Electronic Pen

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

It didn't last very long and, to be honest, it never was quite as robust as its supporters claimed it was. There was no official obituary, no eulogies rendered, no elegies written, no Requiem Mass held, and no panegyric was delivered on television or to a joint session of Congress. In the end, "compassionate conservative" passed with a whimper, not a bang.

In the late nineties, and in the early part of this century, "compassionate conservatism" became a bellwether term for conservatives. Some on the right criticized the use of the phrase, arguing that conservatism is by its very nature compassionate and therefore there was no need to put any modifier in front of it. Others - especially those running the presidential campaign of George W. Bush -- saw the phrase as political gold.

While the origin of "compassionate conservatism" is still in question - some say it was longtime conservative advisor Doug Wead who coined the term, others credit Marvin Olasky with, if not coming up with it, at least popularizing it -  there is no doubt that it softened the public's perception of modern day conservatism.  That softening, along with the much bigger boost given Bush by the U.S. Supreme Court -- helped paved the way for his entrance to the White House in 2000.

Even at the height of its usage, "compassionate conservatism" wasn't ever really about a heck of a lot of compassion. It was more about branding and the selling of a presidential candidate.

At the heart of Team Bush-Olasky's argument was an anti-government animus that maintained that the federal government and state governments should play less of a role in supporting social safety net programs, and instead, that role should shift to local charities and faith-based organizations.

While there has been no grand funeral, no flags at half-mast, no wake and no tear-filled remembrances, consider compassionate conservatism dead and buried. Practically non-existent since the election of Barack Obama and the rise of the Tea Party, some final nails in the compassionate conservatism coffin may have been delivered during two recent Republican Party presidential debates.

The issues in question were the death penalty and health care.

Although many in this country continue to support the death penalty, a discussion of it rarely yields hoots and hollers from either side. However, that changed during the September 7 presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California.

As the editors of The New Republic recently pointed out:

"It was an ugly moment ... when the discussion turned to the death penalty. 'Governor Perry, a question about Texas,' moderator Brian Williams began. 'Your state has executed two-hundred thirty-four death-row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times.' Suddenly, Williams was interrupted by an outburst of applause and cheers from the audience. The point being made by the Republican spectators could not have been clearer: The death penalty was not just a policy they favored. It was something to celebrate. And Rick Perry's answer to the question was about as thoughtful as the audience's reaction. 'I've never struggled with that at all,' he said-a boast that was especially unsettling because Texas almost certainly executed an innocent man, Cameron Todd Willingham, on Perry's watch."

Williams asked Perry why the audience applauded when he'd mentioned the 234 executions. "I think Americans understand justice," Perry said.

As Financial Times columnist Jurek Martin recently observed,

"Compassionate conservatism, W's 2000 campaign slogan, is definitely not his [Perry's] style, because it has gone out of style among Republicans. He has no problem calling social security a Ponzi scheme, evolution an unproven theory and President Barack Obama a liar because that is the lingua franca of the rugged individualist of today."

At the CNN-Tea Party Express September 12 debate in Tampa, Florida, Wolf Blitzer posed a hypothetical question about health care to Ron Paul, an obstetrician and Texas congressman:

Wolf Blitzer: "You're a physician, Ron Paul. So you're a doctor, you know something about this subject. Let me ask you this hypothetical question. A healthy, 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, 'you know what, I'm not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance, because I'm healthy. I don't need it.' But you know, something terrible happens. All of a sudden, he needs it. Who's going to pay for it if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?"

Ron Paul: "In a society [where] you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him."

Blitzer: "But what do you want?"

Paul: "What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would [be to] have a major medical policy but not be forced -"

Blitzer: "But he doesn't have it. He doesn't have it and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?"

Paul: "That's what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody -"

Blitzer: "But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?"

Paul: "No. I practiced medicine before we had Medicaid, in the early 1960s, when I got out of medical school.  I practiced at Santa Rosa Hospital in San Antonio , and the churches took care of them.  We never turned anybody away from the hospitals."

Reports vary on what happened after Paul answered "No." While it is clear that someone in the audience yelled out a hearty "yes" as an answer to Blitzer's  "are you saying that society should just let him die?" And while some may have cheered, it was the response of only a few. Mostly the audience remained silent.

Perhaps even more chilling than the hoo-ha over "the die or not die"  hypothetical was Paul's answer to America's health care crisis: "... we've given up on this whole concept that we might take care of ourselves and assume responsibility for ourselves. Our neighbors, our friends, our churches would do it."

It is clear that "compassionate conservatism' has outlived its usefulness for Republican party candidates. The new catchphrase? "Cutthroat Conservatism."

read more

Recently, the Benton Harbor City Council - governed under the authoritarian emergency financial manager appointed by Tea Party Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder - passed a resolution to honor the US Constitution the week of September 17.

The emergency financial manager for Benton Harbor declared, in the spring, that the Benton Harbor City Council could only do three things: call meetings to order, approve minutes and adjourn meetings. As a result, the state-appointed manager of Benton Harbor declared the city council resolution honoring the US Constitution as null and void.

As Rachel Maddow pointed out in a September 19 commentary, there is a frightening irony in "elected officials not being allowed to honor the Constitution because they've been overruled by an appointed overseer who nobody voted for."

In April of 2011, BuzzFlash at Truthout wrote a commentary entitled "Tea Party Michigan Governor Rick Snyder Adopts Soviet-style Authoritarian Powers Over Michigan Cities."

Maybe the emergency financial manager for Benton Harbor will force the Benton Harbor City Council, chosen by the voters, to follow the Politburo books of rules and orders.

******

If you'd like to receive these commentaries daily from Truthout/BuzzFlash, click here. You'll get our choice headlines and articles too.

read more

 

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

President Obama has just declared that he will veto any deficit reduction bill that does not include taxes on the wealthy.

In response, the Republicans trotted out their main "Friday the 13th" talking point that they have used since the beginning of the Reagan era: "The president is engaging in class warfare."

Anticipating the GOP "round up the usual sound bite when it comes to the wealthy paying their fair share for democracy" strategy, Obama declared, "This is not class warfare: it's math."

Given that the Republican Party - with an infrastructure of think tanks, lobbyists and corporate media supported by corporate America and the likes of the Koch brothers - has been conducting a war of attrition on the US middle class for years, it is hard to digest such brazen hypocrisy.

As Andy Ostroy, who is posted regularly on BuzzFlash at Truthout observes:

It's time the rich stop whining about class warfare and start paying their fair share of taxes to pay for this country's essential services and to help reduce its debt. How about we borrow from Sen. John McCain and piggyback the millionaire's tax with the slogan, "America First." The nation's rich needs to stop thinking about their own pocketbooks for a second and show some concern for the country in which they've amassed their colossal wealth.

If the Obama administration is smart, it will hammer home this millionaire's tax rhetoric until it becomes the sort of highly effective propaganda Republicans have been successfully regurgitating for years.

Dividing up the middle and working classes based on appeals to race, ethnicity and social wedge issues has been a trademark of the Republican Party.

What they fear most is that the great masses of Americans who receive a stagnating hourly wage and more limited benefits each year will rise up and demand their share of the nation's wealth.

Class warfare has been waged on behalf of the wealthiest people and corporations in the US for decades - and on that battlefield, the richest Americans have thus far won.

As Ostroy asks, "To be sure, the rich have never been richer, and the poor have never been poorer. So what are Republicans constantly complaining about?"

What they are complaining about is the concept of workers being fairly compensated for their labor - and that the wealthiest Americans might have to buy one less yacht or home. That's class warfare to them.

read more

JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

This morning, I called House majority whip Kevin McCarthy's DC office (R-CA) to inquire about H.R. 1581, a bill authored by McCarthy that would remove wilderness protections for a shocking 70 million acres of federally managed wildlands and would open them up to mining, drilling and other industrial uses. The targeted lands include more than half of Alaska's Tongass National Forest, as well as other endangered wild places that environmental organizations have been fighting to protect for years.

I asked the office assistant if he knew about this bill, and he said he didn't, nor did anyone else. The reason for this is that decisions like these are made on the sly and in the dark, by using the deadly Congressional tactic, known as a rider. Riders are attached to spending bills that Congress must pass in order to fund the government. "These add-on provisions are rarely subject to hearings or extensive public debate; by their very nature," explains NRDC's watchdog on Capitol Hill, David Goldston. "They are designed to evade scrutiny and quietly advance new policies that would otherwise never make it into law," continues Goldston.

For instance, one spending bill alone contains almost 40 anti-environmental riders, and more are expected to be added before the House votes on the final bill.

In a previous commentary posted at Buzzflash at Truthout, I explained how these secret, undemocratic tactics work, and how our earth's destiny and our fate are being determined by a very small minority of representatives and industrial oligarchs. Rep. McCarthy's H.R. 1581 exemplifies this anti-democratic tactic, which benefits the few at the expense of our beautiful wildlands, wildlife and our health.

It would be interesting to see what would happen if voters were able to make decisions that impacted the plans of billionaire industrialists. Consider BP and the Gulf of Mexico: The worst oil disaster in history turned the entire ocean into a dead zone.

Why aren't we allowed to vote on bills such as H.R. 1581? The obvious reason is that a clear majority, including Republican voters, believe that the government needs to do much more to protect nature and our environment. "Gallop's annual Environment Poll finds that Americans are more likely than ever to say that the government should put a higher priority on protecting the environment than on increasing energy production. When given a choice, Americans are also more likely to prefer conservation of existing energy supplies than increased production of energy." (Public Favors Environment Protection over Energy Production as Priority for U.S.)

That explains why the industrialists deplore the democratic voting process. They wouldn't be able to get away with oil projects like the Tar Sands Pipeline if it were up to us at the voting booth. It's far easier to buy a President and congressional members than it is to buy off millions and millions of people.

read more

NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

As more and more WikiLeaks cables get released, the Brazilian-US diplomatic relationship has become increasingly illuminated. Though somewhat wary of each other, Washington and Brasilia sometimes saw eye to eye on matters of geopolitical importance. Take for example, both countries' handling of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. Under the helm of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, Brazil cultivated a strategic alliance with Venezuela, and publicly the two nations embraced South America's "pink tide" to the left. Yet, WikiLeaks documents reveal that Brazil may have shared Washington's concern over Chávez's rising geopolitical importance, particularly in the Caribbean theater.

During the Bush years, American diplomats kept a close bead on Venezuela's growing partnerships in areas far afield. In Jamaica, for example, US officials conducted a "sustained effort to dissuade" the authorities from supporting Chávez's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council. Concerned over Venezuela's rising star in the region, the Americans met with the Jamaican political opposition. Writing to her superiors in Washington, US ambassador in Kingston Brenda Johnson expressed "concerns over the influence of Venezuelan money and energy supplies in Jamaica in the years ahead."

Monitoring Chávez in Jamaica

During a local cricket match, Bruce Golding of Jamaica's opposition Labour Party approached the ambassador to request a meeting. Asking that the US hold the information in "strict confidence," Golding revealed that his party's concern over Chávez had "heightened in recent weeks." Confidentially, he continued, a "senior person in the government," had passed him, "sensitive inside information," and, "a number of persons within the government," were, "frightened over the secrecy," concerning Jamaica's official dealings with Chávez.

Spinning a rather cloak and dagger narrative, Golding explained how senior officials from the ruling People's National Party (PNP) had recently flown to Caracas. Once in the Venezuelan capital, he claimed, they had been given one or two large packages and thereafter returned to Kingston. The opposition politician alleged that overall the Venezuelans had doled out $4-5 million to the PNP in Caracas in order to finance the electoral campaign of Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller. The very next week, the government magically claimed that it had managed to repay $475,000 to a Dutch-based oil trading firm called Trafigura.

Earlier, the company had made the "contribution" to the PNP, but when the matter came to public attention, the news spiraled into a full blown campaign finance scandal. Speaking to the US ambassador, Golding thought it was "logical" that part of the cash that Venezuela gave to the Jamaicans had been later used to pay back Trafigura. Going further, Golding claimed that just before the Trafigura "contribution," the PNP had experienced financial problems and even found it difficult to maintain its own facilities. Recently, however, there had been a "dramatic turnaround," and the party no longer found it necessary to solicit contributions from the private sector.

read more

ROBERT KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The woo-woo nuttiness of it all defies the imagination, beginning with the idea of a course in "Nuclear Ethics and Nuclear Warfare" at Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Nuclear ethics?

Does that mean no nuclear weapons should ever be used to promote sexual harassment?
Well actually, it turns out that the point of the mandatory course, which was recently canceled by the Air Force after officers of numerous faiths complained to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation about it and Truthout published an exposé in July, was to give officers in the first week of missile-launch training a Bible-verse-studded indoctrination in faux-Just War Theory (cynically known in the ranks as the "Jesus Loves Nukes" training).

"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! He who sat upon it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war."

This verse, Revelation 19:11, has nothing to do with Just War Theory, Christian or otherwise. It sounds more like the theology of Armageddon, or the ethics of end times - scary enough on the social fringe, but my God, here was the US Air Force, guardian of the country's nuclear arsenal, pushing it as a basic part of missile-launch training.

There were plenty of other religiously pushy declarations in this mandatory course, such as these words from Wernher von Braun, the Nazi rocket scientist who teamed up with the US military after the war to develop its space and missile programs, regarding his surrender to the Americans in 1945:

"We knew that we had created a new means of warfare and the question as to what nation . . .we were willing to entrust this brainchild of ours was a moral decision more than anything else," von Braun is quoted as saying. "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world be best secured."

This is too strange to be irony. The Nazi rocket wizard sought moral reassurance in Christian exceptionalism, and his words then became part of America's official ethics of nuclear war: We're with Jesus on that white horse, and if/when we launch Armageddon, we're only doing the work of the Lord. To my mind, there are few people on the planet scarier than self-proclaimed "Christian soldiers," at least those who feed from the evangelical trough and belong to the US military, because their agenda transcends rationality. In righteousness they judge and make war.

But my sense of shock and awe over this nuclear ethics course isn't simply about evangelicals in the military and their zeal to proselytize. It's about the official sanctioning of a nuclear morality that allows their use - that transforms America and its military machine into an instrument of the will of God.

read more

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Predictably, they whine that this
Is just "class warfare"
When the plan only costs them
Upper class carfare.

It's time to contact your congressman
With letters, emails and faxes
(Unless you're opposed to the very rich
Paying their fair share of taxes.)

read more

NOTE FROM BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Frankly, we loved this alleged bumper sticker that has been making its way around the Internet so much, BuzzFlash at Truthout just couldn't resist passing it along.

The author is unknown to BuzzFlash at Truthout, but let us know if you are out there.

A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

WASHINGTON,DC (September 14, 2011) - Today Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) and 40 members of the House Democratic Caucus introduced the Emergency Jobs to Restore the American Dream Act, H.R. 2914 - a cost-effective plan to put over 2 million people to work for two years.

The time has come for Congress to focus like a laser on the most pressing crisis facing our country - the jobs crisis. With extended unemployment benefits scheduled to expire at the end of this year, 13.9 million people remain out of work. The average worker who is unemployed has been searching for a job for more than nine months and recent reports reveal that private sector employers largely refuse to hire those currently jobless. An additional 8.4 million are working part time because they cannot find a full-time job. In June 2007, 63 percent of adults were employed, now the percentage is 58.2 percent. Despite reports of a Congress immobilized and unable to address the jobs crisis- Congress can and must do something today.

"It begins with this simple idea:  If we want to create jobs, then create jobs. The best way to grow the economy and reduce the deficit is to put Americans to work.  Every dollar in H.R. 2914 must be attached to an actual job," said Rep. Schakowsky. "The worst deficit this country faces, isn't the budget deficit.  It's the jobs deficit.  We need to get our people and our economy moving again."

If enacted, the legislation would create 2.2 million jobs that will meet critical needs to improve and strengthen communities:

• The School Improvement Corps would create 400,000 construction and 250,000 maintenance jobs by funding positions created by public school districts to do needed school rehabilitation improvements.
• The Park Improvement Corps would create 100,000 jobs for youth between the ages of 16 and 25 through new funding to the Department of the Interior and the USDA Forest Service's Public Lands Corps Act.  Young people would work on conservation projects on public lands include restoration and rehabilitation of natural, cultural, and historic resources.
• The Student Jobs Corps would creates 250,000 more part-time, work study jobs for eligible college students through new funding for the Federal Work Study Program.
• The Neighborhood Heroes Corps would hire 300,000 teachers, 40,000 new police officers, and 12,000 firefighters.
• The Health Corps would hire at least 40,000 health care providers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, nurses, and health care workers to expand access in underserved rural and urban areas.
• The Child Care Corps would create 100,000 jobs in early childhood care and education through additional funding for Early Head Start.
• The Community Corps would hire 750,000 individuals to do needed work in our communities, including housing rehab, weatherization, recycling, and rural conservation.

The legislation gives the unemployed priority for jobs, particularly those who have exhausted their unemployment benefits (the "99ers"), and veterans. The bill allocates a fair distribution of funding and jobs among states, with targeting based on high unemployment and need. The bill also ensures that jobs do not undercut the rights of other workers, lower wages, displace current workers or take business from small/local businesses.

The $227 billion cost of the bill ($113.5 billion over each of two years) can be fully paid for through separate legislation such as Rep. Schakowsky's Fairness in Taxation Act, which creates higher tax brackets for millionaires and billionaires, and eliminating subsidies for Big Oil and tax loop holes for corporations that send American jobs overseas.

The full, detailed summary of H.R. 2914 can be found at http://schakowsky.house.gov/jobs/

read more

This wasn't just a lost decade economically for the middle class, working class and the poor; it has pretty much been a lost 30 years, according to a September 13 New York Times article.

Contrary to Republican talking point myths, the income of the working American has generally stagnated for at least 20 years, even though the productivity of US workers has generally increased.

As The New York Times reports:

Another 2.6 million people slipped into poverty in the United States last year, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday, and the number of Americans living below the official poverty line, 46.2 million people, was the highest number in the 52 years the bureau has been publishing figures on it.

And in new signs of distress among the middle class, median household incomes fell last year to levels last seen in 1996.

Minorities have been hardest hit by the growing income disparity and lack of livable-wage jobs. But even "the median, full-time male worker has made no progress on average" - and that's, based on inflationary adjustment, since 1973.

Not surprisingly, according to the Times, "the past decade was also marked by a growing gap between the very top and very bottom of the income ladder."

Pretty soon, there may be no more ladder to climb economically.

Maybe that is why Sen. Bernie Sanders recently held a hearing: "Is Poverty a Death Sentence?"

read more

RICHARD A. STITT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.), one of the most inveterate Obama-haters, recently threatened to quit his position on the 12-member congressional "supercommittee," because he opposes any cuts to the military budget.

Kyl and the other five Republicans on the panel have also taken the Grover Norquist pledge to never, ever raise taxes, for anything. It is sounding better, and better, for the impotent, self-immolating 12-person panel of politicians to guarantee failure before it even starts.

read more

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Why shouldn't Congressional representatives and senators receive retirement benefits at the same age of eligibility for Social Security?

That's a good question, particularly since the Congressional pensions are lavish in comparison to Social Security.

Sen. Sherrod Brown criticized this inequity earlier this year:

Currently, Members of Congress can begin collecting pensions as early as age 50, while working Americans cannot collect full Social Security benefits until age 66. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), retirement with an immediate, full pension is available to Members of Congress covered under FERS at age 62 or older with at least five years of federal service; at age 50 or older with at least 20 years of service; and at any age to Members with at least 25 years of service. For Members covered by CSRS, retirement with an immediate, full pension is available to Members age 60 or older with 10 years of service in Congress, or age 62 with five years of civilian federal service, including service in Congress.

Brown strongly opposes raising the retirement age for Social Security due to the high number of Ohioans who are engaged in physically demanding work - on a shop floor, production line, or farmland. Brown has long been active in efforts to protect Social Security from privatization, and has worked to ensure that seniors can continue to afford necessities like prescription drugs despite the lack of cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA) that Social Security recipients have faced for the past two years.

This week, Brown introduced legislation to ensure that any increase in Social Security retirement age is matched by the same age of eligibility being applied to the generous taxpayer-funded pension plans for those serving in Congress.

Given that the White House has been sending out trial balloons for weeks that President Obama inexplicably supports raising the eligibility age for Social Security to 68, it is of some comfort that at least one member of Congress is holding our elected officials accountable for "walking in our shoes."

Yet, if Brown's bill is unlikely to pass, he considers legislation that would make deficit reduction begin on Capitol Hill - through reducing Congressional salaries by 10 percent - even a longer shot.

"I think some might [take the cut]," Brown said. "But I would guess probably a bill like that won't pass."

That is because as far as most of DC is concerned, including the White House, what's good for the goose (cuts in pensions, salaries, and health care for the working class) is not good for the gander (the elected elites who enact those cuts on everyone but themselves and the wealthy.)

******

If you'd like to receive these commentaries daily from Truthout/BuzzFlash, click here. You'll get our choice headlines and articles too.

read more

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

"Casting [Gibson] as a director or perhaps as the star of Judah Maccabee is like casting [Bernie] Madoff to be the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, or a white supremacist as trying to portray Martin Luther King Jr.," says Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of Los Angeles's Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance.

Earlier this year, Mel Gibson and Jodie Foster appeared hand in hand on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in Cannes, France. They were attending the premiere of The Beaver, a film directed by Foster, starring both her and Gibson. In the movie Gibson plays a depressed toy manufacturer who, after failing to commit suicide, winds up communicating through a hand puppet. This was supposed to be his return to Hollywood stardom after having spent a few years fending off questions about his sexist, anti-gay, racist and anti-Semitic rants. The Beaver was a box office dud; it cost $21 million to make and it reeled in far less than that, both domestically and internationally.

To get his sinking Mojo back, Gibson is going to have to do better.

But first, he must clear up a few of the messes he's created for himself; most immediately with his ex-girlfriend, and most notably, with the Jewish community.

Apparently, money has allowed Gibson to buy his way out of his ex-girlfriend mess. In late August, Gibson agreed to pay Oksana Grigorieva, $750,000. In addition, according to the Associated Press, he will, "continue to provide housing and financial support for their young daughter to resolve a bitter legal fight that followed sexist, racist rants attributed to the actor."

Gibson's Jewish problem, however, is going to take a lot more than money to fix.

read more

A BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

The following is a news release from the office of Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Washington - Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at a Senate hearing he chaired today cited dramatic evidence linking poverty and shorter life spans. A new census report, meanwhile, said more Americans than ever before lived in poverty last year.

Sanders citied evidence that living in poverty greatly reduces access to health care and shortens life spans. "This is the first time in our history that children born in certain parts of the United States can expect to live shorter lives than their parents' generation," according to a report released at the hearing.

A separate Census Bureau report also released today said that more than 46 million Americans, about one in six, lived below the poverty line in 2010. The census report also said that that about 49.9 million Americans lacked health insurance, a number that soared by 13.3 million since 2000.
"Poverty in America today is a death sentence for tens and tens of thousands of our people which is why the high childhood poverty rate in our country is such an outrage," Sanders said in an opening statement at the hearing.

The United States has both the highest overall poverty rate and the highest childhood poverty rate of any major industrialized country on earth, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. While 21.6 percent of American children live in poverty, the rate is 3.7 percent in Denmark, 5.3 percent in Finland, 6.7 percent in Iceland, 8.3 percent in Germany, 9.3 percent in France. "I suppose we can take some comfort in that our numbers are not quite as bad as Turkey (23.5 percent); Chile (24 percent); and Mexico (25.8 percent)," Sanders said.

read more

MARC PERKEL FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The president and Congress have said that in order to cut the deficit "everything" has to be on the table. Does "everything" include the pensions that members of Congress get? It seems to me that if anyone should get their pensions cut it should be Congress. They are the ones who passed the unbalanced budgets that created the debt in the first place. They want us to put Social Security on the table. The way I see it, if Congress doesn't cut their pensions then not everything is really on the table.

read more

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

"No games, no politics, no delays."
Barack's ground rules are deft ---
The GOP will say, "C'mon! Without
Those things, we've got nothing left."

http://news.yahoo.com/obama-calls-congress-act-jobs-bill-152431593.html

Body

It is a disturbing feature of our society that truth has devolved into a rare commodity, especially when election time rolls around. Somehow it has become common practice to allow lies and innuendoes to permeate political debate, as if they had the same legitimacy as actual facts.

In the aftermath of debates and conferences there may be some retro-fitting of statements, but at the time of their utterance they pass muster among pundits and partisans who maintain an air of polite deference to fellow participants. Thus, truth is often sacrificed in the heat of the moment to keep things moving, and to allow the ridiculous to cavort among the more learned and deserving thought merchants. But, it isn't only the innocent idiots who find their way to media stardom, and who, despite the ridicule they encounter at times from their betters, maintain a certain presence. It is the menace inherent in their writings and speeches that defines them as something other than free-speech practitioners. Theirs is a special brand of hate and partisanship that seeks only to expand their fifteen minutes of fame and roil the waters of honest debate.

On the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks we were reminded of bravery about which our country can only stand in awe for what was accomplished in our name. There are many stories that touch us, but none more than the leadership of Todd Beamer on United Airlines Flight 93 whose words "Let's roll" led the assault on the high-jackers in the cockpit and brought the plane down short of its mission to attack Washington DC. In light of his singular leadership and communications from others who lost their lives on that day, there is something particularly repellent about Ann Coulter's observations as she wrote about them in her column.

The natural inclination of those who experience great loss is to pursue the causes to their logical conclusions. But, Ann concluded that the grief-stricken widowed pilots' wives were "enjoying" their widowhood tremendously, an observation prompted no doubt by Coulter's own publicity-seeking persona, and a culture that says you can say anything about anyone and chalk it up to the constitutional guarantee of free speech. At the time I assumed we wouldn't be hearing from Coulter any more because the American people would reject her poisonous prose, but she's still around appearing at conservative causes, writing books and spreading her noxious reflections across the land - a sad commentary on the depths to which we have sunk as a nation.

This condition permeates all phases of our body politic and infects the minds of the public. One has only to consider the speeches of Sarah Palin, among others, who consistently misstates and deliberately muddies the waters of honest debate. Health care restructuring becomes socialized medicine and financial reform threatens to bring down the entire free-market infrastructure, no matter what damage has been done to our well- being in the name of these twisted versions of events. Somewhere along the line truth is lost and we fall prey to someone's personal vision of power.

Discussions of everything from national security to health care are so steeped in political rhetoric that there is little room for rational discussion. In perfect Orwellian cadence, for instance, Buck McKeon, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, advanced the notion that in order to establish peace the US must undertake "a proliferation of power." His description of what we need to do to bring our armed forces up to snuff includes a wide-ranging assortment of weapons systems that may or may not be relevant to the kinds of conflicts in which we are currently engaged. Once again, truth falls victim to the perceptions of a "dug-in" partisan who may have called the shots a touch too long.

It may be a tall order to keep after the truth, but it is a necessary exercise whenever the opportunity presents itself. We should be getting after media ‘analysts' who allow guests to torment facts into unrecognizable shapes. This is not the time to be so damn polite. Truth is at times rude and intrusive.

 

BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT NEWS ALERT

Earlier this year, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) denounced the idea of raising the retirement age for social security eligibility in this news release:

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Following yesterday's release of a budget proposal that would dismantle Medicare and leave the door open for raising the retirement age on Social Security to age 69 or higher, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) held a news conference call today to outline new legislation he is introducing that would require Members of Congress to "walk in the same shoes" as working Americans.

Brown's bill, the Shared Retirement Sacrifice Act of 2011, would amend the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) and Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) to directly tie the Social Security retirement age to current and future Members of Congress' access to their federal retirement benefits. On the call, Brown released a county-by-county estimate showing the number of Ohio senior citizens that receive Social Security benefits.

"Raising the Social Security retirement age might sound fair to politicians who come to work every day in a suit and tie, but it's a nonstarter for working Ohioans who stand on their feet all day long in a restaurant or on a factory floor," Brown said. "Social Security is under attack by those who falsely think it adds to the federal deficit. These same politicians want to give extra tax cuts to the wealthiest two percent of Americans and tax breaks for big corporations and Big Oil while dismantling Medicare. It's time for Washington politicians to make the same sacrifices that they're proposing for millions of Americans."

"That's why I'm introducing legislation that would require Members of Congress to 'walk in the same shoes' as working Americans by tying their pension and retirement benefits to the Social Security retirement age. If these politicians want to ask Americans to continue working into their late 60s and early 70s before receiving critical retirement benefits, there's no reason why they shouldn't have to make the same sacrifices as well," Brown continued.

Currently, Members of Congress can begin collecting pensions as early as age 50, while working Americans cannot collect full Social Security benefits until age 66. According to the Congressional Research Service (CRS), retirement with an immediate, full pension is available to Members of Congress covered under FERS at age 62 or older with at least five years of federal service; at age 50 or older with at least 20 years of service; and at any age to Members with at least 25 years of service. For Members covered by CSRS, retirement with an immediate, full pension is available to Members age 60 or older with 10 years of service in Congress, or age 62 with five years of civilian federal service, including service in Congress.

Brown strongly opposes raising the retirement age for Social Security due to the high number of Ohioans who are engaged in physically demanding work-on a shop floor, production line, or farmland. Brown has long been active in efforts to protect Social Security from privatization, and has worked to ensure that seniors can continue to afford necessities like prescription drugs despite the lack of cost-of-living-adjustments (COLA) that Social Security recipients have faced for the past two years.

Brown, along with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), has introduced legislation that would require a supermajority (two-thirds) vote in Congress to make any significant changes to Social Security. Brown also strongly pushed for legislation to give a one-time, $250 check to Social Security recipients to help offset the rising cost of prescription drugs and other necessities.

As of 2009, the median retiree Social Security benefit is $14,000. Social Security lifts more than half a million Ohio seniors out of poverty.

read more

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The latest Republican plan to steal a presidential election may just work.

In Pennsylvania, according to Mother Jones, a plan is brewing to allocate the state's electoral votes by Congressional districts. Since Pennsylvania is gerrymandered to favor the election of Republican Congressional representatives, Obama could win the popular vote there, but lose the state in the Electoral College.

Given that the Pennsylvania legislature and the governorship are all controlled by the GOP, this is a law that has good odds of being passed.

With the precedent of Republican-controlled states using pretty much model templates of legislation to put barriers in the way of Democratic voting groups, it is extremely possible that the Pennsylvania electoral delegate plan will be proposed and enacted in other states where the GOP is in charge.

The Democrats have little recourse. "Nor is there anything obviously illegal or unconstitutional about the GOP plan," Mother Jones notes. "'The Constitution is pretty silent on how the electors are chosen in each state,' says Karl Manheim, a law professor at Loyola University in Los Angeles."

After the stolen election of 2000, which led to a lost decade of national decline for America, it is painful to think that a Democrat may win the popular vote but lose the presidency due to political chicanery with the electoral vote allocation.

But this robbery of democracy might just very well occur in plain sight.

******

If you'd like to receive these commentaries daily from Truthout/BuzzFlash, click here. You'll get our choice headlines and articles too.

read more

TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

If Mister Bush wanted to seem “calm in a crisis”
Why did he abandon all discretion
With those children and just show them his best
Deer-in-the-headlights expression?

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43946847