j_b

Classic propaganda poster. Just watch the "environmentalists are fascist pinkos" crowd claim they have always put the environment first.

Just imagine that, our civil rights are no worse than Mexico's. A country where drug lords execute 1000's of people every years. The teatards are getting desperate to justify racial profiling.

Anti-government psychopaths blame the deficit on an extremely successful federal program like Social Security that has a several trillion dollar surplus, and will only need minor tweaking to be sustainable through the end of this century, yet they won't say a word about the 10's of trillion dollar hole created by the policies THEY advocated like cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, perpetual war to control the flow of resources and the free for all financial markets shenanigans that have bankrupted the world economy and caused the loss of trillions in pensions and savings, as well as millions of jobs. The sleight of hand you expect people to swallow couldn't be any more obvious. Not only the policies you defended are responsible for the deficit, but it was all along the intention of the looters to destroy the integrity of government in order to "drown it in a bath tub" and better pillage the commons.

Looks like Adolf quickly ran out of arguments.

You agree with the Bush dead-enders even though nobody ever supported him, right? And spare us the one liner drivel. Even with cutting and paste, I still write 10X more in my own words than you can dream of.

Clearly, it's not like your reading what people post has ever elicited an intelligent response from you. So honestly, why should anyone care?

and now this: HUD is Trying to Privatize and Mortgage Off All of America’s Public Housing by George Lakoff The Obama Administration's move to the right is about to give conservatives a victory they could not have anticipated, even under Bush. HUD, under Obama, submitted legislation called PETRA to Congress that would result in the privatization of all public housing in America. The new owners would charge ten percent above market rates to impoverished tenants, money that would be mostly paid by the US government (you and me, the taxpayers). To maintain the property, the new owners would take out a mortgage for building repair and maintenance (like a home equity loan), with no cap on interest rates. With rents set above market rates, the mortgage risk would be attractive to banks. Either they make a huge profit on the mortgages paid for by the government. Or if the government lowers what it will pay for rents, the property goes into foreclosure. The banks get it and can sell it off to developers. Sooner or later, the housing budget will be cut back and such foreclosures will happen. The structure of the proposal and the realities of Washington make it a virtual certainty. The banks and developers make a fortune, with the taxpayers paying for it. The public loses its public housing property. The impoverished tenants lose their apartments, or have their rents go way up if they are forced into the private market. Homelessness increases. Government gets smaller. The banks and developers win. It is a Bank Bonanza! The poor and the public lose. And a precedent is set. The government can privatize any public property: Schools, libraries, national parks, federal buildings - just as has begun to happen in California, where the right-wing governor has started to auction off state property and has even suggested selling off the Supreme Court building. The rich will get richer, the poor and public get poorer. And the very idea of the public good withers. This is central to the conservative dream, in which there is no public good - only private goods. And it is a nightmare for democracy. The irony is that it is happening under the Obama administration. Barack Obama, running for office, gave perhaps the best and clearest characterization of what democracy is about. Democracy, he has said, is based on empathy - on citizens caring about and for each other. That is why we have principles like freedom and fairness for everyone. It is why social responsibility is necessary. The monstrous alternative is having a society where no one cares about or for anyone else. HUD, under the Obama administration, is about to take a giant step toward that monstrous society. [..] http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/21-1

How To Take Back A Stolen Election: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1129-26.htm Kerry won: http://onlinejournal.com/evoting/110504Palast/110504palast.html

you are finally catching on. It's about time.

I certainly don't, despite you gratuitous affirmations to the contrary. Conservatives in this forum were telling us "to get over it" (or something similar) after the Rethugs stole the 2000 and 2004 elections through disenfranchising of minority voters in Florida and Ohio. And spare us your little act of pretending to be even-handed toward all offenders of things proper, because you aren't.

As if we needed more evidence that teatards are mostly corporate tools.

contrarily to you, I don't have to make up stuff to point out the blatant hypocrisy of my political opponents.

Classic non-sequitur from the teatard. Representative Republic and democracy aren't mutually exclusive. Let's however note the lack of objection to the facts presented by Lindorff about SS. Let's remember that next time someone claims SS is a Ponzi scheme.

Look at the hypocrites who were telling us to "get over it" when the thugs stole the presidential elections in 2000 and 2004 now pretend there is a problem. No credibility, ZILCH.

Protecting Social Security by Dave Lindorff [..] Look at the latest study out of the Senate Special Committee on Aging titled: "Social Security Modernization: Options to Address Solvency and Benefit Adequacy." That just-released report, prepared by committee staff with the help of the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, lays out the shortfall facing Social Security as America's Baby Boomer population begins to retire. It concludes that the alternative to raising the retirement age to 70 from the current 66, increasing the already onerous Social Security payroll tax by another 1% of income for both employees and employers, and reducing the annual cost-of-living adjustment for benefits by 1% (meaning retirees would fall further and further behind the cost of living each year), would simply be to eliminate the cap on the income that is subject to the Social Security tax. Let me make that clear by putting it another way. The committee report states that if the Social Security tax applied to all income instead of just the first $106,000, as things stand now, then Social Security would be completely funded at least through 2075. In fact, instead of a $5.3 trillion shortfall, there would be a 16% surplus! The report states that even if those wealthy folks who had their higher incomes taxed were able to collect higher benefits--as much as $6000 a month in current dollars--the added tax dollars raised would still ensure that the system would remain funded through 2075 and beyond. Yet despite this obvious solution, we are continually warned in grave tones by the corporate media, by members of Congress, by President Obama and by Wall Street hucksters like Peter Peterson, that Social Security faces a crisis. We are continually told that benefits will have to be reduced, especially for current workers. We are continually told that the retirement age will have to be raised, so that people who work at strenuous, stressful, mind-numbing jobs will have to wait until they are 70 to slow down and spend time with their families. How in hell would you explain this in a high school civics class? Social Security, surely the single most popular program to come out of the New Deal in the 1930s, is currently the only thing keeping 44 percent of America's elderly out of poverty. Nearly a third of its benefits are paid to poor children who have lost the wage earner in their family, to widows, to the permanently disabled and to the extreme elderly. Twenty-five percent of beneficiaries depend upon Social Security payments for 90% of their incomes, thanks to the failure of most employers to offer any kind of a pension to their workers. This is, in short, a critical program that protects our elderly, our disabled and our poor. And it ensures everyone a basic income in their old age--an average of $1300 per month for life--and with very little overhead. Yet this program, currently underfunded, is in danger now. It is threatened not because of demographic changes, but because of corporate lobbyists and ideologues who want it killed. And these twisted, greedy people are desperately trying to keep the vast majority of American people who are depending upon Social Security for their old age from doing the logical thing, which is to tax the rich and make them and their employers pay the same flat rate that they pay on their income--15%--so that the system will be secure indefinitely." http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/05/19-7

Conflict of Interest Worries Raised in Spill Tests By IAN URBINA Local environmental officials throughout the Gulf Coast are feverishly collecting water, sediment and marine animal tissue samples that will be used in the coming months to help track pollution levels resulting from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said. Hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake, since those readings will be used by the federal government and courts to establish liability claims against BP. But the laboratory that officials have chosen to process virtually all of the samples is part of an oil and gas services company in Texas that counts oil firms, including BP, among its biggest clients. Some people are questioning the independence of the Texas lab. Taylor Kirschenfeld, an environmental official for Escambia County, Fla., rebuffed instructions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to send water samples to the lab, which is based at TDI-Brooks International in College Station, Tex. He opted instead to get a waiver so he could send his county’s samples to a local laboratory that is licensed to do the same tests. Mr. Kirschenfeld said he was also troubled by another rule. Local animal rescue workers have volunteered to help treat birds affected by the slick and to collect data that would also be used to help calculate penalties for the spill. But federal officials have told the volunteers that the work must be done by a company hired by BP. “Everywhere you look, if you look, you start seeing these conflicts of interest in how this disaster is getting handled,” Mr. Kirschenfeld said. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but there is just too much overlap between these people.” The deadly explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig last month has drawn attention to the ties between regulators and the oil and gas industry. Last week, President Obama said he intended to end their “cozy relationship,” partly by separating the safety function of regulators from their role in permitting drilling and collecting royalties. “That way, there’s no conflict of interest, real or perceived,” he said. Critics say a “revolving door” between industry and government is another area of concern. As one example, they point to the deputy assistant secretary for land and minerals management at the Interior Department, Sylvia V. Baca, who helps oversee the Minerals Management Service, which regulates offshore drilling She came to that post after eight years at BP, in a variety of senior positions, ranging from a focus on environmental initiatives to developing health, safety and emergency response programs. She also served in the Interior Department in the Clinton administration. Under Interior Department conflict-of-interest rules, she is prohibited from playing any role in decisions involving BP, including the response to the crisis in the gulf. But her position gives her some responsibility for overseeing oil and gas, mining and renewable energy operations on public and Indian lands. Officials in part of what will remain of the Minerals Management Service, after a major reorganization spurred by the events in the gulf, will continue to report to her. “When you see more examples of this revolving door between industry and these regulatory agencies, the problem is that it raises questions as to whose interests are being served,” said Mandy Smithberger, an investigator with the nonprofit watchdog group Project on Government Oversight. more: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/21/science/earth/21conflict.html

No only securing the border is a pipe-dream, but illegal immigration won't go away without reconsideration of trade policies that notably led to the loss of millions of farming jobs in Mexico thanks to corporate welfare for US agribusiness. Illegal immigration is a world wide issue; if capital and goods can move completely freely so should labor.

Only when the study ignores that illegal immigration is a felony. I'd like to see your source cited. when people like you mention crimes by illegals they don't mean being illegally in the US. Stop the charade.

Does that factor in the fact that being an illegal is illegal? Just saying. Probably not, but the people who claim that many illegals are criminal, pretend that it is about crime against American citizens and usually try very hard to avoid mentioning that illegal crime statistics are overwhelmingly about illegal immigration activities.

Source please. Since you have a history of only asking for sources as a diversion technique, I'll give you one source among many and see what you do with it before I proceed to your next request: "We find that the foreign-born, who make up about 35 percent of the adult population in California, constitute only about 17 percent of the adult prison population. Thus, immigrants are underrepresented in California prisons compared to their representation in the overall population. In fact, U.S.- born adult men are incarcerated at a rate over two-and-a-half times greater than that of foreign-born men. The difference only grows when we expand our investigation. When we consider all institutionalization (not only prisons but also jails, halfway houses, and the like) and focus on the population that is most likely to be in institutions because of criminal activity (men ages 18–40), we find that, in California, U.S.-born men have an institutionalization rate that is 10 times higher than that of foreign-born men (4.2% vs. 0.42%). And when we compare foreign-born men to U.S.-born men with similar age and education levels, these differences become even greater. Indeed, our evidence suggests that increasing educational requirements in the provision of visas would have very little effect in the criminal justice arena. But immigrants may affect public safety in ways other than direct involvement in criminal activity. For example, immigrants may induce more criminal activity among the U.S.-born by displacing the work opportunities of the U.S.-born; in other words, immigrants may “take away” legal jobs, possibly leading to more crime among natives. To measure underlying criminal activity more broadly, we also investigate crime rates in California cities. We find that on average, between 2000 and 2005, cities that had a higher share of recent immigrants saw their crime rates fall further than cities with a lower share. This finding is especially strong when it comes to violent crime. Finally, even if immigrants are less likely to engage in criminal activity than the average native, the criminal activity of their U.S.-born children is also of interest. Therefore, we briefly discuss current evidence on later generations, finding continued low levels of criminal activity. Taken together, our findings suggest that spending additional dollars to reduce immigration or to increase enforcement against the foreign-born will not have a high return in terms of public safety. The foreign-born in California already have extremely low rates of criminal activity. . . . in California, U.S.-born men have an institutionalization rate that is 10 times higher than that of foreign-born men (4.2% vs. 0.42%). http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/cacounts/CC_208KBCC.pdf

Or a labor union, even! right, the big bad unions that will contribute $1 for every $100 or so corporate contribution.

Especially since studies show that the crime rate is typically lesser among immigrants, especially illegals, who don't want or need any extra attention brought upon themselves.

if it did reduce the war budget, you'd likely have to fight the MIC just to wage nuclear war

because it occurred during winter and access is difficult? The 2005 Kashmir earthquake (~80k casualties) struck just before winter set in and many people spent the winter without housing and with little supplies.

alright, time to fess up: who has been trolling?