Tag Archives: George Bush

How will the Republican Party punish the federal workforce today?

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The GOP doesn’t see federal workers as people – they’re pawns in a political game that’s played with two sets of rules, depending on the president’s political party.

Since President Obama took office, what’s one of the GOP’s favorite fallbacks to obstruct economic recovery while sticking it to the group they hate the most? Target federal workers! This week they want to cut the federal workforce (again):

Republican lawmakers in both chambers on Wednesday proposed reducing the federal workforce through attrition to avoid sequestration this year. The 2013 Down Payment to Protect National Security Act would cut the entire government workforce by 10 percent through attrition at an estimated savings of $85 billion over the next decade. It would replace the sequester for one year: The government will need to trim $85 billion in Defense and non-defense spending in fiscal 2013 if sequestration takes effect on March 1. The bill would allow federal agencies to hire one person for every three employees who retire or leave their job.

As Greg Sargent said, “That would do wonders for the recovery.” If the Republican Party didn’t have federal employees to kick around, they’d have no “ideas” or new bills ever. As Rep. Jim Moran, D-Va says,

“…government employees should not be asked to sacrifice more in the name of deficit reduction. Since 2011, federal employees have sacrificed $103 billion in the name of deficit reduction, more than $50,000 per employee,” Moran said, referring to the extended federal pay freeze and other measures. “It is time for Congress to find a comprehensive deficit plan that asks others to pay their fair share.”

Essentially, the GOP wants to reduce the workforce so we can all spare the wealthy and corporations from losing their very profitable tax loopholes and deductions? They want to reduce the federal workforce so more of their buddies, the private contractors, can be hired to do the work at much higher prices to the taxpayer? Sounds like the same song and dance we’ve been getting from the Republican Party for decades: take from the working and middle class to further enrich their benefactors.

Of course, it’s a much different story when a Republican is in the White House.  In June of 2012, Think Progress reported: “Public sector employment is now down 608,000 workers since January 2009, a 2.7 percent decline. At the same point in President Bush’s term, public sector employment was up 3.7 percent. If, over the past 40 months, public sector employment had grown at the same pace as it did in President Bush’s first term, there would be 1.4 million additional people at work right now. That’d be enough to bring the unemployment rate down by nearly a full percentage point.” See graph below:

Ultimately, Republicans would like to see us all working 16-hour shifts in corporate-sponsored mancamps (CorpCamps), living in CorpDorms, getting paid with vouchers which would be good for things like CorpFood or CorpMed. But asking the CEOs of obscenely profitable corporations to pay a living wage to their workers, or wanting a tax system that doesn’t reward wealth and punish everyone else? That’s socialism.

The good news: each corporate mancamp will sponsor its own Thunderdome. 

image: disassociatedramblings

Related: 

Attention federal workers: the Republican Party STILL hates you

The U.S. will never become Greece IF we reject conservative principles and austerity cuts

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John Amato makes a good point about the constant threat from Republicans that America is moments away from becoming Greece because of the deficit:

“…after seeing the International Monetary Fund implore Great Britain to ease off its austerity program so their economy could heal, I had a little change of heart. See, one of the only reasons why many countries in Europe have suffered so much after the financial collapse has been because, instead of turning towards Keynesian policies that Paul Krugman has begged for, they’ve embraced the Conservative principles that the UK’s Cameron touted. And that decision ushered in very painful austerity measures upon the people of their nations. The effects of those decisions has been a non-existent financial recovery to their economy and an accompanying nightmare to their population.

[...] If we don’t want to become Greece (which can’t happen, anyway), we should never, ever consider austerity measures or conservative principles. How quickly the world forgets that it was under a conservative George Bush presidency that the global economy collapsed. Why should we ever turn to his acolytes’ beliefs to fix the problem now?”

A bad economy, another recession, high unemployment, suffering — or, in other words, the entire Republican strategy for the 2014 and 2016 elections.

Time to rebuild the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives

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…But should Obama gets what he wants, he’ll face another major challenge: his own Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Over the last three decades, gun activists and lawmakers have purposefully hindered the BATF and carefully molded the agency that enforces gun laws to serve their own interests, stunting the ATF’s budget, handicapping its regulatory authority, and keeping it effectively leaderless. The bureau Obama is counting on to lead his gun control push is a disaster…by Republican design.

The problems are obvious. The agency that Obama said “works most closely with state and local law enforcement to keep illegal guns out of the hands of criminals” has the same of number of agents as the Phoenix Police Department. Its budget has barely budged in decades (as the Department of Homeland Security has grown flush with post-9/11 funding). It has fewer investigators than it did in 1973. And its acting (and part-time) director, B. Todd Jones, commutes to work from Minneapolis, where he works fulltime as a US attorney. It hasn’t had a permanent director for six years. The NRA blocked Obama’s earlier appointee, Andrew Traver, in part because Traver had once attended a meeting of police chiefs that focused on gun control. At the unveiling of his gun violence prevention package, Obama announced he would seek to make Jones the permanent (and presumably fulltime) chief of the ATF.

To understand how the ATF became the weakest of law enforcement agencies, you have to go back to President Ronald Reagan’s first term.

Read more: Flashback: How Republicans and the NRA Kneecapped the ATF | Mother Jones


  
images drunkonstevphen

Jon Stewart explains how Republicans, the Patriot Act, and the NRA have made it impossible for the ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, & Firearms) to enforce sensible gun control.

Working for the ATF must be a slice of heaven. Read this:

Wyoming Ban On Federal Gun Bans Proposed By State Lawmaker – State Rep. Kendell Kroeker (R-Evansville) has put forward a bill making it a felony to enforce in Wyoming any federal ban on assault weapons or high-capacity gun magazines, two proposals that Biden’s gun control task force is likely to present to President Barack Obama on Tuesday. The task force’s recommendations, of course, would have to be passed by Congress and signed by Obama in order to become law. Kroeker said his bill, which would hit federal agents with up to five years in prison and a $50,000 fine for attempting to enforce such bans in Wyoming, is designed to be proactive in preserving gun rights.

New study that will make Teaparty members even angrier then they are now

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FIVE YEARS AGO, IN 2006, DAVID E. CAMPBELL AND ROBERT D. PUTNAM INTERVIEWED 3,000 AMERICANS and re-interviewed many of the same people again this summer. Their findings indicate what most of us already knew: that Teapartyers were far-right, social conservative Republicans (and still are). Or, as Jon Stewart said: “They’re just moral majorities in a tri-cornered hat.”

[W]e can look at what people told us, long before there was a Tea Party, to predict who would become a Tea Party supporter five years later…

Our analysis casts doubt on the Tea Party’s “origin story.” Early on, Tea Partiers were often described as nonpartisan political neophytes. Actually, the Tea Party’s supporters today were highly partisan Republicans long before the Tea Party was born, and were more likely than others to have contacted government officials. In fact, past Republican affiliation is the single strongest predictor of Tea Party support today.

What’s more, contrary to some accounts, the Tea Party is not a creature of the Great Recession. Many Americans have suffered in the last four years, but they are no more likely than anyone else to support the Tea Party. And while the public image of the Tea Party focuses on a desire to shrink government, concern over big government is hardly the only or even the most important predictor of Tea Party support among voters.

As so many have been arguing for the past 3 years, priority #1 is not small government with these people! So what do (rank and file) Tea Partiers have in common (from 2006 through today):

  • They’re white and
  • have a low regard for immigrants and blacks (*ahem* racist?!)
  • are disproportionately social conservatives
  • have a desire to see religion play a prominent role in politics
  • seek deeply religious elected officials
  • approve of religious leaders engaging in politics
  • want religion brought into political debates

Absolutely no surprise. They’re the same weird, eccentric group of religious RWNJs with a brand new Koch-funded name: Tea Party Patriots. What rubbish. They have always wanted a form of government for the USA that’s a straight-up Christian Theocracy, and nothing has changed.

Sometimes it seems that teahadists needs to be reminded that Jesus Christ was not one of the founding fathers. And, newsflash! Their idea of Christianity is so far removed from mainstream belief that it borders on freakish: Jesus as a gun-toting, white-power, women-belong-in-the-kitchen, immigrant-hating, ‘get your own wine and fish’ conservative Deity, who gladly puts the world on hold to personally speak with politicians like GWB, Perry, Bachmann and Palin.

But here’s what’s funny — people have already figured out the teaparty:

Polls show that disapproval of the Tea Party is climbing. In April 2010, a New York Times/CBS News survey found that 18 percent of Americans had an unfavorable opinion of it, 21 percent had a favorable opinion and 46 percent had not heard enough. Now, 14 months later, Tea Party supporters have slipped to 20 percent, while their opponents have more than doubled, to 40 percent.

 [...] the Tea Party ranks lower than any of the 23 other groups we asked about — lower than both Republicans and Democrats. It is even less popular than much maligned groups like “atheists” and “Muslims.” Interestingly, one group that approaches it in unpopularity is the Christian Right.

Read the rest….

With the growing disapproval of the teaparty in general, it’s nice to know that most of us ARE actually using the brains God gave us.

Related:

Rick Perry: George Bush distilled, crossed with gun powder and semen…

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“Rick Perry is what happens if Lex Luther distilled down George Bush essence in a laboratory and crossed it with gun powder and semen from the finest thoroughbred in Lubbock, and then strapped that concoction onto a nuclear missile and shot it into the fucking sun! And then, waited, waited, waited, until one day, on the anniversary of the Alamo, a solar flare, yada yada yada, Rick Perry!” — Jon Stewart


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(Via Bob Cesca)

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GRAPH: How / when the debt accumulated

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Well, well… will you look at that HUGE SPACE next to GWB’s name!

Proving, once again, the Republicans don’t want to be responsible for debt they had no problem racking up for a decade.

How the Debt Accumulated | NYTimes

It’s true. I love graphs.

Torture and Osama bin Laden’s capture

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An op-ed in this morning’s Washington Post (emphasis mine):

I asked CIA Director Leon Panetta for the facts, and he told me the following: The trail to bin Laden did not begin with a disclosure from Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who was waterboarded 183 times. The first mention of Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti — the nickname of the al-Qaeda courier who ultimately led us to bin Laden — as well as a description of him as an important member of al-Qaeda, came from a detainee held in another country, who we believe was not tortured. None of the three detainees who were waterboarded provided Abu Ahmed’s real name, his whereabouts or an accurate description of his role in al-Qaeda.

In fact, the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” on Khalid Sheik Mohammed produced false and misleading information. He specifically told his interrogators that Abu Ahmed had moved to Peshawar, got married and ceased his role as an al-Qaeda facilitator — none of which was true. According to the staff of the Senate intelligence committee, the best intelligence gained from a CIA detainee — information describing Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti’s real role in al-Qaeda and his true relationship to bin Laden — was obtained through standard, noncoercive means.

I know from personal experience that the abuse of prisoners sometimes produces good intelligence but often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear — true or false — if he believes it will relieve his suffering. Often, information provided to stop the torture is deliberately misleading.

Mistreatment of enemy prisoners endangers our own troops, who might someday be held captive. While some enemies, and al-Qaeda surely, will never be bound by the principle of reciprocity, we should have concern for those Americans captured by more conventional enemies, if not in this war then in the next.

– Senator John McCain

Read it all…

9-11 Truthers: Andrew Napolitano

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MMFA: Today on his Fox Business show, Freedom Watch, Andrew Napolitano hosted 9-11 truther Eric Margolis. Napolitano has previously supported the conspiracy theory that the government is lying about the attacks on September 11. By Fox News’ standards, Napolitano should have been “fired immediately” for these comments, yet Napolitano still has his own Fox Business show and Fox News frequently hosts him.

What’s interesting about Napolitano being a 9-11 Truther (aside from being a favorite Fox News personality) is the bottom line: does he ultimately want to see George Bush and his Administration brought to trial / convicted for covering up what really happened and/or manufacturing the events of 9-11 that caused the deaths of so many and changed our country forever?  Because that’s what Truthers believe: “the explanation of the 9/11 events put forth by government and media contain significant inconsistencies which suggest, at the least, a cover-up, and at worst, complicity by insiders.”

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Too bad they warned him ahead of time.

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Bush cancels Switzerland visit under threat of protests, efforts to arrest him »

President George W. Bush has canceled an event in the famously neutral country Switzerland because of expected protests to his presence there.

Bush was supposed to give the keynote address at a Jewish group’s charity gala on Feb. 12 in Geneva.

Leftist groups had planned to protest the visit, according to news agencies. But several human rights groups had also filed criminal complaints against Bush, demanding that he be taken into custody if he stepped on Swiss soil and investigated for allegations of ordering torture.

A right-wing member of the Swiss parliament also demanded last week Bush’s arrest on war crimes allegations if he came to the country, according to Reuters.

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Fox News: not good at math

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Fox News creates it’s own facts AND math. They’re just that fair and balanced.

reallyfoxnews:

President Obama’s submitted a $3.6 trillion FY 2010 budget, which Fox News claimed was “4x bigger than Bush’s costliest plan.”

However, President Bush submitted a $3.1 trillion budget for FY 2009 and a $2.9 trillion budget for FY 2008.

Math is hard.

See also:

Fox News: the more you watch, the less you know

Daily Show: Lame-as-F@#k Congress

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“…Since when does the Republican Party make 9/11 first responders stand over in the corner with the gays and Mexicans? By the way, the 9/11 responders bill is called the Zadroga Bill. It’s named for an NYPD officer who died as a result of breathing toxic dust at Ground Zero, and it would set up a $7.4 billion fund to treat illnesses arising from working at Ground Zero—compensate the sufferers for economic losses. AKA The Least We Can Do / No-Brainer Act Of 2010.

Since Republicans took to the floor to discuss the Dream Act, and took to the floor to discuss Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, I can’t wait to see them take to the floor to talk about why their party hates first responders! …It appears no Republican senators even showed up to discuss their principled stand after [Democrats Chuck] Schumer and [Robert] Menendez.

Of course, Republicans wouldn’t be so cowardly as to not vote for the bill without justifying their actions. Just cowardly enough not to do it on camera. Wyoming Senator Mike Enzi explained in a Sunday op-ed that his real concern was proper oversight of money already spent on 9/11 workers—475 million dollars of which he claims has gone missing, saying “the nation can’t afford careless spending, no matter how well-intentioned.” Mismanagement, waste—unacceptable!

Now,by the way, the bill they were gonna vote on actually fixes that problem, but just like in May 2008, when the Pentagon announced it couldn’t account for 15 billion dollars that had disappeared somewhere in Iraq… what did Mike Enzi’s tireless fiscal watchdog say one month later, when he was asked to vote for more Iraq funding? I believe he said “This isn’t a perfect bill… The fact remains, however, that we need to fund our troops… so I will support the supplemental bill.” Unless any of those troops are 9/11 responders, in that case fuck those guys. And by the way, Mike, bad news—you know all of our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq are technically 9/11 first responders!

…So guess what, Republicans: your “We’re the only party that understands 9/11 and its repercussions” monopoly ends now. So, no more co-opting 9/11 imagery to get yourselves elected; no more using 9/11 as the date when, magically, all your policies became right; no more using 9./11 to micromanage lower Manhattan zoning decisions; no using 9/11 as an excuse for why your Bush tax cuts never stimulated the economy in the first place; or 9/11 as an excuse for what you were going to be doing anyway. No more using 9/11 as a price point. You know what, Republicans? You use [9/11] so much, if you don’t owe the 9/11 responders healthcare, at least you owe them royalties!

Here’s a little tribute… to some of  those illustrious Republican senators who – when it has served them in the past – have found comfort and advantage in invoking the heroes of 9/11, and yet when it came time to return the favor delivered their message loud and clear: NO.

So here’s to the 9/11 Non-Responders…”

— JON STEWART, letting the GOP have it over their hypocrisy in voting down legislation that would have granted 9/11 first responders comprehensive healthcare benefits, on The Daily Show. (via inothernews)