AmericaSpeaks held a nationwide townhall on Saturday to listen to what average Americans want when it comes to the complex financial decisions that must be made in light of a "deficit" that government is running.
Susie Madrak reports:
For the first time in a long time, I might have some faith in America. Because no matter how many times the facilitators of this event (which was funded heavily by Pete Peterson, the conservative billionaire who wants to cut Social Security) tried to steer us toward cutting Social Security and Medicare, the 3500 or so people who took part in this national town hall weren't buying it. Sure, there were Fox News junkies here and there, and some cautious, low-information voters who kinda-sorta disagreed, but the majority who attended seemed to have their own ideas about how to solve the deficit "problem."
You know what most of them wanted to do? Soak the rich -- and cut defense spending.
Why must a 600 billion dollar budget in government be exempt from being cut? Why is the Department of War being held exempt from being cut in light of this dire fiscal crisis that faces the nation ten, twenty, or thirty years from now?
What conservatives are selling is nothing but fear of a nightmare that does not exist. They are selling a fictional fiscal dystopia for the gullible.
Conservative leaders don't care because they are taken care of by their corporate overlords.
Do you think Pete Peterson, CEO of Blackstone, cares if you have to retire at 69 instead of 65; just so the imaginary play money those Wall Street banksters deal with means that government has a "balanced" book?
What Americans want is for government to provide for it's senior citizens to live in dignity and to have Medicare available to all.
Spend more on us and less on the war killing machine. How hard is that to understand?
I was at the 1Sky.org protest today in Denver. About 140 people showed up at Rocky Mountain Lake Park that had numerous speakers before the holding of hands to demonstrate that we will not let deep water oil drilling continue and to have a coherent national renewable energy policy that will replace the extractive energy based economy that we now have.
(I don't find it hard to believe Republicans don't understand basic economics. Do you? - promoted by Fong)
Crooks and Liars says it all:
"The Democrats will try to act like Republicans by cutting the deficit, and it won't win them any additional votes. It never does. The kind of people who like Republican policies vote for Republicans."
What is so hard to adhere to what FDR had to battle? The fight to restart a collapsing economy and a horrendous unemployment number?
Small businesses (and large businesses) cannot just hire more people if there is not demand for their products. Right?
It is up to government to create a 21st century Works Projects Administration that will jump start a collapsed private sector. The private sector cannot do it. Wall Street cannot do it.
Contrary to what Republicans have to say about their scary boogie man of the "deficit", most people don't give a rat's *ss about the deficit. If the choice is having a job or mythical "red ink" the job will always win.
If the economic is jump started then the tax revenues will grow too.
Hard to believe that Republicans cannot understand simple economics.
Plume found miles from prime ocean fishing off the coast of Florida.
Oil is a poison.
Oil reaches loop current in the Gulf of Mexico.
How much oil is gushing? 5,000 bbl per day sez BP/Government. But wait BP sez the siphon is working to the tune of 5,000 bbl per day, but the live video feed shows the reality. Oops for the sea creatures.
BP has used 700,000 gallons of oil dispersant. It has bought 33 percent of world stock of oil dispersant.
Making the oil disperse from visible globules to microscopic level only increases the toxicity for sea life. For BP it is "out of sight = out of mind".
Bacteria does eat the oil but in doing so depletes the ocean of oxygen that effectively creates "dead zones" by having such low levels of O2 content that higher marine animals cannot survive.
How many gushers are there in the Deepwater Horizon area?
Matt Simmons,energy adviser to President George W. Bush, is an adviser to the Oil Depletion Analysis Centre, and is a member of the National Petroleum Council and the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks that the real gusher(s) is NOT being televised.
"The Obama Administration's move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America."
I wrote on ProgressNow community blog that President Obama is becoming a conservative Dem, and I received some flak about it. But this is another fact that supports my position. I can cite a long list of policies and goals that President Obama supports that this antithetical to progressive/liberal issues, including constitutional issues on civil liberties/rights and executive powers.
Why else would President Obama want to support a conservative position that hurts the poorest in American society?
Sign the petition to halt this shameful bill immediately.
President Obama now tells us that the Warren Court overstepped it's judicial role by becoming "activist". Glenn Greenwald retorts:
"But given that the defining rulings of those decades have long formed the bedrock of the progressive understanding of the Constitution and the judiciary, that the dominant Justices of that era (Brennan, Marshall, Douglas, Black) are the iconic liberal judges of the 20th century, and that those decades produced the most vital safeguards for core Constitutional guarantees and critical limits on executive power, Obama -- as I said yesterday -- should at least specify which decisions he finds "erroneous" and illegitimate...."
Now tell me what would make President Obama say something like that?
He is not a progressive or moderate but rapidly becoming a "conservative" Democrat on key issues pertaining to the Constitution and issues of civil liberties and safe guards that protect us from an oppressive government.
What cases does President Obama takes issue with by the Warren Court:
"The White House declined to identify rulings that Mr. Obama believes relied on judicial activism."
Another piece to corroborate the long history of Republican dirty tricks. This time a report from Russia that backs up the arms-for-hostages deal and not the media spun story of Reagan becoming president was "enough" for Iran to release the hostages.
Robert Parry writes:
"The coincidence between Reagan's inauguration and the hostage release was curious to some but served mostly to establish in the minds of Americans that Reagan was a tough leader who instilled fear in U.S. adversaries. However, if the timing actually resulted from a clandestine arms-for-hostage deal, it would mean that Reagan's presidency began with an act of deception, as well as an act of treachery...."
"The problem with the April 20 spill is that it isn't really a spill: It's a gush, like an underwater oil volcano. A hot column of oil and gas is spurting into freezing, black waters nearly a mile down, where the pressure nears a ton per inch, impossible for divers to endure. Experts call it a continuous, round-the-clock calamity, unlike a leaking tanker, which might empty in hours or days...
If the flow is not stopped, it will exhaust the natural reservoir of oil beneath the sea floor, experts say. Many months, at least, could pass...."
"A National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration video, shot as officials coordinated response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, shows that federal officials almost immediately worried that the oil well could leak up to 110,000 barrels per day, or 4.6 million gallons...
It only takes one quart of motor oil to make 250,000 gallons of ocean water toxic to wildlife. Are you starting to get the magnitude of this?"
Let's see 4 million gallons per day x 30 days x 3 months = 360 million gallons. If it takes 6, 9, or 12 months, but what if it humans cannot stop the flow?
Robert Reich has an absolute must read on why Tim Geithner was precisely the wrong man for the job of Secretary of Treasury:
The Fed has finally came clean. It now admits it bailed out Bear Stearns - taking on tens of billions of dollars of the bank's bad loans - in order to smooth Bear Stearns' takeover by JPMorgan Chase. The secret Fed bailout came months before Congress authorized the government to spend up to $700 billion of taxpayer dollars bailing out the banks, even months before Lehman Brothers collapsed. The Fed also took on billions of dollars worth of AIG securities, also before the official government-sanctioned bailout.
