GOP Presidential front runner Mitt Romney gets heckled at the Iowa State Fair earlier today.
“I didn’t come here to listen to the American people, I came here to speak!”
And with three minutes of Romney ignoring each and every question, and not answering them, HE HAS LOST MY VOTE, FOREVER!!!
[In] an interview with the Daily Beast’s Andrew Romano, [Texas Governor, Rick] Perry makes his most outlandish claim to date — Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional:
The Constitution says that “the Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes… to provide for the… general Welfare of the United States.” But I noticed that when you quoted this section on page 116, you left “general welfare” out and put an ellipsis in its place. Progressives would say that “general welfare” includes things like Social Security or Medicare—that it gives the government the flexibility to tackle more than just the basic responsibilities laid out explicitly in our founding document. What does “general welfare” mean to you?
[PERRY:] I don’t think our founding fathers when they were putting the term “general welfare” in there were thinking about a federally operated program of pensions nor a federally operated program of health care. What they clearly said was that those were issues that the states need to address. Not the federal government. I stand very clear on that. From my perspective, the states could substantially better operate those programs if that’s what those states decided to do.
So in your view those things fall outside of general welfare. But what falls inside of it? What did the Founders mean by “general welfare”?
[PERRY:] I don’t know if I’m going to sit here and parse down to what the Founding Fathers thought general welfare meant.
But you just said what you thought they didn’t mean by general welfare. So isn’t it fair to ask what they did mean? It’s in the Constitution.
[Silence.]
Perry’s reading of the Constitution raises very serious questions about whether he understands the English language. The Constitution gives Congress the power to “to lay and collect taxes” and to “provide for the…general welfare of the United States.” No plausible interpretation of the words “general welfare” does not include programs that ensure that all Americans can live their entire lives secure in the understanding that retirement will not force them into poverty and untreated sickness.
Given his rampant misinterpretation of the bible and absolute disregard for science to achieve right-wing evangelical legislation in the culture-warped republican wasteland of Texas, I’ll just say I’m not too surprised that Mr. Perry (Parry) would make up his own interpretation of the constitution as well, which, of course, must be the correct one.
Ladies and gents, this is who just entered the presidential race for the GOP.
HE WANTS TO TAKE AWAY YOUR MEDICARE AND YOUR SOCIAL SECURITY!!!
THIS IS NOT A JOKE!!! HE IS REALLY RUNNING!!
-Drew, Concerned American
Romney is, however, correct in one way: raising the cap on the amount of income taxed for Social Security purposes does not begin to solve the problem. Instead, it solves the problem altogether.
8 Historical Reasons to Show Liberals Love
If you work hard for a living, you can thank a liberal for:
- The 8-hour workday, overtime pay, and the federal minimum wage (Fair Labor Standards Act, 1938). Labor activists started calling for an 8-hour day in 1836; Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the above provisions into law for many workers more than a century later.
If you or someone you love serves in the military, you can thank a liberal for:
- The G.I. Bill of Rights, first enacted in 1944 under FDR, which provides funds for military veterans to receive education/training, started unemployment compensation for veterans, and facilitates loans for returning veterans to buy homes and start businesses.
If you are a member for an under-represented group often attacked by the (ever-fading) white male majority, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Civil Rights Act of 1964, enacted under Lyndon B. Johnson, which outlawed major forms of discrimination against blacks and women, including racial segregation and unfair voter registration requirements.
If you plan on getting old and/or sick some day, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Social Security Act, enacted for limited recipients in 1935 under FDR and expanded under Harry Truman and LBJ, which helps ensure that people who are too old or infirm to work can still access basic necessities.
- Medicare, which provides greatly subsidized health care to retirees. Medicare was signed into law in 1965 by LBJ as an amendment to the Social Security Act.
If you drink water, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Clean Water Act, first enacted under Truman in 1948 (the Federal Water Pollution Control Act) and expanded under Jimmy Carter in 1977. The 1977 amendments created a greater structure for regulating pollutants contaminating U.S. waters and gave the EPA authority to implement pollution control programs.
If you’ve ever had a baby or a sick family member and didn’t want to choose between caring for them or losing your job, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (signed into law under Bill Clinton), which allows employees who have worked for an employer for at least 1 year to take up to 12 weeks of leave for a family illness, birth or adoption within each 12 month period. Employers must apply accrued sick or vacation time to the worker’s family/medical leave and compensate workers for that time.
If you grew up in a rural area and enjoyed 20th century conveniences, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Rural Electrification Act of 1936 (FDR), which provided federal loans for the installation of electricity in rural areas of the U.S.
Yes, But ‘What Have You Done for Me Lately’ – 10 Reasons to Thank Obama
Is Obama the idealized leader many hoped he’d be? No. Has the Obama administration accomplished more in two years than most Presidents have in two terms? Yes. Here are just some of the strides Obama and liberals made from 2009-2010 before Republicans gained control of the House:
If you or someone you love plans to go to college (and you’re not rich), you can thank a liberal for:
- Student Loan Reform and Pell Grant Award Increases (part of the Affordable Care Act of 2010), which cut private lending companies out of government loans to save $61 billion in subsidies over the next decade, more than half of which goes to funding increases in Pell Grant awards (up to $5,550/year in 2011).
If you realize fossil fuels are ruining the environment, precipitating violent storms and bound to run out sometime this century – and you support the development of sustainable, clean energy, you can thank a liberal for:
- Components of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (aka the Stimulus Bill) that made the largest investment in green technology in history. The bill introduced more than $70 billion for green activities, including a ten-fold increase over the Bush Administration in funding for the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
If you have credit cards or loans and don’t enjoy getting ripped off, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Credit Card Holders’ Bill of Rights Act of 2009, which banned underhanded and predatory practices by credit card companies and provided new consumer protections, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (formed under the 2010 Wall Street Reform), which seeks solely to educate and protect consumers from unfair and predatory practices by financial institutions. Its goal is to make sure prices are clear up front, that risks are visible, and that nothing deceptive or abusive is buried in fine print.
If you or someone you love might need comprehensive medical treatment without wanting to get screwed over, you can thank a liberal for:
- Health Care Reform (aka ObamaCare, aka Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010), which forbids health insurance companies from canceling coverage when a person gets sick, from refusing to cover preexisting conditions, and from imposing lifetime limits on medical care. The bill also established federal subsidies to decrease the price of health insurance (families of four earning up to $88,000 are eligible) and initiated federal oversight of premium hikes.
If you or someone you love is disabled or part of the LGBT community, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which extends federal protection to victims who were attacked because of their gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Shepard and Byrd were murdered in 1998, the bill was first introduced in 2001, and it finally passed in 2009.
If you or someone you love is homosexual – or if you just believe in the Fourteenth Amendment’s extension of equal protection under the law, you can thank a liberal for:
- Repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” which allows gays and lesbians to serve in the military without having to hide who they are.
If a teacher has ever touched your life, you can thank a liberal for:
- The Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act of 2010, which allocated $10 billion to avert public education layoffs (saving or creating 161,000 teacher jobs) and authorized $16.1 billion in Medicaid funding to help grant low-income people access to potentially life-saving services.
If you think American multi-national corporations should bear a bigger tax liability to help fund services for the people from whom they’re getting rich, you can thank a liberal for:
- Funding the above education/Medicaid bill by reducing tax loopholes for companies making profits overseas. The bill was supported by the National Education Association and several workers’ unions; it was opposed by Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform and the Chamber of Commerce. Only one House Republican voted in favor of this bill.
If you or someone you love has a child for whom they can’t afford to purchase insurance, you can thank a liberal for:
- Reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in 2009, which expanded health coverage to 4 million more low-income American children and preserved coverage for 7 million children already enrolled.
If you or someone you love is dying or debilitated from a life-altering illness and you still want hope for a cure, you can thank a liberal for:
- The end of the Stem Cell Research Ban, for which Obama takes full credit. He used an executive order in March 2009 to end former President George W. Bush’s ban on federal funding for embryonic stem cell research.
(via lunarpolitics)
Source: silas216
Let me be perfectly clear, Washington and conservative pundits…Social Security IS NOT AN ENTITLEMENT!!! Here’s what an entitlement is: a government program that provides benefits to members of a group that has a statutory entitlement; also : the benefits distributed by such a program. For example, welfare is an entitlement, Social Security is not. Millions of Americans work hard for their money and put away money into Social Security, they PAID FOR THEIR SOCIAL SECURITY BY WORKING FOR THEIR MONEY!!! How the heck is that an entitlement?
What I think an entitlement is is Congress’s free health insurance that doesn’t have a pre-existing conditions clause that prevents legislators from getting health insurance.
Also, an entitlement is all of the vacations that Congress takes on the dime of the taxpayer, and they have the nerve to call Social Security an entitlement?
The hypocrisy that fills Congress and Washington is astounding!!
-Drew, Concerned American
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) set aside his front-running strategy at last night’s Republican presidential debate, attacking the race’s new front-runner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, on a variety of issues, including Perry’s repeated assertions that Social Security is a “Ponzi scheme” that won’t exist for younger Americans. In his 2009 book, Perry also questioned the constitutionality of Social Security, another issue with which Romney’s campaign took exception.
After the debate, Romney campaign adviser Stuart Stevens told reporters that Perry’s desire to “abolish Social Security” was a “disqualifying position.” But in 2007, when Romney was also campaigning for the Republican nomination for president, he supported his own radical change, repeatedly advocating for the privatization of Social Security, a plan pushed by Republicans and former President George W. Bush that failed in 2005.
At one debate, Romney was asked where he stood on privatization. Regarding Bush’s plan, Romney said, “That works“:
ROMNEY: Currently, we’re taking more money into Social Security that we actually send out. So our current seniors, their benefits are not going to change. For people 20 and 30 and 40 years old, we have four major options, for instance, for Social Security. One is the one Democrats want: raise taxes. It’s the wrong way to go.
Number two, the president said let’s have private accounts and take that surplus money that’s being gathered now in Social Security and put that into private accounts. That works.
But Romney’s support of private accounts was hardly a one-time utterance at a single debate. Throughout that campaign, he touted the plan:
June 2007: When a college student asked Romney how he, as president, planned to solidify Social Security’s future, he endorsed private accounts: “One thing that the president proposed [on Social Security] that is a good idea is to take some of that money, or all of that surplus money and allow people to have a personal account. So they can invest in things that have a higher rate of return than just government debt. They can invest in things like our stock market or the world’s stock market…so that they can get a better return, and maybe that would make up for some of the shortfall. That’s a good idea.”
October 2007: At a town hall, Romney said there were “two major paths” lawmakers could take to shore up Social Security. The first, he said, was “to raise taxes on people, which I don’t want to do. And the other is to allow some portion of people’s money that they’re now having taken out of their salaries to be invested in Social Security.” When an attendee told him his plan was “privatization,” Romney replied, “You call it privatization. I call it a private account.”
Romney did not abandon his support for privatization when his first presidential campaign ended. On page 160 of his book, No Apology, published in 2010, Romney again hinted at support for privatization:
“Individual retirement accounts offer a fourth option, one that would allow today’s wage earners to direct a portion of their Social Security tax to a private account rather than go entirely to pay the benefits of current retirees, as is the case today. […] Owners of these individual accounts would invest in a combination of stocks and bonds and – presuming these investments paid a higher rate of return than new treasuries – the return on these investments would boost the payments to seniors. I also like the fact the individual retirement accounts would encourage more Americans to invest in the private sector that powers our economy.”
What is shocking about Romney’s embrace of private accounts in his book is that it was published after a financial crisis that would have devastated retirement accounts for millions of Americans had the push for privatization succeeded. According to a Center for American Progress analysis, an October 2008 retiree would have lost $26,000 in a private Social Security account, and that report was done before the market bottomed out in 2009. Millions of Americans who already save in some sort of private account — a 401(k), for instance — lost nearly everything in the crisis, and Social Security is the only source of retirement income they have left. Yet Romney still offered privatization as a potential “fix” for the program, acknowledging but ignoring the easiest way to make Social Security solvent for the next 75 years.
Perry’s position that Social Security is unconstitutional is without a doubt, as veteran GOP strategist Karl Rove put it, “toxic.” But the argument Romney’s campaign has pushed is that by taking a position Americans don’t support, Perry is unelectable and incapable of beating President Obama in a general election. That stance, however, ignores Romney’s own support for a radical position that has been repeatedly proposed by Republicans and subsequently rejected by the American people.
After making some very good points about the necessity of infrastructure spending he went downhill when he repeated right-wing propaganda about America having one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world (complete and utter bullshit). Then he repeated right-wing propaganda…
Source: diadoumenos
Ron Paul gets a huge applause for proposing an opt-out provision for Social Security.
Is he flipping crazy?
Huntsman is once again going hard on the attack, accusing both Perry and Romney of fear-mongering. He also plugged Paul Ryan’s plan, and managed to eek out an applause.
Rick Santorum deftly turns a question about Social Security into an answer about his electability.
Perry begins his response to a question about Social Security by assuring seniors that they’ll be fine; clearly, he’s thinking about the Florida primary, and the abundance of seniors who’ll be voting in it.
VIA OurFuture.org
Here are eight of the biggest myths that are out there:
1) President Obama tripled the deficit.
Reality: Bush’s last budget had a $1.416 trillion deficit. Obama’s first budget reduced that to $1.29 trillion.2) President Obama raised taxes, which hurt the economy.
Reality: Obama cut taxes. 40% of the “stimulus” was wasted on tax cuts which only create debt, which is why it was so much less effective than it could have been.3) President Obama bailed out the banks.
Reality: While many people conflate the “stimulus” with the bank bailouts, the bank bailouts were requested by President Bush and his Treasury Secretary, former Goldman Sachs CEO Henry Paulson. (Paulson also wanted the bailouts to be “non-reviewable by any court or any agency.”) The bailouts passed and began before the 2008 election of President Obama.4) The stimulus didn’t work.
Reality: The stimulus worked, but was not enough. In fact, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the stimulus raised employment by between 1.4 million and 3.3 million jobs.5) Businesses will hire if they get tax cuts.
Reality: A business hires the right number of employees to meet demand. Having extra cash does not cause a business to hire, but a business that has a demand for what it does will find the money to hire. Businesses want customers, not tax cuts.6) Health care reform costs $1 trillion.
Reality: The health care reform reduces government deficits by $138 billion.7) Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, is “going broke,” people live longer, fewer workers per retiree, etc.
Reality: Social Security has run a surplus since it began, has a trust fund in the trillions, is completely sound for at least 25 more years and cannot legally borrow so cannot contribute to the deficit (compare that to the military budget!) Life expectancy is only longer because fewer babies die; people who reach 65 live about the same number of years as they used to.8) Government spending takes money out of the economy.
Reality: Government is We, the People and the money it spends is on We, the People. Many people do not know that it is government that builds the roads, airports, ports, courts, schools and other things that are the soil in which business thrives. Many people think that all government spending is on “welfare” and “foreign aid” when that is only a small part of the government’s budget.
(via silas216)
Source: leftish
Texas Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), a libertarian hero, last year said that allowing Social Security to exist is akin to permitting slavery. But during an appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe today, Paul admitted to the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein that he collects Social Security checks anyway:
STEIN: A bit of a personal question then, are you on Social Security? Do you get Social Security checks?
PAUL: I do.
STEIN: Well, I mean, is there — you just told younger generations that they should ween themselves off this social contract.
PAUL: That is true.
STEIN: But you haven’t done it yourself…Don’t you think you chould have set a good example for the future generations. You’re not the wealthiest man in congress, I know that, but you have enough means to take care of yourself in retirement…Couldn’t you have set an example?
PAUL: No. I think the programs are so designed, just as I use the post office too, I use government highways, I do that too, I use the banks, the federal reserve system, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t work to remove this in the same way on Social Security.
Watch it:
Paul is, of course, not the only conservative to benefit from government programs that he or she opposes. But his crankish view of the Constitution has brought him to the conclusion that Social Security is altogether unconstitutional, which also hasn’t stopped him from collecting benefits.
At a meeting Saturday with a Missouri Tea Party group, Rep. Todd Akin (R-MO) served up some factually challenged red meat:
U.S. Rep. Todd Akin said he has doubts about the constitutionality of Medicare and thinks global warming “is highly suspect.” […]
Akin’s remarks questioning the constitutionality of Medicare came as he was explaining his vote against prescription coverage under the medical plan for seniors and people with disabilities. He said it was too expensive, and “it was expanding an entitlement I wasn’t too comfortable with to begin with.”
Asked about the remarks after the meeting, Akin said, “I don’t find in the Constitution that it is the job of the government to provide health care.”
Akin should take a moment to actually read the Constitution before he lectures anyone about what’s in it. Although the Constitution does not include the words “health care,” it does enable our elected leaders to raise revenue and to “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.” A national program ensuring when older Americans retire they do not impose crippling health costs upon their families easily fits within this grant of power.
For what it’s worth, Akin also claimed that Medicare cannot simply be repealed overnight “now [that] people have contributed their money to it,” but his actions reveal that he has every intention of eliminating this crucial program for America’s seniors. Akin — along with nearly every single one of his fellow House Republicans — voted for Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to phase out Medicare.
Moreover, Akin’s bizarre reading of the Constitution is increasingly common amongst his fellow Republicans. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) recently told a town hall meeting that protecting America’s “frail elderly” is “a family responsibility, not a government responsibility.” Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) mocked President Franklin Roosevelt for calling on the federal government to provide “a decent retirement plan” and “health care” because “the Constitution doesn’t give Congress any of those powers.” And GOP presidential frontrunner Rick Perry (R-TX) believes that everything from Medicare to Social Security to child labor laws to the minimum wage is unconstitutional.
H/T: ThinkProgress Justice
More on why Todd Akin is unfit to be a dogcatcher, much less a U.S. Senator.
(via letfreedomlulz)
Source: justinspoliticalcorner
Christian apologetic/existentialist/progressive/interdenominationalist/freethinker/some agnosticism, library assistant, liberal blogger, Unite Blue member, DJ, respectful 2 all!
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