Category: Politics

Mitt Tells the Truth & Democracy is Not For Sale | Bill Moyers via Common Dreams

There’s a groundswell for rooting the money out of politics, as Americans come to see that this is the one reform that enables all other reforms. Two polls released in the last few days report large majorities – as many as eight in ten – are in favor of clamping down on the amount of money that corporations, the super-rich, and those shadowyoutside groups are pouring into the campaigns. It’s up to all of us to put a sign on every lawn and stoop in the land: “Democracy is not for sale.”

For more on this story, visit: Mitt Tells the Truth | Common Dreams.

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Stop A Couple Of People From Voting Republican This Year. Just Share This Hilariously Eye-Opening Video. | MoveOn.Org

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Stop A Couple Of People From Voting Republican This Year. Just Share This Hilariously Eye-Opening Video. | MoveOn.Org.

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Tough Talk for America by Mattea Kramer | ZNet Article

By Mattea Kramer

A Guide to the Presidential Debates You Won’t Hear

So here’s a brief guide to what you won’t hear this Wednesday or in the other presidential and vice-presidential debates later in the month. Think of these as five hard truths that will determine the future of this country.

2. Taxes are at their lowest point in more than half a century, preventing investment in and the maintenance of America’s most basic resources

3. Neither the status quo nor a voucher system will protect Medicare (or any other kind of health care) in the long run

4. The U.S. military is outrageously expensive and yet poorly tailored to the actual threats to U.S. national security

5. The U.S. education system is what made this country prosperous in the twentieth century — but no longer

1. Immediate deficit reduction will wipe out any hope of economic recovery

 

For more on this story, visit: ZCommunications | Tough Talk for America by Mattea Kramer | ZNet Article.

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‘Democratic Womanism’: Poet and Activist Alice Walker on Women Rising, Obama, and the 2012 Election | Common Dreams

With less than 40 days to go before the 2012 presidential election, poet and activist Alice Walker reads her new poem, “Democratic Womanism,” and discusses her thoughts on President Obama’s legacy, including his use of drone strikes. “You ask me why I smile when you tell me you intend in the coming national elections to hold your nose and vote for the lesser of two evils,” reads Walker. “There are more than two evils out there, is one reason I smile.”

For more on this story, visit: “Democratic Womanism”: Poet and Activist Alice Walker on Women Rising, Obama, and the 2012 Election | Common Dreams.

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US Designates Wikileaks ‘Enemy of the State’ | Common Dreams

ed note:

Benjamin Franklin wrote in”On the Freedom of the Press”

This Nurse of Arts, and Freedom’s Fence,
To chain, is Treason against Sense:
And Liberty, thy thousand Tongues
None silence who design no Wrongs;
For those who use the Gag’s Restraint,
First Rob, before they stop Complaint.

Documents show US policy puts media outlet in same legal category as violent terrorist groups

by Common Dreams staff

Military documents (pdf) obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request and posted online by Wikileaks show that the US government has designated the whistleblower website and its founder Julian Assange as “enemies of the state”—the same legal category as Al Qaeda and other foreign military adversaries.

For more on this story, visit: US Designates Wikileaks “Enemy of the State” | Common Dreams.

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Tax Loophole Benefiting Romney’s Estate Costs U.S. $1 Billion Over Ten Years | ThinkProgress

According to Bloomberg News, Mitt Romney is taking advantage of a tax loophole to pass off a fortune to his children without paying taxes on it. According to administration figures, this loophole costs the government $1 billion over a ten-year budget window ….

For more on this story, visit: Tax Loophole Benefiting Romney’s Estate Costs U.S. $1 Billion Over Ten Years | ThinkProgress.

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Amy Goodman: Romney Has a Jobs Plan … for China | Truthdig

ed: I’ve often thought that there are too many products with “Made in China” stickers on them. I think one reason China’s economy is so good is that they make most of our stuff. Clothes we buy at most clothing stores, toys at most toy stores, at least the big box stores, just about everything at Michael’s craft store is made in China, as is most everthing in Walmart and Target. Is America soon going to be Made in China? Amy Goodman has her own take on this below ….

By Amy Goodman

Freeport, Ill., is the site of one of the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. On Aug. 27, 1858, Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated there in their campaign for Illinois’ seat in the U.S. Senate. Lincoln lost that race, but the Freeport debate set the stage for his eventual defeat of Douglas in the presidential election of 1860, and thus the Civil War. Today, as the African-American president of the United States prepares to debate the candidate from the party of Lincoln, workers in Freeport are staging a protest, hoping to put their plight into the center of the national debate this election season.

A group of workers from Sensata Technologies have set up their tents in a protest encampment across the road from the plant where many of them have spent their adult lives working. Sensata makes high-tech sensors for automobiles, including the sensors that help automatic transmissions run safely. Sensata Technologies recently bought the plant from Honeywell, and promptly told the more than 170 workers there that their jobs and all the plant’s equipment would be shipped to China.

For more on this story, visit: Amy Goodman: Romney Has a Jobs Plan … for China – Truthdig.

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What Mitt Romney Doesn’t Get About Responsibility | Bloomberg

The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.

“The problem is that Romney doesn’t seem to realize how difficult it is to focus on college when you’re also working full time, how much planning it takes to reliably commute to work without a car. … The working poor haven’t abdicated responsibility for their lives. They’re drowning in it.”

Imagine you’re Romney, the Republican presidential nominee: For the past year you’ve been unable to grab a clear lead in the polls against an incompetent who has been unable to get unemployment below 8 percent or reach a reasonable debt- reduction deal with Congress. Which would you prefer to believe? That you’re not good enough, not smart enough and doggone it, people just don’t like you? Or that the incumbent Democrat has effectively bought off half the country with food stamps and free health care?

For more on this story, visit: What Mitt Romney Doesn’t Get About Responsibility – Bloomberg.

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10 Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes | ThinkProgress

Think Progress has 10 unanswered questions about Romney’s taxes, beginning with:

1. After the election, when the subject of your tax returns is outside of the public glare, will you file an amended tax return to claim your full deduction of charitable contributions? Was the tax rate you reported for other years similarly manipulated?

2. Why was your 2011 income $7 million lower than you estimated it to be in January? How does someone overestimate their income by $7 million?

3. Financial disclosures show that you have as much as $82 million in your tax-deferred Individual Retirement Account, despite the fact that tax rules limited contributions into such accounts to $30,000 per year. Did you lowball the value of the assets you put into your IRA, as tax experts suspect? And did you do the same with gifts into your sons’ trusts?

4. What was the purpose of your Swiss bank account and the myriad offshore entities shown on your return, based in countries like the Cayman Islands and Luxembourg, if not to avoid taxes?

5. Can you explain what one tax expert has called a “mysterious one-time infusion of foreign tax credits” in 2008?

For more on this story, visit: 10 Questions Romney Should Answer About His Taxes | ThinkProgress.

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