The Overwhelming Hypocrisy of the Right wing

United States Amendment 2910 – 114^th Congress

12/3/2015

Sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein with 25 cosponsors

PURPOSE:  To increase public safety by permitting the Attorney General to deny the transfer of firearms or the issuance of firearms and explosives licenses to known or suspected dangerous terrorists.

REJECTED: 50 to 48. 50 Republicans voted to allow anyone, including persons on the terrorist watch list to purchase guns.

47 Democrats and 1 Republican voted to prevent this abomination. (The list of names is below).

WINNERS: The NRA and their masters, gun manufacturers and terrorists.

LOSERS: America, its citizens and those folks who are unfortunate enough to be present the next time there is a terrorist attack, either here or abroad.

We are the main supplier for madmen with guns.

The hypocrisy, the gut wrenching hypocrisy displayed by the members of the GOP running for President and those who voted yesterday is beyond the pale.

On Wednesday we were greeted by the standard my thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their families of this terrible tragedy comment by any politician who had a microphone thrust into their face.  The Right was upset when the President’s statement after the attack in Colorado Springs read in part “We can’t let it become normal. If we truly care about this — if we’re going to offer up our thoughts and prayers again, for God knows how many times, with a truly clean conscience — then we have to do something about the easy accessibility of weapons of war on our streets to people who have no business wielding them. Period. Enough is enough.”

Well enough on Friday, November 27^th was not enough, since on Thursday, December 3^rd, a day after 14 Americans were massacred and 21 injured by 1 domestic and 1 foreign terrorist*, who obtained their guns here in the States our elected officials chose not to close one small loophole in our laws.

*They were not on the watch list, we do not know how they obtained the guns, but with our lack of laws anyone can buy a gun legally.

How many more must die? How many must die in one massacre before the 2^nd Amendment Americans wake up to the crimes they are committing by supporting the gun manufacturers?

I believed that when 20 children and their teachers were murdered on December 14^th, 2012, that we would finally pass some laws to curb the easy access to guns.

When that did not happen I accepted the fact that it would take a massacre of at least 20 x 5 or perhaps even 10 before something is done.  We almost had such an occurrence on Wednesday, since the killers in San Bernardino had tried to retrofit the long guns to make them automatics.

So Senators, governors and politicians at every level of government here in America, if you do not support the curbing of the madness that has overtaken us, then spare us your ‘thoughts and prayers’.  You do not care about us; all you care about are the contributions from gun manufacturers and our votes.  Your thoughts and prayers are directed towards hoping that we as a people do not at some point say “enough is enough”.

The Leader of the Senate received $922,000 in contributions from the NRA to help fund his 2014 re-election bid.

He tweeted:

At least he had the decency not to say “and prayers”.

Grouped By Vote Position

YEAs ---48
Baldwin (D-WI) Bennet (D-CO) Blumenthal (D-CT) Booker (D-NJ) Boxer (D-CA) Brown (D-OH) Cantwell (D-WA) Cardin (D-MD) Carper (D-DE) Casey (D-PA) Collins (R-ME) Coons (D-DE) Donnelly (D-IN) Durbin (D-IL) Feinstein (D-CA) Franken (D-MN)	Gillibrand (D-NY) Heinrich (D-NM) Hirono (D-HI) Kaine (D-VA) King (I-ME) Kirk (R-IL) Klobuchar (D-MN) Leahy (D-VT) Manchin (D-WV) Markey (D-MA) McCain (R-AZ) McCaskill (D-MO) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Mikulski (D-MD) Murphy (D-CT)	Murray (D-WA) Nelson (D-FL) Peters (D-MI) Reed (D-RI) Reid (D-NV) Sanders (I-VT) Schatz (D-HI) Schumer (D-NY) Shaheen (D-NH) Stabenow (D-MI) Tester (D-MT) Toomey (R-PA) Udall (D-NM) Warren (D-MA) Whitehouse (D-RI) Wyden (D-OR)

NAYs ---50
Alexander (R-TN) Ayotte (R-NH) Barrasso (R-WY) Blunt (R-MO) Boozman (R-AR) Burr (R-NC) Capito (R-WV) Cassidy (R-LA) Coats (R-IN) Cochran (R-MS) Corker (R-TN) Cornyn (R-TX) Cotton (R-AR) Crapo (R-ID) Cruz (R-TX) Daines (R-MT) Enzi (R-WY)	Ernst (R-IA) Fischer (R-NE) Flake (R-AZ) Gardner (R-CO) Graham (R-SC) Grassley (R-IA) Hatch (R-UT) Heitkamp (D-ND) Heller (R-NV) Hoeven (R-ND) Inhofe (R-OK) Isakson (R-GA) Lankford (R-OK) Lee (R-UT) McConnell (R-KY) Moran (R-KS) Murkowski (R-AK)	Paul (R-KY) Perdue (R-GA) Portman (R-OH) Risch (R-ID) Roberts (R-KS) Rounds (R-SD) Rubio (R-FL) Sasse (R-NE) Scott (R-SC) Sessions (R-AL) Shelby (R-AL) Sullivan (R-AK) Thune (R-SD) Tillis (R-NC) Vitter (R-LA) Wicker (R-MS)

Not Voting - 2
Johnson (R-WI)	Warner (D-VA)

Whigs, Dodos and High Button Shoes

Some days I am not in the mood to write a Blog post and then a headline, comment, column or something will catch my eye and I head for my laptop.

Today is such a day.

Yesterday (12/2/2015) in California, 14 people were massacred and the last count that I saw 20 were injured. 

There was also another shooting in this country on that date.  1 woman was killed and 3 men were injured in Savannah, GA.  I found out about that massacre (we now define “massacre” according to our do nothing congress, as a shooting that results in 3 or more deaths) from an article posted on Facebook today.

I received countless emails and notifications from several news organizations about California. Not one about Georgia.  Too small? Too much like all of the others? How many of us have to die before there is a notification or email. How many of us have to die before the massacre becomes a commercial free event on our 24-hour cable stations?

California was the 3^rd “mass shooting” since the Colorado Springs massacre.

I would guess that because of the number of dead and the location of the shootings, the coverage was constant.

Savannah received a 3 paragraph statement on the website of one of its TV stations.

Research by a Reddit community and others show that there have 355 mass shootings in the US this year.  That means we have had more multiple death and injured shootings than days in the year.

We are living in a time in which when we wake up in the morning, there is a possibility that we could be injured or killed by a lunatic with a gun.  A gun that even those on the terrorist watch list can buy because Congress is beholden to the NRA and gun manufacturers and not to us the American people.

We are also living in a time when the media has failed us completely. Listening to some of the junk being spewed yesterday on TV was enough to make my head hurt, but not enough for me to want to write a Post.  That desire was prompted by an email I received this morning from the Washington Post.  In the Politics email that I receive every day, the article with the headline “Obama’s inconsistent claim on the ‘frequency’ of mass shootings in the U.S. compared to other countries” did that. The first paragraph read “We urge the president to be consistent in [sic] precise in describing mass shootings in the U.S.”

At least 15 people died, 23 are injured in 1 day in 2 different shootings in 2 different parts of the country and the writer was given a platform to criticize the President’s use of words, as he compared our gun crazy society to other nations that are not war torn, such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria etc.

We, the people of the United States have no one advocating for our needs.

We have a Congress, which is peopled by the serfs of the wealthy.

We have a media, which for the most part is wholly owned by the wealthy.

We have police departments that seem to be less caring and are more racists that the KKK.

We had the Occupy movement and now Black Lives Matter, which we do not support and so they are attacked and demonized by politicians and the media.

We have a planet that is dying and those who worship the checkbook of the Koch Brothers are withholding life support.

If we do not wake up, stand up and say no more, we will all join the Whigs and the Dodo.

We will be no more.

Chart below by Wonkblog.

The Rape of Americans by the Healthcare industry

Yesterday I called my insurance company to get information on my prescription plan for 2016.
Not only will there be a 25% increase in the monthly premium, but all of the co-pays have increased.  And for one of my medications the tier has been changed from a flat rate to a percentage of the retail cost. The percentage cost was increased from 40 to 47%. My co-pay will be 47% of $900 (twice per year)  instead of a flat $240.00 x 2, which I paid in 2015.

Currently the Republicans in Congress both the Senate and the House are attempting to scrap the ACA.  Remember the cost I mentioned above are for Medicare program.  Think about what anyone under 65 is going to pay for insurance premiums and co-pays.

I am sharing here with you the readers version of an excellent article in PoliticusUSA which very clearly explains our healthcare, especially our prescription future including links to other articles.

As a follower of my Blog, I am asking to take the time to read this so that you get an idea of what is being done to us.

Corporate Health Care Giants Make Their Move

These are the halcyon days for PoliticusUSA. Staff writers and contributors have an endless smorgasbord of Republican rubbish to expose. You could write on a different issue that Republicans have twisted and misrepresented every day for a year and you still wouldn’t cover the endless destruction wrought through their fealty to the corporate multi-national gods. 

Today, I’ve plucked health care from the mountain of ruinous options. The center piece of any observations about health care is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) or, as its better known, Obamacare, an insulting defaming of the president, embraced by the so-called “liberal” media.

Despite Republican efforts that would do the sleaziest of con men proud, millions upon millions have been added to the insured rolls as reflected in these numbers. Not giving the least little damn about the poor and infirm, Republican legislators and governors, national and state, continue to politically obsess on strategies to put all health care power in the hands of pharmaceuticals and insurance giants. And, to a certain extent, they’re succeeding, in spite of somewhat surprising decisions by the Supreme Court breathing continued life into the ACA.

It’s not that the opposition to ACA hasn’t tried on the judicial front. All they do is file lawsuits aimed at repealing the act. Here’s a sampling. There are a few pronounced weaknesses with the legislation. I’ve already written widely about the health insurance scammers, who thanks to a single vote by Joe Lieberman that served to eliminate the “public option” from the original ACA legislation. 

That’s a multi-billion dollar gift that the major insurers will take advantage of by setting the premiums wherever they want them and for the cheaper policies make sure the deductibles are obscenely high. The insurance companies are comfortably ensconced in an irreversible catbird seat because of the vast majority of Democratic voters that are too lazy to give up a fraction of their Tuesday. Small businesses are increasingly opting out of ACA or working the system with their books to make sure they don’t meet the criteria for inclusion. Considering virtually all extraneous costs are passed onto the consumer, these moves are downright unpatriotic and unfeeling.

Then there’s the matter of changing your health insurance if it doesn’t meet your needs during open enrollment season. Washington Post Writers Group columnist, Catherine Rampell, a rare voice of national media reason on this subject, points out that numerous economic studies have shown that insurers “jack up rates on those too lazy or inattentive to investigate other options.” Again, laziness has a steep cost in a Democracy that tilts toward those only too eager to take advantage of a slothful population. Ms. Rampell adds that plans end up raising premiums, deductibles and co-pays in an never-ending cycle of ripping off those intimidated by the complexity of changing plans. 

Occupying about half the seats on the health care gravy-train are the pharmaceuticals. Republican legislative destruction of historical bills designed to limit monopolistic behavior, has that train roaring down the tracks to unprecedented prosperity for the multi-national pharmaceuticals. R & D industry figures to the contrary, drug companies mostly take advantage of years of federal government research grants to Universities from the National Institutes of Health. The trillion dollar industry also builds on ingredients that are merely tweaked, and in many cases are not any more effective than their predecessors, costing a fraction of their new replacement. An estimated 80% of drug company expenditures go to marketing. 

Here is a wonderful Google book site that explains in detail how such sleight of hand works. When you read the section on brand name and generic drugs, bear in mind that the new trade legislation seeks to extend the patents on brand name drugs by years, so the pharmaceuticals can charge you maximum dollars. 

As for monopolies, AP reports on a current example in the combining of mighty Pfizer and Allergan together to the tune of $160 billion. That’s just one deal in a basket of drug deals totaling nearly 2 TRILLION dollars in completed or pending actions. The silence from most Republicans is deafening, even though, when added together, the final results will probably double the prices for their meds in the not too distant future if the deal passes the muster of regulators in the U.S. and the European Union, among others.

Allergan made a ton of strategic moves (about 20 or so in the last couple of years) prior to the announcement of the proposed merger to seize control of what are undoubtedly the more profitable of assorted meds. 

Adding insult to injury, the Pfizer and Allergan merge would create the world’s largest drug company with a key “inversion” component allowing U.S. based Pfizer to shift it’s tax base to Dublin Ireland-based Allergan. The new company will escape hundreds of millions in U.S. taxes per year. Ireland is a very corporate tax-friendly environment. “Faith and begorrah”, inversions must be in the bible somewhere. Pfizer is already ‘loop-holing some $74 billion in tax-avoidance profits offshore. 

For the record, inversion moves are strongly opposed by both Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders. Clinton said it will leave “U.S. taxpayers holding the bag” while Sanders termed the deal a “disaster” for Americans already paying high prescription drugs costs. Interestingly enough, Donald Trump agrees with the Democratic candidates, calling the deal “disgusting.” Marco Rubio wanted it both ways: “Pfizer has an obligation to maximize profits for shareholders.” He then went on to say that what the president did with the IRS to prevent inversions doesn’t work. Translation: Rubio did NOT criticize inversions or the merger. Most of the other Republican candidates seem to playing it close to the vest. Maybe we’ll find out their true feelings in the upcoming debate. 

So everybody on Viagra, Lipitor and Eliquis, among the 337 drugs on the Pfizer roster, is going to have to dig deeper into their wallets if this deal goes through as expected. On the Allergan side, the product numbers are much smaller, but for those who seek perpetual Barbi Dollism, Botox, materials for breast implants and Juvederm are among the roughly 45 offerings under its banner.

Another Republican sweep in 2016 and you can write this country off for at least a generation. Are you listening registered Democrats?