April 11, 2013

Obama's support for Social Security cuts allows GOP leaders to become defenders of safety nets.

Here is the Republican campaign chairman accusing the president of balancing the budget on the backs of seniors.

This really angers me more than I can say. Health care givers and facilities for seniors are overwhelmed as it is, and President Obama seems unaware.

The fact that the head of the NRCC is right makes it all the more infuriating.

GOP campaign chairman calls chained CPI trying to balance the budget on the backs of seniors

BLITZER: Well, let's talk about these proposed changes that the president is putting forward when it comes to Social Security and Medicare, the shocking proposals that you say the president's putting forward that could affect seniors. What's so shocking about changing that CPI, that consumer price index the way that you would determine how much inflation would go ahead with increases for Social Security recipients, for example?

WALDEN: Well, once again, you're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go.

And here he is on the Medicare cuts:

Well, I thought it very intriguing in that the budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors, if you will. And we haven't seen all the detail yet, and we'll look at it, but I'll tell you, when you're going after seniors the way he's already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare, and now coming back at seniors again, I think you're crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine, certainly, and around the country. I think he's going to have a lot of pushback from some of the major senior organizations on this and Republicans, as well.

I would like to know why in the world the Democrats think this is going to work? Last night David Axelrod was pathetic on Rachel's show. His talking points were against the progressives, and he almost showed contempt.

I wonder whose bright idea this was? Wait, I think I know.

Guess what. Chained CPI is the bright idea of Third Way, the Dem policy shop.

Yesterday, the organization Third Way released a plan outlining several Social Security reform proposals meant to ensure the program's solvency over the next 75 years. The plan, called Saving Social Security, makes several fundamental changes to the program and cuts $2 in benefits for every $1 it increases taxes. The authors of the plan describe it as "savings-led" and say that by approaching Social Security reform in a progressive way, it's possible to come up with "a solvency plan that would make Franklin Roosevelt proud".

Now the Republicans can pretend to become the defenders of the elderly when that is very far from what they really are. That's what happens when Democrats latch on to Republican policy and make it our own.

There is no one now really standing up for the left and the liberals. They are all too busy playing their political games.

April 9, 2013

Joint Statement in Response to Community Cancer Sequester Cuts Effective April 1st.

The American Society of Clinical Oncology, Community Oncology Alliance, International Oncology Network/AmerisourceBergen and The US Oncology Network

Today, America's seniors and the physicians who care for them will begin to feel the impact of a federal government policy that was never supposed to happen. Sequestration has been applied to Medicare, reducing payments to physicians and care providers. This is bad news for all seniors, but likely devastating for seniors struggling with cancer. The Administration has decided to apply the sequester cuts not only to services physicians and others provide, but also to the fixed, pass-through costs of chemotherapy and related cancer-fighting drugs used to treat and manage this life-threatening disease.

More than 60 percent of cancer patients in the United States rely on Medicare. A series of misguided Medicare reimbursement cuts has created an unsustainable situation whereby many community cancer care providers operate at a loss when providing treatment to Medicare patients. Medicare reimburses community cancer clinics for chemotherapy based on an average sales price (ASP) and an additional services payment (6%) for administrative costs and financial risks associated with handling, storage, preparation, administration, and disposal of these highly toxic drugs. Unfortunately, Medicare payment falls short, and many cancer clinics are currently paid less than it costs to treat seniors fighting cancer.

Community cancer care providers are struggling to survive in this unsustainable environment. Until recently, more than 80 percent of the nation's cancer patients were treated in physicians' offices in the community setting. Since 2008, more than 1,200 community cancer care centers have closed, consolidated, or reported financial problems. The result has been patient access problems, increased costs to seniors, Medicare, and taxpayers due to the migration of Medicare patients to costlier care settings, and new barriers to care for elderly patients in remote areas. When community cancer clinics close their doors, access to cancer care is compromised for all cancer patients, but especially vulnerable seniors.

The sequester cut to cancer drugs threatens viability of community cancer care. In effect, the government is forcing clinics to subsidize Medicare — that is, to make up the difference between what Medicare pays and the actual cost of cancer drugs. Health care providers are never comfortable putting their work in purely economic terms, but the fact is community cancer clinics are small businesses held to the economic reality that operating at a loss cannot be sustained. It is hard to imagine any business—small or otherwise—accepting a policy that requires operating at a loss. Oncologists should not be put in the untenable position of continuing to treat patients at a loss, which will result in clinic closings, or being unable to treat Medicare seniors fighting cancer in order to keep the clinic doors open.

Bill Moyers also has concern about serious cuts that will create more homeless.

Sequestration Means Less Affordable Housing, More Homelessness

But here’s what it means when it comes to housing: up to 140,000 fewer low-income families receiving housing vouchers, more children exposed to lead paint, higher rent for people who can’t afford it and a rise in homelessness.

These are among the human costs of sequestration noted in a new paper by Doug Rice, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, who has worked on housing policy for ten years.

“These kinds of cuts are really unprecedented,” Rice told me. “The Section 8 voucher program has been around for nearly 40 years — it was created during the Nixon Administration and has had strong, bipartisan support for its entire history. Part of that support has consisted of Congress providing adequate money to ensure that the vouchers currently used by families are renewed from year to year.”

But for just the third time in 39 years, Congress will not fund local housing agencies so that they can renew all current vouchers. A $938 million cut in the voucher program translates to a 6 percent shortfall below what is needed to maintain assistance to the same number of families in 2013 as last year.

April 8, 2013

Something else to laugh about as more senior services suffer.

It all seems to be a joke to many. The fact that services greatly needed to keep seniors in their homes are being cut back drastically seems to be a laughing matter.

I already posted about Meals on Wheels getting drastic cuts, and 4 on the thread blamed the seniors

Florida is being hit hard.

Here's more, so get your snickering ready.

Sequestration cuts having impact on public aid agencies

Three weeks after the start of the automatic $85 billion reduction in federal spending known as sequestration, local agencies providing housing, food and support services to the region’s elderly and poor are still waiting to learn how deeply their programs will be impacted and whether their contingency plans will spare the elimination of current service recipients.

Designed to be so painful they will force lawmakers to adopt a plan to reduce the escalating federal deficit, the cut includes an across-the-board 5 percent reduction in funding for domestic programs and a 7.8 percent cut to military spending.

While the continuing federal budget resolution adopted last week has restored funding to a limited number of programs, local programs hit by cuts include Meals on Wheels and other in-home services that allow seniors to delay the costs of nursing home placement, the Head Start preschool program that allows low-income parents to work and attend school, public housing and the regional food bank’s federal food commodities program.

Kathy Whitaker, director of the Area Agency on Aging that administers referrals for the Meals on Wheels and Personal Support Services programs provided by the First Tennessee Human Resource Agency for elderly residents in Northeast Tennessee, said her office has been advised to prepare for a 5 percent to 8 percent cut in funding for fiscal 2013. Through June 30, she said a 5 percent cut will equate to the elimination of 1,892 meals or the equivalent of 25 individual consumers.

Things that will allow seniors and disabled to continue to live in their own homes are being cut.

What has happened to empathy for our fellow Americans? It appears to have become a topic for ridicule.

April 7, 2013

Way to go, America. Meals on Wheels funding cut by sequestration. Seniors fearful.

This is ridiculous. It is outrageous. It is the fault of both parties, and it speaks to what our country is becoming.

Funding is also being cut until seniors who are ill are feeling the pain as well. Hubby and I have seen first hand this week how cutbacks in health care are taking their toll. We were hospitalized at the same time, fortunate to have good insurance. But now even that does not insure adequate health care. There are just so many hospital rooms, just so many beds in rehabilitation facilities.

Shame on both parties for these shenanigans about cutting back everything that once was a part of our country.

Meals on Wheels anticipates funding cut impact by October

MANATEE, Florida -- Bradenton Mayor Wayne Poston and Palmetto Mayor Shirley Groover Bryant drove off Wednesday morning to deliver hot food from Meals on Wheels PLUS of Manatee on Ninth Street East in Bradenton to bolster awareness of homebound senior hunger.

Yet, despite the well-meaning of "Mayors for Meals Day," agency officials were preoccupied by the disturbing news of the impact from impending federal budget cuts to its ability to serve those needy residents.

Due to the ongoing sequestration budget battle in Washington, Meals on Wheels PLUS figures to lose $68,000 from funding for its senior services, a development that troubled several people at Wednesday's event.

"It could be devastating. That's a lot of money," said Maribeth Phillips, the nonprofit's chief executive officer. "We're operating very lean as it is, so that's lot of funding for us to make up."

Seniors are scared here. I know, because I saw many this week who are simply living on the edge and feeling fearful of what is coming next. They fear cuts to their services, they fear cuts to Social Security. They are surprised the cuts are being advocated by a Democratic president.

There is no excuse for this, these are political games being played by politicians who are more concerned about re-election than doing their job.

April 3, 2013

Made a big splash about arresting the Atlanta teachers. NOW what about these crooked reformers?

Needless to say the teachers should not have cheated. Not even to save their jobs. No excuses.

However let's talk about these guys. There is surely not much about them available in the major media. You have to search for this stuff.

Investigating Charter Schools Fraud In Philadelphia

Corruption And Fraud

At one school, the Philadelphia Academy Charter School, parents raised concerns in 2008 after school administrators told them that there was no money available for special education students.

"The school kept saying 'We don't have money for these students,' " Woodall tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "However, there was money being spent on all kinds of other issues. When parents raised questions at the Board of Trustees meetings, they were basically told, 'We don't want you asking questions.' "

Ultimately, both the founding CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School and his successor were charged with stealing almost $1 million from the school's coffers, including money students had collected for a Toys for Tots campaign. The two men — one of whom had only a high school education — also allegedly engaged in questionable real estate deals. As a result, the high school paid rent money for its facilities directly to them.

Or how about these guys?

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/madfloridian/8537

ALBANY — The former chief financial officer for the Brighter Choice Foundation, which provides funding and support to 10 public charter schools in Albany, has been charged with embezzling $202,837 from the organization.

The arrest Wednesday of Ronald A. Racela marks the second time in four years that Racela has been charged with grand larceny. Two years ago, Racela admitted stealing $53,931 from KeyBank in Albany, where he was employed as a manager in the Community Development Lending Group, court records show.

..."M. Christian Bender, executive director of Brighter Choice Foundation, said Brighter Choice officials were not aware of Racela's criminal history when he was hired as financial director of Brighter Choice Charter Schools in June 2010. Bender said Racela described his separation from KeyBank as "tense" but did not disclose he had been arrested for embezzlement eight months before he was hired by Brighter Choice.

"I knew that it had not been a smooth separation, but obviously I had no idea that it involved criminal activity on his part," Bender said Friday.

Or how about this long list of charter schools wasting taxpayer money?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10022205948

Philadelphia Charter School Mogul, Charged With Defrauding $6.5 Million In Tax Dollars

Philadelphia charter school mogul Dorothy June Hairston Brown was charged Tuesday -- along with four colleagues -- with defrauding three charter schools of more than $6.5 million in tax dollars.

More:

FBI agents on Thursday raided the office of Pennsylvania Charter Cyber School founder Nick Trombetta, who is suspected of misusing Pennsylvania tax dollars to fund his out-of-state ventures, KDKA News reports.

The Pennsylvania Cyber Charter School, founded in 2000, enrolled more than 11,300 students in the 2011-12 academic year and has an annual budget of more than $100 million. Critics say the $10,000 the school receives for each child far exceeds the cost of educating a student online, and that the excess money has gone to other Trombetta ventures such as the National Network of Digital Schools and the Lincoln Interactive, which develops and markets online curriculum.

And from Florida:

CARROLLWOOD - Dozens of teachers and hundreds of families learned Wednesday afternoon they must find new jobs and a new school for their children to attend because A.T. Jones Academy does not have the finances to open its doors this year.

"I want to stay with my friends," sobbed Delana Kruining, 8, who attended the charter school along with her sister Katie, 6.

Hillsborough County Schools sent trucks to the academy to pick up items purchased with taxpayer money.

.."Parents asked where all the school's money went only to be told all their questions would be addressed in an email sent out Monday. No email was ever sent.

But now they have those Atlanta teachers behind bars. And we must now find a way to protect the citizens from the crooked reformers.

April 3, 2013

Only in Florida? City Considering Easing Up on Spitting Ordinance

Commissioners considered removing the 1944 ordinance.

Commissioners heard in a first reading on Monday about a new ordinance that would make spitting a civil infraction instead of a misdemeanor.

That means Lakeland police will be able to write a $100 ticket to spitters.

Commissioners will vote on the changes to the ordinance on April 15. If passed, the new ordinance would be effective that day.

City Attorney Tim McCausland made some additional changes to the ordinance, enacted in 1944. The ordinance currently says it is unlawful for anyone to spit in front of or on a bus, a public conveyance, a sidewalk, a public building or any other public place within the city limits.

One commissioner pushed about this saying ""Anything so you don't have a kid getting 60 days in jail for spitting on the sidewalk"

Here is more background on this subject. In my mind this sort of fits into the pre-crime scenario...the suspicion that someone is going to do something wrong. This is a college community, so someone out walking late should not be a surprise.

Man Arrested for Spitting on Sidewalk

Insomniac Joseph Stoiber, 29, was walking in his neighborhood when he couldn't sleep at 2:30 a.m. May 30, talking to his friend on the phone about baseball.

Lakeland police Officer Tyler Anderson saw him in the community near Florida Southern College and stopped him. After asking Stoiber what he was doing, Anderson asked to pat him down.

...."According to internal reports, Officer Nicholas Ivancevich arrived within 1½ minutes after Anderson made contact with Stoiber. When Ivancevich arrived, Stoiber was already in custody and handcuffed.

Ivancevich, who didn't initially know what Stoiber was charged with, also happened to spit into the grass as he was getting out of his car, according to internal reports.

April 2, 2013

Federal judge allows lawsuit against Michelle Rhee, broadens to concealment and fraud claims

Very interesting. And about time.

Federal Judge Orders Michelle Rhee Suit to Go Forward

For nearly three years, efforts by hundreds of DC Public School teachers who were victims of the much publicized mass firings by former Chancellor Michelle Rhee- herself hailed as a reformer and darling of major media- have failed to gain any traction in the courts.

However, in what may be a turning of that tide, US District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras has denied Rhee’s motion to dismiss claims by a music teacher that his firing was concocted by using a misapplied or non-existent job title to enable his poor evaluation and subsequent firing.

The suit involves Willie J. Brewer Jr., a 53-year-old teacher who worked for DCPS for 28 years before being terminated in October of 2009 due to “budgetary constraints” under a RIF (Reduction in Force). Under this circumstance, the pecking order of teachers to be terminated as determined by Rhee, were first those with poor performance evaluations. However, Brewer claims he was an instrumental music teacher and that his RIF competitive standing was erroneously governed by the standards for a vocal music teacher, a position that required a skill set different from his own. As a result, Brewer claims he scored a poor evaluation and was terminated.

..."Along that line, it has been learned that Brewer will now amend his original complaint to broaden the scope of Rhee’s alleged actions into possible civil fraud and concealment claims. This has developed as a result of videotaped testimony by the former DCPS CFO Noah Wepman before the DC City Council on November 30, 2009. In that testimony, Wepman appears to admit that he willfully concealed, with the knowledge of Rhee, the true accounting figures which indicated that the DCPS had no budgetary shortfall at all- the pretext for the RIF to be instituted and the mass firings to take place.

Playing games with the lives of career teachers. This should not have been allowed to happen.

Michelle Rhee went to Tampa and bragged about how much she was disliked.

Rhee in Tampa boasts about unpopularity


Michelle Rhee, the outgoing chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools, speaks to urban school administrators during a panel on teacher evaluations at the Council of Great City Schools conference in Tampa on Thursday. (SKIP O’ROURKE | TIMES)

"Be prepared to be Ms. or Mr. Unpopular," the outgoing chancellor of Washington, D.C., public schools told an audience of urban school administrators here Thursday. "I am really good at this one right now."

Three years ago, Rhee launched a whirlwind of change: a tough evaluation system and teacher contract that resulted in 241 firings this spring, and ultimately may oust 25 percent of the district's teachers from their jobs. Those forces led to her resignation last week, following the election defeat of her boss, Mayor Adrian Fenty. But they brought applause from her audience at the Council of Great City Schools conference.

She has had an impact there. More words from Tampa, from the superintendent.

And that kinder, gentler approach? These are the words of the school superintendent to Arne Duncan who was also there.

"They're either going to leave or we're going to say, 'Let us help you leave,' " she said.

March 25, 2013

Durbin wants new fiscal commission. Wants to raise retirement age, cut COLA.

What is wrong with that man? He wants it to be fashioned like the old fiscal commission, aka the Bowles/Simpson Commission, or the Catfood Commission.

Durbin Proposes Social Security Commission

Durbin wants the commission to make recommendations to make Social Security solvent for 75 years. The panel would be expected to consider increases in the payroll tax, a higher retirement age and a lower annual cost-of-living adjustment for beneficiaries.

"You would basically say to a commission, within a very limited time frame, to come up with a proposal for 75-year solvency of Social Security and then — and this is important — it would be referred to both chambers on an expedited procedure," Durbin told reporters at a Washington breakfast sponsored by The Wall Street Journal…

Durbin's proposed 18-member commission would contain an equal number of Republicans and Democrats but require 14 votes to send a plan to Congress.

In a 1997 article at FAIR, John Hess said it very well. They are going to keep trying to "rescue"
Social Security until great harm is done.

Can Social Security Survive Another Rescue?

The rescue of Social Security has been a staple of American journalism for 20 years now—a story all the more remarkable in that Social Security has never been in peril except from its rescuers.

The rescues have all been based on faulty arithmetic. First, in 1977, the rescuers humbly confessed that they had made a mistake in adjusting benefits to inflation, as a result of which Social Security was threatening to go broke. (They never say the Army is threatening to "go broke," only that it needs more money to do the job that it's asked to do.) Not to worry. Amid the Yuletide hosannas of our massed punditry, our leaders found the courage to enact a correction that would, they swore, assure solvency into the 21st Century.

..In the early '80s, when income taxes were slashed and the great military buildup began, it was clear that some luxuries would have to be sacrificed, like housing, welfare, health and education. But Social Security was the promising target, one with a tax attached that bore mainly on the little folk. Because, however, the little people cherished their Social Security, a frontal attack by the Reagan White House was a political disaster, so a campaign of deception was mounted.

A bipartisan commission under Alan Greenspan went to work on the numbers, while the media developed an unprecedented campaign of vilification of the elderly. On magazine covers, in cartoons and columns and on broadcast commentaries innumerable, they were depicted as hogs, vampires, sharks, gorillas and card sharps scooping up the sustenance of the young. While the investment banker Peter G. Peterson led the media legions, Greenspan fabricated a hurricane warning. Multiplying one false assumption by another (for example, he assumed that the C.P.I. would rise nearly three times as fast as it actually did rise, while his private firm was forecasting an even smaller increase), he predicted that Social Security would go bankrupt in 1983.

Disappointed in Democrats like Durbin who are continuing this effort to cut the safety nets.

March 24, 2013

The marginalization of "The Left" through the years. Not hearing us now at all.

As the Republicans catered to their right wing extremists, the Democrats made sure their left wing was not given much credence. In a way they were even preceding the time that Newt Gingrich and his GOPAC made liberal a bad word.

In 1985 at the formation of a Democratic policy think tank it was made clear whom they were going to target.

1985 Blueprint for reforming the party

In his "Saving the Democratic Party" memo of January 1985, From advocated the formation of a "governing council" that would draft a "blueprint" for reforming the party. According to From, the new leadership should aim to create distance from "the new bosses"-organized labor, feminists, and other progressive constituency groups-that were keeping the party from modernizing. From's memo sparked the formation of the Democratic Leadership Council in early 1985. According to Balz and Brownstein, "Within a few weeks, it counted 75 members, primarily governors and members of Congress, most of them from the Sunbelt, and almost all of them white; liberal critics instantly dubbed the group 'the white male caucus.'"

And there was a conference by them in 1986, where it was made even more clear what they thought about liberals.

In a 1986 conference on the legacy of the Johnson administration’s "Great Society" initiatives, DLC chairman Gov. Charles Robb of Virginia took up the neoconservative critique of liberalism first articulated in the early 1970s by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Norman Podhoretz, and other neoconservatives. According to Robb, "While racial discrimination has by no means vanished from our society, it's time to shift the primary focus from racism – the traditional enemy without – to self-defeating patterns of behavior – the enemy within." This speech signaled the end of the "New Politics" of the 1960s and 1970s in the Democratic Party and the rise of a new social conservatism in the party. Robb's speech opened room for Democratic Party stalwarts to back away from political agendas that proposed government initiatives to address poverty, discrimination, and crime, and to join the traditional conservatives and neoconservatives in opposing affirmative action, social safety-net programs, and job-creation initiatives. Thus, the New Democrats of the DLC added their voices to the chorus of those calling for stiffer prison sentences, an end to affirmative action, reduced welfare benefits, and less progressive tax policies.

Actually Simon Rosenberg, head of the New Dem Network, and a founder of the DLC said it even more plainly.

freed... from positions making it difficult for us to win. Simon Rosenberg.

"Simon Rosenberg, the former field director for the DLC who directs the New Democrat Network, a spin-off political action committee, says, "We're trying to raise money to help them lessen their reliance on traditional interest groups in the Democratic Party. In that way," he adds, "they are ideologically freed, frankly, from taking positions that make it difficult for Democrats to win."

After Obama was elected, Al From wrote an op ed. He said that the anti-war people could not be allowed to control the party.

Recently, Al From, founder of the Democratic Leadership Council, used a front page New York Times story to warn Senator Obama and other Democratic leaders that, "the antiwar people cannot define the Democratic Party."

Al From is wrong, again.

For years, the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) has been warning the Democratic Party about the dangers of being associated with progressive values, ideas and policies. Time and again, their advice has proven disastrous.

The truth that From hopes we'll forget is that, after years of failure using the DLC's Republican-lite strategy, Democrats took back Congress in 2006 with a progressive, antiwar message. As the New York Times reported that fall, "the vast majority of House candidates in competitive races ran as Iraq war critics," as did all six new Democratic Senators.

Then they ran differently in 2010....and lost.

When Bruce Reed took over as chair in 2009, he declared the battle won. The battle against the left, that is.

Our party should cherish its left, its liberals...not speak condescendingly toward them.

“The political mission of the DLC has been largely accomplished,” said Reed, who’s had the group’s No. 2 post since 2001. “Twenty-five years ago, the forgotten middle class had serious doubts about Democrats, and now Democrats are winning the middle class, suburban voters, moderates by handsome margins. Our next challenge is to deliver on that promise and earn those votes for years to come.”

Notice he did not mention the rest of the Democratic party. Not a word about those on the left.

Evan Bayh had the nerve to say the Democratic party was being taken over by the left.

Bayh has a history of sparring with the left in his party. As chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council in 2003, he warned of then-rising presidential campaign of Howard Dean. “The Democratic Party is at risk of being taken over by the far left,” he told DLC members in 2003. “We have an important choice to make: Do we want to vent, or do we want to govern?”

Blanche Lincoln was very upset with the criticisms of the left in her last campaign. Her words were not very sympathetic.

In a new interview with The Hill, Sen. Blanche Lincoln -- facing a tough Democratic primary challenge funded by national progressives on Tuesday -- called out her opponents on the Democratic left wing. Lincoln said she is facing criticism from a political movement that she suggested is divorced from the political reality.

"Just like the far right, I think the far left also believes that you've got to be with them 100 percent of the time or you don't meet the test," Lincoln told the paper. "I don't think there's anybody that you're going to be with 100 percent of the time -- not and be true to your constituency. My first commitment here is to Arkansas."

Trouble is that the votes taken on a national level affect people throughout the country. We must speak out if we disagree.

There was on very insulting comment made about us in the 90s by Rob Shapiro, a VP of the group.

Seems the "intellectual leveraged buyout" of the Democratic party has worked quite well.

Rob Shapiro, the DLC VP at the time, and a Clinton advisor, spoke clearly about their purpose.

What we've done in the Democratic Party," explains institute Vice President Rob Shapiro, a Clinton economic adviser, "is an intellectual leveraged buyout." The DLC, presumably, is acting as arbitrageur, selling off unprofitable mind-sets to produce a lean and efficient philosophy for the "New Democrat," as DLCers call their slick bimonthly magazine.

Unprofitable mind-sets sold off to be more efficient. We have learned through the years that a whole lot of Democratic ideals were considered "unprofitable mind-sets"...and they had to go.

That's us liberals and progressives by the way.

March 21, 2013

Arundhati Roy on Iraq War's 10th: Bush May Be Gone, But "Psychosis" of U.S. Foreign Policy Prevails

Here is the full transcript at the Democracy Now website.

http://www.democracynow.org/seo/2013/3/18/arundhati_roy_on_iraq_wars_10th

Apart from the invented links between Iraq and al-Qaeda, we had the manufactured frenzy about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. George Bush the Lesser went to the extent—went to the extent of saying it would be suicidal for Iraq—for the U.S. not to attack Iraq. We once again witnessed the paranoia that a starved, bombed, besieged country was about to annihilate almighty America. Iraq was only the latest in a succession of countries. Earlier, there was Cuba, Nicaragua, Libya, Granada, Panama. But this time it wasn’t just your ordinary brand of friendly neighborhood frenzy. It was frenzy with a purpose. It ushered in an old doctrine in a new bottle: the doctrine of preemptive strike, also known as the United States can do whatever the hell it wants, and that’s official. The war against Iraq has been fought and won, and no weapons of mass destruction have been found, not even a little one.

....AMY GOODMAN: Do you see President Obama going in a different direction?

ARUNDHATI ROY: Of course not. I don’t see him going in a different direction at all. I mean, the real question to ask is: When was the last time the United States won a war? You know, it lost in Vietnam. It’s lost in Afghanistan. It’s lost in Iraq. And it will not be able to contain the situation. It is hemorrhaging. It is now—you know, of course you can continue with drone attacks, and you can continue these targeted killings, but on the ground, a situation is being created which no army—not America, not anybody—can control. And it’s just, you know, a combination of such foolishness, such a lack of understanding of culture in the world.

And Obama just goes on, you know, coming out with these smooth, mercurial sentences that are completely meaningless. I was—I remember when he was sworn in for the second time, and he came on stage with his daughters and his wife, and it was all really nice, and he said, you know, "Should my daughters have another dog, or should they not?" And a man who had lost his entire family in the drone attacks just a couple of weeks ago said, "What am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to think of this exhibition of love and family values and good fatherhood and good husbandhood?" I mean, we’re not morons, you know? It’s about time that we stopped acting so reasonable. I just don’t feel reasonable about this anymore.