God, capitalism, guns, Republicans

Commenter: Thank God for capitalism, guns and the Republican party.

Response: Guns? Ever hear the full Second Amendment? Why do 2nd Amendment people think that one untrained person is a well regulated militia? Ever hear of a State National Guard? Now that's a militia.

As for God, I didn't realize that after Jesus came on the scene that he/she required followers to insult, humiliate, physically harm and discriminate against LGBT, Mexicans, women, Democratic Socialists (capitalism plus socialism), disabled, elderly, sick people, non-Christians, etc. And if you are going to go Old Testament, then you have most certainly been sinning.

As for Republicans, everything we have seen from them is just lies, excuses, gerrymandering, voter suppression, discrimination, condescension, and biasing of laws to favor the rich and large corporations at the expense of small business and the 99%.

How's that big pay raise after the huge corporate tax cut doing for you? Able to afford a one-year membership at Costco, yet?

Finally, do you really want a nanny state regulating our bedrooms, our bodies, and our individual freedoms, which for some reason Republicans like along with their "inherently moral" free markets?

Thoughts on a $15 Minimum Wage

Corporations earn enough profits to skew laws in their favor while screwing small business (skew & screw). A worker making so little that they need government assistance is a company benefiting from paying so little. I call that corporate welfare.

Companies should not be in the business of paying for health insurance for employees, especially if they have to compete with foreign companies. Health insurance becomes another place to cut benefits, so employees end up with unaffordable premiums, deductibles, co-pays, etc. Part-time workers become especially profitable because companies (with 20 or more employees) don't have to pay health insurance for them; workers end up needed two or more part time jobs while not having health insurance.

A minimum wage of $15 an hour would raise prices an average of 4%. If a startup cannot afford to pay $15/hr, they need to rework their business model. A higher minimum wage increases consumer spending and tax revenues, decreases government assistance costs, and contributes to job satisfaction.

Wage increases are no longer tied to increases in productivity. The people who do the actual work no longer benefit from productivity increases, raising the gap between the rich and the not-rich, and disincentivising employees from doing their best at a job. Like communism, if it doesn't matter how hard you work, there is no incentive to work hard.

This has been a public service message from a poster with verbosity set to maximum.

My 2018 Wish List

These are a few of my favorite things:

====General====  * True separation of church and state. Take the religion label off of churches, organizations, and people. Base tax-exempt status on being a charitable organization. Base laws on non-religious grounds (no more religious exemptions). Allowing religious exclusions is making laws regarding religion.
 * Universal healthcare. The right to decent medical care should not be dependent on what state a person lives in.
 * Gun safety and sane gun laws. No more BS about one untrained person being a militia (state national guards are militias).
 * Adjustment of payroll taxes and salary caps to fully fund Social Security (used to be routine) with no more raising retirement ages and cutting benefits. It should be illegal to claim that fixing federal deficits and National Debt requires Social Security reform.
 * Fair taxation (stop shifting the burden of taxation onto the middle class and the poor).

====Government====
 * 60 vote minimum for confirmations (with at least 1 vote from the other party?) and with the right to bring nomination confirmations to a floor vote (no more McConnellisms).
 * Free (or affordable) education. Part-time work used to be sufficient to secure higher education at most colleges.
 * No more for-profit prisons.
 * No more for-profit courts and modern debtors' prisons.
 * No voter suppression, especially suppression under the guise of election integrity.
 * No gerrymandering.
 * No Electoral College (which is winner-take-all in some states and votes in some states worth more).
 * Required standards for implementation of any election integrity laws, secure (tamperproof?) election machines and mandatory counting with time limitations of absentee ballots, military ballots, and provisional verified ballots.
 * Reimplementation and updating of the Voting Rights Act.
 * An implementation of truth in advertising laws for elections.
 * Campaign finance reform.
 * No undisclosed or "delayed" revelations of names of donors to campaign funding.

====Economic====
 * An end to corporations as people except for economic purposes.
 * Simplified contracts and agreements, no arbitration clauses, no unfair hidden clauses.
 * No hiding profits off-shore. If a company makes a profit in this country, that profit should be taxable, and it should not matter what country a company is headquartered in. What happens in the U.S. should be taxable in the U.S.
 * An end to corporate subsidies and corporate welfare.
 * An end to corporations relying on public assistance for underpaid employees (a form of corporate welfare). In other words, livable wages.
 * CEO's and governing boards to be civilly and criminally liable for corporate misbehavior (shared responsibility - not immunity).
 * An end to vulture capitalism (or much greater regulatory control and oversight) with its theft of company assets and pawning off of pensions to underfunded government agencies.

====FDR Version====
Implementation of FDR's second bill of rights or a modern version of it:
 * The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
 * The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
 * The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
 * The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
 * The right of every family to a decent home;
 * The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
 * The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
 * The right to a good education.

Article I, Section 8, United States Constitution:
"The Congress shall have power to...provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States."
Combine the two and we have the progressive view.

The Undoing of the Separation of Church and State

The radical conservatives in the court's majority are destroying the wall between religion and state. Since the 19th century, the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations, defined in the U.S. Code in its very first sentence as people, are entitled to a wide range of constitutional protections.

Our modern Supreme Court has extended those rights beyond economic functions. Thus we have Citizen's United giving not just to corporations, but to advocacy groups as well, free speech rights wherein money equals speech. We have Hobby Lobby with its "religious freedom" to act on its beliefs, impacting its employees.

Unlimited corporate money gives rise to corporate political power with the ability to influence legislation and elections. That this country was founded as a Christian nation is delusional. But with companies as "people" being given expanded protections and rights by the Supreme Court, how many of us will find ourselves as employees and consumers being subjected to religious restrictions? Hobby Lobby sprung leaks in the dike, and Citizen's United is turning that leak into a deluge.

What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for America

Can the Wall Between Church and State Survive Brett Kavanaugh?

Failure of AHCA replacing ACA blamed for Dem House takeover?

So, if Republicans had succeeded in the repeal-and-replace efforts, then Democrats could not harp on that issue?  I would say McCain saved some House seats.

The GOP wanted to replace ObamaCare with Ryan's AHCA. His plan would have had coverage for only 5% of the costs of pre-existing conditions. The AHCA would have also included the eventual removal of insurance expense subsidies and Medicaid federal subsidies, shrinking federal financial aid to help people get coverage, and premiums 3 to 5 times higher for coverage of older people and people with pre-existing conditions. The CBO estimate was that 24 million more would become uninsured by 2026. The more radical conservatives called it ObamaCare Lite and said the AHCA did not go far enough.

The same person who claimed that the ACHA absolutely does not eliminate coverage of pre-existing conditions also said that people who want better health insurance could move to a different state.

If the AHCA had replaced the ACA, the House and the Senate would likely have become more blue, not less.

Link to Politico story: Defeated GOP congressman blames McCain's Obamacare vote for Democrats' House takeover 

Chest-thumping And Religious Posturing

In the 50's, politicians were falling all over themselves trying to prove that they were not "godless" commies. In 1956 a joint resolution passed by congress and signed by Eisenhower adopted "In God We Trust" to replace "e Pluribus Unum," which had been the de facto motto since 1782, on our currency.

In 1954 "under God" was added to the Pledge of Allegiance. As this violated the separation of church and state, the Pledge eventually could no longer be used in public schools.

The sermon that convinced Eisenhower to modify the Pledge also had "An atheistic American is a contradiction in terms.” There was also the wonderful view that “If you deny the Christian ethic, you fall short of the American ideal of life.”

And now we have the wearing of flag pins by politicians to prove their patriotism. In the 70's, politicians used it as a symbol of patriotic solidarity against anti-Vietnam protesters. It again became popular after 9/11. Not wearing the flag shows that you are unpatriotic and that you don't love your country; that you must be a socialist or communist. It doesn't matter if wearing the flag pin doesn't do anything, doesn't protect workers or consumers or the environment or the poor or the sick and disabled or the elderly or children or vets.

Symbolism is valued more than actions. Anything done to help people is said to be just coddling them, making them dependent, is touchy-feely, is socialism, is the spending of tax dollars on welfare queens and the lazy. Regulations are anti-jobs, stifling American innovation, just part of a nanny state.

Wear the flag pin and prove your patriotism and love of country. To not wear the pin shows that you hate your country and soldiers and vets and police and success and religion and traditional marriage and unborn babies. Not wearing the pin shows that you are not a true American. Whatever that is.

Wear the flag pin and show that you have ethics and values and morals and biblical righteousness and fiscal sanity and are not a cheater and not a greedy person. And then go to church and be absolved of your sins; go out and lie and cheat and steal some more because Jesus loves you. And atheists and worshipers of other religions are not what the founding fathers approved of, so take off those flag pins because you are not part of our Christian America.

So sayeth the hypocrites.

Primed for Obstruction

Let's see if I have this right. If Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein gets fired or resigns:

1. Oversight of the Mueller investigation would fall to the next available person in the Justice Department's hierarchy, Noel Francisco. 
2. Noel Francisco is a partner in the law firm that represents Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in the Russia probe.
3. Noel Francisco was a lawyer on Trump’s transition team (which also has been pulled into the Mueller investigation).
4. The White House in April granted an Ethics Waiver for Noel Francisco.
5. That waiver gives Francisco immunity from having to recuse himself from supervising Mueller's investigation.
6. Francisco would become the person signing off on the special counsel’s budget.
7. Francisco would become the person making decisions on subpoenas and indictments for that investigation.
8. Francisco would become the person who determines whether or not the final report is publicly disclosed.
9. Francisco would become the person overseeing the investigation of himself.
10. That ethics waiver was never listed with the 28 other ethics waivers granted by the White House, giving that waiver the secrecy it should not have had. 
11. That waiver is signed by then-White House Counsel Don McGahn, who is also a partner with Francisco at the same law firm that represents Trump's presidential campaign in the Russia probe.

Can you say, "conflict of interest"? Can you say, "obstruction of justice"? Can you say, "cover-up"? I knew you could.

Link: Secret waiver clears possible Trump Russia Rosenstein replacement