Ocassional Thoughts of an Independent Progressive Atheistic Humanist
Represenative Jim Jordan (OH-4), a cheap labor conservative and chair of the stealth Republican Study Committee, introduced “H.R. 1167, the Welfare Reform Act of 2011” to do to food stamp recipients what the GOP did to people on welfare back in the 1990’s – kick them to the curb if they don’t go to work. Too bad the program already has such a requirement. I can only think that Jordan and the rest of his Star Chamber want to have children go hungry and make family poverty worse.
On Thursday, Mitt Romney gave a speech about health care reform where he actually lied about his support of a national mandate. Since the tea bagger GOP members hate the mandate, Romney is lying about supporting it back in 2007 to try and make them like him. Kind of like Donald Trump being a birther or Newt Gingrich running for President.
In 2007 Romney said:
The preamble of the US Constitution says: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” That means the government should act in the best interests of the people and in a way that betters our lives such as protecting our health, liberty, and property. Some conservatives like Senator Rand Paul complain about a “nanny state” restricting our freedom to eat as much as we want when we want, waste energy, and to be homophobic no matter that doing all that might encroach on other’s rights.
Recently Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said:
Sen. Rand Paul, in a tussle with an Energy Department official Thursday, complained about what he described as burdensome, “busybody” regulations that were forcing him to buy a bad bowl.
“Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices,” Paul said.
The issue on the table was a 2007 law requiring a phase-in of energy efficient bulbs. Paul and others are trying to repeal portions of the law, arguing that it restricts the American consumer.
At a Thursday hearing on the issue, Paul — a freshman Republican who shares a libertarian streak with his father, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) — aimed his complaints at Kathleen Hogan, a deputy assistant at the Energy Department.
He began his remarks by asking Hogan if she was pro-choice. She replied that she was “pro-choice of bulbs.”
“The point is that most members of your administration probably would be frank and would be up front to characterize themselves as being pro-choice for abortion,” Paul said.
Toilets join light bulbs on Sen. Rand Paul’s list of necessities burdened by ‘busybody’ rules0
Setting aside the ridiculous point of comparing abortion to buying light bulbs, he isn’t the only cheap labor conservative to complain about government regulations that force you to change the behavior you are use to.
I understand Paul’s point about low flow toilets. Early models were clunky, but the current models are cutting edge and leave the old complaints behind.
I support the use of CFL or LED light bulbs over the old inefficient incandescent bulbs that haven’t really changed in over 100 years. I have several CFL bulbs and one of them I bought in 2003 and it is still working. I have not had to change a light bulb for more than 3 years now and I have seen a slight reduction in my electric bill. I plan on moving to the even better LED bulbs once the costs moderate a bit more.
What moron would want to spend money on old bulbs and give up savings on their electric bill? Sen Rand Paul I guess and other Luddites like him. Besides I would rather spend extra now for new technology and make that transition than be forced to do it later when we have to save energy either because oil is running out or some other nasty reason. I’m sure there will be someone who demands the right to pay $10 a gallon to gas up their old SUV that gets 5 miles to the gallon.
To me that is being stupid.
There is also complaints about the insurance mandate and other parts of the new health care reform law, belly aching about the First Lady’s efforts to curb child obesity, and the First Family speaking out against bullying.
They might have a point about the insurance mandate of the health care law over reaching by taxing people who don’t buy health insurance, but who would want to let insurance companies decide if life-saving procedures were cost-effective? Why do some people want to put profit over people? How is that moral?
At least if the government decided what was covered, those decisions wouldn’t be based on the bottom line. Just talk to people who spend hundred of thousands of dollars so they can have a few more weeks with their loved one. Compassionate people can’t and won’t put a price tag or profit over their loved one.
I don’t worry about rules and regulations meant to benefit the most people but I do worry, and find it ironic, that people like Senator Rand Paul thinks its okay to interfere in a woman’s health decisions while whining about the government doing that to us.
He would rather force women to have unwanted children, have the IRS police if tax dollars were used for abortions, yet doesn’t want to spend money to help take care of those children.
It seems when Democrats “overreach” they at least help the most people but when the GOP overreach they want to hurt the most people.
What is really a “nanny state”? One that tries to better the human condition or one that wants to be a selfish ass.
I knew when low voter turn out helped sweep the GOP into office in Ohio this past November that we would then see some stupid ideas being introduced. For example, unemployment is 9% and instead of that being a priority the Ohio GOP instead have introduced six anti-abortion bills. The stupidity also led Ohio State Senator Tim Schaffer (R-31) to introduce a bill requiring a urine test as a requirement for state public assistance.
The Ohio Senate is considering the bill that would require anyone applying for heating, housing, medical or food assistance to submit a urine sample.
People who fail or refuse the test would not qualify for aid.
State Sen. Tim Schaffer says the bill will weed people out who abuse the system.
“What the legislation does is, it makes sure that when Ohio taxpayers are asked to provide human services to a family, that the money is being used to buy things for the family,” Schaffer said.
I get a sad kick out of morons like Schaffer who don’t understand how public assistance works. They operate on false assumptions. Schaffer is wrong in his intent that “the money is used to buy things for the family…”
State assistance is rarely actual cash. Heating assistance is a voucher, food stamps are now debit cards, medical payments are made direct payments to the provider from the state.
A friend pointed out too that a urine sample will usually not detect alcohol. NOR will it detect cocaine if they last used a week ago or more.
People on public assistance have to jump through so many hoops as it is. The false assumption of wide spread fraud personalized in the old Reagan era “welfare queen” smear just doesn’t exist since the welfare reform work in the mid 1990’s.
Tim Schaffer and those who have no current idea how the public assistance system works, need to take a test before they can introduce new laws about it.
It started with a tweet and brought out how some are misinformed about history. One has to wonder why people tell or repeat lies that can be refuted so easily.
I heard about the Tucson shooting victim who was arrested for making a death threat to a Tea Party person at a taping for the ABC News Sunday news show “This Week” and sent off a flippant tweet:
Violent words from Right 20 from Left 1 – Death threat at ABC-TV Town Hall event Saturday
I wrote it because I knew that the people on the right and by extension the corporate media would hold that event out as proof that “both sides do it” which is actually a false equivalence. The violent rhetoric from the right far outstrips any coming from the left – if any from the left even exists.
Later a few of tweets pop up in my mention file:
@cadfile Keith Olbermann praised a man for threatening the life of a Tea Party member here
@cadfile As far as violent words. The left seems to confuse political metaphor with reality calling it violent words
@cadfile I see violence as a left-wing thing. The guy that flew airplane into IRS building was a Communist & SEIU beating a man up
And that was from just one person @m4zdaman
The truth is that Olbermann praised the man on his Friday show – a day before the incident as the article and a check of the show’s website shows. That means that m4zdaman thinks that Olbermann is clairvoyant. Nice trick – then why didn’t he stop it before it happened?
The IRS plane crasher wasn’t from the left and the SEIU beating was found to be a hoax.
Of course my question has always been why does the right have to use violent “metaphors” in political discussions. All I know is some men use violent words to compensate for a small penis or a questioning of their sexuality. I wonder if that is true for those on the right that use those unnecessary words. It just seems that those on the right want to be dicks for the sake of being a dick – kind of like Biff Tannen was in the Back to the Future movies.
Next I get a few tweets from @Weirdodo and @joegallant who like @m4zdaman seem to think flooding people with tweets somehow “proves” your intelligence or correctness. Here are the more ridiculous ones:
@cadfile Violent actions from left, 1000 to 1, http://tinyurl.com/the-real-KKK Gee, looks almost like current events!
@cadfile Um… KKK was the paramilitary arm of the pre-war southern Democrat party
@cadfile “The Klan attacked black members of the Loyal Leagues and intimidated southern Republicans and Freedmen’s Bureau workers”
So the false equivalence they are drawing is that the Democratic Party of the 1950’s and 1960’s is the same party that elected President Obama in 2008 and the KKK from the 1950’s and 60’s would support a black President.
Yes the Democratic party was in general made up of a large number of southern people who supported Jim Crow laws and segregation. Although it was a southern Democratic President who supported and got the Civil Rights Act passed. The KKK was a domestic terrorist group that was anti-minority, anti-immigrant, pro-white, right wing nationalists. They also supported Jim Crow laws and segregation.
Leading Democrats of the time were racist such as Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms, and Robert Byrd. Back then many white Southern politicians championed racial segregation. Thurman switched to the GOP in 1964 to support Goldwater and oppose the Civil Rights Act. Helms switched to the GOP in the early 70’s while Byrd stayed in the party but moderated his views.
The main reason the GOP changed to more conservative and racist was the Southern strategy where Republicans like Richard Nixon scared white voters in the south and they voted for Republicans. The more liberal Democrats then took control of the party and evolved as the opposite of the GOP. However there are still some conservative members just as there use to be more liberal Republicans back in the day.
So if we were going to humor @Weirdodo and @joegallant we could say that if the KKK existed today like they did in 60’s it would be the paramilitary arm of the GOP since it seems the GOP has the worst problem with a black President and a liberal agenda for health and social programs.
I think it’s funny that someone on the right has to go back to the dark days of the Jim Crow south which makes the false equivalence so obvious and striking.
Again in the past two years, coinciding with the Obama administration, the amount of actual violence coming from the right is off the chart. He is just a brief summary:
July 2008: A gunman agitated at how “liberals” are “destroying America” kills two and wounds four at a Unitarian church.
October 2008: Two neo-Nazis are arrested in Tennessee for a plot to murder Barack Obama and dozens of other African-Americans.
December 2008: A father-son team involved in the “patriot” movement try to extort a bank with a homemade bomb; they end up killing two police officers.
January 2009: A white supremacist in Brockton, Mass., rapes a black woman, kills her sister and a homeless man, and is captured while en route to a Jewish community center.
April 2009: A white supremacist and gun nut kills three Pittsburgh cops because he believed conspiracy theories about President Obama taking away his guns. He had been posting Glenn Beck videos on a neo-Nazi website.
May 2009: Another right-wing crazy in Okaloosa County, Fla., also fearing his guns would be confiscated, kills two cops before being shot dead.
June 2009: A Holocaust denier and right-wing tax protester kills a security guard at the Holocaust Museum.
July 2009: A woman takes a break from posting Glenn Beck videos on her MySpace page to case an Air National Guard Base in Long Island. Upon her arrest, authorities find an assault rifle, a shotgun and 500 rounds of ammo in her car.
August 2009: A man in Collier Township, just south of Pittsburgh, walks into a women’s aerobics class and kills three women. His diary states, “Good luck to Obama! He will be successful. The liberal media LOVES him. Amerika has chosen The Black Man. Good!”
February 2010: An anti-government tax protester flies his plane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas, killing himself and one other.
March 2010: Seven militiamen in Michigan and Ohio are arrested for plotting to assassinate local police officers to spark a new civil war. This is also the month that an anti-government extremist walks into the Pentagon and opens fire, wounding two, before being shot dead.
May 2010: A mosque in Jacksonville, Fla., is firebombed.
July 2010: A Glenn Beck fanatic loads his car with weapons and drives to the Bay Area to attack the offices of the Tides Foundation and ACLU. He is wounded in a shootout along with the patrolmen after they intercept him on a routine traffic stop.
September 2010: A Concord, N.C., man who refers to himself as the “Christian counterpart to bin Laden” is arrested and charged with plotting to blow up an abortion clinic.
The corporate media meanwhile is quick to downplay these events and other threats directed at Democrats or liberals.
I don’t really care if you are a Democrat or Republican but what does jerk my chain is if someone is obviously ignorant – especially about something so easy to check out.