The day after the election House Speaker John Boehner said he and the other Republicans would work with the President as long as he gave the GOP everything it wanted rather than the GOP compromising with the President. The general conversation in the belt-way media was about the ‘fiscal cliff’. The so-called cliff was created when the Republicans refused to co-operate with the Democrats and basically kicked the can down the road until after the election. The results of the election was clear. Any resolution to the ‘cliff’ will have to be based on the President’s plan, NOT the GOP’s plan.
No $4,000 Tax Increase From Obama – Romney Lies In His Ads Too
It’s common knowledge that Mitt Romney massively lied during the first Presidential debate on October 3rd. Now it seems he’s blatantly lying in his campaign advertisements. One in particular, running in my neck of the woods, claims a source for some tax data is non-partisan when in reality the American Enterprise Institute is far from non-partisan.
Here is the ad:
Unemployed Republican Voter Parrots Ron Paul On Social Safety Net
Vanguard, on Current TV, is like 60 Minutes on steroids by focusing on one issue for the whole hour. After the Current TV special on the GOP Iowa debate held Saturday night, Vanguard showed a program titled “Two Americas” that compared and contrasted two families on either end of the income scale. One brief statement from the unemployed Dad parroted the views expressed by Ron Paul – that the social safety net should taken down and poor people supported by charity. His comments showed the disconnect I’ve seen before by poor Republicans who keep voting for cheap labor conservatives who steal from the 99% and give to the 1%.
The unemployed family of four moved to Houston, TX to get work after the Dad lost his $55,000 construction superintendent job. The Mom had just lost her $12 an hour job the previous month and the family was living on approximately $19,000 a year in unemployment – of course until it runs out. The other family of four had a Dad who is president and CEO of an energy trading company.
At the expense of the middle class, unions, and elderly, “business friendly” means handouts and special exemptions for businesses
Governor John Kasich and the other cheap labor conservative members of the GOP talk about how the state isn’t business friendly. To them that means attacking the unions, middle class, and elderly while out of the other side of their mouths, the Governor and his buddies have given big businesses tax credits and other hand outs. Most don’t really need them. That is exactly what happened in the case of Findlay’s Marathon Petroleum.
Marathon, founded in Findlay, and still having 1,600 employees in the city along with a large office complex downtown, seemed to be in “urgent need” of help from the state government in the form of tax credits. This is the same oil company that made net profits of $2.6 billion in 2010 and nearly $1 billion more in the first quarter of 2011.
HR 3 passes – raises taxes, still no jobs, thanks GOP
When the Republicans won back the House of Representatives, they did it by campaigning about JOBS JOBS JOBS, yet just as I knew they would they instead decided to start by attacking women. One way was by passing HR 3 (aka No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act) on Tuesday. This bill not only prevents federal money being spent on abortions it also goes much further and redefines what is your money and what is the government’s money.
The House of Representatives just passed H.R. 3, the controversial abortion-funding law that pro-choice critics and the White House has said will make it harder for woman to pay for abortion coverage with their own money.
The passage was expected, considering 227 members signed on as co-sponsors of the legislation. The final vote was 251-175. Sixteen Democrats and 235 Republicans voted aye. The full rollcall vote is here.
Not only does the bill ban federal funds to pay for abortions, and redefines rape to remove that from reasons to use federal funds for an abortion, it also changes what is meant by “Your money”:
In order to make their “no taxpayer funding for abortion” scheme work, Republicans use H.R. 3 to disallow tax deductions for your health care expenses if your private insurance plan covers abortion. Not if you actually get an abortion. And not if a member of your family does. All it takes for you to see your taxes hiked is if the private insurance plan you selected and paid for with your own money permits coverage of abortion at all. For anyone. Even if you never get one and never plan to. If you bought a plan that agrees to cover abortion if someone else totally unrelated to you needs one, then you lose eligibility for any tax deductions for the cost of your insurance, and your tax bill shoots up. Republicans take your cash, because you agreed to buy a plan that might someday pay for someone else’s abortion.
That’s right. The cheap labor conservatives will raise your taxes to make sure no one gets an abortion – even if you pay for it yourself.
As David Waldman continues:
Yes, it’s the government’s prerogative to favor or disfavor certain activities using the tax code. But of course, just last month, the Supreme Court’s conservative wing went out of its way to preserve state tax breaks for donations made to funds that underwrite religious school tuition in Arizona by holding that tax credits aren’t “government spending.” And yet now, here are Congressional “conservatives” insisting that they are. And that since money is fungible, that means every dollar you have might be in your wallet only by virtue of a tax credit. Which means the government can keep every dollar you have on a string, telling you you can’t spend it on things they don’t like, or else they’ll raise your taxes for making them mad.
AND the GOP went ape shit over something called a “Medicine cabinet tax” after the Affordable Health Care for America Act passed.
As my friends and I say IOKIYAR!
It’s OK If You’re a Republican.