Category Archives: Government

A Fine Example Of An Arizona Conservative.

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Last Tuesday, a federal jury convicted former Arizona Congressman “Slick” Rick Renzi on 17 counts, including wire fraud, conspiracy, extortion, racketeering, money laundering and making false statements to insurance regulators. He was acquitted on 15 other felony charges because some evidence was ruled inadmissible.

I was especially interested in the outcome of the case, since the Republican’s conviction confirmed my character judgment. You see, Renzi represented my congressional district, and I became convinced of his corruption after my very first exposure to Mr. Slick. Indeed, only months afterward, rumors of Renzi’s abuse of power began to surface.

Renzi was indicted on charges that, while in office, he tried to force a mining company to purchase a former business associate’s land as part of a federal land exchange for copper mining. When the mining company balked, he engineered another federal land swap that included a payment of $4.6 million for land owned by James Sandlin, who then paid Renzi $733,000 for his help.

Renzi was also charged with embezzling more than $400,000 of customer premiums from his insurance business in order to fund his 2002 congressional campaign.

“Former Congressman Renzi’s streak of criminal activity was a betrayal of the public trust and abuse of the political process,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Mythili Raman of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division in a statement released after the verdict. “Mr. Renzi now faces the consequences for breaking the laws that he took an oath to support and defend.”

Sadly, Renzi’s conviction isn’t the end of political corruption in Arizona. But it’s a start.

Sore Losers.

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Following the expansion of Medicaid in Arizona, which was pushed by a very conservative governor and passed by a bipartisan coalition of both Republican and Democratic legislators, the so-called “patriots” of the Tea Party are trying every trick in the book to overturn majority rule.

They are threatening to collect enough signatures to put the measure on the ballot in 2014. Even if voters refuse to overturn it, the expansion would be delayed nearly a year after it’s supposed to take effect as part of the Affordable Care Act. At the same time, the very conservative Goldwater Institute and the ultra conservative Center for Arizona Policy are threatening to sue the state if the bill is implemented. That, too, could hold up the expansion of Medicaid in Arizona.

The irony of all this is that, not six months ago, our “scorpion-eating” Governor Brewer was idolized by the Tea Party Parasites of Arizona. Now these people are crying foul. They claim that they were bullied and ignored…in the same way they’ve treated Democrats in the legislature.

Truth is, all these people really care about is their own narrow ideology. They could care less about democracy and the founding principles they claim to hold so dear. They could care less about the people of Arizona.

They’ve been exposed as the spoiled bullies they really are.

Arizona Turned Upside-Down.

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Mark it down. On Thursday, June 13, 2013, the Earth stood still! The clouds parted. The impossible became possible. Red turned blue. Blue turned red. Tempers cooled, even if the temperatures didn’t.

In a brief moment of clarity and political sanity, moderate Republicans joined Democrats at the behest of our finger-wagging Governor Brewer to pass a state budget that includes an expansion of Medicaid. It was a victory for bipartisanship, responsible government and “Obamacare.”

As a result, tens of thousands more Arizonans will have healthcare insurance.

Of course, the Teapublican legislators are apoplectic. For hours, extending through the evening and into the early morning, they railed against Obamacare and the federal government. They labeled the moderate Republicans and Governor Brewer as traitors. They said they were betrayed; bullied; treated as a minority. Hmmm…as the old saying goes, it seems these Tea Party Parasites finally got a taste of their own medicine. (Pun intended.)

Thank you Governor Brewer and moderate Republicans. Your display of bipartisanship and common sense was great! Unfortunately, I fear the attitude won’t last.

Scandalrama!

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As the Teapublican House, led by witch-hunter-in-chief, Darrell Issa, looks under every rug and in every nook and cranny for dirt on Fast & Furious, Benghazi, Tea Party applications for non-profit status, the NSA, and anything else that can be used as a hammer against the Obama administration, the real work of Congress languishes.

The House still has not resolved the federal budget and the debt ceiling. It has not yet brought sanity to the nonsensical sequester cuts. It has not proposed a single bill to create jobs and lower unemployment. It has not proposed a bill to rebuild and modernize our infrastructure. It has not yet passed a bill to reduce or eliminate the waiting time for veterans’ benefits. It has not yet passed an immigration bill.

The House has not considered tax reform to eliminate loopholes that would prevent multinational corporations to stash cash in offshore tax havens. It has not passed a bill to end the senseless gun violence. It has not passed a bill to close loopholes in background checks or to control the straw buyers who provide guns to gangs and drug cartels. It hasn’t even proposed a solution for climate change caused by increasing CO2 emissions.

Teapublican congressional representatives have largely ignored all substantive issues. Instead, they have focused on trumped-up “scandals,” the repeal of “Obamacare” and a myriad of restrictive social issues all revolving around women’s vaginas. As always, they seem fascinated by the “evils” of sexual orientation and the rights of the unborn.

Meanwhile, they ignore the rights and the needs of the already living.

Rx For Economic Depression And World War.

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Last week, the Romney-Ryan campaign released its plan for the transition of power from the Obama administration had they won the 2012 election as they expected. Titled the Romney Readiness Project 2012, the 138-page report reads more like a plan to destroy our nation than to lead it forward.

Among the recommendations were 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts for individuals and 10 percent cuts for corporations. The plan also recommended eliminating labor agreements in federal contracts, eliminating regulations on Big Coal and Big Oil, repealing “Obamacare” while quietly maintaining its cuts to Medicare, cutting Medicaid by offering block grants to states, and “voucherizing” Medicare.

As for foreign relations, the report recommended restoring military funding to pre-sequestration levels, confronting China’s trade policies and designating it as a currency manipulator, sustaining troop levels in Afghanistan beyond 2014, asserting US military might in Syria, and confronting Russia over human rights and its support of Syria and Iran.

In other words, Romney would have dramatically cut revenues while greatly increasing expenses (And you thought Teapublicans were concerned by deficits!).  At the same time, he would have tried to bully other nations, including some of our allies.

By re-electing President Obama, we very likely dodged a bullet…literally!

Big Oil And Its Worldwide Oiligarchy.

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If oligarchy is a power structure in which all political power effectively rests with a few people, Oiligarchy is the perfect term to describe what has become the most powerful industry on Earth. Since World War II, Chevron, Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell and others have gained increasing control over the US government, along with our foreign policy and our military.

Oiligarchy operatives and lobbyists are a virtual Who’s Who of American politics, including Presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan, as well as former Secretaries of State James Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Condoleezza Rice, former Vice President Dick Cheney, Senator Bob Dole, former Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle, former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft, former CIA Director James Woolsey, and many, many, many others.

Their connections to the oily empire are deep. Richard “The Dick” Cheney was previously CEO of oil giant Halliburton. Condoleezza Rice served on the board of Chevron and even had an oil supertanker named in her honor. And before Dubya failed as president, he experienced multiple failures in the oil business.

At times, these people have sided with Big Oil at the expense of national security, the environment and human rights. Indeed, the oil companies’ greed, along with our thirst for cheap gasoline has resulted in wars, dictatorships, genocides, toppled governments and a growing worldwide hatred of the US.

Following the Cheney-inspired Project for a New American Century, Bush, Cheney and their minions helped Big Oil elbow its way into the Caucasus and Caspian Sea regions in order to steal oil from Russia and keep it from Iran. In the process, we took the side of Chechen rebels who were led by Muslim extremists in their fight for secession from Russia.

The war in Afghanistan was preceded by US demands for an oil pipeline across that country. The war in Iraq was a cynical and clumsy attempt to control Iraqi oil. Even our unyielding support for Israel seems driven less by a desire to protect Israel from its Arab neighbors than by Big Oil’s desire to have a powerful ally near Middle East oil fields. And in an especially cynical move, US-backed Big Oil and Russia are in a race to lay claim to Arctic drilling as the polar ice cap melts. (Ironically, oil-caused global warming is creating an opportunity to capture and burn even more oil!)

Not content with its lethal impact on international politics, Big Oil has set its sights on further destroying our environment in its quest for ever larger profits. The Oiligarchy is demanding that the Obama administration approve the Keystone XL pipeline, which is intended to carry oil from the newly-fracked oil fields in North Dakota and the tar sands of Alberta, Canada to refineries in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast. The claim is that the pipeline will create “tens of thousands” of new jobs in the US, but a review by the Cornell University Global Labor Institute estimated that the pipeline would add only 506 to 1,387 new jobs.

In exchange for that meager number of jobs, Big Oil wants us to risk the inevitable spills of a substance the EPA says is virtually impossible to clean up. The US has already experienced at least two spills of the particularly dirty and gooey tar sands oil. In one of the spills, a pipeline belched 200,000 gallons of oil into a Michigan river. Nearly three years later, the oil has sunk to the bottom of the river and has not biodegraded. It likely never will.

Worse yet, the bituminous oil from tar sands is often referred to as “junk oil.” As a fuel source, it is terribly inefficient, creating an inordinate amount of pollution relative to the energy it provides. Once it flows (or more accurately, oozes) onto the market, it will dramatically increase greenhouse gases, leading environmental experts to state that it will be “game over” for our planet.

Big Oil doesn’t seem to care.

Spending billions in attempts to elect subservient politicians, to lobby Congress and to confuse voters, Big Oil owners like the Koch brothers deny the impact of fossil fuels on climate change. Ignoring the findings of almost every climate scientist in the world, they and their bought-and-paid-for politicians claim that climate change is “unsettled science,” a “sham,” the “greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people.”

If they’re wrong (and it’s almost certain they are), they won’t pay the price. But our planet and most of its inhabitants will.

Darrell Issa Has Long Been An Expert On Lies And Corruption.

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It seems that Rep. Darrell Issa sees lies and corruption everywhere in the Obama administration; Fast & Furious, Benghazi, IRS and AP. Yet after months of “investigations” Issa has yet to find any evidence of White House involvement in these scandals.

In fact, to use the term “scandal” is a misnomer.

So why is Issa so intent on seeking evidence of corruption when even members of his own party say there is no there there? Aside from the obvious political motivation to discredit the president, it may be because Issa has walked a rather shady path in his own life. Indeed, few are more inclined to expect to find corrupt activities than someone who has committed many of his own.

To wit, Issa lied about his military record. He was indicted by a grand jury for the alleged theft of a Maserati. After being stopped for driving the wrong way on a one-way street, he was charged with carrying a concealed weapon and pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of an unregistered firearm. He was indicted a second time for grand theft auto, but the prosecution dropped the case.

Issa’s personal fortune stems from Steal Stopper, a company he obtained through foreclosure when its founder missed a payment on a $60,000 loan. But the company’s offices and factory were destroyed by fire. A fire investigation found that the fire had started in two places aided by an accelerant such as gasoline. Interestingly, Issa was accused of increasing the fire insurance policy by 462% just a few weeks earlier and of removing computer equipment containing accounting and customer information prior to the fire.

Suspicious of an apparent arson, the insurance company paid about one-tenth the insured amount, which still was enough to provide Issa with a tidy profit. Issa later rebuilt the company and sold it to a California-based maker of car alarms making himself wealthy.

And this is the guy who, as Chair of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, is now in charge of Congressional investigations? It would seem that if Issa is serious about finding corruption, he’d be more successful by investigating himself.

New Poll Finds 33 Percent Of Americans Are Batcrap Crazy!

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A recent HuffPost/YouGov poll found that 44 percent of Americans view Rep. Michele Bachmann unfavorably while 33 percent had a favorable view of one America’s most ignorant and batcrap crazy politicians!

That tells us less about Bachmann than American voters.

Keep in mind, this is the woman who confused John Wayne with John Wayne Gacy; who believed “the shot heard ’round the world” for American independence took place in Concord, New Hampshire; that the slave-owning Founders “worked tirelessly to end slavery;” that an overabundance of CO2 in our atmosphere is harmless; that the Census is a government plot to round up dissenters; that Congress is full of communists; that evolution is just a theory.

During her six years in office, Bachmann has had only one bill passed by the House – the repeal of “Obamacare” – and none signed into law. Indeed, even fellow Minnesota politician, Tim Pawlenty described Bachmann as having “a legislative record of offering failed amendments.”

That’s being kind.

As leader of the Tea Party delegation in Congress, Bachmann presided over the most destructive element in US history. She is the leader of the misguided, the uneducated, the uninformed, the misinformed and the heavily armed. She and her colleagues measure success by how much legislation they can block; how completely they can destroy safety nets for the poor and the vulnerable; how completely they can undermine education; how thoroughly they can destroy our own government.

She and her Tea Party parasites even held hostage the faith and credit of the US Treasury, causing the US to lose its AAA bond rating for the first time in history. And, even though she has announced that she won’t seek re-election, she’s not done. She still has more than a year to cause further obstruction and destruction.

And she has the support of 33 percent of Americans??? God help us.

Do You Believe In Magic?

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who has reported from war zones and written a number of powerful books about our culture. I was fascinated by his recent interview on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, during which he addressed some of the cultural idiocy that exists in the US.

Hedges decried the media’s tendency to cover sensational stories over substance. He also discussed unfettered capitalism, domination of US media by a half dozen corporations, and the Christian right’s use of the despair created by the Great Recession and lasting unemployment in order to drive Americans into a non-reality-based belief system.

“I think we have powerful proto-fascist movements in this country,” said Hedges, “and I look at the Tea Party, the militia and the Christian right, where they celebrate the language of violence, they celebrate the gun culture, and they channel what I would describe as a very legitimate rage, and a legitimate sense of betrayal towards the vulnerable; towards Muslims; towards undocumented workers; towards homosexuals, intellectuals, feminists, liberals…they have a long list of people they don’t like. And I think that remains a very powerful and frightening undercurrent in American society.”

“What you get when you enter that kind of ideological belief system, you no longer deal with reality. You believe in magic,” Hedges continued. “You believe that Jesus will intervene to protect you and promote you, and then it becomes impossible to have a kind of rational discussion, for instance, with people who believe that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.”

To make the point, Hedges noted that he visited the Creationist Museum where dinosaurs are displayed alongside Adam and Eve in a representation of the Garden of Eden. In discussing his tour of the park, Hedges recalled a guide saying, “I suppose you wonder why the T-Rex had such big teeth.” She explained that it was because “Adam and Eve needed the T-Rex to open the coconuts.”  When a child asked how Noah had managed to get the dinosaurs onto his Ark, the tour guide responded that “Noah only took the dinosaur babies.”

Hedges stated that this kind of walking away from science is what allows totalitarian systems to thrive. One of the concerns is the Christian right’s lust for apocalyptic violence. He said, “It’s almost a celebration of the destroying of a world that almost destroyed them.”

As for the state of our government, Hedges stated, “We have the facade of the democratic state, and yet we’ve undergone a corporate coup d’etat in slow motion.”

For more insights from Chris Hedges check out his weekly column at www.truthdig.com.

Colbert Exposes Abuses Of The 501(c)4.

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Although known for his comedy, Stephen Colbert has shown an aptitude for investigative journalism that surpasses many of the so-called “legitimate” news operations. His reporting on the IRS “scandal” is but the latest example.

Long before traditional news organizations began reporting on the abuses of political PACs and Super PACs, Colbert exposed the inappropriateness of political organizations being awarded 501(c)4 status. Following the lead of Karl Rove, Sarah Palin and hundreds of right wing groups, Colbert formed his own 501(c)4 called the Colbert Super PAC SHH! in 2011. By simply signing a few papers with the help of Republican attorney and former chairman of the Federal Elections Commission, Trevor Potter, Colbert legally declared his organization a non-profit and began collecting hundreds of thousands of dollars. According to Potter, he did not have to reveal the names of his donors. He did not have to adhere to spending limits. The only restriction was that he could not directly coordinate his expenditures with any candidates.

Interestingly, he never actually filed a 1024 form to request tax-exempt status from the IRS. (Of course, neither did many other Super PACs.) But now that the IRS is under investigation, Colbert realized that he, along with thousands of Tea Party groups, could file the form with the assurance that the IRS would not dare deny it while the IRS, itself, was under investigation. So Colbert filed the form under the new name Making-America-A-Better-Tea-Party-Patriot-9/12-Place-To-Constitution-America-Tea-Party-Nominally-Social-Welfare-Conservative-Political-Action-Tea-Party-Secret-Money-Liberty-I-Dare-You-To-Deny-This-Application-Of-America-Tea-Party.

Once again, Colbert has exposed the reality of 501(c)4s and the absurdity of our political system.

To be clear, the 501(c)4 designation was never intended to be used by political groups…not even by satirical groups such as Colbert’s. It was intended for use by genuine charities that serve the public interest and need to keep their donors anonymous so that the donors would not be hounded by thousands of other charities seeking funding.

But the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision unleashed a torrent of political groups claiming non-profit status so that corporations could keep their political donations anonymous. Not long afterward, the Tea Party movement began swamping the already understaffed IRS with thousands of requests for non-profit status. Is it any wonder, then, that the IRS chose to target these groups for extra scrutiny? What public good did the groups serve beyond providing cover for anonymous donors who wanted to use their money to attack political opponents and affect the outcome of elections?

Whether the IRS decision to request more information was politically-motivated is still unclear. But two things are clear: The IRS should scrutinize such groups, denying 501(c)4 status to those groups that are primarily political, like…say…the Tea Party. And Stephen Colbert is a unique talent.