Tells Me Lies - Part II

Continues from Tell Me Lies - Part I

“Obama Care comes to more than 2,000 pages of rules,
mandates, taxes, fees and fines that have no place in a free
country. That's right.  That's right.
  You know what?  The president has declared that the debate
over government controlled health care is over.  That will come
as news to the millions of American who will elect Mitt Romney
so we can repeal Obama Care.”
   

I wish Romney and Ryan would have the guts to tell this, face to face, to Stacy Lihn. I wish I could see them telling Mrs. Lihn to let Zoe die. The Republican party is always talking about the sanctity of life, pro-life, and all that propaganda, because that is all it is – those are not their true values, but it sure sounds great and they repeat it to no end.  They don't care for the life of a child. Unfortunately, we know that Zoe passed the birth canal already so at this stage in her life they couldn’t care less what happens to her and the thousands of children with pre-existing conditions that have or about to reach their insurance life-cap and for whom their only hope to life is Obamacare... We know Obama does Care and we know they don’t care.

“And the biggest, coldest power play of all in Obama Care
came at the expense of the elderly.  You see, even with all the
hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with the
new law and new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the
planners in Washington still didn't have enough money; they
needed more.  They needed hundreds of billions more.  So they
just took it all away from Medicare, $716 billion funneled out
of Medicare by President Obama.”
   

This is another lie that has been debunked by all reputable media, but just like the lie about Janesville GM they simply don’t care about facts and know too well that if they say it, their base will “swallow” it, applaud, and cheer even when the base knows it's false. It doesn’t matter because even when they know it's a lie, that lie sounds good against the object of their hate: the President of the United States.

“An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is 
being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn't
 even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obama Care and we're
going to stop it.
   In Congress, when they take out the heavy books and the
 wall charts about Medicare, my thoughts go back to a house on
 Garfield Street in Janesville. My wonderful grandma, Janet, had
 Alzheimer's and she moved in with mom and me. Though she felt
 lost at times, we did all the little things that made her feel
 loved.  We had help from Medicare and it was there, just like
 it's there for my mom today. Medicare is a promise and we will 
honor it.  A Romney-Ryan Administration will protect and
 strengthen Medicare for my mom's generation, for my generation
 and for my kids and yours.
   So our opponents can consider themselves on notice.  In
 this election, on this issue , the usual posturing on the Left
 isn't going to work.  Mitt Romney and I know the difference
 between protecting a program and raiding it.  Ladies and
 gentlemen, our nation needs this debate, we want this debate, we 
will win in this debate.
   Obamacare, as much as anything else, explains why a
 presidency that began with such anticipation now comes to such a 
disappointing close.”

Oh yes, we too want this debate!! Bring it on!  The lies of the Republican Party will have no leg to stand on and we are literally dying to see this.  A true debate and not using the same old tactics of conveniently going off the tangent or changing the subject as it is customary on the Right. 

Obamacare will bring down future costs. It is estimated that the total reductions over a time span of ten years is of $716 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. These $716 billion that the Republicans love to mention so much but know these are cost reductions, reductions that are aimed towards insurance companies and hospitals, and not to the insured. Obamacare will allow Medicare funds to grow, preventing what it has been up to now abusive charges from Hospitals and Insurance companies. In reality, the $716 billion they talk so much about are savings, savings that will preserve Medicare as it was intended to be. Obamacare will increase benefits for our seniors, by offering them preventive care with no out-of-pocket costs and increasing their prescription coverage. Obamacare increased the age of our children to be part of our insurance to 25, regardless if they are in school or not. Obamacare prohibits insurance companies from dropping you if you become seriously ill, if you have a pre-existent condition or if you reached your life-cap. Obamacare also forces insurance companies to spend at least 80% of the premiums they charge on you, if not then they must send you a refund. Obamacare does enforce new taxes, but these taxes are mainly for the wealthy, hospitals and insurance companies. Instead, Ryan and Romney want to give our seniors a coupon!  Enjoy reading "The Path to Prosperity".  Don't be lazy, read it, then weep and cry!

“It began with a financial crisis.  It ends
 with a job crisis. It began with a housing crisis they alone 
didn't cause.  It ends with a housing crisis they didn't
 correct.”
    

Let’s see… hummm… “It began with a financial crisis. It ends with a job crisis. It began with a housing crisis they alone didn't cause."   They alone didn't cause?  Talk about taking responsibility!  "They," meaning us Liberals and Democrats didn't cause it at all.  The Republican Party leader at the time, George W. Bush and the Republican members of Congress did by deregulating the market and behaving in a completely irresponsible manner.  Paul Ryan is a hypocrite! It began with a total collapse of our financial system that included Wall Street and therefore the banking industry, the housing industry and the job market!

When George W. Bush took office for the first time, the unemployment rate was at 4.2 and began a slow but persistent raise until it reached 7.3 by December 2008. When President Obama took office, the unemployment rate for the month of January 2009 was 7.8, as it happens when you get the mess inherited by President Obama, the unemployment rate continued to raise peaking at 9.9 in December 2010, where it began a slow but consistent decline and according to the latest survey (July 2012) it is now at 8.3. In other words, it is improving.

“It began with a perfect AAA credit rating for the United
 States. It ends with the downgraded America.”

After the Democratic Congress made concessions and cuts in the vicinity of $4 trillion and asking the Republicans to accept increasing taxes on the very wealthy, the Republicans were prepared for a government shutdown because they refused not only increasing taxes on the  wealthy but, they wanted to extend the Bush tax cuts that would increase our debt by $1 trillion. They didn’t care that we would default on our debt. The raising of the debt ceiling, as the name suggests, is current debt not future spending but Republicans refused to budge until the very last second. They wanted cuts in Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid… in other words, no increase in revenue and more sacrifices on the backs of the American middle-class. It is thanks to them, the Republicans in Congress, that we were downgraded. I have no doubt in my mind that it was done on purpose, to blame one more thing on the President.

“He said, ``Well, I haven't
 communicated enough.'' He said his job is to, quote, ``tell a story to the American 
people''. As if that is the whole problem here?  He needs to talk
 more and we need to be better listeners?
   Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years, we have
 suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What is missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting
 blame to the last administration, is getting old.  The man
 assumed office almost four years ago. Isn't it about time he
 assumed responsibility?
 

I think if there's any mistake made (it's) that we haven't communicated clearly enough what the president has done on this oil spill from the beginning," – The person that said “haven’t communicated clearly enough” was Vice President Joe Biden in a speech about the oil spill in the gulf, not president Obama. But the deceitful Right, in particular Paul Ryan doesn’t care about the truth, that’s not important. Ryan wants President Obama to assume responsibility, we are yet to see or hear any Republicans in office, nor President Bush or anyone in his administration to accept any responsibility for crashing our economy with their failed Reaganomics. What’s more, they don’t only praise it they want to return to it. They think that driving our economy off the cliff for 8 years can be solved in 3.5, and with a Congress that obstructs everything. 

They don’t care at all about helping the President save our country, our economy and bring it back to the right track… They don’t care because they know that if President Obama gets to do what’s needed, we will re-elect him. No, for the GOP, politics are far more important than the American people.  The only "people" that matters are the “people” that put them there and they need to respond to, as Paul Ryan said, but is not people with warm blood, flesh and skin, rather it’s the other “people” the ones with a Swiss bank account as blood, concrete as skin and steel as bones.

 

To read my article "The Path To Prosperty... But Whose?" click here

Tell Me Lies - Part I

“President Barack Obama, came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those are very tough days. And any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My own state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it. Especially in Janesville where we were about to lose a major factory. A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that G.M. plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said, "I believe that if our government is there to support you, this plant will be here for another 100 years."

That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that's how it is in so many towns where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight. Right now, 23 million men and women are struggling to find work. 23 million people unemployed or underemployed. Nearly one in six Americans is in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life.”
 ~ Paul Ryan Acceptance Speech, August 29th, 2012

The above is only one of the many lies pronounced by Vice President Nominee, Paul Ryan, a Catholic and “devout” follower or Ayn Rand, who for years accredit Rand for being the role model he followed, forced all his employees to read her books and now, in order to secure the Vice Presidential nomination and not upset the religious right, he denounces.  Republicans can’t even have solid ideals, regardless of how bad these are, they are willing to throw their mothers under the bus for greed and to secure power.

The GM plant he so blatantly talks about in his speech was closed on December 23, 2008. The president at that time was George W. Bush. We must give credit where credit is due, Bush requested an automobile industry bail out and Ryan voted in favor of this bail out but it was turned down in Congress. But, blaming President Obama for something that happened when he was just a Senator and Presidential nominee but not the President of this great country of ours is just a lie and Ryan knows this. How can anyone believe anything else he says when he is capable of saying such a lie in public television, a lie that is so easy to debunk? He is a liar with no shame; he is a man with no integrity.

“Nearly one in six Americans 
is in poverty. Millions of young Americans have graduated from
 college during the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts
 and get moving in life.
 Half of them can't find the work they studied for, or any
 work at all. So here's the question, without a change in
 leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?”


Having the audacity to say something like this after the Republicans have obstructed every effort by the current administration to get the economy moving it’s simply obscene. Senator Mitch McConnell during an interview on December 2008 clearly mentions the stimulus package pushed by then President George W. Bush which was close to a trillion dollars.  This debt was “inherited” by President Obama and is among the “excessive debt” that Republicans blame on president Obama. The Republican Party suffers from what I suspect its a chronic compulsive lying and for blaming anyone but themselves, never accepting responsibility.

“The first troubling sign came with the stimulus. President
 Obama's first and best shot at fixing the economy. At a time
 when he got everything he wanted under one party rule. It cost
 $831 billion. The largest one-time expenditure ever by our 
federal government. It went to companies like Solyndra, with their 
gold-plated connections, subsidized jobs and make believe
 markets.
 The stimulus was a case of political patronage, corporate 
welfare anachronism at their worst.”


The Bush administration requested a Stimulus package in 2008 of 152 billion dollars. Every year George W. Bush, requested a tax cut of $1.35 trillion dollars. During the Bush Administration the GDP went up by 2.5% a year, the median household income dropped by approximately $1,175 and the income tax for the same group increased by 2%. When Bush left office, the National debt had increased by $11.3 trillion dollars and 500,000 jobs have been lost. It is well known that most of the expense for the wars initiated by Bush were not included in the budget, they were always requested as an emergency funding. For seven years that administration didn't take into consideration the wars that were taking place when preparing the budget. For eight years the cost for the wars were not part of the National Defense Budget. Apparently, every year it was a surprise that money was needed to fund a war.  And the Republicans dare to criticize president Obama!

“You -- you the American people of this country were cut out
 of the deal. What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus?
 More debt. That money wasn't just spent and wasted, it was 
borrowed, spent and wasted.”

That is, as usual, a lie. The American people got lower interest rates, thousand of jobs were saved by helping the automobile industry from closing their factories nationwide, forcing credit card companies to make their charges clear and reformed to prohibit excessive interest charges. It created programs to help homeowners save their home by refinancing their home loans through federal agencies. Created federal jobs when the private sector refused to do so in an effort to discredit the president. Thanks to that "Obama stimulus" is that this country was able to stop the path of destruction it was heading into and what made the economy to begin to heal, even when the Republicans did everything in their power to destroy us.

“Maybe the greatest waste of all, was time. Here we were
faced with a massive job crisis so deep that if everyone out of 
work stood in single file, that unemployment line would stretch
 the length of the entire American continent.
 You would think that any president, whatever his party,
 would make job creation and nothing else his first order of
 economic business, but this president didn't do that. Instead,
 we got a long, divisive, all or nothing attempt to put the 
federal government in charge of health care.”


I have to admit that the Republican party has balls. Bills are created in the House of Representatives, and since the beginning the ONLY thing that Republicans have thought of to "create jobs" is extending the Bush tax cuts - which will increase the National Debt by $1.35 trillion dollars per year and will NOT bring the necessary funds to keep the economy afloat. This tickle-down Reaganomics haven't worked for a decade, but they think that is the only way to stimulate the economy. I have no idea how can they lie with a straight face as they do; however, I have noticed that when any of them lie they seem to have a frog in their throats. All of the sudden, when lying, they have to 'clear' their throats. Put attention and you will notice it too. Another way the Republicans think that jobs can be created is by tailoring to the oil industry, disregarding our environment and water supplies to satisfy the greed of these companies. I wish that in the event that we can't end our dependency in fossil fuel, that not one new well can be drilled until an existing one has been shot down. Another thing I would do is that the oil extracted in our land remains in our land instead of being exported, that same oil should not be part of the Stock Market so it's pricing would not be dictated by the world market speculation tactics. But we know that first we will see a gun control bill passed into law than controlling and maintaining the oil in our land. That oil, which is extracted from the depth of our land and seas should NOT belong to private companies, it belongs to the people, the country - our country.   Instead, companies like BP own a big chunk of it... a British company!

To say that "you would think that any president, whatever his party, would make job creation and nothing else his first order of economic business" when the Minority Leader in the Senate, Senator Mitch "Turtle" McConnell without any shame declared on public television that the main goal of the Republican Party was to make of President Obama a one-term president.  That was and still is the only thing that the GOP cares for.  The American people can eat dirt, they don't care... And the brainless people that constitute their base cheer, applaud and follow just like sheep to the slaughter.

To read the continuation, click Tell Me Lies - Part II

Souces:

Track the Money

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

Changes in CBO's Baseline Projections since January 2001

Congressional Budget Office

In Union Lies the Strength

I continue scrutinizing Mitt Romney’s views on some of the issues on his page, anyone can find them on his website. The issue that caught my attention was his stand on Labor; particularly because we all know he is not a “job creator” rather he is more like a “job killer” so I was very interested in finding out what his “views” are on the subject.

Surprisingly, Mitt Romney’s opinion on the issue is too long. I will split my comments to make it easier on the reader and myself. This is the first of three posts on the issue of Labor.

It comes to no surprise that he is against unions. To mitigate his dislike for unions he elaborates on the past glories and accomplishments for the benefit of the American worker that unions have achieved in the past. But for Mitt Romney Unions are damaging businesses and they need to be eliminated or changed to be beneficial to corporations. For a man that has made a career increasing the wealth of Corporations at the expense of regular people and shows little or no remorse for the thousands of workers that lost their jobs while he filled the pockets of Bain Capital nothing but disdain towards Unions is to be expected.

On his site, if you read carefully, you will be able to understand what is what Mitt Romney wants to protect. He says on his page, and I quote, “But today, the effects of unionization have changed in ways that need to be recognized. Too often, unions drive up costs and introduce rigidities that harm competitiveness and frustrate innovation.” What he means by this is that Unions will not allow companies to abuse workers, to make them work in an unsafe environment and that unions demand that worker gets compensated fairly for the work they do. That is what companies have been striving for, pay less, offer less or no benefits and not be responsible for providing a safe environment where they have to spend money to secure the worker or provide them with the safety gear necessary to protect them, after all… that cost money and we all know corporations couldn’t care less for the workers, all it matters is the shareholders’ profits.

He goes on to blame Unions for manufacturing jobs disappearing from this country. As if outsourcing had nothing to do with it! He claims that most Americans believe that Unions in reality hurt the American worker. I hope this is not true. The only way the American worker can fight injustices, discrimination, unfairness and harassment in the workplace is through the Union. The only reason we have a 40-hour week, days off, vacations paid, health insurance and all the perks that we enjoy today and take for granted is thanks to the Unions. If we lose Unions in this country, and now that Corporations are “people” we will go back to the days when we had no rights, no one to defend us, or the money to pay for our legal representation. Slowly but surely the Right wants us to go back in time, a time when they had slaves but no responsibility. After all, even slave owners would take care of a sick slave – not out of the kindness of their heart, but as a protection for their investment; as a worker we will not even get that, we will be easily replaceable.

He has the audacity to accuse President Obama for “returning the favor” to Unions in exchange for the “several hundred million dollars” that Unions donated during his 2008 campaign. Taking him on his own word, who is making monetary donations in sums never heard of before during any other political campaign? We all know the answer, the Koch brothers and Citizens United. Never has a Union or a person donated $400 million dollars to a single candidate as they did during the Wisconsin recall elections. Does anyone truly believes that they are donating these fortunes so the working class can have jobs? Does anyone here is so naïve as to believe that Mitt Romney, the Koch brothers or Citizens United care at all for the middle class? Their long-time record says otherwise.

Romney talks with indignation about the American Automobile industry bailout. How dared President Obama bailed them out? Mitt Romney, once again does not care for the worker but the shareholders and creditors, in other words the 1% of this country. About the bailout he says: “Part of this entailed preferential treatment of the United Auto Workers [UAW], at the expense of other stakeholders and creditors – INCREDIBLY, the UAW was given a majority ownership stake in Chrysler.” We don’t hear the same indignation for bailing out the Bank industry and Wall Street after all they are NOT blue-collar workers and I am sure in Mitt Romney’s eyes they deserved to be saved, they deserved every penny. The bailout money received by the Automobile Industry, especially GM did give preferential treatment to their retired workers that were at risk of losing their pensions; second UAW though an agent independent from the Union had been paying for the GM workers’ health insurance since 2005, the workers in order to help save the company, were not getting vacation pay, holidays or overtime. I guess that any sacrifice a blue-collar worker did counts for nothing, blue-collar workers are nothing to Mitt Romney, only white-collar workers matters for him.

Mitt Romney closes the subject of the bailout saying that other companies are now worrying about the “caprice at the hands of government.” Those poor, suffering corporations are breaking Mitt Romney’s heart! The unemployed? They should do the same he suggested to students with little or no income: shop around and settle for less… I guess he believes that unless you are wealthy, you do not need money or a good and rewarding job, you must settle and be happy that at least you are lucky enough “to have a job.”

Interesting reading about Unions in the United States:


An Eclectic List of Events in U.S. Labor History

History.com - Labor Movement