EVEN A STAUNCH CONSERVATIVE IS EMBARASSED BY THE FIELD OF GOP CANDIDATES

...Conservative columnist, Charles Krauthammer



You know it’s really bad when the major conservative writers and the radio & TV pundits are holding their noses.

As my loyal readers are aware, I am anything but a fan of the conservative op-ed writer for the Washington Post and the FOX TV contributor, Mr. Charles Krauthammer. But even this great, droll writer of conservative fiction does occasionally have a vision within his head that I can agree with.

Of course, there is always his negative approach that says that none of the positive areas within the economy over the past three years have had anything to do with any of the efforts of President Obama or the Democrats. But to Mr. Krauthammer’s credit, even he is astute enough to recognize that those presidential candidates currently being offer up by the GOP are hardly worth any praise for their accomplishments or capabilities.

As he explained during a FOX Special Report, “No credit should go to President Obama. [Instead, it should be given] to the embarrassing Republican candidates and the ridiculous behavior of the Congressional Republican leadership.”

Krauthammer stated during this Special Report that, “President Obama has mostly been a passive observer to a landscape that has been remarkably favorable to him and his administration.” Krauthammer attributed the, “ridiculous way the Republicans have conducted themselves in Congress for making Obama look at least like a grown-up while Republicans have had an almost year-long exposure to a weak Republican field.” “The fact that Santorum is the last standing alternative,” he explained, “think of how this is going: Trump, Bachmann, Perry, then Cain, then Newt– who’s really in decline now– Ron Paul, who is on the ascent but not electable, then Santorum.”

Krauthammer rightly concluded that “Every [Republican] alternative is going to get a try.”

Krauthammer highlighted how the weak field made such a big difference by arguing, “imagine a race with a Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Christie, Thune… it would’ve had a completely different complexion” [instead of having] “embarrassing candidates like Cain and the others.”

When Krauthammer gets it right, he really and rightfully goes for the party’s jugular.

It’s hard to argue with Mr. Krauthammer when he and other conservative writers such as Brooks, Gerson, Noonan, Will and Frum have all written various negative columns about the weak field of Republican presidential candidates. And even the FOX pundits such as O’Reilly, Hannity, Malkin, Coulter and Huckabee have not been super cheer-leaders for any of the 2012 GOP presidential offerings.

And let’s not forget the bizarre Mr. Glenn Beck and the “King of Conservative Blowhards”, his rudeness, Rush Limbaugh. They too have not been particularly enamored with any of those running under the GOP banner.

The real disgusting part of all this is that none of these Republican candidates have offered one policy or program idea that deals with this country’s real issues. That being job creation, infrastructure building and repair and helping those affected by the mortgage crisis.

In a recent example of how totally out-of-touch these lame candidates are, a recent observer of the 15 past so-called GOP debates posted on the internet a “90 second revisiting of the past Republican Presidential Debates”. When the recording was played back, the 90 seconds consisted of the hundreds of recorded times that the candidates stated the word “taxes” and the number of times they mentioned the name “Ronald Reagan”. But there was not one mention of US “jobs”, or the nation’s “infrastructure” or housing needs.

And this is doubly interesting, as based on today’s far-right Republican Party and its Tea Party members, their current past political icon, Ronald Reagan, would not even be allowed into today’s Republican Party, due to his raising of taxes 11 times and his position on abortion during his presidency.

Yes, due to the down economy, the US Supreme Court’s Citizens-United decision, with all the money being spent against the Democrats, it is still going to be a big election-duel regardless of who is running against the president. But based on the current 13% approval rating of the US Congress, plus the poor field of GOP candidates and President Obama’s almost 50% approval rating, it’s looking better for the Democrats than it probably should be, at least for now.

But no one should get cocky as it’s still a long time to November 2012, and the Republicans can and will still do a lot of political damage.

Yes, with all that’s going on with the “Occupy” groups around the country and with all the “Citizens-United” investments in the GOP, it’s going to be a very interesting election year.

Copyright G.Ater 2012

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FOR U.S. HOUSE REPUBLICANS:”TOTAL HYPOCRISY” DOESN’T COME CLOSE TO DESCRIBING THEM

...Representative Joe Walsh (R-Il), a Tea Party House member known for his high levels of hypocrisy.






If the current Republicans in Congress were adolescent children, it would now be appropriate for them to be given a major, “Time-Out”.

Well, the Republicans in the House finally caved on the payroll tax extension and they and Speaker Boehner were licking their wounds as they headed home for the holiday break.

But previously on the Wednesday before Christmas, the GOP House Speaker, had assembled nine of his House Republican colleagues into his conference room, and he also invited in the TV cameras and a number of reporters, The Speaker then proclaimed that the House Republicans really and truly did want to enact the payroll-tax break that they had just defeated.
“We’re here. We’re ready to go to work,” Boehner announced.

CNN’s Deirdre Walsh, then caused the Speaker to turn an even brighter red-orange by mentioning the recent savage editorial in the conservative Wall Street Journal that had called the GOP payroll-tax strategy a total “fiasco”.

Boehner stated that he now wanted a House-Senate Conference Committee (which based on history, would have taken weeks to form) for negotiating a new 1 year tax deal.

Unfortunately. The current Speaker doesn’t know his job well enough to understand that there is a very big problem with his proposed plan.

The Senate Democrats had already negotiated a compromise with Senate Republicans, and Boehner’s Tea Party and his House Republicans had then summarily rejected that compromise.

Yessiree, House Republicans, really did vote to deny tax relief and unemployment extensions to 160 million Americans.

They keep saying they want a 1 year extension of tax relief and unemployment benefits. But they failed to mention that the Republican plan cuts the number of eligible weeks of unemployment payments in half, it requires drug testing for unemployment insurance recipients, it requires recipients to have a high-school diploma or a GED certificate and it also calls for “Means Testing” of Medicare. (Which would eventually make Medicare into a welfare program.)

Of course, to this day, the network and cable news programs (especially FOX have all failed to give out these disturbing details of the Republican House proposal.

On another front, the House Republican Leadership was later that week huddled up in a conference room in the Capitol building basement for more than two hours.

One would have assumed that they were obviously puzzling over how to explain to their constituents why they had effectively order a January tax increase on the American middle class, while the country was still in the middle of a deep recession. (And also while the Republicans were continuing to fight for much larger tax breaks for the wealthy.)

In any case, it is amazing how in the world they were able to justify the killing of a bipartisan compromise that had the support of all but eight Senate Republicans and the previous tacit approval of Speaker Boehner himself...?

But as it turns out, in that huddled basement meeting, they were not discussing how to explain their votes to their constituents.

Nosiree, not those House Republicans.

Instead, they were discussing their favorite scenes from the Mel Gibson film “Braveheart”...What you say????

Yes, approximately 10 House Republicans had gone to a podium to share their favorite memories of the movie...?

It is reported that one GOP House member mentioned the scene where the Scottish rebel, William Wallace, ordered his army to “moon” the English troops.

And another House member recounted the scene in which Wallace commanded the rebels to “hold their positions before raising their spears against the charging English cavalry”.

Yes, this whole bizarre discussion was to encourage these meeting attendees to not relent on their spending cuts approach. And, to borrow a well used Dubya reference, they were encouraged to, “stay the course” for killing the nation’s economy.

In fact, this last movie-scene discussion inspired these assembled Republican House lawmakers to actually start chanting: “Hold! Hold! Hold! Hold!”

When Rep. Rob Bishop (R-UT) rose to tell his colleagues that he hated the film, he then introduced a motion that all references to “Braveheart” be banned from the meeting. But of course, just like adolescent children, his Republican colleagues laughed and heckled Rep. Bishop and the motion was obviously not adopted.

What these "world history-deficient" and childish Republican House members don’t seem to realize is that the ancient Scots they are trying to emulate were defeated and slaughtered. William Wallace was captured, (possibly betrayed by his own people), and he was drawn and quartered in a British town square. His body parts were then distributed to other British and Scottish town squares as a warning against rebellion from the British king.

Yes, these are the idiots that, solely by the Democrats not turniung out to vote in the 2010 midterms, were allowed to assume their offices and to make misdirected decisions for the majority of the American people. It has become truly disgusting and embarrassing to watch day after day.

The hypocrisy of this wrong-thinking Republican group is astounding, but fortunately, it’s not going unnoticed.

Here is the latest Gallup Poll on US Congressional approval:

“Dec. 15, 2011: PRINCETON, NJ -- Americans' assessment of Congress has hit a new low, with only 13% saying they approve of the way Congress is handling its job. The 83% disapproval rating is the worst Gallup has measured in more than 30 years of tracking congressional job performance.”

With President Obama’s current approval rating of 43%-47%, the current 112th US Congress doesn’t look real good for their 2012 elections. And as of today, a recent Gallup Poll says that over 55% of those Americans polled wanted to replace ALL of the current members of Congress, especially those recent Republican Tea Party Congresspersons.

For most Americans and their 2010 votes, as the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

I don’t think the American voters will be as easily fooled in November 2012.

Copyright G.Ater 2011

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GET YOUR DIPLOMA FROM THE “GOP SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS”. BUT DON’T EXPECT IT GETTING YOU A JOB.

...GOP Speaker, John Boehner, Mr. "We can't raise taxes on job creators".




In math, “1+1=2”. In Republican economics, “lower taxes = more jobs”. Well, at least the math equation is correct.

As the gap continues to widen between the GOP and the Democrats, both sides continue to argue whether or not lowering taxes does, or does not, create jobs.

The Democrats continue to rightfully state that George W. Bush’s “tax-cuts-for-the-rich” produced fewer jobs in 8 years than Obama has produced, (in a down economy), in the past 3 years. But they keep saying that, “we can’t increase taxes on the job creators”, which we all know is a bunch of bunkum. But the conservatives keep preaching that to an apparent economically ignorant American public.

So, how can we convince the American public that higher taxes on the rich will not only “not” stop job creation, but will actually increase job creation?

Well, first we must get the people to understand that the US is the most “Consumer Driven” nation in the world. This statement means that 60% of this nation’s is based on the buying of consumer items to drive the nation’s economy. The US is the world’s “most” consumer driven because, of the other industrialized countries, most of their consumer economies are driven by about only 40% consumerism.

And just why is that?

Well, many other nations have fewer citizens and they don’t purchase as many items from “for-profit” companies as do Americans. As an example, most all health care in the US is “for-profit”, where in other countries, “for-profit” health care is against the law. In addition, all student loans for higher education in the US are “for-profit” loans from private banks. In other countries, higher education costs are paid by higher taxes and their higher-education is free for all of its citizens. But these are just a couple of examples.

The point is that what the conservatives keep trying to sell is, ”By raising taxes on the top 1% of the nation’s wealthy, we are considering destroying the very mechanism that makes our economy the strongest and biggest in the world: The incentive for entrepreneurs and investors to build companies in the hope of getting rich and, in the process, creating millions of jobs.”

But the truth, as stated by a current billionaire, Mr. Nick Hanauer, “the theory that rich people create the jobs is absurd”. And Mr. Hanauer is the founder of the online advertising company aQuantive, which Microsoft bought for $6.4 billion.

There have long been many problems with this argument that the wealthy create jobs, starting with:

>>> Taxes on the rich today are, relative to history, low, so raising them would only begin to bring them back in line with previous prior prosperous US periods

>>> Dozens of rich entrepreneurs have already gone on record confirming that a modest hike in capital gains and income taxes would not have the slightest impact on their desire to create companies and jobs.

>>> In addition, when taxes are closer to the 50% level, that many times encourages the company’s management to keep the money invested in expanding the company, instead of paying the money out in large taxable dividends.

As Mr. Hanauer states, and as it is for consumer driven economies, “rich people do not create jobs, even if they found and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people”. What creates the jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is “a healthy economic ecosystem surrounding the company, which starts with the company's customers”.

The company's customers that buy the company's products, which, in turn, create the need for the employees to produce, sell, and service, those products. That’s what creates jobs. If those customers go broke, or lose their jobs, the demand for the company's products will collapse. The jobs will then disappear, regardless of what the entrepreneur or the company does. This is today, and always has been, the basics of what creates and keeps jobs.

As is demonstrated with the more than $9 million a year that Mr. Hanauer keeps, he buys lots of stuff. But, more importantly, he doesn't buy as much stuff as would be bought if that $9 million were instead earned by 9,000 Americans each taking home an extra $1,000 a year.

As a very wise man once said, “To be a very rich man, in a very poor country, that country’s economy will eventually fail, as fewer people have the necessary spending money for maintaining the nation’s consumer driven economy.”

Yes, it’s basic math, not “Republican economics”.

Now regarding entrepreneurs, such as Steve Jobs, of Apple Computer, Mr. Hanauer states, “Now, of course entrepreneurs are an important part of the company-creation process. And so are investors, who risk capital in the hope of earning returns. But, ultimately, whether a new company continues growing and creates self-sustaining jobs is a function of customers' ability and willingness to pay for the company's products, not the entrepreneur or the investor capital.” He is suggesting that saying that, "rich entrepreneurs and investors create the jobs is like suggesting that squirrels create evolution”.

Or, to put it even more simply, it's like trying to say that “a seed creates a tree”. The seed does not create the tree.

The seed starts the tree. But what creates the tree is the combination of the DNA in the seed and the soil, the sunshine, the water, the seed’s environment, the nutrients, and the other factors that nurture it. Plant the seed in an inhospitable environment, and it won't create anything. Instead, it will die.

The point is that entrepreneurs and investors are very important to our economy. The Steve Jobs in the country keep the economy vibrant and nimble, and they help the "gale of creative destruction" that creates innovation and progress and wealth and allows the economy to remain competitive. And they all deserve credit for that. But if they create any jobs, it’s only temporary if the customers for their products do not appear.

We are all in this together.

What "creates" most of the jobs in our economy is due to a healthy economic ecosystem for the 99%, not a 1%, privileged part of it. Without healthy and plentiful customers, with good paying jobs and the ability to “consume”, entrepreneurs, investors and manufacturers are eventually “dead in the water”.

It’s really that simple.


Copyright G.Ater 2011

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US PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS HAVE CHANGED FOR THE WORSE

...The 33rd US President, Harry S. Truman





The Citizen-United decision has thrown a huge monkey–wrench into America’s elections.

We all knew the elections were going to be all about “the money” after the Citizens-United debacle came down from the conservative and activist US Supreme Court. But the whole election process has taken a turn that no one had thought about with the beginning of the 2012 election season.

First we’ve already had the 13 Republican so called “Debates”, (and watch out, they are talking about having another 13 debates before it’s all over). These bogus “political events” have turned into being mostly fund-raising events for some of these people that have had no intention of actually running for the US presidency.

I say this because both Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich did not even set up and support any traditional election organizations around the country. They instead, both did their so called, “campaigning” by going on tours for selling and signing their latest books.

And the crazy Congresswoman, Michele Bachmann, who knows that she is not going to be the GOP nominee, she is using the debates for fund-raise for her next House election campaign. It is also now appearing that the GOP candidate Rick Santorum is just looking for more media-exposer for increasing his pay-check when he returns as a FOX TV contributor. And Ron Paul is staying in the debates for increasing his influence for being included in the decision making process at the 2012 Republican convention.

But the real results are that we now have to listen to all the “big money” rhetoric that is being espoused, while the rest of the nation’s citizens are striving to just keep their heads above water. (The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) just announced last week that for the first time in US history, 1 out of every 2 Americans is considered either poor or living in poverty.)

As for some examples of the latest rhetoric, Mitt Romney tried to make a $10,000 bet with Texas Governor Rick Perry to resolve their dispute over health care during one of their recent TV Debates. And the hateful right-wing radio talker, Michael Savage, is now offering Newt Gingrich “one million dollars to drop out of the presidential race”.

But, why would Savage offer only one million dollars for Newt to drop out?

Gingrich had already received $1.6 million for being a lobbyist / historian for the mortgage giant Freddie Mac. And he gets $60,000 for each of his public speeches, based on his own boastful account. He reportedly has also generated $100 million in revenues by trading in on his long-time Washington connections.

When Romney was criticized for the ridiculous $10,000 debate bet with Governor Perry, Romney then went on FOX to say that Gingrich should be returning the $1.6 million he received from Freddie Mac. That comment led Gingrich to then suggest that Romney should “give back all the money he’s earned [at Bain Capital] on bankrupting companies and laying off employees.”

Money, money, and more money. Kind of sounds like a gang of kids arguing on the playground, doesn’t it?

As was stated by the Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank, “...if Savage was a few zeros short on Gingrich’s price tag, his instincts were correct: Gingrich and his rivals are most definitely up for sale. The Republican nominating contest resembles nothing so much as a Christie’s wine auction, as candidates accept, and toss about, dollar figures beyond the comprehension of the people they would serve.”

Because of Citizens-United, we must now look at what President Obama has to do, just to be competitive. He is now required to raise up to $1 billion in campaign contributions for the 2012 campaign. That’s up from the $750 million he brought in for his 2008 campaign.

More and more it’s becoming that if you aren’t a millionaire, or billionaire, you will be required to raise millions to run for any national elections, or re-elections. In other words, all of Congress is more than ever, “up for sale” to the highest bidder.

But, did the conservatives on the US Supreme Court possibly over-step themselves by developing a bogus legal case that allowed something like Citizens-United to pass?

Because of these massive effects of Citizen-United, in recent days, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent has proposed a way out of this mess. He has presented a constitutional amendment that would outlaw corporate campaign contributions, overturning the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision. There are also other individuals in congress putting forward bills and amendments, but the DC lobbyist (with unlimited financing) are hard at work in attempting to make sure that Senator Sanders and the others fail at their patriotic attempts.

This is all such a difference as to what it was like with previous US presidents.

Take for instance, Harry S. Truman, the 33rd US President.

On his first day of once again becoming a private citizen, refusing official transportation, Truman instead drove his brand-new Chrysler New Yorker automobile, with his wife, Bess accompanying him, all the way home to Independence, Missouri. No Secret Service protection, motorcade or Air Force One.

When Harry Truman had become President, the only asset he had was the home he and his wife Bess owned in Independence, which they had inherited from his mother-in-law.

Once Truman left the office of the president, Truman quickly decided that he did not wish to be on any company’s corporate payroll. He believed that taking advantage of such financial opportunities would diminish the integrity of the nation's highest office. He also turned down numerous offers for any commercial endorsements. (Fat chance of that happening today!)

Due to his business losses during the Great Depression, Truman and his wife had no real personal savings, so as a result, they faced serious financial challenges.

Once Truman left the White House, his only source of income was his old WWI army pension of $112.56 per month. Former members of Congress and the federal courts already received a federal retirement package, but in 1953, there was no such benefit package for former presidents.

So, Truman had to take out a personal loan from a Missouri bank shortly after leaving office.

He then set about establishing another precedent for future former chief executives: making a book deal for his memoirs of his time as president. For his memoirs, Truman received a flat payment of $670,000. Unfortunately, he had to pay two-thirds of that in taxes. He later stated that he had calculated that he ended up with $37,000, after he paid his book-writing assistants.

Even though Truman only received one flat fee, his memoirs were a commercial and critical success for the publisher, and there were multiple re-prints of both books. They were originally published in two volumes in 1955 and 1956. The book titles were: Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Year of Decisions and Memoirs by Harry S. Truman: Years of Trial and Hope.

It wasn’t until 1958, that Congress passed the Former Presidents Act that offered a $25,000 yearly pension to each former president. It is highly likely that Truman's financial status played a role in the law's enactment. The one other living former president at the time, Herbert Hoover, also took the new pension. Even though Hoover did not need the money; he reportedly took it to avoid embarrassing President Truman, who had become a very close friend.

The contrast between Harry S. Truman and today’s GOP candidates shows just how low things have gotten in the attitude of those individuals currently running for the highest office in the land.

God help us if one of these Republican dofuse candidates gets into office.

Copyright: G.Ater 2011

Follow me on Twitter: gater01

RIGHT-WING AUTHOR GETS IT ALL WRONG ABOUT “OCCUPY WALL STREET”

...The conservative Washington Times staff writer, Marybeth Hicks.

It’s amazing how the far-right is so totally unable to see the truth, or ” the forest for the trees”.

Recently, Ms. Marybeth Hicks, the right-wing conservative author of "Don't Let the Kids Drink the Kool-Aid: Confronting the Left's Assault on Our Families, Faith and Freedom," and a self-appointed “culture columnist”, Ms. Hicks decided to add her own two-cents regarding the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) protests. Her rant has apparently gone viral on the internet.

As expected, her explanation for what she saw and understood about the OWS movement, and its participants, was about as far off-base as it’s possible to be. But it was certainly right in line with what you might expect to hear on Rupert Murdoch’s FOX TV Network or coming from the mouths of Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.

The first area of total misunderstanding was of her referring to all of the protestors as if they were all under the age of 30, and that most were college students sporting facial piercings and tattoos. It was surprising that she didn’t also refer to them as dirty, filthy, hippie drug addicts, as has so commonly been stated on FOX and other right-wing radio talk shows.

The reality is that it has been documented by many reputable news organizations that the average age of the OWS protestors is more like 45-50, with many retirees as well as many union workers, nurses, college graduates and working, or out-of-work, professionals.

Apparently, based on her previous writing experience, she is once again seeing herself in the position of being the righteous parent giving moral instructions to misbehaving adolescents, aka: the OWS protestors.

In fact, she starts her review of the OWS movement in the form of asking the maternal question: "Who parented these people?"
She then goes on to take the role of the aforementioned “parent”, or of being the more intelligent individual, and she proceeds to give the protestors five things that, “the OWS protesters' mothers should have taught their children but obviously didn't, so I will.”

But, also as expected, the assumptions that Ms. Hicks has made regarding her five different pieces of profound knowledge, are basically all incorrect. Without stating them in their lengthy entirety, here are her five assumptions condensed down to one sentence each.

#1: The protestors feel that they aren’t being treated fairly and they should be getting whatever it is that they want just by asking.

#2: The protestors expect to get “free” college tuition and “free” health care.

#3: The protestors expect their expensive college loans to be eliminated.

#4: The protestors are spoiled and protesting just for getting more attention from the media.

#5: That the reason the protestors don’t have jobs is that they are all sporting, “tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks” which make them unfit for most jobs.

Ms. Hicks goes on to support her apparent idea that the protestors are all mostly college students by incorrectly stating that, “Only 4% of college graduates are out of work. If you are among that 4%, find a mirror and face the problem. It's not them. It's you.”

I don’t know where she got that percentage, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the current unemployed college student rate is currently 18.8%.

So, OK, let’s take on her assumptions one at a time.

#1: The protestors feel that they aren’t being treated fairly and they should be getting whatever it is that they want just by asking.

Over the past three decades, the wealthy have increased their wealth 200-300% while over the average middle-class wages have stagnated. The protestors are saying that the average wages from the 1940’s to mid 1970’s basically followed along with the increases in wealth for very rich Americans. This all stopped, beginning with Reaganomics, in the 1980’s. The protestors basically want to stop what has been going on for the last 30years in forcing them into the poor house. They want changes in fiscal policy that evens-the-playing-field. An area in which the conservatives do not want to change.

#2: The protestors expect to get “free” college tuition and “free” health care.

Most of the industrialized countries around the world offer free education from K-12 through college as well as tax paid-for health care. In fact, the US is the only industrialized country that has “for-profit” health care providers. In most European countries, it’s literally against the law to offer for-profit health care.

Starting with Thomas Jefferson’s, Virginia Technical Institute, that was the first US college that provided free upper education. Every US state at one time had free education available through four years of college. Today those free colleges are disappearing in the United States. It started when Ronald Reagan, as the governor of California, started charging its residents to attend state colleges. The protestors want to go back to tax-payer provided higher education and health care, that also competes with the rest of the world. They do not expect to not pay higher taxes to receive these items.

#3: The protestors expect their expensive college loans to be eliminated.

When the Republicans took low cost student loans away and gave it to private banks, the cost of those loans soared. This increased cost, plus the increases in college tuition, have caused students to finish college with debts similar to the costs of buying their first homes. The protestors want the loans to return to being managed by the government at lower interest rates and longer terms. They do not expect the loans to just, “go away”.

#4: The protestors are spoiled and protesting just for getting more attention from the media.

As it was with American Civil Rights and the War in Vietnam, it takes a movement of the people to change politics and policy, not the reverse. That is why there are movement protests all over the country and also starting up in Europe. The majority of the Americans of all ages want to change the current policies and politics. The last time this occurred with the US economy was after the 1930’s Great Depression. That movement took 3 years before the changes were made in Washington DC for beginning to build what became the greatest middle-class in the world. That’s what the OWS protests are all about. They are not spoiled kids looking for attention.

#5: That the reason the protestors don’t have jobs is that they are all sporting, “tattooed necks, gauged ears, facial piercings and dirty dreadlocks” which make them unfit for most jobs.

Yes, there are some young people sporting tattoos and piercings within in the OWS movement. But overall these are not just “kids” of bad parenting. As stated, there is a cross-section of many Americans that want change. And Ms. Hicks comment about 4% unemployed students is totally off base. This is a legitimate “Movement”, not some prank by a bunch of juveniles.

Unfortunately, Ms. Hicks attitude is right in line with most of the dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers. I guess it should have been expected.

Copyright: G.Ater 2011

Follow me on Twitter: gater01

SHORT PRIMERS ON THE SEVEN POTENTIAL GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES

...It’s that crazy Republican Congresswoman, & GOP Presidential candidate, Michele Bachmann













This article shows that there is only one individual that is qualified and that should be seriously considered by the GOP for 2012. And that one candidate doesn’t stand a chance in hell.

The following is being presented in order for everyone to fully understand the background and capabilities of those in the group that are to be chosen from, for becoming the political opponent to President Obama in November 2012.

#1: NEWT GINGRICH:

The “Christmas Grinch” himself, Newton Leroy Gingrich, is currently the “flavor-of-the-month” for the Republican Party. And it currently, being so close to the Iowa Caucuses, Newt could end up being the final flavor-of-choice for 2012 by default.

Newt has previously been a history professor, but has mainly been known for being the only Speaker of the House that was forced to leave his Speaker position by a Republican House of Representatives on ethics issues.

Following an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, Gingrich was sanctioned and fined $300,000. Gingrich acknowledged in January 1997 that "In my name and over my signature, inaccurate, incomplete and unreliable statements were given to the committee". The Committee concluded that inaccurate information supplied to investigators represented "intentional or ... reckless" disregard of House rules.

Special Counsel James M. Cole concluded that Gingrich violated federal tax law and he had lied to the ethics panel in an effort to force the committee to dismiss the complaints against him.

Gingrich left his position voluntarily in order to avoid a long and complicated hearing in the full House of Representatives.

Gingrich is also known for having a trigger temper and for driving President Clinton’s sex scandal investigation while at the same time having his own secret sexual affair. He made big news in Washington DC when he went to a hospital to visit his wife, who was having cancer treatments, as he was bringing her divorce papers.

Today, Newt is on his 3rd wife, a woman that he was previously having an affair with and who has a ½ million dollar credit line fetish with jewelry from Tiffany’s.

Gingrich is best known in gutter politics for his obstructionist tactics and the 1995 shut down of the US government that he implemented as the House Speaker. He has recently stated such outlandish comments such as “The president is the best American “food stamp president ever,” and that President Obama is, “fundamentally out of touch with how the world works”.

These statements are coming from a man that wants to get rid of child labor laws and that thinks that working children should replace their school janitors. Gingrich stated on FOX that in poor neighborhoods, “The young students could be paid to clean the toilets and scrub the floors.”

Newt also wants to get rid of “Obamacare” and to deny women seeking reproductive health care services.

#2: MITT ROMNEY:

Mr. “Flip-Flopper” himself, Willard Mitt Romney, has been unsuccessfully running for president since he left the Massachusetts’ governorship in 2007.

He is a life-time Mormon and a staunch supporter of corporate America. Virtually every large multinational corporation has donated to his PAC or election campaign. But even with all that money, along with his own personal wealth, he is not well-liked by the base of the conservative Republicans.

Having brought health care to the state of Massachusetts, and that health care program being the foundation for President Obama’s health care program, Mitt is looked at by his own party as being a traitor to conservatism and “way too moderate”.

And all that has nothing to do on the fact that Mitt has “flip-flopped” his position on everything from abortion, and climate change, to health care and Gay rights. He also wants to privatize Social Security and Medicare as we know it today.

#3: RICK PERRY:

Mr. “Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme” himself, James Richard Perry, Governor of Texas, still thinks that Social Security is unconstitutional. He is very proud that he has executed more Texas prisoners than any other US governor since the death penalty was reinstated.

He claims to have added more jobs than any other state, but they are mostly minimum wage jobs with the Texas oil companies (nothing he had to do with) and the other increases were by adding public state jobs.

He has broached the false idea that Texas can secede from the Union and he wants to repeal “Obamacare” while allowing Texas private health care companies to “ration” their health care. He also agrees to deny coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Under his watch, health care premium costs doubled in Texas.

In addition, most capable political observers consider Governor Rick Perry being “as dunb as a rock”.

#4: MICHELE BACHMANN:

Ms. “Dingbat Congresswoman” herself, Michele Marie Bachmann, by winning the Tea Party’s, Ames Straw Poll Caucus, and by founding the Congressional Tea Party Caucus, Ms. Bachmann catapulted herself to becoming one of the GOP presidential candidates. I call her a “Dingbat” because this is the woman that seriously believes the following:

>>> That the American Revolution’s “shot heard around the world” was fired in New Hampshire, not in Concord, Massachusetts.
>>> She thinks that John Quincy Adams was a “founding father” instead of his father, Presidaent John Adams.
>>> She thinks that the founding fathers were against slavery, even though most of them had slaves.
>>> She had publicly mistaken the movie icon John Wayne with serial killer, John Wayne Gacey.
>>> She had publicly mistaken Elvis Presley’s birthday anniversary with the anniversary of his death.
>>> On MSNBC, Ms. Bachmann called for the US Justice Department to investigate all US congresspersons to determine which of them were un-American.
>>> Ms. Bachmann and her husband believe that being Gay is a choice and that it can be “prayed away”.
>>> Michele is a serious evangelical that believes that the US was originally formed based on Christianity.

As president, Ms. Bachmann swears that she would write a presidential executive order to repeal “Obamacare”. (Executive orders cannot repeal laws enacted by Congress.)

She voted to end Medicare as we know it and she stated that as president she would “wean” Americans off of Social Security.

Ms. Bachmann says she would bring back “Don’t ask, Don’t Tell” in the military, which a president can’t do.

And even though she rails against government spending, her family’s farm and her husband’s medical company have received hundreds of thousands of government subsidy dollars to date.

#5: RICK SANTORUM:

Mr. “Intelligent Design vs Evolution” himself, Richard John Santorum, was a Republican Pennsylvania Senator until 2006.

Mr. Santorum is a very religious evangelical, and a staunch right-wing politician. When he lost his senatorial race, he lost, with 41% of the vote to his opponent’s 59%, the largest margin of defeat ever for an incumbent Republican Senator.

He is known for his stances against homosexuality and the high-profile case of not allowing Ms. Terri Schiavo’s husband to turn off her life support system after 15 years of being in a coma. (Ms. Schiavo was proven to have been brain dead for years before she was eventually allowed to officially die.)

Santorum has been a firm supporter of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, intelligent design over evolution, and Social Security privatization.

In a bizarre episode, Mr. Santorum and his wife brought their miscarried deceased male child home from the hospital to introduce it to their seven other children before returning the baby's body to the hospital the next day.

Santorum has been serving as a Senior Fellow with the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., and was a long-time Republican contributor to the mis-information FOX so-called News Channel.

#6: RON PAUL:

Mr. “just let him die”, himself, Ronald Ernest Paul, is an American physician, author and United States Congressman from Texas who is seeking to be the Republican presidential candidate.

The “just let him die” reference is because it was yelled out in a recent primary TV debate. At the time, Mr. Paul, who doesn’t agree with providing any Americans health care, or unemployment insurance or Social Security, was explaining that we should not provide health care for someone that was terminally ill. Someone from the debate audience obviously agreed with Mr. Paul as they yelled out, “just let him die.”

Ron Paul regularly votes against almost all proposals for new government spending, initiatives, or taxes, regardless of what they would benefit the public. He cast two thirds of all the lone negative votes in the House during a 1995–1997 period. He has pledged to the right-wing lobbyist, Grover Norquist, to never to raise taxes and states he has never voted to approve a budget deficit.

Paul believes that the country could abolish the individual income tax by scaling back federal spending to its fiscal year 2000 levels. Financing government operations would be primarily by excise taxes and non-protectionist tariffs. Unfortunately, that would not provide the necessary tax revenues.

Mr. Paul endorses eliminating most all federal government agencies, terming them “unnecessary bureaucracies”. He also advocates for the gradual elimination of the Federal Reserve System.

#7: JON HUNTSMAN:

Mr. “motocross”, himself. Jon Meade Huntsman Jr., is a long-time Mormon, an American politician and diplomat who served as the 16th Governor of Utah.

He also served in the administrations of four United States presidents and is a candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

The “motocross” reference is from an early TV ad that the Huntsman’s campaign ran where a helmeted motocross rider was screaming across the desert. The motorcycle rider was supposed to be the candidate. However, there were no political comments or statements and you never saw the face of the rider. Quite a bizarre TV ad .

Huntsman inherited a multi-million dollar corporation and he has served as the CEO of his family's Huntsman Corporation.

He was elected Governor of Utah in April, 2004 and won re-election in 2008 with nearly 78% of the vote. While governor, he also served as chairman of the Western Governors Association and as a member of the Executive Committee of the National Governors Association.

In 2009, he resigned as governor to accept an appointment from President Obama as the United States Ambassador to the People's Republic of China. He also speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese.

Jon Huntsman would probably be the most intelligent and capable candidate that the Republicans could offer in 2012. But Mr. Huntsman is much too moderate for the current Republican Party and the Tea Party members. He was also an ambassador for President Obama, and for the GOP, that is being a traitor, even if it was for the benefit of a “supposed” bipartisan country.


So here you have a condensed version of what the Republicans have to choose from for their 2012 candidate. For whomever receives the nod from the voters to be the eventual GOP candidate, all I can say is, “I wish you no luck in the 2012 campaign”.

Copyright G.Ater 2011

Follow me on Twitter: gater01

OBAMA SHOWS THAT POLITICAL HISTORY CONTINUES TO REPEAT ITSELF

...President Obama speaking in Osawatomie, Kansas








President Obama this week made it clear that the US is going through many of the same issues that Theodore Roosevelt, the previous Republican president, spoke about in his famous “New Nationalism Speech” of 1910.

As you may or may not be aware, President Barack Obama has very deep family roots in the state of Kansas. His mother was born in Wichita, Kansas and his mother’s parents were both from Kansas.

Earlier this week, President Obama went to Osawatomie, Kansas, in order to present a kind of unofficial “state-of-the-union” speech that the country has needed for a long time. In many ways, it not only commemorated a Theodore Roosevelt speech that was made in this same town 101 years ago, it also seemed to channel Mr. Roosevelt’s thoughts from way back then.

For those that did not hear or read the whole speech, here are some excerpts that seriously layout what this country has been put through the last three decades, who is responsible and what needs to be done to right our “ship of state”.


As stated by President Obama:


“This is the defining issue of our time. This is a make-or-break moment for the middle class, and for all those who are fighting to get into the middle class. Because what's at stake is whether this will be a country where working people can earn enough to raise a family, build a modest savings, own a home, secure their retirement.

Now, in the midst of this debate, there are some who seem to be suffering from a kind of collective amnesia. After all that's happened, after the worst economic crisis, the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, they want to return to the same practices that got us into this mess. In fact, they want to go back to the same policies that stacked the deck against middle-class Americans for way too many years. And their philosophy is simple: We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules.

I am here to say they are wrong. I'm here in Kansas to reaffirm my deep conviction that we're greater together than we are on our own. I believe that this country succeeds when everyone gets a fair shot, when everyone does their fair share, when everyone plays by the same rules. These aren't Democratic values or Republican values. These aren't 1% values or 99% values. They're American values. And we have to reclaim them.

You see, this isn't the first time America has faced this choice. At the turn of the last century, when a nation of farmers was transitioning to become the world's industrial giant, we had to decide: Would we settle for a country where most of the new railroads and factories were being controlled by a few giant monopolies that kept prices high and wages low? Would we allow our citizens and even our children to work ungodly hours in conditions that were unsafe and unsanitary? Would we restrict education to the privileged few? Because there were people who thought massive inequality and exploitation of people was just the price you pay for progress.

Theodore Roosevelt disagreed. He was the Republican son of a wealthy family. He praised what the titans of industry had done to create jobs and grow the economy. He believed then what we know is true today, that the free market is the greatest force for economic progress in human history. It's led to a prosperity and a standard of living unmatched by the rest of the world.

But Roosevelt also knew that the free market has never been a free license to take whatever you can from whomever you can. He understood the free market only works when there are rules of the road that ensure competition is fair and open and honest. And so he busted up monopolies, forcing those companies to compete for consumers with better services and better prices. And today, they still must. He fought to make sure businesses couldn't profit by exploiting children or selling food or medicine that wasn't safe. And today, they still can't.

And in 1910, Teddy Roosevelt came here to Osawatomie and he laid out his vision for what he called a New Nationalism. ‘Our country," he said, "means nothing unless it means the triumph of a real democracy … of an economic system under which each man shall be guaranteed the opportunity to show the best that there is in him.’

Now, for [saying] this, Roosevelt was called a radical. He was called a socialist – even a communist. But today, we are a richer nation and a stronger democracy because of what he fought for in his last campaign: an eight-hour work day and a minimum wage for women, insurance for the unemployed and for the elderly, and those with disabilities; political reform and a progressive income tax.”


As to where we are today and who is responsible for getting us here, President Obama stated the following:


“Now, just as there was in Teddy Roosevelt's time, there is a certain crowd in Washington who, for the last few decades, have said, let's respond to this economic challenge with the same old tune. "The market will take care of everything," they tell us. If we just cut more regulations and cut more taxes – especially for the wealthy – our economy will grow stronger.

Sure, they say, there will be winners and losers. But if the winners do really well, then jobs and prosperity will eventually trickle down to everybody else. And, they argue, even if prosperity doesn't trickle down, well, that's the price of liberty.

Now, it's a simple theory. And we have to admit, it's one that speaks to our rugged individualism and our healthy skepticism of too much government. That's in America's DNA. And that theory fits well on a bumper sticker.

But here's the problem: It doesn't work. It has never worked. It didn't work when it was tried in the decade before the Great Depression. It's not what led to the incredible postwar booms of the 50s and 60s. And it didn't work when we tried it during the last decade. I mean, understand, it's not as if we haven't tried this theory.

Remember in 2001 and 2003, Congress passed two of the most expensive tax cuts for the wealthy in history. And what did it get us? The slowest job growth in half a century. Massive deficits that have made it much harder to pay for the investments that built this country and provided the basic security that helped millions of Americans reach and stay in the middle class – things like education and infrastructure, science and technology, Medicare and Social Security.

Remember that in those same years, thanks to some of the same folks who are now running Congress, we had weak regulation, we had little oversight, and what did it get us?

Insurance companies that jacked up people's premiums with impunity and denied care to patients who were sick, mortgage lenders that tricked families into buying homes they couldn't afford, a financial sector where irresponsibility and lack of basic oversight nearly destroyed our entire economy.”


And the president gave a good explanation for what the last three decades have brought us all:


“Look at the statistics. In the last few decades, the average income of the top 1% has gone up by more than 25% to $1.2m per year. I'm not talking about millionaires, people who have a million dollars. I'm saying people who make a million dollars every single year. For the top 100th of 1%, the average income is now $27 million per year. The typical CEO who used to earn about 30 times more than his or her worker now earns 110 times more. And yet, over the last decade the incomes of most Americans have actually fallen by about 6%.

Now, this kind of inequality – a level that we haven't seen since the Great Depression – hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That's why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It's also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.

Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren't looking out for the interests of most Americans.”


And what needs to be done to fix the problems?


“But we need to meet the moment. We've got to up our game. We need to remember that we can only do that together. It starts by making education a national mission – a national mission. Government and businesses, parents and citizens. In this economy, a higher education is the surest route to the middle class. The unemployment rate for Americans with a college degree or more is about half the national average. And their incomes are twice as high as those who don't have a high school diploma. Which means we shouldn't be laying off good teachers right now – we should be hiring them. We shouldn't be expecting less of our schools –- we should be demanding more. We shouldn't be making it harder to afford college – we should be a country where everyone has a chance to go and doesn't rack up $100,000 of debt just because they went.

In today's innovation economy, we also need a world-class commitment to science and research, the next generation of high-tech manufacturing. Our factories and our workers shouldn't be idle. We should be giving people the chance to get new skills and training at community colleges so they can learn how to make wind turbines and semiconductors and high-powered batteries. And by the way, if we don't have an economy that's built on bubbles and financial speculation, our best and brightest won't all gravitate towards careers in banking and finance. Because if we want an economy that's built to last, we need more of those young people in science and engineering. This country should not be known for bad debt and phony profits. We should be known for creating and selling products all around the world that are stamped with three proud words: Made in America.

Today, manufacturers and other companies are setting up shop in the places with the best infrastructure to ship their products, move their workers, communicate with the rest of the world. And that's why the over 1 million construction workers who lost their jobs when the housing market collapsed, they shouldn't be sitting at home with nothing to do. They should be rebuilding our roads and our bridges, laying down faster railroads and broadband, modernizing our schools – all the things other countries are already doing to attract good jobs and businesses to their shores.

Yes, business, and not government, will always be the primary generator of good jobs with incomes that lift people into the middle class and keep them there. But as a nation, we've always come together, through our government, to help create the conditions where both workers and businesses can succeed. And historically, that hasn't been a partisan idea. Franklin Roosevelt worked with Democrats and Republicans to give veterans of World War II – including my grandfather, Stanley Dunham – the chance to go to college on the GI Bill. It was a Republican president, Dwight Eisenhower, a proud son of Kansas who started the interstate highway system, and doubled down on science and research to stay ahead of the Soviets.”


And here’s how we pay for it.


“Of course, those productive investments cost money. They're not free. And so we've also paid for these investments by asking everybody to do their fair share. Look, if we had unlimited resources, no one would ever have to pay any taxes and we would never have to cut any spending. But we don't have unlimited resources. And so we have to set priorities. If we want a strong middle class, then our tax code must reflect our values. We have to make choices.

Today that choice is very clear. To reduce our deficit, I've already signed nearly $1tn of spending cuts into law and I've proposed trillions more, including reforms that would lower the cost of Medicare and Medicaid.

But in order to structurally close the deficit, get our fiscal house in order, we have to decide what our priorities are. Now, most immediately, short term, we need to extend a payroll tax cut that's set to expire at the end of this month. If we don't do that, 160 million Americans, including most of the people here, will see their taxes go up by an average of $1,000 starting in January and it would badly weaken our recovery. That's the short term.

In the long term, we have to rethink our tax system more fundamentally. We have to ask ourselves: Do we want to make the investments we need in things like education and research and high-tech manufacturing – all those things that helped make us an economic superpower? Or do we want to keep in place the tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans in our country? Because we can't afford to do both. That is not politics. That's just math.

Now, so far, most of my Republican friends in Washington have refused under any circumstance to ask the wealthiest Americans to go to the same tax rate they were paying when Bill Clinton was president. So let's just do a trip down memory lane here.

Keep in mind, when President Clinton first proposed these tax increases, folks in Congress predicted they would kill jobs and lead to another recession. Instead, our economy created nearly 23 million jobs and we eliminated the deficit. Today, the wealthiest Americans are paying the lowest taxes in over half a century. This isn't like in the early 50s, when the top tax rate was over 90%. This isn't even like the early 80s, when the top tax rate was about 70%. Under President Clinton, the top rate was only about 39%. Today, thanks to loopholes and shelters, a quarter of all millionaires now pay lower tax rates than millions of you, millions of middle-class families. Some billionaires have a tax rate as low as 1%.... One percent.

That is the height of unfairness. It is wrong. It's wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker, maybe earns $50,000 a year, should pay a higher tax rate than somebody raking in $50m. It's wrong for Warren Buffett's secretary to pay a higher tax rate than Warren Buffett. And by the way, Warren Buffett agrees with me. So do most Americans – Democrats, independents and Republicans. And I know that many of our wealthiest citizens would agree to contribute a little more if it meant reducing the deficit and strengthening the economy that made their success possible.”


And finally.......


“And it is that belief [in 1910] that rallied thousands of Americans to Osawatomie – maybe even some of your ancestors – on a rain-soaked day more than a century ago. By train, by wagon, on buggy, bicycle, on foot, they came to hear the vision of a man who loved this country and was determined to perfect it.

'We are all Americans,' Teddy Roosevelt told them that day. 'Our common interests are as broad as the continent.' In the final years of his life, Roosevelt took that same message all across this country, from tiny Osawatomie to the heart of New York City, believing that no matter where he went, no matter who he was talking to, everybody would benefit from a country in which everyone gets a fair chance.

And well into our third century as a nation, we have grown and we've changed in many ways since Roosevelt's time. The world is faster and the playing field is larger and the challenges are more complex. But what hasn't changed – what can never change – are the values that got us this far. We still have a stake in each other's success. We still believe that this should be a place where you can make it if you try. And we still believe, in the words of the man who called for a New Nationalism all those years ago, 'The fundamental rule of our national life,' he said, 'the rule which underlies all others – is that, on the whole, and in the long run, we shall go up or down together.' And I believe America is on the way up”


I encourage everyone that read this column to seek out and read the full text of President Obama’s speech. As was the Theodore Roosevelt speech, this Obama speech is one that will be quoted for decades to come.

Copyright G.Ater 2011

Follow me on Twitter: gater01

WHY DO THE CONSERVATIVES HATE AMERICA'S ORGANIZED UNIONS?

...The late Republican strategist, Paul Weyrich






The GOP declared war on America’s labor unions over 100 years ago. Now, just why is that?

Here we are today, embracing the year 2012, and the major unions in the nation, both those in the private industries and those in the federal and state governments, are all still totally despised by American conservatives.

The real reason for the GOP's long-term anti-union attitude is actually quite simple. American unions are the most democratic organizations known to mankind. And conservatives have always hated real democracy.

What you say! Republicans, and other conservatives actually hate the basic democratic foundations of the most successful nation in history?

Yes, that is a correct statement.

The reality is, that in true conservative thinking, they would much prefer conservative kingdoms and dictatorships with only a small group of people in control of the government. This is also why the Republican party has always been in bed with the major corporations. (No, it’s not because the corporations are the bogus “job creators”.)

They love and support large corporations because corporations are just smaller forms of kingdoms or dictatorships.

Think about it.

Corporations are not democracies. As an employee, you give up your freedoms of free speech and the right to have a personal opinion. And you obviously do not get to vote for the top executive that runs the corporation. You work under the rules of the corporation and if you want to change the rules, all you can usually do is make suggestions to upper management. Management decides when and where you will continue to work for them and whether you will get a raise, or a demotion, or a “pink slip”. It’s definitely anything but a democracy.

On the other hand and in comparison, unions are totally democratic.

Union members elect their leaders, they decide by majority rule on their labor contracts, their internal rules and regulations, on their wages and on their pensions and health care programs.

As to the conservatives, they don’t want any large democratic group of any kind telling them what to do.

This is why the Republican party’s #1 goal for 2012 is to take back the White House. This is also why they don’t care what happens to the average working middle-class American. “Let them eat cake,” should be the Republican’s motto because they would rather see the country, and all of its middle-class and its poor to totally fail. For them, this is much preferable to the president and the Democrats having any success in saving the nation’s economy.(Especially, since they were the ones responsible for driving the economy into the ditch.)

And the conservatives have felt this way, going all the way back to the gilded ages of the late 1900’s.

As a more recent case in point, the late Paul Weyrich, who was the co-founder of the conservative think-tank, Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority, and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEX). This last group being the organization that writes right-wing, conservative legislation that DC lobbyists will present to their paid-off, US Congresspersons for introduction in the US House and Senate.

This well established Republican strategist made what became a very famous speech at a conservative Texas get-together back in the late 1960’s. The meeting was also attended by the then Governor of California, Ronald Reagan, and the speech kind of says it all regarding the future philosophy of the governor that became president, and most of today’s American conservatives.

In the speech, Mr Weyrich stated: "Today, many of our Christians have what I call the “Goo-Goo Syndrome” -- Good Government. They want everybody to vote.
I don't want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people, they never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down."

This one short paragraph became a new foundation of the thinking of the GOP that is still their thinking today.

Being a smaller political party in its number of members, (when compared to the Democratic party), this is the reason the Republicans try to make it more difficult to register voters, especially America’s elderly, minorities, and the younger voters, as these groups tend to vote mostly Democratic.

Take for instance the last national election in 2010.

Historically, after a major presidential election such as that of 2008, the new ruling party usually looses congressional seats in both houses of congress in the next mid-term election.

However, with the many more seats-than-usual that the GOP and the Tea Party won in 2010, they have continued in trying to sell the idea that the voters “gave the GOP a mandate to cut federal spending and lower taxes”.

Well, what really happened is that the Democratic voters failed to show up in the 2010 election because many of those that had voted for the Democrats in 2008 were very disappointed. They didn’t like that the president and the Democrats in office didn’t go far enough with “Obamacare” by it not having a “Public Option”. They were also upset because the Dems in Congress did not first concentrate on a real "jobs bill" instead of immediately pursuing the healthcare issues.

In addition, 2010 was a classic mid-term election which always has a much smaller voter turn-out than presidential elections.

The truth is that the GOP’s so called “mandate” was actually a minor win by less that 18% of America’s voting public. Since when did 18% of America’s voters become a “mandate”...?

As I have previously said, with the exception of the right to bear-arms and the “state’s rights 10th amendment”, the conservatives tend to hate all the other parts of the US Constitution. But they love giant corporations, monopolies, big money and a conservative US Supreme Court that decides who and how the country is run.

And I will challenge anyone that reads this column to argue with my conclusions regarding America’s political conservatives.

Copyright G.Ater 2011

Follow me on Twitter: gater01

"OCCUPY WALL STREET" HAS NOW BECOME, “OCCUPY THE NATION”

...The OWS at work

Occupy is a very large national group of seriously pissed-off middle-class Americans.

Probably one of the recent best things for the “Occupy” groups all over America was when that blow-hard, Bill O’Reilly on FOX, stated that the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement was now “dead”. Pinhead O’Reilly had made this statement because the LA Police had just used 1400 of their “finest”, wearing riot helmets and carrying batons, to make 200 arrests of peaceful American citizens. Oh, and there was not one instance of violent resistance.

Yes, the “Occupy” groups are all over the nation, and they are now in some major European cities as well. These growing movements must be making some serious impressions. At first, the main-stream media and the conservatives tried to ignore the movement. But as it grew, the movement became impossible to ignore. They have grown so much that in Great Britain, 2 million protesting Brits virtually shut down London by going on strike and moving into the streets and stopping all business in the usually busy streets of London.

Major conservative talkers on the far-right radio talk shows and the FOX channel are using outrageous lies to describe the movement crowds. They have also been using denigrating descriptions and even some old false “cold-war” claims such as “the movement members are aligned with Lenin and other previous communists leaders”. As usual, they never show any proof of their outrageous claims.

They also sometimes refer to these average Americans as being: shiftless mobs, dirty hippies, sex-offenders, convicted felons, drug addicts, professional handcuff-lock-pickers, anarchists, Parisian mobs, “being worse than Robespierre”, Marxist radicals, anti-capitalists, and finally, that nut-case Glenn Beck even stated that the Occupy Groups will “Come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you, they will kill everybody.”

Sounds like the movement has gone from the ruling class mode of, “ignore them” to the “fight them” mode. The OWS movement is seriously getting under the conservative’s skin...and that’s very, very good!

The approach that the opposition to the movement is now taking is to continue criticizing the OWS and to question what the movement is all about.

Some of the questions that they are asking are:

>>> What is the movement’s focus?

>>> The movement is too vague. Where is their list of demands?

>>> Where and who are their leaders?


Let’s take a look at these questions, one at a time.

#1: What is the movements focus?

To sum it up, the average working, middle-class American is declaring that they are highly pissed-off.

But their focus is actually very clear. They are finally upset at the increasing disparity between the rich Americans and the ever-growing groups of poor Americans. They have watched the well-to-do Americans increase their wealth by over 200%, while the average working American’s wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years. Even the slogan of their group, “We are the 99%” and the fact that they are referred to as the “Occupy Wall Street” groups, pretty much says it all. They know where the blame belongs, and they have made it a major part of their slogan. They have been very clear that they are also very up-set with the massive student loan rip-offs, government-for-sale lobbyists, permanent foreign wars and over-paid military mercenaries and defense contractors. It has become obvious that the overall abusive treatment of the many, by the privileged few, has finally taken its toll.

This is a true populist movement. The Tea Party movement had started out that way, but was then taken over and financed by the conservative think-tanks and GOP front groups such as Freedom Works the American Crossroads and the American Enterprise institute. In retrospect, it is now appearing that the Tea Party members were originally, and mostly, just a group of pissed-off conservative Republicans. Based on the losers that the Tea Party put into office in the 2010 election, even they are looking to replace many of those crazies in the up-coming 2012 election.

The reality is that the Occupy Wall Street crowd consists of millions of ordinary middle-class and low-wage Americans that feel dismissed, disrespected, and disenfranchised in their own country. It’s really that simple.

#2: The movement is too vague. Where is their list of demands?

If you will recall, back when this nation first started, the liberation movement started as a disjointed activity. In fact, as of today, there has never been a clear starting date applied to when the colonists began protesting their grievances against the arrogance of King George III and the giant East India Trading Company.

As it is with the OWS movement, all the original colonists had wanted was to just be treated equally and to be part of the king’s decision making process regarding the colonies. Had the king agreed and brought the colonists into the system, the movement that eventually started a new nation would probably have failed at the start. It wasn’t until the colonists passions were driven to the point of outrage that those such as Thomas Paine began writing his infamous rebellion pamphlet’s. (Kind of like what’s going on today with the Occupy’s internet, Facebook and Twitter posts.) These were the writings of the time that eventually spawned the Sons of Liberty and other maverick protestors including those that participated in the Boston Tea Party. It was very much later, after the colonists movement was well established, that a specific list of grievances and demands were developed for the liberation movement.

In fact, as with our past history, it was only recently that a selection of the Occupy cities began forming a functioning, ‘Demands Working Group”. This group will be operating as a very, “small ‘d’, democratic group”. This organization will continue to have on-going discussions and they will extensively use consensus-building techniques before a solid “demands list” is eventually developed.

It must be noted that it took three decades for the American middle-class to get to this depressed level. It will not be fixed in a few weeks or months. And the conservative have their vast wealth and they have been building their misinformation systems for years. They won’t be giving up their hold on this nation without a number of major confrontations.

#3: Who and where are the movement’s leaders?

Purposely, so that they can’t be targeted by the opposition, there are no specific leaders. The group’s decision are made by the General Assemblies (GA) of each OWS group. The GA meets twice a day and the concept of using a GA approach came from the recent groups of Egyptian citizen occupiers of Egypt’s Tahrir Square. Everyone’s voice and suggestions are welcome and all proposals are adopted or passed by 9-out-of-10 of the participants. It is a painful and slow process, but it allows everyone to have their say for the benefit of the whole group. In other words, it’s how the original founding fathers designed the nation’s democratic process over 200 years ago. (Too bad the current US Congress doesn’t work this way.)

Based on recent polls, 59% of Americans agree with what the Occupy protestors are saying and doing. And here comes the conservatives worst nightmare. Last month the Washington Post stated that rank & file Tea Party members, dismayed that their movement had been stolen by the Republican lackeys, are now reaching out to the Occupy camp. On an internet posting by a self-declared former “Tea Partier”, they stated “I don’t agree with everything that your movement does, but I sympathize with your cause and agree on our common enemy.”

This movement’s opposition will become much uglier as the elites realize that there are many more of us than there are of them, and that eventually they are going to lose. The Occupy giant is now awakened and he is royally pissed. Right now what the Occupy movement needs is not more people setting up tents in the town squares. What they really need is for more people to visit the occupy compounds. The visitors need to have conversations with the occupiers for really understanding what’s going on and how the visitors can help without having to camp out and be pepper sprayed by the local police. (There are plenty of people already volunteering to be those guinea pigs of police violence.)

The next major focus point for “Occupy” should be Washington DC. Perhaps by the time Winter is over, that would be a good place for 1 million Americans to just “show-up” and take over the Washington Mall.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see what the GA’s decide.

Copyright G.Ater 2011

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