Archive for the ‘Money/politics’ Category

Where do these creeps get the gall

Wednesday, May 22nd, 2013

Congressman Who Gets Millions in Farm Subsidies Denounces Food Stamps as Stealing ‘Other People’s Money’
Aviva Shen
Think Progress / News Analysis
Published: Wednesday 22 May 2013

While Fincher interprets food assistance for the needy as “stealing,” he has not similarly condemned the Farm Bill’s massive agricultural subsidies. In fact, he supported a proposal to expand crop insurance by $9 billion over the next 10 years. Fincher has a great personal stake in maintaining these particular government handouts, as the second most heavily subsidized farmer in Congress and one of the largest subsidy recipients in Tennessee history:

USDA data collected in EWG’s 2013 farm subsidy database update — going live tomorrow –shows that Fincher collected a staggering $3.48 million in “our” money from 1999 to 2012. In 2012 alone, the congressman was cut a government check for a $70,000 direct payment. Direct payments are issued automatically, regardless of need, and go predominantly to the largest, most profitable farm operations in the country.

Fincher’s $70,000 farm subsidy haul in 2012 dwarfs the average 2012 SNAP benefit in Tennessee of $1,586.40, and it is nearly double of Tennessee’s median household income. After voting to cut SNAP by more than $20 billion, Fincher joined his colleagues to support a proposal to expand crop insurance subsidies by $9 billion over the next 10 years.

Posted in Economy, Hypocrisy, Money/politics, Oligarchy, Plutocrats, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Satire, social justice, Wingnuts | No Comments »

How to shit on democracy and majority rule: Chapter 2013-5-19-a

Sunday, May 19th, 2013

You know how we grew up hearing about American democracy, majority rule, honor, and all that? Well, I did, anyhow. But I’m a pre-boomer, so… All lies.

Remember when everybody mocked the NRC after Clint Eastwood’s stunt with the empty chair? Well, maybe the joke’s on us. Advise and consent. Yeah! But what if it’s advise, but don’t hold your breath waiting for consent? Sure, the president can get the consent of a majority of senators. However, because Republicans have chosen to destroy democracy by abusing of the “gentlemen’s agreement” of filibuster, a majority isn’t enough. The minority rules. We mocked the NRC Convention, Ho-Ho. But they’re mocking our system of government. Nothing to laugh about there.

From Huffington Post:

Larry Cohen

President, Communications Workers of America

No NLRB, No Voice

Posted: 04/12/2013 5:51 pm

Today Congress essentially told working Americans to drop dead. House Republicans pushed through a dangerous bill that would paralyze the National Labor Relations Board, blocking the only path that workers have to workplace justice.

H.R. 1120, the “Preventing Greater Uncertainty in Labor-Management Relations Act,” is designed to advance a recent U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit decision, known as Noel Canning v. NLRB, challenging the constitutionality of President Barack Obama’s recess appointments to the board.

Under the decision, the NLRB only has one Senate-confirmed member – Chairman Mark Pearce, a Democrat whose term expires this August.

Now H.R. 1120 seeks to freeze all activities of the NLRB that requires a full quorum, or three members. It would also bar the NLRB from enforcing any decisions it has made since Jan. 4, 2012, when Obama made those disputed recess appointments.

How did we get here? The blame mainly falls on the broken Senate rules.

So here’s the Republicans’ dream meeting of the NLRB, an essential protection for the rights of American workers in particular, and for human rights and justice in general. Think of it as an application of the Clint Eastwood ideal.

Posted in Civil Librties, Corporatogracy, Human Rights, Hypocrisy, Labor, Law & Constitution, Money/politics, Oligarchy, Plutocrats, Politics, Republicans, social justice, Wingnuts | No Comments »

Faux News: We (Mis)report, you decide!

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

FauxNews 1

Posted in Economy, Hypocrisy, Media, Money/politics, Oligarchy, Plutocrats, Politics, Republicans, Satire, Wingnuts | No Comments »

The rich are getting richer. The poor are starving. Where will this end?

Sunday, May 12th, 2013

A passage from “The Rocking Horse Winner” by D.H. Lawrence:

And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll’s house, a voice would start whispering: “There must be more money! There must be more money!” And the children would stop playing, to listen for a moment. They would look into each other’s eyes, to see if they had all heard. And each one saw in the eyes of the other two that they too had heard. “There must be more money! There must be more money!”

Consider Mr. Creosote from Monty Python’s Meaning of Life. Let’s think of him as “Mr. GOP Job Creator.” He doesn’t actually create jobs, of course. In fact, he destroys jobs and workers, and consumes more and more – just for himself. How greedy can these bastards be?

“There must be more money!”

For them, that is. Their gluttony grows. It can never be satisfied. In Lawrence’s story, the greed causes the death of a child. In the movie… well, see below. In contemporary U.S.A.? What happens to a dream deferred? What happens when that dream is dangled close and the snatched away? We’ll see. As Martin Luther King said, the powerful never voluntarily give up their power.

Meet Mr. Job Creator:

See Mr. Job Creator, already bloated to the point of disgust, insist on consuming more:

See Mr. Job Creator seize and consume even more of others’ share of our nation’s wealth:

See Mr. Job Creator explode and spray the results of his gluttony on the rest of us:

Posted in Economy, Money/politics, NSFW!, Oligarchy, Plutocrats, Politics, Republicans, Satire, social justice, Wingnuts | No Comments »

Titania has retired!

Friday, May 10th, 2013

Here’s the evidence! Queen Titania is definitely toast!! Not physically, maybe, but certainly in respect to status, power, wealth, and – most of all – magic.

As everyone knows, in Oberon’s kingdom fuchsia is by far the most valuable element; so of course that’s the element Titania negotiated for the bail-out parachute she’d need in case of a forced resignation or voluntary retirement. We don’t yet know why or under what circumstances she took recourse to the parachute, but we do have concrete physical evidence that she did so.

What she didn’t realize is that when one reality-warps from Oberon’s realm to Bottom’s, much more than mere “atmosphere” transmogrifies. She didn’t foresee the sad ruin we see here: A glowing, incandescent fuchsia treasure has been reduced to a worthless, faded decoration from a waaaay overpriced cocktail, discarded along the side of a road.

One assumes Titania must by now have been seized by a human/former-fairy trafficker for unspeakable purposes … or, mercifully, squashed like a bug beneath some right-wing extremist’s jack-boot. Very sad.

This is all just dreamy speculation, of course. In reality Titania probably continues to reign as Oberon’s consort in their alternate reality.

What!?!

You don’t believe in alternate realities? Then please, please begin watching Faux News, subscribing to WorldNutDaily, and checking regularly the websites of Congressional Republicans. What you’ll find there is an alternate universe so bizarre that Titania, Oberon, Bottom, and even Shakespeare would find too implausible to credit … to credit, not just the fantasy, but the mere suggestion that some rational being would take it seriously.

[First episode. Many more to follow, number depending on how long I remain functional.]

Posted in Arts, Economy, Fox, Money/politics, Politics, Republicans, Satire, social justice, Wingnuts | No Comments »

no redemption for the great deceiver

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Paul Krugman wrote this:

No Redemption for George W. Bush

Tuesday, 07 May 2013 14:11 By Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co. | Op-Ed

I’ve been focused on economic policy lately, so I sort of missed the big push to rehabilitate President George W. Bush’s image in the run-up to the opening of his presidential library in Texas recently; also, as an anti-Bushist who pointed out how terrible a president he was back when everyone else was praising him as a Great Leader, I’m kind of worn out on the subject.

But it does need to be said: Mr. Bush was a terrible president, arguably the worst ever, and not just for the reasons many others are pointing out.

From what I’ve read, most of the pushback against pro-Bush revisionism focuses on just how bad his policies were, from the disaster in Iraq to the way he destroyed the Federal Emergency Management Agency; from the way he squandered the budget surplus to the way he drove up the costs of Medicare, the health insurance program for older Americans. And all of that is fair.

But I think there was something even bigger, in some ways, than his policy failures: Mr. Bush brought an unprecedented level of systematic dishonesty to American political life, and we may never recover.