Boehner Post-Election is Business as Usual

Response to "John Boehner: No Tax Rate Boost To Avert Fiscal Cliff"

It's not a tax hike, it is the end of a temporary tax cut. The income of the wealthy has quadrupled while wages on the middle class have gone down.

Do people even know that Democrats never had a supermajority in the Senate in 2009 and 2010 due to Al Franken (D-MN) not being able to take his seat for six months due to a contested election, along with the illness of another Senator and the death of Ted Kennedy?

Don't talk to us about Dems being able to pass whatever they wanted in 2009 and 2010. It didn't happen. Senate Republicans held up or watered down any meaningful legislation which would have sped up the recovery. They held hostage unemployment insurance, extended lower tax rates for the middle class, and raises in the debt ceiling, just so millionaires and billionaires could keep more of the money they gained by ripping off their workers.

As Robert Reich has suggested, let's raise the rates on the wealthy back to 55.2%, charge a 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent, enact a tax of one-half of 1 percent on financial transactions, and raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income.

No more "starving the beast." Republicans have long since abandoned fiscal responsibility in their pursuit of cuts to social programs, at the state level as well as the national level. Throw these clowns out!

Return to Fiscal Sanity

Robert Reich's proposal for $4 trillion of deficit reduction over the next decade:

• Raise the tax rate to 55.2% for those making over $1 million
• Charge a 2% surtax on the wealth of the richest one-half of 1 percent
• Enact a tax of one-half of 1 percent on financial transactions
• Raise the capital gains rate to match the rate on ordinary income
• Cap the mortgage interest deduction at $12,000 a year
• Eliminate special tax preferences for oil and gas
• Eliminate price supports for big agriculture
• Eliminate tax breaks and research subsidies for Big Pharma
• Eliminate unnecessary weapons systems for military contractors
• Eliminate indirect subsidies to the biggest banks on Wall Street
• End the Bush tax cuts on incomes between $250,000 and $1 million

The result is deficit reduction without a Grand Ripoff of the middle class.

See The President’s Opening Bid on a Grand Bargain: Aim High.

There are some other issues which should also be addressed.

Consider raising the cap on income subject to Social Security payroll taxes, rather than cutting benefits.

Raising the Medicare payroll tax from 2.9% (employees only pay 1.45%) would also help offset rising health care costs. There hasn't been a rate increase since 1986, even though costs as a percentage of GDP have risen.

The payroll tax holiday mixes general revenues into the Social Security Trust Fund. Social Security should be entirely self-funded, and putting general revenues into the fund set a dangerous precedent. When general revenues can be put in, revenues can also be taken out. Social Security is the most successful government program ever, and is critical for keeping seniors out of poverty (and for preventing a return of poor houses). It is a self-funded retirement and disability insurance program which is not subject to Wall Street shenanigans, mismanagement, high administrative fees, or personal or corporate bankruptcy. Don't screw with it.

Middle class incomes have decreased while income of the 1% has quadrupled. The lack of a living wage for working Americans means that government has had to subsidize workers in the form of assistance programs for the poor. Conservatives argue that employers should be free from minimum wage standards, but in effect they are just passing costs onto the government. A significant rise in the minimum wage is long overdue.

The lack of single-payer health care such as that in most other western countries has resulted in one of the most expensive health care systems in the world. Health care should also be de-coupled from employment (and from being the responsibility of corporations). Medicare for all should be looked at as a way of making American businesses more competitive in the global marketplace.

Republicans have practiced "starving the beast" for years, de-coupling revenue from costs while giving the wealthy enormous tax breaks. As a result, the National Debt has skyrocketed. Additionally, conservatives are using the debt as an excuse to cut social programs. Conservatives abandoned the notion of a responsible fiscal policy, so it is up to Democrats to enable a return to fiscal sanity.

It is time to ignore the demands of lobbyists, to ignore the demonizing rhetoric of the radical conservatives, and to return to representing the interests of the vast majority of Americans. It is time to risk political careers and just do what is right. That is leadership.

Copies of this post have also been e-mailed to:

• President Barack Obama (D)
• Senator Al Franken (D-MN)
• Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
• Representative Collin C. Peterson (D-MN 7th)

Romney's Pants On Fire Welfare Claims

For those who believe Romney and Ryan on their claim that Obama is gutting the welfare work requirement, here are the facts:

From Kathleen Sebelius, The Secretary of Health and Human Services, July 18, 2012, letter to The Honorable Dave Camp, Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives:

"The Department is providing a very limited waiver opportunity for states that develop a plan to measurably increase the number of beneficiaries who find and hold down a job. Specifically, Governors must commit that their proposals will move at least 20% more people from welfare to work compared to the state's past performance. States must also demonstrate clear progress toward that goal no later than one year after their programs take effect. If they fail, their waiver will be rescinded. And if a governor proposes a plan that undercuts the work requirements established in welfare reform, that plan will be rejected."

See also the letter from George Sheldon, Acting Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, July 12, 2012, to State Human Service Officials, which accompanied the memos sent from the Administration to the states regarding the new waiver policy.

PolitiFact rates the Romney ad, which claims that the work requirement is waived, as "Pants on Fire!".

The Washington Post gives Romney's (and now Ryan's) claims "Four Pinocchios".

Another Liberal Rant

Four years ago the economy was tanking; jobs were disappearing at the rate of 750,000 per month, gas prices had dropped from over $4 a gallon to less than $2, the stock market was plunging, housing prices were declining precipitously, the banks were revealed to have been gambling with depositors' money but were too big to fail, the auto industry was in crisis, the national debt had almost doubled, we were fighting two wars which were being financed using emergency appropriations bills (does not appear in the deficit figures, but instead is added directly to the national debt), ratings agencies were found to have rated mortgage backed securities (toxic assets) as AAA without having the slightest idea of what they were really worth, and deficits were already exceeding $1 trillion, with promises of more trillion dollar deficits to come.

Since then, Republicans have opposed Obama on every issue since he was elected, and have not allowed Democrats' plans to deal with the economy to go forward. The only things that kept us from another Great Depression were the stimulus and the bail-outs, which were passed in the midst of panic, but which Republicans now claim were failures.

For our future, the radical conservatives want even less oversight, fewer regulations, fewer pollution controls, bigger banks, bigger tax cuts for the rich (including dropping capital gains taxes to zero), no financial or consumer safeguards, privatized Social Security, no Pell grants for students, no minimum wage, no heating assistance for the poor, no Head Start for preschoolers, no community block grants, no infrastructure spending bills, and they want Medicare changed to private health plans with premium support that increases at a rate which is less than the rise in health care costs.

Republican-led states have enacted policies resulting in the laying off of over 600,000 public employees, including teachers, firefighters and police. State funded assistance to cities has been cut at a time when declining revenues have decimated city budgets. Assistance programs for children, the elderly, students, and the disabled are being cut even though the need for such assistance has risen dramatically. Radical conservatives have been busy characterizing the economically disadvantaged and even people on Social Security as "moochers". They have claimed the moral high ground against gays and lesbians, even going so far as to try to enshrine a denial of their rights into state constitutions and federal legislation. They consistently oppose universal health care, refusing to de-couple health care from full-time employment even when it would benefit commerce. Radical conservatives have also been at the forefront of efforts to disenfranchise voters who typically vote Democrat, enacting in state after state restrictions on voting hours along with requirements for specific photo IDs.

The 2008 elections should have resulted in a 60 seat super-majority in the Senate. Instead, Republicans in Minnesota contested Al Franken's election win, and kept him from taking his seat until July of 2009, by which time Ted Kennedy had vacated his Senate seat. Threats of a filibuster kept the majority of legislation that had passed the House from passing in the Senate. The Affordable Healthcare Act could only be passed with the use of a reconciliation bill (simple majority needed to pass and only one bill allowed per year). Meaningful legislation to deal with the banks, with the housing crisis and with the tanking economy could not get by the "Just Say No" Republicans. And yet inaction by Congress was a big reason that Republicans made big gains in the 2010 elections.

The new breed of conservatives do not understand that it is not the wealthy who create jobs. Companies create jobs because someone has the money in their pockets to buy the things that they sell. Without middle class consumers to buy the products and services of businesses, there will be few new jobs created.

Our economy post stimulus has largely been a result of Republican policies, and thus has not gotten out of first gear. Too many people think that the economic meltdown happened on Obama's watch, and too many people think that Obama, and not radical conservatives, are responsible for the sad state of the middle class. Even so, Obama is expected to win re-election. But unless the House and Senate elections result in Democrat super-majorities, which is highly unlikely, we can expect more obstructionism and even less attention to social responsibilities in Congress, at least until the 2014 elections.

Regarding Demonstrations of Intolerance

I think about the number of people who chose to go to Chick-Fil-A on a certain day to show their support of unequal rights versus the number of people who did not go, and that gives me a bit of hope. If there was a day set for people to go to McDonald's to show their support for marriage equality (with the necessary media stimulus), there would no doubt be long lines there also.

If you lived in a society where most people were gay, how would you feel about strangers telling you that you could not, should not marry a person of opposite gender? To be told that you are unnatural, immoral, and that fulfilling your desires would somehow damage social institutions and the fabric of society? How would it feel to be told that your preferences are somehow so dangerous that we need to enshrine a denial of your rights into state and national constitutions? Would it feel oppressive to you to have people proclaim that the Word of God says you are to be condemned for your very nature?

It has somehow become fashionable for people to proclaim their piousness by a demonstration of intolerance. Their condemnation of others inflates their opinion of themselves as moral. And in today's political environment, this demonizing of others fits well in people's minds alongside proclamations of individual responsibility. This judgment of others along with the denial of social responsibility has been placed under the Banner of God, and it will take time for people to recognize that philosophy as being one of greed and intolerance. Until then, know that there are a great many people out there who support the LGBT community, even if they are only able to show that support one Chick-Fil-A sandwich-not-eaten at a time.

This was written in response to "Being Gay in Tucson Hurts", by Jane Devin (reprinted in the Huffington Post).

Is Our System Socialist?

Socialism is an economic system characterised by social ownership and/or control of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy, and a political philosophy advocating such a system. It is a term that Republicans seek to attach to Democrats.

Conservatives constantly claim that Obama has taken over the health care system. In what way is the Affordable Healthcare Act socialist? Which hospitals, labs, clinics, insurance companies, or medical device companies have been nationalized? How many price controls are the pharmaceutical companies subject to? How is our system of health care in any way similar to any of the universal health care systems that most other industrialized western countries have?

Maybe Medicare itself is socialist, but remember all the cries of "Keep the government's hands off of my Medicare!"?

Reagan raised taxes (8 times) when he saw deficits ballooning after major tax cuts were tried. Bush took a surplus and turned it into trillion dollar deficits. Radical conservatives have prevented a return to sane fiscal policies, preferring to blame social spending rather than slashed revenues, a trashed economy and Bush's unfunded wars for continued deficits. Those radicals have opposed almost all measures to get the economy out of first gear, while blaming social spending and socialist policies. Our economy has become a Republican economy with mostly Republican fiscal policies, yet in the face of disasterous consequences the GOP cries out for even more deregulation and even less oversight, crying all the while, "It's Obama's fault!"

Grover Norquist advocates a two step solution, lowering revenues and lowering expenses, yet the GOP is pledged only to the first step. Fair trade is ignored for free trade. Fraud and unfairness characterize the financial and commodities markets. All of the gains in income go to the top, and people who would create the demand for goods and services needed by businesses have wages frozen or cut or have their jobs eliminated. Companies that would benefit by having health care decoupled from employment are forced to continue paying directly for their employees' health plans.

Wall Street is doing fine, yet Main Street continues to suffer. The conditions leading up to Bush's Great Recession have not been corrected, and will not be corrected under the radical conservatives' policies. The GOP-led House continues to pursue their misguided vision of unfettered and unregulated capitalism (environment, public and national interest, and consumer protections be damned) and Darwinian social policies. While seeking to over-regulate the behavior of individuals under their concept of morality, they pursue a vision of capitalism in which all behaviors are regarded as inherently moral, with unworkable "market forces" to be the only restraint on their pursuit of money.

Calling our economy socialist is laughable. What is not laughable is for radical conservatives to demand that we double-down on the disasterous policies that got us into the current mess. Look past their cries of freedom, morality and patriotism, and learn to recognize the politics of selfishness and greed. Don't believe the lies.

Feedback for Obama 2012

Obama-Biden 2012 questionnaire additional comments or feedback:

Better to let all tax cuts end than to give in to GOP demands for continued breaks for those who do not need them. Focus on revenue, not program cuts. The best way to reduce debt/deficits is to grow the economy by growing the spending power of the majority of Americans. Remove special tax treatment for income from capital gains and dividends. Stop compromising without concessions from intransigent radical conservatives.

Advocate single-payer (Medicare For All). Increase Medicare payroll taxes and enable negotiating of drug prices by Medicare. Advocate freedom to get healthcare, not freedom from healthcare.

Advocate removing the wage cap for Social Security taxes so that wealthy people's income is not given preferential treatment and in order to strengthen Soc Sec finances. Stop calling SocSec an entitlement and call it what it is: insurance. Reducing benefits or allowing privatization of social security and slashing funding for the agency administering Social Security is not reform. Don't let statements about Social Security increasing the debt, running in the red (has the Trust Fund all been spent?), or being bankrupt go unchallenged. Don't let Wall Street screw up the most successful federal program ever.

Advocate investment and subsidies for higher education and make education affordable again. Invest in our future. Regulate for-profit educational institutions and stop predatory practices.

Increase infrastructure spending to both stimulate the economy and to repair our severely neglected infrastructure.

Outlaw payment of dividends from cash gained through increased company debt (loans). Outlaw saddling a purchased company with the debt from the loan used to purchase that company.

Stop negotiating free-trade agreements which create tax havens. Strengthen the Volker rule or re-enable Glass-Steagall. Ban multi-national or foreign companies from putting money into politics (national security issue). Enable transparency in campaign financing. Ban tax-exempt (non-profit) status for political entities. Permanent ban on government officials becoming lobbyists. Work to ban future "off-budget emergency" spending bills for defense. Better regulation of defense contractors.

Ban banks from buying bonds with money borrowed at zero interest rates from the federal reserve; that money should not be used for personal profit. Stop foreign banks from borrowing from the federal reserve. Increase financial company capital requirements and reporting requirements. Ban too-big-to-fail banks from doing business in the U.S. (break them up). Advocate increased capital requirements in the commodities markets, and restrict commodities market participation to companies which handle or use those commodities (end speculation and the disconnect of supply and demand). Advocate minimum alternative tax on and decreased loopholes for companies, especially oil company subsidies. Stop unregulated natural gas fracking and require disclosure of chemicals used. Replace DeMarco as acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and enable real housing-foreclosure relief.

Get rid of Goldman-Sachs executives from your staff. Hire progressives who advocate policies which benefit all Americans, especially the working middle-class which is the engine and driving force of the economy. Make it clear that capitalism is not inherently moral, that its workings are vulnerable to the sins and shortcomings of those who participate.

Job Numbers Sign of Anemic Recovery

In response to "Mitt Romney Calls May Jobs Report 'Devastating News' For American Workers":

I am amazed that the economy improved at all. The Democrats in the Senate had only 59 votes 2009-2010 because the Republicans kept Franken (D-MN) from taking his seat until July of 2009, which was after Kennedy (D-MA) resigned due to his illness. Under the rules of the Senate, any legislation required a 60 vote majority, so the Republicans were able to kill 400+ bills passed by the House with the threat of a filibuster. After the 2010 elections, the Democrats had an even smaller majority. Republicans became the party of NO, and vowed to do whatever it took to make Obama a one-term president.

The wealthy pay an effective tax rate of 16%, the lowest in more than 50 years. Most of their income is not even subject to payroll taxes. Republicans have done nothing to improve the revenue side of the equation. Their prescription is for austerity for everyone except the super-rich. This policy is the same one hampering European recovery. With middle-class wages being stagnant, the demand for products is also anemic. Add to that state cost cutting measures that are still resulting in large numbers of layoffs.

Even Mitt Romney has admitted that continued austerity measures are likely to send us into another recession or depression.

So to blame the economy on Obama not only misses the point, but threatens to result in the election of even more conservatives with their disastrous policies.

Monsanto and Genetically Modified Organisms

After so long hearing of so many egregious practices by Monsanto, and in particular after reading an article by SourceWatch and viewing "The World According to Monsanto" by Marie-Monique Robin - ARTE ,  I came upon a petition to "Bring Down Monsanto". While I have little faith that this will ever happen, I thought I would share what I wrote in the petition's opinion box accompanying my signature.

How do I feel about GMO (genetically modified organisms) and Monsanto?

GMOs are not tested by the FDA due to a politically motivated policy of "equivalence",  whereby GMO versions are assumed to be nearly equivalent to the non-GMO versions, and as such are considered inherently safe. This "equivalence" policy was instituted in the U.S. under George H.W. Bush's direction as part of the deregulation fever which started under President Reagan. This policy holds even when scientific studies contradict those safety claims. Food products which are genetically modified are no longer required to be labeled as such.

Genetically modified (GM) plants contaminate non-GM plants during fertilization, so that diversity is reduced. The farmers trying to grow non-GM crops end up with contaminated crops, which leads to both export problems and to problems with the companies that have patented the GMs. Monsanto in particular is very aggressive in its treatment of farmers with contaminated crops, preventing them from using their own crops for seed, and basically suing for patent violations (even though it was their company's product which contaminated neighboring crops).

Sometimes it is not the modified gene itself that is problematic; it is the location in the genome of the plant where it is inserted that is the problem. The location in the genome is not consistent, and different locations of the gene can produce very different results. Thus, the process itself of producing GMOs can cause adverse effects.

Roundup-ready crops in particular are a problem, because Roundup is an herbicide which kills most other plants. The company's claims of environmental safety have proven over and over to be outright lies, claims which are dis-proven by the company's own research as well as independent research. Studies presented to the FDA have also been doctored to hide problems.

Research which contradicts Monsanto's claims is routinely attacked, and scientists involved in such studies have dirty tricks campaigns waged to discredit them.

Monsanto products often contaminate water supplies, and have resulted in local animal population die-offs. Many family farms have difficulties when in the neighborhood of Monsanto crops, since the use of Monsanto's herbicides may contaminate adjoining areas.

Unprotected workers applying Monsanto chemicals have adverse health effects. Local or imported bee populations with access to Monsanto crops end up with colony collapse disorder, and many bee farmers have gone bankrupt as a result.

In short, it is way past time for regulations and policies to be put into place to protect our health and our food from both unregulated GMOs and Monsanto in particular. Products which are genetically modified must not be allowed on the market without testing. With its equivalence policy, the FDA is subjecting us to essentially unregulated and untested genetically modified food and animal products. Monsanto, a company which now has a 70% share of our food market with its GM products, must be dealt with. Its ruthless and illegal practices must be stopped. At the very least, anti-trust and anti-monopoly legislation should be brought to bear against this morally bankrupt company.

Payroll Tax Increase Used In Pay-As-You-Go-Act

Not only is the payroll tax holiday mixing general revenues into the Social Security Trust Fund (which has U.S. Treasury bonds and has not been "stolen"), but now politicians are using payroll tax increases as an offset for the purposes of the "Pay-As-You-Go-Act of 2010"? The proposed increases in payroll taxes are limited in scope (applies only to "certain shareholders of a subchapter S corporation engaged as a partner in a professional service business"), and is thus limited in its effectiveness as to reforming Social Security revenues, and mixes the bookkeeping of payroll taxes with general revenues. The accounting for Social Security is supposed to be kept separate from other federal programs, and this proposal undermines that division.

If an offset is needed for keeping student loan interest rates low, then why not propose getting rid of big oil subsidies to pay for it? Democrats should have proposed this while daring Senate Republicans to vote NO.

Yes, the cap on income subject to payroll taxes should be raised (it should be indexed instead of static; the raising of the cap is the only fix Social Security needs), but doing it piecemeal while mixing it in legislation for other purposes is one more step to dismantling the most successful federal program ever. Maybe you want grandma and grandpa in poorhouses as was common before 1935, but I think a self-funded retirement insurance program which is not subject to Wall Street shenanigans, mismanagement, high administrative fees, or personal or corporate bankruptcy is a much better idea. This messing with payroll taxes is alarming, and we have to get it stopped.

See "Student Loan Vote: Republicans Block Bill To Extend Low Interest Rates", and "Stop the Student Loan Interest Rate Hike Act of 2012".

Misinformation: CNN and Social Security

Regarding CNN's, "Where do your taxes go?", posted 4/20/2012, and broadcast 4/21/2012 during the 1:00 pm ET news show. "$2.3T of the $3.6T federal budget comes from taxes. Christine Romans explains where your money goes."

The editorial and reporting staffs of CNN need to educate themselves when it comes to the financing of Social Security.

One of the claims was that "One-fifth of our tax dollars goes to Social Security". Really? Social Security has its own revenue stream (or at least did until the misguided tax holiday). Unless CNN also make clear that Social Security benefits are paid using payroll taxes (and the trust fund), and are not paid from general revenues, including federal taxes, then CNN is assisting in the perpetuation of some of the many lies and misinformation spread by those interested in dismantling one of the most successful federal programs ever.

Continually repeating claims that almost 50% of Americans pay no federal taxes while at the same time counting Social Security as part of the federal budget is to imply that Social Security is a budget buster in need of fixing. To continue this misinformation is to facilitate a partisan agenda. The radical conservative efforts to change Social Security are either a tactic to scare Social Security recipients, or an effort to privatize (think huge administrative fees) or eliminate Social Security.

A core part of the philosophy of the current GOP is advocating personal responsibility with no social responsibility, and Social Security is seen as a social program in conflict with that ideal. But Social Security is the reason (along with living wages) that we no longer have huge numbers of seniors and disabled people in poorhouses and in poverty.

Private retirement plans are subject to theft, personal bankruptcies, corporate bankruptcies, stock market crashes, bank closings, and incompetent or unscrupulous administration. In contrast, Social Security will always be there. Unless, of course, misguided or agenda-driven politicians take it from us.

"Reforming" Social Security by reducing benefits or raising the retirement age will do absolutely nothing to reduce the National Debt. Neither will increasing or decreasing payroll taxes. The only change which will occur is to change the length of time that full benefits can be paid, which is currently about 25 years (after which, assuming no changes, Social Security would be able to pay 80% of benefits through 2084).

The only change which should be made is to raise the cap at which payroll taxes are taken out (the cap should not be fixed, but should be indexed or removed), and that is only to insure full benefits past the next 25 years. It is also worth noting that very little of the income of the wealthy is subjected to payroll taxes, while most if not all of the income of middle and lower income workers is.

Social Security is not an "entitlement" in that it is not an unearned benefit (the new definition of entitlements). Social Security is retirement insurance, and premiums are paid in the form of payroll taxes.

Raise the retirement age? Social Security is fully funded for 25 years at current retirement ages. Will future retirees be penalized because of lies? The payroll tax holiday should also be eliminated to stop the mixing of our retirement insurance payments with general revenues.

Social Security is counted as an off-budget item. The trust fund holds special Treasury Bonds, bought whenever there is more collected in Social Security payroll taxes than is paid out in Social Security benefits. Those bonds fund part of the national debt, to the tune of $2.6 trillion. (Yes, those paper IOU's in the Trust Fund are actually U.S. Treasury Bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.)

When Social Security pays more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, it cashes in some of those treasury bonds. The Treasury Department is able to pay for those special Treasury Bonds by selling regular Treasury Bonds (say, to China).

Treasury Bonds are what fund the national debt (and have since the 1917 sale of Liberty Bonds). Since Social Security's special Treasury Bonds are only redeemed at the same time that new regular Treasury Bonds are sold, and money given to Social Security for redeeming the special bonds is offset by money from the sale of regular bonds, there is no change in the national debt. Thus, even if Social Security is running a deficit for the current year, there is no impact on the National Debt (and no change in how close or how far that actual debt is from the current debt ceiling).

The upcoming retirement of Baby Boomers was foreseen, and is the reason the Trust Fund was built up to such a large amount. So even though Social Security is projected to have deficits for the foreseeable future, the $2.6 trillion Trust Fund will insure that Social Security is able to pay out 100% in benefits for the next 25 years, and is able to do so with no changes in retirement ages and no changes to benefits.

Educate yourselves, and stop assisting the radical conservative assault on Social Security. Your future depends on it.

More Bad Budgets

The rich should be paying their fair share, not 15% on investment income. Preferential treatment for capital gains income should be eliminated. Obama has proposed extending most of the Bush tax cuts, except for taxes on the very rich and the capital gains tax cut. However, that would still leave capital gains being taxed at 20%, which is lower than the current 25% rate for middle income taxpayers. And this proposal would cost $4.1 trillion over the next ten years.

George W. Bush doubled the debt and left future budget years with trillions in deficits. What is happening is that the Republicans are starving the beast in order to reduce social spending. This is called Disaster Capitalism. You cannot continuously raise expenses such as two wars and a prescription plan that pays whatever is asked (no negotiation) and expect surpluses when revenues are lowered at the same time. Clinton raised taxes (as did Reagan) and left surplus budgets. Bush lowered taxes and left record deficits.

Much is being made about poorer people not paying federal taxes, but they certainly pay other taxes. They pay federal payroll taxes, federal excise taxes, state and local taxes.

People who work hard for a living are tired of freeloaders - the rich who pay less as a percentage of taxes, corporations that pay little or no taxes, companies with record profits that receive subsidies, speculators making money on commodity markets where they do not have any interest in the commodities and who drive up the price of commodities (think oil and gas, heating oil) for all of us.

Want smaller government and lower taxes? Try living in Somalia.

AARP Wants Permission To Ask For Benefit Cuts

AARP's repeated efforts to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits demonstrates that they have little understanding of the issues involved. Not only have they bought into conservative's lies, they are acting contrary to the interests of the people they claim to represent.

There are a few changes that Medicare needs. One such change is permission for drug price negotiations, rather than having to pay whatever prices the pharmaceutical industry asks. The Medicare payroll tax is very low, and could be bumped up a bit with little impact on paychecks. What we really need is Medicare for all. Private health insurance has administrative costs that are usually 20% or higher, and deductibles, co-pays, benefit limits, and doughnut holes make that insurance more like a very costly limited value coupon.

As for Social Security, the only change which should be made is to raise the cap at which payroll taxes are taken out (the cap should not be fixed, but should be indexed or removed), and that is only to insure full benefits past the next 25 years. It is also worth noting that very little of the income of the wealthy is subjected to payroll taxes, while most if not all of the income of middle and lower income workers is.

Raise the retirement age? You have got to be kidding. Social Security is fully funded for 25 years at current retirement ages. Will you penalize future retirees because of lies? And get rid of the payroll tax holiday and stop mixing our retirement insurance payments with general revenues.

Social Security accounting is separate by law, and in fact is counted as an off-budget item. The trust fund holds special Treasury Bonds, bought whenever there is more collected in Social Security payroll taxes than is paid out in Social Security benefits. Those bonds fund part of the national debt, to the tune of $2.6 trillion. (Yes, those paper IOU's in the Trust Fund are actually U.S. Treasury Bonds, backed by the full faith and credit of the United States.)

When Social Security pays more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes, it cashes in some of those treasury bonds. The Treasury Department is able to pay for those special Treasury Bonds by selling regular Treasury Bonds (say, to China).

Treasury Bonds are what fund the national debt (and have since the 1917 sale of Liberty Bonds). Since Social Security's special Treasury Bonds are only redeemed at the same time that new regular Treasury Bonds are sold, and money given to Social Security for redeeming the special bonds is offset by money from the sale of regular bonds, there is no change in the national debt. Thus, even if Social Security is running a deficit for the current year, there is no impact on the National Debt (and no change in how close or how far that actual debt is from the current debt ceiling).

Furthermore, even though Social Security is projected to have deficits for the forseeable future, the $2.6 trillion Trust Fund will insure that Social Security is able to pay out 100% in benefits for the next 26 years, and is able to do so with no changes in retirement ages and no changes to benefits. (The upcoming retirement of Baby Boomers was foreseen, and is the reason the Trust Fund was built up to such a large amount.) In fact, any changes to retirement ages or benefits would have absolutely no impact on the National Debt. Raising retirement ages or cutting benefits will only have an impact 26 years from now, and would still only affect Social Security benefit payouts, not the National Debt.

For more on AARP's current activities, and links to register your opinions on these issues, check out FDL (firedoglake.com).

The XL Pipeline and Other Progressive Rumblings; A Letter to the President

The Keystone XL pipeline is touted as necessary, even though it will lead to only 50 permanent jobs, and any output will be sold abroad, not here in the U.S. And there is a reason that Canada does not want the pipeline to be built to their seaports. It is called the environment.

The price of crude oil is set on the world markets, and speculation in oil future's markets has increased dramatically, yet we are told that somehow gasoline prices can be lowered by the actions of the president, and in particular, by allowing the Keystone XL pipeline to be built. Those gas prices rise or fall world-wide, and the major difference in gasoline prices across the globe is due to taxes.

Support for the pipeline sounds like a purely political move at the expense of the environment.

We want the progressive president that we elected in 2008, not someone who continually caves in to the uncompromising demands of the opposition party. We need someone who understands that the GOP wants low revenues in order to cut social programs. We need someone who understands that individual responsibility without social responsibility is just selfishness and greed.

We need someone who will stop mixing general revenues with the payroll tax revenues in the Social Security Trust Fund; general funds in the Trust Fund gives the GOP the excuse they want in order to cut expenses by cutting Social Security. We need someone who will fight for allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices rather than paying whatever the pharmaceutical companies demand.

We need someone who will refuse, absolutely refuse, to allow the Bush tax cuts to continue. We need someone who demands an end to preferential tax treatment for income from working money over income from working people; end the 15% capital gains tax and treat capital gains (and special dividend income) the same as regular income. Anything else is a slap in the face to blue-collar workers.

End the saddling of expenses on companies in the form of employee health care insurance. American companies which employ American workers have to compete with overseas companies which have employees with national health care. Fight for health insurance which is not dependent on the type and longevity of employment as well as the size of the company. That alone would help small businesses attract quality employees.

Again, please stand up for the principles of candidate Obama, and become the great president we so desperately need.

On the Road Again to 1929 - The JOBS Act

Copy of Letter to Rep. Collin Peterson (D-MN):

I am writing about your YES vote on the Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act, HR3606 (JOBS, or Jumpstart Only Big Scams Act).

Thank you for voting to end protections that were put in place after the stock market crash of 1929. And thank you for making the raising of capital more difficult and expensive because of the increased risk of fraud.

Exempting some types of transactions from SEC disclosure requirements as well as getting rid of penalties for lying will definitely make raising capital easier.

Getting rid of many parts of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley law will facilitate the return to the era of innovative accounting such as those practiced by Enron and WorldCom.

We have already eliminated the Glass-Steagall Act which kept commercial and investment banking separate, allowing bad investments to endanger commercial financing. With taxpayer financed bail-outs available, what danger could there really be?

So let's say good-bye to investor protections and give more jobs to people like Bernie Madoff and others who benefit from laws promoting economic self-destruction.

And by the way, how much did those securities industry special interests have to contribute to get you to vote yes on this bill? I bet you sold out real cheap.

This is yet another bill whose purpose is at odds with the title, unless the title only refers to the jobs of our representatives in Congress. I have also written my other representatives, President Obama, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) to let them know my opinion of this bill.

AARP Wants Social Security Cuts Again?

From the Huffington Post, we have that AARP "will soon be holding a private, principals-only 'salon-style conversation' with a host of advocates of entitlement cuts." A petition opposing this outrage is at FireDogLake.com.

AARP meeting "off-the-record" with social security opponents to discuss strategies for changing Social Security, including possible benefit cuts? How ignorant and despicable!

The only change which should be made is to raise the cap at which payroll taxes are taken out (the cap should be indexed, not fixed), and that is only to insure full benefits past the next 25 years.

Raise the retirement age? You have got to be kidding. Social Security is fully funded for 25 years at current retirement ages. Will you penalize future retirees because of lies? And get rid of the payroll tax holiday and stop mixing our retirement insurance payments with general revenues.

If AARP want me as a future member, they had better start acting like advocates for seniors.

And get rid of AARP CEO Barry Rand along with whoever advises him. NOW!

Romney for President?

Crony capitalism, disaster capitalism, lies and super pacs. Now Romney wants to reduce capital gains from 15% to 0%, eliminate corporate taxes altogether, and reduce income taxes (the wealthy would be the prime beneficiaries). Romney says he can do this and still balance the budget without touching military spending, Social Security or Medicare. It is a snow job, pure and simple. Thirty years of reducing taxes on the rich, two unfunded wars, a Medicare prescription plan that pays pharmaceutical companies whatever they want (no negotiation), reduced revenues due to Bush's recession, and we are told that spending is the problem?

The rich pay a smaller percentage of their income than the middle class in federal taxes, and most of their income is exempt from payroll taxes. Yet we are told that the poor are taking money out of the rich man's pocket, even though it is clearly the rich who are taking from the rest of us.

We have effectively eliminated our borders and invited the 50 cents-an-hour workers of the world to take American jobs using unfair free trade agreements.

We force corporations to pay for health insurance for long term full-time employees, then blame taxes and regulations for difficulties in competing with companies in other countries that have universal health care. And those who make minimum wage or are not full-time employees need not apply for health insurance.

We are told that jobs are the number one priority, and watch while state after state tries to balance budgets by eliminating public sector jobs of hundreds of thousands of teachers, police, firefighters, maintenance and highway workers.

We are told Social Security needs fixing and privatizing, even though it is self-funded (except for the misguided tax holiday), has a $2.6 trillion surplus (increasing to at least $3.3 trillion dollars by 2020) to handle baby boomers retiring, and can pay full benefits for the next 25 years.

The firewall between investment banks and commercial banks was eliminated, and ten years later, exactly as predicted, the economy crashed. Republicans blame Democrats for the state of the economy, even though the crash happened during Bush's presidency.

The price of crude oil is set on the world markets, and speculation in oil future's markets has increased dramatically, yet we are told that somehow Obama is to blame for high gasoline prices. Those prices rise or fall world-wide, and the major difference in gasoline prices across the globe is due to taxes. The Keystone XL pipeline is touted as necessary, even though it will lead to only 50 permanent jobs, and any output will be sold abroad, not here in the U.S. And there is a reason that Canada does not want the pipeline to be built to their seaports. It is called the environment.

Conservatives are willing to take the United States to the brink of default in their stubborn insistance on not ending any tax cuts, but point to the national debt as the fault of spending instead of reduced revenues.

Conservatives are falling all over themselves proclaiming their godliness, while they implement socialism for the rich and diaster capitalism for the rest of us. They are leaving most of us to fend for ourselves in their version of social darwinism for the less well-off, preferring individual responsibility without social responsibility.

Oil Speculation

CNN's Jack Cafferty asks, "Should price controls be imposed on gasoline?"

My answer is that it is not just Wall Street that is the problem. Crude oil prices are determined on a “futures” market at the NYMEX or ICE (Intercontinental Exchange). Traders need only put down a small fraction of the price to control a larger amount of futures contracts (leverage). The oil futures market is now dominated by speculators (70% versus 30% a decade ago) who never intend to take delivery of any crude oil. Not only should speculators be required to put at least 50% down, but there should also be limits on the amount of oil that speculators could trade in the energy futures market. Time was that prices were determined by supply and demand. Trading futures and allowing speculation has added an expensive middleman which costs consumers (both here and worldwide) dearly.

See Sen. Bernie Sanders' post, "Crack Down on Oil Speculators".

Medicare "Improvement Standard" Improperly Applied

The Center for Medicare Advocacy talks about the improper interpretation and erroneous implementation of an "improvement standard." Basically, treatment under Medicare should not be denied on the grounds that a patient's underlying condition will not improve. From their self-help packet:

As an overarching principle, the Medicare Act states that no payment will be made except for items and services that are "reasonable and necessary for the diagnosis or treatment of an illness or injury, or to improve the functioning of a malformed body member." 42 USC §1395y(a)(1)(A). While it is not clear what a "malformed body member" is, clearly this language does not limit Medicare coverage only to services, diagnoses or treatments that will improve illness or injury. Yet, in practice, beneficiaries are often denied coverage on the grounds that they are not likely to improve, or are "stable," or "chronic," or require long-term care, or "maintenance services only." These are not legitimate reasons for Medicare denials.

Also from the Center for Medicare Advocacy is an article about the improper denial of coverage:

Neither the Medicare statute nor its implementing regulations mentions or suggests an improvement standard in the context of diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury...The general statutory standard for Medicare coverage is one of medical necessity; that is, the standard is whether a given service is 'reasonable and necessary.' The same subsection of the law does use the word 'improve,' but only in the specific and limited context of authorizing Medicare coverage 'to improve the functioning of a malformed body member.' This use of 'improve' is the only reference to improvement in the statute...[T]here is no overarching improvement standard in the Medicare statute."

From the self-help packet, your first step after a denial would be to ask that a claim be submitted:

Submit a Claim: If a Medicare beneficiary is told that Medicare coverage for therapy is not available.... ask the health care provider to submit a claim to Medicare. The submission of a claim to Medicare is the only way to obtain a formal Medicare coverage determination and to access the Medicare appeals process if coverage is denied. The provider must submit a Medicare claim at the patient’s or representative’s request.

I did send letters to my representatives, including Obama, about this issue, a copy of which I posted elsewhere on my website. Also, there is a lawsuit about this improvement standard underway, with an update posted here.

What Should Jesus Do?

The protester, a bearded guy in sandals, says that the moneyed interests are exerting too much influence on the government. He thinks that it is time for those who are holding aloft the banner of God and righteousness look at how they are treating their fellow citizens.

Under the guise of liberty and morality, today's conservatives argue that minimum wage laws are anti-growth, that they harm businesses, and that they are mandates by a government that does not want the free market to determine the price of labor. They argue that child labor laws should be repealed in order to provide children work experience and money in their pockets. The conservative claim is that individuals are responsible for providing for themselves and their families, and government should not be rewarding failure and punishing success. But arguing that basic protections be denied to workers in America in order to protect or increase the incomes and profits of big business and of the wealthy is arguing that employees have complete control of their own wages and working conditions. It is arguing that any failure to earn living wages is the fault of the worker, and not of any employer.

Conservatives view taxes on corporations to be anti-business, and taxes on the wealthy to be part of a redistribution scheme designed to take money from those who have earned it in order to give it to people who have not earned it. They end up arguing that a tax rate of 15% on the wealthy, along with a cap on how much (or little) of their income is subjected to payroll taxes, is confiscatory, while subjecting middle income wages earned by working people to a 25% federal tax plus Social Security taxes plus Medicare taxes plus unemployment taxes is somehow fair.

Social Security is (or was until the payroll tax holiday) entirely self-funded by payroll taxes, yet the conservative view is that it is an unearned benefit. Social Security recipients are seen as living off of the government, and people receiving Social Security are counted along with veterans as getting mandated charity paid for by other taxpayers.

Conservatives argue that investment banks should not have to be separate from commercial banks, even though speculation by banks threatened massive losses in the last year of Bush's presidency and even resulted in the loss of more than a billion dollars in American farmer's capital accounts.

Taxes have been slashed drastically for the wealthy and for large corporations, but blame for deficits is placed on social spending, and the only adjustments being made are cuts to programs which benefit those whose incomes are low. Social spending is labelled evil because it supposedly is spending on people who have not earned it.

Conservatives claim moral failings on the part of Americans being left behind. They claim that there is a loss of traditional values. We have become a society in which less-educated men have great difficulty finding jobs with decent wages and good benefits, yet we are asked to believe that a lack of morals are behind rising unemployment, falling marriage rates, and unhappy marriages. The unemployed are told to just get a job, as if full-time jobs with living wages were available to anyone who asked.

Conservatives argue for capitalism without regulations, as if pollution never happens, people are never exploited, products never harm anyone, and politicians are never given money for legislation which favors one group or one corporation or one industry over others.

Moral law has for 3000 years condemned people who make excess profits from money without contributing to society. Yet people protesting against sharply rising inequalities, the loss of economic opportunities for American workers, and the slashing of help for those less well off, are labelled and dismissed.

What should Jesus do?

Regarding Contraception Funding and Religion

If hospitals and universities should be exempted from a law if they have ties to religious organizations, then either those organizations should divest themselves of those ties, or the law should be written so that it is not the religious organizations themselves which enforce the law. But are those hospitals and universities also exempted from anti-discrimination laws, or laws regarding labor practices?

The founding fathers purposely mentioned neither God nor religion in the original Constitution, preferring instead to mention religion only in an amendment. The establishment clause in the first amendment prohibits the government from preferring one religion over another, but also prohibits preferring religion over non-religion, or non-religion over religion. At the same time, the amendment bans Congress from making laws "prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

Exempting churches, temples and synagogues from laws regarding contraception gives those organizations the free exercise of their religions demanded by the first amendment. But institutions which serve secular purposes (health care or education), and which employ people without regard to religion, cannot be treated differently depending on whether or not they have religious ties. Shifting funding for contraception onto a third party satisfies the establishment clause as well as the free exercise clause. Removing the requirement for contraception funding altogether would be establishing a preference for religion; that requirement was put in to serve both the interests of citizens and of the state, and was not put in to establish a religious or non-religious preference.

Keeping Medicare Safe and Solvent

Members of the Democratic Party should encourage the repeal of the prohibition clause of the Federal 2003 Medicare prescription drug law which bans the Secretary of Health and Human Services from negotiating prices with pharmaceutical companies.

Other changes to Medicare which should be supported include provisions to stop paying private Medicare plans anything more than traditional Medicare, to include a drug benefit in traditional Medicare, and to lowering the age of Medicare eligibility.

In addition, we should support a clarification by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) with regard to improper interpretation and erroneous implementation of an "improvement standard." This misinterpretation results in improper denial of coverage to Medicare patients with chronic conditions, including "people with Multiple Sclerosis, Alzheimer's disease, ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), spinal cord injuries, diabetes, Parkinson's disease, hypertension, arthritis, heart disease, and stroke. Further, the erroneous standard disproportionately affects people who have low-incomes, as well as African-Americans and Hispanics." [1]

"Neither the Medicare statute nor its implementing regulations mentions or suggests an improvement standard in the context of diagnosis or treatment of illness or injury...The general statutory standard for Medicare coverage is one of medical necessity; that is, the standard is whether a given service is 'reasonable and necessary.' The same subsection of the law does use the word 'improve,' but only in the specific and limited context of authorizing Medicare coverage 'to improve the functioning of a malformed body member.' This use of 'improve' is the only reference to improvement in the statute...[T]here is no overarching improvement standard in the Medicare statute." [2]

In the absence of CMS action, the President should be encouraged to issue an Executive Order directing CMS to take appropriate steps.


1. Removing a Major Barrier to Necessary Care: The Medicare "Improvement Standard" Advocacy & Education Initiative

2. How the 'Improvement Standard' Improperly Denies Coverage to Medicare Patients with Chronic Conditions

Copies of this posting were sent as e-mails using Congress.org to President Barack Obama (D), Senator Al Franken (D-MN), Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Representative Collin C. Peterson (D-MN 7th).

Separation of Church and State?

Our founding fathers opposed the institutionalization of religion into government, and purposely kept the Constitution itself free of references to God. The first priority of the amendments in the Bill of Rights was to erect a church-state wall. When Benjamin Franklin proposed during the Constitutional Convention that each day begin with a prayer to God for guidance, his suggestion was defeated.

Since our nation's founding, opponents of America's secularism have repeatedly sought to breach the wall of separation between religion and government. It was not until the "Red Scare" of the 1950s, with it's fear of communism and the atheism that it espoused, that politicians in Washington practically fell over each other in their efforts to prove their piety. It was in 1954 that the phrase "under God," was added to the Pledge of Allegiance, thus making it a public prayer as well as a patriotic oath. (Ironically, it has been the addition of those words that has resulted in the banishment of the pledge from public schools.) In 1955 Congress added the words "In God We Trust" to all paper money. In 1956 "E Pluribus Unum" was replaced with "In God We Trust" as the nation's official motto.

The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled as unconstitutional efforts to inject religion into government, yet we are told almost daily how the founding fathers wanted this to be a Christian nation. We are told repeatedly that we must have religion in order to have values. People's rights are routinely denied with recitation of Old Testament value judgements. Non-Christian religions are demonized with distortions and untruths about those faiths. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars practically became holy wars with all of the religious justifications that were regularly cited.

Our founding fathers would be vehemently opposed to current efforts to put Christianity into our government. If people really cared about the values that this nation was founded on, they would stop using religion as a qualification for seeking public office, and they would oppose the demonizing of those who choose to respect the Establishment clause (church/state separation) of the first amendment of the Bill of Rights of our nation's Constitution.

Additionally, I believe that government itself should have a blind eye when it comes to religious matters. Laws should apply equally to both religious and non-religious organizations, assets, incomes, etc. To do otherwise is to give religion special status, and invites corruption of religious institutions as well as of government.

Newt Gingrich Lies About Chilean Privatized Retirement

Newt wants Wall Street to get a hold of the $2.6 trillion in the Social Security Trust Fund, as well as the money coming in yearly from payroll taxes. And he wants private firms to make money from 20% administrative costs (administrative costs for Social Security are currently less than 2%).

In the Chilean privatized retirement scheme that Newt loves so much, Chilean workers pay 10% of their salaries to personal retirement accounts, plus another 2% for the pension fund managers. It doesn't matter to Gingrich that about half of all retirement payments from the private accounts have to be subsidized, and that 40% of retirees are paid only from government (public) funds.

Newt continues to spout the lie that the system is voluntary, and that it has not cost the Chilean government anything, because apparently if you repeat a lie often enough, people will believe it.

Boehner's Lies

Boehner wants to capitalize on the fact that too many people believe the recession started during the Obama administration, instead of in the previous administration. The official start of the recession was December of 2007. I wrote in November of 2010, "Let us now sit back and listen for the next two years as the Republicans continuously blame the other party for all of the country's woes. Let us see if they can keep people from realizing that they have been conned."

Under George W. Bush, the percentage of the National Debt to the GDP went from 56.4% to 86.4%. In the final months of Bush's term, the economy was in free-fall, the stock market was tanking, the banks were getting bailed out by Congress, unemployment was spiraling out of control, and the deficit for 2009 was projected to be $1 trillion dollars, all before Obama even took office. We were also in the middle of two unfunded wars.

In the first two years of Obama's presidency, Republicans in the Senate blocked most of the efforts by the Democrat-controlled House to provide economic relief to Main Street. Since then the House, under a Republican majority, has passed one bill after another designed to give the rich more breaks under the guise of producing jobs. The Bush tax cuts are still in place, and taxes on capital gains are still 15%, while actual labor is taxed at 25% or more.

Boehner wants us to believe that Republicans will usher in an age of prosperity; in reality, it has been the policies of conservatives which have left so many Americans destitute.

Response to a Story About Charity

This is a comment to a Huffington Post article titled, "Conservativism, Compassion, and Cruelty: A Response to David Brooks."

Why do corporatio­ns continue to lobby against progressiv­es and universal health care? You would think it would be in their interest to support health care that is not paid for with company provided health insurance. Don't they have to compete against companies who don't have those costs?

Maybe it is really corporatio­ns dominated by outside (foreign) interests that are against American universal health care.

If more than half the town voluntaril­y helped pay for one person's medical bills, does that say something about universal health care?

What would have happened if it was not Ruthie Leming? If it was someone who was not as well liked or someone who worked in a less visible profession­, would the town have responded in the same way? Should one's popularity make a difference in the amount of help given for medical expenses?

Class Warfare, Taxes, and Progressives

What has bled the nation dry is the conservative policy of keeping revenues disastrously low while continuing to raise expenses, such as two unfunded wars. A 25% cut in taxes on capital gains and (special) dividend income is still in place (capital gains and dividend income are now both taxed at 15%), resulting in federal taxes on the wealthy averaging 16%. Most of the income on the wealthy is exempt from payroll taxes. Contrast this with a 25% tax rate on middle class incomes along with payroll taxes. So people are taxed at a much higher rate if they have to labor for their income rather than sending their money out to do the work for them.

We have had thirty years of class warfare by the wealthy. Income at the top has soared while wages among the poor and the middle class have stagnated.

Legislation is dominated by corporate influence. The conservative strategy of increasing the deficit in order to provide justification for cutting social spending has worked. The conservative's stated goal of keeping the economy from recovering in order to defeat Democrats is working.

There is a reason the top 1% pay more in taxes than the bottom 50%. Look at the relative incomes. Just how much should poor people pay in taxes while their income and spending power continues to tank?

Unemployment benefits, public libraries, a women's right to vote, environmental protections, food safety, a 5-day work week, living wages, child labor laws, desegregation, national parks, Social Security and Medicare. That is what progressives have fought for and won. How many of these have conservatives attacked? Do you really want a return to child labor, six-and-a-half day work weeks, senior poverty and poorhouses, sawdust in hot dogs, rivers catching fire, workers being fired for not being able to perform their jobs after being injured on those jobs, and wages that are little more than indentured servitude?

Go ahead and continue to support today's GOP. Continue to vote against your self-interest. Continue to believe right-wing propaganda and continue to believe that progressives are socialists. Continue to support free trade agreements that force American companies to compete against companies that are subsidized by their governments and whose workers have government (not company paid for) health care and 50-cents-an-hour wages.