Rick Snyder should be recalled! What their gov is doing is outrageous. How dare him, in a lame duck session, push forward and SNEAK IN such a heinous bill calling for the END of Unions. I wonder how many people think that Big Business will be generous and allow workers to receive a fair wage, healthcare, overtime pay, a 40 hour workweek and vacation time, all just out of the goodness of their hearts? I wonder how many people think that Big Business will forego their outrageous bonuses, and stop cheating on their taxes by hiding their riches in hidden overseas accounts, all because they are so very honest.
I am so angry at that cowardly, sneaky and conniving Michigan gov Rick Snyder What a Coward! How dare him! How dare the COWARD! I ask ALL Michigan residents to advocate a RECALL against that COWARD! RECALL SNYDER! RECALL SNYDER! RECALL SNYDER!
I wonder how many people have studied the history of our country and read about the abuses against workers, starting with the history of slavery, the abuses against minorities including "Operation Wetback" and other abuses, (latinos, asians and others) all to support "Manifest Destiny." Nothing has come easy.
However the Blood, Sweat and Tears of our hardworking and protesting forefathers have gotten us to our current state we have today. Now the heinous, greedy Rick Snyder is out to abolish unions and abolish all of the successes the Unions have achieve to date. RECALL SNYDER! RECALL SNYDER! RECALL SNYDER!
Showing posts with label greedy fat cats. Show all posts
Showing posts with label greedy fat cats. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 11, 2012
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Guest Voz - Economist Robert Reich: The Secret Big-Money Takeover of America
As I've long time reported, the Koch brothers funded the creation of the Tea Parties and Glenn Beck's 912 rallies and now, the campaigns of several Republican candidates. They hate President Obama and the Democrats because they are spoiling their plans to DESTROY THE MIDDLE CLASS!!! The Teabaggers may have been fooled by them, but these FAT CAT BIG BUSINESS BULLIES are finally being outed!
Guest Voz - Economist Robert Reich:
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before -- and they're doing it behind closed doors. Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret. But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Credit the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy "nonprofits" that don't have to reveal anything.) According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it -- thereby revealing the GOP's true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove's and other supposed nonprofits aren't sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly. In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before -- a government by and for the rich and big corporations -- and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That's why, for example, it's been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they're earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it's so difficult even to extend George Bush's tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent - even though the top won't spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year. The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax. But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money. Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they'd join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is "not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Guest Voz - Economist Robert Reich:
Not only is income and wealth in America more concentrated in fewer hands than it's been in 80 years, but those hands are buying our democracy as never before -- and they're doing it behind closed doors. Hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle. The Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multimillionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.
No one knows for sure where this flood of money is coming from because it's all secret. But you can safely assume its purpose is not to help America's stranded middle class, working class, and poor. It's to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators. Credit the Supreme Court's grotesque decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission, which opened the floodgates. (Even though 8 of 9 members of the Court also held disclosure laws constitutional, the decision invited the creation of shadowy "nonprofits" that don't have to reveal anything.) According to FEC data, only 32 percent of groups paying for election ads are disclosing the names of their donors. By comparison, in the 2006 midterm, 97 percent disclosed; in 2008, almost half disclosed.
Last week, when the Senate considered a bill to force such disclosure, every single Republican voted against it -- thereby revealing the GOP's true colors, and presumed benefactors. (To understand how far the GOP has come, nearly ten years ago campaign disclosure was supported by 48 of 54 Republican senators.)
Maybe the Disclose Bill can get passed in lame-duck session. Maybe the IRS will make sure Karl Rove's and other supposed nonprofits aren't sham political units. Maybe pigs will learn to fly. In the meantime we face an election that marks an even sharper turn toward plutocratic capitalism than before -- a government by and for the rich and big corporations -- and away from democratic capitalism.
As income and wealth has moved to the top, so has political power. That's why, for example, it's been impossible to close the absurd tax loophole that allows hedge-fund and private-equity managers to treat much of their income as capital gains, subject to a 15 percent tax (even though they're earning tens or hundreds of millions a year, and the top 15 hedge-fund managers earned an average of $1 billion last year). Why it proved impossible to fund expanded health care by limiting the tax deductions of the very rich. Why it's so difficult even to extend George Bush's tax cuts for the bottom 98 percent of Americans without also extending them for the top 2 percent - even though the top won't spend the money and create jobs, but will blow a $36 billion hole in the federal budget next year. The good news is average Americans are beginning to understand that when the rich secretly flood our democracy with money, the rest of us drown. Wall Street executives and top CEOs get bailed out while under-water homeowners and jobless workers sink.
A Quinnipiac poll earlier this year found overwhelming support for a millionaire tax. But what the public wants means nothing if our democracy is secretly corrupted by big money. Right now we're headed for a perfect storm: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top, a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy, and a public in the aftershock of the Great Recession becoming increasingly angry and cynical about government. The three are obviously related.
We must act. We need a movement to take back our democracy. (If tea partiers were true to their principles, they'd join it.) As Martin Luther King once said, the greatest tragedy is "not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people."
What can you do?
1. Read Justice Steven's dissent in the Citizens United case, so you're fully informed about the majority's pernicious illogic.
2. Use every opportunity to speak out against this decision, and embarrass and condemn the right-wing Justices who supported it.
3. In this and subsequent elections, back candidates for congress and president who vow to put Justices on the Court who will reverse it.
4. Demand that the IRS enforce the law and pull the plug on Karl Rove and other sham nonprofits.
5. If you have a Republican senator, insist that he or she support the Disclose Act. If they won't, campaign against them.
6. Support public financing of elections.
7. Join an organization like Common Cause, that's committed to doing all this and getting big money out of politics. (Personal note: I'm so outraged at what's happening that I just became chairman of Common Cause.)
8. Send this post to your friends (including any tea partiers you may know).
Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Republican John Boehner - In the Pocket of Big Business
NY Times Reports:A G.O.P. Leader Tightly Bound to Lobbyists
WASHINGTON — House Democrats were preparing late last year for the first floor vote on the financial regulatory overhaul when Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio and other Republican leaders summoned more than 100 industry lobbyists and conservative political activists to Capitol Hill for a private strategy session. The bill’s passage in the House already seemed inevitable. But Mr. Boehner and his deputies told the Wall Street lobbyists and trade association leaders that by teaming up, they could still perhaps block its final passage or at least water it down.
“We need you to get out there and speak up against this,” Mr. Boehner said that December afternoon, according to three people familiar with his remarks, while also warning against cutting side deals with Democrats. That sort of alliance — they won a few skirmishes, though they lost the war on the regulatory bill — is business as usual for Mr. Boehner, the House minority leader and would-be speaker if Republicans win the House in November. He maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R. J. Reynolds, MillerCoors and UPS.
They have contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts (that's why Boehner is so Tan and called the Tan Man) and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed. Some of the lobbyists readily acknowledge routinely seeking his office’s help — calling the congressman and his aides as often as several times a week — to advance their agenda in Washington. And in many cases, Mr. Boehner has helped them out.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
The Root Cause of all the Immigration Enforcement Hype: Show Me the Money!
Now we are getting down to it. The real root cause of why the zealots are pushing the racial profiling bill. The President is sending troops to the border and $500M in Cash. The AZ Anti CIR advocates are salivating. They are going to hire all of their cronies to incarcerate in their private prisons all those they racially profile and the landscapers, maids and nannies they're arresting. Their tactics are so obvious even Fox News is noticing.Fox News reports:
President Obama's $500 million request for border protection and law enforcement activities has some U.S. lawmakers and state officials along the border screaming, "Show me the money!" Obama is expected to send a proposal to Congress next week that calls for sending as many as 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border and for $500 million to fund programs for Drug Enforcement Administration, Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The Arizona attorney general, Terry Goddard, has set up a 10-person team to prosecute crimes that occur related to the border. The state already has $94 million dedicated but expects the Feds to chip in some of that $500 million in supplemental spending for it because border-related crime is a federal issue. "I believe that's an important commitment of national attention to the real problem we're facing in Arizona and throughout the Southwest, and that is the violent crime fomented by criminal drug cartels (that's funny. reports indicate AZ has their lowest violent crime rate in years)," Goddard said at a news conference this week.
At a White House news conference Thursday, Obama touted his request for additional resources, saying, "if we are doing a better job dealing with trafficking along the border, we've also got to make sure that we've got prosecutors down there who can prosecute those cases." (LOL..what are they going to do when all they've arrested is gardeners?) One Republican congressman wants Obama to request $2 billion and send 25,000 additional troops.
"The president's proposal is about 24,000 men short of what's needed," Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said in a written statement, adding that 1,200 troops will do nothing but provide the administration with a photo op. (Those greedy fat cats want the Feds to send them even more money!)
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