Saturday, December 22, 2012

Lawrence O'Donnell's First Word on Wayne La Pierre's Friday Speech.


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I have no words left for how creepy La Pierre is, but his salary is more than 99.94% of Americans. That is what he is protecting, not you. O'Donnell has other things to say about La Pierre's creepy cash cow.

Data on Wayne La Pierre's income classification


I used Think Progress report on how many Americans make over $1 m per year from late Oct 2011,  I had severe trouble finding what meager percent earned that amount last week when I was trying to write a post on John Boehner's proposal to only raise taxes on those making over $1 million a year so I jumped on the TP report's data.  I also used info from BLS.gov on Nov 2011 summary report for size of the civilian work force and from Wikipedia on the size of the US military in 2010 to add the non civilian work force.

A good short URL for this is http://x.co/r7nn

Things Bill @Bill_Lenner and I @CA_Lady tweeted today (besides auto send from posting today's posts here and at tumblr.

It's only $35 a year to join NRA That's a magazine subscription and gigantic sign saying "Spam Me with Gun Ads!" not a real non profit.
Info on the above came from the NRA website as I accessed it this morning.

The #NRA is the desperate "cheap date" of nonprofits.

Wayne La Pierre's $1m/yr salary is more than the earnings of 99.94% of Americans' That's what he's really protecting. x.co/r7nn

I heard years ago that the#NRA was throwing life memberships at NRA members who were driven away by their new r/w cow piles. Sry no link

RE twitter.com/KathrynBruscoB…Good idea. Put a teacher in every gun store, one fully versed in teaching common sense, and shut it down...

Aspergers syndrome is not a dangerous mental illness, but Schizophrenia often emerges in late teens early 20s. #newtown shooting


(I Hope we weren't too ignorant on that.  I'm just tired of hearing that the Aspergers made Adam Lanza kill those kids .)

I've seen gun lockers going for $150 even in affluent So California. If a person buys a $700 gun they can buy a gun locker or they shld wait 



There were two armed officers trying to stop the Columbine shooting and they could not. See:Columbine High School Had Armed Guard During Massacre In 1999

Tuesday, December 18, 2012

SOS Alert! Save Our Social Security Now! Time for Action!


The old days:

In the old days people used to be able to plan to retire in  a location like this.  Remove a few trees, grade and lay down  a short lane of gravel leading to a county road, and build a modest home, or live in a less expensive city from which you could reach the kids and grandkids homes easily, but not too close to major employments centers with the crowding and the noise and fumes.  Or maybe you'd stay in the big city and take up a sport or hobby that would help extend your life, and or otherwise keep you active and meeting people.

These kinds of things were normal.

Now:

Now they are only for the select few.  There are many reasons  for that, most of which are completely different than the reasons that mainstream "explainers" from the news system to politicians both of which are dependent on money from the wealthiest people, tell us.  The theft and destruction of our retirement moneys, was and is a grand theft by the wealthy and powerful from the middle and working classes as well as the poor and sick or elderly.

We once had a three legged stool set up for retirement.  Saving accounts that paid a decent interest, maybe 5-7% over inflation, pension funds from our jobs because it was considered a basic human right that if you employed a person for 20 or 30 years you owed them a retirement, and Social Security, which the GOP has called an "entitlement" for enough decades that everyone now calls it the same, some with a sneer on their lips as if we are spoiled children of fat cats who intend to feed off the prosperous carcasses of our dead parents or at least their trust funds.  In fact, though, we have run the numbers and shown that you earn your Social Security and pay a painful portion of your paycheck every year for it.  Two of those legs, savings with reasonable returns and pensions, have been damaged or completely disappeared for most Americans leaving those who still have pension plans in place at risk of having them suddenly disappear.  IRAs get stolen from with ever increasing fees, and lowering interest rates, Savings account are earning less than a percent per year for most people, though interest on many unsecured loans are often over 30% a year.  And many employers have dropped pensions completely by contract renegotiation, bankruptcy which a GOP packed SCOTUS decided could disappear pension funds, or just ornery assholeness by bosses that are as bad in heart as those who created the horrific work conditions of the 19th century when they were called Robber Barons.


If you have an employer, they do pay half of your Social Security savings, but have always maintained that if they didn't have to pay they would immediately raise wages to compensate. Most knowledgeable sources believe that to be a phony gambit.  What the wealthy want is for the Social Security lock box to be broken so they can get their hands on it or at least to reduce your return, but as we showed in the linked article above, you do earn the entire amount via your direct payments to Social Security and your employers' payments if given just a modest but reasonable interest enough for you to be paid out for 40 years after 40 years of employment (at an average of the wages you were paid over that career).

Now you can go now and write your US House Representative and your two Senators and tell them you will not accept a vote from them to delay Social Security or even Medicare which would be easily fixed by negotiating drug prices, for years or reduce benefits and that you will be learning how they voted (we will post the votes here) and you won't believe the lies they tell you about why they "had to do that".

Also tell your Republican representative that you also know that he or she and his or her partners Gerrymandered the GOP to power in the US House of Representatives and you won't stand for that.

That will be overturned so they cannot count on stealing your political rights to give your retirement and Medicare money to fat cats and stay in power.  Things are going to happen FOR THE PEOPLE from now on, with or without them in office.

How to Contact Congressionals:

Find your current US House representative at House.gov.
You can select "Contact Your Rep's Name"  and then select "Email" from the drop box which will allow you to do just that (involving possibly your complete address including 4 digit zipcode extension (findable via link below) or you can select "Office Information" from the chart for DC and local office addresses, phone, fax, and hours.

Apparently the government site wants to act as your email service, but I doubt they will allow you to contact more than one Representative and two related Senators.   I'm going to go try it as soon as I finish here.


And your Senators names and emails can be found at Senate.gov
Ditto on the controls.

Those two above will require a zip-code possibly with the 4 number extension which can be found at USPS.com by going to "Look up a zip-code" and clicking, upon which a small secondary window will open asking for at least a partial address, usually at least the street and any postal box number and city or 5 figure zip code .  It will also ask for an email address.  I've never tried it but understand the Republicans do write to multiple sets of Congressionals each even if that isn't really nice, I guess from multiple email boxes that have been passed out like popcorn for the last couple of decades.  I've never been a spammer, but I'm told that the right passes around  email addresses of Congressionals like a lifeguard slathers on  suncream for use by their "nickel a tweet or email" squads paid from funds set up by very wealthy individuals.  This might be focused mostly on representatives of the same swing states that determine presidential candidates as the most common turnovers of House seats also occur in those areas.

This site Contacting the Congress will deliver to you personally the emails for your Congressman or woman and Senators along with their DC phone and DC fax numbers which, I assume, you can use via any email account or phone, fax. I suppose those are current.  If your Congressman has changed for 2013, this is still valid right now because there will be votes on the so-called fiscal cliff this week.  --(It is not a cliff, but is being hyped by our fat cat financed news system so that the GOP can take your money and give it to their fat cat donors, to be returned to as over priced ad purchases or for the Congressionals' campaign funds and SuperPAC ads to re-elect them, increasing their own personal power and wealth while you face a retirement without the money you actually put into it and a reasonable return.

If the challenge goes into the new Congress next year, we will try to figure this out again and make sure your new Congressionals, if not the same are available to you.  There are forces that, not only attempt to keep information from you, but  to keep your ideas from your Congressionals.  We will try to help.

But contact your Representative and Senators today.  They may make their decision tonight or tomorrow.   Do not wait a minute.  Tell them to not touch Social Security funds or age or the  Medicare age.  You will be keeping track!

The Obama administration has a bill pending to keep any immediate pain by regular Americans from being felt by going over the fiscal "cliff".  That is another thing being squashed by the Gerrymandered US House.  Tell  your Congressmembers that you are aware the Republicans are the main problem and that you will be watching to see if they personally join in opposing action to solve the matter in an equitable manner.

A good short URL for this post is http://x.co/qvVW

Picture above of slope and frozen creek in California's "Gold Country" used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user "El Caganer" who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

Michigan's Name for the Workplace Fairness and Equity Act is a Lie

Videos should come down within a minute...
More:
Jennifer Granholm is the former governor of Michigan, so she knows her stuff. Rick Sniyder was elected on the basis of lies when Governor Granholm was termed out.

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Michigan Your GOP Has Reduced You to Slave Level In Your National Voting Power


Michigan.  At least each  of your citizens is worth 3/5ths of a person, the proverbial value given to slaves in national representation before the Civil War.  That means you're doing 50% better than the 2/5ths of a person that citizens of Louisiana have been rendered and 140% better than 1.24/5ths of a person that the GOP have made the people of Pennsylvania.

This is at the national level only,  I am still researching your statewide representation, but now that even the Detroit Free Press has acknowledged you are losing your representative rights I'm guessing your statewide representation is just as bad, if not worse. (The news media is more and more dependent on the money of billionaires and everyone from the editor to the gofer knows it.  They only admit to having a clue about the take over of our government by the people who give the their paychecks when it becomes more than obvious that everyone is going to know soon anyway.)

** Maddow has shown in a video that it is nearly as bad at the state level too.  In fact more Michigan citizens voted for Democrats in the state legislature than for Republicans this, but your state House will still be Republican because of self interested Gerrymandering of the GOP. This can be changed, by referendum, I  assuming, because the SCOTUS decided that redistricting can be done at any time.  I am also told that the increased Democratic presence in the Michigan House along with moderate Republicans may be enough to overturn the decisions made by this lame duck session.  If not, I'm sure the people of Michigan will take action.  Hopefully even recalling Rick Snyder before the end of his turn.

I find DFP's posturing as if they just discovered criminally abusive government in Lansing to be amusing if not outrageous.  I guess they were too busy cashing their nice paychecks from their fat cat backers and spending the money to look around and see how their readers were getting mauled by the GOP which took a heavy majority in the 2010 elections through lies and previous Gerrymandering and then made it much worse or to run the numbers and discover they were helping to end democracy in Michigan.  Taking away citizens rights do not create jobs that give their citizens a decent lifestyle, it creates modern day slavery as everyone but the racists can now see, even the sold out "mainstream" press.

But how did we come to the conclusion that Michigan's citizens' rights are being taken away at the federal level?

By checking the discrepancy between the presidential vote in the state and the percentage of the total number of Congressional seats each party has won.

Obama won the state of Michigan 54.3% to Mitt Romney's 44.8%.  We can reduce personality foibles leading to decisions by adding the alternative liberal and conservative 3rd percentages to the main presidential candidates'.  "Liberal" candidates then won 54.7% of the votes in Michgan for president and more "Conservative" ones 45.3%.

Yet Democrats won only 5 seats out of 14.

One of the likeliest places that defined Gerrymandering took place was around Detroit.  Congressmembers John Conyers and Gary Peters  both won with over 80% of their vote, while two neighboring  Republican Congressmembers won with only 50.8% and 58.3%.   Meanwhile Congressman John Dingell won with 67.3% of the vote, while his neighboring Congressional incumbent, Tim Walberg won with only 53.3%.  Well you say that's just the luck of the draw.  No, it may be about drawing, but not about luck.

Look to the left. Those neat boxes within Michigan's mitten shape  and northwestern extension are it's counties. Simple nice utilitarian boxy shapes.

Now look to the right.  Those crazy shapes are Michigan's US House Districts.  There is nothing utilitarian about them.  They're like a jigsaw puzzle.   Why?  Apparently to maximize Republican control of the US House of Representatives.  Funny because we learned in high school government class that the House of Representatives was the people's house which better followed the  wishes of Americans, but if GOP candidates do not have to do the people's will, that is all gone and we are left with our weaker hold on the Senate, because GOP House members can sell our rights to their fat cat backers.  Now do you understand why we non wealthy citizens pay billionaires in tax cuts to take our jobs to China, and why 70% of Americans were against invading Iraq, but we went anyway?

One more point:  GOP members may think they are getting a good deal by this Gerrymandering, but if they can't change their mind and still have the same level of rights, then they do not have those rights in the first place.

This is not just a student's study problem.  They can impoverish us and even kill us, our children, our parents, and our spouses or other loved ones, because they first destroyed our voting rights.

Also see Florida Citizens Your GOP Has Reduced Your National Electoral Rights to 1.6/5ths of a Human Being
Pennsylvania Your GOP Have Reduced You To 1.25/5ths of Of a Person

Congratulations Louisiana! Your GOP has rendered all of you to 2/5ths of a human being through Gerrymandering


A short URL for this post is:  http://bit.ly/18ceDRd

Yes, Virginia, There Is A Constitutional Crisis


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy


You may be able to see on the right two states that I analyzed recently "Popular Posts" Pennsylvania and Louisiana, and another one in Blog Archive for Florida (also available at the links in the sentence).

I was working on Michgan's loss of voting rights, and will continue to do so, to show Wolverines how their GOP have taken away them away and that's why they can take their union rights.  I plan to  continue with other states.  It is not true that Southern states are immune because of the "Civil Rights Act" as some liberals claimed earlier.  I will also put up the part of Rachel's video that shows why this theft of voting rights is so important (even beyond the anti union measures).  Rachel covered that well.

Indeed many Americans' rights have been disappeared.  That's why we have to give our money to fat cats so they can take our jobs to China and then we have to fight wars for Israel.  The election theft of 2000 was so beautiful and they got 2 wars for it!  That's what they call success and they are looking for that kind of power again.  People understood after seeing so many die how bad not voting is.  (Yet right wingers on Twitter were claiming that state legislatures and the US House of Representatives went Republican simple because Democrats stayed home and didn't vote.  That is, of course, BS.  Obama wouldn't have won the states if Dems stayed home.  And as Rachel showed (and I was thinking the other day) you can show that voters specifically voted for Democratic representatives more than Republican ones by adding up all the races in the state.  I can't find the state legislature numbers tonight, but I'll try to get the US House seats analysis done really quickly.

We have to get active and stop this, right now.  Your life, or your kids, or grandkids lives are at stake.

We can't stop wars if our rights are being disappeared.

In a final note:  I'm from California. We faced our own inequalities a few years ago, actually pushed by the governor who shall not be named.  Okay, I'm kidding.  I've maligned our action hero Gubernator a lot, but the redistricting by special panel that I was so worried about worked out well and wasn't hijacked by conservatives.  It did increase the number of Democratic seats in both the state legislature and the US House from our state.  The redistricting panel was specifically set up to have two representatives for each major party, a few set aside specifically for minor parties, and then some for our minority groups.  Obviously, some of those minority groups were going to be representaed by either Republicans or Democrats most likely Democrats because the GOP has made a long term practice to chip away at rights to minorities and less affluent people.  If you do that, guess what, those minorities are going to  not like your party.  California got its democracy back.  Other states should do the same, because there are big money interests who want you to pay them more in tax cuts and go to war for them.

And all our middle class and poor families, and young adults have are our votes.  Our votes have to represent us.  And if one party is able to disappear our votes with Gerrymandering.. That's the worst Constitutional Crisis we've ever faced in my lifetime, and probably underlies all the other problems we have.

A good short URL for this post is http://x.co/qgcg 

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Steve Colbert Explains Everything (That Jon Stewart Didn't) To Us


Steve tackles the day's new threats

And California judge blocks a block of Gay Reparative Therapy

A good short URL for this pot is http://x.co/qctP

You may notice that there is a clear copyright symbol on all these videos.  But the sites for Colbert's and Stewart's videos have a readily available embed code for each of them which is usually a sign that it's okay to pass them along.  (I often helps people realize what they are missing if they can't currently get the channel themselves, and in the future they may choose to order it, or beg their parents, or to make sure to check the websites for themselves.

The Daily Show: Jon Stewart, Etc on Michigan's Right To Work Law and Competition With Indiana

First he explains. Then he raps!

Then Jason Jones and Aasif Mondvi compete for Indiana and Michigan in a race to the bottom.

A Shorter URL for this post is http://x.co/qcl9

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Did Dick Morris and NewsMax Run a Con on Donors?

Journalist claims to have found evidence that Morris and Newsmax are scamming conservatives. Keep sending them your money, folks. They have lots of silk shirts and expensive suits to buy. The video seems to come down slowly (or maybe it's just my computer or connection right now), but it does come. A good short URL for this is: http://x.co/qZGY

Sunday, December 9, 2012

Florida Citizens Your GOP Has Reduced Your National Electoral Rights to 1.6/5ths of a Human Being

Not all of Florida's Dangerous Creatures Live in the Swamps.
A lot of them hang around Tallahassee much of the year.


Florida's GOP state representatives and their fat cat backers have made a Florida citizen's vote worth less than that attributed to an Antebellum slave.

The recent election has exposed many states broken political system by which the wealthy have bought up the votes and the power in the GOP party and are using them to destroy democracy so they can enslave Americans, enrich and empower themselves, and even start new wars as business ventures, without worrying about the backlash from people seeing their children dragged out of their homes to face Iran's chemical and biological weapons when the Universal Draft plan, that is already set up, is triggered.

We found a Florida citizen's worth by calculating Florida's US House districts won by each party in the 2012 election and then compared that with the state-wide vote for the presidential race.  In this case we could have also compared it with the state-wide race for senator which would have made it look even worse as Democratic candidate  for senate, Ben Nelson, got 55.2% of the vote compared to Connie Mack's 42.2% while Obama got 50% compared to 49.1% for Mitt Romney.

That being said, Obama weighted Florida's US House results less than other states that went for him and Romney's win in Louisiana reduced the effects of the GOP result in Louisiana.

To the left you will see the FL counties that went for each presidential candidate.  Notice that counties tend to be blocked out either in  rectangular forms or following natural or community lines.

On the other hand Florida's US House Districts are more imaginative, some even getting downright snaky, both a result of the desire of the majority of the GOP packed Florida state legislature drawing lines to make more Republican seats in the US House of  Representatives. The 5th district is like a cobra dancing to the flute of an East Indian charmer with a gourd flute. Harder to see is the 27th House district that is almost pinched in two by FL 26 which you can see on the original map where the districts lighten when you roll over them.  A very valuable beach area was protected from inclusion within two heavily democratic areas that would more sensibly be cut into three more balanced districts making them more competitive.

Another illustration is  found up in the blue snake near the top of the state.

Florida's 5th is likely to be a district protected by the Civil Rights Act, but the incumbent and winner Corinne Brown was in the 3rd district before the post 2010 redistricting.  Her win increased  from 63% to 70% while one neighboring district this year was won by a Republican with only 57% of the vote, showing that at least one Democrat majority district was likely torn up and stuffed into multiple Republican majority districts a well as part going into the 5th.  I don't have the full information on the neighboring districts, and Gerrymandering tricks make it difficult for someone without full information on demographics of the state that only the state legislature may have to do the work.

The Gerrymandering of the US House districts should be seen as a scandal worse than Watergate though that phrase is overused elsewhere.  So lets just leave it described as making Florida's citizen's into 1.6 5ths of a person or worth a little over 1/2 of the value of a slave before he or she was released by Lincolns proclamation over 150 years ago.

Feeling free now Florida? Or are you ready to tackle the bad governance you are getting from your state legislature and Governor.  The good news is that the US Supreme Court decided that Texas could redistrict itself after the 2002 election less than 2 years after the 2000 census based redistricting.  The bad news is that your state legislature is still controlled by the GOP.  So you are going to have to go for a statewide citizen's referendum, however that works with your laws.

Contact local Democrats and tell them you want your rights back.  Talk to your neighbors and friends on and off the Internet and tell them about what you've learned.  Tell them they are worth only 1.6 5ths of a person because of the state's Republicans and that you need that fixed to keep fat cats from stealing from everyone.  Republicans are not immune from this lack of electoral rights since if a person cannot change their mind and retain his or her voting rights rights, he or she does not have them in the first place.  If  Republicans can't stop the GOP from declaring war and starting a draft they don't have any more power than you to save themselves, their children, or grandchildren. And the people cannot stop their legislators from voting for harm to them or their families if those legislators are protected by Gerrymandering.

Short link for this post is: http://x.co/qPgv or now prefered bit.ly/1bf9Khf

Picture above used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user WalterPro4755 who has no connection to this blog or blogger.

Monday, December 3, 2012

Can We Just Get the Facts Straight? There is No Fiscal Cliff Looming, Except for Grover Norquist


The last thing you'll see when we reach "The Fiscal Cliff"?  LOL  That's all BS.

The "Fiscal Cliff" is a meme started by a liberal news host that has been misused by John Boehner, right wing pundits and politicians, and the sold out mainstream press.

I wasn't sure, but I suspected when Lawrence O'Donnell started walking back his talking points of going off the "Fiscal Cliff" that he had been the instigator of the meme this fall.  Otherwise, why did he think he could stop the BS?

Just a few days ago, I saw a clip in which the "fiscal cliff" was derided as something out of a liberal talk host's mind, and now I'm even more sure he was.  O'Donnell has some pretty firm ties to Hollywood (having worked with the writers of The West Wing) and was probably able to get the rights to show the very end of the movie Thelma and Louise, I'm guessing, so, you can guess that it was just too fun to not use the "Fiscal Cliff" meme with the ladies defying the law and driving that classic car off into the Grand Canyon (as described by Wikipedia.  I thought they were in Texas, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.  Note to self see if this is on Netflix. )

But in the last few weeks O'Donnell has been trying to calm people down and explain that what is looming is more like a fiscal curb or even better a fiscal driveway, a gentle slope.  In fact, though the right has adopted the meme and is trying to convince Americans to hammer on their representatives and Senators to AVOID THE FISCAL CLIFF EVEN IF YOU HAVE TO TAKE AWAY OUR SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE BECAUSE, YOU KNOW, JOBS!!!

Yes, the GOP in their reduced power is wailing and trying to scam us even harder.  There is so much wrong with that.  First of all, Social Security is paid for by over 15% in taxes deductions taken from your pay, half from you directly and half paid by your employer --that is claimed every time business owners want to reduce their portion of that tax.  As a self employed businessperson, I pay both halves, so I know it is true that someone has to pay the other half.  But the right started calling it an "entitlement" years ago as if you're a baby crying for a free lollipop.  I really can't think of  better illustration of  how

So 15% of a person's pay goes into the SS funds until he or she makes over 110k a year (this year).  Many have pointed out that if that cap disappeared there would be no deficit in the SS funds for 75 more  years.  And the changes that happen when Dubya and Cheney's tax cuts for the wealthy expire will strengthen our economy by reducing debt.

The political reality of the fiscal cliff is to get beyond the end date of the Dubya tax cuts that gave so much away to the already wealthy that Dick Cheney was laughing at us because he was going to get so much from the government, and we peasants were going to be screwed.  That is the real fiscal cliff.  John Boehner is just lying about tragedy that might strike if we do the Thelma and Louise scene.

After those tax cuts expire on January 1, 2013, then the pledge that Republicans made to Norquist (an unelected power abuser) will be completely irrelevant because any tax cuts the Congress votes for are new tax cuts and therefore "the Norquist pledge" to never raise taxes is moot.  (Norquist is just a tool of the billionaires who funnel money into the SuperPACS to be used to bribe Congressional and other candidates, but most of that was shown to be much less effective than they thought by the recent election.  The fact that the GOP had to Gerrymander US House districts to get a majority there shows that people can get elected without them if they are willing to do the peoples' will.)  Personally, before I'd give into Norquist myself, I'd hop into the driver seat and drive, but the political rality is that it's not going to be that spectacular, or horrible.  It's just a meme that has gone wild due to GOP lies and power-whoring.

Score! I found the video with the last moments of Thelma and Louise on YouTube. I like how they work the music in with it. The video is small but you can choose full screen and make it a little  bigger. Ads do show up on it, but click the x and they go away.  They come with the video. Sorry.


Bonus: I have a video with the short version of the last moments of "Thelma and Louise" and then there is a lot of explaining being done about the new GOP gambit to talk Americans into telling their Congress members to vote for dropping tax deductions instead of raising taxes on the wealthy. That would be stupid and disastrous for honest charities, and home owners. Reducing the value of homes right now wouldn't be good and the home loan deduction is one factor keeping home values up, and what Grinch wants charities to have to close and stop helping the poor and the sick?

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Picture at top used via Creative Commons License Attribution (CC by 2.0) thanks to Flickr user  DaSon'e who has no connection with this blog or blogger.
Short link to this post= http://x.co/qAX7

Sunday, December 2, 2012

Pennsylvania Your GOP Have Reduced You To 1.25/5ths of Of a Person


Congratulations Pennsylvania!  Each of your citizens are worth 1.25/5ths of a human in regards to having your say in our supposedly democratic federal government.  You can thank the GOP for that.

Remember how they consolidated control after they grabbed power in 2010 elections promising Job Jobs Jobs.  Their real goal was reducing your say in government, therefore giving their fat cat backers substantially more power over your lives than they are supposed to have.  All the wealthy have to do is dump money into the GOP coffers.

As we have seen, the GOP then decides what is good for America and for your state is to let the wealthy control everything through privatization, the destruction  of unions who protect workers, even offering partial support to non unionized employees through their existence.  ( I am not working for a union, nor am I in one.)  The GOP is also behind many laws that allow, even reward the outsourcing of our jobs.  Do you know that they even have passed laws that give tax cuts explicitly for outsourcing? The GOP now wants to take your Social Security money that you pay over 15% of your salary for each year, and reduce your payments so they don't have to force their backers to take fewer tax cuts on their incredible salaries to fix the budget, and so they can continue to spend more on wars.

To see what happened look to the left.  That is a map of the counties of Pennsylvania showing which went for Obama and which went for Romney with the usual colors.  The gray ones were too close to call.  I'm not sure if they are now or not.  That doesn't matter because counties do not get 1 vote each, like US House districts do.  Neither does the larger red area indicate more Republican support. Acres and mile do not vote, people do and the large populations in the blue areas went for Obama. 

Out of 18 US House districts Democratic voters were highly packed into only 5, even though Obama and liberal leaning Jill Stein won 51.4% of votes for president while Mitt Romney and conservative leaning Gary Johnson won 47.7% of the presidential vote.  5 out of 18 seats equals .28 of the total available.  But we have to weight that with the fact that liberal presidential candidates won 1.099 times more votes than the conservative candidates for president so we divide the .28 by 1.099 and get .25 or 2.5 10ths or 1.25/5ths of a person.  Unfortunately that's a worse scenario than Louisiana.  YIKES!  And a lot worse than the 3/5ths of a person that slaves were considered before the Civil War.  I would consider a score of 4.5/5ths to be decently represented considering candidate variability", but 1.25/5ths of  a person is ridiculous.

Being a member or siding with the Republican party does not fix that scenario, since, if you can't change your mind and keep your rights, you don't have those rights, only the same number of rights as those who are most denied theirs.

That is why the Republicans are able to sell the rights of all the people of PA to the fat cats, and are working on the rights of the rest of us in the nation.

To the left here are the US House districts of Pennsylvania.  You can see some special Gerrymandering aspects from here.  Where counties are somewhat boxy utilitarian lines, for the House districts you get crazier shapes than a Kindergartener would draw (no disrespect for kindergartners -- I admire their unfettered imaginations, and have seen some drawings by them that put any artist out there to shame by how they capture the true essence of  their subject without the noise we usually consider to be "realistic"). At it's original site you can see that the PA 1st District and 7th District have areas that are completely separate from their main bodies or linked by a tiny corridor--that's a Gerrymandering tactic, and how about that crazy shape above on the right?  What is that, a flying dragon? Also,if you see the race results on that the blue dot on the left you will see that it is so heavily dense with Democratic voters that it drains three to four other districts of Democratic majorities, so Republicans win by small margins. Now if the districts were not crazy shapes already, you could say that is just the luck of the land.  But every one of those red districts is the type of meandering blob typical of  Gerrymandering to prevent certain groups from getting their rightful majority.

Can you rely on your state's court system to help you out, folks?  Probably not.

Ohio politicians tried taking their egregious Gerrymandered legislative districts through their legal system all the way up to their Supreme Court filled with Republicans except for one of their justices.  Guess what.  They were denied a redo, the decision coming down just days ago.  If they're smart they will start a referendum vote through petitions, and even a special election.  I'm betting that PA will need a state wide referendum, to get theirs changed as well.  You should work on the Gerrymandering of your state government too, and fix it all.

The right for your vote to be equally weighted is the foundation of democracy, and prevents warmongers from taking you or your children off to unnecessary war.  (A plan for a universal draft of males and females aged 18 to 35 was created in 2004 by the Selective Service System and still exists today, waiting for a trigger since SSS plans do not expire with the end of a presidency.) As we saw in 2003, wars are too easily cooked up by presidents and Congress flush with Gerrymandered districts.

Keep yourself and your children or grandchildren safe.  Fix your state government.  Demand the end to Gerrymandering for both state legislative and US House districts.  You may recall that Texas won the right from the US Supreme Court to redo their state's US House districts within two years after they had been set up.  (Remember Tom Delay's gambit and the Texas legislators who went into hiding?)  You can do it too, in an equitable manner.  California voted and forced our legislature out of the redistricting job market, handing it to a special balanced committee focused on good governance.

Start a state-wide referendum.  Statewide you have your power, as can be seen by the election of a senator in the same party as your presidential vote.  If you can't before then, get a Democratic governor for 2015. It's time to get on with it.  Or maybe make your shackles a nice fashion statement.  Until they drag you off to war.  (Israel could, with the help of the US House get the US involved in a disastrous war invading Iran after they destroy the world economy by attacking Iran's nuclear facilities as I have explained before, even if we have a Democratic president.  They continue to feed the press the same kind of pro war propaganda they used to get us into Iraq and which was then shown to be completely bogus. )


Short url for this post is http://x.co/q8Rp

Picture at top of a PA stream is used via Creative Commons License Attribution  (CC by 2.0).  Thanks to Flickr user digitalArt2 who has no connection to this blog or blogger.