Vote Edwards in Democracy for America Poll!!

So today Republicans refused to vote for SCHIP on Capital Hill. A moment to reflect. Republicans sided with Bush even though he and their party pundits waged a horrible campaign full of deliberate misinformation, lies, and the slandering of a 12 year-old-boy and his family. Edwards released a statement that is spot on: Republicans should be made to pay a price at the polls.

Edwards dropped by the WaPost today to answer live questions from a few of the commentators there. He answered questions about health care and the No Child Left Behind Act, and about the excessive hype placed on standardized testing. As he points out: "You don't make a hog fatter by weighing' it."

I was pleased to see he had a ready answer for the likelihood that Republicans will campaign on tax cuts next year, despite the fact that Bush put us $9 trillion in the hole. Edwards went on to say he will point out to voters that Republicans mean to lower taxes on wealthy people, while Democrats lower taxes on working people. "If you believe we should finally value work, and not just wealth in America, you should vote for me."



In Iowa, the Edwards campaign announced today the formation of a Statewide Rural Advisory Committee, a wide group of leaders including first responders, business leaders, elected officials and agricultural leaders. One of it's most recognizable members is Denise O'Brien, an organic farmer and the founder of the Women, Food and Agriculture Network, was the Democratic nominee for secretary of agriculture last year. Earlier this month, Edwards was endorsed by Iowa's Monroe County Supervisor Denny Ryan. Representing rural interests played a part in more more key endorsements from the Georgian Democratic Party, including the former Governor.

The importance of rural voter outreach extends to more than just the presidential caucus, as MyDD points out, as Democratic votes increased in rural counties in both 2004 and 2006. "That was a big change from the 1990s, when rural voters swung significantly against the Democratic Party. I believe that John Edwards would be by far the best candidate in our field to continue this trend, which would hurt the GOP badly. I urge you to consider this: the presidential election is more than 50 statewide elections. It also coincides with 435 House races and thousands of races for the state legislature." Out of the states come our national leaders and our next presidential candidates.



Edwards also signed the Presidential Pledge to expand Americorps to expand service positions by 100,000. Speaking before the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, Edwards spoke about the need to return the production of our military's equipment to American soil, a point which I strongly support him. Edwards' also proposed a "Brownie's Law" which would require that those nominated as political appointees to federal agencies meet the same strict hiring requirements as a civil servant, and that they possess actual work experience for that position.

Another good policy point is that Edwards has proposed national cancer networks which would increase funding for cancer research at the National Institutes of Health, include specific research into what chemicals increase the likelihood of cancer, make more widely available home visits from nurses, and also called for an Internet clearinghouse for information about services that are available for families dealing with the disease.

Election data shows what happens when you match up each of the Democratic candidates against the Republicans: Edwards beats every Republican with a larger margin than either Clinton or Obama. Edwards is the only Democratic candidate with a significant lead against Republican front runner Rudy Giuliani. Edwards' out performance against Clinton and Obama in match ups with the Republicans are particularly is also significant in the key battleground states of Iowa, Missouri, and Ohio. We all know how important to a Democratic victory are voter margins in Ohio. As for swing voters, Edwards at this point demonstrates the greatest appeal among Democratic candidates to Independents, beating Giuliani by 13%. Obama wins Independents by 5% and Clinton wins them by 3% against Giuliani.



Vote for Edwards in the Democracy for America Poll!!!

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John Edwards, Democracy for America, current politics, poverty in america, breast cancer, education

Ending Poverty for the Average Federal Employee

So today let's note a rather unusual book out there in the slew of presidential hopeful pulp-novelas: Ending Poverty in America: How to Restore the American Dream. The book contains only an essay by Democratic hopeful John Edwards, and the meat of the book at least isn't endless puffing about how he's going to fix everything that's wrong with you. Instead, it's a collection of essays by both liberals and conservatives, produced by the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. These essays are scientifically based studies of the nature of poverty and both the successes and failures of recent American policy in creating a fair economy for all of us. The collection begins centered around a simple set of irrefutable statistics:

"In 2005, 37 million Americans- about 1 in 8 people- lived below the income poverty level, defined as $19,874 for a family of 4. Almost 13 million were children under 18... The income gap between the rich and poor is growing as well: in 2005 the top 20% of U.S. households received over half of all income, while the bottom 20% of households received only about 3% of total income. Wealth inequalities are also on the rise: in 2004 the top 1% of households by income held more than a third of all net worth and financial assets. Approximately 80% of stock is held by the top ten percent of wealthy households; the poorest 40% of households own less than 1% of all stocks... Over 46 million Americans (about 16% of the population) lacked health insurance coverage in 2005... over 27 million workers are employed with no health insurance."

What does a poverty statistic mean on a personal level? How accurate is this idea that passing over $19,874 will enable parents to care for two children? Heck, what about single young women working for the federal government to defend the nation against terrorism? Let's calculate the cost of living for one such employee: $9,600 Rent ($800 a month, 1 bedroom), $1,960 Food ($35 a week), $2400 Gas (1 hour commute), $740 Insurance USAA, $396 Work Parking Permit, $1,920 Retirement Savings, $1,440 Health Insurance Co-Pay, $140 Prescriptions (No Birth Control), $100 Emergency Room Co-Pay, $230 New Tires, $480 Cell Phone, $252 Internet Services, $60 Bank Fees, $370 Vet Bills for 1 Cat, $1,940 Car Repairs, $120 AAA, $60 (3 $20) Haircuts, $270 Plane ticket to see dying grandfather, $120 Contact Lenses, $180 Dentist plus x-rays, $380 Holiday Gifts (including Birthdays and Christmas). Not included: Thanksgiving Dinner, Booze, Christmas Tree, Easter Eggs, clothing of any kind, movie tickets, books or magazines, Starbucks, Halo 3, dating, make-up, cable television, laundry detergent. Yes, I need the Internet, as a college student. The cell phone serves as a stand in for a land line. Total Cost for 1 Year: $23,158.

Base Salary? $23,700. A cost of living adjustment raises the total to $27,100. After $3,523 in federal taxes and $813 in state taxes, take home pay would equal $22,764. Rumors on several job sites are that pay is $33,000 and that is not true. For those of you who are curious, the cost in salary and benefits of TSA for 2007 will cost $3.45 billion, at an approximate cost of $1.91 per passenger, and $1.65 per checked bag. The cost per passenger includes the cost of screening carry-on luggage. How interesting it would be to ask passengers how much they think it costs to screen them in terms of labor. The above recounting of expenses includes $26 in prescription co-pays for medication after needing four stitches for an on-the-job-injury, my second in as many years after surviving ten years in retail with a clean record.

Edward's book notes that "One in four people who work full-time, year round, still earn less than the amount of money needed to keep a family of four above the poverty threshold... The single parent with three children, working a full 40 hours a week for 52 weeks a year, must earn $9.55 an hour to stay at the poverty line." So basically what you have here is the cold hard economic fact that a fighting the war on terror won't even allow you to provide for yourself, let alone a spouse and two children, without massive government assistance or going without health insurance. And several of my coworkers follow the later track in order to come up with money for their families, betting against the odds that all of their medical needs can be solved with extra sleep and Tylenol. Times I have required medical care in the past year? Three times with my family practice and one emergency room visit after an allergic reaction to a steroid inhaler in the middle of the night. Not that I am completely innocent, I agree, having twice had overdraft charges of $34 dollars for a total of $68 in the past year.

The Congressional Budget Office reports that between 1979 and 2000, the income of the top 1% of Americans grew 184%. Top 5th grew 70%. The real income of the bottom 5th grew only 6%. Edwards's book notes that inter generational mobility has stagnated to the point that "it would take a poor family of four with two children approximately 9 to 10 generations- over 200 years- to achieve the income of the middle-income four-person family... A son whose father earns about $16,000 a year has only a 5% chance of earning over $55,000 per year." Meanwhile, the CBO has just released two estimates of the cost of staying in Iraq. For the favored Republican scenario of continued combat operations, the estimated cost is $25 billion per year. For the favored Democrat scenario of non-combat peace-keeping operations, the estimated cost is only $10 billion per year. Both scenarios use conservative estimates on the necessity to replace equipment and armor. Some one's going to have to pay for all of this, and sorry to you war-mongers out there, but this federal employee is running in the budgetary red.

More voices are speaking up about what our money has been buying us in Iraq: Foreign Policy's Terrorism Index.

"The outcome of the war in Iraq may now rest in large part on the success or failure of the so-called surge. Beginning in February, the White House sent an additional 28,000 U.S. troops to Baghdad in an effort to quell the violence there. Securing the capital with overwhelming force is a key component of the anti-insurgency plan developed by Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq and the military’s foremost expert on counterinsurgency tactics. It took until June for all the U.S. forces to be put in place, and the number of American troops in Iraq is now at its highest level since 2005. But is Petraeus’s plan working?

The index’s experts don’t think so. More than half say the surge is having a negative impact on U.S. national security, up 22 percentage points from just six months ago. This sentiment was shared across party lines, with 64 percent of conservative experts saying the surge is having either a negative impact or no impact at all. When the experts were asked to grade the government’s handling of the Iraq war, the news was even worse. They gave the overall effort in Iraq an average point score of just 2.9 on a 10-point scale. The government’s public diplomacy record was the only policy that scored lower.

These negative opinions may result in part from the experts’ apparent belief that, a decade from now, the world will still be reeling from the consequences of the war. Fifty-eight percent of the index’s experts say that in 10 years’ time, Sunni-Shiite tensions in the Middle East will have dramatically increased. Thirty-five percent believe that Arab dictators will have been discouraged from reforming. Just 5 percent, on the other hand, believe that al Qaeda will be weaker, whereas only 3 percent believe Iraq will be a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. If true, the surge, or any other tactical shift for that matter, was probably already too little, too late."

Americans need to get over their love affair with movie stars and cowboys as Presidents. Certainly doesn't make the world safer, or fairer, or more democratic. As a democrat, I want a renewed commitment to the ideals of democracy, towards compassion and justice. I want to see America renewed in the beauty that democracies are able to produce, in their bustling cities and the equal allocation of riches to it's people, the wealthy and the worker. Instead of tax breaks for corporations, I want workers to have the right to show each other their paychecks without getting fired. Instead of private mercenaries used to secure oil reserves, I want trained and armored US soldiers deployed to end on-going genocide. I want to be able to travel to my job on public transportation, I want utility companies brought under control, I want spammers put out of business. And I want the American Dream for myself, to be able to put away money for a new car and use my tuition to reduce my tax-burden even though I don't itemize.

I want a President who believes in the noble endeavor that democratic government was created to bring about in the world, instead of being pledged to destroy it in the name of private profit. John Edwards saves his remarks until everyone else at his Center has been given a chance to contribute, and he makes a point of including everyone's good ideas towards creating a wonderful future for America... both conservatives and liberals. And it's a good vision, about us as a people... a way to give up terror and war, in exchange for hope and peace.

"The American people understand that no one who works full-time should live in poverty... Let us set a national goal-the elimination of poverty in America in 30 years. It will not be easy, but I believe in the unlimited power of the American people to accomplish anything we set our hearts and minds to acheive. If we do not rest until poverty is history, it will be."

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John Edwards, politics, current affairs, economics, poverty, health insurance, homeland security, war on terror, Iraq, moonbat

Bush Took Tax-Cuts for the Rich from Soldiers

So today, let's discuss the revelation that Bush likes to make war and duck out on the bill. The specific charge this time is that 88% of the National Guard units are near naked, which is hardly a way to face the enemy. Soldiers aren't made of tin; you have to pay for all these pesky things like "trucks, Humvees, generators, radios, night-vision goggles and other gear that would be critical for responding to a major disaster, terrorist attack or other domestic emergency" like say... a Category 5 hurricane. "We are really concerned about vehicles," said Lt. Col. Pete Schneider, a spokesman for the Louisiana Guard. "We would have enough for a small-scale issue . . . maybe a Category 1 tropical storm we could handle -- an event that doesn't involve massive flooding or massive search and rescue," he said. One would think a nice order of those would count as an economic stimulus package?

"Army National Guard units in the United States have on average about half of their authorized stock of dual-use equipment, needed both for fighting wars and for domestic missions, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The National Guard estimates that it would require $38 billion for equipment to restore domestic Army and Air National Guard units to full readiness. The Army has budgeted $21 billion to augment Guard equipment through 2011.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the use of U.S. military reservists has risen from about 12.7 million days of service in 2001 to an estimated 63 million days in 2006. The current increase of U.S. troops in Iraq is expected to require the call-up of as many as four National Guard combat brigades beginning early next year.

But while the 830,000-strong selected reserves make up more than a third of the total military, they receive only 3 percent of equipment funding and 8 percent of the Defense Department budget, the report said.

In 2006, Army National Guard units preparing to deploy had to borrow on average one-third of their people and 60 percent of their equipment from a dozen other units, making for a less cohesive force, the report found."

So what was Bush doing instead of taking care of our men and women in uniform, what were the conservatives pushing as vital to the "war on terror" instead of tending hand and foot to the every need of those members of our society they claim to honor the most in their hearts? Why.. they were taking care of those nearest and dearest to the true core of the conservative- the rich. While clothing our soldiers in cardboard instead of decent armor, and stripping the Guard to their swimming trunks, the conservatives were leading the charge in tax-cuts for the rich. You see, the cons had a novel approach. If we give a tax-break to the rich, they'll have enough money to buy a nice new expensive yaught, and there will be one less [i]{white}[/i] person that we'll need the Guard to save. Hence... tax-cuts are patriotic. And if you're not for them, you have Osama on your Kwansa card-list.

The facts of the tax-cuts enacted at the insistance of Bush and his cronies from 2001 to 2004 is that the middle 20% of American taxpayers got back an average of $647
for 8.9% of the pie. Those who made up the top 1% of taxpayers got back $34,992
for 24.2% of the pie. Millionares got back $123,592 for 15.3% of the pie. There has been no great tech boom, cell-phone reception is still spotty, cancer has yet to be cured, and we are still dependent on fossil fuels. So where did this money go if it didn't go towards the most basic tools needed to fund Bush's greatest expense: the 'war on terror?' Why was this not instead a "Patriot Tax" (whose name would automatically make traitors out of anyone who voted against it) to ensure the viability of the American military?

Let's be honest about the facts here....

"The average after-tax income of the top one percent of the population more than doubled over this period, rising from $294,300 in 1979 to $703,100 in 2001, an increase of $408,800. (CBO adjusted these figures for inflation and expressed them in 2001 dollars.) This represents an increase of 139 percent. By contrast, the average after-tax income of the households that make up the middle fifth of the U.S. population rose $6,300, or 17 percent, during this period. And the average after-tax income of the poorest fifth of households rose $1,100, or only eight percent."

Why are we talking about tax cuts as if it were a patriotic duty for the rich to buy things for their own personal use and not to buy a few Humvees or some body armor for an infantry soldier? And let's take a look at the White House's favorite fish and hook line that cutting taxes fuels economic growth. The
reality of it is that:



So cutting taxes for six years hasn't caused the economy to grow for majority of Americans. {Hint: If you don't buy a new car every year to change the color, you are in the column on the far left, which shows how your wage rate went down.}

Tossing Bush's tax cuts ontop of the economic growth that would have occurred anyway, we can compare it to that civilian job growth (left side) against the jobs created by the military in the same ammount of time (right side).



Now it's not my liberal bias here, but something the conservatives should have loved, but likely will never allow themselves to entertain, which is the possibility that they really could have their cake and eat it too. Democrats want to create jobs through government spending. Republicans supposedly want a top-notch military and well-supported troops in order to fight the 'war on terror.' So, if these obnoxious tax-cuts they had been swooning over had really been spent on Humvees and body-armor instead (let alone renovations on Walter Reed Medical Center and qualified case managers to look after wounded vets), jobs would have been created, the economy would have been good, and things might not be so dire in that little 'war on terror,' eh? May the American public never hand their purses over to the cons again. Or the terrorists will win.

Real patriots party after paying taxes.

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moonbat, liberal, conservative, National Guard, Iraq, war on terror, Democrat, Republican, taxes, tax cuts, Bush