Gov. Snyder signs bill to limit Michigan abortion clinics, kills his Blues overhaul

Gov Rick Snyder (GOP – Michigan) continues the Republican’s War on Women, but the klutz screwed up his own Blue Cross Blue Shield overhaul in the process. This is what happens when religious fanaticism, in this case Christianism, overtakes sanity. At least he’s not as stupid as tGOP Gov Bob McDonnell of Virginia, who had “trans-vaginal ultrasound” brainwave, but it still is medically unnecessary coercion. What puzzles me is where these Christian crazies got the idea to attack abortion and deny a woman’s right to decide what to do with her own body. After all, there’s nothing in the Christian Bible that forbids abortion.

His excuse that it is a “question of women’s health and safety” is the most pathetic I’ve heard in a long time. If that’s what he was really concerned about, he’d just get the Hell out of the way and let women deal with their own bodies the way they see fit.

[From The Detroit News by Karen Bouffard and Christine MacDonald] Lansing — Gov. Rick Snyder has scuttled his own plan to make Blue Cross Blue Shield a mutual liability insurance company in order to veto a provision that would have banned the Blues from providing standard abortion coverage.

In an interview Friday with The News, Snyder said he has signed another bill to require abortion clinics be licensed, but believes it is wrong to tell private insurers and employers what they can negotiate in their contracts.

The governor said his decisions on both bills follow threats from people on both sides of the abortion issue, and personal soul searching.

Snyder said the measure covering abortion clinics, House Bill 5711, was vastly revised since it was introduced earlier this year, and that many of the most controversial portions were deleted.

The bill requires that doctors screen patients to make sure they haven’t been coerced into
having an abortion, and requires that fetal remains be disposed of in the manner already used by clinics, Snyder said. It will also require that clinics performing more than 120 abortions per year be licensed.

“To be screened for coercion is a reasonable thing,” Snyder said in an interview this afternoon with The News. “It is really a question of women’s health and safety.”

[Full story]

The Republican Tea Party Contract On America

This “Contract On America” is a must-read. If you have not yet been convinced that a vote for the Republicans and Tea Party will be a vote for the utter destruction of America and of her middle-class and poor, and for the devaluing of America’s position in the World, you’ll be convinced after you read this.

Read “The Republican Tea Party Contract On America” here.

Huge Support For Obama Jobs And Tax Proposals

A new Gallup Poll indicates that two out of three Americans agree with President Obama’s new jobs bill, and seven out of ten agree with his plan to close corporate tax loopholes. Yet, Conservatives block their ears and have come up with a new talking point – “class warfare”. This talking point is hilarious, when you consider that Republican Presidents and Republican-controlled Congresses have engaged in extreme class warfare since 1980with their successful program of transferring America’s wealth away from the middle class and into the pockets of the rich.

This is the link to the poll: Gallup

President Obama and his American Jobs Act

Motoko Rich wrote a piece in The New York Times about President Obama’s new jobs plan and what some employers say about hiring more employees.

Rich wrote: “The plan failed to generate any optimism on Wall Street as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index and the Dow Jones industrial average each fell about 2.7 percent.” This is a patently absurd statement. The stock market fell because of concerns over European debt, primarily that of Greece, and over the exposure of European and American backs if Greece went belly up. It had nothing to do with Obama’s American Jobs Act.

Then Rich talks about “… perceived obstacles to business expansion like government regulation ..”. This is pretty much a talking point propagated by Conservatives. It’s true that America’s biggest polluters, the multinational energy companies, and America’s biggest rip-off merchants, the banks, may be queasy about new regulations, but, by and large, small businesses don’t have too much to worry about in this area.

Overall, however, Rich’s article highlighted one thing that that I, and many others like me, have been beating the drums about – namely, that demand creates jobs; that businesses wont hire if there’s no demand for their goods.

Over the past thirty years, we have learned the powerful lesson that supply-side, or trickle-down, economics is truly “voodoo economics” and that George H W Bush got it right. Today, multinationals are sitting on trillions of dollars of cash, but wont invest it in job creation, because there is no demand for their goods. Likewise, small businesses, America’s greatest job creation engine, are facing the same problem – lack of demand.

The only way to create demand in a slow economy is to get spending money into the hands of those who actually spend it – the middle class and the poor. The only entity that can do that is the Federal Government. Obama’s program will work, if the GOP and Tea Party hostage-takers don’t deliberately screw it up.

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GOP Idiocy – Lower Health Spending by Increasing It

From ThinkProgress.org by Igor Volsky

“Inside Health Policy’s Sahil Kapur reports that Republicans on the Super Committee continue to insist on lowering the health spending by increasing it — that is, repealing the one law that will not only reduce the deficit over 10 years, but also slow the rate of growth in national health expenditures.”

This is another moronic idea from the far-from-intellectual House Energy and Commerce Chair Fred Upton (R-WI)

It is apparent that the Anti-American GOP-TeaParty have no interest in Real Americans or the health of America’s economy. They are solely interested in transferring America to the Multinationals, padding the pockets of the rich, and making Americans subservient to the Dominionism Cult.

These clowns must be voted out of office before America is ruined beyond recovery.

The GOP: Anti-American Barbarians in our Midst

Today’s Conservatives have crossed the line from Anti-Americanism into being an Occupying Terrorist Force. They make Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun look like amateurs when it comes to raping and pillaging – although today’s Conservatives  specialize in attacking only the poor, middle class and sick, the weakest parts of society. Like true pillagers, today’s Conservatives send their spoils back to their masters, except, in their case, their masters live in the United States of America and comprise the multinational corporations and many of the rich.

This article, by Marie Diamond and published by ThinkProgress.com, highlights a part of this raping and pillaging conducted by today’s Conservatives; another illustration of their despicable tyranny in America:

“Yesterday [Sep 6], Missouri lawmakers began a special session during which Republicans will try to pay for a business tax cut by eliminating a tax creditthat benefits more than 100,000 senior citizens and disabled people.

Missouri Republicans are just the latest in a long list of state legislatures that are funding more corporate tax breaks on the backs of low- and middle-income residents. In this case, Republicans are targeting a property tax credit that helps offset higher rent for some of the state’s most vulnerable citizens:

At stake is a tax credit that provides up to $750 for lower-income elderly and disabled people. Called the “Circuit Breaker,” it is designed to be an offset for the property taxes included in the rent paid by people with incomes of $27,500 or less. The tax credit costs $53 million annually. Repeal is part of a package that also would impose limits and sunset dates on credits targeted to developers. The Circuit Breaker tax credit is the only credit slated for repeal.

“The real issue is that many people with disabilities simply can’t own their own homes because they live on a subsistence income,” said Edward Duff of Joplin, a member of the Governor’s Council on Disability. “It really is a sort of parity to offer these renters this shelter.”

Once again, Republicans have shown they are not averse to raising taxes, as long as they are on the poor. The “circuit-breaker” tax credit is such an important aid for low-income residents that 29 other states offer property tax circuit-breakers or similar programs, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Killing the credit would raise taxes on groups including disabed vets and senior citizens by up to $750 a year.”

[Read the full story here]

Conservatives are wrong on climate economics

There is an excellent article on Grist.org, by David Roberts, about the growing anti-science phenomenon amongst Conservatives – and of the economic lies that surround it. The multinationals are behind most of it, using their corporate wealth to produce anti-environmental propaganda, false economic “theologies” about potential job and economic losses, and political talking-points for use against President Barack Obama and his Environmental Protection Agency. Why the Mainstream Media has failed to challenge these Corporate-Conservative fantasies is quite a mystery

As David Roberts says:

“The fact that conservatives are so proudly flat-earth on climate science has preoccupied the press and pundits to the point that it’s obscured another conservative pathology, one that is, if anything, more consequential: their discredited take on the economics of climate policy.”

[Full story]