They are NOT all the same!

Don’t!

Don’t you dare even try to tell me this election year that “all politicians are the same.”

Just don’t.  I’m liable to go postal on you.

That’s the laziest and most dishonest cop-out a citizen of a democracy can take and that attitude already brought us to the brink of disaster in the eight years that George W. Bush was president.

If you cannot be bothered to get on the Internet or read about the candidates, if you cannot be bothered to find out where the candidates really stand on the issues, then please, don’t tell me, or each other, that they are “all the same.”

Voting for someone because he has a (D) or an (R) after his or her name when you don’t know another blessed thing about them is not only stupid; it’s destructive to the electoral process and to the country.

Think about it, if we had elected Al Gore, or rather if the U.S. Supreme Court had chosen Al Gore, over George Bush in 2000, Gore never would have gulled us into going to war in Iraq, killing 4,000 of our own children and tens of thousands of Iraqis, over a barefaced lie. 

We probably still would have gone into Afghanistan after 9/11, but I think we would have conducted that war better and maybe gotten it over with a lot faster and with a better outcome than we are.

Gore would not have destroyed the budget surplus his predecessor handed him and given a fat tax break to billionaires and millionaires to “not create” jobs.

Gore would not have let thousands of enforcement jobs stand vacant throughout the 2000s in the SEC, the FDA, the USDA, the EPA and other agencies.  He would not have appointed anti-regulation zealots to thousands of other enforcement jobs, thus making the government regulation of securities, food safety, the environment, health care fraud, and drugs and medical devices a sick joke, until President Obama was able to begin reversing some of that “we’re open for business and to hell with people”  philosophy.

Gore would not have disparaged the solid science behind global climate change at the behest of Big Oil and he would have done everything he could to lead us into the clean energy future rather than the really, really filthy tar sands/Keystone XL Pipeline past.

And, I firmly believe, Gore would not have allowed rightwing politicians to so successfully wage the vicious war on women and reproductive health care that they are waging so well right now. 

We might have still had the financial meltdown, since Glass-Steagall was repealed in the waning days of the Clinton Administration and Clinton signed it into law, but I like to think there would have been more oversight of mortgage lending and derivatives trading rather than the utter lawlessness and maybe not the ridiculous bank bailout Bush left us with as a farewell present.

So now we have this bunch of liars, hypocrites and clowns running for the Republican nomination to challenge President Obama, but even they are not “all the same.”   One is worse than the other, each in his own unique and horrifying way.  Even in the Republican clown car, they are not all wearing the same makeup and clown noses. 

Mitt Romney is a plutocrat the Robber Barons would have embraced and the common people would have tried to blow up a hundred years ago, Ron Paul lives in a Utopia of small government that can never be allowed to happen, lest we all return to cave dwelling and hunting and gathering, and Gingrich is just as dishonest, mendacious, smug and arrogant as he ever was.

Gingrich is kind of a special case though, because he has been able to reinvent himself, just as if the Republican House had not sanctioned him for myriad ethics violations, fined him $300,000 and encouraged him to resign from Congress when he was Speaker of the House, Speaker of the House, for Pete’s sake! 

If you are too young to remember that, here are the reports of the House Ethics Committee that came out of his House ethics probe.  I warn you, it is about 1,200 pages long and it is chilling reading.  Gingrich unethically used tax-exempt organizations and the GOPAC to develop supposedly neutral but actually pro-Republican TV programs and “history” courses and books to recruit voters and non-voters to what he hoped would be a permanent Republican majority. 

He may have failed personally, but the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove and other party high rollers and propagandists soon picked up on his scheme, and founded a score of “think tanks” and grassroots (astroturf) organizations to do the same thing, the most successful of which is now the Tea Party.  Thoughtful, sane Republicans must be in deep mourning or rigid with embarrassment.

The Gingrich revolution includes Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that allowed the entry of unlimited amounts of corporate money into our political discourse.  Gingrich has been a major beneficiary of Citizens United.  He doesn’t have to raise money from supporters or even care what voters may think of him; he needs only to hold his hand out to his good buddy, Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire Las Vegas casino operator, for $5 million here, $5 million there for more lying campaign ads of the kind he bemoans when they're aimed at him.
Gingrich has this anti-Romney commercial out in Florida that says:  What kind of man would mislead, distort, and deceive just to win an election?
He means you to think "Mitt Romney" but really, who leaps to mind?  You, Newt!

This election year is going to be the ugliest any of us alive have ever seen, maybe the ugliest of all time.  Some say the Jefferson era was worse, but in this day and age of modern communication, that’s hard to believe. Campaign commercials are going to engulf us.  They will be a months-long onslaught of one 30-second lie after another, sandwiched between all our favorite programs. 

Use your mute button, cast down your eyes, and take some time to find out what the candidates at all levels really represent. 
 Or please, just don’t vote at all.  Voting for a candidate you’ve been brain-washed into supporting is worse. 

Cui bono? The campaign contributors, of course

Boy oh boy, what a reality show this Chester School District bankruptcy thing is!

So here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know:  Vahan H. Gureghian, the owner of the Chester Community Charter School gave Tom Cortbett $325,714 in 2009 and 2010 in his run-up to the governor’s mansion, according to the National Institute on Money in State Politics, www.followthemoney.org.

And here’s something else I’ll bet you didn’t know:  The state requires that the Chester Upland School District pay each of the charter schools within the district $9,858 per pupil and an additional $14,670 over and above that, a total of $24,528, for each special education student each year, according to CU’s complaint filed in federal court.  The charter schools claim to have 670 special education students out of their total population of 3,000. 

This is a bit of a long explanation, so stay with me here.  So that’s 670 students times $24,528 equals $16.4 million, just for the 20 percent of the charter school population that is designated special education.  

CU has almost exactly the same percentage of special-ed students, 740 out of a school population of 3,700, also about 20 percent  of the overall population.  The state only gives CU a total of about $14,000 for each of its special-ed kids, $10,000 less than it requires CU to give to the charter schools. 

Chester Upland has such a miniscule tax base that it depends on the state for 79 percent of its funding.  The state cut $23 million out of CU’s total allotment for this school year, yet did not, and maybe it cannot, reduce the amount that CU must pay the charter schools.

Moreover, the state has been paying the charter school directly for more than a year and then deducting that amount from CU’s funding, just in case CU wanted to spend some of that money on its own students.

Connecting any dots yet?  I’ll do it for you:  the guy who gave Tom Corbett $325,714 in campaign contributions isn’t hurting a bit and, in fact, the state is going out of its way to protect his taxpayer-funded income, whatever it may be as, indeed, it must do under the Charter School Law of 1997.  That law is sacred. 

But to do so, the state is violating just about every other state and federal education law and several parts of the U.S. Constitution by letting the Chester Upland School District go down the tubes. 

If it weren’t for the fact that it is profoundly hurting 3,700 Chester students and is damaging the lives and livelihoods of thousands of parents, taxpayers and employees – if it weren’t for that, I’d say grab your popcorn and pull up a chair to watch this sideshow play out.

What will happen in the next episode?  Does the state really mean to force the most impoverished city in the state, and one of the most impoverished in the country, to shut down its schools?  Or does it just intend to keep starving it until it can be drowned in a bathtub?

Are the surrounding districts supposed to take Chester’s 3,700 students?  I can’t wait to see that happen.

What about Chester Upland taxpayers?  Are they expected to continue to pay the highest tax rate in the county, if not the state, for no public education at all?

I’ve been reading the court documents.  Chester Community Charter School has joined the suit, suing both the state and CU, and the Pennsylvania Education Association – the teachers union – has filed a brief seeking to intervene.  No answer from the state yet, but the complaint is fascinating.  Here are a few more highlights:

·         82 percent of the school district’s students are entitled to free and reduced lunches based on their economic status.

·         More than 50 percent of the assessed property in Chester is tax exempt.  That includes hospitals, Widener University, Harrah’s Casino, the soccer stadium, the state prison and the Riverwalk office building, basically all of the economic development in Chester for the past 30 years. 

·         29 percent of the taxes assessed homeowners and small business owners eventually become delinquent and when the school district gives up hope of ever collecting the taxes and  seizes those properties, they do not sell at tax sales.

·         The school district has been a distressed district for 17 years and under various forms of state control for 16 of those years.

·         The last version of that control – the Education Empowerment Board, which operated from 2006 to 2010 – increased the school district’s budget from $85 million to $113 million and the number of its employees from 590 to 735, even in the face of declining enrollment from 4,600 students to today’s 3,700.

·         Then in June 2010, the state handed this whole steaming pile to the school board elected by the people of Chester and said, “Here, do something with this offal.”

·         The school district did, cutting 115 teachers and 84 support staff – 28 percent of its total personnel – this school year and consolidating schools.  It even cut out its entire reading program. 

Pennsylvania is obligated to provide a thorough and efficient public education to all of its children.  The state is not doing that here and by not doing it, it is violating the Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. 

No child left behind, indeed!

I’m pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t do this

When Jesus took the seven loaves of bread and a handful of fishes and fed the multitudes during the Sermon on the Mount, I doubt he applied a means test to determine who could afford to buy food themselves and who were absolutely destitute.

“You there!  I see you have a heel of bread in your pocket.  No loaves and fishes for you.” 

“And you, little girl, you have a handful of olives.  Sorry, I have to cut off your eligibility.”

“And you, pretending to have leprosy, do you expect me to lay on hands without making sure you are not ripping off the health care system with all your crumbling bits and pieces?”

Gov. Tom Corbett is definitely not a “what would Jesus do” kind of caretaker of our state’s poor and unemployed.

Last month, his administration announced that it has cut 150,000 people off Medicaid, 43,000 of them children, and today he has announced that after May 1, people will have to pass an “assets” test to determine if they are eligible for food stamps — that is they have to prove they don’t have any assets beyond a couple of thousand dollars in the bank in case they have to go to the hospital and/or die.

In addition, Corbett is completely ignoring the situation in Chester where public school teachers receive their last paychecks tomorrow, Jan. 11, and will try to keep going day to day after that. 

All of this leaves me speechless, not least of all because nobody seems to care about any of these things other than the poor themselves and a handful of workers and teachers who are struggling, or will be struggling to deal with these cruelties and job cuts.

It reminds me of Pastor Martin Niemöller in pre-World War II Germany who famously said:

First they came for the communists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a communist.  Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a trade unionist.  Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak out because I wasn't a Jew.  Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.

To paraphrase:  First they came for the blacks and Democrats and public employee unions …

Of course, no one mentions race or voter registration or union membership in all the Corbett Administration’s machinations. Corbett has been lying very low when it comes to arousing the masses re unions, unlike Ohio and Wisconsin and Indiana, but he's quietly been going after the poor and  after the state's black citizens.

Inadvertently, former Pennsylvania Senator and holier than thou Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum let the cat out of the bag last week when he said, “I do not want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”

Later he tried to backpedal on  this statement saying first that he had really said “blah” people or ran two words together and said “plives” (no he didn’t), or that he was merely “tongue-tied” and didn’t mean to inject race into the comment at all.

That’s probably true.  He never meant to SAY it, but his tongue betrayed his brain because obviously that’s how he thinks about poverty, that it’s almost exclusively a black thing.

Then there’s Newt Gingrich who told supporters he’d gladly go before the NAACP and tell its members, “I do not want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.”   

This is the same man who wants to fire union school janitors, repeal child labor laws and put poor (dare we say, black?) children to work scrubbing school toilets, so they can, you know, learn about the dignity of work. 

How sanctimonious and supercilious and, I don’t know, just plain arrogant can you get?  

Neither one of these jerks explains in any detail just how he would go about “giving” anybody anything, let alone “opportunity.”  Mostly they’re about taking away what little is left of the social safety net, thus giving people the opportunity to freeze or starve.

Corbett is of the same ilk as these uncompassionate conservative Republicans who play masterfully on our fears.  They make us so afraid that somehow, somewhere, someone is going to cheat us taxpayers out of something, that we helpfully get in line to deprive ourselves of it.  That’s what happened with health care reform.  Oh my God, an undocumented Mexican might use an American hospital to have a baby, so no health care coverage for anybody, anywhere, ever.  

In the case of food stamps, this whole rigamarole may be because a man in Michigan won $2 million in the lottery last year and continued to qualify for food stamps.  I hope this is not the case, because that would be stupid.  Instead of disqualifying lottery winners, or even people with $2 million, you'd go after everybody with a couple of thousand dollars in savings.   Hammer and gnat, just saying. 

Republicans have long had a history of raising negative stereotypes about black people, portraying them as lazy children holding their hands out for government benefits, and they raise the same kinds of stereotypes about other minorities, especially Hispanics.

This is meant to get us white folks to hate these programs so we won’t holler when the Repugs cut them.  Then when they grab enough power to cut Medicare and Social Security, which they loudly proclaim they plan to do, there will be no one to speak for any of us.

We are all just supposed to be like Santorum’s grandfather, who, he proudly says, was working in a coal mine with Black Lung when he was 72 years old.  Yeah, that’s the future I what I want for everybody.

According to the Inquirer, the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare claims only about 2 percent of the 1.8 million Pennsylvanians currently on food stamps would be affected by the assets test.  If that’s the case, why do it?  Why create all that paperwork for overworked, under-staffed caseworkers? 

Pennsylvania has one of the lowest rates of food stamp fraud in the nation, one-tenth of 1 percent.  So why mess with it?  The state welfare secretary says he gets complaints about people abusing food stamps. 

Yes, a lot of people seem to think that anyone actually USING food stamps is abusing them.  Oh look, that woman’s trying to buy diapers with food stamps.  How dare she!  After all, you can’t eat diapers.

36 percent of all food stamp recipients nationwide are white while 22 percent are black (which is pretty close to black representation in the population).  And here in this state, advocates for the poor estimated that 30 percent of the people who would qualify for food stamps never apply.

Medicaid is more problematic.  We’re supposed to believe that 150,000 people, 43,000 of them children, can be dropped from the Medicaid rolls because they have died, left the state or moved on up into the Middle Class.  In this economy, really?  Since Medicaid pays for nursing home care for destitute seniors, maybe a lot of them did die.

It is virtually impossible to get on to Medicaid in Pennsylvania.  You have to be destitute AND have minor children in your care to get it.  Otherwise you’re on a waiting list several hundred thousand people long and your chances of getting struck by lightning are better than your chances of ever getting on Medicaid.

Getting on public welfare is equally as difficult.  Again, you must have children and then you only qualify for federally funded welfare for five years.  Remember when Bill Clinton did away with “welfare as we know it” back in the 1990s with the help of Newt and Rick?  That still stands.  

As for state welfare, if you are a single adult, you can only qualify for a few weeks of welfare each year, even if you are drug addicted, chronically ill or mentally ill, which is why you see so many people sleeping on steam vents.

Nevertheless, look for public assistance to be next on Gov. Corbett’s chopping block, I’d say in very short order, probably next month at the rate he’s going.  And of course Congress will take care of unemployment insurance.

And what about those 3,600 kids in Chester?  The state owes them a thorough and efficient education, right now!  Corbett blames the elected school board for the mess Chester is in, but the state itself ran that school district for 15 years until mid-2010.  Would we even be having this discussion if those kids were white and if their parents had not voted overwhelmingly Democratic last November? 

Cut military spending yourself for fun and profit

Here is the coolest site I have seen in a long time.  The New York Times has created an interactive tool where you—YOU -- get to cut the military budget.    Not really, but you can have a good time pretending to and you can put your own two cents in via the NYT when the real cutters get going, or don’t.

The Pentagon has committed to $450 billion in cuts over the next 10 years and Congress, because of the failure of the Super Committee, may have to cut $1 trillion from the military budget over the next 10 years, unless, of course, Congress finds some way to weasel out of its commitment to cut costs across the board.

When the New York Times and CBS polled Americans last summer during the height of the debt ceiling debacle, 55 percent wanted to cut military spending before anything else.  And of those, 55 percent wanted to reduce troops in Europe and Asia while 19 percent wanted to cut weapons programs.  (We have roughly 50,000 troops in Germany, 40,000 in Japan, 30,000 in South Korea and 10,000 in Italy, according to a recent survey.)

So on this site, you can set your own goal at $450 billion or $1 trillion or keep going until you are exhausted.  To get to the site, just click on the link (or hold down the control key and click on the link) above.  Once you have decided what you would cut – and yes, the Osprey program is an option – you “submit” your plan and the site will then show you what percentage of other Americans have chosen the same cuts you did. 

Before you head over to the site, a couple of things to keep in mind:

1.     The 2012 defense budget is $662 billion and eats up 60 percent of our annual federal spending.  The next largest item, health and human services – which is Medicare and Medicaid – takes up 7 percent.

2.     The United States spends six times more than the next biggest military spender, China.

3.      The U.S. spends more on its military than the next 17countries combined.

4.      There are 1,500 lobbyists for the military  industry in Washington, D.C., and the defense industry spent more than $140 million on lobbying between 1998 and 2010.  Boeing was the single largest campaign contributor among the top defense companies in 2008, handing candidates $2.6 million.

5.      We have 2,500 nuclear weapons and another 2,600 in backup.  Congressional Republicans are committed to modernizing g these weapons at a cost of as much as $600 billion over the next 10 years – weapons we will never use unless our leaders all go stark raving mad.  

6.      The military-industrial complex is a huge drag on the economy and a major contributor to the deficit, but, according to a study by the University of Massachusetts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, investing in military spending provides far fewer jobs than investment in clean energy, health care and education.