How can Americans ask our young men and women to indiscriminately kill a shadowy enemy and then return to their ordered Coca-Cola lives Stateside? “It’s even worse for our troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hanks says. “At least the Pacific-war soldiers coming back from World War II decompressed on ships for weeks. And then once the troops arrived portside, it was often a long train ride home to Peoria. Today these guys in Afghanistan fight in bloody hell and are flown back in 18 hours. How can they cope with that? How can they suddenly go from Tora Bora to Peyton Place?” Even the legendary Audie Murphy, the most decorated soldier in World War II, suffered posttraumatic stress disorder after his return from the European theater. During one meltdown, a deranged Murphy held his wife hostage at gunpoint.
Recently, an angry Ft. Stewart soldier, Spc. Marc A. Hall, wrote a rap song about his rage at having been ’stop lossed’, forced again and again to re-enlist into dangerous war zones even though his contracted time in service had expired. In the song, he describes revenge and vengeful acts on his Commanding Officers for betraying him and forcing him back into combat.
It turns out that writing about your rage, or your sorrow, or fear, or brokenness actually helps you PROCESS the unthinkable things you might have seen or done in wartime. Author Maxine Hong Kingston has a writers group for US soldiers that has been helpful in their re-entry into their home environments. An anthology, Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace was published with these writings.
Drugs and addiction account for a significant percentage of veterans’ crimes: nearly half of vets in federal prison, for example, are locked up on drug charges. Fully 61% of veteran prisoners are dependent on or abuse alcohol or drugs. Meanwhile, cases of post-traumatic stress disorder — many left untreated — only compound the problem.
The Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America organization’s tagline is ‘For America’s Newest Generation of Veterans and the People Who Support Them’. They offer a hand to help veterans re-acclimate to their families and their jobs and their lives.
We need to UN-BOOT CAMP our brave men and women in the Military, especially if the Military will not do so.
Students, professors, teachers and unions around the country will organize today to protest America’s imperiled system of education with more than 100 events in 32 states.
The movement started in California, where the public college system has been seized by tension and dissatisfaction over proposed tuition hikes, budget cuts and a series of racist events on University of California and California State campuses.
At the same time that we’re upping their educational costs, think about this:
The founding fathers said that our national debt should be paid off every generation. They said it is immoral to saddle the next generation with debt. Today we are saddling not only the next generation but the next and the next. This is taxation without representation because we are putting our posterity in debt when they are not old enough to vote on it.
Its not exactly fair to make students pay more for the ability to discover the ways in which we’ve betrayed them.
So kids, we won’t educate you, but we’ll sure house you for life!
On this day of protest, let’s give students our support. We’d rather have them smart so they can dig us out of the mess we’re in, so they can provide GOOD FOOD to us when we’re in nursing homes in just a few decades… We’ll be in trouble if they are all uneducated or incarcerated.
The first is that things are actually much worse than anyone ever talks about. The pivot points of our financial system — the infrastructure that lets free markets produce real wealth — have become profoundly corrupted. Balance sheets are “fictions,” as Professor Frank Partnoy put it. Trillions of dollars in liability hide behind these fictions. And as expert after expert demonstrated, practically every one of the design flaws that led to the collapse of the past few years remains essentially unchanged within our financial system still. That bubble burst, but we can already see the soaring profits of the same firms that sucked billions in taxpayer funds. The cycle has started again.
You know all about the billion dollar bonuses, but have you forgotten about the billion dollar bailout?
But the second point was even worse. Expert after expert spoke as if the problems we faced were simple math errors. As if regulators had just miscalculated, like a pilot who accidentally overshoots the run way, or an engineer who mis-estimates the weight of cargo on a plane. And so, because these were mere errors, people spoke as if these errors could be corrected by a bunch of good ideas….
But we aren’t in our current double dip recession because of math errors, that’s blind. We are here because our governmental system is beholden to political interests and guess who has the most money to throw at Congress? The same unregulated corporations who put a gun to the global economy’s head, took obscene profits, got bailed out (remember that you’re not getting bailed out via credit card reform or mortgage reform or healthcare reform) paid themselves bonuses and are now experiencing a bump in their business (WHY? because they’ve again BET AGAINST AMERICA).
Lessig has a solution:
We need to admit our (democracy’s) problem. We need to get beyond this stage of denial. We need to recognize that until we release our leaders from a system that forces them to ignore good sense when there is an opportunity for large campaign cash, we won’t have policy that makes sense. Wall Street continues unchanged because the Congress that would change it is already shuttling to Wall Street fundraisers. Both parties are already pandering to this power, so they can find the fix to fund the next cycle of campaigns.
…privately funded public elections tend inevitably towards this kind of corruption. And until we solve that (eminently solvable) problem, we won’t make any progress in making America’s finances safe again. FixCongressFirst. Only then will sensible policy be possible.
With Billionaires running for office and committing $100 million of their own money IN CASH to their campaigns, with Wall Street and lobbyists funneling billions to keep the current governmental/corporate back-scratching going on and to ensure that NO REFORM HAPPENS, American workers will be bankrupted again and again. This Congress is incapable of the change we need, because they are so happy to jump on planes and go to vacation spots, on corporate dimes, while you and I think they are working for us.
Just one question: didn’t the GOP just have 8 years?
Newsweek’s title is: IF THE REPUBLICANS WERE IN CHARGE… Well they got voted out of the majority, and the Presidency. So countering Obama’s agenda might seem like its their job as the opposition party, but its not. When GWB was President, Dems were told to be patriotic and follow their President, which many did. They followed him into a trillion dollar war, trillion dollar deficit and a housing implosion and lobbyist/insurer/banking explosion.
So why, one year in to a Democratic Presidency, are we wondering what the Republicans would do if they were in charge?
We see it every day, the detritus, the lost jobs, the massively increased credit card charges, the $500 million bonuses to bankers who destroyed the world (yes, Goldman Sachs, people still blame you).
Newsweek shows its death knell: NEWS and WEEK are supposed to be going together, not guesstimating what the 8 year veterans have up their sleeve. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the obstructionism, the lack of reform in the financial arena and the refusal to provide Americans with reasonable health care reform.
The New York Times shares an ABC interview with Speaker Nancy Pelosi about potential Congressional job loss due to voting for Healthcare Reform:
Ms. Pelosi was asked what she would say to House Democrats who were “in real fear of losing their seats in November if they support you now.”
“Our members, every one of them, wants health care,” Ms. Pelosi said. “They know that this will take courage. It took courage to pass Social Security. It took courage to pass Medicare. And many of the same forces that were at work decades ago are at work again against this bill.”
“But,” Ms. Pelosi continued, “the American people need it. Why are we here? We’re not here just to self-perpetuate our service in Congress. We’re here to do the job for the American people, to get them results that give them not only health security, but economic security.”
Once you are in Congress, odds are you will stay for a few terms. Except when actual WORK is being done and lines are drawn and talk show hosts are frothing at the mouth. Then you risk losing your job if you vote your conscience and vote how the American people want you to vote.
Good news is, we might actually get real healthcare reform. Bad news is, any members of Congress that don’t survive November elections will not be using the Republican ‘revolving door’ to lobbying firms on K Street. This vote will actually pit members of Congress AGAINST their usual Sugar Daddies: obscenely profitable corporations who want the status quo with most Americans in their sticky web of inadequate health care coverage.
The commercialization of our healthcare means that the companies profiting off the physical and mental health of Americans (by avoiding those of marginal and ill health) have the governmental power… Its the insurance companies that mount repeal campaigns, not individual voters. Understandably, the insurance companies (and banks, and lobbyists) don’t want to be in the same boat as the American people, jobless without benefits.
So, Members of Congress: PLEASE VOTE YOUR CONSCIENCE, not your job security. Hate to remind you, but that’s why we sent you there in the first place.
Your vacations and perks might come from insurance companies who flood you with re-election donations, and your future job might be as a million dollar lobbyist, but today, in Congress, you represent US.
I tweeted all day yesterday (www.twitter.com/marywallace) during the Healthcare Summit at the White House. A great website, www.sunlightfoundation.com live streamed all day, updating charts next to each speaker with a list of their top career donors! Not surprisingly, many of the Republicans who oppose healthcare reform are fully funded by insurers, banks and lobbyists.
It was shocking to hear man after man after man say, let’s get out a clean piece of paper and start over again. REALLY? After they had done so much work on their own bills? DID THEY BRING CLEAN PIECES OF PAPER TO START WORKING ON THE SPOT? No.
I noticed that the overwhelming majority of Republicans were old white men (I’m talking to you Boehner, even though you’ve got that fake tan going on). In the pockets of the insurance industry and their lobbyists.
But I woke up today to this guy’s face, it looks so shocking in its aged meanness.
Its Jim Bunning, from Kentucky, who single-handedly blocked the Senate from extending unemployment benefits for 1.2 million Americans, while complaining
‘I have missed the Kentucky-South Carolina game that started at 9:00,” he said,
“and it’s the only redeeming chance we had to beat South Carolina since they’re the only team that has beat Kentucky this year.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate in Kentucky is 10.7 percent. With a population of 4,200,000, that’s over 420,000 unemployed. NOT GOOD.
As I said yesterday on twitter, Americans forced their government to pull out of the Vietnam war when TV images and newspaper images of dying and dead American soldiers inundated American households. We had believed the rhetoric from Washington, but when our own young men and women came home in wheelchairs and body bags, it was the power of the images that turned the tide in the US government’s ability to continue the war.
We are inundated these days with image after image of Congressmen who deny health insurance reform to working Americans (while covered under government plans themselves), who deny childcare to the working poor (while having it available themselves), who send other people’s kids to war while their own drink excessively underage in bars (I’m talking to you, George W. Bush). The images from the bargaining table yesterday were predominantly old, white men. Sure, old white men run the insurance companies and the banks and the lobbying firms. But if you walk around any city in America, you’ll see all different ages and colors and sexes. How did we whittle down our vision of who should represent us in Congress to one color, one age AND one sex? How did that one type of person end up in charge of everything?
Its time for new employment rules: in order to serve in Congress, you have to agree to take 1/2 the $170,000 salary until your state’s poor and homeless and lower class and middle class are stable. The other half? It goes into a fund to counter the lobbying of your beloved insurers and banks. You get no health insurance until all your state’s citizens are covered. Can’t make that work? Then you don’t deserve cadillac coverage yourself. And if you have a daughter or son of military recruitment age? They go to war until no citizen from your state is overseas. That would stop the illegal multiple re-ups that the military is getting away with.
Is it just me, or does ANYone else notice that the bosses of our Representative Leadership are all old white guys, and that they look just like the guys who got us into this recession, the old white guy bankers?
And are they hard at work, both sides of the aisle working together to pull American taxpayers out of this recession? Are they spanking the bankers? Are they creating jobs?
No, they’re involved in a political death match. WITH EACH OTHER.
First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.
And now, Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
What are they doing? Holding up the smooth working of the Government of the United States of America? For their own political good? We have 3 branches of Government and all three are being held up by partisan politics in Congress.
They have NO IDEA what regular Americans are going thru right now. Because they can head off to Hawaii to caucus, or dine with lobbyists at expensive restaurants. They don’t have to listen to regular Americans.
They get to play their little power trips, while utterly ignoring the people who elected them.
The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics tallied lobbying income data from tens of thousands of disclosure filings, and the data show that special interests of all stripes spent $3.47 billion lobbying the federal government in 2009, up from $3.3 billion the previous year.
How did the influence industry manage such a banner year despite a battered economy? The simple answer is that the Obama administration’s aggressive change agenda has prompted businesses to open their wallets to an unprecedented degree in the hope of preventing reform.
Washington is paralyzed by snow and partisanship. Nothing is getting done — even as the Great Recession pulls more Americans into its maw.
In the midst of this paralysis, the President was asked about the giant pay packages of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase & Co. ($17 mullion for 2009) and Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman Sachs ($9 million). “First of all, I know both those guys,” Obama said. “They’re very savvy businessmen. And I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That’s part of the free market system.”
Free market system? As I remember it, American taxpayers forked out hundreds of billions to keep JPMorgan, Goldman, and other big Wall Street banks afloat through most of 2009. Had we not done so, Dimon, Blankfein, and most other top executives on Wall Street would not have earned a dime last year. In fact, some would be out on the street, reather than sitting pretty on the Street. The free market system has been unleashed instead on average Americans.
Why do 92% of Americans want to kick their Members of Congress to the curb?
Seriously, he entered a Senator’s office to ‘alter’ her phones to prove that she was refusing to take calls contrary to her opinion on health care reform… He got caught dressed like a telephone repairman. One of his accomplices had a listening device. He tweeted about his case, and there’s a possible gag order. He’s up against SERIOUS Criminal Charges. At 25, he was released to LIVE WITH HIS PARENTS, which many feel is laughable, as in ‘hahaha the 25 year old boy has to live with his parents’. Then he was interviewed as an activist on FOX News. That’s ‘white’ justice. Not true justice. Did FOX interview beaten-on WTO protestors, or people stealing food in New Orleans after the levees broke and the US Government didn’t respond with food?
Now he’s on FOX News saying ‘This was all a HUGE misunderstanding’. He says its investigative journalism. Yeah right, just like David Letterman’s extortionist is saying he was simply asking for a ’silence payment’ similar to that paid to Tiger Wood’s ho’s… We live in a world of murky interpretation of ethics and these ‘Jedi mind wipes’ provided by FOX News, ‘this wasn’t a felony trespassing, this was conservative activism’ are now considered a legal defense.
Do the crime?
Do the time, buddy.
But let’s watch what justice prevails for him, the white boy ‘conservative filmmaker’ who dressed like THIS
thinking he was a Pimp. Pimp? He looks like a drunken FRAT BOY thinking he’s all that. He’s so lucky he found ‘easy to dupe’ employees at ACORN, where he said he was bringing in underage prostitutes and wanted business advice.
He’s arrogant, has an unhealthy sense of entitlement and his own righteousness. That’s not criminal, but it is annoying. It is, however, criminal to trespass onto a Federal Building, a Senator’s office space, have listening devices and tamper with phones.
Let’s see if he does any hard time. Then let’s compare that to non-white, lesser known, low-income sentencing for similar crimes committed by less media-savvy perps, minus the felony wiretapping charges that he thinks he’ll squiggle out of. He’s the poster boy of ‘anti-corruption’ for the right wing pundits now. I bet this boy gets off, and his real brethren, other criminals, do hard time.
Looking at the cover of today’s online Huffington Post, one could wonder just how ‘asleep’ Americans really are. Is there no one in charge who can connect the dots and shout from the rooftops how unfair our systems are towards working American Taxpayers? The oligarchy continues to siphon off huge profits from the top, walk away from debts they don’t wish to pay and pay themselves billions in bonuses for their hubris.
Meanwhile, you live within your means, juggle your credit debt, try to keep your home and go to work today so these a**holes can languish in the sun somewhere.
and finally, the piece de resistance,
and this is NOT dated December 2009 or January 2010 but February 1st, 2010…
Yep, they’re gonna pay out $100 Million to the guy who bet AGAINST YOUR FINANCIAL SAFETY.
