Guest Commentary (3251)
Government-Supported Research Enables Their Profits, But Many Corporations Have Nearly Stopped Paying Taxes
PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Multinational corporations have built their businesses on the backs of American taxpayers. They've depended on government research, national defense, the legal and educational systems, and our infrastructure.
Yet they've turned around and mocked us with declining tax payments. They've cut workers. They've refused to invest their massive profits in job-producing research and development. And they've insulted existing employees with low wages and dwindling retirement support.
As a final disdainful act, many of them have tried to convince us that they LOSE money in the U.S. while only making profits overseas.
Here are the facts.
US Citizens Will Die Because of the Republican Governors Who Won't Expand Medicaid
WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Gov. Rick Perry (R-Texas) opposes the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), and vows to block the expansion of Medicaid in his state. At a news conference this past week, Perry, flanked by conservative senators Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, declared “Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration's attempt to force us into the fool's errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system." About one-fourth of all Texans do not have health care coverage.
According to an analysis by the Dallas Morning News, if Texas budgeted $15.6 billion over the next decade, it would receive more than $100 billion in federal Medicaid funds, allowing the state to cover about 1.5 million more residents, including about 400,000 children.
Texas isn’t the only state to politicize health care.
Gov. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) says that expanding Medicaid is the “right thing to do,” but the Republican-dominated state legislature doesn’t agree. Gov. John Kasich (R-Ohio) is having the same problem with his Republican legislature, although participation in Medicaid would save the state about $1.9 billion during the next decade. Gov. Jan Brewer (R-Ariz.), one of the nation’s most vigorous opponents of the ACA, surprisingly has spoken in favor of Medicaid expansion to benefit her state’s residents.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-La.) and the Republican legislature oppose implementing the ACA and Medicaid expansion. Jindal says the expansion would cost Louisiana about $1 billion during the next decade. However, data analysis by the state’s Department of Health and Hospitals reveals that if Louisiana accepted the federal program, which would benefit almost 600,000 residents, the state would actually save almost $400 million over the next decade. About one-fifth of all Louisianans lack health insurance.
Pennsylvania, by population, is a blue state, but it has a Republican governor, and both houses of the Legislature are Republican-controlled. Gov. Tom Corbett says he opposes an expansion of Medicaid because it is “financially unsustainable for Pennsylvania taxpayers” and would require a “large tax increase.” This would be the same governor who believes that extending a $1.65 billion corporate welfare check to the Royal Dutch Shell Corp., a foreign-owned company, is acceptable but protecting Pennsylvanians’ health is not.
Fifteen states, dominated by Republican governorships and legislatures, by declaring they won’t allow Medicaid expansion, are on record as placing political interests before the health of their citizens. Another 10 states are “considering” whether or not to implement additional health care coverage for their citizens. The Republican states, pretending they believe in cost containment, claim they oppose Medicaid expansion because of its cost, even though the entire cost for three years is borne by the federal government, the states would pay only 10 percent of the cost after that. The cost to the states would average only about 2.8 percent, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget office.
(Photo: tindenbaum)
DeMint's Domain: The Heritage Foundation at Forty
BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Weyrich’s vision, Coors’ money, Fuelner’s leadership, and Reagan’s stamp of approval propelled the Heritage Foundation to prominence. Will Jim DeMint’s marketing strategy lead to a conservative revival?
For a good part of the past forty years, The Heritage Foundation has been the most influential conservative think tank in the country. Now, with its long-time president Ed Fuelner stepping down and Tea Party favorite former South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint becoming its president, will it continue to prosper?
Whatever else can be said about Fuelner, who was president of Heritage for nearly 36 years, he certainly changed the way right-wing think tanks wonk!
In his last official note to the troops -- sent out on his final day as Heritage president -- Fuelner thanked supporters, warned that “progressives are on the offensive, aggressively trying to remake our country using a Euro-socialist mold,” and encouraged them to “remain optimistic about the future.”
Fighting Climate Change and Creating "Green Jobs": Is Hemp the Silver Bullet?
NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Though Obama has frequently spoken of the need for more “green jobs,” he has failed to acknowledge the inherent environmental advantages associated with a curious plant called hemp. One of the earliest domesticated crops, hemp is incredibly versatile and can be utilized for everything from food, clothing, rope, paper and plastic to even car parts. In an era of high unemployment, hemp could provide welcome relief to the states and help to spur the transition from antiquated and polluting manufacturing jobs to the new green economy. What is more, in lieu of our warming world and climate change, the need for environmentally sustainable industries like hemp has never been greater. Given all of these benefits, why have Obama and the political establishment chosen to remain silent?
President Obama: If "XL Pipeline Is Harmless to Environment" as Your State Department Claims, Then Explain Exxon-Mobil's Tar Sands Pipeline Rupture-Evacuation in Arkansas
JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
In his State of the Union speech, President Obama acknowledged the severity of global warming and that action must be taken to replace industrial polluting energy with clean energy technologies.
The President has made some progress insofar as opening the market to green energy by providing tax initiatives and other good incentives, but with off-the-record hot temperatures, devastating droughts across the mid west and western states, and extremely catastrophic weather conditions, toxic coal, oil and gas chemical polluters are still the major providers of energy. They are killing our rivers, lakes and oceans and increasing CO2 trapped greenhouse gases far more rapidly than scientists have predicted. Given the overwhelming crises, the President needs to take a massive leap of action as he led us to believe he’d do, given his speech, when he announced that if “congress doesn’t act then I’ll take executive action.”
It’s pretty obvious to most Americans that our government is merely an extension of these polluting industries. When you see a senator, a congressman or the president, you are looking at a representative of the oil, coal, gas and nuclear industry. They are the “company men” in office – pretending to represent the people. So we know all too well what an uphill battle it is.
Monsanto May Be Number One in Capitalist Hall of Hypocrisy
PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Capitalist greed is splitting our country in two. But rather than look objectively at their failures, many of those responsible have been hypocritical, portraying themselves as advocates of freedom and prosperity while the greater part of America slides toward poverty.
Some of the candidates:
1. The "Get a Job" Critic
This usually well-connected person criticizes the jobless for being lazy. But in a recent poll that asked if "the government in Washington should see to it that everyone who wants to work can find a job," 68% of the general public agreed, while only 19% of the wealthy were in agreement.
Apparently they feel the free market will find those jobs. But as they staunchly adhere to their notion, large corporations are holding trillions in cash, transfering millions of jobs overseas, and paying low-level wages to those who have managed to stay employed.
Boy Scouts Still Have Ban on Gays, Even Though Founder Robert Baden-Powell Was Supposedly Gay
WALTER BRASCH FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Robert Baden-Powell
Sometime in May, a special committee selected by Boy Scout executives will recommend whether the Scouts should allow gays to be members and leaders.
The decision may have more to do with funding than with any other policy.
Contributions from individuals, major corporations, and at least 50 United Way agencies stopped because of the Scouts’ anti-gay policy. Among corporations that have not made annual six-figure donations are Intel, Merck, CVS, Chase Manhattan Bank, Verizon, Google, UPS, and Levi Straus. Stephen Spielberg, an Eagle Scout, in protest of the policy against gays dropped off the national advisory council.
The national council was also losing funds because of a drop of about 22 percent in membership the past 13 years.
So, the Scouts sent out a trial balloon a few months ago that it was considering whether or not to remove its anti-gay policy, and allow local units to determine their own policies.
That led to a vicious backlash by the nation’s right-wing, with talk show commentators, media pundits and blowhards, conservative politicians, and equally conservative businessmen backing the Scouts’ right not to allow gays to become members. The right wing formed their own associations and threatened to pull their own funding if the Scouts allowed gay members, volunteer leaders, and professional staff.
Never willing to lead, the Scout executives decided there needed to be another "reconsideration.”
The last “reconsideration” occurred in 1974 when the Scouts ended segregation—a few decades late.
(Photo: Wikipedia)
Same-sex Marriage Polls Have Risen Faster Than Property Taxes in a Tulip Bubble
Will Durst For BuzzFlash at Truthout (Satire)
The nation held its collective breath and turned not just blue but a veritable rainbow of colors as the Supreme Court spent a goodly part of two days hearing oral arguments on gay marriage. Well, at least they were in the same room as arguments about gay marriage were oralled. In a position to eavesdrop on a series of gay marriage arguments; if they were of a mind to.
Why the US Government Lacks Legitimacy on Gun Control
JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
It’s laughable to hear our President and members of the legislature argue the fine points of gun control when they go about attacking defenseless and poor countries, murdering hundreds of thousands of people under the phony excuse of national security with weapons of mass destruction ranging from cluster bombs to depleted uranium missiles and chemicals that literally disintegrate flesh and bones to ash as witnessed at Fallujah, Iraq, “Go massive!” Donald Rumsfeld cheered, “Sweep it all up. Things related and not,” while Dick Cheney and his associates drooled over the sadistic methods of torture that he ordered against a people who did absolutely nothing to the United States.
I think of that photo of the five year old Iraqi girl wailing, crouched down with her parents’ blood splattered over her dress after U.S. troops opened fire at their car because they made the mistake of driving through the patrol, an image that circled the world media except in the United States where it was censored.
That image symbolizes the perception of the United States’ rogue government from the Bush years, and it has not really improved under Obama’s given the fact that Obama refused to prosecute the Bush-Cheney administration for committing heinous war crimes: lying about evidence that Saddam Hussein harbored weapons of mass destruction, ordering barbaric torture practices and bragging about how effective the satanic act of torture is when it is anything but, invading a sovereign and civilized nation no different from European nations except that Iraq happened to be in the Middle East and an oil rich country. These are all impeachable offenses under the U.S. Constitution.
Marriage Equality and the Christian Right: "It's the End of the World!"
BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT
Christians will be “forced underground.” – Pastor Jim Garlow
Legalizing gay marriage will spell "the death of capitalism." – Matthew Hagee
If the Supreme Court rules in favor of gay marriage it "will have lost its legitimacy in its entirety." – Matt Barber & Mat Staver
Marching against same-sex marriage felt like being involved in the “Civil Rights Movement.” – Brian Brown
Gays and lesbians “hate God’s law and therefore they do hate God.” – Peter LaBarbera
If the above statements from members of the conservative evangelical Christian commentariat sound ludicrous yet chilling, outlandish yet eerily familiar, that is because over the years we have become quite familiar with their incessant anti-gay vitriol. However, the more interesting aspect of this collection of off-the-wall commentary by Pastor Jim Garlow, Matthew Hagee, Liberty Counsel’s Matt Barber and Mat Staver, who is also vice president of the Jerry Falwell-founded Liberty University, the National Organization for Marriage’s president Brian Brown, and Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth About Homosexuality, is their fear that the tide of public opinion has turned against them.
