113th Congress-style Freeloading

Since freeloading was pretty much institutionalized in the historical past, on the backs of slaves and others oppressed, it's ironic that the ideological peers of Jefferson Davis talk about freeloading as much as they do.  Like the Tea Partiers in Congress, for instance.   And Congress, of all people, commenting on the alleged freeloading of others!  You would think they would try to deflect any embarrassing comparisons to themselves by not talking about freeloading at all, but this 113th Congress is shameless.  This is, after all, a handsomely paid Congress (roughly $175,000 annually and an abundance of perks) that rarely works a full business week, has more adjournments than probably any Congress in history, and likely takes more and longer vacations than run-of-the-mill freeloaders, such as the CEOs of rich corporations that inexplicably receive monetary largesse from Uncle Sam. 

Nonetheless, the Tea Party folk in Congress can't get enough of talking negatively about "food stamp" and general welfare recipients, most of whom are either children or working adults, and many of the latter without conventional jobs are doing community or volunteer work.  They even had a Georgian congressman (Kingston) saying or implying that poor kids need to start picking up brooms in school and sweeping the classroom or cafeteria floors (he didn't say "all" kids).  The Tea Party Congress could just leave low-income or poor descendants of slaves alone by just considering "welfare" a kind of inheritance trade-off for work never paid for in past centuries, but then that wouldn't fit in with their true colors.

This Tea Party, that's pretty much running the gerrymandered U.S. House of Representatives, even wants to snatch away some or all of the already earned money of Social Security recipients through gimmicky laws or privatization, and a lot of them want to outright dismantle the popular program.  They could care less that Social Security is not welfare, but basically a pension fund that is paid into by the general populace, and thus by the recipients themselves.  Regarding another insurance program that is paid for by the recipients and could-be recipients, the Tea Party also doesn't want any extension of unemployment compensation to laid-off workers, of course, and they really don't like the concept of unemployment compensation in general, let alone helping people whose benefits are about to run out this month. 

All the Tea Party cares about is feeding into this bizarre notion that a government of a great nation should do nothing other than provide for the national defense and some policing, and to pave or re-pave some interstate highways, we guess.  Their unorthodox ideas, to put it kindly, would make for a poor nation that would hardly be a nation if they were to succeed beyond their wildest dreams.  And if their rank-in-file and the rest of the nation would magically start emulating their 113th Congress ways, who would do the work to keep a great nation running?  Pretty much nobody.

[Originally posted on Commoner on 12/20/13 under the title "Speaking of Freeloading: the 113th Congress;" revised on 12/25/13.]

Government By Crisis

With the old 111th Congress having passed the healthcare law, some years ago, that essentially is a redone Republican (R) plan from the 1990s and a "gift basket" to medical insurance companies, the present-day R's, that control the federal House of Representatives, are about to shut down the government over their opposition to it, believe it or not, though they realize they don't have the political numbers in the overall government to actually repeal the law in 2013.  Their main opposition to the Affordable Care Act is that poor and low-income people might be able to get healthcare.  That sums it up in short.  This is the same party that once opposed Social Security (from the "New Deal"), Medicare (from the "Great Society'), and generally opposes social welfare in general, whether or not it also benefits the middle class, and now they are going to shut down the government to make a point.  Workers could get thrown out of jobs, and payments could stop going to military personnel and recipients of social security insurance, among others, depending on how long all of this lasts.   None of these shenanigans are doing the economy any good, but stay tuned, the next planned crisis inside the government shutdown crisis is called the debt ceiling crisis.

[Originally published on Northern Pacific Report on 9/26/13 and revised on 9/30/13.]

Obama and Whistleblowers

Reportedly, President Barack Obama's minions scrubbed one on his websites of a section that had said something to the effect that whistleblowers were so valued by Obama and would be protected under his administration.  The words were published sometime around the beginning of his administration or prior and, like so many other of his stated policies back then and now, completely phony.  In fact, they were Orwellian phony since the Obama govt. has gone after whistleblowers with an enthusiasm (unprecedented arrests and prosecutions of whistleblowers) unlike any administration in U.S. history.  These whistleblowers have tried to uncover lawlessness and immorality in government with courage and true patriotism for the most part, but the so-called Constitutional Scholar, who used to think there were "57" states in the Union, believe it or not, has all but declared whistleblowers as enemies of the state, while his wisecracking Attorney General, Eric Holder, has thrown the book at them.   It is little wonder that the Obamaites had to scrub words from a website that were proving to be a real embarrassment to them.

[Originally published on Commoner on 7/28/13 under "Obama to Whistleblowers: Don't Believe a Word I Said;" revised on 7/30/13.]