At least one Republican has Gotten the Message
By louisehartmann
At least one Republican has gotten the message. Senator John Thune from South Dakota told a local newspaper that if he’s learned one thing during this August recess holding town hall meetings with constituents – it’s don’t cut Medicare and Social Security. Thune told the paper that that message is one that he’ll be taking back to Washington, DC. Of course – the rest of the Republican Party still doesn’t get it.
That’s because they’re either not holding ANY town hall meetings, or they’re holding private, corporate-funded town halls that charge constituents 40 bucks to ask a question, or they’re busy keeping “watch lists” to intimidate their constituents from asking tough questions.
Either way – John Thune seems to be the only Republican who’s actually doing his job – and listening to the American people who are in lock-step opposition to the Republican’s radical agenda.
Comments
#2
Dang! Recording public employees performing their duties in public! Such a concept, and a welcome report from the 1st court!
In Chicago, IL, last week Tiawanda Moore was found innocent of the two Class 1 felony charges against her for recording police after filing sexual abuse charges against an officer. The downside is that the jury found her innocent on an exception. A Class 1 felony can bring a sentence of 15 years in prison, and under some circumstances up to 30 years. See 720 ILCS 5/14 for details.
Chris Drew still faces felony eavesdropping charges, and will come to trial for recording his own arrest for violating a Chicago city ordinance that bans selling art in public. He was trying to challenge the peddler ordinance on First Amendment grounds, but the police paid no attention to the ordinance charge when they discovered that he had recorded his own arrest.
#3
Why are there so many people who think that "osprey" and "lamprey" are pronounce with /pray/ at the end instead of /pree/?
#4
Will Thune, once back in DC, with others to pursuade him, keep his promise?
#5
What I am sick of is so-called Liberals and Progressives saying that Social Security and Medicare are "sacrifices we must make for a fair society."
They are not sacrifices. They are investments we make for a better economy, just like other networked goods like roads, water, education, food inspections, law, police, fire fighters, and health.
We need not just to make a better case. Liberals needs to educate themselves to understand the benefits that Social Security and Medicare generate for us all. The economic growth of the fifties and sixties was not an accident. They are products of the investments our government made in infrastructure, the GI Bill, Social Security, and much more, all of which the Republicans wish to do away with, in a campaign that will not just destroy the Middle/Working Class of our country, but the entire economy and even the profits of the corporate sponsors of the Republicans.
Until there are people making that case, loudly, as you do, and on the regular campaign trails, Democrats and Liberals will be fighting a losing battle.
#6
Ospree must be an American pronuncuation, I have never heard it pronounced anything other than ospray or lampray here in England. Mirriam Webster giives both pronunciations. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/osprey
#7
Thom GOP -Baggers get it allright They just don't give a RAT$ A$$ about people Just huge corp tax cuts- loopholes. subsides as Grayson said If you get real sick Die Quickly
#8
I just dropped into thune's facebook! I am hard pressed to believe much of anything these days and not likely to trust this guy anymore then the others as well as obama. you really should skip over and read some of the stuff people post on his page! I would be utterly disgusted if i was a senator and knew what was being wrtitten it was like walking into a room of pure unadulterated stupid!!!! what i really hate is all this talk about how a jobs program? its not the presidents job to fix it its the boobs below him and the fact that most of the work has gone overseas hence ripping the most monsterous hole in the future of the said social safety net. I think my head hurts! Arghhhhhhh if my 17 year old daughter can be given the base % rates and the challenge of calculating the amount of revenue genearted if you just put 7,000,000 people back to work for $11 an hour over ten years why is it so hard for the rebumblicans and demoquacks to put thier heads together and solve the problem not to mention note the sheer amount of $$$ is adds up to. Dam my head hurts! arghHHHHHHHHHHHHlololol
#9
It's nice to be optimistic, but how can you or anyone take this conservative Republican Senator's words seriously. Mr. Thune has never supported the middle-class or the wrongs he and his party inflict on Americans each and every day of their political lives in any vote. You sound like he's had a change of heart. I don't think he has at all. That so called change of heart will never translate into any change in his voting against the interests of our country or vote for anything that levels the playing field for the average American. It's only words and that is all, until he changes his votes, and he never wiil. He is the same despicable errand boy for the wealthy he has always been. Watch how he votes before you crown him as "getting it".
#10
Nope. Republicans in Louisiana still lying
#11
Whether the republicans get the message or not, depends totally on whether they believe that they can lie, cheat, defraud, pretend, misdirect, and steal their way into office; if they believe that in order to get elected they have to do what the people want, then they will. Otherwise they won't, because the only reason sociopaths do anything is because they think they will personally benefit from doing it. Appealing to their higher nature is pointless- they really and truly believe that they do not have a higher nature. But posing a serious, long-term, very real threat to their ability to get into office and stay in office, will get their attention. But even if they are forced to not mess with social security, medicare, and medicaid, they're going to beg you to at least let them declare illegal wars, murder hundreds of thousands or preferably millions more innocent people, and steal natural resources and money from foreign countries, because if you don't let them at least commit crimes against humanity and grand larceny overseas, they will feel a deep, crippling sense of frustration, because republicans, being severely mentally ill, think the only way they can be happy is by killing or at least harming other people.
So, the real question here is, do we hand over control of America to a bunch of dangerously sick people just because their sickness tells them that they want it? Or do we stand up, marginalize the overt effects of their sickness, and reclaim our country? Before we decide, we should consider that when you give power to such people, you get world wars one and two, the Korean war, the Vietnam war, all those nasty little wars that we have caused in Central and South America, And the last time we Americans handed over control of our country to the mentally ill, we got the Great Depression and then we got the depression that we are in now.
On the other hand, the last time we took back control over our country from the mentally ill politicians, we got FDR's New Deal and our country got largely rebuilt and people were put back to work and our economy got back on its feet.
One final point: it is IMPOSSIBLE to make republicans happy unless you allow them to steal all of your money and property and rights and otherwise ruin your life and also allow them to murder countless people. So forget about making republicans happy, forget about trying to get their approval, forget about "compromising" with them. Screw them. We need to take our country back.
#12
It didn't hurt, that in the 50's and 60's the US faced little competition in the world. Infact, we benefited substantially from the rebuilding after WWII. In business schools in the 60's, they had case studies that examined what was going to happen to the steel industry, when the demand for steel mills in the world was satisfied. I think you see the result.
Medicare and social security represent the productive part of society supporting the basically unproductive, so I don't undersatand your reasoning.
#13
If you ask anyone if they want their entitlement they will say yes. If you ask them if they deserve more they will say yes. Ask them how it will be paid for, and the answer is by others.
#14
This if way too against the grain for Thune or any of his colleauges. He has the JFK good looks, and he has been grooming, and being groomed for this. It's all an act; he's lying and portraying himself as the lone, sane Reapublican. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the GOP presidential candidate for 2012.
#15
Yeah, the republicans will get the message alright, but what their constituents and the vast majority want is in direct conflict with the radical agenda a tiny rich group has paid BIG BUCKS TO GET. They're not going to let something as silly as democracy get in their way.
The only messages that count for these scoundrels are the twisted and manipulative ones that ROVE disseminates just before the elections....you know the ones that motivate people like the tea-baggers to vote themselves into poverty while at the same time giving the KOCHS another tax break.
#16
With the current situation in America. The fractured broken system in American society. The civic response to corruption is apathetic and indifferent at best. Who is going to stop the fascist state being constructed out of American public institution, military, churches and economic wealth. We live in a divided and conquered society.
#17
Reply to # 13
Here's what you said: "Medicare and social security represent the productive part of society supporting the basically unproductive, so I don't undersatand your reasoning."
Wmstol, MaryMary, (or nameless worker sitting at a computer in a republican-owned boiler room) maybe I can help you understand. Even productive people can run into unpredictably difficulties in their lives. Now, we can take the republican approach to this statistically and historically unavoidable situation where a certain number of us need help, and just throw them under a bus, take them to the edge of town and leave them there to die, or maybe- I don't know- put them in gas chambers and concentration camps. (Does this kind of talk cheer you up, make you feel almost giddy with excitement? If so, you are a republican, all right.) The republican approach works for everyone who doesn't get sick or who has so much money that even the costs for treating a catastrophic disease wouldn't make a dent in their bank accounts. But the republican approach doesn't work for anyone else. In other words, the republican approach doesn't even work for 99% of the people in the republican party, but they don't see that yet. But they will. It will be unavoidable.
And see, part of the problem here is that so many of the super-rich people got super rich by screwing the little people or by outright theft and fraud, so it is truthfully and quite directly their fault that millions upon millions of Americans don't have enough money for health care. The republican approach works for people who do not consider themselves part of the human race. The republican approach works for people who are superior to the little people. You know, they are sort of an ubber race, and all the little people are basically just animals with no rights, to be ordered around and used until they die. And by golly, when it's put like that- truthfully- it sounds kind of like most republicans are mentally ill. Which they are.
Ok, that's medicare. Now let's take a look at social security. Is social security a gift from the government to the people who get social security? You republicans say that it is. You call it an "entitlement," as though an entitlement is a bad thing. And yet, the word entitlement means something that a person is entitled to, something they have a right to receive. And you only pay social security tax on the first $106,000 of your yearly income. Every person who earns an income in America pays into social security, and the government collects that money, and then issues social security checks to people who have paid into social security. I have no idea what would make you think that social security is a gift to unproductive people. I have a friend who has worked very little in his life, and so his monthly social security check is going to be about $115 a month. I have seen the letters he has gotten from Social Security explaining that he will get $115 a month. He didn't put enough money INTO social security to get more. IN OTHER WORDS, SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT A GIFT, AND IT IS NOT A PUNISHMENT FOR THE RICH. SOCIAL SECURITY IS A FUND THAT PEOPLE PAY INTO, AND THEY GET OUT OF IT ACCORDING TO HOW MUCH THEY PUT INTO IT. Geez, if you're going to argue with me, try to get at least ONE of your "facts" straight. I mean, debating with you is like shooting fish in a barrel.
Now, let's say you are a woman, about 25 years old, with three children, and your husband has become a violent, abusive drunk. He is unsafe for you and the kids to be around. You want to protect your children, and you are terrified of your husband. One night, he beats you, breaking your shoulder and fracturing your skull, and threatens to kill you and the kids. In the republican world, such a woman can just sit there and wait for her husband to kill her and her kids, because there is no way in hell (literally, in hell, because that's the kind of world you people want, isn't it?) that the government is going to interfere in her life by protecting her and her children. If her husband's going to kill her and her kids, well, that just must be God's will, am I right? Can i get an amen?
By the way, that woman I mentioned in the last paragraph, was my mother. I saw my father beating my mother, When I tried to stop him, he hit me so hard that I flew the room and when I hit the wall I was knocked unconscious. And you, who no doubt make a lot of fraudulent noise about being a Christian, think the government should not spend a penny of your tax dollars protecting helpless women and children. Great, I'm sure Jesus is up there rooting for you, because he hates big government too. Right? Too bad you've never read the New Testament, where Jesus says, "As you have done unto the least of these, you have done unto me." So actually, republicans aren't Christians, they are Old Testament, pre-Jesus, eye-for-an-eye people who just kind of like causing and watching suffering.
#18
Yeah, I've known people like you. In fact, my father was like you. He deeply and bitterly resented paying taxes that, as he said it, went to lazy, indigent, good-for-nothings who simply didn't want to work. And yet, when he got a catastrophic illness, guess what he did. He did exactly what most republicans would do: he transfered all of his assets into a trust so he could get the government to pay for his medical treatment.
Unlike you, I have lived and worked in slums, in places where people lived in concrete-floor one-room shacks that had an open shower in one corner of the room, one bare light bulb, a noisy little refrigerator, a hot plate to cook on, and no furniture other than a mattress on the floor. And I'll tell you something: on the whole they were better people than republicans. They didn't have enough for themselves, but they would share with you if you needed it, even if it meant they would go hungry. They were simply better people than republicans. They behaved like human beings, not like hypnotized robots who only know how to repeat Rush Limbaugh's latest line of bull____. They were human beings, not pretend Christians who actually worship Glen Beck and his hateful lies. And I'll tell you something else: they were not white. They were black and hispanic. I think it's very interesting that the people repubicans hate the most, are actually better people, morally and ethically superior to republicans, more truthful and trustworthy, and with better family values.
If everyone was like those poor people, this would be a pretty good world. If everyone was like republicans, this would be a hell world. Take your pick; what kind of world do you want to help create?
#19
Just a word...Don't forget folks, there are plenty of demoquacks as guilty as the rebumblicans and if the demoquacks weren't then they'd be getting a lot more done right now. I have yet to hear or read about how the demoquackic party not to mention the president have finally grown some nuts. Mr. Press did mention today that the president is going to give his speech next week on jobs. I sure hope he plays like Mr. Press and all of us would like, HARD BALL! Put not just the rebumblicans against the wall but the whole congress! They are all just a bunch of shills pissing in the wind and we, all of us, left, right and center ar egetting the shaft and what i think most people miss is that all the media machine does every day is blame Obama. I just don not get it!
#20
And yet there's more.
Yes, yes there is a moral and ethical arguement to be made for supporting the helpless against the oppressive and brutal. Hell, the arguement can be made a lot broader to include supporting the vulnerable working class against the oppression of the corporations, and so forth and so on.
Yet my point is a little more cynical than that. Social Security and Medicare -- indeed universal health care -- have a purely economic basis for their value.
Republicans like to pretend that there is only one valid theory that explains economic activity, and this theory is their version of the so-called Free Market. But a real economist will tell you that economics has become a lot broader and more comprehensive than just this one vapid theory. There is network economics, and evolutionary economics, and other branches of economics that teach us that there are some kinds of economic transactions that do not depend on narrow, short-term profit to be valid. The generalities are too complex to go into here, but I can give a short version as it applies to Social Security.
WIthout Social Security, the aged and retired have two choices. Sometimes, not even that. Many can try to get by on whatever they have managed to save during their working years (and with wages as they are today, good luck with that). They can scrimp and scrounge, and maybe get by, maybe die of starvation or desease, but their spending will be severely limited. The other choice is to live with their children, and thus draw on their children's income for their support, leaving that much less for the children to spend on discresionary consumption.
This is the way it used to be in America. For most of us, old age meant irrelevance, dependence, and deprevation.
Then came not only Social Security, but also union-provided retirement incomes, and retirement and old age were transformed from a dark, gloomy period of life, into what were called the "golden years."
The difference was, with a decent income, the retired could live in decent conditions. They could be active. They -- and incidently their children -- had the money for discretionary goods like vacation trips, appliances, cars, and more. And that's not just good for them. It's good for all of us, for the entire economy.
Because the fact is, consumption by the working/middle class -- not the hoarding of vast wealth by the upper 5% -- is the key driver of our economy. As we have seen recently, when enough people lose their jobs, their savings, their prospects, and have nothing to spend, the entire economy goes belly up. When we are all better off, we are all better off.
If that sounds like socialism, it's only because the listener's hearing and understanding are so limited.
Money is not a thing, it's an action. What most call money, whether coins or paper in your drawer, or numbers in some account statement, is just the potential to spend. It is only, however, when we spend it that money becomes a real thing. It's called an economy, and we need to get it back.
#21
Next Saturday, Sept 10th Republican Cliff Stearns will have 4 town halls across the district. Florida's 6th. Since I am in his district, and contact his office often I plan on attending. Have been working on my question regarding his support (in a letter to me) of the Ryan Budget Plan as well as highlighting why it's a bad plan. Probably will not have much time to get the info in so working and wittling it down for all in attendance to understand it. If I cannot get the question in at the 1st one, I'll go to all of them until I do. If I am given any issues, hassled, harassed etc by his private security or others - it's all going to be recorded by a friend . Who, ironically enough has grown up believing himself to be a conservative/Republican but he smells the foul air too.
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