Don't Steal My Stickers - here's how Dems in the "red zone" can protect their bumper stickers, and maybe help some Dem candidates!

(Don't) Steal My Stickers by BoldlyLiberal

Browse Democratic party 2012 Bumper Stickers

If you're a true-blue Democrat living in a red-state, you won't have to worry about losing your bumperstickers with this message prominently displayed! Yes, it's come to this - the other side has a reputation for some acts that are less than savory. But this tactic has been known to work - and if it doesn't, it may help raise money for the Democratic Party, So it's all to the good! Use the template or Customize button if you want to change your message to the would-be miscreants ;)

Fundraising

Well, Mary suggested posting here to help me fundraise for Team in Training and the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, so here it is. Unfortunately, I'm all typed out since I've been working on forms of this letter all day. One for family, one for friends, one for facebook. Anyway, I would appreciate any and all help. If you go to my blog 'Cuppa Jo' you can read my updates and hopefully follow the URL to a donation. Or click here.

Thanks!

Are our Governments driving us into Poverty

My name is Myshelle and I live in the state of South Australia,Australia.
Any views stated here are my own unless I place a quote, in which case I will name the source if in the public arena or seek permission from others.
I am not allied to any political group in Australia or South Australia.

Australia known as the lucky country how many times we scoff at that! Currently our Federal Government is Labor and our local state government here in South Australia is Labor also.
Two more years to go until we can vote in the both elections,voting is compulsory in Australia.
In the mean time as elsewhere, the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer.

Here however I will detract from Australia's politics and move to some recent conversations I have had through social media, and the friends I have made in America while on Facebook.
I had and probably many others like me believed America to be the World Leader,the top most, the best ,but as I interact more and more with its people I am of the opinion this is not so.
Why you may ask, because the poor are getting poorer and the rich are getting richer,just like the rest of us.
I am reading more and more posts from the chronically ill,the aged and the carers who look after them,the unemployed all desperate people and one recently who in a full time capacity and with ill health herself,cares for a mother solely on her own,saying she was so poor she was going to apply for food stamps. I can say this saddened me and it did but in reality it horrified me. I have not heard of this since reading on Australia's Great Depression in the 1930s.

So I was left wondering why,why in a country as great as America should this be so. Here was one reply I read from “The Democrat Lady”Quote “There have been so many cutbacks in the USA due to budgets because conservatives will not raise taxes, that we are as bad as 3rd world country when it comes to social services. Almost 50% of Americans are now living in poverty, and mental health or help for those with a sick relative is almost nil.
There are probably churches that will give them 3-4 days worth of food, but most of those places are over capacity, so you can no longer depend on them if you need help.”
Definitely food for thought,pardon the pun.

Here in South Australia we are known as the most over taxed state in the whole of Australia. So it seems to be one extreme to another. Electricity and water supply costs are forever escalating so much so, you restrict yourself to use only in dire necessity. Currently in our season of Summer,those in the lower socio economic background suffer badly! They cannot even in over 100F, heat afford to run cooling, not even fans and due to this a lot of the sick and elderly end up in hospital that is if they don't die first!. The water charges are user pays and can you believe this,the LESS you use the more you pay,essentially you cannot win.
Politicians have a lot to answer for and we pay their wages!

More on NDAA - from a very astute comment posted to Reddit. PS: If you think Pres. Obama could have somehow fixed it by veto, you need to read this!

Once, deeply-concerned liberals have been played by the President's right-wing opponents, and sadly this has been abetted by the "Professional Left" who can't get too close to the facts. I've followed this situation closely, and since I can't say it any better than this comment from a poster on Reddit, I'm pasting it below. Please read, then turn your anger where it belongs: The Right-Wing Establishment! (PS: the original bill was put forth by Sens. McCain & Graham. Dems who voted for it did so only after fighting long & hard to get the worst of the language removed. There is NO provision for indefinite detention of US citizens in this bill!!!)

Link to original: http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/nxu96/obama_signs_ndaa_with_signing_statement/c3ctkzz

TL;DR The President's opponents played the electorate like a fiddle and will get away with it because people don't seem to realize they've been tricked into being angry at the wrong person.

He signed it because if he didn't, defense spending including benefits to veterans and their families would not have been authorized. The sections of NDAA that many people here seem to have a problem with are sections that were added into the document by primarily Republican legislators and which the President adamantly opposes but was powerless to stop. I'll repeat that: the parts of this bill that many people here hate were included against the President's wishes and in a way that he is powerless to stop. The only way he could have stopped these sections from being included would have been to try to veto the bill in its entirety, a move that would have been both political suicide as well as being futile, as Congress would simply have overridden him. He is explicit in his opposition to exactly the parts of the bill everyone here hates, going so far as to detail exactly which sections he opposes and why.

You'll notice that the bill also restricts his ability to close Guantanamo Bay; this isn't coincidence. These sections are openly hostile to the President's stated mandate - they are effectively a giant 'fuck you' to the President, as well as a nasty way of eroding the President's support with his own base. Observe:

1. Draft legislation that is almost guaranteed to piss of the President but more importantly piss of his base.
2. Attach said legislation to another piece of larger, more important legislation like, say, the Defense Spending budget for the entire year so that any attempt to dislodge the offensive legislation will result in a political shitstorm, as well as place the larger legislation in jeopardy.
3. Once attached, begin a PR campaign that highlights the offending legislation and brings it to the attention of as many media outlets as possible - not just the traditional media, but alternative media outlets as well (Fox news, MSNBC, Media Matters, Huff-Po, Infowars, etc.)
4. Here's where it gets tricky: Simultaneously, speak to both your party's base and the opposition's. To your base, argue that the legislation is necessary to 'Keep America safe' and that the President, by opposing it, is clearly soft of terrorism and endangering the military by trying to strip the legislation out. At the same time, sit back and watch your opponent's liberal supporters tear into the offending legislation as being dangerous, anti-democratic, and a threat to civil liberties. You know they will; that's what they care about most. You've designed legislation that will make them froth at the mouth. You don't even have to keep flogging the message; one look at the legislation will be enough to convince most people that it is anathema to everything they hold dear. Because it is.
5. Pass the 'parent' legislation. Doing so forces the President to sign it or attempt to veto it. Since the legislation in question just so happens to be the military's operating budget, a veto is out of the question. The President must sign the bill, you get the legislation you wanted, but you also practically guarantee that your opponent's base will be furious at him for passing a bill they see as evil. Even if he tries to explain in detail why he had to sign it and what he hates about it, it won't matter; ignorance of the American political process, coupled with an almost militant indifference to subtle explanations will almost ensure that most people will only remember that the President passed a bill they hate.
6. Profit. you get the legislation you want, while the President has to contend with a furious base that feels he betrayed them - even though he agrees with their position but simply lacked the legislative tools to stop this from happening. It's a classic piece of misdirection that needs only two things to work: A lack of principles (or a partisan ideology that is willing to say anything - do anything - to win), and an electorate that is easy to fool.

This is pretty basic political maneuvering and the biggest problem is that it almost always works because most people either don't know or don't care how their political system actually functions. The President was saddled with a lose-lose situation where he either seriously harmed American defense policy (political suicide), or passed offensive legislation knowing that it would cost him political capital. To all of you here lamenting that you ever voted for this 'corporate shill', congratulations: you are the result the Republicans were hoping for. They get the law they want, they get the weakened Presidential candidate they want. And many of you just don't seem to see that. You don't have to like your country's two-party system, but it pays to be able to understand it so that you can recognize when it's being used like this.

EDIT: typos

Endowments for Public Schools

This was published on another blog The Democrat Lady Speaks Out and appears here with permission.

Earlier today, I saw something on my Facebook page which asked the question as to what type of human being thinks there is nothing wrong in asking a teacher to take a 20% pay cut, but cannot fathom asking a millionaire to pay an addition 3% in taxes.

There was a lot of discussion about it, as you can imagine. And, I, of course, added my two cents. Then, I thought, perhaps, my two cents was actually worth sharing with the blogosphere.

If we want to fight the conservatives in the area of education funding, PART of the answer is endowments for teacher's salaries and pensions. Here is an idea in a few steps:

1) You make conservatives happy by "investing" in something that pays interest or a dividend. If you have a 5% return, you need $1,000,000 for a $50k salary. If you want the teacher to have a bigger salary, you add to the endowment.

You can use this same fund for the teacher's retirement pension, allowing the surviving spouse/partner to receive the pension upon death of the retired teacher. BUT you need a stipulation that the funds will be used to pay a NEW teacher when both teacher and spouse/partner have gone on their great reward in the sky. Thus, you fund BOTH salary and pension at the same time.

Wall Street would practically slobber all over itself trying to make this work. Yes, you WILL have to have stipulations as to what happens in economic downturns, so that teachers salaries are not all wiped out because some stockbroker(s) or bank(s) does(do) something stupid and tanks the economy.

2) Next, you give donors to the endowment a tax deduction. (See conservatives act like sex-starved teenage boys.) Make it a charitable deduction. Currently, if a millionaire makes a donation to endow a professor's chair at a university, the millionaire gets a tax deduction. Why shouldn't anyone who gives to endow a public school teacher's salary and benefits get the same?

3) As each teacher's salary/benefits is endowed, you place the tax savings into another teacher's account. This is so all the teacher's salaries get endowed faster. There will ALWAYS be people who can get donations faster than someone else. Just like there are people who can jump higher or type faster than others. When Teacher X has all they need in their account, and they can get 100% of their salary and benefits from their endowment, the TAX money that would have gone to Teacher X can now go to Teacher Y. It helps meet the entire goal faster.

4) When it is all COMPLETE, you lower or eliminate PROPERTY taxes, and, after that, SALES taxes. Why not do this as each teacher is funded? Because the wealthy areas will be funded faster and the poorer areas not at all. Sooooooooo, if the wealthy want to be done with property and sales taxes, we need to make sure they also donate to the poorer districts. By the way, this will not work if we wait for the wealthy to fund the whole thing. All of us will have to make contributions here and there to teacher's endowments.

Donations would have to be given with no strings as to what can be taught, but can be given to specific subjects. For example, you could donate to fund a math teacher, science teacher, PE teacher...whatever you, the donor believes is important. You could NOT, for example, put a stipulation on the donation that a science teacher could not teach evolution, or a math teacher multiplication.

This will take generations to finish, but in the end, you have a fully funded public school system that includes pensions and does not depend on taxes.

Well, that's my basic idea. I am sure there are people out there that will tear my idea apart and list all the reasons why "liberals" like me can't possibly know what we are talking about.

Return The Democratic Majority To The House And Senate in 2012: OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ...

Return The Democratic Majority To The House And Senate in 2012: OPEN LETTER TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES ...: In response to this letter , written by former general partner of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman S...

Today I Donated to Occupy Wall Street!

Rosie the Riveter OWS sticker from Zazzle.com

Thanks to all who have purchased products with this design - on Nov. 17 Day of Action I made a donation of $17 to the Occupy Wall Street general fund from proceeds on sales! Keep purchasing, and I will keep donating!

Rosie the Riveter OWS sticker by BoldlyLiberal
Browse Occupy wall street Stickers

Power to the people, not the corporations! As the American Autumn of 2011 takes off, peaceful protests and organizing movements spread from city to city. More and more, we realize that the funneling of wealth, opportunity, and resources from the 99% to the privileged 1% cannot continue. Show your solidarity with the 99% by using your voice, your presence, your signature on petitions - and most of all, with your vote. Because if you don't use it, you'll lose it!