I was browsing vids late last night and ran across this three part presentation from August, 2011. That’s right, August, 2011. It appears that Bill has been knocking himself out for quite some time and these particular vids need to go viral as they explain the genesis of the progressive nightmare we are currently living through. They also succinctly distill what conservative believe and why, and offers debate ammunition for those times when you find yourself with a government owned moo that thinks the government’s ‘free lunch’ is the way to go.
I will be doing an indepth article on the Frankfurt Institute in the next few days as time allows.
Bill Whittle Explains our Progressive Nightmare – Part 1
Bill Whittle Explains the Conservative Solution – Part 2
Bill Whittle Sticks Around for an Awesome Q & A – Part 3
If I were president, on Day One I would issue an executive order paving the way for Obamacare waivers to all 50 states. The executive order would direct the Secretary of Health and Human Services and all relevant federal officials to return the maximum possible authority to the states to innovate and design health-care solutions that work best for them.
As I have stated time and again, a one-size-fits-all national plan that raises taxes is simply not the answer. Under our federalist system, the states are “laboratories of democracy.” They should be free to experiment. By the way, what works in one state may not be the answer for another. Of course, the ultimate goal is to repeal Obamacare and replace it with free-market reforms that promote competition and lower health-care costs. But since an outright repeal would take time, an executive order is the first step in returning power to the states.
I only have one thing to say about Mitt Romney’s attempt to position himself for a presidential nomination…
P.A.T.H.E.T.I.C. (on, oh, so many levels).
If this is what Romney thinks will swing support his way, he is so far behind the current patriotic ideological trend that he isn’t even in the same hemisphere with the rest of us, (not that he ever was; being another progressive plant for the globalists).
Bill Whittle explains the three great ages; agricultural, industrial and information, and the related government that was necessary. He explains the political corruption associated with the industrial age, from the robber barons to the progressive movement that is now in complete conflict with the form of nimble government required by the digital age. He draws an important parallel between the robber barons of the industrial age and the unions’ unholy alliance with government in the information age.
…because the industrial age is drawing to a close as the information age takes its place, and all of our economic structure, once again, going back to being horizontal, independent, light, fast, agile, decentralized, local, smaller, and cheaper. The old dinosaurs may totter for awhile, but they will eventually fall, and the government that will come out of our third wave information age society will have to be fast, decentralized, local, smaller and cheaper as well. …It’s the people with the Gadsden flags, the ones calling for less government that are on the side of the future, not the public sector union members living in the past to preserve benefits and entitlements that now other people have to pay for. These public sector unions actually have become the old, corrupt alliance of money and political power that they themselves were created to destroy.
(Editor’s Note: Get comfy kids. Yes, I found a video and stumbled into a rabbit hole. H/T PatriotsNetwork for the video.)
The Algebra Project:
The Algebra Project was founded in 1982 by a Harlem-born and Harvard-educated Civil Rights’ leader, Dr. Robert P. Moses through the use of his MacArthur Fellowship award. Over the past two decades, AP grew from teaching math in one school in Cambridge, MA, to more than 200 middle schools across the country by the late 1990s, developing successful models of whole-school and community change.
AP’s unique approach to school reform intentionally develops sustainable, student-centered models by building coalitions of stakeholders within the local communities, particularly the historically underserved population. Since 2000, we have continued to provide the context in which students, schools, parents and communities maximize local resources and take ownership of their own community building and mathematics education reform efforts, which now include high school as well as middle grade initiatives.
The civil rights work in the 1960s culminated in the national response to protect a fundamental right: the right to vote. Our current work seeks a national response to establish a fundamental right: the right of every child to a quality public school education.
I cannot let these two groups, (The Algebra Project and Young People’s Project), and this particular topic go by without some attention, as the propaganda and indoctrination continues (and yes, Soros is in the background).
In a simple nutshell: Robert Moses, a civil rights’ activist (who was mentored by Ella Baker; bio here) started the Algebra Project with funding from a MacArthur Fellowship to tutor and elevate the math scores of disenfranchised and minority children to help them be more prepared for higher learning institutions. It sounds like a noble, worthy goal that no one would deny until one hears about the National Student Bill of Rights from an Baltimore Algebra Project member and realizes that these children do not know who exactly is directing them.
For people who don’t know what the Algebra Project is; it is a youth run tutoring program where high school students and also some older members who are in college (like me) tutor math for an hour and a half after school and also organize for quality education as a Constitutional right. So, it’s a youth run program where the tutors are actually paid to improve the math skills and math literacy, build political awareness and exercise political power as students, as young people. – Chris Goodman (Rap Name: Comrade), Baltimore City Algebra Project
We’ve been working on a National Student Bill of rights…some of those rights include free college, free public transportation, clean bathrooms, no more standardized tests. So we are in the process of really getting students to have these dialogues in their classrooms, outside the classroom, all over the place…”
As readers now have a nutshell understanding of the Algebra Project, let’s drill down a bit and further the education.
Dr. Robert P. Moses President and Founder In his young adult life, Dr. Moses was a pivotal organizer for the civil rights movement as field secretary for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and was director of SNCC’s Mississippi Project. He was a driving force behind the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964 in organizing the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP), which challenged the Mississippi regulars at the 1964 Democratic Convention. From 1969-1976, he worked for the Ministry of Education in Tanzania, East Africa, where he was chairperson of the math department at the Samé school. Dr. Moses returned to the USA in 1976 to continue to pursue doctoral studies in Philosophy at Harvard. A MacArthur Foundation Fellow from 1982-87, Dr. Moses used his fellowship to develop the concept for the Algebra Project, wherein mathematics literacy in today’s information age is as important to educational access and citizenship for inner city and rural poor middle and high school students as the right to vote was to political access and citizenship for sharecroppers and day laborers in Mississippi in the 1960s. As founder and president of the Algebra Project Inc., Dr. Moses also serves as director of the project’s materials development program. See more at www.algebra.org. Together with Algebra Project Inc. board member Danny Glover, Moses and others recently launched a national discussion calling for an amendment to the U.S. Constitution for Quality Public School Education as a Civil Right; see more at www.qecr.org. Dr. Moses has received several college and university honorary degrees and honors, including the Heinz Award for the Human Condition and the Nation/Puffin Prize for Creative Citizenship.
More information about Ella Baker’s mentoring of Robert Moses, SNCC, MFDP, and her influence on Students for a Democratic Society:
That same year, on the heels of regional desegregation sit-ins led by black college students, Baker persuaded the SCLC to invite southern university students to the Southwide Youth Leadership Conference at Shaw University on Easter weekend. At this meeting the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed.
The SNCC became the most active organization in the Delta, and it was relatively open to women. Following the conference Baker resigned from the SCLC and began a long and intimate relationship with SNCC (pronounced “snick”). Along with Howard Zinn, Baker was one of SNCC’s highly revered adult advisors, called the “Godmother of SNCC.”
In 1961 Ella Baker persuaded the SNCC to form two wings: One wing for direct action and the Second wing for voter registration. It was with Baker’s help that SNCC (along with Congress of Racial Equality) coordinated the region-wide freedom rides of 1961 and began to work closely with black sharecroppers and others throughout the South. Ella Baker insisted that “strong people don’t need strong leaders,” and criticized the notion that a single charismatic leader at the helm of movements for social change.
Ella Baker pushed the idea of “Participatory Democracy”, therefore, she wanted each person to get involved individually. She also argued that “people under the heel,” referring to the most oppressed sectors of any community, “had to be the ones to decide what action they were going to take to get (out) from under their oppression.” She was a teacher and mentor to the young people of SNCC, highly influencing the thinking of such important figures as Julian Bond, Diane Nash, Stokely Carmichael, Curtis Muhammad, Bob Moses, and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who wrote a song in Baker’s honor, called “Ella’s Song.” Through SNCC, Baker’s ideas of group-centered leadership and the need for radical democratic social change spread throughout the student movements of the 1960s. Her ideas influenced the philosophy of participatory democracy put forth by Students for a Democratic Society, the major antiwar group of the day. These ideas also influenced a wide range of radical and progressive groups that would form in the 60s and 70s.
In 1964 she helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) as an alternative to the all-white Mississippi Democratic Party. She worked as the coordinator of the Washington office of the MFDP and accompanied a delegation of the MFDP to the National Democratic Party convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey in 1964. The group’s aim was to challenge the national party to affirm the rights of African Americans to participate in party elections in the South. When MFDP delegates challenged the pro-segregationist, all-white official delegation, a major conflict ensued. The MFDP delegation was not seated, but their influence on the Democratic Party helped to elect many black leaders in Mississippi and forced a rule change to allow women and minorities to sit as delegates at the Democratic National Convention.
Many of my readers have heard the name Ella Baker because of Van Jones, the co-founder of the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, California who wrote STORM: Reclaiming Revolution and is beating the ‘social justice and green jobs’ drums, but let’s get back to Robert Moses, The Algebra Project and an offshoot of TAP, Young People’s Project. As of 2007, TAP was being supported by The Tides Foundation and the Ford Foundation, among others. Also, Robert Moses is the recipient of the 1999 Heinz Award in Human Condition netting him $250,000. Does the ‘Heinz’ name sound familiar? It probably does because John Kerry’s wife is the heir to the Heinz family fortune and the founder of the Heinz Award, and benefactor to many left-wing organizations including Tides.
Teresa Heinz Kerry is Board Chairwoman of the Heinz Family Foundation, Board Chairwoman of the Howard Heinz Endowment, and a Board member of the Vira I. Heinz Endowment. Collectively these are known as the Heinz Family Philanthropies, grant-making institutions that fund primarily leftwing causes. Teresa is the widow of Senator H. John Heinz III, and the current wife of Democratic Senator John Kerry.
Moving along we come to the 1996 offshoot of The Algebra Project, the Young People’s Project:
The Young People’s Project (YPP) is an outgrowth of the Algebra Project, “a national mathematics literacy effort aimed at helping low income students and students of color successfully acquire mathematical skills that are a prerequisite for a college preparatory mathematics sequence in high school and full citizenship in today’s technological society.” YPP joins the Algebra Project in its belief that all the children who live in the country are children of the country and that they have the right to a high quality public school education.
A brief cruise around YPP’s Board Members’ page brings forth this interesting tidbit of information:
Jessy Molina graduated from Harvard College in 1999 and from Yale Law School in 2002. Upon graduation from law school, Jessy accepted a Soros Justice Fellowship to work at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights on the Books Not Bars project, with the goal of shifting state funding priorities away from incarceration and toward education and youth opportunities. After completing her fellowship, Jessy worked for the John Gardner Center for Youth and Their Communities at Stanford University. As Program Director for the Gardner Center’s West Oakland youth initiative, she worked with high school students at McClymonds High School in Oakland to develop and implement a youth-led social justice curriculum. Jessy currently serves as National Co-Coordinator of Quality Education as a Constitutional Right (www.qecr.org), along with her husband, Michael Molina. Jessy enjoys learning from and with the young people she works with, especially her daughter, Maya.
The Soros Justice Fellowships fund outstanding individuals to implement innovative projects that advance the efforts of the Open Society Foundations to reform the U.S. criminal justice system. The foundations seek to reduce the destructive impact of current criminal justice policies on the lives of individuals, families, and communities in the United States by challenging the overreliance on incarceration and harsh punishment, and ensuring a fair and equitable system of justice.
Fellows receive funding through the following two categories:
Advocacy
Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowships fund outstanding individuals—including lawyers, advocates, grassroots organizers, activist academics, and others with important perspectives—to initiate innovative policy advocacy projects at the local, state, and national levels.
A never ending rat-maze of progressives that definitely understand how to brainwash an entire country over the course of generations through the indoctrination of our children. When enough generations of children are taught to be good little worker bees as part of the collective hive, America’s great experiment will have ended without so much as a whimper.
Glenn briefly covers the attempted assassination of Missouri governor, Jay Nixon, the radical leftist (Casey Brezik) that was responsible, and who is actually behind the violence toward public figures.
Are you ready kids? (Whenever I say this to the RedLemur, he knows it’s gonna be bad…)
Barry Soetoro, current resident of the White House, has signed an Executive Order directing federal agencies to review regulations and produce a plan for changes to the current regulations based on the best science available.
Bye-bye Congress.
(All emphasis from this point on is the editor’s and is meant to highlight portions that require reading!!!)
By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, and in order to improve regulation and regulatory review, it is hereby ordered as follows:
Section 1. General Principles of Regulation. (a) Our regulatory system must protect public health, welfare, safety, and our environment while promoting economic growth, innovation, competitiveness, and job creation. It must be based on the best available science. It must allow for public participation and an open exchange of ideas. It must promote predictability and reduce uncertainty. It must identify and use the best, most innovative, and least burdensome tools for achieving regulatory ends. It must take into account benefits and costs, both quantitative and qualitative. It must ensure that regulations are accessible, consistent, written in plain language, and easy to understand. It must measure, and seek to improve, the actual results of regulatory requirements.
(b) This order is supplemental to and reaffirms the principles, structures, and definitions governing contemporary regulatory review that were established in Executive Order 12866 of September 30, 1993. As stated in that Executive Order and to the extent permitted by law, each agency must, among other things: (1) propose or adopt a regulation only upon a reasoned determination that its benefits justify its costs (recognizing that some benefits and costs are difficult to quantify); (2) tailor its regulations to impose the least burden on society, consistent with obtaining regulatory objectives, taking into account, among other things, and to the extent practicable, the costs of cumulative regulations; (3) select, in choosing among alternative regulatory approaches, those approaches that maximize net benefits (including potential economic, environmental, public health and safety, and other advantages; distributive impacts; and equity); (4) to the extent feasible, specify performance objectives, rather than specifying the behavior or manner of compliance that regulated entities must adopt; and (5) identify and assess available alternatives to direct regulation, including providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior, such as user fees or marketable permits, or providing information upon which choices can be made by the public.
(c) In applying these principles, each agency is directed to use the best available techniques to quantify anticipated present and future benefits and costs as accurately as possible. Where appropriate and permitted by law, each agency may consider (and discuss qualitatively) values that are difficult or impossible to quantify, including equity, human dignity, fairness, and distributive impacts.
Sec. 2. Public Participation. (a) Regulations shall be adopted through a process that involves public participation. To that end, regulations shall be based, to the extent feasible and consistent with law, on the open exchange of information and perspectives among State, local, and tribal officials, experts in relevant disciplines, affected stakeholders in the private sector, and the public as a whole.
How did that public participation work out for us on Obamacare, Cap and Trade, and the Net Neutrality?
(b) To promote that open exchange, each agency, consistent with Executive Order 12866 and other applicable legal requirements, shall endeavor to provide the public with an opportunity to participate in the regulatory process. To the extent feasible and permitted by law, each agency shall afford the public a meaningful opportunity to comment through the Internet on any proposed regulation, with a comment period that should generally be at least 60 days. To the extent feasible and permitted by law, each agency shall also provide, for both proposed and final rules, timely online access to the rulemaking docket on regulations.gov, including relevant scientific and technical findings, in an open format that can be easily searched and downloaded. For proposed rules, such access shall include, to the extent feasible and permitted by law, an opportunity for public comment on all pertinent parts of the rulemaking docket, including relevant scientific and technical findings.
(c) Before issuing a notice of proposed rulemaking, each agency, where feasible and appropriate, shall seek the views of those who are likely to be affected, including those who are likely to benefit from and those who are potentially subject to such rulemaking.
Sec. 3. Integration and Innovation. Some sectors and industries face a significant number of regulatory requirements, some of which may be redundant, inconsistent, or overlapping. Greater coordination across agencies could reduce these requirements, thus reducing costs and simplifying and harmonizing rules. In developing regulatory actions and identifying appropriate approaches, each agency shall attempt to promote such coordination, simplification, and harmonization. Each agency shall also seek to identify, as appropriate, means to achieve regulatory goals that are designed to promote innovation.
Sec. 4. Flexible Approaches. Where relevant, feasible, and consistent with regulatory objectives, and to the extent permitted by law, each agency shall identify and consider regulatory approaches that reduce burdens and maintain flexibility and freedom of choice for the public. These approaches include warnings, appropriate default rules, and disclosure requirements as well as provision of information to the public in a form that is clear and intelligible.
I wouldn’t have expected anything less from the poseur in the White House who really truly believes he knows better than you or your elected representatives; “identify and consider…freedom of choice for the public.”
Sec. 5. Science. Consistent with the President’s Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies,
“Scientific Integrity” (March 9, 2009), and its implementing guidance, each agency shall ensure the objectivity of any scientific and technological information and processes used to support the agency’s regulatory actions.
Sec. 6. Retrospective Analyses of Existing Rules. (a) To facilitate the periodic review of existing significant regulations, agencies shall consider how best to promote retrospective analysis of rules that may be outmoded, ineffective, insufficient, or excessively burdensome, and to modify, streamline, expand, or repeal them in accordance with what has been learned. Such retrospective analyses, including supporting data, should be released online whenever possible.
(b) Within 120 days of the date of this order, each agency shall develop and submit to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs a preliminary plan, consistent with law and its resources and regulatory priorities, under which the agency will periodically review its existing significant regulations to determine whether any such regulations should be modified, streamlined, expanded, or repealed so as to make the agency’s regulatory program more effective or less burdensome in achieving the regulatory objectives.
There it is folks; Congress is now irrelevant.
Sec. 7. General Provisions. (a) For purposes of this order, “agency” shall have the meaning set forth in section 3(b) of Executive Order 12866.
(b) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
(i) authority granted by law to a department or agency, or the head thereof; or
(ii) functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
(c) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
BARACK OBAMA
THE WHITE HOUSE, January 18, 2011.
UPDATE:
A commentor left a note about finding out who is behind the executive orders. I am reposting an article from November 9th, 2010.
World Net Daily is reporting that a Soros funded group, Institute for Policy Studies believes that ‘Progressives Won!’ and because they only lost three members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, they feel justified in writing as many executive orders as possible and ‘pushing’ Obama to do the right thing and sign them now that the blue-dogs have been eliminated. How’s that for some interesting circular thinking America? You must want progressive mandates because you didn’t vote Nancy and her anti-Constitutional cohorts out. Psychotropic drugs anyone?
Dead weight gone. Good Riddance. The blame for the stalemate to come can now fall squarely where it belongs…on the anti-progressive, anti-democratic, anti-populist Republican members of Congress.
Our work is now finally beginning. The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted. We didn’t have it then; We don’t have it now. But what we do have now is a more solidly progressive bunch of Dems in Congress and a president presumably less encumbered by the false illusion that playing nice will get him a date with the other team.
Let’s throw our support unabashedly behind the Congressional Progressive Caucus and let’s push Obama to finally do the right thing through as many Executive Orders as we can present to him.
(Editor’s Note: Please remember that progressives like Soros and the groups he funds are only oneagenda at the table. They aren’t the only ones playing the game of ‘Divide, Conquer, and Pillage America’. My money is still on the international central bankers who, in my opinion, are using the left and the far right to do their dirty work.)
NEW YORK – It was progressives who won the mid-term elections, particularly incumbents in a socialist-founded congressional caucus that emerged from last week’s ballots virtually unscathed, boasted an article published by the George Soros-funded Institute for Policy Studies, a Marxist-oriented think-tank in Washington, D.C.
The article recommends that President Obama govern from executive order to push through a progressive agenda.
“Progressives won in the 2010 mid-term elections,” wrote Karen Dolan, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, or IPS, and director of the Cities for Progress and Cities for Peace projects based at the radical organization.
“The Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House Democratic Caucus at over 80 members, emerged virtually unscathed, losing only three members,” she wrote, in the piece published on the IPS website.
“By contrast, the conservative Blue Dog Democratic caucus was more than sliced in half from 54 members to only 26. Further, of the 34 conservative Dems who voted against Obama’s Healthcare Reform, a mere 12 won re-election,” she wrote.
Dolan declared that “our work is now finally beginning.”
“The veil of a happy Democratic governing majority is finally lifted. We didn’t have it then; We don’t have it now. But what we do have now is a more solidly progressive bunch of Dems in Congress and a president presumably less encumbered by the false illusion that playing nice will get him a date with the other team.”
She went on to recommend that progressives “throw our support unabashedly behind the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and let’s push Obama to finally do the right thing through as many Executive Orders as we can present to him.”
WND reported the Congressional Progressive Caucus was founded by the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA.
Has long supported Communist and anti-American causes around the world
The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) was founded in 1963 as a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization with seed money (derived from a fortune made in cosmetics sales under the Faberge trade name) from the Samuel Rubin Foundation. Samuel Rubin (1901-1978) was a Russian Bolshevik and the father of Cora Weiss, who headed the Samuel Rubin Foundation from its inception and is currently the principal financier of IPS. Weiss’ husband, Peter, is Chairman of the IPS Board of Trustees. He is also a member of the National Lawyers Guild and the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, both of which were created as Communist Party fronts. The Weisses selected Richard J. Barnet and Marcus Raskin to be the first co-directors of IPS, with the aim of transforming the United States by altering public attitudes, changing laws, and reversing foreign policy through an Academy that reached every nexus of the national nervous system.
There is a move on to mix up the seating arrangement at pResident Dipstick’s SOTU speech later this month with Democriminal Mark Udall and Republicriminal Lisa Murkowski leading the ‘civility’ charge.
I say, “Go For It. Let EVERYBODY know who you are!”
I heard about this idea yesterday and also learned that the reason the two parties sit exclusively apart is to show party unity and belief system.
We are being treated to history being made (yet again); the District of Criminals’ Progressive Big Government Party coming out of the closet. I say they should sit together as they are all the same; just look at their voting records.
Momentum is building to mix the traditionally partisan seating arrangements at the State of the Union later this month, even though there’s no clear plan for how to actually make that happen.
Several Senate Republicans have signed on to the effort, along with a few key House leaders, who have endorsed Democratic Sen. Mark Udall’s proposal to head across the aisle – literally – and sit with members of the opposite party during the annual address on Jan. 25.
All told, more than two dozen members of Congress have publicly endorsed the idea.
Congressional seating is open at the State of the Union on a first-come basis, so anyone can sit anywhere — outside of the first few rows reserved for cabinet officials, Supreme Court justices and certain congressional leaders.
The real test will come the evening of the address, when members will choose to sit with their parties or mix it up. But at least on paper, Udall’s request for a “symbolic gesture of unity” is gaining support.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) announced Friday she is now “co-leader” of the initiative, supported by GOP colleagues Sen. John McCain, Maine Sen. Olympia Snowe, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte.
“Congressional reaction to the president’s State of the Union address has increasingly come to symbolize the sharp partisan divide in Congress,” Murkowski said in a statement. “So we think a good first step towards greater civility would be for senators and congressmen, Republicans and Democrats, to sit together in the House chamber on Jan. 25 when President Obama addresses a joint session.”
And in the House, the third-ranking Republican, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, told reporters at his party’s retreat in Baltimore Friday that he’s happy to sit with his Democratic colleague, Minority Leader Steny Hoyer, who is also supportive of Udall’s proposal.
Meanwhile, Majority Leader Eric Cantor also seemed open to the possibility, according to a statement from his spokesman, Brad Dayspring, who told POLITICO that the Virginia Republican is “happy to sit with any of his colleagues during the State of the Union address.”
Udall appears pleased with the reception so far, tweeting Friday that, “Bipartisan seating at the #SOTU is catching on. GOP’s #3 leader, Kevin McCarthy, just said he’s open to it.”
Udall’s office says several of his Senate Democratic colleagues also are on board: Alaska Sen. Mark Begich, California Sen. Barbara Boxer, Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson, Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu, Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman also supports the proposal.
Meanwhile, more than a handful of Democrats in the House also have signed on, including Reps. Heath Shuler of North Carolina, Mike Ross of Arkansas, Jim Matheson of Utah, Sanford Bishop of Georgia and Reps. Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud both of Maine.
But at least one House Democrat has not warmed up to the idea: Rep. Jesse Jackson, a Democrat from Illinois, said: “The president’s speech on economic rights for the American people should bring us together, not the seating chart.”
No need to take names, but….
This will be the first real test of the newly elected Tea Party candidates as the co-opting begins with something incredibly small and seemingly reasonable.
For my readers’ amusement this morning, Nancy Pelosi statements that will make coffee spew out of your nose.
“We still would have lost the election because we had 9.5% unemployment. Let’s take it where that came from. The policies of George W. Bush and the Republican support for his initiatives, tax cuts are for the wealth, recklessness by some,” Minority Leader Pelosi told CNN.
Pelosi: It’s Bush’s Fault:
Pelosi: We “Were All About Market-Oriented Solutions”
And one of Nancy’s comments that will go down in history…
Pelosi: “We Have to Pass the Bill So That You Can Find Out What Is In It”
At mid-day Wednesday, it fell to now-former Speaker Nancy Pelosi to introduce her successor, John Boehner, as he was sworn in as Speaker of the House. Some might have forgotten, but four years ago, on January 4, 2007, it was Boehner (not the departing Dennis Hastert) who introduced Pelosi when she first became Speaker. A look at the two speeches — Pelosi introducing Boehner and Boehner introducing Pelosi — shows striking differences. Boehner’s 2007 speech, coming after Republicans were trounced at the polls in November 2006, was self-effacing, gracious, and non-partisan. Pelosi’s 2011 speech, coming after Democrats were trounced at the polls in November 2010, was self-serving, sharp, and partisan.
Start with Pelosi introducing Boehner. The outgoing Speaker began with some boilerplate about the importance of the occasion and then turned to a subject she has addressed many times in the past four years: herself. Her time as the first woman Speaker, Pelosi said, “means that more doors are wide open for all of America’s daughters and granddaughters.” Then Pelosi cast herself as the defender of America’s children in general, “their health, their education, the safety of the air they breathe, the water they drink, and the food they eat.”
Pelosi then launched into a list of Democratic legislation — college loans, financial regulation, and, especially, national health care (which she referred to as a “patient’s bill of rights.”) that was passed during her time as Speaker. That led to a recitation of Obamacare talking points. “It means children with pre-existing conditions can get coverage; young people can stay on their parents’ plans until age 26; pregnant women and breast and prostate cancer patients can no longer be thrown off the insurance rolls; our seniors are paying less for needed prescription drugs; [and] taken together, this will save the taxpayers $1.3 trillion,” Pelosi said.
She wasn’t finished. Pelosi touted the Lilly Ledbetter Act, veterans’ legislation, and ended on a commitment, not observed during her time in the Speaker’s chair, to evaluate every piece of legislation on the basis of whether or not it creates jobs. Only then did Pelosi offer a few kind words for Boehner.
Contrast that with Boehner’s speech introducing Pelosi on January 4, 2007. It was about 40 percent shorter and began with Boehner celebrating Pelosi’s achievement as first woman Speaker. “Today marks an occasion that I think the Founding Fathers would view approvingly,” he said. “And my fellow Americans, whether you are a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, today is a cause for celebration.”
Max Keiser makes an interesting point when he states that Monsanto’s seeds are a form of fiat currency (debt), and Stacy explains why Europe has turned their backs on GMOs.
Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert on Truthout.org’s story:
Once again, not seeing any difference between Bush and Obama.
The former United States ambassador to France suggested “moving to retaliation” against France and the European Union (EU) in late 2007 to fight a French ban on Monsanto’s genetically modified (GM) corn and changes in European policy toward biotech crops, according to a cable released by WikiLeaks on Sunday.
Former Ambassador Craig Stapleton was concerned about France’s decision to suspend cultivation of Monsanto’s MON-810 corn and warned that a new French environmental review standard could spread anti-biotech policy across the EU.
“Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but that also focuses in part on the worst culprits,” Stapleton wrote to diplomatic colleagues.
President George W. Bush appointed Stapleton as ambassador to France in 2005, and in 2009, Stapleton left the office and became an owner of the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team. Bush and Stapleton co-owned the Texas Rangers during the 1990s.
Monsanto is based in St. Louis.
The EU’s 1998 approval of MON-810 corn has since expired. In recent years, several European countries joined France in banning MON-810 and similar biotech crops while the products are reassessed in light of research showing they could harm the environment and human health.
(NaturalNews) The manufacturers of the most prevalent sweetener in the world have a secret, and it`s not a sweet one. Aspartame, an artificial sweetener found in thousands of products worldwide, has been found to be created using genetically modified (GM) bacteria. What`s even more shocking is how long this information has been known. A 1999 article by The Independent was the first to expose the abominable process in which aspartame was created. Ironically, the discovery was made around the same time as rich leaders around the globe met at the G8 Summit to discuss the safety of GM foods.
The 1999 investigation found that Monsanto, the largest biotech corporation in the world, often used GM bacteria to produce aspartamein their US production plants. The end result is a fusion between two of the largest health hazards to ever hit the food industry —artificial sweeteners and an array of genetically altered organisms. Both have led to large-scale debate, with aspartame being the subject of multiple congressional hearings and scientific criticism. Scientists and health advocates are not the only ones to speak out against aspartame, however. The FDA received a flurry of complaints from consumers using NutraSweet, a product containing aspartame. Since 1992,the FDA has stopped documenting reports on the subject.
