Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Showing posts with label House. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
House Republicans Reward The Super Rich At The Expense Of The Poor
Recently, House Republicans passed a budget for 2012 that offers even more tax cuts for America's super rich and new kickbacks for some of the most profitable corporations in the world. To pay for the tremendous cost of this legislation, the Republican budget cuts funding for basic services like education, police and firefighters, and health care, actually raising taxes on middle class and low-income families.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Don't Be Fooled by Bush
The chairmen of the U.S. House and Senate Judiciary Committees were given the assignment of modernizing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). The House is working hard to pass another FISA bill since Bush vetoed the last one because it did not grant immunity to the phone companies. Their new version still protects our national security, preserves civil liberties, and denies retroactive immunity to phone companies that participated in the Bush-Cheney Administration warrantless surveillance program and I hope they don't back down. Have all of you sent a message to your carrier by changing companies since you learned your own phone company, to whom you pay money every month, was spying on you? Don't reward them for that. Reward the House members who stood up to Bush and protected your rights.
The Senate also passed a bill, but theirs does not protect our civil liberties. What it does protect are the phone companies from being sued by the American people who had their privacy invaded. It more importantly protects the Bush Administration who ordered that invasion. If either party did nothing wrong, they wouldn't need so much protecting. Further, the bill the White House so fervently supports in the interest of national security, accusing Congress of putting the American people in danger, really does nothing to endanger or protect our country from terrorism despite what Bush claims. It protects him by staving off the investigations and wouldn't you try to keep people from learning what you have been up to if you were Bush? To do this, he has been irresponsibly making false claims that we are more vulnerable to terrorism until a new bill is passed.
By pushing back against right-wing pressure, Congress has the Bush-Cheney Administration bolstering their scare tactics and suggesting that congressional Democrats' efforts to get the FISA bill right this time will invite another terrorist attack. I am somehow doubtful that FISA occurs to suicide bombers before they go boom, but I could be wrong. Bush is trying to scare Congress and the American people into accepting a FISA bill that includes retroactive telecom immunity, further eroding our Constitutional privacy rights. People, please be smarter than that. Support those who are protecting your rights. Pay attention to the issues and think about your vote before it is cast and for whom.
The people who do not care about protecting our rights had no problem investing in a controversial television commercial evoking ticking time-bomb imagery straight out of TV's 24 to shock the American people into supporting another flawed FISA law. They have a very low opinion of the American people if they think we can't see through the fear mongering. Congress is pushing for a better FISA bill, but a few loud voices in Washington are more determined than ever to ram through another flawed piece of legislation. The smarter we get, the more nervous they get and the harder they try. Too bad they don't work as hard at running our government as they do at fooling the public.
The Senate also passed a bill, but theirs does not protect our civil liberties. What it does protect are the phone companies from being sued by the American people who had their privacy invaded. It more importantly protects the Bush Administration who ordered that invasion. If either party did nothing wrong, they wouldn't need so much protecting. Further, the bill the White House so fervently supports in the interest of national security, accusing Congress of putting the American people in danger, really does nothing to endanger or protect our country from terrorism despite what Bush claims. It protects him by staving off the investigations and wouldn't you try to keep people from learning what you have been up to if you were Bush? To do this, he has been irresponsibly making false claims that we are more vulnerable to terrorism until a new bill is passed.
By pushing back against right-wing pressure, Congress has the Bush-Cheney Administration bolstering their scare tactics and suggesting that congressional Democrats' efforts to get the FISA bill right this time will invite another terrorist attack. I am somehow doubtful that FISA occurs to suicide bombers before they go boom, but I could be wrong. Bush is trying to scare Congress and the American people into accepting a FISA bill that includes retroactive telecom immunity, further eroding our Constitutional privacy rights. People, please be smarter than that. Support those who are protecting your rights. Pay attention to the issues and think about your vote before it is cast and for whom.
The people who do not care about protecting our rights had no problem investing in a controversial television commercial evoking ticking time-bomb imagery straight out of TV's 24 to shock the American people into supporting another flawed FISA law. They have a very low opinion of the American people if they think we can't see through the fear mongering. Congress is pushing for a better FISA bill, but a few loud voices in Washington are more determined than ever to ram through another flawed piece of legislation. The smarter we get, the more nervous they get and the harder they try. Too bad they don't work as hard at running our government as they do at fooling the public.
Saturday, September 1, 2007
They Had The Tea Party - We Have The Internet
Growing tired of the abuses of tyranny, culminating in smothering taxes, a group of colonists broke bricks of tea against ships docked in Boston Harbor, thus sparking the necessary revolution that resulted in our democracy. America was coming along quite well with its ever expanding Constitution, focused always on the improvement of the rights of the American people until one day, it suddenly stopped. This greatest of all nations once rife with worldwide reverence for democracy and all the perks that came with it had come to a screeching halt. America had grown away from the original encroachments that suppressed it under the moralist mindset of the 1700's, tweaking the Constitution whenever it was necessary to bring the country up to date; away from the savagery of arrogant ignorance perpetrated by past oppressive generations, moving always forward, never backward. It was a beauty to behold and Americans held their heads a little higher than everyone else by birthright as they traveled the world proudly and freely.
Americans are no longer as enthusiastic about holding their heads quite as high as they once did, fearful of getting it chopped off as our country is not as revered as it once was when it was moving forward. It is now moving backward, flirting dangerously with the descendants of racial segregation and McCarthyism.
When the present administration came to power, America's credibility began deteriorating. The U.S. is no longer revered by citizens of other nations as we are judged by our policies and our willingness to attack countries for no cause. Bush is ridiculed on late-night television talk shows, but what he's cost the United States is no reason to laugh. Aside from the war, back at home, we have crises after crisis and our government does nothing to protect its own people, so our government worrying about Iraq after we leave somehow lacks sincerity. We should not have invaded that country and Bush knew it. When the American people discovered the false pretense that brought us to invade a country with which we took no issue, we should have left immediately, but that would have lost the president his 9/11 scapegoat, and the money being made by this war for the people who have invested in it, makes it worthwhile to stay as long as we can. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces, says the United States will be in Iraq for another nine to ten years. We can not allow that. If Congress will not take the necessary steps to bring our troops home now, it is once again up to the people. Those of us with young children who will be eighteen in the next nine or ten years already have incentive; all we need is a non-violent means to get our message to the government. We just need a modern day version of a tea party or at least an updated issue of the Pentagon Papers. The blogs are not enough if we just write them and read them. There is so much more to be done.
Americans are no longer as enthusiastic about holding their heads quite as high as they once did, fearful of getting it chopped off as our country is not as revered as it once was when it was moving forward. It is now moving backward, flirting dangerously with the descendants of racial segregation and McCarthyism.
When the present administration came to power, America's credibility began deteriorating. The U.S. is no longer revered by citizens of other nations as we are judged by our policies and our willingness to attack countries for no cause. Bush is ridiculed on late-night television talk shows, but what he's cost the United States is no reason to laugh. Aside from the war, back at home, we have crises after crisis and our government does nothing to protect its own people, so our government worrying about Iraq after we leave somehow lacks sincerity. We should not have invaded that country and Bush knew it. When the American people discovered the false pretense that brought us to invade a country with which we took no issue, we should have left immediately, but that would have lost the president his 9/11 scapegoat, and the money being made by this war for the people who have invested in it, makes it worthwhile to stay as long as we can. Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces, says the United States will be in Iraq for another nine to ten years. We can not allow that. If Congress will not take the necessary steps to bring our troops home now, it is once again up to the people. Those of us with young children who will be eighteen in the next nine or ten years already have incentive; all we need is a non-violent means to get our message to the government. We just need a modern day version of a tea party or at least an updated issue of the Pentagon Papers. The blogs are not enough if we just write them and read them. There is so much more to be done.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
