While private corporations contaminated the waters of the Elk river in West Virginia, causing hundreds of thousands of people to go without usable water, the government stepped in and brought water to those affected. Now that the ban on using the water is lifting, how soon before they start hating on government again?
Prepare yourself to hear that Government is the problem in 3,2,1…
This is 2014. I have to keep reminding myself of that fact. When you see wanted ads like the one below, its easy to think that the year is 1914.
According to Gawker, this ad was placed in West Virginia.
When it rains, it pours. Chris Christie, presently dealing with the bridgegate controversy, is now faced with another crisis – a federal investugation into his use of Hurricane Sandy funds.
The Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has opened a federal investigation into whether New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) improperly used Hurricane Sandy relief funds to produce commercials starring himself and his family ahead of his re-election campaign.
Auditors will examine how the Christie administration used $25 million set aside for “a marketing campaign to promote the Jersey Shore and encourage tourism,” focusing on the bidding process to award a $4.7 million to a politically connected firm that cast Christie and his family in the Sandy ads, while “a comparable firm proposed billing the state $2.5 million for similar work” but did not include Christie in the commercials.
The ads produced by the company, MWW, attracted significant criticism. The New Jersey Star Ledger accused Christie of siphoning off “money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads,” and described the move as “offensive” and a ” new low.”
Watch the ad here:
BEIJING – Former NBA star Dennis Rodman, the only foreigner with access to North Korea’s reclusive dictator Kim Jong Un, returned from Pyongyang Monday defending his controversial “basketball diplomacy” there.
Americans and North Koreans “can actually get along,” said Rodman, who apologized he “couldn’t do anything” about Kenneth Bae, a Korean American missionary imprisoned in North Korea.
Rodman will return to Pyongyang in about a month for another game of basketball, he said, following the exhibition game last Wednesday between a North Korean team and a Rodman-led team of a team of ex-NBA players and current streetballers.
The ex-Chicago Bulls forward sang ‘happy birthday’ to Kim before tip-off, and spent the second half sitting beside his “friend for life”, reported to be a Chicago Bulls fan.
Rights groups and U.S. politicians have criticized Rodman for engaging with the North’s repressive regime. While in Pyongyang, he was forced to apologize for comments last week that blamed Bae for his own incarceration.
At Beijing airport Monday, at the end of his fourth trip to Pyongyang over the past 12 months, Rodman said “I’m sorry that I couldn’t do anything”, when asked if had raised Bae’s case with Kim.
Rush Limbaugh is feeling the heat, as advertisers abandon his hate machine.
After he was recently picked up by WOR, longtime advertisers on the station began objecting to having their products and services affiliated with Rush.
On Friday a Mexican-American Flush Rush volunteer contacted a WOR advertiser called Page Publishing to politely request that they not advertise on the Rush Limbaugh Show.
She specifically objected to Limbaugh’s characterization of Mexicans as being lazy by nature.
The response she received will make your day:
I am the president of Page Publishing, and I could not agree with you more. He is a disgusting, misogynistic racist. We have been advertising with WOR for quite a while, but they only recently added this moron’s program to their lineup, and we were assured that our ads would not inadvertently run during his show. Thanks for pointing out that it did (I don’t have the stomach to listen to his show to verify if our ads do run). I will insist that our ads never run during his bigoted show. It amazes me that his show has any audience at all here in New York City- a progressive and liberal place if ever there was one (the place where I was born and raised, and a place that is amazing in its diversity).
Your email reached me because the staff here universally despises Limbaugh and everything he stands for, and they know of my feelings as well. The ironic things about most of the nonsense that he spews, in particular his references to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, is that there probably isn’t a harder working group of people in the nation right now.
He has the right to say what he wants, and we have the right to refuse to support him with our corporate advertising dollars.
Thanks for the email,
StephenStephen Matthews
President and CEO
Page Publishing, Inc.
Paul Krugman writes: Suddenly it’s O.K., even mandatory, for politicians with national ambitions to talk about helping the poor. This is easy for Democrats, who can go back to being the party of F.D.R. and L.B.J. It’s much more difficult for Republicans, who are having a hard time shaking their reputation for reverse Robin-Hoodism, for being the party that takes from the poor and gives to the rich.
And the reason that reputation is so hard to shake is that it’s justified. It’s not much of an exaggeration to say that right now Republicans are doing all they can to hurt the poor, and they would have inflicted vast additional harm if they had won the 2012 election. Moreover, G.O.P. harshness toward the less fortunate isn’t just a matter of spite (although that’s part of it); it’s deeply rooted in the party’s ideology, which is why recent speeches by leading Republicans declaring that they do too care about the poor have been almost completely devoid of policy specifics.
Let’s start with the recent Republican track record.
The most important current policy development in America is the rollout of the Affordable Care Act, a k a Obamacare. Most Republican-controlled states are, however, refusing to implement a key part of the act, the expansion of Medicaid, thereby denying health coverage to almost five million low-income Americans. And the amazing thing is that they’re going to great lengths to block aid to the poor even though letting the aid through would cost almost nothing; nearly all the costs of Medicaid expansion would be paid by Washington.
Meanwhile, those Republican-controlled states are slashing unemployment benefits, education financing and more. As I said, it’s not much of an exaggeration to say that the G.O.P. is hurting the poor as much as it can.
What would Republicans have done if they had won the White House in 2012? Much more of the same. Bear in mind that every budget the G.O.P. has offered since it took over the House in 2010 involves savage cuts in Medicaid, food stamps and other antipoverty programs.
Still, can’t Republicans change their approach? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is almost surely no.
Look!
If Governor Chris Christie thought that Thursday’s news conference, that turned into a two-hour fiasco of alternately blaming others and apologizing without remorse, was going to be the end of the story about the GWBridge lane closures, then he was clearly mistaken. As usual with a scandal, the more we know, the more we want to know.
For example, who actually texted David Wildstein that they were smiling at the traffic jam? This is going to be interesting because presumably it wasn’t Bridget Anne Kelly, the Christie aide who went from loyal and brilliant early in the week to “stupid” and “deceitful” at the press conference. And speaking of Kelly, why didn’t Christie speak to her before firing her? What kind of prosecutor assumes guilt first and worries about whether they’re being just later? Answer: A prosecutor like Christie who obviously doesn’t care about the truth.
Questions about Christie’s political future are also a main topic, as this scandal shows that he either doesn’t have control over his own aides, or that he sent a message to them that this was politically acceptable behavior. In any case, this has severely damaged his national reputation. Conservatives were always wary of him; now moderates might be scared off by a man who has been resolute in the past, but just might have spilled over into vindictive in the national mind.
But the worst aspect at this point is that mayors from across New Jersey are now reviewing events of the past year and wondering if the negative attention they’ve received from Trenton is a result of them not endorsing Christie or running afoul of him because they disagreed with his decisions. This is the atmosphere that the governor has created for himself. Yes, his YouTube videos were entertaining for his supporters, but they are now a liability because, together with this scandal, they show a man who has no tolerance for opposition. That’s dangerous for a man who wants to be president.
It will be interesting to see what new information comes out about this and whether the narrative as we imagine it today has more moving parts to it.
For more please go to:
www.facebook.com/WhereDemocracyLives and Twitter @rigrundfest
We all feel for the crisis in West Virginia… well, maybe not the Republicans. In fact, as the water situation in West Virginia got contaminated, House Republicans voted in favor of a bill that will take away the authority of the EPA – the agency responsible for among other things, making sure our water supply is not contaminated.
Although Republicans are hellbent on stopping the EPA, government stepped in and is bringing clean water to the people of West Virginia. And the good people on Twitter have figured it out – that sometimes, government will step in and do what’s right for the people. These people understand what’s going on, and these tweets below clearly shows that.
Here are a few examples.
I know how @RickSantorum feel abt blah ppl taking from gubment. Wonder how he feels abt #WestVirginia taking from same gubment. #ObamaWater
— Curtis (@cfreelakers24) January 12, 2014
Dear #GOP #tcot #TeaParty #Republicans Big Govt. steps in to save the day again #WestVirginia #Coal #ChemicalSpill pic.twitter.com/LApbXtRHOT
— Def Jeff (@eqracer) January 12, 2014
Funny? When disaster hits #republicans never say “call the corporations !” They say call the government! #WestVirginia — sttbs73 (@Sttbs73) January 12, 2014
Wouldn’t blame the residents of #WVA if they formed lynching mob and went after everyone at Freedom Industries & #WestVirginia officials — Dexter Porter (@DexterPorter) January 12, 2014
Does the #GOP philosophy of no regulations, no inspections & screw people Make **ANY** sense?? #WestVirginia Freedom Industries #UniteBlue — NaphiSoc (@NaphiSoc) January 12, 2014
Not just a few miners now, will #WestVirginia voters rethink #Republican anti regulation/environment policies?
— Hal Donahue (@haldonahue) January 12, 2014
People in Charleston picking up bottled water handed out by firefighters. #WVWaterCrisis #fnr pic.twitter.com/svmEmwz0l0
— Tonya J. Powers (@tonyajpowers) January 12, 2014
Been Picking On #WV all Day, But Truth Is Thanks To Republicans, That Exact same Thing Could Happen In ANY State, Any day! #WVWaterCrisis — Rossssc (@rossssc) January 12, 2014
5,000 gallons? Let’s stop calling it an accident. The real name is negligence. #WVWaterCrisis #wvchemleak
— Shawn Fluharty (@WVUFLU) January 10, 2014
Once again, socialism is forced to clean up another capitalist disaster. #wvchemleak #wvwatercrisis #corpwelfare #deregulation
— Path2Enlightenment (@Path2Enlighten) January 12, 2014
The Republican’s wish.
As West Virginians were learning Thursday of a devastating chemical spill in the Elk River that has rendered water undrinkable for 300,000 people, the US House of Representatives was busy gutting federal hazardous-waste cleanup law.
The House passed the Reducing Excessive Deadline Obligations Act that would ultimately eliminate requirements for the Environmental Protection Agency to review and update hazardous-waste disposal regulations in a timely manner, and make it more difficult for the government to compel companies that deal with toxic substances to carry proper insurance for cleanups, pushing the cost on to taxpayers.
In addition, the bill would result in slower response time in the case of a disaster, requiring increased consultation with states before the federal government calls for cleanup of Superfund sites – where hazardous waste could affect people and the environment.
The bill amends both the Solid Waste Disposal Act and the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act – often referred to as Superfund, which was created in 1980 to hold polluter industries accountable for funding the cleanup of hazardous-waste sites.
There are over 1,300 priority Superfund sites in the US.
The legislation was passed by a vote of 225 to 188, mostly along party lines, with all but four Republicans supporting the bill and all but five Democrats opposing it.
Some Republicans are claiming Chris Christie isn’t really one of them. Some pundits are claiming, even as scandal erupts around him, that he’s a “different kind of Republican.” He’s more than that: He is the archetypal Republican, the incarnation of its arrogant, corporatist soul.
It’s like we said a while back: Christie is “the heartless, smug, bullying embodiment” of his party. He and his staff reflect a world in which other people are nothing more than rubes to be manipulated and exploited, whether they’re trying to escape the trap of long-term unemployment or Fort Lee during the morning rush hour.
The conventional wisdom says that Christie’s not like other Republicans. Pundits say he’s a “moderate,” a “pragmatist,” a counterbalance to the far-right ideology of the Tea Party Republicans. But no leading Republican is really moderate, including Christie. And at the end of the day they’re all pragmatists, ready to do whatever it takes to serve their paymasters’ agenda.
Democrats and liberals routinely express frustration and bafflement at Republican hypocrisy. “They claim to hate big government,” they’ll say, “but they want to expand the Defense Department. They say they want government out of our lives, then vote to control women’s sex lives or manage a brain-dead woman’s care from the nation’s capital.”
Well, yeah.
It’s true that Republicans are hypocritical in word and deed. But while they may be false to an ideology, they’re always true to their mission: to promote and serve the interests of big corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. And when it comes to that agenda, all of them — the Chris Christies as well as the Paul Ryans — are as extremist as the political climate will permit. Whether the subject is taxation, “corporate personhood,” or the future of the planet, there’s no room for either moderation or ideology in the service of corporate goals.
