The sequestration debate ignores many issues. Everyone is talking about it. Each of the major parties blames each other for it. Many GOP members including the heads of the Democratic Party advanced sequestration since day one. The Left/Right paradigm is involved in this issue. For example, the Left paradigm wants cuts to military spending and none to domestic programs while the Right paradigm wants no cuts to military spending and cuts to domestic programs (especially the Tea Party types). We know that sequestration again is an across board cuts in all levels of government spending. The bigger picture is that tremendous savings can be received out of military and domestic spending without reducing services to either. We find that the military is wasting bucket loads of money on non-defense costs. BusinessWeek and Bloomberg document about how we can slash military spending without harming national security. That means to slash boondoggles that even the Generals don’t desire. Many aircraft are coming that even some in the Army doesn't need. BusinessWeek gave a list of cost cutting measures that will not undermine national security. This is about eliminating the pork without harming jobs. Yet some small government Republican hypocritically lecture us on small government, but they want huge Pentagon contracts to exist along with the defense business to spread imperialism worldwide. The military wastes trillions of dollars. The Secretary of Defense back in May 2012 admitted that the DoD “is the only major federal agency that cannot pass an audit today.” The Pentagon will not be ready for an audit for another five years, according to Panetta. Even Senator Tom Coburn said that the Department of Defense can reduce $67.9 billion over 10 years by eliminating the non-defense programs that have found their way into the budget for the Department of Defense. Coburn said that the wastes of taxpayer dollars involve the $100,000 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency strategy planning workshop including a session entitled “Did Jesus die for Klingons too?” that entailed a panel debating the implications for Christian philosophy should life be found on other planets. Other wasteful spending projects include DOD-run microbreweries and a DOD and Department of Agriculture co-produced reality cooking show called “Grill It Safe." Billions of dollars spent in the war on terror. The war on terrorism weakens our national security, increases terrorism, and harms our economy as well. The military industrial complex, the expanding Homeland Security, and imperialist foreign policy are harmful for our economic development indeed. Domestically, we have wasted taxpayer money on Wall Street banks instead of breaking up the big banks to save the economy (as advanced by independent economists and financial experts). The bailouts are not stopping either. They continue to this very day. The government has advanced the interests of the big banks over Main Street. The handful of the wealthiest human beings are having record profits while economic inequality grows even under Obama. Trillions are sucked from the real economy when they are given to the banks. Wealth is being redistributed from the poor to the rich. Even the Bank for International Settlement (one of the strongest central banking organizations on Earth) warned in 2008 that the bailouts of the big banks would create sovereign debt crises, which could bankrupt nations. Treasury Secretary Paulson shoved bailouts down Congress’ throat by threatening martial law if the bailouts weren't passed. The bailout money has subsidized companies to allow bankers to get bonuses, and other unnecessary things. A large personage of the bailouts can into foreign banks. We should prosecute big white collar criminals not embrace oligarchy. Fraud influenced the Great Depression and that is why fraud was exposed in that time period. Some big corporations pay no taxes. The source of our real budget deficit comes from unnecessary military projects, waste and fraud in the military, the war on terror, war profiteering, endless bailouts for the big banks, crony capitalism, bad economic policies, failure to enforce laws, shipping jobs overseas, and sending trillions of dollars in a faulty banking system. So, we should have investments, and job creating policies in the public and private sectors. Yet, we also need to get tough on fraud as well.
Barack Obama's biography is ever known in the world. He was born on August 4, 1961 at Kapiʻolani Maternity & Gynecological Hospital (now the Kapi'olani Medical Center for Women and Children) in Honolulu, Hawaii. His father was Barack Obama, Sr. and he was an Kenyan African Luo man from Nyang'oma Kogelo, Kenya. His mother was Stanley Ann Dunham from Wichita, Kansas. Barack Obama lived in Indonesia for a while and returned into Honolulu as a means to live with his maternal grandparents. His mother divorced his Kenyan father and married a man named Lolo Seotoro in March 15, 1963. He or Lolo was a then Indonesian East West graduate student in geography at the University of Hawaii. Barack Obama was a smart child and he dealt with many issues in his early life. He admitted that the land of Hawaii gave him an opportunity to see different cultures and the concept of the unity of the human race. When a person gets older, a person understands the unity in diversity as found in the human race. Barack Obama finished high school and first attended Occidental College by 1979 in Los Angeles. On February 1981, he gave his first public speech calling Occidental to divest from South Africa in response to South Africa back then agreeing with the immorality of apartheid. Thank God that apartheid was defeated in South Africa indeed. In 1981, he visited Indonesia to visit his mother, his sister Maya, and to visit the families of college friends (in Pakistan and India) for three weeks. He transferred to Columbia University in NYC in 1981. He majored in political science with a specialty in international relations. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in 1983, which ironically was the year that I was born in America. He worked for a year at the Business International Corporation and then at the New York Public Interest Research Group. In 1985, Barack Obama went to community organizing in the city of Chicago. He worked with the Catholic Church as a means to develop the community of South Side Chicago. He set up a job training program, a college preparatory tutoring program, and a tenants' rights organization in Altgeld Gardens. He visited Kenya in the late 1980's and in 1992 with his then fiancée Michelle Obama and his sister Auma. Barack Obama is famous for entering Harvard Law School.
I was once like many who believed in unrestrained, free market capitalism. I used to believe in that cut, cut, and more cut philosophy. Yet, when I did some exquisite, non-abstract research, I figured that a decrepit economic philosophy that enslaved our race is not some philosophy that I need to adhere to. Dirgism, cooperatives, controlled capitalism, or even a mixed economy is superior to laissez faire capitalism. Stephen Zarlenga, Ellen Brown, and others have advanced alternative economic populist solutions as well. I am a progressive on economics, but I am an independent on other issues as well. I am an Independent man ideologically. I reject ongoing bank bailouts. I do believe that money from eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse including fair taxation on the super-rich (like higher tax rates for millionaires and billionaires) can generate revenues to fund education and healthcare, which is a human right not a privilege. I don't agree with the status quo, but a Greenback like economic populist like solution to deal with our money. Many folks from across the political spectrum comprehend the truth about the corruption and malfeasance generated by the Federal Reserve. Yet, true prudence not token moderation is about ending the war on terror and eliminating fraud not massively using austerity that will harm the poor and the middle class. The Progressive Caucus have found alternatives to austerity, which the reactionaries so love. My thinking is not anti-democratic since the Constitution in Article I, Section 8 allows Congress to dictate spending public money. Also, it is democratic to advance the general welfare of society. It is democratic to maintain human civil liberties and to expose corporate corruption not worship deficit hawk paranoia. When you live in an age of record economic inequality, token prudence is out of the question. You need emergency, radical solutions in stopping it or an economic recession not so-called soft prudence or moderation. Ellen Brown and others agree with money being backed, but not with gold. Obsessing with the gold standard in the wrong way will cause deflation. Allowing more public banking in all levels of government can be one step in solving this issue (resulting in sending credit to assist our infrastructure without funding big banks permanently) instead of the Federal Reserve being dominated by select private interests. I don't believe that central banks should run the government, but I do believe in the government ought to promote the general welfare of society. Everyone can benefit from investments, cutting fraud, waste, and abuse, ending the war on terror, never cuts essential programs that human beings need, and a radical change in power to benefit humanity not the oligarchy. What is truly anti-democratic is a dog eat dog economic view and the harm to the rights of workers, minorities, and other human beings. Allowing the free market to do whatever it wants whenever it wants is the definition of antidemocratic processes as well. That is the point. That is why we once had the Glass Steagall Act. Either we have power controlled by the people individually & collectively or the status quo.
Far too often, we ignore the UK responsibility in the immoral war in Iraq. We know about the American involvement in the Iraq War, but not the British involvement in striking detail in a lot of cases. We have folks like Foreign Secretary William Hague. He has an arrogant mentality, because he has made it a career of talking down to human beings. According to the Guardian, with the 10 year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq coming up, he has written to his fellow Ministers and asked them not to discuss the case or the legality of the Iraq War. According to a source close to Hague: ‘The foreign secretary has written to colleagues to remind them that the agreed position of the coalition government is not to comment on the case or justification for the war until Chilcot has reported. This is about allowing the inquiry to reach its conclusion, not having the government prejudge them. Hague might have forgotten that the long awaited Chilcot Inquiry cannot deliver its report. Once, it has been told in November of 2011 that the report will be delayed until the summer of 2012. The reason is that the Whitehall departments were continuing to block the disclosure of documents about the events relating to the invasion of Iraq. Chilcot's panel read all of the classified documents. They knew that it was vital that these documents must be revealed to the public. Without that intrepid action, the public wouldn't learn fully about the lesson about the error of the invasion of Iraq. The report would be delayed again as told on July of 2012. The inquiry panel was frustrated by Whitehall's refusal to release papers still being held in secret. These papers involved the MI6 and the government's eavesdropping center called GCHQ. Chilcot's letter to David Cameron referred to the sharp exchanges with the former cabinet secretary Gus O'Donnell over disclosing details about the correspondence and conversations between Blair and Bush. This would illuminate Blair's position at critical points in the run-up to war. By late 2012, news about a further delay as the issue about showing the documents was still being fought over by the Inquiry and the Cabinet Office. So, the documents are postponed for publication until late 2013 or even in 2014. It is unknown to the wider public. The evidence given to the Chilcot Inquiry document about how legal advice was ignored and vital human beings were excluded from discussions. Chilcot and his panel had to recall many folks like Tony Blair. The reason is that much of their previous evidence has been rubbished by other witnesses. Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, told the inquiry that the cabinet should have been told of the Attorney General’s doubts about the legality of invading Iraq before Blair went to war. Sir Gus, before he retired, was the one blocking the much sought after publication of the classified documents. Diss Blair with one hand and protect with the other is the of some. Hague desired to block all meaningful discussion on the justification or the legal basis for invading Iraq until Chilcot has delivered his report. The government including Hague's own Ministry though was blocking the very action Chilcot needs from them in order to finalize the report. Hague wrote a letter to the cabinet to make it clear that ‘not prejudging Chilcot should not prevent [ministers] acknowledging the sacrifices of the armed forces.’ On the other hand, it is true that the illegality of the invasion of Iraq will lead into the exploitation the military. The military was sacrificed on the altar of Blair's delusional ambitions not in the defense of the United Kingdom at all. Many Conservatives in the UK political system advanced gender inequality and voted to go into war. Some Labour MPs voted against the invasion. Yet, even some Labour members kept their heads down. The LibDems found one MP guilt of harming the course of justice and facing prison. Nick Clegg or the deputy Prime Minister discussed about the accusation of the former chief executive being accused of sexual harassment. If someone wants to support the troops, then don't lie to the troops about an unjust, illegal, and immoral war.
Some of the Supreme Court members are attacking the U.S. Voting Rights Act. This vicious assault is not new and it is just as bigoted and oppressive as Jim Crow. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Shelby County vs. Holder. This case involved the reactionaries trying to challenge the key enforcement provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The reactionary justices Antonin Scalia, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts have expressed their overt intension in their clear opposition to the act. Justice Clarence Thomas or the fourth member of the bloc is silent and he is the swing vote on this topic. Even Justice Anthony Kennedy questioned the relevance of the Voting Rights Act. Some in that court want to overturn or eviscerate provisions of the law that require states of the former Jim Crow South (and other jurisdictions to pre-clear changes in voting procedures with the federal government as to insure the rights of blacks including other minorities to vote). The challenge to the Voting Rights Act has been rejected by the federal trial court and the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. In our time, there is still an assault on democratic rights by the ruling class. The power of Congress is being usurp, because the 15th Amendment outlawed voting discrimination based on race including the Voting Rights Act. Congress voted to extend the VRA for years, even recently in 2006. Both Houses voted overwhelmingly to extend the act for another 25 years. The vote was 98 to 0 in the Senate, 390 to 33 in the House. The Voting Rights Act is necessary for many reasons. We already have the 14th and 15th Amendments to the Constitution. Yet, the state and local governments of the South disenfranchised African Americans via taxes, literacy tests, violence, and terror. That is why mass struggle in the 1950's and the 1960's executed by thousands of African Americans including nonblack workers in the nation fought against legal segregation. They were involved in marches, sit ins, protests, etc. Some were assaulted and killed form state and local authorities including terror groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Bombings, lynchings, and beatings killed other human beings. The struggle for human rights caused the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The VRA involved all of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Virginia and Alaska, as well as parts of Arizona, Hawaii and Idaho. In 1975, Texas was added due to findings of persistent discrimination against non-English-speaking persons. Today, all or part of 16 states fall under the pre-clearance requirement of the VRA. By 2006, a Texas municipality challenged it on grounds similar to those at issue in Shelby County. The debate is on Sections 4 and 5 of the act, which are necessary because of the voter suppression efforts made by the GOP during the 2012 Presidential campaign. We should have the pre clearance requirement in states that have a known history of discrimination. There are attempts at voter suppression in Alabama and other regions of the nation. Scalia, Roberts, Alito, and Kennedy want to repeal Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act. This will cause Congress to create a new formula for determining which jurisdictions fall under the scope of pre-clearance, a remote prospect in the present political context that would have much the same effect as striking Sections 4 and 5 altogether. Scalia made the recent bigoted comments of: “Now, I don’t think that’s attributable to the fact that it is so much clearer now that we need this. I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement…It’s a concern that this is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress.” Even in the year of 2000, voting rights were eliminated. Our democratic rights are in stake when you have voter ID laws, harming early voting, the purging of voting rolls, calling corporations the right to donate unlimited cash to election campaigns, and other evils. The Republicans have shown fear of the changing demographics in America. That is why they want to use gerrymandering schemes as a means to maintain their power. The attack on the Voting Rights Act is an attack on all human beings, not just African Americans. Our living standards should be maintained. We don't need a ruling class to have police state with indefinite military detention, domestic spying, and assassinations of U.S. citizens either.
By Timothy
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