Now, a third major error by President Obama rips our country apart.

[seafan]

1. Retaining Goldman Sachs honchos to manage the Wall Street-induced economic meltdown, accelerated by George W. Bush, Inc. over the past eight years.


2. Perpetuating the travesties of the illegal wars started by George W. Bush.


3. Throwing universal, single payer health care for all Americans off the cliff.




And all of these egregious decisions, in the face of control of the White House, the US Senate and the US House of Representatives, and buoyed by the will of The People.




And 30 Senate Democrats just voted against re-importation of lower-cost drugs from abroad.


There is an agenda here, and the People's business is not on it.

The pharmaceutical industry predicted Friday that the safety of the nation’s prescription drugs would be imperiled if the Senate passed a new bipartisan measure to let American consumers buy cheaper drugs from foreign nations.

“Our critics, unfortunately, say all we’re trying to do is protect profits,” said Ken Johnson, senior vice president of industry’s main trade group, the Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers of America.

"The drug companies form the most powerful lobby in Washington," he said. "They never lose."
---US Senator Bernie Sanders, 2009




Mr. President, I don't know who or what is holding you hostage from making a difference in the lives of the people of this country.


As it stands now, we are on a collision course with utter catastrophe.

[Vincardog]

1. WE need to throw out the DINOs and Blue Cross Dogs ASAP

[corpseratemedia]

2. this will turn into a long fight to vote out corporawhoredems in the party

who hate americans

[TwilightGardener]

3. Honestly, I don't have a big problem with the Wall Street thing--

I wasn't opposed to TARP and the bailouts, I saw them as necessary to keep the whole system from grinding to a halt or going under--I just wish the administration would have been more serious about requiring the big banks to LEND and curb bonuses. Iraq is going the way I want it to (winding down), Afghanistan I am ambivalent about--but I accept that Obama still sees a worthy and do-able mission there. I think HCR could have been handled better, at least in terms of message control.

[bvar22]

35. The whole system grinding to a halt?

Well, ALL we have is the word of Hank Paulson and some of the other Multi Millionaires (campaign contributors) that reaped HUGE sums from the free money that their extortion threat provided.

That extortion scam worked so well that NOW the Health Insurance Cartel is using it.

"Give us a $Trillion Dollars or we will continue to let these 40,000 Americans/year die"

[StarfarerBill]

4. Yep: when it comes to protecting profit, the corporate Mob is all about protectionism.

The rest of us..."Under the bus, under the bus."

[DJ13]

5. Poor Obama

If he doesnt play along with the corrupt power in DC he wont get that $10 million book deal or that perpetual lucrative (million $ per engagement) speaking tour after he leaves office.

Sucks to be put in a position where you either give up on personal wealth or you sell out millions of Americans.

[Shagbark Hickory]

6. WHAT?! He had plenty of book deals before he even got to washington.

I don't think book deals has anything to do with this.

I think he's just not standing up for the people.

[DJ13]

8. Its the carrot thats been dangled in front of every President since Reagan

Even Bush got paid for his "service" with a book deal after leaving the WH.

[Shagbark Hickory]

18. He's the one dangling carrots. Bigger than avg carrots I might add.

[Hippo_Tron]

13. So what you're saying is, insurance companies decide who gets a book deal

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Publishing companies decide a book deal and how much and Obama's will be millions because the publishing companies know that his book will sell a lot of copies. Obama's book deal has nothing to do with the substance of health care reform. Nice try, though.

[Romulox]

7. There is no hidden tormentor; Obama is doing precisely what he wants to do. nt

[Individualist]

10. Correct!

[NJmaverick]

9. DU is now "our Country"?

:crazy:

[blueman2]

11. Forced buy in

I could never support a bill that FORCES taxpayers to buy into govt premiums if some of those funds go towards abortion, because some of those taxpayers may be opposed to abortion.

[EnlightenedOne]

14. and how do you feel about war?

I suspect you whole heartedly supported Bush's illegal and immoral war against Iraq - where we blew up peoples' ACTUAL children without any care at all. I hate that my taxes go towards building more weapons of mass destruction.

[blueman2]

15. Correct

That's exactly my point. If you are opposed to that war then you should protest leaders/legislation that support it. Just as those who oppose abortion should protest being forced to help fund it.

[EnlightenedOne]

16. Actually, over 1 million people marched

against the war, but Bush referred to us as a "focus group" that didn't merit his attention or care. So just because we are "against" something doesn't mean that it matters to those who have money to make and steal from the U.S. Taxpayer to wage their war. I believe Veep Cheney and his company Halliburton made out like bandits on the war - and then they took our tax dollars and sent them overseas to the Grand Caymans where they would not have to pay taxes on it. that was quite the "conflict of interest" there. But despite our cries, it was done nonetheless, with the support of the Republican party. I don't recall hearing a single Republican having a problem with that.

Now then, if you succeed in your efforts to force women to have these children that they don't want to have or can't afford to have - I presume you will wholeheartedly support her with your tax dollars to perhaps pursue employment opportunities, food stamps and welfare while she raises this child (children) so that they are not forced to live in squaler or on the streets. Is that a correct assumption on my part?

[blueman2]

19. Huh?

?"efforts to FORCE women to have a child they don't want..."? What are you talking about? Last time I checked abortion is perfectly legal in this country numbnuts. Who said anything about FORCING women to have children. Anyway to answer your question: Yes, if a women CHOOSES to have a baby even though she cannot afford the baby then yes I would wholeheartedly support her with my tax dollars to perhaps pursue employment opportunities, food stamps and welfare while she raises this child (children) so that they are not forced to live in squaler or on the streets. No family should live in squalor. If it takes tax dollars to keep that from happening then so be it. That said, I would like to see tax dollars going to fund birth control for those who can't afford it so that those women who do not want a child do not get pregnant in the first place. A women being faced with an unwanted pregnancy is a dilemma that is easily avoided in today's day and age.

[EnlightenedOne]

24. Well, I misjudged you

and you can apologize to me for the name-calling. Most people who do not want to pay for abortions out of their tax dollars are also against a woman's right to choose - period. And, they also tend to be against birth control. Yes, for now it is illegal and I suspect it will stay that way, but there certainly is a fight against it, thanks to religion - which rails against abortion but has no problem being pro-war and killing the born children. Even though the Bible or Jesus never uttered a word about abortion, but the republican party knew it would be a great way to turn the majority Democratic Catholics into reputlicans. So kudos to you.

[seafan]

22. We were dismissed as a mere *focus group* in the run-up to the illegal Iraq invasion.

And we reject that corporate-owned media-generated label.



Just another way Corporations control the propaganda flow to Americans-- controlling the content of media outlets. No more public airwaves suits them just fine in their merger with Government.


For thirty years, Corporations have pulled the wool over our eyes to hide this from the populace, instead, trumpeting false blame on liberals, so-called "Big Government is The Problem" lies, and badmouthing government repeatedly so that people's trust is gutted.



Attention teabaggers, disaffected citizens, fed-up Democrats, Republicans, Independents and all other affiliations: The REAL ENEMY IS CORPORATIONS that have seized control of our government.




Now, we all need to get on the same team to fight these gangsters.



The truth will set us free.

[blueman2]

23. Hold on now.

But Seafan, isn't it corporations that employ people? Isn't it corporations that make things? Isn't it corporations that put gas in your car so you can get around? Isn't it corporations that heat our homes and made your computer? Isn't it corporations the generate 99% of the governments tax revenues? I was totally against the bailouts and I say let them sink or swim on their own. But c'mon to Hate them? To call them gangsters? Why do you call them gangsters? Because somewhere up at the top in an ivory tower there's a rich guy? So what.

[EnlightenedOne]

25. Who make up the corporations?

p.e.o.p.l.e.

US. But instead of giving us a living minimum wage or cost of living increases - what do they do? They screw the worker and all the profits are divided amongst the top executives. It was never that way before Reagan. So now its not enough to make $350,000 a year, or $650,000 a year. It must be that the top executives take home MILLIONS. And with those millions, they are allowed and do pay off many a politician to do their bidding. They have become the enemy because of their greed and they refuse to play fair. That's gangster and mafia.

[seafan]

31. Just joined DU today, did you, blueman2? Welcome.

Here are some facts that no doubt you will find interesting.

...."Isn't it corporations the generate 99% of the governments tax revenues?"....

Maybe in foreign countries, but not in ours.


According to the GAO, this report from last year for example, Most Corporations Don't Pay Income Taxes

August 12, 2008

Most corporations, including the vast majority of foreign companies doing business in the United States, pay no income taxes, according to a Government Accountability Office report released Tuesday


During the eight-year period covered by the report, 72 percent of foreign-owned corporations went at least one year without owing taxes, and the same was true for 55 percent of domestic corporations.

Small companies were much more likely to pay no taxes than larger companies. Still, more than 3,500 large domestic corporations - with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts - did not pay taxes in 2005.

.....

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Byron L. Dorgan , D-N.D., who requested the report along with Carl Levin , D-Mich. "The tax system that allows this wholesale tax avoidance is an embarrassment and unfair to hardworking Americans who pay their fair share of taxes. We need to plug these tax loopholes and put these corporations back on the tax rolls."

The report covered the period from 1998 through 2005. During that time, corporate income taxes as a share of gross domestic product dipped, from 2.2 percent in 1998 to 1.2 percent in 2003, the lowest share since 1983. But receipts jumped after that, hitting 2.7 percent in 2006 and 2007, according to the Office of Management and Budget. That was the highest share since the late 1970s.

"....Isn't it corporations that make things? Isn't it corporations that put gas in your car so you can get around? Isn't it corporations that heat our homes and made your computer?"....

Actually, these corporations have been shipping our jobs overseas for a few decades. And it's another story for many domestic corporations. Consider WalMart, for example. Their profits flow out of the small towns and into Corporate coffers in Bentonville, Arkansas. The local people whose family members work at WalMart do not benefit from corporations such as this that siphon their profits out of communities, never to be used for improving the lives of their poorly compensated employees and their families they need to support.

And actually, no, my computer was not made in this country. American corporation, but foreign workers built it.


No, it's PEOPLE who "make things". And domestic and foreign corporations have so many built-in advantages, tax shelters, *Free Trade* agreements, lack of regulations and armies of lobbyists, that THE AMERICAN PEOPLE's welfare is no longer part of the equation.

Instead, US corporations "that make things" have set up shop in foreign countries, and sent American jobs to third world countries and paying their people 25 cents an hour. Corporations "on the make" is more accurate.


How do you feel about the huge wind farm that will be built in Texas, that will utilize wind generators that will be built by workers in China? And how do you feel about these same Chinese corporations receiving some of American taxpayers' stimulus money, because these companies are *creating jobs*--- IN CHINA?


So, good luck in holding these predatory corporations accountable for anything on our side of the pond. You'll have to go to corporate headquarters to speak to someone--- just buy your plane ticket to the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands (Noble Drilling Services Inc.; Seagate Technology LLC), Bermuda (Accenture; Foster Wheeler Ltd.; Ingersoll-Rand Co.; Tyco; Cooper Industries, Inc.; Global Crossing), Dubai(Halliburton), Barbados (Nabors Industries Ltd); etc., etc.

Why have the headquarters of these American corporations moved offshore? So they can avoid paying taxes to our government.

....Why do you call them gangsters? Because somewhere up at the top in an ivory tower there's a rich guy? So what."....

Since we don't manufacture much in America any longer, let's take a look at Goldman Sachs.

The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. In fact, the history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates.

By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citi-group - which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former GoIdman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange. the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York - which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman - not to mention ...

But then, any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain - an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.

The bank's unprecedented reach and power have enabled it to turn all of America into a giant pump-and-dump scam, manipulating whole economic sectors for years at a time, moving the dice game as this or that market collapses, and all the time gorging itself on the unseen costs that are breaking families everywhere - high gas prices, rising consumer-credit rates, halfeaten pension funds, mass layoffs, future taxes to payoff hailouts. All that money that you're losing, it's going somewhere, and in both a literal and a figurative sense. Goldman Sachs is where it's going: The bank is a huge, highly sophisticated engine for converting the useful, deployed wealth of society into the least useful, most wasteful and insoluble substance on Earth - pure profit for rich individuals.

.....

Reuters

The Goldman Sachs building in New York.





The rich guys in this particular ivory tower have ripped you and the rest of America off. That's why they are known as gangsters.



America is waking up.


Good morning.

[blueman2]

32. Hold on now Part ll

seafan

According to the very article you site at the top of your column, small companies are much more likely to pay no taxes than larger ones. Well that's a good thing wouldn't you agree? The article goes on to say that, "large" domestic corporations - with more than $250 million in assets or $50 million in gross receipts - did not pay taxes in 2005. Do you know how small of a corporation that is? A business of that small size should be referred to as a company not a "corporation" (considering what the term "corporation" implies within our argument here). So let's keep the discussion focused on these really, really big, evil corporations that I think you're referring to. First off, there is no such thing as a tax "loophole". That is if you define "loophole" as "illegal". Yes, giant corporations pay accounting firms huge money to take advantage of obscure and LEGAL tax code. Well, too bad, because that very tax code was written by... you guessed it- politicians freely elected by the citizens. The IRS simply does not allow any corporation, whether it be Apple (the evil corporation that may have made your cell phone) or Grandma's pottery shop, to avoid paying up by simply bending the rules a bit. And I've seen plenty a perp walk in my day by CEO's that tried (WorldCom, Enron, Tyco, Adelphia, etc.). The fact is that corporate taxes in America are amongst the highest of the world's larger economies. One note about my original post. I said that corporations GENERATE most of the govts tax revenues. I didn't say PAY. Think about it: Sales tax, payroll tax, income tax, capital gains tax, excise tax, commercial real estate tax, utility tax, gasoline tax, tolls from people going to and from work. And on and on. All these taxes are generated by private businesses. Hey wait... I just thought of something: Because govts can't exist w/o taxes... our govt can't exist without all these private businesses and corporations. Uh oh :(

I agree with you 100% that we need to stop shipping jobs overseas. But to say that the U.S. doesn't manufacture much any more is inaccurate. Despite the dubious trend of exporting our jobs, the U.S. still has the largest manufacturing base in the world. But you're right, we're going in the wrong direction.

Now on to WalMart. I was in wallmart the other day and I saw a pair of quality, brand name leather work boots (yes, they were made in China) for $11. $11! Why is it that whenever someone starts in on the Walmart bashing, it's always about how the 70 employees there don't have a good dental plan. But it's never about the thousands out in the community whose standard of living has been drastically raised simply buy having Walmart in their vicinity. And by the way, you seem to object to the fact that Walmarts profits "flow into their corporate coffers". Well where may I ask would you prefer them to flow to?

You say it's PEOPLE who make things, not corporations. Isn't it both? Ask an automotive worker to press out a rear bumper for a new Ford without an assembly line. Ask a construction worker to dig a utility trench without his heavy equipment built by Caterpillar. Ask a biologist to manufacture a new drug without the multibillion dollar laboratory provided by the pharmaceutical company. They'll respond by asking you to kindly step aside cause they've got work to do. They both depend on each other.

I don't even want to discuss the banks here in this discussion because that would be like presenting a toaster at a horse show. It may be a great example of a toaster.. but this here's a horse show pardner. I can't even give a definition of what the hell is going on with the banks. It's not socialism. It's not capitalism. It's not communism. I don't know what it is. Besides I gotta go, Letterman's about to start. Bye

[seafan]

34. Good luck in your life's journey.

[nightrain]

17. blueman2--a "roll" is something to eat. A "role" is more likely what you mean.

[blueman2]

20. Thanks (cut and pasted)

Will correct that.

[CKennedy16]

12. Forced buy in is crap.

"Throwing universal, single payer health care for all Americans off the cliff."

Now that is some change we can believe in!!!
:rofl: :sarcasm:

[treestar]

21. Ripped apart?

:rofl:

Oh the drama!

And anyone who ever worked for Goldman Sachs or any other large company should be jailed!

[blindpig]

26. Not error. Design.

The only mistake is believing that the government is by, of and for the people.

[mullard12ax7]

27. But I like our country being run by criminal banks and war criminal bushies

like Gates. Why this year alone, they've thrown women under the bus, increased our war mongering, screwed home owners, continued to manipulate the markets and best of all:

HELD NO ONE ACCOUNTABLE

[Vidar]

28. K&R.

[GeorgeGist]

29. Wait til Friday

[bobthedrummer]

30. Plus the total lack of holding BUSH/CHENEY era criminals to our rule of law and Constitution-k&r

[winyanstaz]

33. That was the one that really pissed me off.....

I thought we would be seeing a Change...back into being a nation of law at least.
Until those criminals are brought to justice we will never be healed.