• From 2007-2008, Young's district received $167,000,000 in earmarks.
• He has supported earmarks to companies which employ or employed his sons.
• In 2011, he favored pouring $1.2 billion into the Pentagon's Humvee program, even after Defense Secretary Robert Gates stated that the government was not buying any more Humvees and wanted the funding moved elsewhere. Young had received 80,000 in campaign contributions from AM General, manufacturer of the Humvee.
• He supports the Paul Ryan plan to gut Social Security and Medicare.

They're pretty much Republicans with blue T-shirts. Problem there, of course, is all the anti-Choice, anti-gay and... well, the Blue Dog caucus is really extreme and barely even part of the Democratic Party at all. That leaves... a group that's kind of like the Blue Dogs but without the white sheets and hoods: the New Democratic Coalition.

The New Dems was founded in 1997 as the House affiliate of the corporatist shills at Joe Lieberman's DLC. It is financed by Big Business and corrupt K Street lobbyists with an anti-worker/anti-consumer agenda. It specializes in "free trade" policies. Most of the leadership has been made up of conservative Democrats with a nose for big money, like Rahm Emanuel, Chamber of Commerce ex-Rep. Melissa Bean, and corporatists Joe Crowley, Ron Kind, Ellen Tauscher, Harold Ford and Allyson Schwartz.

Some conservative Democrats, like Steve Israel and Debbie Wasserman Schultz, seeking to hide their true colors have officially dropped out of the New Dem Coalition in the hope of winning wider leadership positions in the whole party. A number of Blue Dogs-- Adam Schiff (CA), Loretta Sanchez (CA), John Barrow (GA), David Scott (GA), Mike McIntyre (NC), Kurt Schrader (OR) and Jason Altmire (PA)-- are members of both right-wing groups.

Labels: assholes, Blue Dog Democrats, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness

Since the 1970s, New Hampshire police have operated under a progressive policy for handling domestic violence cases that has saved countless lives. Under current law the presumption is that an arrest will be made when police observe evidence of abuse. They have a large degree of discretion and don’t need to witness the assault firsthand or obtain a legal warrant before they can separate the alleged attacker from his victim.

All that will change if Republicans get their way. The state’s GOP legislators are pushing two bills that will reverse a half century of progress, the Concord Monitor reports:

Domestic violence is no longer taken lightly legally or by society. That’s the way it should be, but two bills under consideration by this most unusual of legislatures, would undo that progress and put lives in danger. Both deserve a speedy defeat.

House Bill 1581 would turn the clock back 40 years to an age when a police officer could not make an arrest in a domestic violence case without first getting a warrant unless he or she actually witnessed the crime. That’s an exceedingly dangerous change. Consider the following scenario, one outlined for lawmakers by retired Henniker police chief Tim Russell:

An officer is called to a home where she sees clear evidence that an assault has occurred. The furniture is overturned, the children are sobbing, and the face of the woman of the house is bruised and bleeding. It’s obvious who the assailant was, but the officer arrived after the assault occurred. It’s a small department, and no one else on the force is available to keep the peace until the officer finds a judge or justice of the peace to issue a warrant. The officer leaves, and the abuser renews his attack with even more ferocity, punishing his victim for having called for help. [...]

It’s impossible to say how many lives the policy, in place since the 1970s, has saved or how many injuries it’s prevented. If they adopt House Bill 1581, lawmakers might find out, but the price paid could be extraordinarily high.

The other bill Republicans have proposed, HB 1608, limits judges’ ability to order the arrest of someone who has violated a domestic violence restraining order by contacting or abusing the person named in the order. It would also prevent judges from ordering defendants to surrender their weapons or block them from buying guns.

Labels: And You Want To Give Power Back To These People?, domestic violence, heartlessness, scumbaggery, The Republican War on Women

Labels: assholes, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, Rick Santorum

At last count, 13.3 million people were officially unemployed and 5.7 million of them had been out of work for more than six months. At no time in the last 60 years has long-term unemployment been so high for so long.

But Republican lawmakers would have you believe that the nation cannot afford jobless benefits and that many recipients are not so much needy, as lazy, disinclined to work as long as benefits are available. When was the last time any Republican lawmaker tried to live on $289 a week, the amount of the average benefit?

Under current policy, federal benefits kick in when state-provided benefits run out, typically after 26 weeks. The duration of the federal payouts depends on the level of unemployment in a given state. Currently, workers in 22 of the hardest-hit states — including California, New Jersey and Connecticut — qualify for up to 73 more weeks of aid. In five other states — including New York — up to 67 more weeks are available. In the remaining 23 states, maximum federal benefits range from 34 weeks to 60 weeks. The cost to continue the program for another year would be about $45 billion.

The Republican plan would cut $11 billion of that in 2012 by slashing up to 40 weeks from the program, reducing by more than half the maximum 73 weeks now available. Because of the way the program is structured, the biggest cuts would come in the states with the highest unemployment. Millions of jobless workers would be quickly left without subsistence, and the weak economy would be weakened further by the drop in consumer spending.

The bill would also impose onerous — and gratuitous — requirements on people who apply for jobless benefits. It would allow states to drug test applicants and would require recipients to be high-school graduates or working toward an equivalency degree

Labels: government for sale, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, unemployment

The procedure I have used to estimate economic damage — this is going to get a tiny bit technical — is to regress the logarithm of economic damage on three independent variables. The first two variables are the storm’s wind speed, and the distance of the storm from New York City, at its closest approach to Manhattan. The third variable is how many fatalities the storm caused in the Southern United States (these were significant in the cases of Hurricane Donna in 1960, Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and Hurricane Floyd in 1999), which is used as a proxy to segregate out damages caused in the South from those in the Northeast in the case of storms that made multiple distinct landfalls. The figures I am going to show you, therefore, reflect estimates of the economic damage to the Northeast from various types of hurricanes, including but not limited to the New York City metro region.

Citing the Galveston hurricane in 1900 that obliterated much of the Texas coast, the libertarian-leaning congressman said Americans were able to rebuild their cities and put up a seawall without the federal government's help.

The citizens of Houston knew a powerful storm had blown through and had made ready to provide assistance. Workers set out by rail and ship for the island almost immediately. Rescuers arrived to find the city completely destroyed. It is believed 8,000 people—20% of the island's population—had lost their lives. Estimates range from 6,000 to 12,000. Most had drowned or been crushed as the waves pounded the debris that had been their homes hours earlier. Many survived the storm itself but died after several days trapped under the wreckage of the city, with rescuers unable to reach them. The rescuers could hear the screams of the survivors as they walked on the debris trying to rescue those they could. A further 30,000 were left homeless.

So many died that corpses were piled onto carts for burial at sea.The dead bodies were so numerous that burying them all was not possible. The dead were initially weighted down and dumped at sea, but when the gulf currents washed many of the bodies back onto the beach, a new solution was needed. Funeral pyres were set up wherever the dead were found and burned for weeks after the storm. The authorities passed out free whiskey to sustain the distraught men conscripted for the gruesome work of collecting and burning the dead. More people were killed in this single storm than the total of those killed in all the tropical cyclones that have struck the United States since. This count is greater than 300 cyclones, as of 2009. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.

Labels: batshit crazies, Eric Cantor, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, right-wing economic terrorism, Ron Paul, we ar, wingnuttia

What happens when there is no money to give to the people who have no money? That is the moral question. It's fine to say that the old people should have saved more, they should have worked an extra job, they should have done without cable TV, they should have invested more wisely. Saying that doesn't change the fact that there will be old people who do not have money. These old people will believe that they need food and shelter and medical care.

Will they get it? At the arch-plutocrats' end of things, the Koch brothers' end, the end occupied by the most devout worshippers of Ayn Rand, the answer is: no. That's the goal. It's long since time for the sloppy, implicit, badly supported social contract to go away. Rich people have been trimming their contribution to the general revenue for decades now. They are not interested in paying the premium that keeps old people and ailing people or just backward people out of the streets. If the day comes that they have to travel to and from their various compounds in armored helicopters, they can afford the helicopters. It's not their problem.

David Brooks do not believe they are that kind of person. David Brooks are responsible. David Brooks care about the need to "invest" in "effectiveness" for all.

Alas, living is not effective. Employers have stopped paying people for their post-productive years. They have done this, welfare-capitalistically, with the sense that the cost and responsibility they are shedding will be picked up by...someone, somewhere.

Labels: Big Blue Smurf Blogging, David Brooks, economic death watch, heartlessness, scumbaggery

A second person in Arizona has died while waiting for an organ transplant. Not because they couldn't find a donor but because state budget cuts took the patients off the transplant list.

When CBS News first met 27-year-old Tiffany Tate in December 2010 she was in desperate need of a double lung transplant. Yet she and 98 other people in Arizona were kicked off the organ transplant list. The state decided it could no longer afford to pay for some transplants which can cost $200,000.

"If we all don't get our transplants, all 98 of us are going to die," says Tate. "We deserve a second chance. I didn't ask for this. I was born with this and I've fought my whole life."

CBS News correspondent Ben Tracy reports at least two people have died since November. Mark Price, a father of six, died waiting for a bone marrow transplant. Now the University Medical Center in Tucson says a man needing a new liver died due to the cutbacks.

A hospital spokesperson said, "We believe that it's likely that they died because they were unable to get a transplant."

"There's absolutely no way you can justify killing people to save really a little bit over a million dollars," says Ariz. Rep. Chad Campbell (D).

Campbell says cutting the transplant program is saving Arizona $1.4 million, or one-tenth of 1 percent of its $825 million budget deficit.

Ariz. governor Jan Brewer says Arizona is broke. "The state has only so much money and we can only provide so many optional kinds of care," she says.

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, health care, heartlessness

Labels: a real mensch, Chris Christie, Cory Booker, heartlessness

Republican senators were so worried about meeting with 9/11 responders who came to Washington today that at least one called the cops on them, the Daily News has learned.

Even before the nine responders had a chance to start visiting senators’ offices - where they intended to stay until meeting with legislators - they were greeted by Capitol Police, who had been called by Sen. Susan Collins (R-Me.).

Collins apparently reacted to a story in today’s News which quoted a letter to senators from 9/11 advocate John Feal warning that he and others planned to sit in offices until they got meetings - or the police made them leave.

Collins is among the senators the 9/11 community hopes will come over to their side, but her call to authorities left them wondering if they could succeed.

“I’m deeply disappointed in Sen. Collins for calling the Capitol Police, but they welcomed us with open arms,” said Feal, although he wound up with a police escort for the first stops on his visit.

“I’m more disappointed that Susan Collins is hiding behind ideology, and now the police, to stop from helping us,” Feal said. “And the people she called to stop us, are just like us. It’s a little ironic.”

Officers eventually determined he and his team were not threatening and left them alone.

Only one Republican has agreed to back the $7.4 billion James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act, and even he - Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois - voted against bringing it up until the Bush-era tax cuts are extended.

Collins’ office did not immediately comment on why she was worried enough about the 9/11 responders to call police.

The advocates - who all served at Ground Zero - are growing desperate with time running out in the Senate. The Zadroga Act either needs to be attached to other legislation or passed on its own before the year ends, and the calendar is crowded with other measures.

Procedural hurdles can also be thrown in the way of any bill if senators don’t want to deal with a measure.

If the bill does not pass this year it is all but dead, and the responders are so concerned they also targeted Democrats who voted for the bill, hoping to inspire leaders to take every step possible.

Their luck wasn’t much better. A group of retired cops, construction workers and firefighters heading to visit the office of Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) bumped into the Rev. Jesse Jackson leaving a meeting there.

Jackson stopped and held an impromptu prayer circle with them in the hallway. But Schumer strolled on by, waited for an elevator and hopped on without saying a word.

“It was disrespectful,” said former NYPD emergency services cop Glen Klein. “It seems like he’s not concerned about our welfare. He could have at least stopped as said hello.”


Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dc/2010/12/gop-senator-calls-cops-on-911.html#ixzz18KKIFQ8G

Labels: 9/11, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) -- Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin began a tightly stage-managed visit to Haiti on Saturday in which she visited cholera clinics while avoiding crowds and the press.

The 2008 vice presidential candidate was a guest of Rev. Franklin Graham, whose aid group works in the impoverished country. Haiti is facing a brutal cholera epidemic while struggling with an electoral crisis and reconstruction from the January earthquake.

Palin, who traveled in part by helicopter, provided access on her tour solely to the U.S. cable network Fox News.

Graham's organization, Samaritan's Purse, refused to discuss Palin's itinerary with other media and asked Haitian and American reporters to leave its compounds, citing a "security lockdown."

"I've really enjoyed meeting this community. They are so full of joy," Palin was quoted as saying on the organization's website. "We are so fortunate in America, and we are responsible for helping those less fortunate."

Associated Press television journalists saw Palin talking with foreign aid workers. She wore cargo pants, a T-shirt and designer sunglasses on her first trip outside the United States since speaking to investors in Hong Kong last year. That speech was also closed to the media.

Samaritan's Purse posted pictures online of Palin touring a post-quake shelter, touching the hand of a Haitian child and laughing with Graham and Fox News host Greta van Susteren.

Palin's visit comes amid a cholera outbreak that has killed more than 2,000 people and sickened more than 96,000 others.

Shuffle shuffle Miss Daisy. Them people are always smiling and so good at basketball too. Oh, no, I kid. I kid. We’re lucky she didn’t accuse the Haitians of being limp, impotent and weak as is her wont (see Barbara Walters interview). But, bonus time, she did come bearing every socialist’s tool: a push up bra. Double points for morale boosting.

Good news is that Palin now says we are responsible for helping those less fortunate and this is a great turn around. Pretty soon she’s really gonna deserve at least a teabag’s worth of community organizing cred. It seems like just yesterday that Palin was saying they were supposed to pull themselves up by their bootstraps like Palin did, but without the government cheese and pork because, like, healthcare for everyone was a bad thing….

Since she’s only there for a day, and has no plans to get dirty helping out with actual work, bestowing the beauty of her visage upon the deprived and desperate Haitians is all we can expect from the goddess of charity.

Nothing says Presidential like waiting a year to show up in Haiti — a year spent trying to destroy your own country’s democratically elected president no less. But no worries, Palin is in Haiti now, getting her picture taken by Fox News to sell herself in 2012 as Someone Who Has Been to Other Countries, also, too. Now, the real question is will the prolific tweeter find time to at least tweet out a call to help the Haitians, or will the miser in her overwhelm any urge of Christmas spirit, knowing as any teabagger does that there’s only so much to go around and she’s still got loads of books to sell?

Labels: 2010 Haiti earthquake, heartlessness, narcissism, Sarah Palin

Labels: Barack Obama, heartlessness, unemployment, wussy-ass Democrats

• An estimated two million workers in December will be cut off of federal unemployment benefits, beginning in the holiday season, if Congress does not renew the program before it expires on November 30th.
  
• Nearly 400,000 workers were laid off just in the past six months and now face the end of their state benefits without qualifying for any federal extended benefits.
  
• 800,000 workers face an immediate “hard” cut-off of their benefits (starting December 4th in nearly half the states) after struggling to find work and pay their bills for over a year in most cases.
  
• Since the unemployment insurance program was created in response to the Great Depression, Congress has never cut federally-funded jobless benefits when unemployment was this high for this long (at over nine percent for 17 consecutive months). The earliest Congress ever started pulling back on benefits was when unemployment reached the level of 7.2 percent nationwide.
  
• Businesses and the struggling economy—especially the critical retail sector—will take a major blow if Congress fails to continue the federal jobless benefits during the holiday shopping season.
  
• In 2009 alone, the increase in the number of people in poverty would have doubled were it not for unemployment insurance benefits.
  
• With the average unemployment extension check of $290 a week replacing only half of the average family’s expenditures on transportation, food, and housing, jobless workers have a major incentive to look for work, notwithstanding the modest assistance their benefits checks provide.
  
• The 51-day lapse of the federal extension program this summer caused substantial hardship for 2.5 million unemployed workers, underscoring the urgency of renewing the current program for another year until there is strong job growth.
  

[snip]

The sheer magnitude of the number of workers affected by the dearth of jobs shows how inadequate recent economic recovery really is: currently, more than one in six working-age adults—or 26.8 million people—are either unemployed or underemployed. Of these, nearly 15 million are jobless through no fault of their own, and an additional 9.5 million are forced to work part time even though they want full-time work.

Taken together, these groups of unemployed and underemployed workers, as well as those
marginally attached to the labor force—people who are available for work, have looked for work in the past year, and still can’t find jobs—result in a “real” unemployment rate of at least 17.1 percent, a much more stark and worrisome measure than the already-staggering 9.6 percent unemployment rate that has persisted for the past two months. At the same time, the unemployed are experiencing record periods of joblessness: nearly 42 percent of the 15 million jobless workers are “long-term unemployed”—that is, out of work for six months or longer. Since the Labor Department began tracking this data, typical spells of unemployment have never lasted for so long, nor has long-term
unemployment affected so many millions of people.

Recent private-sector job growth has been grossly inadequate to bring down these dire rates of joblessness. In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics recently reported that job loss over 2009 and 2010 may have been even worse than initially reported, with 366,000 more jobs lost as of March 2010,3 resulting in 8.1 million total jobs lost over the course of the downturn. Given this, as well as weak jobs growth in 2010, the U.S. needs 11.5 million jobs to reach pre-recession levels of employment, a shocking number when considering that layoffs temporarily increased over the summer and are now
overwhelming the public sector as state and local government budgets are being slashed and federal hiring for the 2010 Census has come to an end.

Never in the history of the program have unemployment benefits been eliminated, or even reduced, when unemployment rates were so high. The only other time in the past 60 years that the unemployment rate has remained so high for so long was during the early 1980s. At that time, Congress did not cut federal unemployment benefits until the national unemployment rate had fallen to 7.2 percent—a far cry from our current rate of 9.6 percent.

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, unemployment, wingnuttia

Ms. Jarrin is part of a hard-luck group of jobless Americans whose members have taken to calling themselves “99ers,” because they have exhausted the maximum 99 weeks of unemployment insurance benefits that they can claim.

For them, the resolution recently of the lengthy Senate impasse over extending jobless benefits was no balm. The measure renewed two federal programs that extended jobless benefits in this recession beyond the traditional 26 weeks to anywhere from 60 to 99 weeks, depending on the state’s unemployment rate. But many jobless have now exceeded those limits. They are adjusting to a new, harsh reality with no income.

In June, with long-term unemployment at record levels, about 1.4 million people were out of work for 99 weeks or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Not all of them received unemployment benefits, but for many of those who did, the modest payments were a lifeline that enabled them to maintain at least a veneer of normalcy, keeping a roof over their heads, putting gas in their cars, paying electric and phone bills.

Without the checks, many like Ms. Jarrin, who lost her job as director of client services at a small technology company in March 2008, are beginning to tumble over the economic cliff. The last vestiges of their former working-class or middle-class lives are gone; it is inescapable now that they are indigent.

Ms. Jarrin said she wept as she drove away from her old life last month, wondering if she would ever be able to reclaim it.

“At one point, I thought, you know, what if I turned the wheel in my car and wrecked my car?” she said.

Some decisions by this person clearly were her own fault - a $90K debt for an undergraduate education is ridiculous in any economy; clearly she keeps feeding a cat (in the photo but not mentioned in the story) that has to cost her money she can ill afford.

When you are unemployed you have an obligation to yourself and your family to take ANY work you can find, rather than whining that the rest of us limit you to only 2 years on the dole. So you used to be a white collar worker and cant find a similar job?? Get real and do what you can. That is the type of work ethic that built this country

As Ms. Jarrin tells it, she has applied for plenty of minimum wage jobs, including McDonalds, Burger King and other fast food restaurants, in addition to positions that better fit her background. I've actually heard this a lot from many unemployed with college-degrees. They can't even get those jobs at Starbucks and the like because they're overqualified or perceived that they will leave as soon as the economy improves.

Can this be what the Democrats in Congress have been hoping for, millions of people who are now dependent on government benefits for their existence? Can it be that the Democrats would like to see people dependent on extensions of unemployment benefits, welfare, Medicaid, etc. so that they remember the Democrats' largesse when it comes time to vote?

Many of these high paying do-nothing cubical jobs are disappearing forever. She needs to fix here resume so she doesn't appear over-qualified and trade down for a lesser job.

Labels: economic death watch, heartlessness, unemployment

Labels: Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness, Rachel Maddow, right-wing hatemongers, scumbaggery, unemployment

Last night, Angle sat for a grueling interview with Nevada journalist Jon Ralston, and in a key moment, she clarified her position: She said we should cut unemployment benefits to encourage those who lost their jobs to reenter the labor force at a lower level than they left it.

The key moment came after Ralston pressed Angle to clarify her earlier remarks about unemployment benefits spoiling Americans. Angle claimed she'd been misrepresented, and suggested that the problem is that unemployment benefits are so high that they discourage people from going out and finding lower lower level jobs:

What has happened is the system of entitlement has caused us to have a spoilage with our ability to go out and get a job...There are some jobs out there that are available. Because they have to enter at a lower grade and they cannot keep their unemployment, they have to make a choice now.

We're making them make a choice between unemploment benefits and going back to work and working up through the ranks of that job and actually building up a good wage again...

What we need to do is make that unemployment benefit go down, not just completely remove the safety net from them while they go out and go to work.

An incredulous Ralston asked: "If people lose their jobs through no fault of their own, as many have during this recession, Sharron Angle's solution is to cut their unemployment benefits so low so they're somehow gonna go out and find jobs that don't exist?"

Angle confirmed that this is precisely her position: "There are jobs that do exist. That's what we're saying, is that there are jobs. That those jobs are entry level jobs..."

Labels: evil, Greedy Republican Bastards, heartlessness