Saturday, January 10, 2015

What the GOP has been up to ...

The Gross Old Poobahs who are the GOP these days have now got a majority in Congress.  I'll bet you thought they would get right on the important issues such as job creation (oh, wait, Obama's already done that - the most jobs created since 1999!), the country's crumbling infrastructure, health care, ensuring the safety of the safety nets of Social Security and Medicare, healing the broken Veteran's Administration, ensuring that our spy agencies keep within Constitutional bounds, building up our schools and our teachers ...

If this is what you thought, you'd be wrong.  Very wrong!  Here's what they've actually been doing.

1.  The thugs in the House "approved a rule preventing routine reallocation of Social Security funds to those men, women and children who receive Social Security Disability ... "  They insist such reallocation (always routine previously) be "accompanied by either benefit cuts or tax increases."

Now, you know the thugs never ever go for tax increases.  So all these folks get screwed.  Again.

2.  This is too funny not to toss in here:  Mitch McConnell claims (publicly, even) that the growing economy is the result of the Obama administration's "expectation" of a new Republican Congress.  Yup, Mr. Obama's been waiting for that so he could get things going!

But, Mr. McConnell, with no help from you or the other thugs, he did, in the six years prior, manage to turn the economy around, and as noted above, created more jobs than the thugs did when they had the White House for 8 years, and he's cut the deficit by about 1/3rd.

Unfortunately for the country, McConnell you live in some alternate universe that doesn't parse with reality.

3.  Thugs in the House passed a bill to gut part of Obamacare.  It would require larger employers to provide health insurance for those who work forty hours plus per week.  Previously the requirement sat at 30 hours.  What this means, of course, is that the average Joe is going to get shafted by the Repugs again - how many employers are going to cut employee hours from 40 to 39 and 3/4  or less because that would rid them of the privilege of providing health insurance for their employees?

4.  Because of harsher rules instituted by the thugs, food stamp enrollment is expected to fall by one million next year.  Lots of single moms who barely make it now won't be able to feed their children in 2015 and beyond.  Thanks a lot you thugs!

5.  John Boehner, aka Mr. Weepy, is, like a lot of the thugs, unhappy with Obama's immigration plan and says he's going to shut down the Department of Homeland Security in order to stop it!   What?  You mean he's going to make us more vulnerable to terrorist attacks because of a minor political disagreement and because the thugs refused to work with the president to come up with some sort of solution?  Yup!

6.  The thugs in the House gave Wall Street a Christmas present - subsidies for risky trading.  Now they're planning to give big banks a gift, too - they're going to delay the Volcker Rule which bans banks from gambling in the securities markets with taxpayer money.  It's a 2-year delay.

There's a bit of good news here.  The Dems (in spite of some 35 rotten turncoats who voted with the thugs) were able to stop this for the time being!

7.  The thugs are also attempting to make 10 other changes to the Dodd-Frank financial reform law - all of which will benefit Wall Street at the expense of the rest of us!

8.  The thugs are planning to push through a Keystone XL pipeline bill which would be a disaster for out country but a boon to a few wealthy oil folks.  Obama says he'll veto it.

9.  Mitch McConnell is opposing a NSA reform bill.  Hey, the NSA are a bunch of good guys.  They should be able to read your emails and listen to your phone calls.

10.  The thugs in Congress have introduced five anti-abortion bills which would make it much more difficult for a woman to obtain an abortion.   Senator David Vitter from Louisiana (you remember he's the one who chased prostitutes while preaching about Jesus) introduced four bills which would disallow Planned Parenthood from receiving any federal monies.

11.  You can be sure that in the coming weeks there will be a thug war on Social Security!  They've wanted to privatize it for years - they want to turn over the $1.7 trillion in SS funds to Wall Street to "invest."  Think about what would have happened if they had had their way back a few years ago.  Many of us would be homeless today!

12.  The thugs, even though every report since the beginning of time, has said there was no chicanery in Benghazi, have authorized the Select Committee on Benghazi to continue it's investigation with no budgetary or time limits.


I can't remember where I got this but it's a great summary of what to expect from the thugs in the coming weeks and months and god forbid, years:

"It's a new year ... and the clown car ... sworn in ... is bigger than ever with a majority in both the Senate and the House. A car full of gun loving, poor hating, veteran screwing, climate change denying, Wall Street deregulating, health care repealing, and wealthy old white man loving clowns."

And we're about to get run over.

Yikes!


1 comment:

William Kendall said...

Asking the current crop of Republicans to deal with reality is far beyond them. Maybe in a couple of hundred years, unless there's a John James Boehner and a Miles McConnell carrying on their forebear's bad work.

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