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Portraying our first African-American president as the captain of a slave ship in a political ad probably isn't the world's best idea. Mark Oxner, a Republican running for Congress in the Orlando area, did just that. It's not so much offensive, really, as it is laughably terrible. Get it? Obama is enslaving our children with debt.
Redistricting will probably result in a new congressional district covering parts of Orlando. It will likely lean Democrat, and our old pal Alan Grayson will be running. So is this Oxner fellow. It appears this race could very well be a hilariously horrible one to watch
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1002230335
"Ouch!!! This is Not going to Help the GOP at All!!!!"Portraying our first African-American president as the captain of a slave ship in a... more
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Former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) tells Keith how an audit of the Federal Reserve shows that the agency "play[ed] Russian roulette" with the U.S. dollar over the course of more than $26 trillion worth of bank bailouts.Former U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) tells Keith how an audit of the Federal Reserve... more
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What you saw tonight is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare plan. It’s sadism, pure and simple. It’s the same impulse that led people in the Coliseum to cheer when the lions ate the Christians. And that seems to be where we are heading — bread and circuses, without the bread. The world that Hobbes wrote about — “the war of all against all.”
http://veracitystew.com/2011/09/13/gop-death-applause-like-romans-cheering-lions-to-eat-christians/What you saw tonight is something much more sinister than not having a healthcare... more
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PCW Extreme Political TV Results
Midway Middle School Auditorium
Midway, GA
Monday July 18th, 2011
Host: Johnny Suave
Suave welcomed everyone to this week’s edition of PCW Extreme Political TV and was immediately joined by Midway’s police chief Kelly Morningstar.
Chief Morningstar welcomes PCW to Midway, Georgia and then wants to know why three kids are selling lemonade in the lobby. Suave reaches into his pocket and produces a one day permit and the crowd cheers. Then someone grabs a microphone.
Man: “Rafe Semmes, Midway, Georgia. ...This is simply ludicrous! Shame on whoever made the judgment call that the lemonade was a threat because they did not know what was in it. This is what happens when “PC” takes over common sense and reality goes out the window.”
http://beta.coastalcourier.com/section/4/article/33929/
Chief Morningstar again repeats that the girls didn’t have a business license or the required permits and police could not determine how the lemonade was made, who made the lemonade, of what the lemonade was made with. The crowd boos in response.
Man #2: “Scott Brown, Atlanta, GA. ...The law is the law and you cannot selectively enforce it. Period. To anyone else offended by the officer’s actions, get over it. We cannot turn those charged with enforcing the law into bad guys. They didn’t make the laws, so it’s unfair to blame them for something you feel may be wrong.”
http://beta.coastalcourier.com/section/4/article/33931/
Brown’s remarks also elicit boos. Suave says this is a issue of using ‘common sense.’
Suave: “I don’t know what’s more ridiculous. The war on lemonade stands all over the country or this whole Carmageddon thing that was supposed to bring LA to its knees over the weekend.”
Match #1 Triple R (D) w/ Code Pink and Emily List defeats ‘Tin Cup’ Ray McAvay (Tea Party)
- Triple R still lusts of being the PCW champion. McAvay tries to win one for the Tea Party. Unfortunately, McAvay goes Phil Mickelson in the final round of the British Open. After Triple R dominates early. McAvay makes an incredible comeback and looks to be on the verge of winning but his overaggressiveness pisses it away at the end.
Rick Perry Visits EA Sports
On a jumbo screen inside the offices of a division of EA Sports, a scene from one of the company’s popular college football video game was playing out, featuring Perry as quarterback for his alma-mater, Texas A&M.
In the scene, Perry throws a touchdown before a stadium full of cheering fans.
As Perry left the room, a reporter shouted, “hey Rick, are you in the game?”
It was a reference to EA’s catch-phrase “if it’s in the game, it’s in the game.”
Perry did not respond and hustled off the stage.
Suave: The big question is ‘will Perry answer the call?’ Let’s find out.
Suave pulls out his cell phone and dials…and waits…and waits…and waits…
Match #2 (Taped at an Idaho bar) Marlon Baker defeats Daren Abbey
- it all began when 28-year-old white supremacist Daren Abbey began threatening Marlon Baker and threatened to stab him because “blacks are not welcome.” Baker, wearing a t-shirt that said “Spokane Boxing Club champion,” knocked Abbey unconscious with one punch.
Ron Paul Promo
Ron Paul announces that this is his final trip around the political merry-go-round. Either he will become the next PCW CEO or he will retire from political wrestling.
This brings out the PCW Tag Team Champions- Jack and Joe Schmidt along with Jim Schmidt. Jim walks out with the Extreme German Schnauzer Hans Gruber.
Jack is disappointed that Ron Paul is going to retire next year if he doesn’t win the PCW CEO race. But what he’s NOT disappointed about is the new Harry Potter movie. Jack raves about Alan Rickman’s ‘brilliant’ performance as Professor Snape in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows- Part 2.
Joe admits that he cried during the part where Snape reveals to Harry that he loved his mother. He begins to break down again but Jack picks it up from there and reminds everyone that Rickman also played Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard movie- the name of their Extreme German Schnauzer.
Jack says that no matter what, the PCW Tag Team Title belts are home and will stay with the Schmidts even after Paul retires.
Suave Tries to Call Rick Perry Again…
Suave pulls out his cell phone and dials…and waits…and waits…and waits…
Match #3 for the King of Extreme Title
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Markos Moutilsas
Arianna Huffington
‘Hardball’ Chris Matthews
Glenn Beck
Laura Ingraham
Bill O’Reilly
Alan Grayson
Rachel Maddow
Keith Olbermann
LEFT:
Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter
Markos Moutilsas, Arianna Huffington, ‘Hardball’ Chris Matthews
RIGHT:
Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Bill O’Reilly
Alan Grayson, Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann
Glenn Beck eliminates Alan Grayson via pinfall
Rachel Maddow eliminates Glenn Beck via pinfall
Laura Ingraham eliminates Rachel Maddow
Sean Hannity eliminates ‘Hardball’ Chris Matthews via pinfall
Markos Moutilsas eliminates Rush Limbaugh via pinfall
Hannity eliminates Moutilsas via pinfall
Keith Olbermann eliminates Laura Ingraham via pinfall
Arianna Huffington eliminates Hannity via pinfall
Ann Coulter eliminates Huffington. Ann Coulter wins the Left Chamber.
Keith Olbermann eliminates Bill O’Reilly. Keith Olbermann wins the Right Chamber
…the FOK News All-Stars come out and join Al Gore in the beat down of Coulter. Olbermann urges them on while wearing the crimson mask. Shuster and Gore hold Coulter up. Olbermann can't see very well. He charges Coulter. SPEAR!]
Sauve: “SPEAR RIGHT OFF THE TOP OF THE CAGE! HOLY CRAP!”
[Olbermann and Coulter land in the ring after going through the other levels of the cage. They're both out. But Olbermann lands on top of Coulter. The referee makes the count...1...2...3.]
WINNER AND NEW KING OF EXTREME: Keith OlbermannPCW Extreme Political TV Results
Midway Middle School Auditorium
Midway, GA
Monday... more
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That’s right, Political Championship Wrestling will be in Midway, GA this Monday night for another politically extreme edition of PCW Extreme Political TV.
Midway, GA, of course, is known for their no nonsense, law and order attitude. Just look at this…
3 girls sitting just off the road selling lemonade. Suddenly, screeching tires can be heard down the road.
A SWAT van and several police cars pull up to the lemonade stand.
A stream of SWAT personnel exit the back of the van and surround the stand.
Midway Police Chief Kelly Morningstar gets out of his police car with a bullhorn. “ATTENTION GIRLS OPERATING UNAUTHORIZED LEMONADE STAND.”
“We’re right here,” says one of the girls.
“YOU DO NOT HAVE A PROPER BUSINESS LICENSE OR THE REQUIRED PEDDLERS OR FOOD PERMITS TO RUN YOUR BUSINESS.”
“I mean, we’re right in front of you,” says another girl.
“WE DON’T KNOW HOW YOUR LEMONADE WAS MADE. WE DON’T KNOW WHO MADE THE LEMONADE OR WHAT’S IN IT.”
“Really, we’re right in front of you.”
“WE ARE CLOSING YOU DOWN, I REPEAT, CLOSING YOU DOWN.”
The SWAT team remove the girls, wraps yellow ‘police line do not cross’ tape around the stand…
…and drinks the rest of the lemonade.
Ga. Police Shut Down Lemonade Stand- CBS News
—–
Monday night, PCW crowns the new King of Extreme Title. The contestants:
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Markos Moutilsas
Arianna Huffington
‘Hardball’ Chris Matthews
Glenn Beck
Laura Ingraham
Bill O’Reilly
Alan Grayson
Rachel Maddow
Keith Olbermann
Catch all the exciting action this Monday night on PCW.That’s right, Political Championship Wrestling will be in Midway, GA this Monday... more
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On this week's edition of PCW Extreme Political TV:
Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) cuts a promo on fellow Minnesota Republican Michele Bachmann.
Match #1: Texas Jack (R) vs. Teddy Lewis (I)
-This is Texas Jack’s debut match in PCW. It’s not a coincidence that his arrival mirrors the possibility that Texas’s Rick Perry may jump into the PCW CEO race.
The usual suspects converge for PCW deficit talks w/PCW CEO Barack Obama & his aide de camp Joe Biden: Republicans: Leader of the PCW Competition Committee John Boehner/Eric Cantor/PCW Executive Committee Minority Leader Mitch McConnell/ Jon Kyl; Dem: PCW Competition Committee Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi/Steny Hoyer/PCW Executive Committee Majority Leader Harry Reid/Dick Durbin.
Rupert Murdoch comes to the ring and tries to explain himself.
Paul Ryan (R-WI) comes out to defend his economic plan to save PCW and then introduces his ‘Raiders’
Match #2: Paul Ryan’s Raiders: Nick Ray (R) and Kevin Collins (R) vs. The Bureaucrats: Jordan Metzger (D) and Andrew Riley (D)
Promo spot for Sarah Palin (R).
PCW CEO Barack Obama Statement
Mila Kunis-Marine Segment: a lucky SOB who had the balls to ask a Hollywood starlet to go to a Marine Ball.
John Boehner Statement
PCW Investigative Reporter Woodward Bernstein Interview With Rutgers Economist Susan Feinberg
Main Event: Farmer Ted (R) w/Tim Pawlenty vs. Average Joe (Tea Party) w/Michele Bachmann
Alan Grayson (D) cuts a PromoOn this week's edition of PCW Extreme Political TV:
Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) cuts a... more
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It has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results.
That’s pretty much where we are on tax cuts for the rich.
Ronald Reagan cut taxes on the rich. Reagan added $1 trillion to the federal debt, and turned America from the largest creditor nation into the largest debtor nation.
George W. Bush cut taxes on the rich. Bush Jr. added $4 trillion to the federal debt, and vaporized 20% of our national wealth in the last 18 months of his administration.
Yet in December, the Republicans in Congress forced us to extend tax cuts for the rich for two more years, at the cost of $70 billion a year. And now, they want to cut social services by . . . $70 billion a year. Here are some of their cuts, to pay for more tax cuts for the rich:
They want to cut Community Health Centers, which provide care to 3 million patients, by 46%.
They want to lay off all food inspectors for 30 to 45 days.
They want to eliminate the COPS program, and lay off over 1000 police officers.
They want to cut Title 1 education funds, laying off 17,000 teachers and aides.
They want to cut 200,000 children from the Head Start preschool program.
So there it is: tax cuts mean school cuts. And health cuts. And safety cuts. This is the Republicans’ jobs program: lay off thousands and thousands of workers.
And in Florida, Rick Scott, our teabag Governor, our Thief in Chief, announced yesterday that he wants to cut taxes on the rich and corporations by $1.7 billion, and (coincidence, of course), cut school funding by $1.7 billion.
Rick Scott’s personal net worth is hundreds of millions of dollars. Rick Scott wants a tax cut for the rich because he wants a tax cut for himself. As for the rest of us, the other 20 million people who live in Florida, all he wants from us is cheap labor.
It’s amazing, isn’t it? We live in the richest country the world has ever seen, but thanks to rampant greed on the part of people like Rick Scott, we have to fight for our health and safety, and the education of our children. As Cardinal Spellman said 45 years ago, “it is a war thrust upon us, and we cannot yield to tyranny.”
I’m ready to fight for what’s right. What about you?
Courage,
Alan Grayson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nso4iVwPT3EIt has been said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over... more
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I am asking each and every one of you to send this video to 2 people. This is a rare instance in life where just 60 seconds of your time can help change the course of history in the fight against the Fed. Either we win, or Wall Street wins. It's that simple. For a variety of reasons, this clip resonates with virtually everyone who sees it, and you are the conduit.
http://dailybail.com/home/there-are-no-words-to-describe-the-following-part-ii.htmlI am asking each and every one of you to send this video to 2 people. This is a rare... more
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Criticizing the Obama Administration's record, outgoing Rep. Alan Grayson (D), on MSNBC's The Ed Show, said, "During the Great Depression, Roosevelt had a jobs program that put 4 million people to work in a matter of months. Where was our jobs program? We could have done more and the Democratic Party's main constituencies felt disappointed and that's why they didn't vote on November 2nd."Criticizing the Obama Administration's record, outgoing Rep. Alan Grayson (D), on... more
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by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Welcome to the final edition of Campaign Cash, which tracked political spending during this year’s midterm elections. Stay tuned for more reporting on money in politics from members of The Media Consortium. To see more stories on campaign funding, follow the Twitter hashtag #campaigncash.
Anonymous millionaires just helped elect dozens of ultraconservative congressional candidates, by pumping millions of dollars into national Tea Party organizations. And guess what’s at the top of the legislative to-do list for those same Tea Party groups? Blocking campaign finance reform legislation.
As Stephanie Mencimer explains for Mother Jones, one of the nation’s largest Tea Party organizations, the Tea Party Patriots, is already coming out guns-a-blazing against any lame duck effort to crack down on secret corporate spending in elections.
And with good cause. The Tea Party’s appeal, after all, is based on its populist, grassroots image. If anybody knew that secret right-wing millionaires were bankrolling the entire operation, the “movement” would lose its luster.
But whether reformers are able to force front-groups to disclose their donors or not, the broader effort to eliminate undue corporate influence from the political process will take years.
Welcome to the plutocracy
The Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission allowed corporations and deep-pocketed elites to spend unlimited amounts electing politicians of their choosing. So long as those expenditures are funneled through a front-group, nobody has to know who is buying an ugly attack ad or why. Instead ads are sponsored by groups with a innocuous-sounding names like “Americans for Prosperity” or “Americans for Job Security.” Nobody knows who ultimately foots the bill.
In organized crime, this process is called “money laundering.” And everyone is getting in on the game, from the Tea Party to Karl Rove to U.S. Chamber of Commerce. As Bill Moyers explains in this Boston University lecture carried by Truthout, it’s ravaging American democracy.
Rove, other conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce have in fact created a “shadow party” … We have reached what … former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls “the perfect storm that threatens American democracy: An unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that’s raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work. We’re losing our democracy to a different system. It’s called plutocracy.”
That, ultimately, is what is at stake with campaign finance reform. Can democracy continue to serve as a check on elite power? Or will America simply dance to the tune played by the super-rich. Citizens United made an undemocratic mess of this year’s election—but the influence of corporate cash is not going to simply melt away. Without serious reforms, the very concept of American elections will become a quaint, naive relic of the past.
Wall Street wins big
And while the plutocracy plainly organized itself against Democrats in this election, democrats have not exactly been strangers to corporate largesse. As Laura Flanders emphasizes for GRITtv, while President Barack Obama occasionally offered rhetorical rebukes against the Wall Street establishment, so far as public policy was concerned, he rarely did anything to ruffle their feathers. Obama continued the Bush bailouts, praised the executives of firms would eventually be investigated for fraud as “savvy,” and aimed pretty low on financial reform. But as Flanders notes, all those favors didn’t end up helping either Obama or his party on Nov. 2:
Having soaked up the government’s largesse, those banksters repaid Obama by pouring millions of anonymous dollars into defeating Democrats.
It worked. The most vocal Wall Street critics in the House and Senate—Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) were bombarded with attack ads courtesy of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Now they’re gone, along with the Democratic majority in the House.
Last-ditch effort on campaign finance reform
As Jesse Zwick emphasizes for The Washington Independent, Congress can still limit the damage in the coming months before the officials elected last night take office. A modest law that would require corporations to disclose their political expenditures and force front-groups to publicly identify their donors would help limit the damage.
After that, as Moyers emphasizes, it’s a long, hard fight.
But wait! There’s more.
* Andy Kroll at Mother Jones notes that Rick Scott didn’t really need money from outside groups to buy the Governor’s race in Florida. He did it himself.
* Jason Hancock reports for The Iowa Independent that outside groups spent more than $1 million to oust judges that ruled to legalize same-sex marriage in Iowa.
* John Nichols and Richard Kim of The Nation talk to GRITtv’s Laura Flanders and Democracy Now!’s Amy Goodman on the midterm results, and what to expect from corporate expenditures in 2012.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the mid-term elections and campaign financing by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit The Media Consortium for more articles on these issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, The Pulse, and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Zach Carter, Media Consortium blogger
Welcome to the final edition of Campaign... more
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by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Earlier this month, Bank of America (BOA), the country’s largest bank, announced a moratorium on foreclosures in all 50 states.
The bank promised not to sell any foreclosed homes or take any more delinquent borrowers to court until it had reviewed its potentially defective foreclosure process. Other major lenders soon announced that they too were suspending foreclosures in dozens of states. Why are the biggest banks in the country voluntarily calling for a time-out? It’s a hint that we’re facing a huge problem: The banks aren’t sure if they have the legal right to foreclose on millions of homes.
Here’s what’s new in foreclosuregate since the Audit took up the story last week. The Bank of America announced that it would resume some foreclosures on Oct. 25, having deemed its own methods sound. The stock market begged to differ. BOA’s stock fell over 5% on Thursday and other bank stocks also took a beating, as did mortgage bonds. This pattern indicates that investors are very worried about the effect of the foreclosure crisis on the health of the banks.
Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) is calling for a foreclosure moratorium under the new Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), as Ellen Brown reports for Truthout. The FSOC has the power to preemptively break up any large financial institution that threatens U.S. economic security. Grayson wants a moratorium on all mortgages securitized between 2005 and 2008 until the FSOC can determine which foreclosures are valid and which are bogus.
The missing link
So, what kind of “defects” in the foreclosure process are we talking about? Fraud, basically.
Zach Carter of the Campaign for America’s Future explains to Chris Hayes of the Nation why Bank of America and other major lenders are in so much trouble: They are just administering loans for other lenders. You make your check out to the Bank of America, but the bank is just babysitting after the loan for the bondholders.
The real creditors are the investors who own bonds made up of pieces of many different mortgages, including yours. The bond gives the bondholder a share of the money that you and other borrowers pay each month. If you don’t pay, BOA initiates foreclosure. If you’re late, BOA charges you fees.
However, the bank can’t just hire a foreclosure company to take your home away on a whim. The bank must first show proof that it is entitled to foreclose because you’ve defaulted on your mortgage in the form of a mortgage note. If you hold one of those toxic asset mortgages, there’s a good chance the bank doesn’t have the note.
As Dean Baker explains in Truthout, in many, if not most, cases, “liar loans” (mortgages issued with no proof of income or assets) have become given way to “liar liens” (foreclosures with no proof of default).
According to Carter, all the big banks have been hiring foreclosure mills to rubber-stamp their claims without checking. Unscrupulous foreclosure companies are admitting to “robo-signing,” i.e., foreclosing without even checking whether the bank’s claims were legit.
Foreclosuregate
According to Andy Kroll of Mother Jones, the Bank of America stands to lose up to $70 billion over what’s come to be known as “foreclosuregate.” A mortgage starts out with an originator, typically a bank or a mortgage broker. In the heyday of mortgage-backed securities, investment banks were buying up hundreds of thousands of mortgages, making them into mortgage-backed bonds, and selling them to investors.
Unfortunately, if the bank doesn’t have the note, who does? The mortgage originator may have gone bankrupt, many were fly-by-night operators that folded when the housing bubble burst. Many mortgages were bought and resold more than once before they found their way into a mortgage-backed bond.
So, the question is whether the bank really owned the mortgages it made into mortgage backed-securities and sold to individuals, pension funds, and other institutions. If not, the banks stand could be on the hook for selling assets they didn’t actually own to investors.
Moratorium now
The scandal affects so many mortgages that some lawmakers are calling for a nationwide moratorium on foreclosures until investigators can sort out who owns what once and for all. Rep. Edolphus Towns (D-NY) told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! that Congress needs to stop banks from putting people out on the street until there is some way to differentiate between fraudulent foreclosures and justified ones:
And so, I just think that people who are saying that this is going to hurt—I think that it’s going to help, because once people gain confidence in the fact that they’re being treated fairly and that there’s no discrepancies in the records, then people will feel very comfortable in terms of trying to move forward. But until that happens, you’re always going to have these comments about the fact that that was not done right, it was done unfairly. And, of course, I think there’s enough here for us to stop and to pause and to say, let’s take a look here before we move forward. So a moratorium is definitely in order.
The Obama administration opposes the moratorium on the grounds that it would hurt the housing market and thereby slow the economy. Towns counters that what would really be bad for the economy is letting banks take people’s homes away without any semblance of due process. If the government doesn’t act to protect the innocent, foreclosuregate could shatter the confidence of potential home buyers. Would you want to invest in a house if you were afraid the bank could just take it away from you?
In AlterNet, Mike Lux argues that fraudulent foreclosures are one more assault on poor and middle class Americans. He argues that the banks are so used to being coddled by Washington that they’re counting on legislators to retroactively change the rules to protect them from the consequences of their own devious behavior.
At this point we don’t know what percentage of foreclosed-upon homes have simply been stolen by banks to pay bondholders, but we do know the problem is vast and systemic. The Obama administration is content to let the banks seize private property first and ask questions later. We need a moratorium to take stock and restore the rule of law.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger
Earlier this month, Bank of America... more
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Dylan Ratigan reports on a story in which a JP Morgan Chase representative broke into an Orlando resident's home to change the locks under a mistaken foreclosure proceeding.Dylan Ratigan reports on a story in which a JP Morgan Chase representative broke into... more
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From the Politico daily email:
HUDDLE SCOOPLET: ALAN GRAYSON, AD MAN: Don't expect him to start taking three-martini lunches with the cast of Mad Men quite yet, but a tipster tells Huddle that Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) writes the scripts for his own television commercials. Aside from the novelty, why would that matter? Grayson's currently embroiled in a controversy over an ad in which he refers to his challenger as 'Taliban Dan' Webster. 'Wives, submit to your own husbands' and 'She should submit to me -- that's in the Bible,' Webster, a former state House speaker, says in clips featured in the ad, which contends Webster has voted to deny battered women medical attention and to ban abortion even for rape victims. It opens with the line 'Religious fanatics try to take away our freedom in Afghanistan, in Iran and right here in central Florida' and closes with 'Taliban Dan, hands off our bodies and our laws.' Conservatives object to the comparison between Webster's religious beliefs and those of Islamic extremists. Grayson spokesman Sam Drzymala acknowledged the congressman's role in the ad-making process but suggested he's not the sole arbiter. 'It's a group effort, but the congressman is involved in the process,' Drzymala told HUDDLE. But he declined to say whether 'Taliban Dan' was Grayson's language. 'The campaign's policy is that [the] process by which we make ads should remain internal.' Here's the ad http://politi.co/9AfBSR
Also, factcheck.org takes exception to the ad: http://www.factcheck.org/2010/09/rep-grayson-lowers-the-bar/From the Politico daily email:
HUDDLE SCOOPLET: ALAN GRAYSON, AD MAN: Don't... more
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CNN's Randi Kaye did a "behind the scenes" interview with Alan Grayson and some of his staff and they did a pretty fair job of going between some of what they considered Grayson's flame throwing and the big money interests who are looking to take him down this mid-term election. Alan Grayson has been a great champion for progressive values and whether anyone thinks his rhetoric is over the top or not, I'll take a little flame throwing back given what we're up against any day of the week and his calling a spade a spade when it comes to how terrible Republicans have been in the way they've governed this country and run it into a ditch.CNN's Randi Kaye did a "behind the scenes" interview with Alan Grayson... more
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OSHA was in the final hours of it's 6 month investigation when Alan Grayson intervened on behalf of SeaWorld, which is located in his district.
Apparently, SeaWorld is applying pressure on OSHA to go easy on them, just as they did in 2007 in a report related to trainer injuries at SeaWorld San Diego. In that report, OSHA stated "swimming with captive orcas is inherently dangerous and if someone hasn't been killed already it is only a matter of time beforeit does happen." However, SeaWorld pressured OSHA into removing that statement from the final report. It looks like SeaWorld is trying the same thing here:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/os-seaworld-osha-grayson-20100819,0,293357.storyOSHA was in the final hours of it's 6 month investigation when Alan Grayson... more
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The bill would cut the DoD's budget and use that money to make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free.
May 23, 2010 |
Last week, as Congress prepared to pass yet another “emergency” spending bill to cover America’s costly operations in Iraq and Afghanistan -- to the tune of $159 billion this time around -- Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Florida, introduced a bill that would force the Pentagon to pick up the tab out of its ample regular budget.
The War Is Making You Poor Act is elegant in its simplicity. Instead of financing these longstanding conflicts outside of the regular budgeting process, where they’re not factored into deficit projections, Grayson’s bill would make the DoD work within its means, and the money would instead be used for an across-the-board tax cut that would make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free.
“The purpose of this bill,” wrote Grayson last week, “is to connect the dots, and to show people in a real and concrete way the cost of these endless wars.” It’s not just the costs of active shooting wars; with hundreds of bases overseas, as far as the defense budget is concerned Americans have been on a permanent wartime footing, to varying degrees, since Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. “War is a permanent feature of our societal landscape,” wrote Grayson, “so much so that no one notices it anymore.”
The bill already has several co-sponsors, including at least two Republicans (albeit maverick GOPers Ron Paul of Texas and Walter Jones of South Carolina). But since the Pentagon would have to take money out of its regular budget -- largely from the budget for newfangled hardware -- the DoD and influential defense contractors will no doubt fight it tooth-and-nail.
But the War Is Making You Poor Act might have a major impact on our national dialogue regardless. It highlights in a visceral way what Americans lose by privileging money for guns over butter. “The costs of the war have been rendered invisible,” wrote Grayson. “There's no draft. Instead, we take the most vulnerable elements of our population, and give them a choice between unemployment and missile fodder. Government deficits conceal the need to pay in cash for the war.” Grayson’s measure might just shine a bright light on those “opportunity costs.”
Budgeting is all about priorities, and the bill can raise public awareness of that fact. The Right has done a remarkable job convincing the American public that tax dollars used for programs that help the middle class or the poor are dollars “taken out of your pocket,” but no such consideration is given to the trillions spent on financing our military operations.
That was apparent during the recent debate over the Affordable Care Act, when Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats and most of the media focused relentlessly on the costs of the bill, and its likely impact on future deficits. No such discussion took place when the invasion of Iraq was being debated. Grayson’s bill makes the same appeal to self-interest the conservatives have used to often devastating effect to oppose everything from Medicare to public education. It says: "We can pay for these wars, or we can make them take it out of the defense contractors’ hides and get our first $35K tax-free."The bill would cut the DoD's budget and use that money to make the first $35,000... more
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