This blog will focus on political images I have found all around the Internet, though I will intersperse some commentary and quotes that I find interesting.
Thursday, October 03, 2013
Raise the damn minimum wage
And another issue - as you raise the minimum wage, the need for the government to subsidize workers with SNAP, HEAP and other governmental help programs will decline.
Sequestration and the shutdown
"Who's being played here?" Dems lost the austerity battle, and sequestration is here to stay. (Click on this headline to read more)
And via Michael Hiltzik's latest Los Angeles Times column:
The clean CR that was most recently on the table at the House of Representatives would incorporate 100% of next year's sequester cuts in nondefense spending and 60% of the cuts in the defense budget.
[...]
It's proper to recall the sequester's devastating effects on millions of Americans, keeping in mind that it was created only to settle a major debt-limit fight in 2011.
[...]
It will cost as many as 1.6 million jobs over that time frame, the CBO says.
Just as the government shutdown leaves congressional pay and benefits intact, so does the sequester. The damage is all done at the opposite end of the economic scale.
[...]
Yet the best we can hope for is that the sequester continues, and doesn't get worse.
[...]
The best clue to the poverty of the Republican anti-Obamacare argument is the breadth of the lies told to justify it.
[...]
There is absolutely no evidence that any workers have lost their jobs because of the reform act. Part-time work?... [T]he share of total employment represented by part-time jobs nationwide has actually fallen slightly (from 19.49% to 19.41%).
[...]
Big business... may well be using Obamacare as a whipping boy to avoid the impression that they're just being cheap... As for "skyrocketing" healthcare premiums, they're nowhere in sight.
[...]
One big lie has been attached to the GOP's determination to overturn a tax on medical devices... But as we showed back in May, no objective data support that claim — all the numbers come from studies the industry commissioned or from libertarian think tanks that would oppose any tax.
[...]
The players are all out for themselves — their profits, their ideology, their TV time. The real-world effect of their actions? That ball isn't in their court.
Saw this on the BBC website...
How The World Sees The Government Shutdown
But perhaps the harshest coverage came from the stolid BBC. In a piece titled "US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned," Anthony Zurcher wrote, "For most of the world, a government shutdown is very bad news - the result of revolution, invasion or disaster. Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war, the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers' wages. That leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic growth is astonishing to many…Now, as the latest shutdown crisis plays out, policymakers in other nations are left to ponder the worldwide impact of the impasse."
But perhaps the harshest coverage came from the stolid BBC. In a piece titled "US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned," Anthony Zurcher wrote, "For most of the world, a government shutdown is very bad news - the result of revolution, invasion or disaster. Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war, the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers' wages. That leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic growth is astonishing to many…Now, as the latest shutdown crisis plays out, policymakers in other nations are left to ponder the worldwide impact of the impasse."
Wednesday, October 02, 2013
The shutdown is scary.
How The World Sees The Government Shutdown (Click on this title to read more)
[...]But perhaps the harshest coverage came from the stolid BBC. In a piece titled “US shutdown has other nations confused and concerned,” Anthony Zurcher wrote, “For most of the world, a government shutdown is very bad news – the result of revolution, invasion or disaster. Even in the middle of its ongoing civil war, the Syrian government has continued to pay its bills and workers’ wages. That leaders of one of the most powerful nations on earth willingly provoked a crisis that suspends public services and decreases economic growth is astonishing to many…Now, as the latest shutdown crisis plays out, policymakers in other nations are left to ponder the worldwide impact of the impasse.”
Wonder how long THIS will last.
Prison, border guards required to work without pay during House tantrum (Click on this headline to read more)
Tuesday, October 01, 2013, 7:05 pm
The shutdown twins
The impasse means 800,000 federal workers will be furloughed Tuesday. National parks, monuments and museums, as well as most federal offices, will close. Tens of thousands of air-traffic controllers, prison guards and border-patrol agents will be required to serve without pay
The shutdown has a cost
You'll laugh! You'll cry! #GOPshutdown round-up (Click on this title to read more)
Tuesday, October 01, 2013, 6:43 pm
About 30 children a week can't get treatment at NIH because of shutdown. "I'm sorry, you can't come," child cancer patients are being told.— Tom Burton (@TomBurtonWSJ) October 1, 2013
Department of Defense suspends all intercollegiate competitions at the Service Academies. Decision on AF-Navy football will be made Thursday— Navy Athletics (@NavyAthletics) October 1, 2013
Food not inspected, diseases/flu unchecked, nutrition programs slashed, tourism industry hurt, stock market down. #GOPgovtshutdown— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) October 1, 2013
Cost of the government shutdown? $1.6 billion a week, $300 million a day, or $12.5 million an hour. http://t.co/kJ4Puj7lyi— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 1, 2013
Who'd a-thunk-it?
Obamacare so in demand that sites are overwhelmed (Click on this heading to read more)
Tuesday, October 01, 2013, 4:26 pm
New York has had more than 2 million visitors this morning, which is causing some trouble for people trying to sign up. To put that in perspective, New York has 2.5 million uninsured residents. [...]Kentucky's new marketplace, the Kynect, had processed over 1,000 applications for insurance by 9:30 a.m. this morning. The Web site has had more than 24,000 visits from people browsing the insurance rates.
Infantile behavior
While Congress fights over memorials, Republican shutdown risks health and safety of millions (Click on this title to read more)
Tuesday, October 01, 2013, 3:55 pm
No government, but keep the memorials.
Tuesday, October 01, 2013
Things our founding fathers said
“Some very worthy persons, who have not had great advantages for information, have objected against that clause in the constitution which provides, that no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States. They have been afraid that this clause is unfavorable to religion. But my countrymen, the sole purpose and effect of it is to exclude persecution, and to secure to you the important right of religious liberty. We are almost the only people in the world, who have a full enjoyment of this important right of human nature. In our country every man has a right to worship God in that way which is most agreeable to his conscience. If he be a good and peaceable person he is liable to no penalties or incapacities on account of his religious sentiments; or in other words, he is not subject to persecution. But in other parts of the world, it has been, and still is, far different. Systems of religious error have been adopted, in times of ignorance. It has been the interest of tyrannical kings, popes, and prelates, to maintain these errors. When the clouds of ignorance began to vanish, and the people grew more enlightened, there was no other way to keep them in error, but to prohibit their altering their religious opinions by severe persecuting laws. In this way persecution became general throughout Europe.”
~Oliver Ellsworth, Philip B Kurland and Ralph Lerner (eds.), The Founder’s Constitution, University of Chicago Press, 1987, Vol. 4, p.
638
~Oliver Ellsworth, Philip B Kurland and Ralph Lerner (eds.), The Founder’s Constitution, University of Chicago Press, 1987, Vol. 4, p.
638
Shooting report
With Republicans so adamant that they have their own way about EVERYTHING, to the point that they are willing to put hundreds of thousands of government employees out of work if they don't get what they want, I suppose background checks for all gun purchases is out of the question?
If only they could see...
If only American workers could see what they are doing to themselves, they would fight back. But declining educational programs, declining pride in their own value, a declining sense of history - all have contributed to the shrinking of unions and worker rights.
A big thanks to the Democrats
There is a way to pass a bill in Congress - you get a majority of the House of Representatives and a majority of the Senate to vote for it. The same would apply for removing a law. Seldom in the history of bicameral democracies are the crazies of just one of the houses allowed to overrule everyone else, yet that is what the Republicans think they can do.
Holding only a small majority in one of the two houses, they seem to believe that they should get their way, and if they don't, they're going to throw a temper tantrum that shuts down a big portion of the government to show everyone else what big babies they are.
I want to thank the President and the Senate for standing up to the squalling of the infant-like Republicans and refusing to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act. The President, in particular, has been far too willing to negotiate with the Republicans in the past, even then when they were trying to extort concessions that deny their lack of majority.
Holding only a small majority in one of the two houses, they seem to believe that they should get their way, and if they don't, they're going to throw a temper tantrum that shuts down a big portion of the government to show everyone else what big babies they are.
I want to thank the President and the Senate for standing up to the squalling of the infant-like Republicans and refusing to repeal or delay the Affordable Care Act. The President, in particular, has been far too willing to negotiate with the Republicans in the past, even then when they were trying to extort concessions that deny their lack of majority.
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Rock Bottom
Sep 30, 2013 | By
CAP Action War Room
GOP Prepares to Take Us Over the Brink
In just a few hours the federal government
will shut down for the first time in 17 years unless House Republicans
stop wasting time on anti-Obamacare ransom notes and instead agree to a
real compromise — a short-term funding bill at sequester spending levels
— that will keep the government open.
Unfortunately, Republicans appear to care
far more about more dead-end votes on Obamacare than about avoiding a
damaging government shutdown.
Late Saturday,
the House passed a measure that demanded a one-year halt to Obamacare
in return for keeping the government open for just over two months. It
also included a repugnant attack on women’s access to affordable birth control that would allow employers to deny birth control coverage to their female employees.
The Senate rejected this ransom note earlier this afternoon,
but it appears that House Republicans are simply readying another
equally unacceptable anti-Obamacare measure instead of a serious bill to
keep the government open.
Sadly, we don’t have to wait for midnight to come to understand how damaging a government shutdown will be. Republican brinksmanship is already hurting the economy, just as it did during their manufactured debt limit crisis in 2011.
The New York Times reported today that “stock markets fell worldwide on Monday as political disagreements in Washington made a shutdown on Monday
night increasingly likely.” “Investors are worried that even a
temporary government shutdown could endanger an already weak economic
recovery,” the Times added.
The Business Roundtable, a group representing corporate CEOs,surveyed its members and found that “half of top executives said the budget fights were crimping their hiring plans.”
The worst for the economy is of course yet to come:
Fears over the impact to the economy led the
GOP-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce and more than 230 other business
groups to write to lawmakers last week “urging them to keep the government open.”
Shutting down the government tonight will
kneecap the economy and hurt millions of Americans, but ironically it
will do nothing to actually stop Obamacare. Indeed, tomorrow
marks the opening of insurance marketplaces that will allow millions of
Americans, many of whom are currently insured or who have never had
insurance, to shop for a quality, affordable health plan.
“An important part of the Affordable Care Act takes effect tomorrow
no matter what Congress decides to do today,” said President Obama late
this afternoon. “The Affordable Care Act is moving forward. That
funding is already in place. You can’t shut it down. ”
Given the Republicans’ spiteful fixation on denying health care to millions of Americans, it’s no wonder that a poll out today
found that the approval rating of Congress has dropped to just 10
percent — an all-time low. Other recent polls have found overwhelming
disapproval for the GOP and its actions:
It’s also no wonder then that if the
government shuts down tonight, the public will, correctly, blame
Republicans. One poll out today found that a majority of Americans (51
percent) say they will blame Republicans in Congress “a lot” if the
government shuts down, which is consistent with the findings of other recent polls.
BOTTOM LINE: It’s sadly
once again clear that Republicans will do anything — including shutting
down the government and sabotaging the economy — in order to stop
millions of Americans from gaining the security of quality, affordable
health care.
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