JoeWo Joe Wosik Blog

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?1- In 2007 Republicans said the downturn in the economy “was in your head” and there was no downturn. This was said clearly by Phil Gramm. So Republicans denied the downturn for quite a while….just like Climate Change…until the evidence was overwhelming that we were being killed by it. So the response by Republicans was not until we began drowning in red. Republicans had built their economic house and tax cuts were their only plays..and it failed. Because they were wrong.

2- Bush had his economic policy in full effect and the result was economic catastrophe. There is no way around it that Republicans claimed since Reagan that tax cuts solved EVERYTHING. Remember that prior to 9/11 Bush only cut taxes and really nothing else and his support was dropping because he was literally doing nothing else. So we have the Bust Tax Cuts AND we have massive job loss. that contradicts EVERY economic theory of Republicans and Ron Paul people. Taxes for the rich were lower than they were in decades but they obviously were not hiring anyone. The fact is that the economy is driven by AVERAGE people having extra money in their pocket and spending it. Rich people (like Mittens) can offshore cash which kills the economy….they can invest abroad which kills the economy…a third thing they can do is hoard cash which is the most common and kills the economy….or the fourth thing super rich can do with their cash is invest in business. But why would you EVER EVER invest when your customers stopped buying your goods? So the entire Republican economic Trickle Down theory (VooDoo Economics) has played out perfectly WRONG as business NEEDS MASSES TO BUY THEIR THINGS. Tax cuts DO NOT make jobs when NO JOBS ARE NEEDED to fill ORDERS. Anyone contradicting this has never run a business as I have. When customers stop buying you LAY OFF PEOPLE…as we did….. and any tax cut we were given was FOOLISH to hire people as we were meeting our sales with fewer workers….as we did. there were no options for us and it is as simple as that. for us to hire person #5 when 4 people could do the job that would be stupid for us business wise….and we were getting tax breaks and writeoffs. Trickle Down was proven a FAILURE.

3. This concept of Trickle Down is part of the TWO SANTA CLAUS theory. Republicans were sick of being called Scrooge as the Dems passed social Security Medicare Labor Laws etc. the response was the Two Santa Clause theory simply explained here as it was developed on the back of a cocktail napkin. http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/01/26-0

4- the Stimulus worked. Over 100 Republicans cut ribbons and took the glory of bringing programs to their home district and they took the glory FOR THE STIM THEY JUST VOTED AGAINST. Rick Perry for instance took $17Billion in Stim dollars and was begging for more Obama Dollars when his state was burning last summer. Funny how Republicans beg for Socialism when they need it. check out the media reports of over 100 Republicans taking glory for STIMULUS PROGRAMS they voted against. They LOVED the STIMULUS but voted against it and called it Socialism. BUT IT WORKED….the only problem was that it was not big enough in the area that worked and it was too big in the area that it failed to work.
http://thinkprogress.org/report/touting-recovery-opposed/

5- The Stimulus would have worked BETTER…when coupled with the simple logic above…if money (in the form of JOBS) were given to average people. HOWEVER 40% of the Stimulus was TAX CUTS. AGAIN above we learned that tax cuts GIVEN TO ME AS I DIRECTED MY COMPANY would not have made me hire one person as my sales were met with my present workforce. IF I was meeting my sales goals with 4 people why on EARTH would I ever hired person #5 regardless the tax breaks I have????? So the tax cut portion of the Stimulus which was 40% of the total WAS A TOTAL WASTE OF CASH only driving debt deeper….and no jobs were had from that part of the Stimulus.

6- Corporate profits are higher than they have EVER BEEN….EVER EVER EVER!!!!! What dont Republicans get about that? Business is so scared of Obama they are MAKING RECORD PROFITS. Only a FOOL says businesses are scared since their profits are higher than ever. you want to drive profits even higher????? REDISTRIBUTE INCOME!!!!! If we were to give working people a pay raise they would spend it on food and couches and pants and shoes and simple things….thereby making facotories make more of those goods to replace them in stores. It is so simple. But Republicans want millionaires to have MORE cash…BUT THEY DONT NEED MORE WORKERS!!!! So they hoarde cash or offshore it or invest it in other nations.

7- Personal taxes are LOWER THAN UNDER REAGAN. Reagan even complained that millionaires should not pay less in taxes than a bus driver. REAGAN was too much of a Socialist than Republicans of today. Actually this has been ANOTHER successful Stimuls project. FICA TAXES have been cut i half and given people basically $1000 per year more in their paychecks. Republicans are getting this too….so they are paying off bills or buying more things…so THIS STIM WORKED FOR REPUBICANS TOO. HAHAH It is so funny to hear how OBama has failed…yet Republicans have had $1000 more intheir pay….which was WAY WAY more than Bush EVER gave them in the Bush Taxes and actually under Romney people making up to about $50,000 will PAY MORE IN INCOME TAX even after FICA is normalized again at 7.25%. Republicans HUGELY FAIL here as well.

8- People in nations abroad see Republicans and they laugh at them. They laugh OUT LOUD at Republicans!!!!! People around the world cannot believe these people that deny science and deny simple economics are allowed to vote let alone GET ELECTED in our nation. Obama was given the Nobel Peace Prize for a couple reasons and one of them was that the world was thanking Americans for getting rid of the Bush nightmare policies. America is part of the world…America is part of humanity…Republicans try to deny it and say they dont want to be “French” but when it comes down to it we are DEAD as a nation without them and other nations and they are dead without us…meaning we are them and they are us. The concept of HUMANITY and SOCIETY is denied by the science deniers but without me….there is no YOU and I need you too….that is a fact!!! Republicans are just wrong at every level on simply everything and see conspiracy behind every BUSH. They are not rich yet they vote for policies that economically kill themselves. They say they are NOT RICH YET…oh my DOG! And they STILL GET ELECTED???? What is WRONG with these people?

Would you believe “60 Minutes” and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell?

Segment on Jan 29,2012 where Steve Kroft interviewed the commissioner:

KROFT: Under league rules, the teams are required to share most of the revenue with each other, which is always a sticking point with some of the most successful franchises, and the more politically conservative owners. I mean, that’s socialism, isn’t it, Mr. Commissioner?

GOODELL: It is a form of socialism. And it’s worked quite well for us. So we try to combine socialism and capitalism. How can we socialize by sharing our revenue in a way that will allow every team the ability to compete.

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Keith Hennessey, who led the National Economics Council in the final years of George W. Bush’s presidency, thinks my analysis of the deficits caused by Obama’s presidency should have included two further items: The likely extension of most of the Bush tax cuts, and everything else.

The Bush tax cuts were far and away the most difficult question we faced when preparing the analysis of Obama’s deficits. As I wrote in the original column, the underlying idea was to construct a comprehensive database of every policy Obama himself had passed. That meant creating a baseline that held everything that predated Obama constant. That’s easy enough to do for almost any policy you can think of. Any policy, that is, but the Bush tax cuts.

The problem is that the Bush tax cuts predate Obama but were set to expire on his watch. So is extending the status quo a new policy decision? Or is it sticking to the baseline, and thus budgetarily costless?

I chose to make it a new policy decision. In 2010, Obama chose to extend the Bush tax cuts for two years. Ignoring the $620 billion in debt that that decision incurred was, I thought, unacceptable. But Hennessey wants me to go further: He wants me to assume the extension of most of the Bush tax cuts through 2017

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There are times when even the most professional media talent just gets fed up with the people they’re paid to talk about. That was obviously the case with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews the night of the Florida GOP Primary:

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The concept of helping the poor was talked about by Jesus more than anything else.  Teaparty people who wrap themselves in the flag and the Bible now say helping people is bad. 

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The guy that said we NEEDED tax breaks for the rich now says the rich need to be taxed more.  Alan Greenspan also said Trickle Down Economics FAILED…because they did not take personal greed into account. So really the political view of tax cuts for the rich has been abandoned by the people that came up with the concept because it failed.

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One benefit of the prolonged campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been the revelation that most of the 20 or 30 percent of Americans who describe themselves as conservatives live in a fantasy world. In their imaginations, Barack Obama, a centrist Democrat with roots in Eisenhower Republicanism rather than Rooseveltian liberalism, is a radical figure trying to take America down the path of “European socialism.” The signature healthcare reform of Obama and the Democratic Congress, modeled on Mitt Romney’s insurance-friendly Massachusetts healthcare program and closely resembling a proposal by the right-wing Heritage Foundation, is described as “statist,” “socialist” or “fascist” (as though Hitler came to power with the goal of providing subsidies to private health insurance companies).

How can otherwise sane people believe such lunacy? The answer is that members of the right-wing counterculture are brainwashed — that is the only appropriate term — by the apocalyptic propaganda ground out constantly by the conservative media establishment. A perfect example is a recent essay by Philip Klein, a senior editorial writer of the Washington Examiner, the right-wing newspaper owned by the billionaire Philip Anshutz: “The Welfare State Is Destroying America.”

Klein begins, typically, with the fall from grace of America under the sinister Franklin Roosevelt, who presided over the establishment of Social Security: “But Roosevelt was dead wrong that the program would help the nation avoid deep debt. Social Security and the entitlement programs that followed its legacy of seeking to protect citizens from the ‘hazards and vicissitudes of life,’ turned out to be fiscal disasters.”

In the real world, of course, today’s national debt has nothing to do with Social Security, whose trust fund has a surplus that will last for decades, with the precise date of the trust fund’s exhaustion depending on the rate of general economic growth. True, the federal government has to raise the tax revenue to repay the money it borrowed from the trust fund — but then, the federal government has to repay all of its creditors, domestic and foreign. What’s wrong with that?

As if to concede that there is no Social Security crisis in the near future, Klein engages in three intellectually dishonest maneuvers typical of right-wing propagandists. First, he talks about medium-term and long-term problems as though they were present-day emergencies. Second, he blurs the distinction between Social Security’s long-term fiscal challenges, which are minor, and those caused by rising healthcare costs, in order to make Social Security seem worse off than it is in reality. Third, he implies that “the growing debt burden” of the United States is primarily caused by Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, ignoring tax cuts, wars and the effects of a near-depression:

With health care costs rising and the population aging, America’s welfare-state obligations are bringing the country to its financial knees. If left unchecked, the growing debt burden will not only trigger runaway inflation and stifling taxes, but it will also threaten national security.

 By now readers of the Washington Examiner must assume that Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson deliberately designed Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid to be paid for by federal borrowing. Why shouldn’t Klein’s audience leap to that false conclusion? After all, Klein has not mentioned the funding streams that pay for these programs: payroll taxes (Social Security), payroll taxes and general revenues (Medicare) and general revenues (Medicaid).

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When Republicans start pissing off Fox News hosts, they should probably start paying attention to what they are doing.

Chris Wallace from Fox News said on Saturday that ”It is insane that there have been nineteen debates!” He also added that ”They’re all stupid,” and that people aren’t tuning in to learn about the issues but rather “It’s like you’re tuning in to a car race, you really want to see if there’s a wreck.”

With that being said, there are even more debates scheduled to take place.

Enough is enough, especially when Fox News (the conservative mouthpiece) is telling you to stop. They would be wise to listen. After all, at this point if the voters don’t know where you stand on the issues, chances are they never will, and you are just doing more harm to your cause than good.

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Friday night (1/27), during the “New Rules” segment of the HBO weekly hit show, Real Time, Bill Maher made yet another astute, hysterical observation that you were already aware of, but love to hear acknowledged with such sarcastic good humor: Political conservatives and the Republican candidates don’t criticize and run against real people, they create fictitious characters using the names of progressive thinkers and Democratic politicians.

The best example of that is of course, the current occupant of the White House. Ask the typical, grass-roots Republican to offer some commentary on Barack Obama and more than likely he or she will repeat some of the condescending characterizations made everyday by their party’s leadership and the conservative media: Obama is a closet Muslim, he wants to raise taxes, he’s a socialist, he has increased the American debt more than all his predecessors combined, he’s soft on terrorism, he doesn’t really want Americans to go back to work, just go on relief, etc.

Another classic example of the “tar and feathering” approach to conservative profiling is the repeated references to community organizer and writer, Saul Alinsky, who died in 1972. Years ago already, the always delusional Glen Beck suggested that Obama was a dangerous disciple of Alinsky. Most recently, Newt Gingrich has picked up on the myth and repeated with no new evidence to back up the claim or any explanation why the world should fear the ideas and teachings of Alinsky who promoted grass-roots community development.

If Lucifer is paying attention to how Republican and Koch-Brothers propagandists portray their political adversaries, he must be wondering if the Democratic Party isn’t just a well-organized front for his Earthly collaborators.

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Now, however, with three decades of experience with the experiment, the fallacies of “supply-side” economics are no longer a mystery. For instance, a major obstacle to today’s economic recovery has been the absence of “demand-side” consumers, not the availability of money to build more productive capacity.

And the reason that there are fewer consumers is that the Great American Middle Class, which the federal government helped build and nourish from the New Deal through the GI Bill to investments in infrastructure and technology in the Sixties and Seventies, has been savaged over the past three decades.

Though many Americans were able to cover up for their declining economic prospects with excessive borrowing for a while, the Wall Street crash of 2008 exposed the hollowing out of the middle class. So today, businesses are sitting on vast sums of cash – some estimates put the amount at about $2 trillion.

And the reasons for this dilemma are now well-known: first, when companies have expanded in recent years, the modern factories have relied on robotics with few humans required; second, the companies put many manufacturing sites offshore so they can exploit cheap labor; and third, the shrinking middle class has meant fewer customers, leaving corporations little motivation to build more factories.

For Americans, this has represented a downward spiral with no end in sight. American workers, whether blue- or white-collar, know that computers and other technological advancements have made many of their old jobs obsolete. And modern communications have allowed even expert service jobs, like computer tech advice, to go to places like India.

While painful to millions of Americans who find their talents treated as surplus, these developments do not by themselves have to be negative. After all, humans have dreamed for centuries about technology freeing them from the grind of tedious work and freeing up society to invest in a higher quality of life, for today’s citizens and for posterity.

The problem is that the only practical way for a democratic society to achieve that goal is to have a vibrant government using the tax structure to divert a significant amount of the super-profits from the rich into the public coffers for investments in everything from infrastructure to education to arts and sciences, including research and development for future generations, even possibly Gingrich’s “big idea” of a colony on the moon.

In fact, that kind of virtuous cycle was the experience of the United States from the 1930s through the 1970s, with the federal government taxing the top tranches of wealth at up to 90 percent and using those funds to build major electrification projects like the Hoover Dam and the Tennessee Valley Authority, to educate World War II veterans through the GI Bill, to connect the nation through the Interstate Highway system, to launch the Space Program, and to create today’s Internet.

Out of those efforts emerged robust economic growth as private corporations took advantage of the nation’s modern infrastructure and the technological advancements. Millions of good-paying jobs were created for the world’s best-trained work force, giving rise to the Great American Middle Class. The obvious answer was to keep this up, with the government investing in new productive areas, like renewable energy.

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This charts shows the stats.  Chart is located here

Let’s discuss some numbers:

How many people have zero or negative tax liabilities? 2012: Tax Units with Zero or Negative Tax Liability under Current Law As can be seen from this info, approximately 46.5% of US tax units will have ?$0 in income tax liability in 2012. This number is about 18% for 2012 when considering payroll taxes as well as income taxes.

Who has zero or negative tax liabilities? As seen here, approximately 78.5% of these tax units had yearly cash income of ?$30,000, 61.9% were ?$20,000. 1.5% had cash income of at least $75K!

These raw numbers are informative…most of the ?$0 tax liability group earned somewhere around the poverty line (depending on family size). Some further breakdowns can be found in this pdf.

When you look at the info in these links, some important things become apparent that are steamrolled by the nuance-free “53%” talking point:

• Tax units with ?$0 tax liability are considerably smaller when payroll taxes are included.
• Unsurprisingly, the number of tax units with ?$0 tax liability jumped substantially when the economy tanked
• Most units with ?$0 income tax liability had income levels around the poverty line, therefore many are probably reasonably assumed to be members of the “working poor”. Additionally, two of the largest sources of negative tax liability are the bipartisan Earned Income Credit and the Child Tax Credit. The EIC is designed specifically for the working poor (with phase-in, plateau, phase-out structure; see here).
• About 26% of the ?$0 income tax liability units qualify as elderly, which provides a tax credit. 55.9% of all elderly tax filers had ?$0 income tax liability.
• For all units above $100K cash income, approximately 2% also had ?$0 tax income liability in 2012!

Finally, consider that these raw numbers lack some important contextual information. How many individual ?$0 income tax liability units have been in this category for multiple years versus transiently? I don’t know and I couldn’t find any information on that. It seems likely to me that some substantial proportion of ?$0 income tax liability units include the hard-luck set–laid-off & un(der)employed workers that will eventually get back on their feet when local and national economic situations improve.

The implicit assumption the the “47%” with ?$0 income tax liability are free loaders asking for or demanding something they have not earned is very likely sweeping a lot of Reasonably Unobjectionable Americans into the same pile is the quasi-mythical Welfare Queen set.

Some new statistics have come out recently, one detailing regional IQ scores and another detailing which states receive more federal money than they give. When paired, the results seem to be compelling: Alabama needs a lot of help.

What Mike the Mad Biologist concludes with in tongue firmly in cheek, provides us some very interesting testing results in regards to regional IQ scores:

Alabama ranks 7th among states who take in more federal money than they pay in Federal Taxes. Their educational system leaves their students lacking when compared to other states, such as Massachusetts, who paid more in Federal Taxes than they took in. Alabama clearly needs to be subsidized! It appears that they are not able to adequately govern themselves. Perhaps we should install an Emergency Financial Manager like they’ve done for several cities in Michigan. Republicans thought that was a great idea since it took away the ability for those cities to have elected officials. They should LOVE that idea for a whole state!

Still, their IQ scores may be an indication as to why they denounce Socialized Democracy as evil. Or their IQ scores may indicate the reason for their denial of sciences and reliance upon religious beliefs, such as creationism. Perhaps it is the indoctrination of religious beliefs into the school setting which has left Alabama behind.

But in any event, it is both interesting and ironic that Alabama, who decries about the evils of socialism, is reliant upon a Socialistic Democracy to maintain itself and whose educational system is failing their students while touting the word of God as scientific evidence over evolution. Do the inequities in their IQ promote their policies, or do their policies promote the inequities in their IQ?

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Basically an unemployed woman asked the 4 remaining contestants in the Republican Presidential race what they would do for her as she was sick and unemployed.  They agreed tax deductions would be about the only thing they could do for her.  HOWEVER that does not get her care now.  Nor does it take into account that she is unemployed so she pays no taxes.  They also agreed that a Health Savings Account would be good for her to start…but again…she is not making money so how can she save?  When it comes down to it they told her to go to Hell and get sick there.

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It’s really frightening how many Americans are willing to listen to a guy like Ron Paul. The congressman is clearly one of two things – he’s either a typical demagogue, or an unthinking ideologue. He specializes in combining fact with fiction by pointing out everything that’s wrong with all of the policies that are contrary to his agenda, then claims that his irresponsible solutions are a cure for all of the nation’s problems – solutions drawn from an outlandish philosophy, which, on its face, is a corruption of the U.S. Constitution, and would constitute an exercise in national destruction. Paul is quoted as saying the following:

“The most basic principle to being a free American is the notion that we as individuals are responsible for our own lives and decisions. We do not have the right to rob our neighbors to make up for our mistakes, neither does our neighbor have any right to tell us how to live, so long as we aren’t infringing on their rights. Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free.”

Paul’s entire premise is flawed. Total personal freedom was clearly not the intent of the founding fathers. They had the good sense to recognized that a society, or a civilization, as it were, is defined as a “GROUP of people who have joined together to pursue a common interest or goal,” and they clearly set out their intent in the preamble of the United States Constitution, which reads as follows:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare [not just make Ron Paul happy] and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Thus, if Ron Paul doesn’t like the rules we’ve set up to “promote the general welfare,” he has the freedom to move to the wilderness and not live among us. But according Ron Paul’s philosophy, he thinks he should have the right to pee against the wall in the middle of Times Square during rush hour, and the government should be precluded from stopping him. Because you see, according to Paul’s philosophy, and his flawed reading of the United States Constitution, that should be his inalienable right, since he’s not hurting anyone else.

So in essence, Paul wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants to take advantage of the benefits of living in an ordered society, while not having to adhere to the rules that make it a society. For example, he contends that the civil rights laws that prevent him from refusing to serve certain groups in his restaurant abridges his right to private ownership. But on the other hand, he has absolutely no problem with the fact that the group that he bans is forced to pay taxes that support “his right to private ownership.” If his business catches on fire, he’s going to expect the banned group’s tax supported fire department to come put it out. And if he’s robbed, he’s going to expect the group’s tax supported police department to come to his aid. But the fact is, he can’t have it both ways. If he’s not willing to adhere to society’s rules, he can’t expect to take advantage of the benefits of living in an ordered society.

Paul also wants to abolish the Department of Education, which is essential to maintaining a “more perfect union.” His philosophy also dictates that we should simply “trust” corporations not to grind up rats in our ground beef, or pollute our air and water. He says, “Just let the free market handle it.”

Well, that sounds like a plan, but we saw how the free market handled the Wall Street fiasco, didn’t we? The free market created it, and we paid for it – dearly. The only thing free about the free market is the freedom of ruthless and greedy capitalists to take advantage of a naive and unsuspecting public – and then they tell us we’er un-American if we complain about it.

Thus, Ron Paul’s philosophy represents the rantings of a selfish, unthinking, greedy, and totally irresponsible lunatic. Therefore, if he wants total personal freedom, it’s well within his grasp. He can vote with his feet and move to the wilderness. Then he can pee against any tree in the forest at will – but he shouldn’t expect us to come to his aid if a snake decides to latch on to his pecker. That’s the price of total freedom.

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Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian, has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

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On Fox News’ Fox and Friends today Stuart Varney called Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn a hero for trying to get rid of the “ban on incandescent light bulbs.” There are two problems with this statement. The light bulbs aren’t banned, and the phase out was actually a Republican idea that was signed into law by George W. Bush in 2007. Here is the video of Varney from Media Matters: While promoting his own show Varney said, “We have Ambassador John Bolton on the Egypt situation. We’ve got Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn who is trying to get rid of that ban on incandescent light bulbs. She’s our hero.” In those few seconds, Fox News managed to push the false talking point that incandescent light bulbs are banned, and also portrayed a Republican as a hero for trying to get rid of the “ban.” However, incandescent light bulbs are not banned. The use of the term band creates a false image of big government making the light bulbs illegal to own. The truth is that Energy independence and Security Act of 2007 increased the efficiency standards for light bulbs by 30% from 2012-2014. The new energy standards begin with 100 watt bulbs in 2012, and end with 45 watt bulbs in 2014. There is also a list of exempt bulb types that includes appliance lamps, rough service bulbs, 3-way, colored lamps, and plant lights. In 2020 a second set efficiency raising standards will take effect.

 It is not going to be illegal to own incandescent bulbs. No one is going to come to your house and take them away, or put you in jail for owning them. There is no ban. America is simply moving to a more efficient light bulb. You will still be able incandescent bulbs for uses that are exempt from the new standards. Here’s the real kicker. The Energy Independence and National Security Act was signed into law, not by the “nanny state loving socialist Obama,” but by Republican free market champion George W. Bush. When President Bush signed the bill into law on December 19, 2007, he praised the energy efficiency standards, “The bill also includes revisions to improve energy efficiency in lighting and appliances. It adopts elements of the executive order I signed requiring federal agencies to lead by example in efficiency and renewable energy use.” This bill came into being as the legislative response to George W. Bush’s Twenty in Ten challenge during his 2007 State of the Union. In the address, Bush called on the United States to improve fuel economy, and increase alternative fuels. His goal was to cut gasoline consumption by 20% in 10 years. All of the current right wing outrage over light bulbs is due to a proposal by their own Republican president. It was their idea. Instead of trying to pass this plan off as Democratic big government, they need to look in the mirror. If they don’t like the new bulbs, they should be blaming themselves, not Obama or the Democrats. It is typical that Fox News would try to frame Republicans as fighting the heroic fight against big government, without telling their viewers that they themselves created the big government that they are now so outraged about, so the next time you come across a right winger who is moaning about the light bulb ban, let them know that could have all the incandescent bulbs that they wanted if they would not have voted for Republican George W. Bush, the energy efficient light bulb president.

Article from HERE

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Which is basically that your God allowed the dying off of countless civilizations…the murder of countless more entire civilizations prior to around 2000 years ago when he suddenly started to care.  THEN he allowed the same thing to happen all in his name.

This is happening more and more and more…

Four years ago, Cooper Tire told its workers they’d have to sacrifice to save the company. With a straight face, Cooper executives said it was essential for the corporation’s survival that workers take tens of millions in pay and benefit cuts.

The workers understood the link between their livelihoods long term and Cooper’s success. Dedicated and loyal, they accepted the cutbacks. Soon afterward, city and state officials granted Cooper millions in subsidies.

Management didn’t share in the workers’ and taxpayers’ pain, though. The top dogs rewarded themselves with millions in pay increases and a shiny new corporate jet.

Cooper punk’d the workers and taxpayers.

This isn’t an aberration. It’s a pattern. Corporate executives, the 1 percenters, slash workers’ wages, then give themselves big bonuses. CEOs tell mayors and governors their businesses are in such dire shape that they may close or move offshore. Government officials dutifully shovel truckloads of taxpayer cash into CEO hands, then the CEOs grant themselves more perks. The television show Punk’d, in which actor Aston Kutcher humiliates famous people, took a five-year hiatus. The 1 percenters gave workers and taxpayers no such break. Punking the 99 percent for profit has only escalated.

At Cooper, 1,050 members of the United Steelworkers union in Findlay, Ohio agreed in 2008 to give the company $30 million in concessions when executives cried destitute at the negotiation table. The next year, after witnessing the same sad song and dance, Ohio officials began transferring $2.5 million from taxpayer pockets to corporate coffers.

Between 2008 and 2011, though, Cooper awarded its executives two pay hikes and double bonuses. The year after Cooper told workers they had to suffer for the company, Cooper CEO Roy Armes got a 50 percent pay increase. The next year, in the middle of the recession, his bump was 19 percent, giving him a package worth $4.7 million in 2010.

Cooper 1 percenters also bought themselves a corporate jet and, for $17 million, a Serbian tire company. Since January of 2009, Cooper posted $360 million in income before taxes.

The workers who took the cutbacks and taxpayers who subsidized the company got punk’d.

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To say you are FOR things is strong. However equally strong is what you are AGAINST. These are just a few things that Republicans voted AGAINST.

Tax on Companies that ship jobs overseas- A bill that would have eliminated a tax break that companies get when they ship jobs overseas. Republicans blocked this, allowing companies to keep the tax break they receive when they ship jobs to other countries.

Political Ad disclosure bill- Would have required all donors to political campaigns to reveal themselves. Republicans blocked this, not once but twice.

Subpoena Power for the Committee investigating the BP Oil Spill – Give subpoena power to the independent committee responsible for investigating BP’s roll in the oil spill. Republicans attempted to block this.

The Small Business Jobs Act -would give LOCAL, community banks access to billions of dollars to loan to small businesses. Republicans blocked this, then attempted to block it a second time and failed.

The DREAM Act- Gives immigrant youth who were brought here as children a path to citizenship by earning a college degree or serving the military for 2 years. Republicans blocked this.

Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”- Would have repealed the law that forces gay and lesbian services members to lie about their sexuality and gives the military the right to discharge soldiers based on their sexuality. Republicans blocked this many times and Democrats were finally able to pass it with the support of just 2 Republicans.

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Democracy-power to the people….ALL people.To push for Democracy is to be seen as a radical? Expect Newt and Mitt to talk about Saul Alinsky ad nauseam.Organizing the poor is ALWAYS called RADICAL or Revolutionary. However the idea of poor being paid a little more for a better life is the “American Dream” you and I live every day. It is seen as radical to those opposed to that concept…Newt and Mitt and their ilk.

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One of the problems that I see in the Republican primaries is that these guys are so out of touch with the reality that the American people are going through that it is really quite amazing. We are seeing a middle class collapsing. We are seeing poverty increasing. We’re seeing a nation in which the rich are getting richer and we have the most unequal distribution of wealth and income of any major country. 

Do they have one word to say about this issue?

We have 50 million people without any health insurance. We are the only country, major country on earth that does not guarantee healthcare to every man, woman, and child as a right. Do you know what their solution is? Cut Medicare cut Medicaid. You got Social Security, the most successful government program in the history of our country. A program which has not resulted in one penny of deficit for this country, and you know what they want to do? They want to cut Medicaid. They want to cut Social Security. They want to privatize these important programs.

These guys are way, way out of touch from where the American people are, and I think when you look at them issue by issue, tax breaks for the rich, cut Social Security, more money on defense spending, they are literally a fringe element in American society.

Last but not least, you’ve got virtually every scientist in this world who studies the issue who tells us global warming is a huge, huge problem. We’ve got to move in a very aggressive way to break our dependence on fossil fuel, move to sustainable energy, energy efficiency. These guys don’t even acknowledge the reality of global warming.

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Memo to Republican Establishment:

I would send this memo to each of you individually, but I’m not sure exactly who you are. I’ve been told that you exist and that people like my colleagues Bill Bennett, Karl Rove, and Bill Kristol are charter members of it.

I am assuming you are out there and I assume there are more than three of you. At any rate, I thought I’d take a moment to catch up with you and make some observations on how things are going for your party.

Let me break it to you gently — you’ve got a first-class disaster on your hands. I know you boys thought this thing would work out and you would be able to whip the Republicans in line to fall in behind Mitt (I assume you are all males but if there is a female in the establishment, I apologize.) Not going too good, is it fellows?

At any rate, let’s talk a minute about Mitt. He was your guy — he was methodical, meticulous, married once. He has completely blown himself up over an issue that everyone knew was coming. Have you had a chance to look at John McCain’s research operation on Mitt? Wow. And let me assure you, that thing has been supplemented, expanded, and annotated. God only knows about the Obama people — they’ve got a billion dollars! And how about my friends over at American Bridge (the Democrat-leaning political action committee)? Clearly Mitt is merely in the beginning of this tax-return, financial-disclosure, Cayman Island (and God only knows what else) fiasco.

Your new front-runner is one of your old front runners, Newt Gingrich. I would like to take a moment to revel: I cannot personally tell you how pleased I am to see old Newt rise to the top after listening to all of your nauseating, sickening lectures on the evils of government and the importance of family values.

Now, you guys have to deal with a $1.6 million Freddie Mac consultant (who says he wasn’t a lobbyist) who has been married three times. Hope you, at least, enjoy the Super Bowl. It could be your last hurrah for a while.

PS — As my former boss once said, I feel your pain. That’s why I didn’t mention Rick Perry.

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Prolife is a lie.  They are not prolife.  They are anti-life. 

They are against Food Stamps helping poor people eat. 

They are against Welfare helping poor people live.

They are against the EPA bringing us clean food, water and air.

They are against health care for everyone.

They are against Unions helping working people make decent wages.

They are against Public Schools giving a free education lifting people to better lives.

They are against so many more things that help people live.

They specifically vote for the lawmakers who carry out the above.

Prolife? That’s a lie! They don’t care if women…and all of us…die!

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Atheism is a violation of Indonesian law under the founding principles of the country. Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim nation, recognises the right to practice six religions in total: Islam, Protestant, Catholic, Hindu, Buddhism and Confucianism. Atheism is, however, illegal. According to Indonesian criminal law, anyone who tries to stop others believing in a faith could face up to five years in jail for blasphemy.

Aan was charged because he used Facebook to spread beliefs that violate the law. Furthermore, it was pointed out he lied on his job application by saying he was Muslim. Aan asked police investigators: if God really exists and has absolute power, why didn’t God prevent bad things from happening in this world?

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When the Tea Party-fueled GOP took over the House by storm in January of 2010 there was high talk of huge change. Exactly a year later, there are signs that the underlying political force behind the House flipping in 2010, the Tea Party, is all but dead.

Need evidence the Tea Party is all but dead? The polls and the vote counts keep rolling in. In politics, winning and votes are what measure influence and power. When applied today, those measuring sticks reveal a weak if not dead political movement that hit its height during the summer of 2009. Today the loud “in your face” town halls are gone. More importantly: So are the candidates.

Ten Signs the Tea Party Is dead:

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Like many Americans, Gail Freyer needs health insurance to help her manage her diabetes. For years, she has struggled to find an insurance plan that would accept her with her pre-existing condition – and with a premium she could afford. Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, Gail was able to enroll in the Pre-Existing Condition Insurance Plan in Arizona. Now, Gail knows she’ll be able to access the care she needs to manage her diabetes and stay healthy.

This story could have ended very differently if Republicans in the House had their way. One year ago today, on January 19, 2011, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the health reform law, and take us back to the days when insurance companies had the power to decide what care residents of the United States could receive – allowing them to once again deny coverage to children with pre-existing conditions, cancel coverage when people get sick, and place lifetime or low annual dollar limits on the amount of care people can get, even if they need it. What’s more, without the law, insurance companies could overcharge for insurance just to boost their profits. And if House Republicans had gotten their way:

• 2.5 million young adults wouldn’t have health insurance.

• 2.65 million seniors would have paid $1.5 billion more for prescription drugs

• 24.2 million seniors would pay for preventive services they are getting for free.

Thankfully, the Affordable Care Act is the law of the land and it’s helping Gail and millions like her. Check out the short report we’ve done about some of the Americans who are being helped by the law and what would have happened if the law has been repealed here.

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Ironically, it was the medical profession, which had made abortion illegal in the first place, that started to speak out. Doctors treating the desperately sick women who landed in hospitals with raging peritonitis, hemorrhages, perforated uteruses, and septic shock often had to futilely watch them die, because the women had waited too long to get help — because they were confused and terrified, because what they had done was “illegal” and “immoral.”

One doctor’s “awakening” is vividly described in The Worst of Times, a collection of interviews with women, cops, coroners, and practitioners from the illegal abortion era. In 1948, when this doctor was an intern in a Pittsburgh hospital, a woman was admitted with severe pelvic sepsis after a bad abortion. She was beautiful, married to someone important and wealthy, and already in renal failure. Over the next couple of days, despite heroic efforts to save her, a cascade of systemic catastrophes due to the overwhelming infection culminated with the small blood vessels bursting under her skin, bruises breaking out everywhere as if some invisible fist were punching her over and over, and she died. Being well-to-do didn’t always save you.

Her death was so horrible that it made him, he recalls, physically ill. He describes his anger, but says he didn’t quite know with whom to be angry. It took him another 20 years to understand that it was not the abortionist who killed her — it was the legal system, the lawmakers who had forced her away from the medical community, who “…killed her just as surely as if they had held the catheter or the coat hanger or whatever. I’m still angry. It was all so unnecessary.”

In the same book, a man who assisted in autopsies in a big urban hospital, starting in the mid-1950s, describes the many deaths from botched abortions that he saw. “The deaths stopped overnight in 1973.” He never saw another in the 18 years before he retired. “That,” he says, “ought to tell people something about keeping abortion legal.”

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Too funny!

Republican Family Values.  Sanctity of Marriage.  Married twice…wife #1 divorced as she had cancer…wife #2 divorced as she had MS…cheated with #3 for 5 years before asking for open marriage.  Newt tried to impreach Clinton for an affair. 

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Republicans claim Democrats engage in class warfare, but it is a deflection from their own war on the poor, and now on children. At a time when America should do everything to help all children thrive and benefit from a good education, Republicans intend on reserving that right for white affluent children and it is shameful. However, Republicans have sought to disenfranchise poor women, senior citizens, the middle class, and college students so it is not surprising they include children in that group. Hopefully, the world does not look too harshly on Americans because if they measure this country by the statements and policies of Republicans and their supporters, they would conclude that as a society, we are despicable people for, if nothing else, the way intend to treat our most cherished asset; our children.

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Why didnt he have his cash in a US bank? He’s got something to hide. It cannot be any simpler than that! 130 accounts offshore for Bain or him???? Mitt Romney is hiding a TON of stuff…he doesn’t even want to release more than his tax forms for this year which he will cook the books on. The Republicans sure vote for CHARACTER and people who are upstanding citizens. Newt leaves one wife who has cancer…another who has MS and tries to impeach Clinton for cheating. FAMILY VALUES! CHRISTIAN! PROLIFE!

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More on the story of Romney and his money is here

Your mother said to share. Was she a Marxist? No she was smart. She knew if one kid had all and one kid had none…which is the 1% vs 99%…she would have a KID WAR on her hands. Hence when you share you ALL win. Your mother was not a MARXIST or Socialist or other ist…well perhaps a PRAGMATIST. A pragmatic nation redistributes money back to the poor to help them and that results in social stability.Without it you get CHOPPED OFF HEADS! So 1%…do you like your head?Mom said SHARE! And U liked it

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Regardless of your religious affiliation, if you do not embrace Socialism, then you do not understand your religion. In every religion I have any experience of, the least among us; those who are regularly shunted off and forgotten (or attacked, for the sake of political expediency) are lifted up as those to whom we should direct our most ardent attentions. This is built into the political ideals of Socialism. It is the only possible political expression for people of Faith. If you consider yourself a person of Faith, it is time you got right with God. Socialism directs itself toward justice and God, by whatever name you call God, is all about justice. Get right, or stop preaching.

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A common myth about American history holds that the first British colonists came to North America for freedom of religion. As it’s often the case, myth is much prettier than reality. It is true that the early Puritans very much resented being persecuted by other Protestants back in England, but this didn’t mean they had anything against persecuting others. What happened to American Indian religions after all the tribes had been conquered by the United States serves as a perfect example of this.

Technically speaking, Congress never passed a federal law prohibiting the practice of Native ceremonies. This, however, didn’t stop generations of secretaries of the Interior working in conjunction with other branches of the government from waging war against traditional Native beliefs. Viewing themselves as parents to senseless children, they honestly believed that criminalizing American Indian traditions was in the Natives’ best interest. Sending offenders to jail was–in their minds–a charitable act of love (incidentally, this is a great reminder that when people want to do something that goes against your will “for your own good” it’s time to start running for your life).

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By creating a convenient ecosystem, China’s Foxconn draws in employees who earn 31 cents an hour working for 35 hours straight, thereby saving American companies money.

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There’s no real way to compare this to the private sector, because the private sector just doesn’t run programs like this. The closest you could come is to compare this level of overhead to average SG&A costs — which is at least something Romney would understand — and on that score the federal government looks great and state governments don’t look too bad either. Most companies would be pretty happy with SG&A expenses of 5-10%.

It’s also worth noting that overhead costs go up precisely when the government does the kinds of things conservatives want it to do. Programs like SNAP and Section 8 housing have fairly stringent means testing rules in order to root out folks trying to game the system, and the result of that is higher admin costs. It’s pretty unavoidable. We could probably cut the overhead costs of housing vouchers by simply giving money to anyone under a certain income line and then calling it a day, but we don’t. We make sure you really truly qualify, we make sure the vouchers are really spent on housing, and we make sure that landlords aren’t scamming either tenants or the taxpayers. This is exactly the kind of thing conservatives are always urging us to do, and it costs money. There’s no way around it.

All of these programs could undoubtedly be run more efficiently and I’d love to hear some real suggestions from Romney about how we could do this. But even if his Bain-trained mind does have some good ideas, he’s never going to save more than a few percent. That adds up, and I’m all for it, but it’s not going to make a serious dent in federal spending and he knows it. There’s just no “massive overhead” here and there never has been. The vast bulk of this money goes exactly where it’s supposed to: to the people it’s meant to help.

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Ayn Rand or MLK: pick one

by David Atkins

MLK:

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?’”

Ayn Rand:

If any civilization is to survive, it is the morality of altruism that men have to reject.

Conservatives get to claim one or the other. They can’t have both.

And if they pick door #2, they can’t have this guy, either.

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Today, we celebrate the life of a truly great man, who — armed only with his bravery and powerful words — brought Jim Crow to its knees. It’s also important to remember that the political heirs of those who created and enforced Jim Crow for a century — Southern conservatives — are now running the Republican Party. And that’s why it’s easy to understand why the fiercest opposition to making MLK Day a national holiday was in the GOP.

The last Republican candidate for president opposed it.

“Mr. Conservative” (Barry Goldwater) voted against the holiday.

Ron Paul voted against the bill that created the holiday — twice.

77 of the 90 nay votes in final bill in the House were cast by Republicans.

18 of the 22 nay votes in the final bill in the Senate were cast by Republicans.

And the Greatest American in the History of America, Ronald “States’ Rights” Reagan, only reluctantly signed the bill into law because it arrived on his desk with veto-proof majorities. Before he signed it, he said,

Congress seemed bent on making it a national holiday.

What an inspiring endorsement.

American Conservatives: Wrong About Everything Since 1776.

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Todd Farally is a Philadelphia progressive and a member of the Sheet Metal Workers Local 19 who I had the pleasure of talking to in Minneapolis last year at Netroots Nation. Todd gets really ticked when people start talking down unions, accusing them of being corrupt and not doing anything to help their members, so he wrote a piece over at Daily Kos explaining exactly what his union does:

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If you don’t vote in 2012….Obamacare could literally be repealed. And a repeal of Obamacare would mean going back to the status quo. No big deal right? Except…

#1 – Pre-existing conditions would be back baby. Sorry if you forgot to mention you had asthma on your disclosure paperwork…if your treatments start getting expensive – insurance companies will be able to drop you. Free market system…fewer regulations rock!

 #2 – Lower drug prices for seniors. As part of the “negotiation” with Big Pharma – seniors are about to get a sweet, sweet deal on prescription prices and the donut hole is now filled. But what is another $700 in the hands of seniors anyway.

 #3 – Small business tax credits to make offering coverage affordable. Businesses under 50 employees are exempt from coverage requirements for their employees and Obamacare provides tax incentives to make this affordable for employees. Small businesses have a hard enough time hiring people who require insurance as it is….I’m sure they’re used to it.

 #4 – The elimination of lifetime limits and annual limits on insurance costs. So – if you have a serious issue like AIDS or Cancer….your insurance company is required to only pay X amount total in your lifetime. Obamacare eliminates that. Sorry about the Leukemia. Profits > Your Life. You understand I’m sure.

 #5 – If you have kids under the age of 26 or are yourself under 26 – insurance companies are REQUIRED to allow the under 26 year old to be on the plan of the parents if that’s what the parents want. This has resulted in huge increases in insurance coverage for the 18 to 26 demo….but – live free or die I guess.

 #6 – All immunizations and preventative care including visits to the clinic must be FREE…per when the law is enacted in 2014. But…I really enjoy paying my copay for my regular check up….so….glad that will be gone.

 #7 – Consumers will have the ability to appeal decisions made by your insurance company if they try to stiff you. But I’m sure they wouldn’t do that right? I TRUST my insurance company – they are honest. Promise.

 #8 – Profits for insurance companies will be capped. They must use 85% of all premiums and income on funding bills from pharmaceuticals or hospitals. This means if they make a bigger profit than expected – you get a rebate. So no more 200 million bonuses for health insurance CEO’s. I CAN’T WAIT to go back to that.

 #9 – States like Vermont will not be able to implement single payer systems and will be prevented by federal law from going their own path. Single payer is the way. And this is the framework to move us there.

 There are so many more important elements of Obamacare. If you’re too dense to understand that this matters. If you’re too dense to understand that this will have a real impact on people’s lives and every single Republican has vowed to repeal it or defund it or neuter it to the best of their ability.

 If you think they’re all the same….you’re ignorant. And worse yet – your ignorance is hurting the country. Pay attention….I need you to catch up here. You’re going to hurt everyone else because you’re upset about Obama’s inability to make lucky charms fly out of the a$$es of little leprechauns at the end of double rainbows.

 There is a real difference here. Obamcare isn’t perfect but its the most progressive law this country has seen in almost 50 years. If you leave it hanging in the wind…you deserve EVERYTHING that’s going to happen in 2012. Unfortunately – your neighbor doesn’t. And neither do your kids.

 A little article below to read up on the stakes and the politics of Obamacare:

 Source Material: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0112/71425.html

 ”Ron Pollack, executive director of Families USA and a strong supporter of the law, said the election is the “most important development for the future of health care that could take place this year.”

 Pollack said he’d be even more concerned about a Republican winning the White House if the Senate and House are controlled by Republicans, too, allowing them to run the table on repealing the health law.

 Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute who opposes the law, agreed that the election matters more than the Supreme Court — but he also said Republicans may have to compromise on repealing the whole law if they get public backlash over repealing its most popular provisions.”

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Judgment Against Wicked Kings¹ This is what the LORD says: “Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and proclaim this message there: ² ‘Hear the word of the LORD to you, king of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne—you, your officials and your people who come through these gates. ³ This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place. ⁴ For if you are careful to carry out these commands, then kings who sit on David’s throne will come through the gates of this palace, riding in chariots and on horses, accompanied by their officials and their people. ⁵ But if you do not obey these commands, declares the LORD, I swear by myself that this palace will become a ruin.’”

⁶ For this is what the LORD says about the palace of the king of Judah:

“Though you are like Gilead to me,
like the summit of Lebanon,
I will surely make you like a wasteland,
like towns not inhabited.
⁷ I will send destroyers against you,
each man with his weapons,
and they will cut up your fine cedar beams
and throw them into the fire.

⁸ “People from many nations will pass by this city and will ask one another, ‘Why has the LORD done such a thing to this great city?’ ⁹ And the answer will be: ‘Because they have forsaken the covenant of the LORD their God and have worshiped and served other gods.’”

¹⁰ Do not weep for the dead king or mourn his loss;
rather, weep bitterly for him who is exiled,
because he will never return
nor see his native land again.

¹¹ For this is what the LORD says about Shallum^[a] son of Josiah, who succeeded his father as king of Judah but has gone from this place: “He will never return. ¹² He will die in the place where they have led him captive; he will not see this land again.”

¹³ “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness,
his upper rooms by injustice,
making his own people work for nothing,
not paying them for their labor.
¹⁴ He says, ‘I will build myself a great palace
with spacious upper rooms.’
So he makes large windows in it,
panels it with cedar
and decorates it in red.

¹⁵ “Does it make you a king
to have more and more cedar?
Did not your father have food and drink?
He did what was right and just,
so all went well with him.
¹⁶ He defended the cause of the poor and needy,
and so all went well.
Is that not what it means to know me?”
declares the LORD.
¹⁷ “But your eyes and your heart
are set only on dishonest gain,
on shedding innocent blood
and on oppression and extortion.”

¹⁸ Therefore this is what the LORD says about Jehoiakim son of Josiah king of Judah:

“They will not mourn for him:
‘Alas, my brother! Alas, my sister!’
They will not mourn for him:
‘Alas, my master! Alas, his splendor!’
¹⁹ He will have the burial of a donkey—
dragged away and thrown
outside the gates of Jerusalem.”

²⁰ “Go up to Lebanon and cry out,
let your voice be heard in Bashan,
cry out from Abarim,
for all your allies are crushed.
²¹ I warned you when you felt secure,
but you said, ‘I will not listen!’
This has been your way from your youth;
you have not obeyed me.
²² The wind will drive all your shepherds away,
and your allies will go into exile.
Then you will be ashamed and disgraced
because of all your wickedness.
²³ You who live in ‘Lebanon,^[b]’
who are nestled in cedar buildings,
how you will groan when pangs come upon you,
pain like that of a woman in labor!

²⁴ “As surely as I live,” declares the LORD, “even if you, Jehoiachin^[c] son of Jehoiakim king of Judah, were a signet ring on my right hand, I would still pull you off. ²⁵ I will deliver you into the hands of those who want to kill you, those you fear—Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon and the Babylonians.^{[d] 26} I will hurl you and the mother who gave you birth into another country, where neither of you was born, and there you both will die. ²⁷ You will never come back to the land you long to return to.”

²⁸ Is this man Jehoiachin a despised, broken pot,
an object no one wants?
Why will he and his children be hurled out,
cast into a land they do not know?
²⁹ O land, land, land,
hear the word of the LORD!
³⁰ This is what the LORD says:
“Record this man as if childless,
a man who will not prosper in his lifetime,
for none of his offspring will prosper,
none will sit on the throne of David
or rule anymore in Judah.”

We love the super-high profit margins of Apple, Inc., the maker of our iPhones and iPads.

And that’s why it’s disconcerting to remember that the low prices of our iPhones and iPads — and the super-high profit margins of Apple — are only possible because our iPhones and iPads are made with labor practices that would be illegal in the United States.

And it’s also disconcerting to realize that the folks who make our iPhones and iPads not only don’t have iPhones and iPads (because they can’t afford them), but, in some cases, have never even seen them.

This is a complex issue. But it’s also an important one. And it’s only going to get more important as the world’s economies continue to become more intertwined.

Last week, NPR’s “This American Life” did a special on Apple’s manufacturing. The show featured (among others) the reporting of Mike Daisey, the man who does the one-man stage show “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” and The NYT’s Nicholas Kristof, whose wife is from China.

You can read a transcript of the whole show here. Here are some details:

• The Chinese city of Shenzhen is where most of our “crap” is made. 30 years ago, Shenzhen was a little village on a river. Now it’s a city of 13 million people — bigger than New York.
• Foxconn, one of the companies that builds iPhones and iPads (and products for many other electronics companies), has a factory in Shenzhen that employs 430,000 people.
• There are 20 cafeterias at the Foxconn Shenzhen plant. They each serve 10,000 people.
• One Foxconn worker Mike Daisey interviewed, outside factory gates manned by guards with guns, was a 13-year old girl. She polished the glass of thousands of new iPhones a day.
• The 13-year old said Foxconn doesn’t really check ages. There are on-site inspections, from time to time, but Foxconn always knows when they’re happening. And before the inspectors arrive, Foxconn just replaces the young-looking workers with older ones.
• In the first two hours outside the factory gates, Daisey meets workers who say they are 14, 13, and 12 years old (along with plenty of older ones). Daisey estimates that about 5% of the workers he talked to were underage.
• The dormitories.

  Daisey assumes that Apple, obsessed as it is with details, must know this. Or, if they don’t, it’s because they don’t want to know.

• Daisey visits other Shenzhen factories, posing as a potential customer. He discovers that most of the factory floors are vast rooms filled with 20,000-30,000 workers apiece. The rooms are quiet: There’s no machinery, and there’s no talking allowed. When labor costs so little, there’s no reason to build anything other than by hand.
• A Chinese working “hour” is 60 minutes — unlike an American “hour,” which generally includes breaks for Facebook, the bathroom, a phone call, and some conversation. The official work day in China is 8 hours long, but the standard shift is 12 hours. Generally, these shifts extend to 14-16 hours, especially when there’s a hot new gadget to build. While Daisey is in Shenzhen, a Foxconn worker dies after working a 34-hour shift.
• Assembly lines can only move as fast as their slowest worker, so all the workers are watched (with cameras). Most people stand.
• The workers stay in dormitories. In a 12-by-12 cement cube of a room, Daisey counts 15 beds, stacked like drawers up to the ceiling. Normal-sized Americans would not fit in them.
• Unions are illegal in China. Anyone found trying to unionize is sent to prison.
• Daisey interviews dozens of (former) workers who are secretly supporting a union. One group talked about using “hexane,” an iPhone screen cleaner. Hexane evaporates faster than other screen cleaners, which allows the production line to go faster. Hexane is also a neuro-toxin. The hands of the workers who tell him about it shake uncontrollably.
• Some workers can no longer work because their hands have been destroyed by doing the same thing hundreds of thousands of times over many years (mega-carpal-tunnel). This could have been avoided if the workers had merely shifted jobs. Once the workers’ hands no longer work, obviously, they’re canned.
• One former worker had asked her company to pay her overtime, and when her company refused, she went to the labor board. The labor board put her on a black list that was circulated to every company in the area. The workers on the black list are branded “troublemakers” and companies won’t hire them.
• One man got his hand crushed in a metal press at Foxconn. Foxconn did not give him medical attention. When the man’s hand healed, it no longer worked. So they fired him. (Fortunately, the man was able to get a new job, at a wood-working plant. The hours are much better there, he says — only 70 hours a week).
• The man, by the way, made the metal casings of iPads at Foxconn. Daisey showed him his iPad. The man had never seen one before. He held it and played with it. He said it was “magic.”

Importantly, Shenzhen’s factories, as hellish as they are, have been a boon to the people of China. Liberal economist Paul Krugman says so. NYT columnist Nicholas Kristof says so. Kristof’s wife’s ancestors are from a village near Shenzhen. So he knows of what he speaks. The “grimness” of the factories, Kristof says, is actually better than the “grimness” of the rice paddies.

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STEPHANOPOULOS: No, we got a few of them from Facebook, though. “Do you believe the outcome of the 2012 presidential election is based on how much money each candidate can raise?”

COLBERT: No, it’s how much speech they can express, because money equals speech. It doesn’t matter if the speech comes from money or comes from your mouth.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you agree with the Supreme Court?

COLBERT: On almost everything. Money equals speech, therefore, the more money you have the more you can speak. That’s just — that just stands to reason. If corporations are people, corporations should be able to speak. That’s why I believe in super PACs.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you believe in super PACs. You believe they’re full expression of the First Amendment?

COLBERT: Without a doubt, do you not, George? Do you not believe that some — are you saying…

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m asking the questions today, Mr. Colbert.

COLBERT: Well, you answer one of my questions, I’ll answer one of yours. Do you believe that corporations are people?

STEPHANOPOULOS: I’m not going to weigh in on that. We’re going to have a long campaign here. But I want to know what you think about that.

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Well, gay marriage has been legal here in Iowa for going on three years now, and just as FOX News predicted, traditional marriage has all but ceased to exist in the Hawkeye state.

The sinister influence of the gay agenda has spread through Iowa faster than anyone thought possible. This epidemic was so pervasive in Iowa that in just the past six months alone, you could see Santorum in public view in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties.

I, myself was accosted by a young man who asked directions to the nearest Bed, Bath and Beyond. Though it may sound harmless, I could read between the lines and tell what he really wanted. I was fortunate that I managed to get away before he could show me how to pick out throw pillows that complement my living room decor.

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