Ignorance Ain't Cheap

Politicians are campaigning to slash education budgets, and even refusing to spend federal money allocated for education.

NEA researcher Michael Petko says the reason lies in “faulty economics.”

“Many people don’t realize that, dollar per dollar, education funds are going to increase state income and produce more jobs than money spent in any other sector in the economy.”

In 2004, NEA conducted two studies on the economic impact of education spending, “K-12 Education in the U.S. Economy” and “The Effects of State Public K-12 Education Expenditures on Income Distribution.”

These studies revealed a statistically significant correlation between education spending and economic development. Study authors argued that increasing education spending would decrease poverty and promote economic growth, and that decreasing education spending would do the opposite.

For each dollar a state saved per student, 0.4% fewer small businesses would come to the state and bring jobs, the researchers found.

Economic stagnation is just one of the many negative consequences of cutting education budgets. Reducing classroom spending will also make it harder for Americans to compete in the international job market against the Chinese and others who are increasing how much they invest in their children’s education.

The United States now spends less than many peer nations on primary and secondary education. In 2009, the United States only spent 25% of its per capita GDP on secondary education, while Austria spent 30% and Italy spent 29%, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Teachers aren’t causing our economic problems. Why are they the scapegoat? We have to stop cutting their salaries!

History

If you’ve been following my blog, you know nothing bugs me more than the ease with which politicians (mostly Republicans) rewrite history.

When Palin answered that “gotcha” question about Paul Revere’s ride, she said he rode to warn the British that we were armed and ready for them. When questioned about it later, she said she knew her history. She had stumbled across the fact that after his capture, Revere told the British we had 500 armed men there to meet them.

Poor Sarah says, "In a shout-out, gotcha type of question that was asked of me, I answered candidly. And I know my American history."

The ambush question was, “What have you seen so far today, and what are you going to take away from your visit?”

Her explanation doesn’t work because he had no intention of riding out into the night to warn the British in the first place. His mission was a secret. He was to riding to Lexington to warn John Hancock and Samuel Adams.

He was a courier. Coincidentally, that’s how I make my living.

Revere was captured almost immediately.

I guess we need fact checking with every statement made publicly (obviously an impossible job). I’ve heard historical revisionists have changed the Paul Revere Wikipedia pages.

Wikipedia is great for science and technology, but we have to make sure everyone knows the information there can be modified by anyone. Unfortunately a lot of people believe history is opinion. I will concede, in a lot of cases, there is more than one point of view but I’m really worried about agenda driven history.

How can anyone think opinions manipulated by lies can be positive?

Beck on Obama

Glenn Beck’s star has faded, finally. He’s just about gone. For years his dis-information campaign has gone unchallenged. His claim that NAZIs and fascists were lefties is taken for granted by people I’ve personally spoken to. Beck likes to pull facts out of his butt.

Last February he claimed Michelle Obama had 43 staffers working for her.
"I think Nancy Reagan may have been the one who had the most people on the staff. She had three. Three!"

"The first lady's office needs 43 people? For what? These people are out of control. It is really Marie Antoinette."
In 2009, FactCheck.org and Snopes.com debunked the claim circulated in a chain e-mail that Michelle Obama had an "unprecedented" number of staffers, with 22.

"First lady Michelle Obama’s staff is no different in size than that of her predecessor, Laura Bush -- around 25 people -- and is based on a similar staffing model," according to
Catherine McCormick-Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama.

While every first lady approaches the job differently, the responsibilities of the office of the first lady have grown over the years to include planning and hosting hundreds of events at the White House and across the city of D.C., planning and supporting domestic and foreign travel with and without President Obama, receiving, cataloging and responding to thousands of pieces of mail, and supporting the first lady’s active schedule in support of the President -- hence the staff size for both Mrs. Bush and Mrs. Obama."

The size of a first lady's staff fluctuates year to year. First ladies typically have several staff members each handling correspondence, press, social engagements and projects. At 25, Michelle Obama's staff is similar in size to her immediate predecessors.

According to the Clinton Presidential Library, the size of Hillary Rodham Clinton's staff fluctuated from 13 in October 1993 to 19 by March 2000.

Beck singled out Nancy Reagan, and claimed she had just three employees on her staff. Sheila Tate, vice chair of the Washington, D.C., communications firm Powell Tate, who was Nancy's Reagan's press secretary, said there were 15 people on First Lady Nancy Reagan's staff. That includes four on the press team (including Tate); two in the projects office; two in the advance office; three in the social office; a personal secretary and her assistant; and the chief of staff and his assistant.

Stacy A. Cordery, a history professor at Monmouth College who serves as bibliographer for the National First Ladies' Library in Ohio, said the role of first ladies has expanded over the decades, and so has the size of the staffs.

Unbelievable

What is it about the Constitution? People carry their copies around like it’s the Bible and chastise the rest of us for not reading it. I’ve ranted before about its interpretation but has anyone actually read it? I admit it’s a bit dry, not to mention, deliberately vague.

Herman Cain announced his presidential bid last Saturday. There’s always been something odd about black republicans to me, especially when they wear cowboy hats. I know there were actually a lot of real black cowboys, but you sure don’t see them in the John Wayne movies these yahoos are referencing.

"We don’t need to rewrite the Constitution of the United States," Cain said. "We need to reread the Constitution and enforce the Constitution."
"And I know that there’s some people that are not going to do that. So, for the benefit for those that are not going to read it because they don’t want us to go by the Constitution, there’s a little section in there that talks about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
"You know, those ideals that we live by, we believe in, your parents believe in, they instilled in you. When you get to the part about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, don’t stop right there, keep reading.
"’Cause that’s when it says that when any form of government becomes destructive of those ideals, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. We’ve got some altering and some abolishing to do."

Those words were in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence.

Unbelievable!

Disappointment

It’s really hard for me to read the comments section of political blogs. There are a lot of people who are incredibly ignorant about history. I can’t believe how many people equate Fascism with Socialism. Fascism was a response to the left in spite of the word Socialist in NAZI. It really seems pointless to believe social justice is possible given our lowest common denominator awareness of the world around us.

The biggest fallacy perpetuated by the right is that Obama is a lefty.

Before the gulf oil spill, President Obama pushed to expand offshore drilling. His Interior Department gave British Petroleum's rig a "categorical exclusion" from environmental scrutiny and, according to the New York Times, "gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first getting required permits. After the spill, the same Interior Department kept issuing "categorical exclusions" for new Gulf oil operations, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar still refuses "to rule out continued use of categorical exclusions," the Denver Post reported.

Salazar, who oversaw this disaster and who, before that, took $323,000 in campaign contributions from energy interests and backed more offshore drilling as a U.S. senator.

Obama’s corporate support has always been right out of the Republican playbook.

Obama has continued George W. Bush’s detention and domestic wiretap policies. He won’t end the federal ban on gay marriage. Immigrant activists are frustrated by the administration’s failure to push for immigration reform.

He has taken some good ideas from the right.

The first Cap and Trade plan was from George H. W. Bush It was about acid rain. Newt Gingrich voted for that plan. He actually said Cap and Trade for carbon would be a great idea.

An individual mandate health care bill was a republican idea. It was the republican alternative to Clinton’s single payer plan. Mitt Romney was doing an individual mandate plan as late as 2009. Chuck Grassley even said individual mandates had bipartisan support.

A budget deal to cut the deficit with both spending cuts and tax hikes was a George H. W. Bush plan. He said it was necessary. He did it, and it worked.

Now these are considered crazy Liberal ideas.

Republicans have abandoned ideas that actually worked. Cap and Trade improved the acid rain problem. An individual mandate worked in Massachusetts and George H. W. Bush did set the stage for balance budget in the ‘90s.

Why have Republicans given up on their successful policies? I guess polarizing American voters and winning elections is more important. Does Obama believe this as well?

The Economic Effects of Taxes

Republicans are trying to convince us that getting rid of taxes will make our economy grow. Many things affect the economy more than the federal tax code.

Changes to revenue generally aren't caused by the tax rates at all, but by other changes in the broader economy. Bill Clinton raised taxes in 1993, and the economy expanded for much of the 1990s and tax revenue went up.

"There's no clear relationship between taxes and economic growth," said Bob Williams of the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. "Too many factors complicate the picture to draw clear conclusions about the taxes-growth relationship."

A 2006 report from the U.S. Treasury Department concluded the effect of most tax laws on the wider economy were "uncertain, but probably generally small."

The Treasury report sought to document the revenue effects of every major tax law passed since 1940. To compare the different laws, it examined tax revenues as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product, a measurement that accounts for economic growth and inflation.

The report found that laws that lowered taxes produced declines in revenues, and that laws that increased taxes produced increases in tax revenues. Tax cuts don’t increase government revenues more than they would have increased otherwise.

Tea Partier Rep. Joe Walsh said on This Week with Christiane Amanpour, "Every time we've cut taxes, revenues have gone up, the economy has grown."

That’s not true. Revenues did not go up in 2001, 2002 or 2003, after tax rates were lowered.

The Bush tax cuts had a time limit because they were unsustainable. We were at historic lows for taxes already. All the cuts have to end, not just for the wealthy! We would have achieved a surplus in 2007 without them.

Trump

I heard someone on a call-in radio show say, “Donald Trump’s business experience makes him far more qualified to get our country out of our financial difficulties than Obama.”

Really?

Trump financed the construction of his third casino, the $1 billion Taj Mahal, primarily with high-interest junk bonds.

In the August 21, 1990 edition of the Jersey Record, columnist Mike Kelly wrote “If we still had debtors’ prisons, Trump would be in the dungeon.”
Although he shored up his businesses with additional loans and postponed interest payments, by 1991 increasing debt brought Trump to business bankruptcy and the brink of personal bankruptcy.

Banks and bond holders had lost hundreds of millions of dollars, but opted to restructure his debt to avoid the risk of losing more money in court.

The Taj Mahal re-emerged from bankruptcy on Oct 5, 1991, with Trump ceding 50% ownership in the casino to the original bondholders in exchange for
lowered interest rates on the debt and more time to pay it off.

By 1994, Trump had eliminated a large portion of his $900 million personal debt and reduced significantly his nearly $3.5 billion in business debt.

He was forced to relinquish the Trump Shuttle (which he had bought in 1989), but he managed to retain Trump Tower in New York City and control of his three casinos in Atlantic City.

Chase Manhattan Bank, which lent Trump the money to buy the West Side yards, his biggest Manhattan parcel, forced the sale of a parcel to Asian developers.

In 1995, he combined his casino holdings into the publicly held Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts. Wall Street drove its stock above $35 in 1996, but by 1998 it had fallen into single digits as the company remained profitless and struggled to pay just the interest on its nearly $2 billion in debt.

In a May 28, 2004, Wall Street Journal article, Trump said the specter of bankruptcy bothered him “from a psychological standpoint,” but added, “it really wouldn’t matter that much.”

A number of his bondholders disagreed. In the same article, Meyer Marvald, a Florida retiree who said he owned about $44,000 of the bonds, claimed “Trump has the Sword of Damocles hanging over our heads.” On October 21, 2004, Trump Hotels & Casino Resorts announced a restructuring of its debt. The plan called for Trump’s individual ownership to be reduced from 56 percent to 27 percent, with bondholders receiving stock in exchange for surrendering part of the debt. Since then,
Trump Hotels has been forced to seek voluntary bankruptcy protection. After the company applied for Chapter 11 Protection in November, 2004, Trump relinquished his CEO position but retained a role as Chairman of the Board. In May, 2005 the company re-emerged from bankruptcy as Trump Entertainment.

Trump’s ruthless dealings have ruined many lives. Anyone who thinks his business experience qualifies him to run our country would probably consider Sarah Palin an intellectual.

Fun With Photoshop

Hoping to illustrate its diverse enrollment, the University of Wisconsin at Madison doctored a photograph on a brochure cover by digitally inserting a black student in a crowd of white football fans.

The original image, below, shows US President Barak Obama ahead of the group with Mubarak trailing at the very back, while the doctored Al-Ahram image shows the Egyptian leader in the front.

Left: Conservative candidate Ed Matts with Ann Widdecombe protesting in support of the Kacheps family, who were facing deportation.
Right: The same picture, doctored to support the party line, on Mr Matts' election leaflet.

More Fun from the Electorate

Is This a Game?

It seems our politicians will never get past whether their side will be perceived as winners or losers. The final negotiating points of this latest fight were over less than one-fifth of one percent of the federal budget.

Of course it was really over the symbolism of not funding Planned Parenthood. Less than 1 percent of the American public views abortion as their top priority issue.

Our leaders in Congress nearly brought government services to a halt. If one side wins a little ground, it’s seen as a victory and a mandate.

We need a functioning government not held hostage by extremists. At least avoiding a shutdown was a loss for the tea party, who seemed eager for a shutdown. I hope they’re at odds with public opinion.

We have bigger issues coming up with the debt ceiling and next year's budget. If it was this hard to settle the minor question of the remainder of the year's budget, the prospects of another shutdown or economic upheaval are much greater when actually important issues are on the way.

No one gets off without blame. Democrats should have passed a budget when they had majorities in both chambers and the White House. It was stupid to go into the fall 2010 elections without passing a single budget bill, when they knew they were going to lose their majority.

Republicans are incapable of bargaining coherently or effectively. Unfortunately, they fear the tea party in the primaries more than they fear the general electorate. There can’t be compromise in the House GOP.

More Bad Spin on Healthcare

In the official response to Obama’s January 25th State of the Union address Rep. Paul Ryan said, “What we already know about the president’s health care law is this: Costs are going up, premiums are rising, and millions of people will lose the coverage they currently have. Job creation is being stifled by all of its taxes, penalties, mandates and fees.”

According to insurance companies and state insurance commissions, rising medical costs are the primary driver of increasing premiums. The Congressional Budget Office has said the law won’t have much of an impact on premium costs for most Americans, compared with what premiums would have been without the law. Premiums had been rising well before the law, and were expected to rise without it. People who buy their own insurance will see an increase of 10 percent to 13 percent and more than half of those individuals will get subsidies that reduce their costs substantially. The increase in premiums will be due to an increase in benefits in those plans.

Health care spending is expected to rise by less than 1 percent over a decade because about 34 million more Americans will gain coverage, according to the chief actuary of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The CBO estimates that 8 million to 9 million people who would normally have employer-sponsored coverage won’t get such an offer from their employers. The reason is that these are mostly low-income workers who will get subsidies to go buy their own insurance in state-based exchanges. Whether the law had been enacted or not, employers would be free to drop coverage.

The CBO says the law would have a small impact on the labor supply, and that would be mostly due to workers retiring early or working less because they would have more secure health care options. It’s also expected to reduce the deficit over the next two decades and beyond.

The law does not create a government-run system. Studies on the quality of care worldwide have not put the U.S. at the top. A 2010 Commonwealth Fund study ranked the U.S. last among seven countries in health system performance. The U.S. ranks 49th in life expectancy, according to the CIA World Factbook, and many countries have lower rates of infant mortality.

The problem, of course, is the philosophical difference between the right and the left. The phrase Social Darwinism has been thrown around. These people believe in the survival of the fittest. Fee Market Capitalism will kill the weak and balance everything out. These folks have never read Darwin.

According to Darwin,“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.”

Humans are a weak species, we need to work together to survive. We are SOCIAL animals, like it or not. Civilized people require social programs like health care and public education. Personally, I embrace our social nature.

A Republican friend of mine gave me a copy of On the Origin of Species. It’s a good read, I recommend it.

Teachers

I haven’t been motivated to post lately. It’s not because there’s nothing to write about. Unfortunately there’s too much to write about and it’s all heartbreaking.

Tea Party politicians say we have to act like grown-ups when it comes to balancing our budget. They tend to focus on fringe expenses.

Slashing and burning funding for education is only going to lead to an ignorant, third world America.

If we’re going to act like grown-ups we have to raise taxes.

We should always go after waste, fraud and abuse but that’s not what got us here and vilifying teachers is pathetic!

Governor Scott Walker is being disingenuous when he says teachers make more than private sector employees. In their education demographic, they make less.

Teachers have taken pay cuts and doubled what they pay for benefits. Walker says public sector bargaining rights for teachers will be too expensive for Wisconsin. He doesn’t make the same claim for police or fire fighters. They, coincidentally, voted for him.

When people get outraged by teachers’ generous benefits they miss the fact that these benefits are supposed to make up for their lousy pay.

Walker is obviously trying to bust unions.

Union abuses should be exposed but unions are the only lobby workers have to fight the lobbyists of big money.

Big money has America convinced that Big Government is Big Brother. Government is inefficient but it’s hard to avoid when there are over three hundred million of us. We have to keep working at it.

Big money is only concerned with maximum production at minimum cost. They are in no way concerned for our quality of life and we should keep that in mind.

Eminent Domain

Some of the first apartments I lived in when I moved away from home were in the Central West End in St. Louis. This was in the 70s and Barnes Hospital/Washington University began what seems a never ending process of expansion.

I would end up losing three apartments to them before I gave up and moved back to the Soulard neighborhood.

The last one they forced us out of was owned by an old woman named Effie. She told us Effie meant grandma in Polish. She and her late husband had moved from Poland during WWII.

Effie owned two 4 family flats. She loved visiting everyone. She putzed around like she was working on the place, but it was really only an excuse to see what everyone was up to.

Effie came to us in tears with news that Barnes was taking her buildings. There was nothing she could do about it. They found her a little bungalow on the south side, but she still didn’t want to sell.

Effie’s son fought it out in court for her, but Barnes had too much money and power. Effie died in that little bungalow a year later.

There is a legal battle in St. Louis over a sign painted on the side of a building near my house. The brick house is owned by a non-profit ministry called Sanctuary in the Ordinary and managed by Neighborhood Enterprises, Inc., which is headed by Jim Roos. They used to manage a 2-family building of mine.

The city's Board of Adjustment voted 4-1 in July to uphold the city's denial of a permit allowing a 369-square-foot painted sign on the south side of the building. The sign is visible from Interstates 44 and 55 and Gravois Avenue coming into downtown.

Roos and the Missouri Eminent Domain Abuse Coalition decided to appeal. The issue is now in federal court.

Roos says the mural is on the building to protest the potential that it and other property between 13th Street and Tucker Boulevard south of Lafayette Avenue could be taken by eminent domain for a shopping center to the west.

While the city sent out letters in May saying it is no longer interested in the property, it didn't remove the blighting designation that allows the city to take it if it wanted.

Apparently the sign could stay if it depicted an American flag, said something about Jesus, or could be considered art.

This is turning into a big problem for the city because if they deny Roos’ right to display the sign based on content, it’s a violation of the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Personally, I think the city just can’t stand anyone getting such a great advertising space for free.

Thanks Ronnie!

What a man!

Ronald Reagan cut social spending, creating the homeless problem by turning hundreds of thousands of mentally ill people out on the streets.

He appointed Antonin Scalia to the Supreme Court.

He cut school funding, trying to classify ketchup as a vegetable.

He traded arms, money, drugs, and hostages between Iran and the Nicaraguan rebels.

He claimed that trees cause most pollution.

He lowered taxes in 1981, creating debt so bad he raised taxes each of the next six years and still didn't make up for it. And while he streamlined the complex and exemption-riddled income tax, his changes created the largest-ever shift of tax burden from the wealthy to the middle-class and working poor.

Reagan ignored the health crisis caused by AIDS.

Reagan spent billions on SDI, an "anti-missile shield". Which, incidentally, violated
the ABM treaty.

Reagan more than tripled the national debt.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop discovered that a woman
did not suffer long-term physical or emotional trauma as a result
of having an abortion. Reagan suppressed the report.

Reagan provided Saddam Hussein with chemical weapons.

When a Marine barracks was blown up by terrorists in Lebanon, Reagan
responded by pulling American forces out of Lebanon and invading the
small Caribbean island of Grenada.

Reagan's attorney general, Ed Meese, was investigated
by three different special prosecutors for involvement in three
different scandals.

Over 100 Reagan appointees were convicted
of crimes committed while in office.

Reagan convinced millions of Americans that the threats they faced were: African-American welfare queens, Central American leftists, a rapidly expanding Evil Empire based in Moscow, and the do-good federal government.

He almost totally sabotaged the behind the scenes work of Gorbachev. They already had signed agreements when Reagan made his grandstanding speech, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

In his First Inaugural Address in 1981, Reagan declared that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."----and here we are.

Rational Health Care

Republicans are still using tort reform as their answer to health care reform. As if, frivolous law suits are why health care is so expensive. We’ve had caps in Missouri and Texas for years and it’s only made matters worse.

By setting arbitrary time limits to file personal injury or medical malpractice claims, putting caps on non-economic and punitive damages, and limiting liability for manufacturers of defective products, tort reform is making it extremely difficult for people to seek compensation when they have truly suffered serious losses at the hands of another. In addition, tort reform weakens the deterrent effect that civil suits have on wrongdoers.

An 85-year-old Alzheimer’s patient living in a Texas nursing home facility was raped by a nurse assistant who had a history of sexual assault at previous nursing home jobs. The patient’s daughter wanted to file a negligence lawsuit against the nursing home facility for hiring the man despite his past.

However, tort reform in Texas made the lawsuit almost impossible. Attorneys advised against filing a suit, which alone could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, because it wouldn’t be worth it due to the caps on non-economic and punitive damages, the higher standard of burden of proof that falls on the plaintiff, and other tort reform strategies implemented by the state.

The nursing home who hired a sexual predator would continue to run as if nothing had happened. This woman and other victims that were once helped by the civil justice system are now regularly barred from court.

A man who was undergoing open-heart surgery woke up during the middle of his procedure because of being under-anesthetized due to medical error. For three hours, this man drifted in and out of consciousness and suffered severe pain during the surgery, but was helpless to call out in anguish. The breathing tube down his throat prevented him from making a sound and paralytic drugs left him motionless during the procedure.

Approximately 20,000 to 40,000 of the 21 million patients who receive general anesthesia before surgery wake up during their procedure from being under-anesthetized by mistake. These patients undergo extreme physical pain and suffering and often develop post-traumatic stress disorder and other serious psychological problems as a result.

Patients who have tried to speak out about anesthesia awareness have been silenced by doctors and other medical professionals They were told their experiences were “all in their head.” When this open heart patient told the nurse he had been awake during surgery, she did not believe him. When he was able to recount the doctor and nurses'' conversations and where they were standing during surgery, the nurse got the doctor. He said, “Don’t worry the patient won’t remember any of this tomorrow.”

Due to tort reform’s caps on non-economic damages such as pain and suffering and mental anguish, this man and thousands of other medical malpractice victims would not be able to receive compensation for their enormous losses. Many would not even get a chance to bring their claim to court. Negligent medical professionals responsible for this nightmare would continue to threaten the well-being of patients unabated.

The really sad thing about all of this is, it doesn’t bring down the cost of healthcare! I have pointed out before that it would be cheaper for us to have single payer universal healthcare. Please refer to my Associated Content article from 2008, it still applies.

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/860847/our_health_care_system_is_a_national.html?cat=9

Who's Writing History?

I didn’t want to post about the shootings that took place in Tucson last week. The right and the left wasted no time blaming each other. It doesn’t matter what motivated the shooter, he was a self absorbed pathetic little man and neither side has to take credit for his actions.

What does bother me though, were the few on the right who pointed out he had a copy of the Communist Manifesto. There was no mention that he also had a copy of Mein Kampf. As if these two books went hand in hand.

I think it was Glenn Beck who first started calling the Nazis leftists because the word socialist in their title.

The National Socialist German Worker’s Party was simply called The German Worker’s Party until 1920. Adding the word socialist was purely a populist move.

Nazi ideology stressed the failures of laissez-faire capitalism, communism, economic liberalism, and democracy; supported the "racial purity of the German people" and that of other Northwestern Europeans; and claimed itself as the protector of Germany from Jewish influence and corruption. They began as a reaction to leftist unions.

They were allies of the Italian Fascists who were as extreme right wing as you can get; a system of government run by corporations and the military.

I can’t understand why talking heads try to influence people by rewriting history. The press has to start calling them out on it!

One Chance To Make A First Impression

"Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." That’s actually the name of HR2, House Republicans attempt to kill Obama’s health care package. It’s hard to tell whether this title reveals the childishness of Republicans who are pushing for it or the voters it’s aimed at.

The Congressional Budget Office has issued a statement that repeal of the health care law will add $230 billion to the deficits through the next ten years.

Republicans can’t seem to discuss any issue without adding misleading talking points; “Job Killing” Health Care Act, “Government Run” Health Care, etc.

They’ve convinced their constituents that:

• Guns make you safe
• The earth is 6000 years old
• Gays are evil and dangerous
• Iraq had something to do with 9/11
• Obama is a Muslim
• Obama is a communist
• Obama is the Antichrist
• Lowering taxes for the super rich would help the economy
• Deregulating banks leads to prosperity
• Jesus is coming back soon
• Every word of the Bible is true – literally
• We don't need trains that work, infrastructure that functions and new energy, just Jesus...

When they said they were going to read the entire constitution at the opening of the 112^th Congress I wondered how they would include blacks equaling 3/5 a person and not being free in free states. It was easy, they omitted those parts entirely. So much for the intentions of the original framers.

Two Republican House members, including a leader on the Rules Committee, cast 6 votes on the US House floor despite missing Wednesday's swearing-in---- A violation of the Constitution they now have to struggling with correcting.

It’s impossible to overstate the incompetence of the Democrats, but Republicans should note that you only get one chance to make a first impression.