If you are a Facebook User, Follow South Shore Democratic Club On Facebook!
All opinions expressed here are the views of the commentator and do not necessarily express official views of the Democratic Party.
America Isn't a Corporation!
“And greed — you mark my words — will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the U.S.A.” That’s how the fictional Gordon Gekko finished his famous “Greed is good” speech in the 1987 film “Wall Street.” In the movie, Gekko got his comeuppance. But in real life, Gekkoism triumphed, and policy based on the notion that greed is good is a major reason why income has grown so much more rapidly for the richest 1 percent than for the middle class.
Today, however, let’s focus on the rest of that sentence, which compares America to a corporation. This, too, is an idea that has been widely accepted. And it’s the main plank of Mitt Romney’s case that he should be president: In effect, he is asserting that what we need to fix our ailing economy is someone who has been successful in business. Read the rest of Paul Krugman's commentary.
Too Quiet For Too Long
You’re just jealous. At least that’s how Mitt Romney sees it. The millionaire who posed for this picture with the boys at Bain Capital with the long green clinched between their teeth and poking out of their collars and jackets now says that people who question what he did there, and what rich people do now, are just green with envy. Read the rest of Charles Blow's commentary.
Mitt Romney's Job Claims Debunked
Mitt Romney isn’t getting away with his false claim that he created more jobs than President Obama. Washington Monthly recently joined those disputing Romney’s effort to doctor his own record.
Romney talks up the jobs he created as governor of Massachusetts, but those were mostly government jobs. During his governorship, his state ranked 47th out of 50 in job creation, with manufacturing jobs falling by more than double the national average.
Romney takes credit for jobs created – including those after he left Bain Capital – but he refuses to take responsibility for the thousands of workers Bain laid off under his leadership, not to mention the American jobs he outsourced.
Using Mitt's job number logic, President Obama would have created 129 million jobs.
Attacking the Under Belly
Do you know ALEC? No, not the kid next door. Or do you know RSLC, the Republican State Leadership Committee? If not, you should get to know them and understand the awesome political power they wield.
Both are nationwide, highly financed right wing organizations mainly focuses on state legislative houses. Have you noticed how many states are magically pursuing the same conservative issues at the same time? Examples of their priority legislative proposals are voter suppression, limit collective bargaining, expand voucher programs and the list goes on. Sound familiar?
That many state bodies are suddenly interested in these subjects, is no accidental. It part of a coordinated and well thought out national plan to impose their conservative agenda. And it is paying off, Republicans now control more state legislatures than any time since 1928.
The legislative bodies are the soft underbodies of politics. State matters, comparatively speaking, do not usually receive much attention from the general public. For many citizens state representatives and their activities are overshadowed by other levels of government. Washington provides a daily stream of headline news, and locally, most people follow one or two immediate issues that are important to them like education, environment or taxes. But few of us really concentrate on what’s really going on in the state capital.
Since the 2010 election we have learned that that attention deficit is dangerous and damaging. State legislatures are ripe areas for an organized and planned attack, and that is just where ALEC and their RSLC cousins are aiming
ALEC formable membership consist of more than 2,000 state legislators from all 50 states plus 85 members of Congress. ALEC “helpfully” holds conferences supported by over 30 staff people. One output is “Model laws.” Over 800 of these right wing model bills are made available to participants for their state programs. In short, conservative forces are conducting a full court press all over the country to pass laws furthering their reactionary goals. Where is the defense?
Of course ALEC receives substantial dollar support from a herd of the corporations, foundations and other financial sources.
Similarly the Republican State Leadership Committee, partially financed by the infamous Koch brother, aggressively supports state candidates. For example in the Maine 2010 legislative race they spent $400,000 for Maine senate race… and all five Republicans won. Records show they also contributed heavily to legislative races in New York and Ohio. In 2010 the RSLC ranked 4th among 527 groups by expending $29 million.
Organizations such as NAACP, Urban League, ACLU and others are challenging them, but what are you going to do about it? How will you contribute in time and money?
-- Arnie Frigeri
Paul Krugman to Eric Cantor: "Have you left no sense of decency?"
As Krugman points out, Cantor may be a "hard man," "willing to endanger America's financial credibility, putting our whole economy at risk" and also "threatening to take Irene's victims hostage," he's also a Category 5 hypocrite. Read rest here.
Warren Buffet's Opinion on Taxes and Shared Sacrifice
Our leaders have asked for “shared sacrifice.” But when they did the asking, they spared me. I checked with my mega-rich friends to learn what pain they were expecting. They, too, were left untouched.
While the poor and middle class fight for us in Afghanistan, and while most Americans struggle to make ends meet, we mega-rich continue to get our extraordinary tax breaks. Read rest here.
A Good Perspective
"The word compromise is not a filthy word. If you can't learn to compromise an issue without compromising yourself then you shouldn't be a legislator."
-- Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY)
Self-Government At Risk
Because the relentless onslaught of right-wing, corporate-bought legislation has nothing to do with whether average folks call themselves Democrats or Republicans, liberals or tea partiers, and everything to do with the American people's right to govern themselves, live their lives in peace and some degree of safety, and not find themselves increasingly under the thumb of a wealthy minority.
-- Emily Mills
Mitt Declares
Corporations are people. --Mitt Romney, Iowa, August 10, 2011
Subsidized Wealth
'When the GOP claimed that deficits don’t matter, it called for privatizing major social insurance programs while cutting taxes on the rich, and now that it claims to be deeply concerned about deficits, it calls for privatizing major social insurance programs while cutting taxes on the rich.'
--Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize in Economics, 2008
Your Insurance $$$ At Work
$102,000,000 annual compensation to UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen Hemsley. America's highest paid CEO. United profits up 13% from last year. Record profits throughout industry. Remember this when your claim is denied, premium increased, and deductible raised. Note insurance companies are just middlemen. They provide e no health services but use 1/3 or your healthcare dollar.
---Anonymous
Seniors, Republicans and Medicare
A majority of voters age 65 and over have recently trended toward voting Republican. Seniors are an important and influential voting group. Many of them voted Republican because of concern over the Medicare. They apparently think the recently enacted Democratic sponsored Affordable Care Act will “gut” Medicare.
The distorted and incorrect inflammatory attack ads by the GOP on the Affordable Care Act have apparently had that effect.
The real threat to Medicare is its continual rise in cost. The Affordable Care Act addresses the threat. The law will, according to the impartial Federal Budget Office, will save the Federal budget a projected $550 billion over the next two decades.
There will be NO cuts whatsoever, and some improvements in the benefits offered in the traditional Medicare fee-for-services program. What will be scaled back are unjustified subsidies to private Medicare Advantage programs . Various other administrative changes will also bring about other cost improvements .
Before seniors jump to conclusions they should get the real facts not the misinformation being peddled by the GOP and Fox News.
By the way, have you ever wondered why so many insurance corporations have given millions of dollars to the GOP to support their efforts to change the Affordable Care Act?
--Arnie Frigeri
Apathy Or What?
A review of the 2010 Election Results for Florida Governor reveals that Alex Sink (D) received 2,522,857 votes while Republican Rick Scott received 2,589,915 votes, a difference of some 67,000 votes statewide. In Hillsborough County registered Democratic voters outnumber registered Republicans by 59,542. What if all 59,542 of those registered Democrats in Hillsborough County had voted for Sink, plus another 10,000 Democrats elsewhere in the state had voted for her, obviously the results would have been different. Read More Here
General Election Stats Tell the Story
Recently released Hillsborough County election statistics show that registered Democrats out number Republicans by about 40,000 voters countywide.
Despite this advantage in registered Democrats, Democratic candidates fared very badly in the November 2010 elections. How can that be ?
The answer is simply in the number of people who actually bothered to vote. In Hillsborough, about 7,700 more Republicans voted than Democrats. Put differently, only 20% of the registered Democrats voted contrasted with 29% of the Republicans.
Guess what -- - Republicans won most of the races.
Getting the vote out is a critical function of local clubs and organizations. Obviously, we at South Shore Democratic Club have our work cut out for us if we are to win 2012.
There is a saying, “People get the kind of government they deserve.” Unfortunately, we may experience the truth of that statement in the months ahead.
-- Arnie Frigeri
Income Inequity
In America, the richest 1 percent of Americans now take home almost 24 percent of income, up from almost 9 percent in 1976. As Timothy Noah of Slate noted in an excellent series on inequality, the United States now arguably has a more unequal distribution of wealth than traditional banana republics like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Guyana. Read Here.
Under GOP Rule, The Rich Get Richer. When Dems Are In Charge Everybody Does Well.
Source: Ezra Klein, Washington Post
Hey, Big Spenders!
Think you know what Democrats and Republicans stand for? In their book Presimetics, out in August 2010, economist Mike Kimel and journalist Michael E. Kanell compare politician's claims with the decisions they made from 1952 to 2008. Click here to take a surprising quiz.
Racism
Eugene Robinson, Washington Post, notes that when the nation's leading civil rights organization passed a resolution condemning displays of racism by Tea Party activists, leaders of the movement reacted with umbrage so thick you could cut it with a knife -- they demonstrated that the NAACP's allegation was entirely justified Click here to read.
TOP OF PAGEAll opinions expressed here are the views of the commentator and do not necessarily express official views of the Democratic Party.