AMERICAN POLITICS - Extreme Political Polarization

"Examining the crisis in America’s democracy and the polarization of its politics" PBS NewsHour 5/12/2022

aka Republican anything goes to win politics.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Nearly 250 years ago, America's founders declared that everyone has "unalienable rights."  What those rights are has been debated ever since.  As the Supreme Court weighs the future of abortion rights the nation's divide has come into sharper focus, as growing political polarization plays out in the midterms.  University of Virginia politics professor Sidney Milkis joins Judy Woodruff to discuss.

TRUMP AGENDA - Deregulation Myth (Reminder)

Robert Reich explains why the conservative myth of deregulation is another form of trickle-down economics.

FACT CHECK - Watching the Watchdog

"'Independent' Watchdog's Secret Funder: Conservative Small-Government Group" by Mick Dumke (ProPublica) and Dan Mihalopoulos (Chicago Sun-Times), ProPublica 1/18/2018

Project Six, led by the former City Council inspector general, got 98 percent of its startup money from the right-leaning Illinois Policy Institute.

When former Chicago City Council inspector general Faisal Khan launched his not-for-profit anti-corruption group close to two years ago, he insisted that it was independent and nonpartisan.

At the same time, Khan refused to disclose who was funding the organization, which he called Project Six — a reference to the group of civic leaders who led the fight against Al Capone during Prohibition.

Now, records obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times and ProPublica Illinois show almost all the money to launch Khan's Chicago-based watchdog organization came from a right-leaning group that is leading a crusade against government regulations, state spending and labor unions in Illinois.

The most recent federal tax filing for the Illinois Policy Institute shows it gave $623,789 to Project Six in 2016 — accounting for 98 percent of the group's first-year budget.  The records don't reveal — and Project Six officials haven't said — where the rest of its money comes from.

The Illinois Policy Institute, in turn, has received extensive support from foundations tied to some of the country's biggest Republican contributors, including the Koch, Mercer and Uihlein families, as well as Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner and first lady Diana Rauner's charitable foundation.

The tax records offer a glimpse of how money often moves among nonprofit groups focused on politics and public policy.  Under federal and state laws, most charitable organizations — unlike political campaigns — are not required to publicly disclose all of their donors.

The Illinois Policy Institute, which identifies itself as an independent entity committed to free-market reforms, has close ties to conservative lawmakers and worked with Rauner for much of his first term.  It has also attacked the politics and policies of Michael Madigan, the longtime Illinois House speaker and Democratic Party chairman.

Since Project Six launched, promising to investigate cases of government waste and fraud across Illinois, its leaders have said it's necessary to hide the identities of the group's funding sources.  They cite the state's long history of entrenched corruption and the potential for retaliation.

Khan, meanwhile, said Project Six had “no political or ideological bent,” and he pledged to keep publishing reports of wrongdoing no matter the origin.  Reports appear on the Project Six website.

Tax records for Project Six and the Illinois Policy Institute are not yet available for 2017.  But in interviews last week, Khan said the Illinois Policy Institute continued to provide support for Project Six.

Khan said he wasn't certain how much the institute gave Project Six in 2017 because it hasn't completed its tax returns, but he estimated it was “significant” and in the “hundreds of thousands” of dollars.

In the interviews, Khan offered shifting accounts of Project Six's financial support.  He initially denied the Illinois Policy Institute was among his group's primary funding sources.

“We're not getting the money from IPI,” he said.  “We get money from all sorts of donors but we don't release their names because they fear reprisal from the city of Chicago.”

Later, though, he acknowledged the support of the institute, and said he was “overzealous” in trying to protect its identity as a financial backer.  In helping Project Six get started, the Illinois Policy Institute also provided the group with office space and helped Khan assemble his board of directors, according to Khan and the board members.

Khan said Project Six's connections to the institute do not affect its investigations, which have primarily focused on Chicago aldermen and Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  The mayor and all but one member of the City Council are Democrats; the other alderman has described himself as an independent conservative.

Four of the 12 reports Project Six has posted on its site targeted Chicago aldermen with ties to Madigan.  One investigation focused on spending by 13th Ward Ald.  Marty Quinn, who shares a ward office with Madigan.  Another centered on a lobbyist who was also a former staffer and consultant for 42nd Ward Ald.  Brendan Reilly, a former Madigan aide.

The institute reported the Project Six findings on its own website and Facebook page without noting that it funds the watchdog organization.

Two other Project Six reports zeroed in on city regulations for Airbnb and ridesharing companies.  The institute has fought to loosen rules for both industries.

Khan said Project Six staffers initiated the investigations and were not influenced by the institute.

“Absolutely not,” he said, arguing that most Chicago elected officials have some link to Madigan.

The real point, Khan said, is what his team has found.

“Where are we wrong in our work?” he asked.  “Every investigation we have done has been accurate and vetted.”

Some of Khan's targets dispute that.  Reilly said Project Six “mischaracterized” the role of the consultant who was working for his office.  Her lobbying work had nothing to do with issues in his ward, he said.

Reilly criticized Project Six for not revealing all its donors.

“It's a bit hypocritical for a group dedicated to transparency,” he said.

Last March, Project Six accused Ald. Proco Joe Moreno of abusing his influence over zoning in his First Ward.  Moreno says Khan's group selectively used facts to push a conservative agenda.

“Project Six is coming off as an independent investigative body that gets press,” Moreno says.  “But it's a right-wing, agenda-driven organization with dark money that is anything but independent.”

Project Six has also issued a report on questionable spending by the mayor of south suburban Markham, also a Democrat-led municipality.  The organization has not released any investigations into Republican officials or conservative strongholds.

“Regardless of who our contributors are, it doesn't affect our integrity, our work, or our investigations,” Khan said.  “We've only gone after people we've received credible information about.”

Khan was the Chicago City Council's first and last legislative inspector general, serving four years.  The office was dissolved in 2015, and Khan lost his position with the city.  The inspector general's office that oversees the executive branch at City Hall took over responsibility for investigating wrongdoing by aldermen or their aides.

A spokeswoman for the Illinois Policy Institute said her group's leaders “do not have any influence” over what investigations are pursued by Khan and his organization.

The spokeswoman, Hilary Gowins, said the institute would not provide funding for Project Six in 2018.

“We are very proud to have supported Faisal in his efforts to bring transparency to Chicago and the state of Illinois in an effort to end public corruption,” said John Tillman, the Illinois Policy Institute's chief executive.  “Faisal and Project Six remain an independent organization.”

But the tax return revealing the contributions from the Illinois Policy Institute “clearly shows that Project Six is far from the independent government watchdog that it claims to be and seriously calls into question Khan's motivation for establishing the group,” said David Armiak, a researcher with the Madison, Wisconsin-based Center for Media and Democracy, which has tracked funding to the institute and similar conservative organizations.

Major contributors to the Illinois Policy Institute have included:

• Foundations funded by Charles and David Koch, the billionaire, industrialist brothers who long have been among the largest supporters of conservative causes in the country.

• The Mercer family, which made its money in hedge funds, is a significant political contributor to President Donald Trump and has invested in the right-wing Breitbart news website once led by Steve Bannon — although the family recently broke with Bannon over his criticism of Trump in a new book.

• Richard Uihlein, the Lake Forest businessman who has been a big financial backer of Rauner.  Uihlein, who has donated to many other Republicans as well as to conservative causes, gave $100,000 last year to a super PAC backing Roy Moore's losing Republican campaign for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama.

The Rauner Family Foundation contributed to the Illinois Policy Institute before Rauner became governor in 2014, and former institute officials briefly moved into high-level roles in Rauner's administration last year, including as chief of staff and communications director.  But Rauner had a falling-out with the institute.

The institute was instrumental in launching Project Six, according to Khan and his group's early board members.  After leaving City Hall, Khan said, he talked with “a lot of people” about what to do next and wondered if he should continue the work he started as legislative inspector general.  One of the people he met with was Tillman.

Tillman, according to Khan, encouraged him to continue investigating fraud and waste in local government.  The institute offered Khan space in its office as Khan was setting up his new organization.

“Project Six is still my idea, my organization, but people like John Tillman and other business leaders helped me put it together and create a working model,” Khan said in last week's interviews.

Khan hired Illinois Policy Institute staffer Nate Hamilton as Project Six's director of marketing and communications.  And three of the organization's initial board members also had connections to the institute.

Businessman and former state GOP chairman Gary MacDougal, a contributor to the institute, said Tillman recruited him to the Project Six board.

“I got a call one day from John Tillman, who said 'I've got a really good guy who cares a lot about shining light in the dark corners and I'd like you to meet him,'” MacDougal said in an interview.  “I had a few strategy sessions with Faisal and, in fact, I'm still having strategy sessions with Faisal.”

After Project Six got up and running, MacDougal left the board because of other commitments, but he said he continues to talk with Khan and just donated to Project Six.  “I believe his heart and his focus are in the right place,” MacDougal said.

He said he's not worried about the new organization's independence.

Tillman, MacDougal said, “very much wants Faisal to be independent, and he is nudging Faisal in that direction.”

Project Six Board chair Randy Nornes, an executive with Aon, has donated to the Illinois Policy Institute as well as the Illinois Liberty political action committee, which was founded by Tillman and is currently led by Pat Hughes, external relations adviser for the institute.

Nornes said MacDougal and an official at the Illinois Policy Institute approached him about Project Six.  As a Chicago resident interested in good government, Nornes said, “I thought it would be a way to contribute back.”

He noted that he has donated to Democrats as well as Republicans and conservative groups, and said he has worked to recruit a diverse group of board members and donors for Project Six.  New board members include an expert in accounting fraud and a public-policy consultant.

“Our funding base now includes small donors,” Nornes said.  “We're doing a lot of the investigative work that in the old days journalists had the time to do.”

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION - Opinion: “Conscience of a Conservative”

"Sen. Flake: It's not conservative to stay silent about the chaos of the Trump administration" PBS NewsHour 8/1/2017

IMHO:  'Conscience?'  They don't have any.  They are mean spirited and money worshipers who do not believe they have a moral obligation to people.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In his new book “Conscience of a Conservative,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz) examines where his own party has gone wrong, calls for a return to conservatism and criticizes the man at the top of the ticket.  Sitting down with Judy Woodruff for a conversation, the Republican senator speaks out about President Trump but says he has “done nothing” that would force lawmakers to kick him out of office.

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 2/24/2017

"Shields and Brooks on tea party lessons for Democrats, remaking GOP in Trump's image" PBS NewsHour 2/24/2017

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week's news, including the grassroots fervor meeting Republican members of Congress in their home districts, the challenge of a clear message for Democrats, how President Trump has influenced American conservatism, and the impact of a President targeting the media as “fake.”

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 8/26/2016

"Shields and Brooks on the alt-right and a general lack of trust in Clinton" PBS NewsHour 8/26/2016

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  In the presidential election arena this week, the two major-party candidates called each other racists, and questions arose over Donald Trump's support among alt-right enthusiasts.  As for Hillary Clinton, she seems to be focusing on casting herself as the lesser-of-two-evils option.  For analysis, we turn to syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

GOP - The Great Divide

IMHO:  Republican Conservatives are frightened people, and their fears are being stoked by rhetoric.  Example; the 'Make America Great Again' slogan.  Just when did America become NOT great?  America IS great, has never stopped being great, except in the minds of the fearful.

Please, Republican Conservatives go back to hiding under your bed and leave the rest of us true Americans alone.

"Fight over core principles exposes deep GOP divides" by Dan Morris, PBS NewsHour 2/1/2016

David Frum's “The Great Republican Revolt” in The Atlantic has garnered lots of attention inside and outside the party.  Frum, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and longtime voice for moderation in the GOP, examines how the party got to the point where outsiders Donald Trump and Ted Cruz are the leading candidates for the party’s presidential nomination.  Frum also looks at the impact of the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus on Congress where, despite achieving a majority in both Houses in 2014, Republicans have failed to end the gridlock of the past seven years.

Frum says Republicans were shocked when Mitt Romney lost to President Obama in 2012.  “The Republican elite had collectively done an analysis of what they believed had gone wrong in 2012.  The only thing the party had done wrong was it had not been open enough on immigration.  Fix that, and everything would fall into place,” Frum told Judy Woodruff.

So the “Gang of Eight” senators, including Republicans Marco Rubio and John McCain, put together an immigration reform bill that passed the Senate but quickly died in the House.  It turned out that a significant number of Main Street Republicans and conservative talk radio hosts actually opposed immigration reform.  “In 2015, that plan ran into the collective mass rejection of the rank and file of the Republican Party,” Frum said.  And this presented an opportunity for Donald Trump.  “The great marketer came along and said, ‘I see a niche.  I see a niche.  It’s the bigger niche.  And I can have it all to myself.’”

Frum says the Republican establishment similarly misread the power of the Tea Party, and subsequently the Freedom Caucus, which led to the government shutdown of 2013, the stunning primary defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in 2014 and in 2015 the effective ouster of Speaker John Boehner.  Cantor ascribes his and the Speaker’s defeat to an anger in the base, unheeded by the leadership.  “There'd be layoffs, and wage-earners in their 40s and 50s who say, ‘Hey wait a minute, what happened to my job,’ and then didn’t have the skills to go find another job.  Members of Congress going home and seeing that.  And saying, ‘Hey something's broken,’” Cantor said.  “And then that compounds itself, which leads some people to say, ‘Hey wait a minute, we gotta throw it all out and go to the extreme, because we are in that bad of a situation.”

Former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, now president of the Heritage Foundation, is known as the “Godfather of the Tea Party.”  He’s just fine with the departure of Cantor and Boehner.  “John Boehner, we used to be friends, but then we worked together in the House — he saw conservatives and this idea of limited government as more of an obstacle and a frustration.  And he punished conservatives who really tried to push for some fairly simple things.  What John Boehner found is he couldn’t crush the conservatives, but he made it painful for them.”

Frum believes the Republican Party must now preach respect for the work and institutions of government.  “The government has to be made to work.  The government is, I think all Republicans agree, too expensive.  But that doesn’t mean that we’d be better off without one, or that you want to destroy the traditional agreements and understandings that make the American government work.”

NOTE: 'The Godfather' was a Mafia crime lord, that ran protection rackets that used intimidation to rob and influence people.

POLITICS - Boner is Out!

(opps, Boehner is Out)

"Under fire from House GOP, Boehner drops resignation bombshell" PBS NewsHour 9/25/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Speaker of the House John Boehner announced he would be leaving office and giving up his leadership position, sending shockwaves across Capitol Hill.  Political director Lisa Desjardins reports on what led to Boehner's decision and how lawmakers are reacting.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  On this day, when a pope and two presidents were already making headlines, a surprise resignation came along to stun Washington (DC).

We begin with the announcement that the speaker of the United States House of Representatives is stepping down.

NewsHour political director Lisa Desjardins reports.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER (R-OH), Speaker of the House (singing):  Zip-a-dee-doo-dah, my, oh, my, what a wonderful day.

LISA DESJARDINS (NewsHour):  With his decision, House Speaker John Boehner, the happy warrior, projected a kind of personal relief and institutional sacrifice.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER:  It’s become clear to me that this prolonged leadership turmoil would do irreparable harm to the institution.  So, this morning, I informed my colleagues that I would resign from the speakership and resign from Congress at the end of October.  Now, as you have often heard me say, this isn’t about me.

LISA DESJARDINS:  In fact, it had become about him, at least in part.  Boehner was again under fire from Tea Party Republicans pushing to defund Planned Parenthood, even if it means closing the government.  They’d threatened a floor vote to try to strip him of the speakership.

"Is Boehner’s departure a win for conservatives?" PBS NewsHour 9/25/2015

IMHO:  Today's Republican conservatives are America's new neo-Nazis

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  How do House Republicans see the resignation of Speaker John Boehner?  Judy Woodruff gets perspective from Rep. Reid Ribble, R-Wisc., with more analysis from political director Lisa Desjardins.

OPINION - Brooks and Shields 7/3/2015

"Shields and Brooks on Supreme Court lessons, Donald Trump controversy" PBS NewsHour 7/3/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:   Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including what we learned about the Supreme Court this session, new presidential candidates Gov. Chris Christie and former Sen. Jim Webb, as well as controversial comments made by Donald Trump about immigrants.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  And, as we do every Friday, we turn to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.  That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks, who joins us today from Aspen, Colorado.

So, gentlemen, the Supreme Court, I think you could say it went out with a bang this week, David, issuing historic decisions on everything from same-sex marriage to the president’s health care law, much more, and with some interesting divisions among the conservatives.

What have we learned about the court, do you think, from this session, and how much of an issue is it going to be on the campaign trail?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times:  Well, the interesting one to me is the same-sex marriage decision, which hit a lot of social conservatives extremely hard.

A great sense of fear that they are going to be labeled as bigots if they disagree with gay marriage, a sense that the culture war they have been fighting is one they have lost.  And I’m — interesting to see how they reacted.

My basic view is that for 30 years, a lot of social conservatives have been fighting a culture war oriented around the sexual revolution, around contraception, gay marriage and other issues having to do with sexual activity.  And I do think that that’s sort of not the fight they’re going to win anymore.  The country is moving pretty far to the left on that.

And I would like to see social conservatives do in public what they do in private, which is to do a lot of work for — show work for the poor, heal the social fabric, tithe to the poor, heal the lonely and really address some of the economic and social dislocations we’re seeing in the country.  That’s an endemic part of the social conservative lifestyle, but it hasn’t been part of their public message.

And that’s been a disaster for them.  So I guess I think the wise choice, both from a Biblical and also from a political point of view, is to emphasize to the public that the key cultural revolution we need now is one to repair the social fabric, and the sexual revolution and views on the definition of marriage are important.  And no one’s asking anybody to renounce them, but should be second-order businesses, given the actual problem we face today.

OPINION - Conservatives Are Killing Us

"NYTimes:  Conservative Economics and Income Inequality Are Literally Killing Us" by Dartagnan, Daily KOS 4/29/2015

Thirty-five years ago, babies born in the U.S. had an infant mortality rate equal to Germany.  Today, American babies die at twice (PDF download) the rate of those in Germany.

Thirty-five years ago, the U.S. ranked 13th in life expectancy for girls among the 34 recognized industrial societies.  Today we are ranked 29th out of those same 34 countries.

We have the highest teenage birth rate among the industrialized world.

One out of every four children in this country lives with a single parent, the highest rate by far in the industrialized world.

Our incarceration rate is triple what it was four decades ago, with an incarceration rate five times that of other wealthy democracies.

Economists from the University of Chicago, MIT and the University of Southern California conducted research to find out why our children die at a rate exponentially higher than European kids.  Their conclusion?  Staggering rates of income disparity, all stemming directly from the 1980's, the Era of Ronald Reagan and the beginning of the resurgence of the conservative movement.

"On nearly all indicators of mortality, survival and life expectancy, the United States ranks at or near the bottom among high-income countries,” says a report on the nation’s health by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine.

What’s most shocking about these statistics is not how unhealthy they show Americans to be, compared with citizens of countries that spend much less on health care and have much less sophisticated medical technology.  What is most perplexing is how stunningly fast the United States has lost ground.

The statistics above are taken from this article by Eduardo Porter in today's New York Times.  As Porter states, "Pick almost any measure of social health and cohesion over the last four decades or so, and you will find that the United States took a wrong turn along the way."  But as his analysis shows, it wasn't just lower wages caused by globalization and technological advancement that led to this dismal state of affairs (although those certainly played a part), but the unique failure of our U.S. government to respond to these developments:

[B]laming globalization and technological progress for the stagnation of the middle class and the precipitous decline in our collective health is too easy.  Jobs were lost and wages got stuck in many developed countries.

What set the United States apart — what made the damage inflicted upon American society so intense — was the nature of its response.  Government support for Americans in the bottom half turned out to be too meager to hold society together.

From the time most of us have even had a political memory we have had to listen to conservative ideology spewed at us, telling us that the U.S. was living in a "welfare state," that "handouts" to the poor were sapping our productivity and harming the "spirit" of the country.  That if we only unleashed the power of Big Business through fostering "entrepreneurship" while cutting programs designed to support the rest of us, the nation would "regain" its stature and create vast sums of wealth for all of our citizens, with corporate profits leading us back to a mythical promised land.  That shrinking government programs while cutting taxes for the richest would put wealth back into all our pockets and improve the quality of our lives.  This was the dominant narrative in the 1980's, it was swallowed nearly whole and regurgitated by Bill Clinton in the 1990's, and reached its apotheosis in the 2000's prior to the Economic Crash presided over by George W. Bush and the same tax-cutting, supply-side ilk who sold it to us from the start, often in the guise of "deficit reduction."  It is the same narrative that continues to paralyze our government's ability to respond to our citizens needs, now mutated into what we know as the "Tea Party."

Now this narrative has borne itself out to be nothing but a staggering lie.  The reality is that beyond a meager Social Security and Medicare for the aged, both creations of Democratic Administrations, and with the constant demonization and derogation of Labor and Unions, there was not much at all to break the fall of ordinary Americans when trends like globalization appeared over the horizon:

A more compelling explanation is that when globalization struck at the jobs on which 20th-century America had built its middle class, the United States discovered that it did not, in fact, have much of a welfare state to speak of. The threadbare safety net tore under the strain.

Call it a failure of solidarity.  American institutions, built from hostility toward collective solutions, couldn’t hold society together when the economic underpinning of full employment at a decent wage gave in.

"Hostility toward collective solutions" is polite terminology for "greed."

In searching for solutions, Porter weighs the benefits of education, but rightly concludes that the way education is structured in this country today it actually exacerbates inequality.  One need only to examine the income levels of those victimized by the latest collapse of for-profit colleges, left clutching their near-worthless degrees, to understand why.  He also points to attempts by Senator Elizabeth Warren and others to generate enthusiasm for lifting the payroll cap on Social Security to expand benefits for the elderly.  But caring for the elderly is ultimately not our biggest problem.  Ultimately the changes necessary to reverse the criminal damage already wreaked on us by the American Right and its malignant, self-serving ideology must be solved at the ballot box.

The challenge America faces is not simply a matter of equity.  The bloated incarceration rates and rock-bottom life expectancy, the unraveling families and the stagnant college graduation rates amount to an existential threat to the nation’s future.

That is, perhaps, the best reason for hope.  The silver lining in these dismal, if abstract, statistics, is that they portend such a dysfunctional future that our broken political system might finally be forced to come together to prevent it.

So this election is not just "our time."  It may be the only time.

U.S. ELECTIONS - Cynical Attempt to Suppress Voting

"Why Voter ID Laws Aren’t Really about Fraud" by Sarah Childress, PBS Frontline 10/20/2014

Voters going to the polls in Texas starting this week will have to show one of a few specific forms of photo ID under a controversial new law upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court over the weekend.

The Texas law — along with 15 other voter ID laws passed since 2010 — was billed as a way to prevent people from impersonating eligible voters at the polls.

But voter ID laws don’t address what appears to be a more common source of voter fraud:  mail-in absentee ballots.

A FRONTLINE analysis of voting laws nationwide found that only six of the 31 states that require ID at the polls apply those standards to absentee voters, who are generally whiter and older than in-person voters.  And two states with strict photo ID policies for in-person voters — Rhode Island and Georgia — have recently passed bills that allow anyone to mail in a ballot.

Voter fraud generally rarely happens.  When it does, election law experts say it happens more often through mail-in ballots than people impersonating eligible voters at the polls.  An analysis by News21, a journalism project at Arizona State University, found 28 cases of voter fraud convictions since 2000.  Of those, 14 percent involved absentee ballot fraud.  Voter impersonation, the form of fraud that voter ID laws are designed to prevent, made up only 3.6 percent of those cases.  (Other types included double voting, the most common form, at 25 percent, and felons voting when they were prohibited from doing so.  But neither of those would be prevented by voter ID laws, either.)

Mark Obenshain, a Republican Virginia state senator who was the primary sponsor of his state’s voter ID law, said that lawmakers tried to balance improving security with maintaining access to the ballot for elderly and disabled people.

“There are good arguments that there are gaps with absentee ballots,” he said.  “But the issue is, how can we close that gap without unduly burdening the right to vote?”  Obenshain said that these voters might not have access to a scanner or Xerox machine to make a copy of their ID.

And, because absentee ballots must be sent to a voter’s registered address, they are still relatively secure, Obenshain said.  “It doesn’t warrant making the voters jump through unnecessary hoops.”

Who Votes Absentee?

Absentee voters tend to be older and whiter than in-person voters.  In 2012, nearly half, or 46 percent, of mail-in voters were aged 60 and older, and more than 75 percent were white, according to an analysis by Michael McDonald, a political science professor at the University of Florida who tracks demographic trends in voting.  Older white Americans generally are more likely to vote Republican.

African-Americans, who overwhelmingly vote Democratic, are less likely to use mail-in ballots. Although they make up about 13 percent of the population, only 8 percent voted by mail in 2012.

Either way, most states — nine — of the 16 that have passed stricter voter ID laws since 2010 only allow voters to mail in ballots if they have an excuse, such as an illness, disability or old age.

Who Is Impacted by Voter ID Laws?

Laws that require photo ID at the polls vary, but the strictest laws limit the forms of acceptable documentation to only a handful of cards.  For example, in Texas, voters must show one of seven forms of state or federal-issue photo ID, with a valid expiration date:  A driver’s license, a personal ID card issued by the state, a concealed handgun license, a military ID, citizenship certificate, or a passport.  The name on the ID must exactly match the one on the voter rolls.

African-Americans and Latinos are more likely to lack one of these qualifying IDs, according to several estimates.  Even when the state offers a free photo ID, these voters, who are disproportionately low-income, may not be able to procure the underlying documents, such as a birth certificate, to obtain one.

In Texas, for example, challengers to the law cited an African-American grandmother who could not afford the $25 to purchase her birth certificate to get an ID, and an elderly African-American veteran and longtime voter who was turned away at the polls in 2013 despite having three types of ID, because none qualified under the new law.

And new research from the Government Accountability Office, an independent agency that prepares reports for members of Congress, suggests that voter ID laws are having an impact at the polls.  Turnout dropped among both young people and African-Americans in Kansas and Tennessee after new voter ID requirements took effect in 2012, the study found.

Six of the 16 states that have passed voter ID laws since 2010 have a documented history of discriminating against minority voters.  All but one of those states’ laws were put in place after the Supreme Court overturned a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that required them to seek approval from the Justice Department for any voting-law changes.

Courts have so far blocked three ID laws.  A state judge struck down Pennsylvania’s law earlier this year, determining that it discriminated against low-income and minority voters.  Two weeks ago, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin’s from taking effect for this election, and last week, a state court declared Arkansas’ voter ID law unconstitutional.  Lawsuits are currently pending against similar laws in North Carolina and Alabama, though they won’t be decided before the November elections.

Voter ID laws have all been sponsored by Republicans and passed overwhelmingly by Republican legislatures.  A conservative U.S. circuit judge, Richard Posner, in a recent scathing critique of these laws, calling the expressed concern about fraud a “a mere fig leaf” and that they instead “appear to be aimed at limiting voting by minorities, particularly blacks.”

“There is only one motivation for imposing burdens on voting that are ostensibly designed to discourage voter-impersonation fraud,” Posner wrote, “…and that is to discourage voting by persons likely to vote against the party responsible for imposing the burdens.”

Obenshain, the Virginia senator, said his law wasn’t about keeping voters from the polls.  “There’s only one class of people who are going to be discouraged from voting, and that’s fraudulent voters.”

OPINION - Shields and Brooks 6/20/2014

"Shields and Brooks on U.S. intervention in Iraq, presidential poll numbers" PBS NewsHour 6/20/2014

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s top news, including the current political agenda of religious conservatives in America, the election of Rep. Kevin McCarthy to be House majority leader, new poll numbers for President Obama and the murky goals for U.S. military intervention in Iraq.

OPINION - Equal Rights for Gays, CPAC Doesn't Get It

"What social progress looks like" by Steve Benen, Maddow Blog 3/19/2013

Organizers for this year's Conservative Political Action Conference, as they've done in the past, made a deliberate decision to prohibit Republican groups advocating gay rights from participating in the event.  On the main stage, attendees saw notable GOP leaders like Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) proclaim that his desire to discriminate against LGBT Americans does not make him a "bigot."

But away from the speakers and organizers, it was clear to many that the marriage debate is effectively over, the right has lost, and even CPAC activists no longer seem to care.

Consider the results of the new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

I put together this chart (at top) to show the trajectory over the last decade, and the trend line isn't exactly subtle.

But the closer one looks at the results, the more striking they are.  Among Americans aged 18 to 29, support for marriage equality is 81%, which reinforces the simple fact that opponents are not only fighting against social progress, they're also fighting a losing battle against a calendar that's indifferent to their culture war.

Indeed, even among white evangelicals protestants, 31% back marriage rights for same-sex couples, which may not sound especially impressive, but that total has more than quadrupled over the last decade.

Also note, history suggests movements on social progress rarely go backwards, and there's nothing to suggest opponents of marriage equality will suddenly reemerge and become the majority again.  That trend line in the poll is only going to keep moving in a progressive direction, and there's not much Republicans can do about it.

At this point, the ideal solution for GOP officials would for the Supreme Court to simply rule in favor of same-sex marriage, end the debate, and take the issue out of the hands of politicians altogether.

"What's Behind the Dramatic Shift in Public Opinion Over Gay Marriage?" PBS Newshour 3/19/2013

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  A new survey shows a majority of Americans support gay marriage.  Support has also grown in the courts and among politicians, including former State Secretary Hillary Clinton and Sen. Rob Portman.  Gwen Ifill examines the shift with Michael Dimock of the Pew Research Center and Greg Lewis of Georgia State University.

POLITICS - Anual Gathering of the 'Political Liers Club'

Liar's Club

"Conservative Activists Outline Political Future at CPAC Meeting" PBS Newshour 3/15/2013

Excerpt

KWAME HOLMAN (Newshour):  For four decades, the Conservative Political Action Conference, known as CPAC, has served as a barometer of Republican politics.

And this year, the GOP's future direction is the issue for more than 10,000 delegates who've been meeting just outside Washington.  At the last few gatherings of CPAC, the focus was on taking back the White House from President Obama.  But with last November's defeat of Mitt Romney, this key bloc of conservative enthusiasts has set its sights on a new goal: reshaping and re-energizing the Republican Party.

POLITICS - Conservative Group Misleads on Affordable Care Act

"Group’s ‘Obamacare Tax Form’ Evades Facts" by Ben Finley, FactCheck.org 11/16/2012

A conservative group misleads taxpayers on the Affordable Care Act and the Internal Revenue Service’s future role in enforcing it. Americans for Tax Reform posted a “projected” IRS tax form on its website that claims to “help families and tax specialists prepare” for new tax provisions under the health care law. But ATR makes several false claims:

• The group claims taxpayers will have to disclose “personal identifying health information” to the IRS to prove they have insurance. It quotes an IRS official who said taxpayers will report their “insurance information.” But the official also said the agency will not collect “any personal health information.”
• ATR says employers must offer preventative coverage that includes “abortion and hair loss treatment.” That’s not true. The law requires smaller insurance plans to cover preventative services, but states decide if those services include abortion. Even then, each state must have at least one plan that does not cover abortion.
• The group says failing to comply with the law could result in “interest against your property.” The law specifically bans the IRS from filing liens and levies against persons who fail to pay the tax for lacking insurance.
• ATR claims taxpayers can apply for a waiver from the health care law. That’s false. The government has given temporary waivers to some companies — not taxpayers — regarding one provision of the law, which involves benefit caps.

ATR says it created the tax form — just days before the presidential election — as a ”service to the public.” Our public service is to correct the record.

Not Getting Personal

Starting in 2014, the health care law requires most Americans to have insurance or pay a tax, although exemptions will apply based on income and other factors. The IRS will require most taxpayers to prove they’re covered or they must pay a tax on their 2014 tax returns.

The IRS hasn’t issued exact procedures for how taxpayers will prove they have insurance. But that hasn’t stopped ATR from making misleading statements.

In an introduction to the tax form and in the instructions, ATR claims the IRS will require Americans to disclose:

• “Personal identifying health information”
• “The nature of their health insurance”
• “Insurance card information”

ATR bases its claim on a snippet of congressional testimony from then-IRS deputy commissioner Steven Miller in September. ATR quotes from Miller’s prepared remarks, in which he stated that “taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage and/or making a payment.”

But Miller explicitly stated that the IRS will not collect “any personal health information.”

Miller, Sept. 11: Taxpayers will get a form at the end of every year from their insurer to use when they prepare their tax returns. It is important to note that the information that insurers provide to the IRS will show the fact of insurance coverage, and will not include any personal health information.

In most cases, taxpayers will file their tax returns reporting their health insurance coverage, and/or making a payment, and there will be no need for further interactions with the IRS.

Douglas Shulman, who recently stepped down as IRS commissioner, also addressed privacy concerns. He told Congress in August that the IRS will verify whether or not a taxpayer has insurance. But he said the agency will not ask for personal information (See part 2, minute 40:00).

U.S. Rep. Danny K. Davis, Aug. 2: There are also individuals who … claim that the Internal Revenue Service is going to have access to individuals’ private health information. Is that a need in order to enforce the provisions of the act?

Shulman: No. Absolutely not. What we will know is and ask for based on the law is: ‘Do you have health insurance coverage? If so, for how many months? And what is the name of the insurance company?’…

I think it’s been way overstated our role in health care. We are basically going to facilitate the financial transactions that make this whole law work. But we’re not going to have access to private individual health care information except for the fact of coverage.

Shulman said the IRS will match the information a taxpayer submits to what his or her insurer reports (see minute 9:00).

He also explained in a speech at the National Press Club in 2010 that taxpayers will attach a form to their tax return that insurers will send to them.

Shulman, April 5, 2010: When someone files their return, the insurance company will send us a little box that is checked, a yes-no question, that says, ‘Do they have coverage or not?’ They’ll send it to the individual. The individual will attach it to their return, and they’ll send it to us. Think it’s just like a 1099, where you get information reporting about the interest that you have on the bank account.

We will run matching programs around that. And if somebody doesn’t have coverage, they’ll either have paid the penalty that they owe, or they’ll get a letter [from] us saying that you owe this amount.

The IRS hasn’t officially announced procedures for how taxpayers will prove they have insurance. None is listed on the IRS’s web page dedicated to Affordable Care Act tax provisions. But the IRS proposed in April the types of information insurers must submit to the IRS in 2015 — and they don’t include personal health details.

The agency proposed asking insurers for the following:

• The name, address and Social Security Number or Tax Identification Number of the taxpayer and any dependents.
• Dates the insurer provided coverage.
• Whether the insurance is considered “qualified” under the law, which means it covers a number of broadly defined health benefits, among other requirements.
• Whether the individual bought insurance through an affordable insurance marketplace, known as a health insurance exchange.
• Whether the individual is eligible for tax credits and other assistance to help pay for coverage.

Abortion Coverage Required?

ATR claims employers must offer preventative coverage that includes “abortion and hair loss treatment.” That’s not true.

The law requires preventative coverage in insurance plans sold to small businesses and individuals. But the states define what that coverage is.

Some states already have laws banning abortion coverage — although some extend exemptions in cases of rape, incest or to save the life of the mother. Others states have chosen to include voluntary abortion coverage in plans offered to small businesses and individuals. But even then, the health care law requires those states to offer an additional plan that does not cover abortion.

ATR’s tax form asks taxpayers if their employer offers “affordable qualifying coverage.” And the instructions for this question claim that a qualified plan “must include necessary preventative coverage such as contraception, abortion, and hair loss treatment.”

It’s true the ACA specifically requires most health insurance plans to pay for contraception for women, coverage that at least 26 states mandated to some extent before the health care law. And it’s true the law includes new coverage requirements for preventative services. But those requirements apply to new insurance plans sold to individuals and small businesses that have 50 or fewer employees. The requirements do not apply to large employers, which make up about 70 percent of the insurance market.

The act’s intent is to make coverage sold to individuals and small businesses as comprehensive as typical employer-based plans. So, the law requires the smaller plans to cover 10 broadly defined “essential health benefits,” one of which is “preventative and wellness services.”

The ACA allows the states to define what those preventative services are in “benchmark” insurance plans.

The benchmark plans in Kansas, Kentucky and Utah, for example, do not cover voluntary abortion beyond at least one of the exceptions for rape, incest or to save the mother’s life. In fact, those states — and five others — outlawed private and public insurance from covering voluntary abortions before the ACA became law.

And 20 states have banned insurers from covering abortion in plans sold on exchanges, the affordable insurance marketplaces that states and/or the federal government are supposed to set up under the health care law.

States including California, Colorado and New York have picked benchmark plans that cover “voluntary” or “elective” abortions.

California’s plan, for example, requires a $30 copay for a “voluntary termination of pregnancy.”

But as we’ve written before, the law requires that at least one plan sold on a state exchange not include abortion coverage beyond the standard exceptions. (The law also bars federal subsidies from directly paying for a voluntary abortion.)

None of the benchmark plans in the six states mentioned above covers cosmetic hair loss treatment.

No Liens or Levies

The form also claims that “failing to comply with the Obamacare Tax Mandate could result … in interest against your personal property.” That’s not true.

As we’ve written before, the IRS cannot file a tax lien (a legal claim against such things as homes, cars, wages and bank accounts) or a levy (seizure of property or bank accounts).

The law specifically states on page 151 that the government cannot “file notice of lien with respect to any property of a taxpayer by reason of any failure to pay the penalty imposed by this section, or … levy on any such property with respect to such failure.’’

But as we noted, the law leaves room for the IRS to issue penalties and to sue to recover the unpaid tax, just as it does now for overdue taxes.

Waiver Whopper

The form’s instructions page also claims that taxpayers “can apply to the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for a waiver from Obamacare.”

We’ve addressed similar claims before. The fact is HHS gave temporary waivers to companies — not individual taxpayers — pertaining to one provision of the law.

The health care law will gradually eliminate the annual and lifetime dollar limits placed on insurance benefits. The law raises the limits each year until 2014, when health plans can no longer place a cap on benefits.

HHS has granted waivers to more than 1,200 companies, particularly restaurants with low-income and part-time employees. The waivers allowed companies such as McDonald’s to temporarily continue to provide bare-bones insurance coverage to some workers.

The waivers, which affect nearly 4 million people, expire in 2014.

POLITICS - Romney Thinks 47% of Americans Are Government Addicts

Romney's remarks demonstrates one of the prime reasons I left the Republican Party in 2000. Romney's statement IS Republican conservative philosophy. Anyone that needs help from any government entity is lazy and dependent, and just is not working hard enough, which is JUST WRONG HEADED. In essence Romney thinks 47% of you are not worth helping.

"Romney Says Remarks on Voters Help Clarify Position" by JIM RUTENBERG and ASHLEY PARKER, New York Times 8/18/2012

Excerpt

Mitt Romney on Tuesday fully embraced the substance of his secretly recorded comments that 47 percent of Americans are too dependent on government, saying that his views helped define the philosophical choice for voters in his campaign against President Obama.

“The president’s view is one of a larger government; I disagree,” Mr. Romney said in an interview on Fox News. “I think a society based on a government-centered nation where government plays a larger and larger role, redistributes money, that’s the wrong course for America.”

The comments were Mr. Romney’s attempt to find some benefit in the political furor after the disclosure of statements he made at a closed fund-raiser in Florida in May, where he spoke of nearly half of Americans who pay no federal income taxes and, in his analysis, would never vote for him.

Those are people, he said at the fund-raiser, who are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them.”

Mr. Romney, who on Monday called the remarks inelegant, suggested on Tuesday that it was time for a full debate about dependency, entitlements and what his campaign characterized as a long history of Mr. Obama’s support for “redistributionist” policies.

ALSO - A liberal view:

Rachel Maddow Show
MSNBC (14:02 clip)

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Mother Jones Transcript of Romney's remarks

OPINION - From the Right, President Obama

"Obama’s Gotta Go" by Niall Ferguson, Newsweek 8/19/2012

Excerpt

Why does Paul Ryan scare the president so much? Because Obama has broken his promises, and it’s clear that the GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope.

I was a good loser four years ago. “In the grand scheme of history,” I wrote the day after Barack Obama’s election as president, “four decades is not an especially long time. Yet in that brief period America has gone from the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. to the apotheosis of Barack Obama. You would not be human if you failed to acknowledge this as a cause for great rejoicing.”

Despite having been—full disclosure—an adviser to John McCain, I acknowledged his opponent’s remarkable qualities: his soaring oratory, his cool, hard-to-ruffle temperament, and his near faultless campaign organization.

Yet the question confronting the country nearly four years later is not who was the better candidate four years ago. It is whether the winner has delivered on his promises. And the sad truth is that he has not.

In his inaugural address, Obama promised “not only to create new jobs, but to lay a new foundation for growth.” He promised to “build the roads and bridges, the electric grids, and digital lines that feed our commerce and bind us together.” He promised to “restore science to its rightful place and wield technology’s wonders to raise health care’s quality and lower its cost.” And he promised to “transform our schools and colleges and universities to meet the demands of a new age.” Unfortunately the president’s scorecard on every single one of those bold pledges is pitiful.

COMMENTS: I am glad the Right has a fully functioning crystal ball that accurately predicts the future. I am sorry the the rest of us, including President Obama, do not.

I, for one, never expected ANY President to dig our economy out of the deep hole that Republicans dug in 8 years of control, in just 4 years. It could not be done, especially after we got the block-everyting-Obama (aka no-governance) U.S. House.

As to our economy now, it is doing better except for jobs. Anyone who pays attention to economic history knows that when the economy tanks the first thing that goes is jobs, and when the economy starts to improve the LAST thing to come back are jobs. Also, the deeper the recession the slower the recovery in jobs, and government cannot do much about that.

What DOES NOT help is, in the name of budget cutting, is putting thousands of government employees (local, state, federal) in the unemployment line.

When it comes to 'consumer spending' it does not matter where the money comes from. The consumer can be individuals, businesses, local governments, state governments, AND the federal government. In the context of our nation's economy all that matters is that money circulates, which is what consumer spending does. Therefore cutting government spending, at this time, does not help our economy, and in turn jobs.

Our national debt is a primary concern AFTER our economy is back on track IN THE FUTURE.

As to "GOP ticket’s path to prosperity is our only hope." The Republicans who have NOT changed their political philosophy and dug the economic hole our economy is in today? We the people, are suppose to trust they will do better? The Republican Party (aka Tea Party) lost my trust mid-2000.

Finally, Niall's long article is very good and detailed, but the overall premiss is still wrong. Maybe his crystal ball is malfunctioning.

HEALTH - Your Life is Too Costly

"Reversing Obama Medicare cuts may backfire on Romney by speeding up program’s insolvency" from AP, Washington Post 8/15/2012

Excerpt

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s new promise to restore the Medicare cuts made by President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul law could backfire if he’s elected.

The reason: Obama’s cuts also extended the life of Medicare’s giant trust fund. By repealing them, Romney would move the program’s insolvency eight years closer, toward the end of what would be his first term in office.

Instead of running out of money in 2024, Medicare’s trust fund for inpatient care would go broke in 2016 without the cuts, according to estimates by the program’s own experts.

That could leave a President Romney little political breathing room to execute his own Medicare plan. Outside experts say it could force deeper cuts, and sooner.

The Romney campaign says there’s no problem with the candidate’s pledge.

“The idea that restoring funding to Medicare could somehow hasten its bankruptcy is on its face absurd,” said spokeswoman Andrea Saul.

Campaign officials say arcane federal accounting rules create a false sense of security about Medicare. They allow savings like Obama’s cuts to also count toward funding other programs or reducing the overall deficit.

“Gov. Romney’s plan is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with patient-centered reforms that control cost throughout the health care system and extend the solvency of Medicare,” Saul said. “He will then implement real entitlement reform that places Medicare on a sustainable long-term footing so that future generations of Americans will not have to worry whether the program will be there for them.”

But Obama’s cuts were not directly aimed at Medicare’s 48 million beneficiaries; instead they affect hospitals, insurers, nursing homes, drug companies and other service providers. Simply undoing the cuts would restore higher payments to those service providers. And that would cause Medicare to spend money faster.

The Obama campaign was quick to seize on the issue.

“The fact of the matter is, what Romney is proposing now is to roll all that back, which would mean that Medicare would reach insolvency eight years earlier, which would mean that seniors would lose benefits,” David Axelrod, a senior political adviser to Obama, said Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”

Romney’s running mate, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, kept the Obama cuts in his budget, which envisions greater savings by shifting future retirees into private insurance plans with a fixed payment from the government to help cover their premiums.

“If you are going to restore (Obama’s cuts), then what it’s going to do is complicate the financial condition of Medicare,” said former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, a fiscal conservative who says government health care programs are too costly.

COMMENT: Ah yes, the conservative view of 'nothing is worth paying for it it's too expensive.' The immoral/unethical view that puts a dollar limit on YOUR life. Can't afford health care, go in a corner and die.

I say again, and again, government (local, state, federal) has a moral and ethical obligation to see that every citizen can GET health care irregardless of cost. And the issue with ACTUALLY getting health care IS cost.

OPINION - The Rich Behind the Throne

"The Fox in the Hen House: No More Rich Behind the Throne Now Rich on the Throne" by Cliff Wilson, Cliff's Notes 7/15/2012

There was a time when being rich in America meant having much land or owning a mercantile business in a city - accumulating wealth and leaving it to one's offspring so they could enjoy a good life if they continued to work at the business or maintain the farm. Now being wealthy means accumulating vast fortunes of money by investing and using money to make more money - producing nothing of intrinsic value and then leaving vast fortunes to your children who proceed often to simply spend it and do little productive, perhaps continue to invest and financially back others hard at work.

There was a time when the most respected Americans were those who worked as teachers, public servants like the policeman, the firefighter, the librarian - the proverbial people in your neighborhood. They performed services for the many who worked at producing goods or growing things. They educated our children and protected us from criminals and catastrophes.

That America now exists only in the history books; it is "gone with the wind" as much as the mythical old south is. And, today America is one in which two classes struggle, not the age old haves and have-nots, but, the me-first vs. the society first. Those who feel that they belong to the village and those who see the village as a place to reside in while making one's fortune.

This year in America is a Presidential election year. These quadrennial exercises in choosing the national leader often reflect where America is. In the 1820's Jackson stood for the "man on the make" the young farmers and the mechanics and craftsmen of the cities vs. those who represented old money (Southern planters and northern bankers). The Republican party was founded in the mid-1850's not only on the platform of no extension of slavery but also the expansion of the economy into the west, cheap sale of government land and the federal government supporting a transcontinental railroad. The 1932 election was a contest between those conservatives who believe that doing nothing would solve the nation's economic problems and liberals who believed they could reform capitalism in ways that would preserve a free economy in America at the same time as protecting the livelihood and the quality of life of all our citizens. FDR, the liberal Democrat, saved the New Deal while most of the western world fell under the rule of dictators.

This year the new Republican party - the tea party radical right wing Republican party- advocates a combination of the better to do nothing philosophy and the help the rich and let what may trickle down. Republicans offer American not a mouthpiece of the super rich classes but an actual robber baron himself in Mitt Romney. I guess the superrich believe that rather than just controlling the President it’s time they had one of their own in the office. And the Democrats offer for re-election Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat, who accepts the basic tenets of capitalism but also adheres to the injunction of Abraham Lincoln (also of Illinois) that the function of government is to do the things that people can’t do for themselves.

It appeared in the 195o’s and 1960's that both parties had accepted the basic role of the federal government to protect the economic and civil rights of all our citizens. Even the Reagan revolution now appears as a modest effort to curtail some of the more liberal aspects of the post-New Deal years. But now we begin a new era - Republicans would put in the White House the fox to guard the chickens of America. At the turn of the 20th century when America faced a serious economic crisis President Theodore Roosevelt speaking softly from his bully pulpit faced down J. P. Morgan. The President if the one elected official who has the moral authority to speak for the entire nation and now the radical right wing tea party Republicans would put a J. P. Morgan in the White House to face down all the Theodore Roosevelts. A President of the 1% will misgovern and mislead the 99% unlike FDR who was called a traitor to his 1% because he proposed programs to benefit the 99%.

HEALTHCARE - How Will It Work?

"How Will the Health Care Law Work? Americans Ask, We Answer" PBS Newshour 7/3/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Susan Dentzer of the journal Health Affairs answers specific questions about the health care law from Americans visiting the National Mall. Among the questions, what will the law mean for small businesses, how soon can someone with pre-existing conditions buy coverage and how will the law get funded?

COMMENT: I know this may be considered politically incorrect, but I have to wonder that after all this time the public SEEMS not to know what this law is about.

Of course conservatives, especially Republicans, have done a very good job at demonizing the issue. Like labeling it 'Government Heath Care' or 'Obama Care.' But these are the people who have fought Medicare since its inception.


"Arguments Brew at State Level Over Medicaid Expansion" PBS Newshour 7/5/2012

Excerpt

SUMMARY: Health correspondent Betty Ann Bowser takes a closer look at the arguments over Medicaid expansion and the states that want to opt out rather than take federal money.