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[Cin]

Why should poor people think they have some kind of a right to eat?

Rand Paul would tell you this himself: Food, like healthcare, is not a right! If some Americans have to starve to death, this is what it takes to preserve our freedom!

They call the poor “useless eaters” and seriously don’t give a crap if we all starve.

This may be how the rich really feel about the working class. But they are not going to say that, at least not all of them, all of the time.

They do have more palatable ways to get those of us who are not yet hungry to agree with their austerity measures. They have skewed, suspect and just plain "old" outdated data that they can use to spin fairy tales about the really, really well off poor people who live in the US. You know the ones who live in the realm of the Welfare Queen.

For example the Washington DC based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has been telling us for years that there are no poor people in the US.

They say stuff like the average family with very low food security ( here is an even more innocuous term than food insecure, when did we stop saying hungry?) experienced disrupted food intakes in only seven months of the year, for one to seven days per month. They say it like it is a good thing. So if you only go without food for one week a month for more than half the year you are not really poor and your children are not really hungry. Hunger is what kids in developing countries suffer. According to the Heritage Foundation only 2.6% of American children’s growth is stunted by malnutrition compared to 42.7% in developing countries. And to these brilliant conservative minds that means we can take a lot more from the 99% than we have up to this point before we are on par with developing nations. A lofty goal indeed.

They say that “the mainstream press and activist groups frequently conflate poverty with homelessness. They insist this depiction is seriously misleading because only a small portion of persons 'living in poverty' will become homeless over the course of a year. The overwhelming majority of the poor reside throughout the year in non-crowded housing that is in good repair.” Seriously. Good repair? They have statistics that say 50% of the poor live in single family homes and not in apartments or mobile homes. WTF? Really? I’ve never lived in a single family home in my entire life. Never. And I don’t consider myself as living below the poverty line. But all around me families whose incomes do fall under the poverty line own their own homes. Who knew? Conservatives that’s who!

Not only that but “nearly all poor households have commonplace amenities such as color TVs, telephones, and kitchens equipped with an oven, stove, and refrigerator. WOW! The nerve of these people.

In 2005, more than half of poor households had at least five of the following 10 conveniences: a computer, cable or satellite TV, air conditioning, Internet service, a large-screen TV, non-portable stereo, computer printer, separate freezer or second refrigerator, microwave, and at least one color TV. One-fourth of the poor had seven or more of these 10 items in their homes.” I wonder if when gathering all this skewed and suspect data these geniuses take in to account the reality that most poor households didn’t just manifest themselves into existence fully actualized as poverty stricken. Contrary to popular belief the poor are made not born. Many poor people were not always “useless eaters”. They actually had jobs back in the day when there were jobs to be had. Maybe they bought some of that stuff then? Back in 2005 (since this is when this data was compiled) before Wall St. destroyed the economy and then got the government to bail them out by taking the food out of mouths of the working class. Maybe even back before the government gave corporations humongous tax cuts for taking jobs and businesses out of the US and bringing them to other countries. Probably the very countries where the brains at the Heritage Foundation explain the “real poor people live” countries where the government doesn’t even have to pretend to give a shit about its people, where corporations can pollute, pillage and use up people to their hearts content. But we can all cheer up because if conservatives like those highly intelligent individuals at the Heritage Foundation think tank have anything to say about it soon enough the real poor people will live here as well. More austerity measures coming soon to a town near you.

Crossing children off their laundry list for now, elderly people get ready, they're coming for you next. And our beloved veterans as well. You know all that supposed support we have for you? Well they forgot to mention that's just while you are actually troops, once you are no longer active then you are subject to being screwed like the rest of the 99%.

I'm adding this link to show where I got some of my information. It is by no means an endorsement of or encouragement to read this shit.

http://www.heritage.org/research/rep...-americas-poor

[DapperButch]

Hey, Miss Tick. I saw that the article was written two years ago (9/2011), which they based off of 2010 census data (which no doubt that twisted into a pretty bow).

I am wondering why you are posting this now?

[Cin]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Hey, Miss Tick. I saw that the article was written two years ago (9/2011), which they based off of 2010 census data (which no doubt that twisted into a pretty bow).

I am wondering why you are posting this now?

It's an old article because I want to show how it has been a long held belief, an old meme of conservatives that the poor in the US do not exist. This belief justifies their actions against social programs at a time when only a small elite percentage of Americans are recovering and these same elite continue to get social welfare. It's not about the article it's about the mindset.

I posted the first article about the food stamp cut and thought it would be useful to examine and understand the process that goes into twisting yourself into believing its a good, adult, grown up decision (phraseology the GOP is using now in 2013)to cut food stamps at a time when more people than ever are using them to make ends meet. What I did was look at the ideas the GOP has long held to justify their belief in the non existence of poor in the US and the brilliant conservative minds who mold data and twist facts to support their beliefs. This is how they cut social programs, this is how they will cut social security and make our golden years financially insecure. It's the mind set i was trying to show. The article was just an afterthought to prove I don't pull this shit out of my ass.

I hope this makes sense. It's not like anything has changed. This is what they believe whether it's 1972 or 2013. And it's only news in that it helps justify current cuts in social programs.

I just want to add if you try to find data to prove there are no poor in the US in 2013 all that comes up are articles exploding with indignation at the cutting of social programs. Articles talking about how terrible it is and Republicans talking about how necessary it is and how grown up and adult it is. It's easy to talk about how insensitive the GOP is and how cruel etc. but it doesn't show how they think and why they believe what they are doing is perfectly fine and logical. I want to understand my enemy. I want to know what makes them tic.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by Miss Tick

America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom
Why do we put up with such injustices?


There are 16.4 million American children living in poverty. That's nearly one quarter (22.6%) of all of our children. More alarming is that the percentage of poor children has climbed by 4.5 percent since the start of the Great Recession in 2007. And poor means poor. For a family of three with one child under 18, the poverty line is $18,400.

Meanwhile, the stock market is booming. Banks, hedge funds and private equity firms are making tens of billions of dollars again, while the luxury housing and goods markets are skyrocketing.

Most amazing of all is the fact that 95 percent of the so-called "recovery" has gone to the top 1 percent who have seen their incomes rise by 34%. For the 99 percent there's been an undeclared wage freeze: the average wage has climbed by only 0.4 percent.

To add to the misery, Washington has decided that the best way to tackle childhood poverty is to have poor kids eat less. Both parties already have agreed to cut billions from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Food Stamps). Starting this November 1, payments are scheduled to drop from $668 a month to $632 for more than 47 million lower-income people -- 1 in 7 Americans, most of them children. (Three incredible graphs that visualize the issues in this story are at the bottom of this article.)

And more cuts are coming. The Tea Party House passed a bill to cut food stamps by $4 billion a year, while the Senate calls for $400 million in cuts. How humane! And since it will be part of the omnibus Farm Bill, President Obama will sign it. (I wonder how our former community organizer will explain this to the poor children he once tried to help in Chicago.)

But that's just the start. More austerity is coming in the form of cuts to Social Security as well as a host of other social programs. When times get tough, you've got to suck it up and take more from the poor.

Rewarding Billionaires Who Increase Poverty?

It gets even more revolting when we realize that the financial billionaires who are profiting so handsomely from the recovery are the very same who took down the economy in the first place. They were the ones who created and pedaled the toxic securities that puffed up and then burst the housing bubble. Those financial plutocrats caused 8 million workers to lose their jobs in a matter of months. Those bankers, hedge fund honchos and fund managers are directly responsible for the rise in child poverty rates. Washington bailed out those billionaires and is now asking the poor and the middle class to pay for the ensuing deficits with further cuts in social programs at every level of government.

Why do we put up with such injustices?

Washington Is in Wall Street's Pocket

Before we entirely succumb to financial amnesia, let's recall how we got here. Since the late 1970s, the financial sector has been on a crusade to remove any and all financial regulations. The goal was to undo all the controls put in place during the Great Depression that so effectively curtailed financial speculation and outright gambling. Once deregulated Wall Street engineered a Ponzi-like housing bubble that netted it astronomical sums. By the time it burst in 2007, 40% of all corporate profits flowed into the financial sector. Wall Street wages grew by leaps and bounds.

As the crash hit, all the largest Wall Street firms, not just Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns, were in serious trouble. Had AIG gone under, so would nearly every major bank and investment house, along with thousands of hedge funds that depended on AIG to ensure its toxic bets. So Wall Street's Washington cadre engineered a $13 trillion bailout consisting of cash, no interest loans and a program by which the Federal Reserve would buy up Wall Street's toxic waste at par value. To produce a financial recovery, the Fed also drove down bond interest rates which in turn drove money into the stock market, sending it to new heights.

Here's the best of all. After getting $480 billion in bailout cash, the top financiers in the country paid themselves more than $150 billion in bonus money for a job well done. Is this a great country or what?

What didn't happen is this: Mortgages were not written down in mass to assist underwater home owners and those who suffered from predatory loans. No lasting jobs programs were created to put the unemployed back to work. No lasting penalties were paid by the individuals who took down the economy. And there was no serious effort at all to cap financial wages and bonuses in the name of justice.

All in all, you could not have designed a more perfect program to enrich the rich and do absolutely nothing for the 99 percent -- and as a result, sink ever more children into poverty.

Waiting for the Recovery That Will Never Come

We are constantly told that the recovery is just around the corner. Liberals say we need more stimulus. Conservatives call for more austerity and cuts in regulations. But all agree that sooner or later more growth will benefit the 99 percent. Unfortunately, it's not happening and it won't happen. Here's why.

First of all, they assume that trickledown actually works, that there is something mechanical within our heavily financialized economy that will bring renewed prosperity to the 99 percent. They look back at previous recessions and recoveries and continue to believe that slumps are followed by renewed growth and income gains for all.

But as financialization has spread throughout the economy, new mechanisms are in place that siphon off wealth into financial gains for the very few. Productive enterprises are turned into financial enterprises that are loaded up with debt and then carved and slaughtered so that wealth can be extracted for hedge funds and private equity firms. In our brave new financialized economy renewed growth turns into renewed incomes primarily for the investment class. The stock market will rise but jobs and incomes won't. The traditional capitalist slump-recovery process died more than a decade ago. Adam Smith's invisible hand no longer produces shared prosperity -- instead it picks our pockets.

Waiting for the Political Pendulum to Swing

Second, we are told how America is essentially a moderate country -- how there's a kind of invisible political pendulum that swings from the extremes back to the sensible center. When the left or the Tea Party gets too wild, the center supposedly pulls them back and common sense economics prevails. But this consoling media meme obscures the fact that our politics are moving ever more rightward. Moderate Democrats and Republicans today are to the right of Eisenhower, Nixon and even Herbert Hoover. They have already agreed to cut the very entitlements that are needed to help alleviate poverty. In fact, they have agreed it's quite OK for America to have 442 billionaires and also have 22.6% of its children living in poverty. The sensible center now sees its role as forging a "compromise" on how much to cut food stamps and other supports for the poor.

Obviously, both political parties lose little sleep worrying about economic injustices. Even most Democrats no longer have a serious game plan to eradicate poverty. That's considered to be 1960s stuff that doesn't make sense in a world where politicians have to make peace with at least some players in the billionaire class in order to survive. As for the poor, alas, they will always be with us.

America Leads the World

Not a day goes by without hearing about "American exceptionalism." We are told by our leaders and pundits that we are the best, the greatest, the mightiest and the most democratic of all nations. It is our mission in life to uphold justice and freedom around the world. But as this chart shows, when it comes to child poverty, we are just about dead last.

Why is that? Because in wealthy nations, children live in poverty if and only if that nation allows it. Our nation, the richest in history, has more than enough wealth to go from the bottom of this list to the top, right next to Finland, if only we decided to act justly.

A Simple Proposal to end Child Poverty

America has 442 billionaires with an average net worth of $4.2 billion each according to Forbes. That means collectively these 442 Americans have nearly $1.9 trillion in wealth.

During the current "recovery," these 442 billions saw their wealth rise on average by over 12 percent per year. What would happened if those billionaires received only 6 percent a year and the other 6 percent were taxed away in order to pull all of our children out of poverty?

That would provide sufficient revenue so that each child now living in poverty would receive an extra $7,000 per year which would pull nearly all of their families above the poverty line. The 442 billionaires would not suffer. No one in their families would go hungry. No luxury goods or services would be out of reach. No cooks, maids, chauffeurs or pilots would have to be let go. The 442 billionaires would feel no pain at all -- not even an itch. As a result of this painless tax, America would eradicate childhood poverty overnight.

Dream on?

Of course, our simple proposal sounds insane in a world where austerity reigns supreme and where billionaires are immune from such redistributive proposals. But I wonder who is sane and who isn't. It seems utterly psychotic to live in a society that chooses to spread poverty to its young. It also seems psychotic to claim that cuts in food stamps are good for the poor while at the same time saying that it's quite OK for billionaires to pile up unearned, tax-sheltered income. The fact that we're putting up with all this should be driving us all insane.

Sooner or later, the millions of Americans who still have souls that ache for justice will take democracy into their own hands. I don't know how it will happen or when, but one day we will eradicate needless poverty and reclaim our nation from those who are robbing it blind.

http://www.alternet.org/hard-times-u...age=1#bookmark

This is actually the "In The News" article that is important as a current immediate issue that is happening as we speak. The other post is about why the conservatives believe cutting social programs is warranted. It a look at the mindset that allows them to take the food out of the mouths of babies and still sleep at night and pray to their god on Sunday.

[Cin]

GOP rep.: Slashing food stamps by $40 billion means ‘more money’ for the hungry

Rep. Andy Harris (R-MA) in September asserted that cutting $40 billion from the food stamp program over the next 10 years would actually provide “more money” to hungry Americans.

A bill introduced by House Republicans this month almost doubled the cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) proposed earlier this year after that plan was rejected by conservative lawmakers. GOP leaders were expected to bring the bill up for a vote on Thursday.

CNN’s Carol Costello pointed out to Harris in a Thursday interview that critics had said that a $40 billion cut was “way too much” because the poverty rate in the United States has risen to more than 13 percent.

“It’s a 5 percent decrease, when we know that there is 10.5 percent of the stores that take food stamps are engaged in trafficking,” Harris replied. “So we know the fraud stands at 10 percent of the stores. We only want to cut 5 percent.”

“That ought to leave more money getting to the hands of the people who do need it,” he added. “And there are millions of Americans who need that benefit.”

“But if you change the requirement, some people will be eliminated from qualifying for food stamps,” Costello noted. “There are critics who say that those people need them too. And how do you decide who needs food stamps and who doesn’t?”

“Well, again, there’s the one study that showed — by the Dept. of Agriculture — 10.5 percent of stores are committing fraud,” Harris insisted. “And, you know what we’re doing, is we’re just saying, ‘Look, if we’re going to help you with food stamps — and we are — then we need you to either work, look for employment — if you’re able bodied, not disabled and able to work — either look for work or engage in job training.’ We think that’s a common-sense trade-off for getting help from the American taxpayer that needy people need.”

“Well, some might say it’s easy to say, ‘Get some job training, get a new job, get a better paying job,’” Costello observed. “But there aren’t that many jobs available at this particular time in our economy to accomplish that.”

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated that 14 million less people would be participating in the SNAP program by 2023 if the Republican House bill was enacted.

“Critics’ attempts to justify big cuts by claiming that SNAP participants are eschewing work are unfounded,” according to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities. “The fact that the majority of SNAP households with an adult who is not elderly or disabled work while they receive SNAP assistance, and that more than 80 percent of such households work in the year before or after SNAP receipt, makes clear the program is an important support for working families that fall on hard times.”

“As the nation slowly climbs out of the deepest recession in decades, many families continue to face a shortage of jobs or to be paid wages too low to enable them to provide adequate food, and struggle to meet basic nutritional needs. The House SNAP proposal pays little heed to these economic conditions. Instead, it would deny food assistance to millions of low-income Americans and cause substantial increases in hardship.”

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/1...or-the-hungry/


How Republicans Who Took Millions In Farm Subsidies Justify Cutting Food Stamps

http://thinkprogress.org/economy/201...g-food-stamps/

There are a lot of justifications used to explain why it is okay to cut food stamps and social programs from invoking the soviet constitution and Lenin to misquoting the bible but the truth is that when conservatives bother to think of the poor they don't believe in them. This is why it is so easy to do what they do. They don't believe there are really poor people or rather I should say they don't believe there are any deserving poor. And to examine that we could actually go back to the early 1800s and see how decisions were made surrounding who is deserving and who is not.

[DapperButch]

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

I didn't think you did. I just get so excited when someone asks me something about a news article I tend to overkill I guess. I either disturb them with my over zealousness or I overwhelm them with way too much information that it seems like an attack of some sort. Please don't take it that way. I just thought if you were interested enough to ask a question you might enjoy a lot of answer.

Sorry I didn't make a note of the fact that it was an older article. In retrospect I probably should have. I was side tracked for the reasons I explained. It wasn't about the time frame of the article it was the thinking behind the think tank. And in my defense i did say when introducing the information that "the Washington DC based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation has been telling us for years that there are no poor people in the US." I also mentioned the dates of the data a few times: "In 2005, more than half of poor households had at least five of the following 10 conveniences" and "Back in 2005 (since this is when this data was compiled)"

Anyway sorry if I gave too much information but I hope it at least makes sense why i would post the information. The article was not the post really, a lot of the words contained in the post were my words and not the words of an article, I Just posted the article for back up as reference for where i pulled some of the stuff i was responding too from.

My wife often tells me that for such a clarity freak I am sometimes not very clear.

Oh dear I hope I didn't do it again and say too much that it feels like well, like too much. Besides trying to explain my thought process for referencing the article my only other concern is trying to ascertain if my response makes sense to you?

And honestly I didn't take it any way at all except as a question. I wouldn't take it as anything but a question from anyone, but from you I certainly wouldn't give it a second thought except to try extra hard to explain to you my thought process.

[Cin]

Originally Posted by DapperButch

Hey, Miss Tick. I had no concern you had any sort of "agenda" behind the posting of an older article. I was just curious. I suppose I was also surprised that an older article was posted, without the poster making a note of that fact. That's all.

I just want to add that when I originally posted the article "America's Greatest Shame: Child Poverty Rises and Food Stamps Cut While Billionaires Boom" I considered adding my second post to that instead of making a whole new one.

It was early and I had just woke up and was still sleepy and decided it might be too long and too confusing so I added the second post which was really an extension of the first and it ended up that the first post ended a page and the second post was the first post on a new page. So that really separated the first article from my post and the reference article. Maybe it would have made more sense if they had been together. Or maybe not. I'm just going to stop explaining now. LOL. I even tire myself out

[DapperButch]

Wow. You are way worse than me. I love it. ha!

[Cin]

Be Very Afraid: The American Economy Is Cannibalizing Itself, and We the People Are Going to Pay a Huge Price
The bottom 90 percent of Americans have disappeared from official Washington.
November 3, 2013

So how to explain this paradox?

As of November 1 more than 47 million Americans have lost some or all of their food stamp benefits. House Republicans are pushing for further cuts. If the sequester isn’t stopped everything else poor and working-class Americans depend on will be further squeezed.

We’re not talking about a small sliver of America here. Half of all children get food stamps at some point during their childhood. Half of all adults get them sometime between ages 18 and 65. Many employers – including the nation’s largest, Walmart – now pay so little that food stamps are necessary in order to keep food on the family table, and other forms of assistance are required to keep a roof overhead.

The larger reality is that most Americans are still living in the Great Recession. Median household income continues to drop. In last week’s Washington Post-ABC poll, 75 percent rated the state of the economy as “negative” or “poor.”

So why is Washington whacking safety nets and services that a large portion of Americans need, when we still very much need them?

It’s easy to blame Republicans and the rightwing billionaires that bankroll them, and their unceasing demonization of “big government” as well as deficits. But Democrats in Washington bear some of the responsibility. In last year’s fiscal cliff debate neither party pushed to extend the payroll tax holiday or find other ways to help the working middle class and poor.

Here’s a clue: A new survey of families in the top 10 percent of net worth (done by the American Affluence Research Center) shows they’re feeling better than they’ve felt since 2007, before the Great Recession.

It’s not just that the top 10 percent have jobs and their wages are rising. The top 10 percent also owns 80 percent of the stock market. And the stock market is up a whopping 24 percent this year.

The stock market is up even though most Americans are down for two big reasons.

First, businesses are busily handing their cash back to their shareholders – buying back their stock and thereby boosting share prices – rather than using the cash to expand and hire. It makes no sense to expand and hire when most Americans don’t have the money to buy.

The S&P 500 “Buyback Index,” which measures the 100 stocks with the highest buyback ratios, has surged 40 percent this year, compared with a 24% rally for the S&P 500.

IBM has just approved another $15 billion for share buybacks on top of about $5.6 billion it set aside previously, thereby boosting its share prices even though business is sluggish. In April, Apple announced a $50 billion increase in buybacks plus a 15% rise in dividends, but even this wasn’t enough for multi-billionaire Carl Icahn, who’s now demanding that Apple use more of its $170 billion cash stash to buy back its stock and make Ichan even richer.

Big corporations can also borrow at rock-bottom rates these days in order to buy back even more of their stock — courtesy of the Fed’s $85 billion a month bond-buying program. (Ichan also wants Apple to borrow $150 billion at 3 percent interest, in order to buy back more stock and further enrich himself.)

The second big reason why shares are up while most Americans are down is corporations continue to find new ways to boost profits and share prices by cutting their labor costs – substituting software for people, cutting wages and benefits, and piling more responsibilities on each of the employees that remain.

Neither of these two strategies – buying back stock and paring payrolls – can be sustained over the long run (so you have every right to worry about another Wall Street bubble). They don’t improve a company’s products or customer service.

But in an era of sluggish sales – when the vast American middle class lacks the purchasing power to keep the economy going – these two strategies at least keep shareholders happy. And that means they keep the top 10 percent happy.

Congress, meanwhile, doesn’t know much about the bottom 90 percent. The top 10 percent provide almost all campaign contributions and funding of “independent” ads.

Moreover, just about all members of Congress are drawn from the same top 10 percent – as are almost all their friends and associates, and even the media who report on them.

Get it? The bottom 90 percent of Americans — most of whom are still suffering from the Great Recession, most of whom have been on a downward escalator for decades — have disappeared from official Washington.

http://www.alternet.org/economy/be-v...age=1#bookmark

[*Anya*]

Senate passes ENDA

With 61 votes, the U.S. Senate voted in favor of cloture on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, clearing the way for a final up-or-down vote later this week.

BY SUNNIVIE BRYDUM NOVEMBER 04 2013 6:18 PM ET UPDATED: NOVEMBER 04 2013 9:16 PM ET

For the first time since it was originally introduced in 1996, the U.S. Senate took an important step toward passing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, voting in favor of cloture — a procedural move intended to overcome any attempted filibuster — in a bipartisan vote of 61-30.

Several senators from both sides of the aisle rose to speak in support of the legislation, which would make it a federal offense for employers to fire, refuse to hire, or decline to promote employees on the basis of their actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity.

Following Monday's vote for cloture, the Senate is expected to take a final vote on ENDA after additional testimony is filed, likely on Wednesday.

The bipartisan vote included 54 Senate Democrats (Missouri Democratic senator Claire McCaskill was absent), and seven Republicans, including some surprising "aye" votes from New Hampshire's Kelly Ayotte, Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey, and Ohio's Rob Portman, who came out for marriage equality earlier this year. Among Republicans who had previously expressed support for the legislation were Utah's Orrin Hatch, Illinois's Mark Kirk, Nevada's Dean Heller, and Maine's Susan Collins. Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican who voted for the bill in committee, was absent from the chamber when roll call was taken.

The nation's first openly gay senator elected took the Senate floor first, asking her colleagues to vote in favor of ENDA and stand on the right side of history.

"I realize that for some, this is not an easy vote," said Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin on the Senate floor. "I understand that for some, they may believe that it’s not good politics. But I want to say that I have a deep respect for those who choose to stand on the side of progress for our country this week. So for those that stand up this week and answer the call for courage, I can say with confidence your courage will be respected and remembered when the history of this struggle is written."

Both senators from Illinois also rose in support of the bill, including Republican Mark Kirk, who has been largely silent and absent from congressional debate on the legislation through the past two years due to a stroke.

"This is not a major change to law," said Kirk. "It's already the law in 21 states, and I think it's particularly appropriate for an Illinois Republican to speak on behalf of this measure, in the true spirit of Everett McKinley Dirksen and Abraham Lincoln, who gave us the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 13th Amendment to the Constitution."

Kirk wasn't the only Republican to rise in support of the bill — Sen. Susan Collins of Maine also testified in support, saying ENDA provides all Americans a fair opportunity to pursue the American dream. "I'm dismayed that so many years have gone by — more than a decade — and this bill still has not become law," said Collins. "It is time for us to enact this important legislation.

Notably, no senators rose to speak in opposition to the bill, though that's unlikely to be the case in the Republican-controlled House, where the bill faces a much tougher journey to becoming law.

Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy closed his remarks with a none-too-subtle message for those lawmakers opposed to outlawing discrimination in the lower chamber of Congress.

"So I hope my fellow senators will come together and support this important bipartisan bill without delay," said Leahy in his closing remarks. "And If the other body has the courage of standing up for America, to stand up for all Americans — every single american there is — and vote for the same legislation."

Late Sunday night, President Obama published an op-ed in The Huffington Post urging the Senate to pass the legislation, and Monday morning, Nevada Republican Dean Heller announced his support for ENDA, breaching the 60-vote threshold needed for a successful cloture vote to move debate on the bill forward.

http://www.advocate.com/politics/201...rocedural-vote

Fired For Being LGBT: ENDA gets another vote

BY NEAL BROVERMAN AND MICHELLE GARCIA MAY 08 2013 2:00 AM ET UPDATED: NOVEMBER 01 2013 7:33 PM ET
151

Sixty years ago, the federal government spearheaded a massive purge of gay employees, no matter how qualified or essential they were to their department's operations. The firings were the result of an executive order by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on April 27, 1953. As told in the documentary Lavender Scare, even LGBT private sector workers who were under contract with the federal government were also fired or forced to resign.

Why? Because gay people were viewed as a godless, immoral group likely to work with communists to spill government secrets.

After decades of activism, policy changes at federal agencies, and state laws protecting LGBT citizens, 94 percent of the top 100 companies in the U.S. — the top 50 federal contractors and the top 50 Fortune 500 companies — have policies prohibiting discrimination based on sexual orientation, and 78 percent of the companies have policies prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity.

Nine in every 10 American voters believe that there are already laws to protect employees in the workplace, just like policies for women, people with disabilities, racial minorities, or people with particular religious affiliations. But that's not the case. An employee could still be fired in 29 states for being gay, and in 34 states for being transgender or gender non-conforming.

So as we mark 60 years since the federal government's mass firings, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act is finally set for a vote in the Senate on Monday (the 19th time Congress has considered it). With a Republican-dominated House of Representatives, ENDA might be tough to gain momentum even though, according to the Center for American Progress, 73 percent of voters support protections for LGBT workers (even 66 percent among Republicans voters).


http://www.advocate.com/politics/201...lgbt?page=full


http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...dies-enda-vote

[Cin]

I guess Rand Paul wants to challenge Rachel Maddow to a duel. He laments the fact that it would be illegal to shoot her in the face. I suppose it would definitely cut down on the amount of 'truth out' we would see from journalists if you could just challenge them to a duel and kill them if they caught you doing something wrong. Sheesh, wouldn't it be easier to just own it, apologize for the mistake and make sure it doesn't happen again? Politicians seeking public office need to be more careful that's all. And when caught screwing up they need to act like adults. I mean aren't the Republicans big on acting like adults or is that just when they are talking about having to starve children and steal money from old people.


Rand Paul’s Wacko Public Meltdown
The proven plagiarist trashes his “haters” and wishes he could challenge them to a duel.

Just when Sen. Ted Cruz’s self-promoting extremism seemed to create room for a far-right 2016 rival who wouldn’t scare children (and the donor class), Sen. Rand Paul is blowing his big chance.

Last week the New York Times reported that in the wake of Cruz’s implosion, Paul’s aides had taken to calling Cruz “the chief of the wacko birds,” using John McCain’s memorable epithet for the junior Texas senator. Paul himself, Jonathan Martin reported, “has quietly been reaching out to more establishment forces within the Republican Party, trying to prove to big donors and mainline Republican organizations that he is more than a Tea Party figure or a rerun of his father’s failed candidacies.” And establishment Republicans were beginning to use the word “grown” and “matured” to describe Paul.

That’s not the word they’re using today, on the heels of a crazy appearance on ABC’s “This Week” where he wished he could challenge the journalists who’ve accused him of plagiarism to a duel.

On the one hand, the revelation that he lifted material from several speeches as well as whole pages of his book from other sources, without attribution, isn’t necessarily a 2016 candidacy-ender. What’s most politically self-destructive is Paul’s bizarre reaction to the charges – which really aren’t “charges,” they’re fact. Instead of admitting he or someone on his staff made an error and promising to toughen his standards, he’s attacked Rachel Maddow, who found the first instance of plagiarism, repeatedly and personally.

“This is really about information and attacks coming from haters,” he told ABC’s Latino-focused network Fusion. “The person who’s leading this attack — she’s been spreading hate on me for about three years now.” Ew, “spreading hate on me,” that sounds kind of disgusting, Rachel – really?

And then, in a bizarre, likely candidacy-ending interview with ABC’s “This Week,” he began talking about a duel.

“Yes, there are times when [speeches] have been sloppy or not correct or we’ve made an error,” Paul said. “But the difference is, I take it as an insult and I will not lie down and say people can call me dishonest, misleading or misrepresenting. I have never intentionally done so.”

He went on: “And like I say, if, you know, if dueling were legal in Kentucky, if they keep it up, you know, it would be a duel challenge. But I can’t do that, because I can’t hold office in Kentucky then.”

“I think I’m being unfairly targeted by a bunch of hacks and haters.”

Paul’s assumption that normal people will hear his reference to fighting a duel and say, “Hell yeah!” betrays his permanent residency on the American fringe. He lives in a world where it’s always the 19th century south, and troubles are best handled with guns and guts, not government. Paul acts like nobody’s ever been either smart enough, or brave enough, to tell the plain truth – and once he does, common sense voters will recognize it and reward him. Instead, they recoil and go, “Huh?”

It reminds me of his first run-in with Rachel Maddow, in May 2010, when he told her he didn’t think the Civil Rights Act should apply to private businesses. He bobbed and he weaved but when Maddow asked point blank, “Do you think that a private business has the right to say ‘we don’t serve black people?’” He answered, “Yes,” and defended their “right” to discriminate as “freedom of speech.” (He also said he thought if he’d been alive back then, he’d have marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) That’s the interview that made Maddow a “hater,” in Paul’s view.

I saw the same thing in his under-covered response to the revelation that his aide Jack Hunter was a neo-confederate racist who’d written a column headlined “John Wilkes Booth was right,” defending the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Paul, of course, came out against assassination – but then he went on to describe Lincoln the way neo-confederates do, as a tyrannical racist hypocrite who fought the Civil War not to end slavery but to consolidate Northern power. He thought he could get away with repudiating the most extreme expression of neo-confederate beliefs while validating their core. And that time, at least, he did.

There’s another problem with Paul’s over the top response to the plagiarism controversy: It suggests that he doesn’t understand the meaning of the term “plagiarism.” He has repeatedly insisted that he credited the original source of his speech material – the movie “Gattaca,” in one instance, and “Stand and Deliver” in another. But he does not seem to get that you can’t lift words directly from Wikipedia and claim them as your own – even though that’s something every sixth-grader knows.

Only a few days after Tailgunner Ted Cruz seemed to be facing a credible Tea Party rival, that rival is melting down. For his part, in the Times piece Cruz was said to be telling GOP donors that Paul can never be elected president “because he can never fully detach himself from the strident libertarianism of his father.” An even bigger problem: Rand Paul can never fully detach himself from himself.

[Cin]

'12 Years a Slave' Highlights America’s Shocking Record of Female Subjugation
The U.S. has not yet reckoned with the trauma of enslaved and oppressed women.


Excerpt:
Did Patsey survive to have children? We’ll never know. Enslaved women sometimes used abortion and infanticide to undermine their oppressions. If she did have children who survived, it’s sobering to imagine where their descendants might be today if chance had kept them on Louisiana’s bayous.

For African Americans living in Louisiana, hunger rates are twice the national average, and the poverty rate is 45 percent. According to a study by the Center for American Progress, Louisiana is the worst place to be a woman in the nation. Women get paid 67 cents on the dollar compared to men, their jobs are more insecure, they hold fewer public offices, and they fare worse in health outcomes. Louisiana ranks ninth in the rate of women murdered by men.

Louisiana is one of the only states in the country that does not have its own minimum wage law. It is a state that relies on the service industry, and we can imagine a descendant of Patsey finding herself in a job—if she could even find a job at all— without health benefits or basic protections, like paid sick leave. Maybe she’s a domestic worker. Or perhaps she packs boxes at a Walmart factory. She would have to stay at work regardless of whether there were sick children at home. With high job insecurity, saying no to whatever her employer’s demands might be could easily lead to firing, so she works extra hours without overtime and tries to ignore it when her manager eyes her lustfully.

Patsey’s descendant would face the fact that in Louisiana, her right to control her own body is constantly under assault. She would be forced to undergo an invasive and unnecessary ultrasound procedure before a doctor could perform an abortion—if she could even find a clinic.

In the very state where her foremother was tortured, deprived and violated, Patsey’s descendant would stand a good chance of getting trapped in unrelenting poverty, health crises and humiliation. During slavery, many Americans justified oppression by claiming that black people were naturally inferior and thus deserved their condition. Today, conservative Republicans suggest that the poor are poor because of their own inferiority, and do not deserve any better than what they have. The ideology of slavery posited a false God who instated a natural order in which some human beings were made to suffer at the hands of others. The ideology of capitalism proposes the supernatural force of the "market," which can never be wrong. Those whom the invisible hand crushes deserve their fate.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/12-y...age=1#bookmark

It's easy to watch a movie about particular times in history and believe the past is the past and these injustices no longer exist. The truth is the same ideology that allows one human being to erase the humanity of another is alive and well in our society. Many still believe there are deserving and undeserving people and we are taught to care little for the undeserving among us. Their fates are of their own doing. Soon many more people will learn first hand how unfair and unjust that belief is.

[Allison W]

Isn't Ted Cruz ineligible to be president? That alone makes the prospect of him ending up the GOP frontrunner extremely amusing, and would make me feel much more confident in a Democratic win in 2016. More confident than I already am, I mean.

[Corkey]

Cruz would be eligible the same as Obama was eligible. The only thing keeping Cruz from running right now is his dual citizenship. If he doesn't get that cleared up in time then he will be ineligible.

[Cin]

Ya, his mother was an American citizen at the time of his birth. A natural born citizen includes those who are entitled to US citizenship at birth. And I'm sure Canada will be more than happy to cut him lose.

[Allison W]

Thanks for clearing that up. I'd heard he's Canadian. Apparently that's true, but not in the way that I had thought. I don't doubt he'd give up his dual citizenship for the presidency, so the prospect of him being the Republican frontrunner is now considerably less amusing. The man is batshit--Paul is at least right about that, in the same way that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

[CherylNYC]

Originally Posted by Corkey

Cruz would be eligible the same as Obama was eligible.

Well, not exactly the same way. President Obama was born in the U.S., (Hawaii to be exact), to an American mother and a Kenyan father. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Canadian father. If Cruz does run it will be interesting to see the Tea Baggers and crazed Birthers tie themselves in knots about why that's OK when they never stopped nattering about Obama's supposed Kenyan birthplace.

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by CherylNYC

Well, not exactly the same way. President Obama was born in the U.S., (Hawaii to be exact), to an American mother and a Kenyan father. Cruz was born in Canada to an American mother and a Canadian father. If Cruz does run it will be interesting to see the Tea Baggers and crazed Birthers tie themselves in knots about why that's OK when they never stopped nattering about Obama's supposed Kenyan birthplace.

Yep not exactly, but we shouldn't be reverse birthers either lol

[Cin]

Actually I think Cruz's father was born in Cuba. Doesn't change anything but it is interesting I think.