Patriotic American Are Not on The Side of Crazy Conservatives Who Want to Shutdown Government

Patriotic American Are Not on The Side of Crazy Conservatives Who Want to Shutdown Government

As lawmakers attempt to pass a funding bill to keep the government operating past Monday, House Republicans won’t agree to avert a shutdown unless Obamacare is delayed for one year. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has been pushing this anti-Obamacare strategy for weeks, claims this represents a “compromise.”

But the American public doesn’t necessarily agree. Even as the deadline for passing a continuing resolution draws near, the vast majority of Americans still don’t want Congress to delay or defund the health reform law, according to the results from a new tracking poll.

The Morning Consult group finds that just seven percent of voters support delaying or defunding Obamacare. On the other hand, 39 percent of voters want Congress to either let the law take effect or expand the law even further. Another 29 percent think that Congress should work on making improvements to Obamacare, but ultimately leave the law in place. By a two to one margin, the poll’s respondents said “the results from the 2012 presidential election represented a referendum on moving forward with the Affordable Care Act.”

In a memo regarding the new results, the Morning Consult group notes that voters have ultimately been “unmoved by three months of the defund argument.”

Morning Consult’s results track with earlier research that has found that most Americans want to give the health reform law an opportunity to work. A recent poll conducted by the Pew Research Center and USA Today found that even when Americans don’t support Obamacare, they still want lawmakers to try to make it work rather than try to undermine it. And Morning Consult’s last tracking poll found that even Republicans don’t favor defunding the health law.

And if the government does end up being forced to shut down because of Republican brinkmanship over Obamacare, the majority of voters say they’ll put “a lot” of the blame on GOP lawmakers in Congress. According to the new poll, nearly eight in 10 independent voters say they’ll blame congressional Republicans for a shutdown.

In an analysis of the new polling results, conservative health policy columnist Avik Roy acknowledges that Americans “don’t view the law in the apocalyptic terms that many conservatives do.” Even though Cruz — who recently conducted a fake filibuster to speak out against Obamacare for over 20 hours — claims that “the American people overwhelmingly reject Obamacare,” Roy notes that doesn’t mean the public actually supports shutting down the government in order to get rid of it.

Only parts of Obamacare or the ACA have been put into effect and millions of Americans are reaping the benefits for their families. Conservatives want to use blackmail and fiscal hostage taking to go against the will of the American people. Conservative do not and never have believed in government by and for the people. It is a freaky political philosophy partly based on mid 20th century fascism and partly on old world rule by monarchs and the elite. It is not an American political party.

Debt ceiling games, Republicans want to hold the country hostage to make the elite richer and workers even more powerless

 Debt ceiling games, Republicans want to hold the country hostage to make the elite richer and workers even more powerless

The House Republican position is that the debt ceiling — a threat to wreak economic havoc — is a legitimate bargaining chip in budget negotiations.

Party leaders at least understand that the debt ceiling must and will be increased, but hope to use the threat of defaulting on the national debt to extract some relatively modest concessions, if possible.

But some number of House Republicans — it’s unclear how many, but probably around 40 — don’t see it that way. They believe the debt limit — a statutory anomaly that should be abolished — should serve as a sort of tie-breaker in divided government that allows the legislature, or even one branch of it, to turn the presidency into an office of nominal leadership. To turn the president into a figurehead who has no choice but to accede to the legislative wishes of the party he or she defeated in the general election.

Why am I so confident they actually believe this?

Because they took a look at the outrageous list of demands the GOP leadership attached to the party’s debt limit increase proposal and said, “not good enough.”

Late Thursday afternoon, House GOP leaders acknowledged that their debt limit bill, which they haven’t even released yet, lacks the votes to pass. “We still have some challenges,” said Rep. Tom Cole R-Okla, a deputy whip and a John Boehner ally, according to The Hill. “We’ve got an awful lot of support, but clearly at this point we don’t have a final product that’s attracting the number that we need. Hopefully that’ll change, and I think it could.”

The House proposal (at least as originally conceived) is a grab bag of GOP goodies, most of which were bullet points in Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign platform. But it lacks the most controversial elements of the GOP agenda — Medicare privatization, Medicaid devolution — and as such doesn’t cut enough spending for some of the most hardline conservatives in the House Republican conference. It also doesn’t include any abortion restrictions.

As such, Boehner and his leadership team can’t whip up 217 Republicans (the current threshold for passage) to back it, and since zero Democrats will support their crazy plan, it’s dead. At least as currently written.

Now I obviously think this whole approach is nuts. But at least in its current form you can construe the plan as a weird starting point from which Republicans will ultimately begin dialing back demands and, in the end, come up empty handed, or at most with minor concessions, in exchange for increasing the debt limit.

But for those 20, 40, 60, however many Republicans, this isn’t how the debt limit should be wielded. The demand should be the totality of the party platform, with no room for negotiation. Or at the very least the party shouldn’t signal willingness to negotiate by leaving major priorities off the table.

When your House majority is 233 members, 20 is enough to threaten your Speakership. As such, instead of telling the hardliners to take a hike, GOP leaders are going to negotiate with them, in the hope of altering the debt limit plan in a way that achieves a Republican-only majority for passage. As loudly as they’re insisting that President Obama should negotiate with him, they don’t have a workable position of their own from which to negotiate. They could quite easily if they were willing to work with Democrats. But John Boehner isn’t ready to lead yet.

Does that mean we’re doomed to default on the debt? I don’t think so. Boehner might not be ready to lead, but he’s also not ready to destroy the economy. The middle way between those two seemingly incompatible “priorities” is to “fight” to the bitter end, but accede to reality at the last possible minute.

That’s what he’s doing right now in the ongoing effort to fund the government, which is set to shut down at the end of Monday. It’s a performance he’ll likely repeat over the next three weeks ahead of the debt limit deadline. Unless he can’t appease the hardliners enough to pass a crazy GOP debt limit bill. In that case, he’ll have to go hat in hand to Democrats for help directly — a recognition that he doesn’t even have the semblance of a governing majority, and that his hardliners are more or less done with him.

Maybe then he’ll accept reality and pick the “leadership” option.

Conservative shadow money from weirdo UnAmerican outfits like the Free Enterprise Institute ( they hate the free market, but love crony corporatism) and the Chamber of Commerce ( the voice of lazy millionaires and companies that have been shipping jobs to Asia for decades)  is pushing for a government shutdown, hoping that it will all be blamed on Democrats.

Conservative Republican Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) Has Serious Delusions

Conservative Republican Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) Has Serious Delusions 

The Congressman who once encouraged House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) to attack Obamacare’s 10 percent tax on tanning bed services as racist against white people sought to compare the GOP’s latest push to defund the health care law to the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

“It only takes one with passion — look at Rosa Parks, Lech Walesa, Martin Luther King,” Rep. Ted Yoho (R-FL) told the New York Times on Thursday. “People with passion that speak up, they’ll have people follow them because they believe the same way, and smart leadership listens to that.”

Though King is best remembered for his work on racial integration, he was also strong champion for the labor movement, fighting against economic inequality and for equal access to health care for all. As he said during a speech to the Medical Committee for Human Rights in 1966, “Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.”

The GOP’s push to defund and ultimately repeal the health care law would leave millions of uninsured Americans without access to health care coverage and would disproportionately impact the African American community. Blacks are 8 percent more likely to lack health insurance than whites, and a recent study found that the health care law could cut that differential in half.

Like the rest of the plastic patriots who call themselves tea bagger conservatives, Yoho does not feel that the American people have the right and the freedom to join together to provide health insurance for ourselves. he and other tea baggers do believe that men, women, children, the elderly and disabled do have the right to die and stop being a burden on Congress critters like Yoho who makes $179,000 dollars a year and his health insurance is subsidized by the American people. Yoho is a social-Darwinist, the UnAmerican political philosophy that fueled the fascist movements of the mid 20th century. The ACA or Obamacare is helping millions of American families.

Fox News Nutty Conservatives Continue War on Women

Fox News Nutty Conservatives Continue War on Women

Fox News medical contributor Dr. David Samadi falsely claimed that he had only been "complimenting" women on their higher use of preventive health services than men when responding to criticism of his earlier call for higher health insurance premiums for women.

In an August 27 appearance on Fox & Friends, Samadi argued that women should pay more than men for health insurance because "they are using the [health care] system a lot more than we are, so they go through a lot of preventive screening, they give birth, they have the whole mammogram, pap smears." He also cited the fact that "women live longer" and that "women have the breasts, they have the ovaries, they have the uterus," while men "only have the prostate," as evidence for why women should pay more for insurance. After his appearance, Samadi was intensely criticized for his comments.

A week later, on the September 3 edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade invited Samadi "to clear up" his previous statements about the difference in medical costs between men and women. Samadi misleadingly characterized his earlier comments as a "compliment" to women:  

    SAMADI: One of the things I said is women are excellent -- and this was a compliment to them. Is that they are very proactive and they go get screened. In my practice it's the women that bring men to our practice because they just -- men don't go get checked. So just like the mammogram, when U.S. task force said women, we don't want you to get mammograms, they went after, they fought for it, and they went ahead with mammograms. With men, when they said no PSAs, everybody said OK. Sound good to me, I'm gonna go watch my sports.

Samadi's explanation of his August 27 comments whitewashes his more outlandish points. Marie Claire blogger Maura Brannigan noted the ridiculousness of Samadi's decision to count the number of diagnosable body parts in determining appropriate health coverage costs, and Slate's Amanda Marcotte highlighted Samadi's evidence-free defense of his claim that women deserve to pay more for childbirth:

    As Gretchen Carlson couldn't help but point out in reference to childbirth costs, starting a pregnancy takes two people, but bringing it to fruition only takes one. Samadi didn't really have a good rejoinder to that. "Not always," he said, creating one of those situations where you really wish a follow-up question was asked. Was he suggesting that the ridiculously small number of pregnancies created in single or lesbian women by sperm donors was justification enough to spare men the responsibility of sharing childbirth costs?

Experts have previously noted that women face discrimination in purchasing health insurance, and will continue to until the Affordable Care Act's provision banning the practice known as "gender rating" comes into effect in January, 2014. As the National Women's Law Center (NWLC) has noted, women "are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women." According to the NWLC, in the individual market, 92 percent of the best-selling healthcare plans charge different rates for men and women of the same age, and as a result, women pay an overall $1 billion more per year. This difference holds true even of plans that do not cover gender-specific care for women, like maternity care. From the NWLC:

    Furthermore, our research shows a wide variation in the differences women are charged both within and across states--even with maternity care excluded. For example, one plan examined in Arkansas charges 25-year-old women 81% more than men for coverage while a similar plan in the same state only charges women 10% more for coverage than men. Neither plan covers maternity care. It's hard to justify or explain that variation.

Conservatives continue to paint women as either being too concerned about preventative medicine or the gender that requires too much medical maintenance. That is even though there is no evidence to support any of their lame brain theories. Conservatives feel like if they sit around and jawbone an issue for a while they have come to an informed opinion. Which is like a physicist looking at the stars for a hour or so and claiming to have all the answers about the galaxy we live in, no empirical studies required.

Labor Day: Why Does Fox News Hate American Workers

Labor Day: Why Does Fox News Hate American Workers

Fox's Charles Payne attempted to discredit fast-food workers' planned attempt to organize for union representation and a higher minimum wage by falsely claiming workers are arguing for a sliding scale of extra income. 

Neil Cavuto hosted Fox Business contributor Charles Payne on the August 28 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto to discuss protests planned by fast-food workers, who are demanding higher pay and the right to unionize. Payne claimed during the segment that employers don't owe a debt to their employees and mischaracterized the minimum wage increase as a sliding scale of pay:

    PAYNE: Listen, I don't begrudge anyone for trying to earn extra money, but what they're essentially saying is that their salary should be doubled from where they are. It doesn't match the skill set. Now, if we start to talk about this -- and listen, it's something that's been echoed all day long with theme of the March on Washington -- that somehow corporations owe a debt to people who work for them. So if Susan has two kids, she gets X amount of income, then she has another child, then the corporation should pay more money specifically because they owe her a debt and she had another kid -- sort of the responsibility or the welfare state that's been such a burden on America is now being thrusted, or attempted to be thrusted on the shoulders of corporate America.

But workers aren't demanding a sliding scale of income. They're organizing for fair representation at work and a single minimum wage increase. As Ezra Klein explained: "most workers have less power to negotiate raises than they did a generation ago":

    The problem is severe enough that it earned a mention at the beginning of President Obama's 2013 State of the Union address. "We gather here knowing that there are millions of Americans whose hard work and dedication have not yet been rewarded," he said. "Our economy is adding jobs - but too many people still can't find full-time employment. Corporate profits have rocketed to all-time highs - but for more than a decade, wages and incomes have barely budged."

    There are many explanations for why labor's share of income is falling. Globalization, automation, skills-based technological change and the decline of unions all play a part. But in the end, all these explanations end up saying the same thing: Most workers have less power to negotiate raises than they did a generation ago. And that's truest for those who making the least money and holding the fewest skills.

The workers' planned action is, according to the Boston Globe, the latest in a series of protests by low-wage workers that first gained attention last November and gathered momentum after summer fast-food strikes across the country's largest cities:

    The fast-food employees' uprising has been gaining momentum since a few hundred workers staged a one-day strike in New York in November, followed by demonstrations in Washington, D.C., Chicago, and several major Midwestern cities this summer.

    Their movement is part of a mounting wave of actions by low-wage-workers, including picketing at more than 1,000 Walmart stores on Black Friday last November and an appeal by airport contract workers for better working conditions.

Beyond increasing their at-work negotiating power, fast-food workers are organizing to pull themselves and their families above the federal poverty line. The Los Angeles Times noted that low-wage workers across the country "are struggling to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families" and raising the minimum wage would, according to a study by the Restaurant Opportunity Centers United, have a dramatic effect on pulling the working poor out of poverty:

    The study, by the Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a national organization focusing on racial equity in the restaurant industry, discovered that nearly 58 percent-- or roughly 6 million -- of the 10.4 million U.S. workers living below the federal poverty level in 2011 would be pulled out by such an increase. (Proposed legislation introduced to Congress earlier this year by Rep. George Miller (D-Calif.) called for just that.)

    The Bureau of Labor Statistics defines the working poor as those who either had jobs, or were looking for at least half the year and still fell below the poverty line.

    The federal minimum wage -- currently set at $7.25 -- was last increased in 2009.

American workers are subsidized the salaries of executives making hundreds of thousands to multimillion dollar salaries. Those workers make the salaries of those executives possible. They make the corporate profits which are paid to share holders possible. people making less than a living wage are supporting the very wealthy. In the mean time some of those employees are forced to collect federal food assistance to survive, which middle-class tax payers subsidize. We don't practice capitalism in the USA we practice a type of corrupt cronyism with the rich living off the work of the working poor.