inthetrunkroom

On September 11, 2012, there was an attack on the U S Diplomatic Mission in Benghazi, Libya. Four U S persons were killed, including U S Ambassador Stevens. There was much scrambling to unwind the why, wherefore , the responsibility and though little about what should have been done to prevent this mess. There was little or no talk about what wasn’t done that could have lessened the impact of the attack. Republicans were quick to blame the then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for failure to take adequate measures to insure the safety of members of the diplomatic service. It didn’t help that then U N Ambassador Susan Rice went on national television and, working with the information sheets she was given by the CIA – an important point here – made several statements which were not exactly accurate. As usual, there are key pieces which have been left out of the common exchanges on this matter. One is that the Annex post in question was in fact a CIA outpost in the region and whose activities in the region are still classified, even from Congress. Secondly, there is the matter of the State Department on several occasions had asked for additional funds for security at these missions but were summarily denied by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan. Nonetheless, the Tea Party Republicans are making this their new cause celebre for the mid term elections and especially in anticipation of Secretary Clinton’s possible run for the White House in 2016. The main mantra is that because of the State Department’s failure, this incident cost four American lives. Yes, all this about four lives and Oversight Committee Chairman Daryl Issa is looking for someone’s head to chop off – preferably Hillary’s. Makes one continually wonder about the whole motivation thing and again, the blatant hypocrisy of the GOP. Congressman Issa wants to know who was responsible for this attack on the U S Diplomatic Mission and , as others in the party are, is demanding accountability. According to the GOP, we must learn the truth about all this and someone needs to be accountable for these four deaths. On a recent CNN program State of the Union with Candy Crowley, Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann was insistent that Congress, and Daryl Issa specifically, is only seeking the truth in demanding to know who was responsible for these four deaths. Time and time again she asserted there is no political agenda here ! Her seeming dedication to finding the truth and holding persons accountable is laudable. OR IS IT ?? Perhaps it is really laughable !!!!!!

In the Spring of 2003, the United States invaded the nation of Iraq. There was no provocation nor was there any legal justification. All the so called reasons, including those forever elusive WMDs about which the entire leadership of the Bush Administration continually lied. Even then Secretary of State General Colin Powell knowingly lied to the U N Security Council regarding the so called presence of a threat to the region’s security.The team of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld cooked up this scheme for one and only one purpose – to gain control of the Iraqi oil fields and to position the US to eventually control the oil fields in Iran. Many were suspicious from the beginning but as more and more documents were declassified, the truth was revealed. When Senator Rand Paul ( R – KY ) made the comment that the Iraq war was all about profits for Haliburton and Dick Cheney, he was, in fact correct. The information, which is still flowing about those years, will reveal even more I suspect but that is not the issue here.

The point here is , simply put, the out front hypocrisy of the GOP as it demands accountable for the four deaths in Benghazi.
Let’s look at the record. My sources ** delineate some horrifying facts. From the Spring of 2003 until the Fall of 2010, the war in Iraq accounted for 5,400 U S military deaths accompanied by over 320,000 severe injuries. There were, by best estimates, over 1.4 million civilian deaths, including 348 journalists. All this, and yet there is no outcry from any direction. NONE. Least of all, there has been and I submit there never will be a demand for accountability for this huge atrocity. How four people, including the President of the United States, orchestrated this attack on a sovereign nation with no justification – either legal or political ( aka national security ) and have not been called to task as war criminals in beyond rational thinking. Can one even approach thinking this invasion was about anything other than enriching oil companies, both now and in the future, as well as those who continue to profit from this nation’s wage war anywhere we can make money at it mentality. I clearly understand this premise will be hard to take for many but, in addition to the sources cited below, I also have a primary source which corroborates this position. What makes me ill is that the orchestra leaders of this folly are now basking in retirement with no hint of ever being held accountable. The complete and total lack of conscience aside, why are they not worried ? Because too many poor lemmings bought in to the propaganda that Iraq was responsible for the attacks on 911 and were getting prepared for yet another of even greater proportions. Mired in fabricated stories of potential Muslim world domination ( sounds like the ol domino theory of the sixties ) and pointing to 911 as proof, the nation did not ask why so much preparation for war with Iraq was indeed happening long before that September.
The proverbial bottom line – the party line is the rule, no matter what the cost. Congresswoman Bachmann and dozens like her care naught for facts, let alone the truth and for her to say that these Select Committee hearings held to once again investigate the incident of September 11, 2012 are to seek the truth is pure crap, plain and simple. What about getting to the bottom of the War that was allegedly waged in response to September 11, 2001. Why are we not investigating that one ??????? Why are there not hearings and, indeed, trials for these true war criminals ???

** In addition to my listed sources, for this article I also used BBC, the New York Times, AP, DOD and a web site called AntiWar.com which cited numerous of its sources including DOD, WikiLeaks and declassified documents from the Central Comand. Also, information contained in the publication “Hubris – the Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War by Michael Isikoff and David Corn and well and information revealed in Why We Did It, a documentary produced by Rachel Maddow of MSNBC

Some time ago, I had the misfortune of having to be rushed to the Emergency Room. I spent the next six hours there, receiving excellent care from the nurses and doctors and other staff. I was treated and assessed at a point where the consensus was that I could return home and rest, with medications for pain and the instructions to follow up within the next week or so. About a month later, I received an invoice from the hospital in the amount of around eleven thousand dollars, an amount which my insurance company would not cover. After inquiring of the insurance company, I was told that, while they had a contract with the hospital, this contract did not extend to the Emergency Room, which I later learned, was in fact operated my a separate organization of highly specialized medical teams. I was forced to satisfy much of the bill on a credit card and the remainder was paid over time – a long time. While awaiting the decision to send me home, I observed numerous patients coming in to the ER, many being young couples with very young children. A disturbing answer to the question regarding insurance carrier was that they had none. Of course, the hospital did provide the necessary care but the cost of that care became part of a growing cost of uncovered services provided by hospitals and passed on to other patients and the taxpayers, raising the overall cost of health care exponentially. There are thousands of stories like these – perhaps millions.

In 2010, the Obama Administration signed the Affordable Care Act which directly addressed the matter of millions – near 48 million – people without health insurance. Agreed, it was sort of rammed through Congress and I accept that parts of it were not well thought through. However, the basic premise was sound – to provide access to health insurance to the millions who heretofore were without health care or were trapped in plans which were pitifully inadequate to say the least. The roll out of the ACA was a miserable catastrophe. It had to do with poor procurement practices, less than stellar leadership on the part of DHHS and, in my opinion, failure to utilize a long standing practice of introducing new programs – the pilot project. Nevertheless, the fact remains that to date nearly eight million people now have coverage who did not have it before. The ACA eliminated being denied coverage because of preexisting conditions – did you know that having been pregnant  was deemed a preexisting condition by many companies. It allowed children to remain on their parent’s policy up until the age of twenty-six – a usual age for recent graduates starting out. The law does have flaws but, as noted above, the premise is solid – access to health care.
So why does the GOP continue to characterize this as socialism and continue to waste congressional time – now fifty-one times – passing legislation to repeal P.L 111-148. It’s even more curious when one learns that the law was actually a GOP plan, originally configured by the Heritage Foundation and designed for states, particularly Massachusetts under then governor Mitt Romney !!!!!! ONE MUST ASK THE QUESTION !

The overall implementation had several components – key of which were three – the public option, the individual mandate and Medicaid expansion. The Democrats, I suspect in order to get the thing passed, took the public option provision out of the Bill but the other two remained and the battle to repeal and destroy began.The central element that was open to attack on the state level was the Medicaid expansion. Too long on detail to include here, this expansion would allow the states to increase the eligibility for Medicaid well beyond the federal poverty  level ( 138 % ) and would be at no cost to the states for the first three years and then 90 % beginning in 2022. This expansion would address the need of nearly fifteen million working poor, giving them access to quality healthcare. However, in what can only be called patently stupid, the Supreme Court ruled that the states could in effect opt out of participation, seeing it as “ unconstitutionally coercive of the states”. That placed more than five million people at risk to lose access to health care. And of course, pretty much all the dark red states controlled by GOP legislatures and heavily influenced by Tea Party demands, opted out. Again, ONE MUST ASK THE QUESTION. Access to health care, while it may not be seen as a “right” by many, certainly should be seen as a necessary part of modern life. It is key to not only social well being but also fiscal well being of nations as costs of health care are huge in every country. That being said, many countries, especially in the industrialized West, do have either single payer systems or two tier systems to provide health care to its citizenry. For example, Norway, Japan,the UK, Sweden, Canada, Finland Italy and Spain have single payer systems while Denmark, the Netherlands,France, Australia , Ireland and Israel have two tier systems. So why doesn’t the United States have a similar system. The Affordable Care Act provisions do not approach either system though they do provide for access to insurance. Medicare operates as a single payer system but, for some reason, that is not quite as offensive, except to the Tea Party disciples like the Congressman Paul Ryan cadre of village idiots. It seems that the GOP is hell bent on denying anyone health care unless they can afford the usually exorbitant premiums levied by the insurance carriers. Unfettered capitalism at the expense of the working poor, the middle class and, of course, the ailing and sick.

In a recent article by Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Cynthia Tucker, she recounts an incident at the GOP primary debate when the tea party audience members cheered at the idea that a comatose uninsured American, unable to afford health insurance would be left to die. Republican governors, such as Governor Deal in Georgia, chastise people for using the Emergency Room unnecessarily. To a point, true but that is often the ONLY access to doctors and medical care available to them. She ends the article by saying that “…that’s a hulking bit of hypocrisy for a party that advertises itself as pro life “ .
And I reiterate, ONE MUST ASK THE QUESTION !

One must ask the question and that question is, why, in spite of examples all over the globe, does the US continue to fight against providing universal access to health care ?It is, additionally, more than just denying, it is taking away. In the so called “Pathway to Prosperity “, the blueprint for the Ryan budget, Medicare will be converted to a voucher system with an annual cap of $15,000 , social security will be privatized and managed by private industry and SNAP, the food stamp system, will be eliminated. This is not a blue print for a budget. This is a blueprint for destruction. Could it be as simple as wanting these benefits, a mainstay of countries world wide, to only be available to the upper income class ? Was the 47 per cent comment by Mitt Romney more of a commitment than a comment ? Has, as per an earlier posting, the venom now progressed and the ideology deteriorated to the point where, as Mr Romney clearly stated, if your daddy can’t afford it, then that’s too bad !!
The question is asked – and I fear the answer is that the GOP is indeed out to destroy the very social fiber of this country. It’s Social Darwinism based on wealth and totally gone amuck. The consequences are frightening at the very least.

Under Section 5 of the Voter Rights Act passed in 1964, certain jurisdictions with a long and well documented history of discrimination in election practices were required to have any and all changes in their voting procedures reviewed and approved by the Department of Justice. This was in direct response to rampant efforts, for the most part by the Republican party, at barring certain populations from voting  in several jurisdictions, mostly in the Gulf states and particularly in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Texas. Altogether there were nine states and numerous additional counties affected by this legislation.

In the post Watergate years, in order to minimize the influence peddling on the part of huge donors to political candidates and in direct response to the “dirty tricks” orchestrated by CREEP – the Committee to Reelect the President ( curious acronym, don’t you think ) the FEC promulgated strict rules regarding campaign contribution limits and disclosures. While influence peddling and the rigging of elections were still ongoing, especially in local and state elections, the manipulation of federal elections, while not eliminated , was at least more open to scrutiny.
And then, starting in the early period before the 2008 general election, things began to drastically turn toward leveraging elections.This was orchestrated by a small group of billionaires. The key was to make contributions to individual candidates within the prescribed FEC limits BUT funnel huge amounts of money through the national committees, specifically the RNC, and through the emerging political action committees or PACS. Dirty tricks were back in full force and along with gerrymandering districts in such a way that population numbers ceased to matter while the configuration almost guaranteed seats for the GOP candidates Elections seemed to be bought and sold on the table of the extremely wealthy. Never was it more evident that in the 2012 Presidential election when the GOP candidate, Mitt Romney, himself a multi millionaire and his fellow GOP candidates were the recipients of hundreds of millions of dollars generated by key individuals with a serious stake in the success of tea party politicians. Oil barons the Koch brothers – seeking to eliminate all regulations – and casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who makes millions upon millions in his Asian casino ventures were pushing candidates who essentially were striving to have the federal government eliminated and any effort at maintaining a safety net for those in need be done away with.

This manipulation of elections was questionable at best and outright illegal under certain FEC regulations at least until they were challenged in court. The challenges went all the way up to the Supreme Court. Then, in the stroke of three key decisions, the Roberts Court virtually eliminated any and all safeguards around the election process, leaving an open path for a small cadre of those same billionaires to control state and federal elections and thus insure their financial advancement at the expense of the ever shrinking middle class, not to mention, at the expense of democracy.
In 2010, in the decision in the case of Citizens United vs the FEC, the court ruled that there would be no limits on contributions made to candidates in elections by corporations. Alleging contributions were covered under the First Amendment and the right of free speech, this decision, along with the subsequent decision, McCutcheon vs the FEC which extended unlimited contributions to individuals, the Court simply opened the door to PACS like Americans for Prosperity – a totally plutocratic organization bought and paid for by Charles and David Koch – to buy elections using massive amounts of cash from a small group of billionaires, bringing  influence peddling to the highest level in history. In 2013, in the case of Shelby County ( Alabama ) vs Holder, the court ruled that the formula for deciding which jurisdictions should require pre clearance  for election rule  changes was out dated and therefore unconstitutional. It revoked the stipulations under Section 4(b ) of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Within hours, the State of Texas reinstated its blatantly discriminatory voter regulations passed earlier by a tea party legislature. It also let stand the way in which the state of Texas actually eliminated entire voting districts based on its demographics which did not support the GOP agenda in 2012. Numerous states which had passed similar restrictive voting procedures were to follow suit. In South Carolina, under their new provisions, over 180,000 voters were summarily taken off the voter registration rolls. The result of this decision was having what is tantamount to the highest court of the land approving the tea party agenda of restricting access to voting among populations which tend to vote democratic. While, according to legal scholars, these cases presented difficult questions under the doctrine of free speech, it all does not appear that complicated to this writer. What is clear, as shown in the 2012 election cycle in a most compelling way, is that now, while a rule of law may have been satisfied, the rule of context was shattered and the Court has taken us down the road to complete and utter dismissal of democracy. Plutocracy will reign supreme unless and until Congress moves toward a legislative remedy for this disastrous ruling on the part of the Roberts Court. It should frighten anyone who deems democracy – or rather a representative republic which is what we really have – as valued. The evidence is mounting by the week and particularly in those very states where the original Part 4(b) had compelling cause to take charge. Rigging of legislative districts along with impossibly restrictive voter registration rules will guarantee elections being the product of the demands of the few rather than the wishes of the many.

In a recent article in the Arizona Republic by Don Campbell ( a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors ), he outlines what he believes is a possibly remedy, that of public funding for elections. His key reason here is that this would give lawmakers the freedom to ignore the narrow agenda of special interest groups and allow more time to address the pressing issues of concern for the majority of their constituents. He goes on to say that, regrettably, nothing is going to change until there is another Watergate type scandal which rocks the political election world. Sadly, this is probably true and perhaps maybe not even then as there can be no doubt that huge money is virtually immune from being taken to task.
If you go to Washington and speak your mind in front of the Washington Monument or write streams of letters to elected officials criticizing government policies, that is indeed free speech. It will get you an audience in the park. It will not get you in to see your Congressman. A huge campaign contribution, however, will guarantee it.
This is what we have become and it will get far far worse because the body politic – I hold one of the most uninformed in the free world – will not see how it is wreaking havoc on every day life until it is too late. And it all started with the failure of the Supreme Court while  adhering to a horribly myopic interpretation of free speech totally ignoring the context and temper of the times. Honestly, does Chief Justice Roberts really believe that discrimination has ceased to exist, especially in places like Texas or Alabama or North Carolina, all infamous for Jim Crow ???? Does the Court really understand how elections are being bought today just as they were decades ago ?
Yes, my friends, the country is on the auction block ! It is indeed up for sale and the whores are lining up !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

During the Bush presidency, the country was dragged into two wars, both unpaid for and  based on total fabrications and greed for oil. There was an unpaid for pharmaceutical program, blatant reckless fiscal policy and complete failure of watchdog agencies to actually watch and, in spite of starting out with a budget surplus, it ended with in excess of a six trillion dollar deficit – an increase of 71.9%, and an economy plunged in to a  Recession rivaling the Great Depression.In 2008, a new administration was elected and the process of trying to rescue the nation from economic and structural collapse began. There were bail outs of the auto industry and other expenditures which did not fair well with the right wing Republicans but  near every reputable economist agreed that in order to right the wrongs, money needed to be spent – lots of money.

Then came 2010 and, as the product of an amazing campaign on the part of very big money to discredit the new administration, the Tea Party was born and far right wing extremism did not even come close to describing this faction  of the GOP. The Senate Minority Leader, in a press conference called within two weeks after to election, went on record saying that the sole priority for the GOP was to insure that President Obama was to be a one term president. Thus began a  campaign of calculated obstructionism, senseless brinksmanship and essentially the take over  of government by the  far right fringe known as the Tea Party. The campaign included  the spreading of misinformation,  half truths and outright lies, mostly centered around the Affordable Care Act, portraying it as job killing socialism. Unfortunately,  as much of the public  seem to get their news from Fox, much of these distortions were accepted as fact.  While these millionaires in Congress have most of  their healthcare paid for by the taxpayers, they are refusing to allow the uninsured access to insurance and health care.Along with this relentless obstructionism is the blatant hypocrisy on the part of Tea Party members, especially in the House.

The Representative from the 6^th District in Minnesota was a key player here, proclaiming that  according to the CBO,the  ACA would cost more than 800,000 jobs. That she was not quoting the CBO but rather a study done by the NFIB ( two years prior to the Act being passed ) didn’t seem to matter. This is the same member of Congress who received over $260,000 in farm subsidies but voted to pull SNAP funds from the Farm Bill in 2013. Similarly,  her colleague from the 8^th District in Tennessee  voted to pull SNAP funds from the Farm Bill while receiving over $9,000,000 in farm subsidies for his agra business. The Representative from the 1^st District in Wisconsin continues to sing his song about the “makers and  takers” and that government doesn’t create jobs but one has cause to wonder. His budget plan – the blueprint for the Tea Party Caucus – calls for privatizing Social Security, to be managed by Wall Street firms, turning Medicare in to a voucher system with a  $ 15,000 cap annually and the elimination of the SNAP program, a move which, in the face of a critical shortage of jobs, could cost over 170.000 veterans their food  subsidy. This from someone who collected social security survivor benefits which helped pay for his college education and has never held a job outside of government since those college days. This means the taxpayers covered his education and have been covering his salary, health care and travel since he was sixteen. So who is the real taker here, one must ask.

In addition to all this obstructionism is the what can only be described as extortion, hostage taking of the American people, if you will, and the brinksmanship each and every time budgets of debt ceilings come to renegotiation time.  In spite of the more than pressing needs in job creation, infrastructure rebuilding and energy conservation, the House has failed to address any of these and has spent its time repealing the Affordable Care Act no less than forty-two times. This time around, the “Extortion List”  contains  elements such as the killing of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau – a new watchdog agency set up to  protect consumers from predatory lending practices so prevalent during the Bush years, the construction of the Keystone Pipeline – transporting tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast for distribution over seas. [ Even the company which owns this notes that, for the US, we’re only talking about 1600 jobs and many of them are part  time. ]We won’t even talk about the environmental safety issues but just ask the folks in Mayflower, Arkansas or Ripley, Missouri, or Marshall, Michigan.

Then we move to the States where Tea Party controlled legislatures have wreaked havoc with everything from access to medical care for women to access to voting for millions of people, operating contrary to the Constitution and Supreme Court rulings all along the way. Tea Party states are  refusing to participate in Medicaid Expansion –  mostly paid or by the federal government, by the way – which is a key component of the Affordable Care Act.  There are Nullification laws moving through state houses and wholesale gerrymandering of  voting districts which near guaranteeing GOP/Tea Party control of elections. In  Arizona, a less than esteemed  Tea Party member of Congress pushed a Bill that would open the Grand Canyon to mining interests – yes, the Grand Canyon !!! From the patently mindless nonsense about birth certificates to now targeting any progress  on Immigration reform, the Tea Party has gone from absurd and idiotic to toxic and dangerous.

Time has come to lose the strategy of statesmanship – which has long gone away anyhow in this writer’s opinion – and forget the idea of civil discussion and even compromise with some common ground as the starting point. There is no common ground and there is no discussion, civil or otherwise in the halls of the legislative branch – in either house.The time has come to call this all for what it really is and take whatever steps can be taken by executive fiat in order to bring an end to this drive to destroy our representative republic and replace it with the upper two percent controlling everything. The GOP candidate for president in 2012 made it perfectly clear what the posture of the Tea Party is – if you can’t  afford college, then too bad ; if you need medical services, just go to the Emergency Room ; if you need social services or mental health services, just go to your church. Off shore accounts, outsourcing and tax evasion on profits earned overseas, elimination of the minimum wage law – all perfectly acceptable agenda.It is time.

Black’s defines “Treason” as the offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance. The Tea Party has forsaken their Oath of Office in deference to the Oath to Grover Norquist. Webster defines Domestic Terrorism as the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce especially for political purposes. The FBI elaborates on that definition by adding “….. intimidate or coerce the government, the civilian population or any segment thereof in furtherance or political or social objectives.

QED  – the Tea Party is nothing more than a destructive, toxic  party of domestic terrorism .

There’s an old saying that goes something like just because you’re paranoid, that doesn’t mean they are not  out to get you.  I heard this a lot in learning all about defensive driving. It’s sort of a way of  accepting that a certain level of paranoia is probably a good thing. It’s like fear – fear can be a good thing as it is one of those emotions that in given circumstances, keeps us awake and alert. Of course, being overcome by fear, or other emotions, well, that’s where problems arise. Paranoia is no exception. Some people see conspiracies in pretty much everything. Sometimes humorous, often sad,  sometimes insulting to ones intelligence and sometimes down right dangerous – these conspiracies and those hard case conspiracy theorists can drive otherwise logical people to the brink of stupidity and then over the edge to that abyss of irrational thinking.

Down through the years, we have seen numerous conspiracy theories. There was Joe McCarthy who saw a communist  in every phone booth and many lives were ruined during his quest to cleanse the nation of this mostly fictional danger.  In more modern times we have  what just might be the mother of conspiracy theories – the Birther Theory. This utter crap  conjured up by one Orly Taitz and fed week after week after week by the likes of Glenn Beck, Joe Arpaio and Donald Trump was simply stupid.  But there are a few which defy  the realm of rational thinking. The whole idea that the attacks on 911 were orchestrated by the government is no less than insane. I contend that the President knew that an attack was coming and he needed it to happen to kick start his Iraq agenda. But to assert that the government actually planted explosive devises in the Twin Towers, let alone the assertion that there was no aircraft involved in the attack on the Pentagon – I think the boys in the white coats need to do a sweep and clear here.  There is an equally mindless theory advanced by that total  and insufferable idiot, Alex Jones, that the tragic slaughter of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School was a carefully planned hoax and the  victims were actually actors – that’s why we never saw the bodies. I won’t even comment on that level of insanity. There are  others, so many others that make me wonder just what is in the water supply that people such as Hannity,  Jones, Corsi, Beck and Limbaugh are drinking. Of course, these have all pretty much been completely debunked and while many still have some desperate hold on them as being fact, they simply are not. The DaVinci Code was fiction, people – really !

However, there is one conspiracy – one major, nation threatening, highly organized, well funded  and well orchestrated conspiracy which is real, is progressing and , if not stopped in its tracks, will bring this country to complete social and economic collapse. In partnership with its Tea Party extremists, the GOP plan is to bring any semblance of social and economic equality to an end and bring the federal government  to a complete standstill while creating what can only be described as a two tier society  controlled by the upper five per cent.This is, in my opinion, a most dangerous agenda and what is frightening is that it is gaining traction, especially in the deep red states.

On a legislative level, one has to wonder how on the one hand GOP members are howling about economic recovery but on the other, their legislative hand, they are setting more roadblocks to recovery than there are on Interstate 76 after a harsh winter.  In the Senate alone, take a look at what has been waylaid, delayed or completely scuttled by procedural nonsense and the abuse of the filibuster rules.There is the DREAM Act which a path to citizenship to citizenship top college graduates who were brought here by their parents, who may have come here illegally, but are penalized because of that. Ask the Valedictorian of Arizona State University of the Class of 2012 – a Cum Laude graduate in Engineering.There is the DISCLOSE Act, which would compel corporations to disclose their political spending. The is the Public Option portion of the Affordable Care Act, which speaks for itself. There was the American Jobs  and Ending Off Shoring Act which would have kept corporations from benefitting from outsourcing to foreign countries and receiving deferred tax benefits for profits earned overseas. There was the Paycheck Fairness Act which required fair and equal pay for equal jobs. There was the repeal of Subsidies for oil companies, the most profitable corporations in the world. And my favorites, the American Jobs Act. This Act, languishing around the Hill since 2011, would have provided a tax incentive to Small Businesses, saved almost 280,000 teachers from layoffs, provided funds for rehabilitating thousands of homes and school buildings, reformed the Unemployment Insurance structure and created an Infrastructure Bank focused on highway, bridge and rail  rebuilding. The Senate killed this effort and the House, in the person of the Speaker and House Majority Leader  went clearly on the record stating that if this Bill ever passed the Senate, it would be DOA in the House and would never come to the floor – this while the Speaker sent twenty-six bills to the Senate which he called jobs bills but in reality were deregulation bills.                                                                                             One other most recent piece of legislation must be noted here. After the tragic murder of children and teachers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, over 90 % of people across the board wanted to see a Bill implementing universal background checks  for sale of firearms – including those sold at gun shows – to be passed. Senator Joe Manchin ( D-WVA ) and Senator Pat Toomey ( R- PA ) composed just such a bill, hammered it out across the aisle and brought it to the Senate which, in spite of overwhelming popular support was crippled in a filibuster and finally, after the Speaker of the House went on the record saying he would kill the bill  if and when it got to the House, was defeated. So much for Congress representing the people !!

Outside the beltway, the cancer continues to grow. Senator Jeff Flake ( R-AZ ) and Peter Hoekstra ( R – MD ) want all the states to band together and force a repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment which would return the choosing of the Senate to the state legislatures. Red states one after the other are trying to bar Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal dollars -specifically Medicaid – because they allegedly don’t want to fund abortions. ( One more way to cut benefits under Medicaid to pay for tax breaks for the upper 2 % ) The fact that over 90 % of what Planned Parenthood does is provide screening and general medical care for millions of low income women or that federal funds are barred from paying for abortions doesn’t seem to enter in to the conversation. And then there is the rampant initiating of what are clearly voter suppression laws and the rigging of the Congressional Redistricting process  in order to guarantee that the GOP and the Tea Party will eventually take over the government. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, no less than seven  red states have enacted such legislation and fourteen bills are active in an additional eight states. Changing polling places, eliminating days the polls will be open, ending early registration and same day registration and not allowing college students to vote in the location of their colleges are just some of the new rules of the game.                                                                                                                                                        This is convincing and compelling evidence of a widespread, well orchestrated and, as I said above, a dangerous conspiracy designed to completely remove democracy from government, return us to a Confederation of States and have the federal government become essentially a combination of a trade association and a war machine .The sole purpose of the Tea Party is to obstruct. The sole purpose of the GOP is to create wealth for their Wall Street puppeteers.  As I have said many times, it is long overdue that people need  to wake up and see the destruction being wrought by these extremist domestic terrorists. Let’s stop this lemming approach to citizenry and demand that government actually govern.