On Guns -- and Shootings and Killings -- In America

There aren't two sides to this issue of guns in America.

There's sensible people who know we need solutions and then there are the weapons supporters, putting guns and gun ownership over human life. That's it. That's all there is.

Quote of the Day -- On Guns In America

"Today it's a tragedy in Boulder, Colorado. This past weekend it was a house party in Philadelphia. And last week it was an armed attack on Asian American women in the Atlanta area.

It doesn't have to be this way. It’s beyond time for our leaders to take action." --Gabrielle Giffords @GabbyGiffords

Republican Party Policies

38,000 gun deaths a year in US: who needs gun control?

2 cases of voter fraud in 2020: let’s pass 253 new voter suppression laws --Ari Berman @AriBerman

Republicans Reached a New Low Yesterday

On the same day 7 women and 1 man were gunned down by a 21 year old madman in Atlanta, Georgia after purchasing a 9mm handgun EARLIER THAT DAY at a local gun shop, 172 Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act. The very same day. Unconscionable.

Republicans are NOT for Americans or America. They are for themselves and their own political party and money and power, period. That's it. Know this, America. Then let's vote them out.

The Real Reason Republicans Are Against Biden's COVID Relief Proposal

Yes, the Republicans say things about being concerned about the budget and that's why they're proposing a smaller and honestly weaker COVID relief plan but Robert Reich gets this correct.

The Real Reason the GOP Don’t Want Biden’s Plan? They Fear It Will Work

Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans' utter failures on COVID and jobs

A bit from the article:

Ten Senate Republican have proposed a COVID relief bill of about $600 billion. That’s less than a third of Biden’s plan. They promise "bipartisan support" if he agrees.

Their proposal isn’t a compromise. It would be a total surrender. It trims direct payments and unemployment aid that Americans desperately need. Biden should reject it out of hand.

Republicans say America can’t afford Biden’s plan. “We just passed a program with over $900 billion in it,” groused Senator Mitt Romney.

Rubbish. We can’t afford not to. Millions of people are hurting.

Besides, with the economy in the doldrums it’s no time to worry about too much spending. The best way to reduce the debt as a share of the economy is to get the economy growing again.

Beyond COVID relief, Biden has other proposals waiting in the wings, such as repairing aging infrastructure and building a new energy-efficient one. These would make the economy grow even faster over the long term—further reducing the debt’s share.

There’s no chance that public spending will “crowd out” private investment. If you hadn’t noticed, borrowing is especially cheap right now. Money is sloshing around the world in search of borrowers.

It’s hard to take Republican concerns about debt seriously when just four years ago they had zero qualms about enacting one of the largest tax cuts in history, largely for big corporations and the super-wealthy.

If they really don’t want to add to the debt, they have another alternative: A tax on super-wealthy Americans...

The total wealth of America’s 660 billionaires has grown by a staggering $1.1 trillion since the start of the pandemic, a 40 percent increase. They alone could finance almost all of Biden’s COVID relief package and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. So why not a temporary emergency COVID wealth tax?

Let’s be honest. The real reason Republicans don’t want Biden’s plan is they fear it will work.

This would be the Republican’s worst nightmare: All the anti-government claptrap they’ve been selling since Ronald Reagan will be revealed as nonsense.

Government isn’t the problem and never was. Bad government is the problem, and Americans have just had four years of it. Biden’s success would put into sharp relief Trump and Republicans’ utter failures on COVID and jobs.

If Biden gets his plans through, he and the Democrats would reap the political rewards in 2022 and beyond.Democrats might even capture the presidency and Congress for a generation. After FDR rescued America, the Republican Party went dark for two decades.

Further proof new President Joe Biden's plans and ideas are good and positive? 

Bolstering Reconciliation Case, Study Shows $15 Wage Would Boost Federal Budget By $65 Billion

Added to this, Joe Biden has only been President just shy of 2 weeks and his popularity is soaring, by any comparison, whether to the previous orange President or nearly any other.

Biden's Popularity Is Surging 

This is how Americans feel on our most pressing issue of the day, too.

Poll: 73 percent say Biden administration will do a good job handling coronavirus vaccine distribution

Joe Biden won by such a large margin in this election and he's so popular presently, Republicans are moving in 28 different states now, again, to make it even harder for Americans---you and I--to vote. 

Republicans Push to Make Voting Harder

The fewer people vote, the more likely they, Republicans, can get into government office and stay there. Wrap your head around that.

So don't think for a moment anyone in the Republican Party is concerned just now about keeping the national debt lower. Oh, no. They're concerned for the their own political party and for their own power, nation and people be damned, as we keep seeing from them over time, repeatedly.

Additional links to further Republican Party ugliness:

All 10 GOP Senators Behind Skimpy $600 Billion Covid Relief Offer Happily Voted for $740 Billion Military Budget

Meanwhile, we can do this.

'We Have Got to Act Now': As GOP Introduces Weak Relief Bill, Sanders Says Dems Already Have Enough Votes to Pass Stronger Package

I say again, why anyone, anyone from the middle or lower classes considers themselves a Republican and votes that way is beyond me. WAY beyond me.

Additional links:

Trump Tax Cuts Helped Billionaires Pay Less Taxes

Trump's 2017 Tax Cuts Helped Super-rich Pay Lower Rate

Trump Tax Cuts Have Failed To Deliver On GOP's Promises

Study: Trump Tax Cuts Failed to Help Anybody But the Wealthy

Trickle-Down Economics: Four Reasons Why It Just Doesn't Work

Robert B. Reich: Trickle-down economics doesn’t work

Trickle-down theory is a monstrous lie

Quote of the Day -- On Today's Republican Party

From George Orwell, born June 25, 1903

“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. 

The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. 

We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. 

The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. 

We are not like that. 

We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. 

Power is not a means; it is an end. 

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. 

Now you begin to understand me.” 

― George Orwell, "1984"

More Reports From Brownbackistan Today

Once again, Kansas and Republican Governor Sam Brownback are in the news--never in good ways, dependably, unfortunately, even tragically. And once again, it's from and in The New York Times‎. Seems the good Guv wants to get his hands on the state courts:



Courts Budget Intensifies Kansas Dispute Over Powers

The fight between Gov. Sam Brownback of Kansas and the state’s judicial branch has escalated, with the governor last week signing into law a bill that could strip state courts of their funding.

 

The measure, at the end of a lengthy bill that allocated money for the judiciary this year, stipulates that if a state court strikes down a 2014 law that removed some powers from the State Supreme Court, the judiciary will lose its funding.

 

The 2014 law took the authority to appoint district court judges from the Supreme Court and gave it to the district courts themselves. It also deprived the state’s highest court of the right to set district court budgets. Critics said the law was an attempt by Mr. Brownback, a Republican, to stack the district courts with judges who may be more favorable to his policies.

 

The budget bill that Mr. Brownback signed on Thursday was related only to the judiciary. He said he wanted to ensure that the courts would remain open while lawmakers sparred over the larger budget issues. Lawmakers have been debating how to fill a $400 million shortfall, which will most likely require tax increases that Mr. Brownback and many in the conservative-dominated Legislature oppose. If a budget is not passed by Sunday, state workers may be furloughed.

 

But in passing a separate budget bill to keep the third branch of government from shutting down, Republican lawmakers took the opportunity to insert language that would shield the 2014 law.

 

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Matthew Menendez, counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, which is helping to represent a Kansas judge who is challenging the constitutionality of the 2014 law. “It seems pretty clear that these mechanisms have been an effort by the governor and the Legislature to try and get a court system that is more in line with their philosophy.”

 

Richard E. Levy, a constitutional law professor at the University of Kansas, likened the measure in the judiciary budget bill to Congress’s passing a law outlawing abortion and then telling the judicial branch that it will lose its funding if it finds the law unconstitutional.

 

“That kind of threat to the independence of the judiciary strikes me as invalid under the separation of powers principle,” Mr. Levy said in an interview on Friday.

Can you imagine what the Republicans would be saying and, in fact, how loudly they'd be screaming if a governor in Kansas tried to pull such governmental stunts while they were in office?

What part of "small government" is this, exactly?

How "conservative" is this?

Let's be clear here, Governor Sam Brownback is a power-hungry, governmental abuser. There's nothing he doesn't want to get his hands on and control and/or change and to his and his political party's and their supporter's own benefit.

The fact is, if a governor from the Democratic Party tried to do or did all the things he's either done or tried to accomplish, he and his entire Republican Party would be screaming that they're "big government" kooks. There is nothing remotely small government or Conservative about this guy, what he's done, what he's doing or what he is trying to achieve. And it's all for himself, his own temporary power, his political party and the wealthy and corporations in Kansas it can benefit.

Kansans need, desperately, to vote all these Right Wing extremists out of office, post haste. The damage they and the Republican Party have put on that state has been bad enough already, as we keep seeing.

Where We Are, Where We Could Be

What we're actually capable of, now.

If only we'd work together.

Imagine.

Why we must fight to get the big money out of our government

Why we must fight to end campaign contributions in elections in America.

Quote of the day

If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power." ~Dwight D Eisenhower, Remarks at the forth annual Republican Women's National Conference (6 March 1956)

An important history lesson

As a nation, we learned our lesson(s). Then we unlearned them, unfortunately. Have a great weekend, y'all.

Airports don't have backup generators?

What is that about? And guess what midwestern, international airport is just about to get them? Need a clue? Link: http://www.kansascity.com/2011/10/25/3227923/power-out-at-kcis-terminal-b-delta.html

"Anonymous" seems to be a collective outgrowth of Banksy

Doesn't it?

Congress yet again cedes more power to the Executive Branch

In this latest move by the Republican leaders in Washington on the debt ceiling negotiations, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell came up with the brainy idea of allowing President Obama to have the authority on his own to raise the debt ceiling in case Congress can't get an agreement done in time. Besides the fact that he's catching heck now from his own party and the Right Wingers in it for doing this, it's also blatantly a cowardly way to not really handle the situation, on the part of Congress, but to flip it to the Executive Branch so their "fingerprints" are all over whatever happens, instead, so that opposing party can blame him, later, for what happens. It's pitiful. This is just more in a long line of instances where Congress cedes yet more power to the Executive Branch, then later they complain that the Executive in office, whoever it is at the time, has or takes too much power and doesn't give them enough to do. This is no way to run a government. Or a country. Link: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/mcconnell-proposal-gives-obama-power-to-increase-debt-limit/; http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/fury-mcconnell-outlines-plan-obama-raise-debt-ceiling-204213811.html;_ylt=ApuwJXpL67V2AY7D5dJ2s3T59XQA;_ylu=X3oDMTN1YmtsbGtkBGNjb2RlA3ZzaGFyZWFnMnVwcmVzdARwa2cDYTYwZGVhMmEtYTVkNS0zZTZkLWEwNTktNGMxMzZmMzc3YjY5BHBvcwM5BHNlYwNuZXdzX2Zvcl95b3UEdmVyA2VjYjYxOWYwLWFjZmYtMTFlMC1iZjdiLTMxZjFhNmJlN2QzZg--;_ylg=X3oDMTJyZjRvZHM5BGludGwDdXMEbGFuZwNlbi11cwRwc3RhaWQDNDQyMjA3ODktNzQwNS0zNDJjLThiMWQtYmNkZjAwYTNhZmFmBHBzdGNhdANwb2xpdGljcwRwdANzdG9yeXBhZ2U-;_ylv=3

Quote of the day--on rich v everyone else

"You can’t fight something with nothing. But as long as Democrats refuse to talk about the almost unprecedented buildup of income, wealth, and power at the top – and the refusal of the super-rich to pay their fair share of the nation’s bills – Republicans will convince people it’s all about government and unions."


--Robert Reich,  Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, author,  former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton, etc.


Link to original post:  http://robertreich.org/post/3476451774

Quote of the day--on corporate power

"Few would argue that corporations today are not only ubiquitous but have enormous power over our lives. Was it always like this? How did it get to be this way? And what are the implications of this situation for democracy? … Indeed, so much power and wealth has been amassed by corporations that they can be said to govern, presenting a mortal threat to our body politic. To use a medical analogy, when a surgeon cuts out a cancer, it's not to punish the cancer, it's to save the body. If we wish to prevent the total demise of democracy - rule by the people - then we must return corporations to their subservient role."    – Women's International League for Peace and Freedom


Quote appropriated here from a blog of which I've just become aware:   http://www.nocorprule.blogspot.com/

Since we're all talking democracy lately

While millions of ordinary Americans are struggling with unemployment and declining standards of living, the levers of real power have been all but completely commandeered by the financial and corporate elite. It doesn’t really matter what ordinary people want. The wealthy call the tune, and the politicians dance.   --Bob Herbert, Columnist, The New York Times

...and we let them.

We're cheering the Egyptians on this week but not paying attention to what our leaders, corporations and their money are doing to us and turning us into here at home, it seems.

Link to original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/12/opinion/12herbert.html?hp

Quote of the day--on what's important

"...what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame – but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others."  --President Barack Obama, in his speech in Arizona after the shooting that left 6 people dead and 14 wounded.


Link to complete text and original post:  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/13/us/politics/13obama-text.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha2

Men: On shifting sand?

"The yang of America’s labor force is this: over a 40-year career, a man earns $431,000 more than a woman on average, according to the Center for American Progress. The yin of America’s labor force is this: in this decade, for the first time in American history, men no longer inevitably dominate the labor force. Women were actually the majority of payroll employees for the five months that ended in March, according to one measure from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s mostly because about three-quarters of Americans who lost their jobs in the Great Recession were men." --Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times (see link below) When you add this kind of data to the fact that the former minorities are becoming the majority and that we have our first Black president, etc., etc., it's not a complete surprise that white, conservative, reactionary men resort to at least confusion, if not insecurity and, unfortunately, some ugliness (e.g., racism, etc.). That doesn't make it okay but it certainly helps explain a lot of their actions and reactions to our world of late. And I have news for ya'll on it---it's not going to get better. We're not going back to the way things were--or the way we think they were. Link to original post: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/22/opinion/22kristof.html?_r=1&hp

And now for something completely similar...

(With apologies to Monty Python's creators for appropriating their line).

Now, the latest energy news:

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A natural gas pipeline exploded in north Texas on Monday afternoon, CNN reported.

The blast was originally thought to be an oil well explosion.

An electrical crew was digging a hole when it struck the gas pipeline, an emergency services spokesman in Hood County, Texas, said.

WFAA-TV, the Dallas/Fort Worth station, reported three people were dead and 10 were unaccounted for after the blast.

People dying in large numbers in China, in coal mine explosions and collapses.

People dying in record numbers here, in the US, in the same.

An oil well explosion and leak in the Gulf of Mexico, creating the biggest natural disaster ever.

And now this.

Mind you, this last one is small (unless you're one of the 3 dead or one of their family or friends) but what is it going to take to point us all, as a nation--if not as a world--that we need to invest heavily in the far safer, cleaner and so, smarter solar power, particularly with photovoltaic cells?

If we all have these on our businesses and homes, along with new and better battery technology which, from what I understand is coming along pretty well, all things considered, we would need far less energy companies since we could create a lot of our own power through a calendar year.

Our air would be far cleaner. We would pollute far less, having gotten rid of coal, the transportation of coal and the burning of fossil fuels.

We could also, then, switch the jobs from out of coal mines with their requisite coal dust and health problems for the miners, to much better, cleaner jobs, perhaps installing the solar cells or some other, better, cleaner work.

Is it easy?

Certainly not.

Can we do it overnight?

Again, no way.

But do we need to do it?

I think we all know the answer to that is a resounding "yes".

And it would be "something completely different..."

Link to original post:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100607/us_nm/us_natgas_blast_texas