Socialist Republican States Take 8 Out of Top Nine Biggest Federal Spenders

Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW)

Why we're against the war

Q: Why are veterans, active duty, and National Guard men and women opposed to the war in Iraq?

A: Here are 10 reasons we oppose this war:

1. The Iraq war is based on lies and deception.
The Bush Administration planned for an attack against Iraq before September 11th, 2001. They used the false pretense of an imminent nuclear, chemical and biological weapons threat to deceive Congress into rationalizing this unnecessary conflict. They hide our casualties of war by banning the filming of our fallen's caskets when they arrive home, and when they refuse to allow the media into Walter Reed Hospital and other Veterans Administration facilities which are overflowing with maimed and traumatized veterans.
For further reading: www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/index.html

2. The Iraq war violates international law.
The United States assaulted and occupied Iraq without the consent of the UN Security Council. In doing so they violated the same body of laws they accused Iraq of breaching.
For further reading:
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/proc/imtconst.htm
http://www.westpointgradsagainstthewar.org/

3. Corporate profiteering is driving the war in Iraq.
From privately contracted soldiers and linguists to no-bid reconstruction contracts and multinational oil negotiations, those who benefit the most in this conflict are those who suffer the least. The United States has chosen a path that directly contradicts President Eisenhower's farewell warning regarding the military industrial complex. As long as those in power are not held accountable, they will continue...
For further reading:
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0714-01.htm
http://www.publicintegrity.org/wow/

4. Overwhelming civilian casualties are a daily occurrence in Iraq.
Despite attempts in training and technological sophistication, large-scale civilian death is both a direct and indirect result of United States aggression in Iraq. Even the most conservative estimates of Iraqi civilian deaths number over 100,000. Currently over 100 civilians die every day in Baghdad alone.For further reading:
http://www.nomorevictims.org/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1338749,00.html
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F70A1EF73C5A0C758DDDA10894DE404482

5. Soldiers have the right to refuse illegal war.
All in service to this country swear an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, both foreign and domestic. However, they are prosecuted if they object to serve in a war they see as illegal under our Constitution. As such, our brothers and sisters are paying the price for political incompetence, forced to fight in a war instead of having been sufficiently trained to carry out the task of nation-building.
For further reading:
http://thankyoult.live.radicaldesigns.org/content/view/172/
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qa6ZHYcG_EM
http://youtube.com/watch?v=1dAXQeH7y9g&mode=related&search=
http://girightshotline.org

6. Service members are facing serious health consequences due to our Government's negligence.
Many of our troops have already been deployed to Iraq for two, three, and even four tours of duty averaging eleven months each. Combat stress, exhaustion, and bearing witness to the horrors of war contribute to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a serious set of symptoms that can lead to depression, illness, violent behavior, and even suicide. Additionally, depleted uranium, Lariam, insufficient body armor and infectious diseases are just a few of the health risks which accompany an immorally planned and incompetently executed war. Finally, upon a soldier's release, the Veterans Administration is far too under-funded to fully deal with the magnitude of veterans in need.
For further reading:
http://www.ncptsd.va.gov/
http://www.vets4vets.us/

7. The war in Iraq is tearing our families apart.
The use of stop-loss on active duty troops and the unnecessarily lengthy and repeat active tours by Guard and Reserve troops place enough strain on our military families, even without being forced to sacrifice their loved ones for this ongoing political experiment in the Middle East.
For further reading: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,FL_loss_092704,00.html

8. The Iraq war is robbing us of funding sorely needed here at home.
$10.3 billion per month is spent on a war which could have aided the victims of Hurricane Katrina, gone to impoverished schools, the construction of hospitals and health care systems, tax cut initiatives, and a host of domestic programs that have all been gutted in the wake of the war in Iraq.
For further reading:
http://www.costofwar.com

9. The war dehumanizes Iraqis and denies them their right to self-determination.
Iraqis are subjected to humiliating and violent checkpoints, searches and home raids on a daily basis. The current Iraqi government is in place solely because of the U.S. military occupation. The Iraqi government doesn’t have the popular support of the Iraqi people, nor does it have power or authority. For many Iraqis the current government is seen as a puppet regime for the U.S. occupation. It is undemocratic and in violation of Iraq’s own right to self-governance.
For further reading:
http://riverbendblog.blogspot.com/
10. Our military is being exhausted by repeated deployments, involuntary extensions, and activations of the Reserve and National Guard.
The majority of troops in Iraq right now are there for at least their second tour. Deployments to Iraq are becoming longer and many of our service members are facing involuntary extensions and recalls to active duty. Longstanding policies to limit the duration and frequency of deployments for our part-time National Guard troops are now being overturned to allow for repeated, back-to-back tours in Iraq. These repeated, extended combat tours are taking a huge toll on our troops, their families, and their communities.
For further reading:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-military12jan12,0,7198945.story?coll=la-home-headlines





Q: Why do Iraq Veterans Against the War call for the immediate withdrawal from Iraq?

A: There are several reasons why immediate withdrawal is the critical first step toward solving the problems in Iraq.

1. The reasons and rationale given for the invasion were fraudulent.
There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq during the time of the invasion according to US officials and former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix. The idea that Al Qeada and the 9/11 terrorist attacks were connected to Saddam Hussein and the Baath party were proven false in the 9/11 Commission Report. Members of the Bush Administration have admitted that they “misspoke” in the run up to the war.

2. The presence of the US military is not preventing sectarian violence.
The US occupation of Iraq has proven to be unable to prevent sectarian violence and halt an escalation towards a civil war. Despite having an average of 140,000 troops in country since the occupation began, internal violence and attacks against civilians and Iraqi security forces have been on a steady incline.

3. The occupation is a primary motivation for the insurgency and global religious extremism.
The insurgency can be broken down into many individually named factions with various goals, beliefs, and techniques. However, our membership of veterans believe that the occupation of Iraq is the primary thing encouraging the insurgency and giving it legitimacy in the eyes of many Iraqis. Likewise, other people of the Islamic faith are encouraged to resist America ’s policies internationally based on how they perceive our military operations in the Middle East.

4. We can no longer afford to fight this war of choice.
The financial burden is destroying our domestic programs that could be used to protect us from natural disasters, provide medical programs, or help improve education. We are jeopardizing the US economy and putting strains on the budgets of important government agencies like the Veterans Affairs Department.

5. National security is compromised.
Funds that could be used to protect our ports and transportation are being stripped away while our National Guard units are on constant deployments instead of being used to protect and defend us here at home.

6. The world is becoming more dangerous.
International terrorist attacks have increased and it has become more dangerous for Americans to travel abroad. Approval for US policy has decreased and the dislike of Americans has increased.
7. Our national “moral authority” is being undermined.
The US has lost credibility to much of the world as the defender of liberty and freedom and our national identity is eroding. We can no longer deploy our armed forces for peace keeping measures with the good faith of the international community. We need to regain the respect and faith of the global community. This begins by withdrawing our troops from Iraq and helping the Iraqi people rebuild their country and society.

8. The majority of American citizens, Iraqi citizens and US military would like to see an immediate end to the war in Iraq.
If we are truly a democracy and we aim to create a democracy in Iraq our leaders will represent the will of the citizens and lead according to their wishes.

9. The military is broken.
We are abusing the small population of armed service members with multiple deployments while using inadequate vehicles and equipment. Less than one half of a percent of the American population is serving in the active armed forces, which is the least amount in the last century. Only 25% of the troops in Iraq are there for their first tour, while 50% are there on their second tour, and the remaining 25% are there three times or more. We continue to involuntarily extend soldiers with Stop-Loss, recall them repeatedly for additional service using the Individual Ready Reserve, and send soldiers with diagnosed medical problems into combat.

Research 2000

Research 2000 for Daily Kos. 3/16-19. All adults. MoE 2% (3/8-12 results):

	FAVORABLE	UNFAVORABLE	NET CHANGE
PRESIDENT OBAMA	67 (68)	28 (27)	-2
PELOSI:	39 (38)	41 (42)	2
REID:	34 (33)	47 (46)	+0
McCONNELL:	19 (20)	54 (53)	-2
BOEHNER:	13 (14)	57 (55)	-3
CONGRESSIONAL DEMS:	44 (43)	48 (49)	+2
CONGRESSIONAL GOPS:	17 (16)	72 (71)	+0
DEMOCRATIC PARTY:	53 (55)	39 (38)	-3
REPUBLICAN PARTY:	27 (29)	65 (66)	-1

Full crosstabs here. This poll is updated every Friday morning, and you can see trendline graphs here.

Let's start with the graphs from Congressional Parties and national parties:

From 1/22, when everyone's spirits were highest, Congressional Republicans' favorability have dropped from 26 then to 17 now. The national party has dropped from 34 to 27, same time frame.

The Congressional Democrats saw a whopping 13-point net gain in their favorability ratings on Feb 26, and haven't looked back. That week (Obama's address to the nation — with Bobby Jindal's response — was Feb 24), the gain came mostly among Democratic respondents, who went from 68-31 favorable/unfavorable to 71-18, and Independents, who went from 38-55 to 47-44.

Hey, what about Congressional leadership? Oh, my.

I keep thinking John Boehner can't get any lower, but he keeps fooling me. He gets 37/25 (fav/unfav) from Republicans this week, and a 9/62 (fav/unfav) from Independents.

Meanwhile, Obama's slight drop from peak (now at 67/28) is made up of favorables that break out this way: 89/9 D, 73/23 I, 23/68 R. This Obama net favorability (fav minus unfav) by party shows that it's unhappy R's that drive the numbers down. Watch those independents.

And keep these fav/unfav/no opinion numbers in mind:

NORTHEAST 86 11 3
SOUTH     42 50 8
MIDWEST   73 23 4
WEST      75 20 5

The South is different than the rest of us  [at least as far as polling patterns].

It's all about educational levels I tell ya!

Research 2000

BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel troops admit Gaza abuses

An Israeli military college has printed damning soldiers' accounts of the killing of civilians and vandalism during recent operations in Gaza.

One account tells of a sniper killing a mother and children at close range whom troops had told to leave their home.

Another speaker at the seminar described what he saw as the "cold blooded murder" of a Palestinian woman.

The army has defended its conduct during the Gaza offensive but said it would investigate the testimonies.

The Israeli army has said it will investigate the soldiers' accounts.

The testimonies were published by the military academy at Oranim College. Graduates of the academy, who had served in Gaza, were speaking to new recruits at a seminar.

The climate in general [was that] lives of Palestinians are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers Soldier testimony Analysis: Operation Miscast Lead? Gaza war crimes probes

"[The testimonies] conveyed an atmosphere in which one feels entitled to use unrestricted force against Palestinians," academy director Dany Zamir told public radio.

Heavy civilian casualties during the three-week operation which ended in the blockaded coastal strip on 18 January provoked an international outcry.

Correspondents say the testimonies undermine Israel's claims that troops took care to protect non-combatants and accusations that Hamas militants were responsible for putting civilians into harm's way.

'Less important'

The Palestinian woman and two of her children were allegedly shot after they misunderstood instructions about which way to walk having been ordered out of their home by troops.

"The climate in general... I don't know how to describe it.... the lives of Palestinians, let's say, are much, much less important than the lives of our soldiers," an infantry squad leader is quoted saying.

FROM THE BBC WORLD SERVICE More from BBC World Service

In another cited case, a commander ordered troops to kill an elderly woman walking on a road, even though she was easily identifiable and clearly not a threat.

Testimonies, which were given by combat pilots and infantry soldiers, also included allegations of unnecessary destruction of Palestinian property.

"We would throw everything out of the windows to make room and order. Everything... Refrigerators, plates, furniture. The order was to throw all of the house's contents outside," a soldier said.

One non-commissioned officer related at the seminar that an old woman crossing a main road was shot by soldiers.

"I don't know whether she was suspicious, not suspicious, I don't know her story… I do know that my officer sent people to the roof in order to take her out… It was cold-blooded murder," he said.

The transcript of the session for the college's Yitzhak Rabin pre-military course, which was held last month, appeared in a newsletter published by the academy.

Israeli human rights groups have criticised the military for failing to properly investigate violations of the laws of war in Gaza despite plenty of evidence of possible war crimes.

'Moral army'

The soldiers' testimonies also reportedly told of an unusually high intervention by military and non-military rabbis, who circulated pamphlets describing the war in religious terminology.

Palestinian civilians paid a heavy price during the three-week Israeli operation

"All the articles had one clear message," one soldier said. "We are the people of Israel, we arrived in the country almost by miracle, now we need to fight to uproot the gentiles who interfere with re-conquering the Holy Land."

"Many soldiers' feelings were that this was a war of religion," he added.

Defence Minister Ehud Barak told Israel Radio that the findings would be examined seriously.

"I still say we have the most moral army in the world. Of course there may be exceptions but I have absolutely no doubt this will be inspected on a case-by-case basis," he said.

Medical authorities say more than 1,300 Palestinians were killed during Israel's 22-day operation, including some 440 children, 110 women, and dozens of elderly people.

The stated aim was to curb rocket and mortar fire by militants from Gaza. Thirteen Israelis, including three civilians were killed.
BBC NEWS | Middle East | Israel troops admit Gaza abuses

Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – Many detainees locked up at Guantanamo were innocent men swept up by U.S. forces unable to distinguish enemies from noncombatants, a former Bush administration official said Thursday. "There are still innocent people there," Lawrence B. Wilkerson, a Republican who was chief of staff to then-Secretary of State Colin Powell, told The Associated Press. "Some have been there six or seven years."

Wilkerson, who first made the assertions in an Internet posting on Tuesday, told the AP he learned from briefings and by communicating with military commanders that the U.S. soon realized many Guantanamo detainees were innocent but nevertheless held them in hopes they could provide information for a "mosaic" of intelligence.

"It did not matter if a detainee were innocent. Indeed, because he lived in Afghanistan and was captured on or near the battle area, he must know something of importance," Wilkerson wrote in the blog. He said intelligence analysts hoped to gather "sufficient information about a village, a region, or a group of individuals, that dots could be connected and terrorists or their plots could be identified."

Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel, said vetting on the battlefield during the early stages of U.S. military operations in Afghanistan was incompetent with no meaningful attempt to discriminate "who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to comment on Wilkerson's specific allegations but noted that the military has consistently said that dealing with foreign fighters from a wide variety of countries in a wartime setting was a complex process. The military has insisted that those held at Guantanamo were enemy combatants and posed a threat to the United States.

In his posting for The Washington Note blog, Wilkerson wrote that "U.S. leadership became aware of this lack of proper vetting very early on and, thus, of the reality that many of the detainees were innocent of any substantial wrongdoing, had little intelligence value, and should be immediately released."

Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney fought efforts to address the situation, Wilkerson said, because "to have admitted this reality would have been a black mark on their leadership."

Wilkerson told the AP in a telephone interview that many detainees "clearly had no connection to al-Qaida and the Taliban and were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Pakistanis turned many over for $5,000 a head."

Some 800 men have been held at Guantanamo since the prison opened in January 2002, and 240 remain. Wilkerson said two dozen are terrorists, including confessed Sept. 11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was transferred to Guantanamo from CIA custody in September 2006.

"We need to put those people in a high-security prison like the one in Colorado, forget them and throw away the key," Wilkerson said. "We can't try them because we tortured them and didn't keep an evidence trail."

But the rest of the detainees need to be released, he said.

Wilkerson, who flew combat missions as a helicopter pilot in Vietnam and left the government in January 2005, said he did not speak out while in government because some of the information was classified. He said he feels compelled to do so now because Cheney has claimed in recent press interviews that President Barack Obama is making the U.S. less safe by reversing Bush administration policies toward terror suspects, including ordering Guantanamo closed.

The administration is now evaluating what to do with the prisoners who remain at the U.S. military base in Cuba.

"I'm very concerned about the kinds of things Cheney is saying to make it seem Obama is a danger to this republic," Wilkerson said. "To have a former vice president fearmongering like this is really, really dangerous."

Ex-Bush admin official: Many at Gitmo are innocent

Limpballs the liar

H.R. 1424 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 on October 3, 2008, 91 House Republicans voted (roll call vote http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll681.xml ) for that bill. President Bush, a Republican, signed it into law.
Limpballs likes to tell his listeners to "check it out!" but he knows his listeners are stupid sheep who don't do "checking it out". That's why they listen to him. They want HIM to tell them what to think.

Daily Kos: State of the Nation

All we hear about on the main stream media is "pork barrel" and "earmark" spending.  I want to hear about the other 99% of the spending bill.  Quit harping on the insignificant and stupid. 

The facts that you never hear in these reports are as follows:

-- earmarks make up 1% of the total bill

--while there are 9000 earmarks that is down from 13,000 in 2005

--40% of the earmark spending this year is from Republicans.  More top Republicans (McConnell, I'm looking at you) have earmarks than top Democrats

--the president committed to no earmarks a year from now, not this year

--this spending bill is long overdue and is needed to fund government agencies

--while the growth of the bill is 8% from last year, 10% of the bill remained unnecessarily the same to maintain Republican staffing despite Republican losses in the past election

This Modern World | Salon Comics

This Modern World | Salon Comics

According to Media Matters, 'liberal', 'Obama-loving' MSNBC has now shown the following misleading graphic at least twice to support stories suggesting that Barack Obama is somehow responsible for the alarming drop in the Dow-Jones industrial average...


And here is the graphic they are not showing, making it quite clear that the plummet has little to do with Obama's Presidency...




The "Liberal Media" strikes again!

(For the record, Media Matters also notes that it's not just "liberal" MSNBC, of course. The wingnut propagandists at Bloomberg and WSJ, along with Fox "News'" Chris Wallace, are also banging the same misinformative drum. So, naturally, MSNBC finds it necessary to not miss a beat.)

Frank Schaeffer: Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

You Republicans are the arsonists who burned down our national home. You combined the failed ideologies of the Religious Right, so-called free market deregulation and the Neoconservative love of war to light a fire that has consumed America. Now you have the nerve to criticize the "architect" America just hired -- President Obama -- to rebuild from the ashes. You do nothing constructive, just try to hinder the one person willing and able to fix the mess you created.

I used to be one of you. As recently as 2000 I worked to get Senator McCain elected in that year's primary. (McCain and Gen. Tommy Franks wrote glowing endorsements regarding my book about military service, AWOL.). I have a file of handwritten thank you notes from Presidents Ford, Reagan, Bush I and II. In the 1970s and early 80s I hung out with Jack Kemp and bought into his "supply side" myth and even wrote a book he endorsed pushing his ideas.) There's more, but take it from me; my parents (evangelical leaders Francis and Edith Schaeffer) and I were about as tight with -- and useful to -- the Republican Party as anyone. We played a big part creating the Religious Right.

In the mid 1980s I left the Religious Right, after I realized just how very anti-American they are, (the theme I explore in my book Crazy For God). They wanted America to fail in order to prove they were right about America's "moral decline." Soon after McCain lost in 2000 I re-registered as an independent in disgust with W. Bush. But I still respected many Republicans. Not today.

How can anyone who loves our country support the Republicans now? Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley and Ronald Reagan defined the modern conservatism that used to be what the Republican Party I belonged to was about. Today no actual conservative can be a Republican. Reagan would despise today's wholly negative Republican Party. And can you picture the gentlemanly and always polite Ronald Reagan, endorsing a radio hate-jock slob who crudely mocked a man with Parkinson's and who now says he wants an American president to fail?!

With people like Limbaugh as the loudmouth image of the Republican Party -- you need no enemies. But something far more serious has happened than an image problem: the Republican Party has become the party of obstruction at just the time when all Americans should be pulling together for the good of our country. Instead, Republicans are today's fifth column sabotaging American renewal.

President Obama has been in office barely 45 days and the Republican Party has the nerve to blame him for the economic and military cataclysm he inherited. I say economic and military cataclysm because without the needless war in Iraq you all backed we would not be in the economic mess we're in today. If that money had been spent here at home on renovating our infrastructure, taking us toward a green economy, putting our health-care system in order we'd be a very different situation.

As the father of a Marine who served in George W. Bush's misbegotten wars let me say this: if President Obama's strategy to repair our economy, infrastructure and healthcare fails that will put our troops at far greater risk because the world will become a far more dangerous place. So for all you flag-waving Republicans who are trying to undermine the President at home -- if you succeed more of our troops will be killed abroad.

When your new leader Rush Limbaugh calls for President Obama to fail he's calling for more flag-draped coffins. Limbaugh is the new "Hanoi Jane."

For the party that created our crises of misbegotten war, mismanaged economy, the lack of regulation of our banking industry, handing our country to rich crooks... to obstruct the one person who is trying to repair the damage is obscene.

Just imagine where America would be today if the 14 to 20 million voters -- "the rube base" who slavishly follow the likes of Limbaugh -- had not voted as a block year after year thus empowering the Republican fiasco. We would have a regulated banking industry and would have avoided our current financial crisis; some 4000 of our killed military men and women would be alive; over to 35,000 wounded Americans would be whole; we would have been leaders in the environmental movement; we would be in the middle of a green technology boom fueling a huge expansion of our economy and stopping our dependence on foreign oil, and our health-care system would be reformed.

After Obama was elected, you Republican leaders had a unique last chance to send a patriotic message of unity to the world -- and to all Americans. You could have backed our president's economic recovery plan. Since we all know that half of our problem is one of lost confidence and perception, nothing would have done more to calm the markets and project resolve and confidence than if you had been big enough to take Obama's offered hand and had work with him -- even if you disagreed ideologically. You had the chance to put our country first. You utterly failed to rise to the occasion.

The worsening economic situation is your fault and your fault alone. The Republicans created this mess through 8 years of backing the worst president in our history and now, because you put partisan ideology ahead of the good of our country, you have blown your last chance to redeem yourselves. You deserve the banishment to the political wilderness that awaits all traitors.


Frank Schaeffer: Open Letter to the Republican Traitors (From a Former Republican)

Daily Kos: If Only We Could Be So Lucky

Rep. John Campbell (R-Calif.), who gives his departing interns copies of Ayn Rand’s novel "Atlas Shrugged," told me today that the response to President Obama’s economic policies reminded him of what happened in the 51-year-old novel.

"People are starting to feel like we’re living through the scenario that happened in 'Atlas Shrugged,'" said Campbell. "The achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit [the] rest of us, are going on strike. I’m seeing, at a small level, a kind of protest from the people who create jobs, the people who create wealth, who are pulling back from their ambitions because they see how they’ll be punished for them."

Oh, yes please. By all means, let's give that "strike" a go. I'll tell you what, "achievers" -- you keep your Collateralized Debt Obligations, and we'll keep the food. You take away your energy futures trading, and we'll keep the actual power plants. You run off to your own private island with your structured corporate insurance derivatives, and we'll keep the automobiles, and the boats, and the oil, and the coal, and the grain, and the batteries, and the electronics, and the cows, and the roads and bridges, and the drinking cups, and the indoor plumbing, and the light bulbs, and the televisions, and the art, and the music, and the trees that grow the fruit, and the lumber, and the recycling centers, and the actual pills to cure what ails you, and the fishing lines, and the books, and the buildings, and the railroads, and the little metal clips that hold the little hydraulic lines that keep that gigantic, thundering airplane you're on in the air. We'll keep the borax, iron, salt, aluminum, and steel. We'll keep the corn, the soybeans, the lettuce, and the water. We'll spot you as many U-haul boxes as you need to pack up your money and your stock certificates, and then please, by all means -- teach us a lesson.

Go live your Randian fantasies, go create that wonderful utopia in which only the most wealthy are permitted entry, and you are not burdened with the outrageous insult of having to contribute back a proportionate share of your income in order to help maintain the very fabric of the nation around you. I can see now that the thought that you might have to pay the same share of your income in taxes that your housekeeper does has drained your already pale blanched, and the thought of having to pay as much in taxes as your wretched mothers and fathers did, a few decades before you, is nothing less than an armed assault on your beachheads.

What fool would suggest we possibly return to the same tax polices that existed under that shameless wealth-stealer and Stalinist, Ronald Reagan? And what insane person would dare seek to treat achievers identically to the lower classes, the people with grubby hands and only one house?

Ah, the arrogance of the Better Class. Just who are these "achievers, the people who create all the things that benefit the rest of us?" They're not the farmers -- we must give far more deference, assign far more value to those that push money from one column to the next. They're not the factory workers, those couldn't possibly be the people who create all the things that benefit the rest of us." They are not nearly so important as the people that invent the derivatives to speculate upon the future trajectories of the numerical indexes that represent the simplified and aggregated "marketplaces" in which the company will sell the products that the workers at the machines create.

It is all so simple, really. You can see how the "achievers" are better than anyone else, and how put upon they are. We claim that the farmers of America create our food, but they are only the saps at the bottom of the chain -- food does not exist unless their is a global market to assign it value, then gather cash by making increasingly leveraged wagers on the incremental differences within submarkets of that global market. You may claim that our miners, those that willingly entomb themselves under a billion tons of rock in order to pry just a small amount of the raw materials of society out from under it, may create "things", for without them there would be precious few "things" to create -- but they are hicks, undeserving of such admiration, and certainly undeserving of official "Acheiver" tax breaks. What do they know of danger, who have not had to rush to their computer to trade a several thousand shares bought earlier in the day, so as to gain a slight monetary advantage over the hundreds of thousands of people doing the same?

So yes, please, by all means, teach us a lesson, Achiever Class, and do it quick. You take your money, and we'll take the people who know how to fix your goddamn plumbing at three in the morning. You grab your portfolio and hold it high above your heads, a symbol of your lifetime of accomplishments, and we'll take all the firefighters. I can only presume you will not need our doctors, our schoolteachers, our grocers or even our tax accountants. Ayn Rand would have wanted it that way: Ayn Rand, oracle of the prickish class, official trumpet section for anyone and everyone that thinks themselves a king.

Does it feel to anyone else that we are in a national rut? That the entire economy of the United States has been predicated, for the last decades, on the following ingenious business cycle?

1. Someone -- probably Phil Gramm -- pushes for deregulation of a particular subset of a particular financial marketplace (see: energy markets, corporate insurance markets), or fervently insists that a newly discovered loophole in current regulations remain open.

2. Using the new loophole or deregulatory act, the companies that requested the financial deregulation in the first place make money hand over fist by exploiting that unregulated marketplace in increasingly sketchy ways (see: Savings and Loan crises, Enron, AIG). Someone who pushed for the deregulation -- probably Phil Gramm -- happens to have a relationship to one of the companies in question, and profits handsomely.

3. The unregulated financial sub-marketplace becomes so sketchy, so loaded with either implicit or explicit fraud, that it collapses under itself, taking the savings of millions of Americans with it (see again: Savings and Loan crises, Enron, AIG). Someone -- probably Phil Gramm -- calls on Americans to stop whining about it, it's just how the world works.

4. The government is forced to step in and repair the damage, but is restricted by the policy prescriptions of multiple somebodies -- usually including Phil Gramm -- to re-regulating the industry in the most minimal possible way, bailing out the companies that got themselves willingly into trouble through their own sketchy or asinine behavior.

5. A thousand other somebodies -- usually followers of Ayn Rand, the most communistic anti-communist to have ever lived, the woman who proposed that the rebellion against communism should consist of starting a commune, but being, you know, more selective about the membership -- chafes violently at the proposed fix in the process, because even in most gentle form it is far, far too harsh on those that created the problem in the first place. Rinse; repeat.

Are we becoming a nation intent on scamming itself, a nation that only values work or inventiveness when it is applied to new ways of squeezing more transactions between the same market endpoints, or milking out one more tenth of a percentage point in income by taking on thirty times that in risk?

It's not enough to produce energy anymore, or to transport it -- there's not enough profit in that. So any company worth it's salt, like Enron, knows the real money is in speculating on energy, not actually doing anything with it. Any Wall Street broker worth their salt knows that investing in a factory is an absurdist proposition, you want to invest in the companies that invest in the investors that financed the investment of that factory. What fool would want to provide actual healthcare, when all the actual cash is to be made in managing that health care by deciding what gets covered, and how much it should cost, and exactly how many files need to be moved how many times before your doctor will see even a dollar in cash from your visit six months ago, and how precisely your heath management company should invest that dollar in other marketplaces, during the ever-expanding length of time it is held between when the service is rendered and all possible paperwork has been exhausted and the dollar must, at long last, be forked over?

What would happen if America's financial sector threatened to go the same way as America's textile industry, or America's steel industry? We are seeing it now -- there is no price not worth paying, in order to prop up the Masters of the Universe. We'll do it, and we have to do it, so tied in is every part of the world economy to all of the others.

But those same financiers might -- gasp -- have to pay three more percentage points of tax, in exchange for saving them, their companies, and their entire industry, and so many may flee to Bermuda and be done with the likes of us. We might block a loophole or two, or question why some company (probably led by Phil Gramm) might keep tens of thousands of secret, offshore bank accounts in an apparent attempt to allow the wealthy to subvert the very laws that the rest of us saps must live by, each and every year, and to even bring such questions up is a declaration of class warfare.

When you have lived your life in the presumption, fervently held, that you are simply better than all those around you, and that your station in life is so far above all others that you should be honored as titan, or Achiever, or demigod, it is merely a given that the common people should not only rescue you from your own created catastrophe of errors, but they should feel damn lucky to have the privilege.

Daily Kos: If Only We Could Be So Lucky

Truthdig - Cartoons - The Weight of the Party

Truthdig - Cartoons - The Weight of the Party

t r u t h o u t | Obama Skews Battle Lines in "Class War"

   Republicans are criticizing his budget plan, but the proposed redistribution of wealth toward the lower and middle classes only reverses a longstanding trend, Michael Hiltzik writes.

    "Class warfare" comes in many flavors. There's the variety practiced by feudal overlords upon their serfs, and the variety waged by the Jacobins of the French Revolution against the monarchists.

    Then there's the variety that Republicans claim to find in President Obama's proposed budget -- a taking from the rich to reward the undeserving poor. The rhetoric has spread quickly, moving from the libertarian Heritage Foundation to the ranks of GOP presidential hopefuls like flames leaping from tree to tree in the Angeles National Forest.

    "Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff," says former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. "The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics may be dead, but a Union of American Socialist Republics is being born."

    Yet the true class war of recent American history is the one that has pitted the upper 1% of income earners against almost everybody else. Over the last three decades, a period that spans Republican and Democratic administrations alike, average family income has scarcely budged an inch, while the wealthy have grown measurably wealthier.

    In 1979, the top 1% of U.S. households earned eight times as much as the middle 20% and 23 times as much as the bottom fifth; by 2005, the Congressional Budget Office found, the upper crust touched 21 times as much as the middle class and 70 times as much as the bottom. Adjusting for inflation, the average American worker made 16% less in 2004 than in the 1970s, according to economist Benjamin M. Friedman.

    Will the Obama budget redress this imbalance? Let's take a measured look at what he proposes.

    The budget plan would restore the top income tax brackets to their levels before the 2001 Bush tax cuts, with the topmost rate rising to 39.6% from 35% now, hardly an excessive increase. The higher taxes kick in at $250,000 for a married couple and $200,000 for individuals.

    For those taxpayers, Obama would ratchet back itemized deductions. He also would raise more money from hedge-fund managers, shareholders and other recipients of investment income. Obama says the money would help pay for programs aimed chiefly at lower- and middle-income wage earners, including a tax credit, relief from healthcare expenses and more aid for education.

    Does this constitute redistribution of income? You bet. That's what government does. George W. Bush redistributed income too -- from the lower- and middle-income wage earners who pay the bulk of Social Security payroll taxes to the higher earners whose income tax cut was financed out of the Social Security surplus.

    Plenty of taxpayers have felt uneasy about this tendency.

    "All the tax rebates to the rich never made sense to me," says Roger A. Wells, 80, a retired computer executive in Manhattan Beach who considers himself firmly middle class and is a lifelong Republican whose GOP pedigree dates to his father's local party chairmanship in Michigan. "I fully endorse the idea that it's about time the middle class got a crack at it."

    The relevant discussion is really about how much income redistribution is proper, and how much the economy can sustain. Obama's critics contend that his budget will take so much from the people and institutions driving economic growth that it's "dangerous," to quote Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.).

    They suggest that wealthy investors and entrepreneurs won't work so hard to help the economy if they get to keep less of the bounty, like the striking industrialists in an Ayn Rand novel.

    Consider economist Larry Kudlow, who last week declared that "raising the marginal tax rate on successful earners, capital, dividends and all the private [investment] funds is a function of Obama's left-wing social vision."

    Kudlow, who holds forth in this vein every day on CNBC, claimed that hornbook economics teaches that "countries that spend more produce less, while nations that tax less produce more."

    But Kudlow sang a different tune last September, when he spoke up in favor of the big bank bailout. "Once every few decades or a couple of times a century," he said in an exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont socialist, "even conservatives have to use government" -- prompting Sanders to congratulate him for joining the socialist ranks.

    Furthermore, the supposed link between high government spending and reduced growth is imaginary.

    "No matter how you torture the data, there is no negative relationship between a commitment to a welfare state and the rate of growth in how well off we are," Peter Lindert, an economist at UC Davis and a leading student of the subject, told me recently. "There really is no case for saying that what Obama is proposing will damage economic growth."

    To be fair, some people don't think Obama can collect all the money he needs by raising rates only on incomes over $250,000. "He's going to reach down, and people making more than $100,000 will pay more," predicts Kip Dellinger, a Westside certified public accountant. Throw in a payroll tax hike to shore up programs such as Medicare and Social Security, he said, and the combined maximum tax bite on top earners could approach 60% -- "and that would have a really negative impact on economic growth." He thinks the middle class will end up getting socked if the Obama budget becomes reality.

    Still, in both economic and social terms, the consequences of America's rising income inequality have been dire. Wages stagnated while the money that otherwise would have gone to workers went instead to shareholders and overcompensated CEOs.

    This deprived lower- and middle-income Americans of purchasing power; to maintain their standard of living they -- all right, we -- took to borrowing on our credit cards and home equity. The harvest is today's credit crisis and a dizzying falloff in consumption.

    The income inequality trend has had a socially corrosive effect. Friedman, the economist, observed in 2006 that the period from 1953 to 1973, when median family income doubled, was one of great social progress, encompassing the civil rights movement and President Johnson's Great Society program.

    Over the following decades, however, stagnating incomes for most Americans brought "a fraying of the U.S. social fabric," Friedman wrote. Public opinion turned sharply against immigration, affirmative action and welfare, with attacks on the latter program displaying "a vindictive spirit that was highly uncharacteristic of the United States in the postwar era."

    Obama's proposed budget, by reversing the transfer of wealth from lower- and middle-income Americans to the wealthy imposed by the Bush tax cuts and by the economic mantras of a generation, won't in itself restore a sustainable balance to the economy, but it will start the process.

    Better-paid workers will be better able to consume goods and services without going into debt, and the frenetic search for profits in financial engineering, rather than in productivity and innovation, will fade. And we'll know whether the talk of "class warfare" echoing so widely today represents the roar of a permanent overclass, or the death rattle of the old guard.

t r u t h o u t | Obama Skews Battle Lines in "Class War"

Don't believe it when the talking heads tell you Obama is tanking. It's another lie.

Daily Kos: Shocking Gallup Poll Suggests Obama Should Keep His Day Job

Israeli ban on sending pasta to Gaza illustrates frictions | McClatchy Washington Bureau

JERUSALEM — For more than seven weeks, the international aid group Mercy Corps has been trying to send 90 tons of macaroni to the isolated Gaza Strip as part of a global campaign to help the 1.4 million Palestinians there rebuild their lives after Israel's recent devastating 22-day military operation.

Israel, which controls most of what goes into and out of Gaza, has said no repeatedly.

At first, Israeli officials said that they wanted to make sure that the macaroni wasn't destined for a Hamas charity. Then they said macaroni was banned because they didn't consider it an essential food item.

On Wednesday, days after American lawmakers raised pointed questions about the macaroni ban, Israeli authorities said that they were preparing to give the pasta a green light.

For the international aid community, the dispute is emblematic of the red tape and political maneuvering that have stymied efforts to rebuild Gaza.

"We're at the end of our rope," said David Holdridge, the head of Middle East emergency relief efforts for Mercy Corps. "This is just ridiculous. It's absolutely absurd."

The Israeli restrictions are expected to be a central issue in the coming days when George Mitchell, President Barack Obama's new Middle East special envoy, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrive in the region for discussions about how to help Gaza without strengthening Hamas, its hard-line Islamist ruler.

"Aid should never be used as a political weapon," State Department spokesman Robert Wood said Wednesday in Washington. "We'll try to push to get into Gaza as many supplies as possible."

The macaroni standoff drew the attention of U.S. lawmakers who made a rare trip last week to the Gaza Strip.

"Is someone going to kill you with a piece of macaroni?" Rep. Brian Baird, a Washington state Democrat who joined Minnesota Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison in visiting Gaza, reportedly said after hearing about the aid restrictions.

Along with macaroni, Israel has prevented aid groups that are helping Gaza from sending in everything from paper and crayons to tomato paste and lentils.

As international donors prepare to meet next week in Egypt to discuss a massive, coordinated global rebuilding initiative, Israel is making it clear that it will block any projects that could help Hamas.

Israeli objections are expected to prevent Gaza's residents from reconstructing all the major government buildings that Israeli strikes destroyed, including the Palestinian Authority Gaza City parliament building, the presidential compound on the Mediterranean coast and police stations.

"We want to make sure that reconstruction for the people of Gaza is not reconstruction for the Hamas regime," said Mark Regev, a spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

Ever since Hamas seized military control of Gaza in 2007 — by ousting forces loyal to pragmatic Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas — after it swept parliamentary elections the year before, Israel has effectively frozen most international development work by preventing most building materials from getting into Gaza.

Israel's latest military campaign in Gaza caused an estimated $2 billion in damage. Palestinian Authority officials estimate that 4,000 homes were destroyed and another 17,000 were damaged.

At the upcoming donor conference, the major players are expected to confront the difficult question of how to rebuild Gaza while sidelining Hamas.

Abbas' allies are floating a plan to channel money directly to the thousands of Gazans who lost their homes. So long as Hamas and Abbas remain at odds, Gaza's rulers are likely to resist any rebuilding plans that they see as undermining their power.

Egypt is trying to broker a new round of talks to reunite Abbas and Hamas, but there are few signs that the two sides are prepared to set aside their differences quickly and reconcile. Also, so long as Hamas refuses to renounce its stated goal of destroying Israel, it's likely to continue to face international isolation.

Beyond rebuilding Gazan homes, it isn't clear what will be done to reconstruct the dozens of factories and businesses that Israeli strikes destroyed.

Israel also is concerned that Hamas will seize aid coming into Gaza, as the group did earlier this month, when it took thousands of blankets and hundreds of food packages from a United Nations warehouse in Gaza.

Hamas returned the goods after the United Nations refugee agency suspended deliveries of aid in Gaza, but the incident remains a concern for the United Nations and aid groups who are working there.

Each day, Israeli and United Nations officials sit down together in an office in Tel Aviv, Israel, to debate what the most important things are to let into Gaza: tents for the thousands of Palestinians who don't have homes now or glass to replace the windows that the Israeli attacks shattered? Should shoes take priority over first aid kits? Is it more important to bring in diapers or shovels?

"We're at the stage now where, for all of us in the humanitarian aid community, this is an unacceptable process," said Charles Clayton, the head of the Association of International Development Agencies, an umbrella organization that represents 75 groups. "It's not the details, it's the entire process which is unacceptable."

Israeli ban on sending pasta to Gaza illustrates frictions | McClatchy Washington Bureau