Let's get our priorities in order!

Daily Kos

The AP reports that at least 65,000 bridges are "structurally deficient" and over 20,000 more are "fracture critical," meaning that the failure of one component could lead to a collapse, as we saw in the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington state last spring.

Tell Senate Republicans: Fix our roads and bridges instead of shutting down our government

Republicans are playing games with our government to appeal to their right-wing base—pushing us to the brink of a government shutdown in order to score a few points with the Tea Party.

While they’re playing games of legislative chicken, our country is facing a major infrastructure crisis.

The AP reports that at least 65,000 bridges are "structurally deficient" and over 20,000 more are "fracture critical," meaning that the failure of one component could lead to a collapse, as we saw in the I-5 bridge over the Skagit River in Washington state last spring.

Worst of all: an appalling 7,795 bridges were found to be both “structurally deficient” and “fracture critical”—a combination that shows significant disrepair and risk of collapse.

Simply put, critical infrastructure threatens the safety of Americans nationwide, but Republicans are more interested in keeping the Tea Party happy than they are in the basic governance required to address this crisis.

Join Daily Kos and the DSCC to tell Senate Republicans: Fix our roads and bridges instead of shutting down our government.

To Senate Republicans:

A government shutdown is exactly the opposite of what we need right now. We need to fix American roads and bridges.

Please fix our crumbling infrastructure instead of shutting down our government.

 

Add your name HERE

 

 

We Can Thank Republicans

Carl Younger

The self destructive lack of common sense displayed constantly by the Republican party is astonishing. I guess their answer will be to continue doing nothing but attacking affordable health care.

 

GOP Fought To Cut Dam Maintenance Budget In Colorado – Now The Dams Are Breaking

Author: Nathaniel DownesSeptember 14, 2013

 

This week’s torrential rains in Colorado — and flooding — have killed several people so far. How many are due to GOP-led cuts to dam repair?

The torrential rains in Colorado this week have resulted in flooding which has killed several people so far. This flooding is made worse by multiple dams which have already failed due to overfill, with dozens more at risk.

Why are they at risk? It turns out that state Republicans have blocked bills to deal with repair or maintenance on infrastructure throughout the state. These efforts, done in the name of fiscal conservatism, do not save money at all, and wind up costing far more than the money saved. Several bridges and dams had already failed before the flooding, which makes the added stress of the current conditions too much to bear. It is reported that over 100 bridges are unsafe while the number of dams nearing failure continues to climb, with over 300 dams listed as at-risk, and two dozen as of extreme risk.

The department tasks with managing the repairs for dams in the state is woefully understaffed and underbudgeted, and the state Republicans refuse to fund any repairs in their push for “small government.” This flies in the face of the reality of aging dam infrastructure across the United States, with 85% to be over a half-century old by 2020.

This is not a new scenario, of failure to maintain key infrastructure leading to disaster. In fact, it is a scenario the people of Johnstown, Pennsylvania know too well. In a wave of privatization in the late 1870′s, the state of Pennsylvania sold several key areas of the south fork river, including the South Fork Dam, to private interests. This eventually landed with a group of private developers, who used the land to found the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in 1881. It was host to notables such as Andrew Carnegie, Andrew Mellon, and a few dozen other of the wealthiest men in America. It was said that letting private hands manage the dam, which held back the reported 20 million tons of water of Lake Conemaugh, would be more cost-effective than having the state manage it. Instead, the private hands sold off the drain management systems for the value of the iron scrap, making it impossible to regulate the lake water level, and the dam fell into disrepair as ‘turning a profit’ was more important than maintaining the earthen structure.

On May 31, 1889, after several days of hard rain, the South Fork Dam gave way. In the path of the 20 million tons of water, the town of Johnstown.

Read this first hand report by 6-year-old Gertrude Quinn Slattery, a victim of the Johnstown flood, to remind us of the horror which the Republicans seek to engineer on a nationwide scale:

“I had great faith that I would not be abandoned,” she wrote. “While my thoughts were thus engaged, a large roof came floating toward me with about twenty people on it. I cried and called across the water to them to help me. This, of course they could not do. The roof was big, and they were all holding on for dear life, feeling every minute that they would be tossed to death. While I watched I kept praying, calling, and begging someone to save me. Then I saw a man come to the edge, the others holding him and talking excitedly. I could see they were trying to restrain him but he kept pulling to get away which he finally did, and plunged into the swirling waters and disappeared.

Then his head appeared and I could see he was looking in my direction and I called, cried, and begged him to come to me. He kept going down and coming up, sometimes lost to my sight entirely, only to come up next time much closer to my raft. The water  

was now between fifteen and twenty feet deep. 

“As I sat watching this man struggling in the water my mind was firmly fixed on the fact that he was my saviour. At last he reached me, drew himself up and over the side of the mattress and lifted me up. I put both arms around his neck and held on to him like grim death. Together we went downstream with the ebb and flow of the reflex to the accompaniment of crunching, grinding, gurgling, splashing and crying and moaning of many. After drifting about we saw a little white building, standing at the edge of the water, apparently where the hill began. At the window were two men with poles helping to rescue people floating by. I was too far out for the poles, so the men called:
 

‘Throw that baby over here to us.’

“My hero said: ‘Do you think you can catch her?’

“They said: ‘We can try.’”
 

“So Maxwell McAchren threw me across the water (some say twenty feet, others fifteen. I could never find out, so I leave it to your imagination. It was considered a great feat in the town, I know.)”

The total death toll was 2,209, including 396 children. It was the single most devastating event in US history up till that point. And it was caused by privatization, by greed, by hubris, by “small government.” In other words, by the same forces at work across the country and displayed in Colorado today.

Government regulations are not there for the good times, they are there so when the bad times comes, it is a minor issue, not a major catastrophe. The results of the Johnstown flood was the adoption of strict liability in US Law, replacing the previous form of fault-based liability which allowed the super-rich to get away with the massive deaths that rainy day so many years ago. Of course, there is an attack on this rule as well, called “Tort Reform.” They want none of it, they want to undo the entire 20th century, to turn the United States into a 3rd world nation, no longer a world powerhouse but instead a banana republic.

We hope for the people of Colorado that the rains pass soon, and that the worst case scenario does not happen. Do not believe their claims of ‘fiscal responsibility’ for their ideas cost far more than any short-term money saved. However, unless they excise the “small government” Republicans within their state as well as nationwide, even if the worst case scenario does not happen this time, it is a ticking time bomb.

Just ask the people of Johnstown, PA.

http://www.addictinginfo.org/2013/09/14/gop-fought-to-cut-dam-maintenance-budget-in-colorado-now-the-dams-are-breaking/

 

Hunger in America and the Moral Bankruptcy of Republicans

God Bless the President of the United States

This is OUTRAGEOUS! The GOP doubles down on the SNAP cuts, we need to VOTE these heartless, greedy politicians OUT in 2014! "Dorothy Rosenbaum and Stacy Dean of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a progressive D.C. think tank, said the cuts will "cause significant hardship to several million low-income households," and that 280,000 children from low-income families will lose access to free school lunch." Arthur Delaney- Huffington Post

 

 

More Than Half Of Teachers Report Buying Hungry Students Food With Their Own Money

 

We often hear about U.S. teachers being paid poorly for all the work they do to educate children. But did you know that 63 percent of teachers report buying food for the classroom each month with their own money? That's just one statistic from a report put out by Share Our Strength, which surveyed teachers across the country about hunger in America's classrooms.

You can download the full Teachers report and learn more surprising facts about hungry kids and the teachers trying to help them at the Share Our Strength site.

Share Our Strength also interviewed two teachers in New York City about their personal experiences with students who have come to depend on them for enough food to get them through the day.

WATCH THE VIDEO:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/23/more-than-half-of-teacher_n_368356.html

Food Stamps and Christians

The national budget defines our moral values as a nation.

Republicans want to deprive Americans of health care.

Republicans fought wars using the Social Security and Medicare surplus they don't want to repay.

Republicans are fighting to prevent Americans from having adequate FOOD - denying children food. Who supports this? How is this Christian?

Who allows children to go hungry?

Is this what Republicans want Americans to look like? Republicans no longer make any rational sense.

  

The Gap Between SNAP and Basic Economic Security

June 28, 2013

by John Light

 

There’s a wide gap between the income cutoff for government food assistance and the income required to provide children with a nutritious diet. As of early 2013, nearly 48 million Americans received food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). That’s about 15 percent of the country. Despite those numbers, a May 2013 report by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), which oversees SNAP, found that 21 percent of families with children experienced food insecurity in 2011 — meaning that at least some family members couldn’t get enough to eat to lead “active, healthy lives.”

To qualify for SNAP — which, until 2008, was called the Federal Food Stamp Program — a family can earn no more than 130 percent of the federal poverty guideline, which is established each year by the Department of Health and Human Services. Until October 2013, that figure is set at $2,069 per month for a family of three; after that, it will be bumped up by about $50. But many antipoverty advocacy groups point out that 130 percent of the poverty guideline is hardly a comfortable income for a family with children.

The nonprofit group Wider Opportunities for Women (WOW) has developed its own indicator for economic security called the Basic Economic Security Tables index, or BEST index. The index differs from state to state, and even between cities within a state, because of differences in the cost of living, including the price of food and childcare. WOW found that across the country, the actual income required for a family of three (one adult and two children) to be economically secure is 200 or 300 percent of the federal poverty guideline, not the 130 percent the USDA uses as the cutoff for SNAP.

That leaves many families — especially those headed by a single parent — in an uncomfortable place where they may not make enough money to buy quality food, but make too much to qualify for government assistance. The chart below shows that gap in a handful of states across America. Mouse over each bar for details.

Click on LINK for graph

http://billmoyers.com/2013/06/28/the-gap-between-snap-and-basic-economic-security/

Always Amazing!

The Everlasting GOP Stoppers

with Bernie Sanders

Veruca.

 

Ayn Rand collected Social Security

Shared at Ayn Rand collected Social Security.

 

Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off's photo.

I feel the same way about them as they felt about the bill!

Stop the World, the Teabaggers Want Off

 

 

Out in the Cold!

Mike Lux

 

Tue Dec 18, 2012

First Loyalties

by Michael Lux

When I was a young organizer for Iowa Citizen Action Network, we were doing a lot of work on utility rate hikes. I met an elderly woman, maybe late 70s, who was living on her Social Security check. As utility prices went through the roof, her cost of living increase in that check wasn't coming anywhere close to covering the costs she had. She was extremely worried, because as frugal as she was she couldn't figure out how to keep her heat on, pay her rent, and buy a few meager groceries.

She thought the utilities might end up shutting her heat off. I suggested a social services agency she could go to, and that she might check with neighborhood churches to see if they had funds that could help. And I promised that I would do everything I could to fight for her. I pushed hard on the local utility companies to try and shame them away from turning the heat off the dead of an Iowa winter, which didn't work very well because the utility companies had no shame. And my organization pushed in the legislature to get a bill passed that would prohibit utility shutoffs in the wintertime, which didn't pass the first year but did the second year we worked on it. But it didn't pass in time to save the woman I met. Reading the Cedar Rapids Gazette one day that winter, I saw that the woman I met had been found dead in her apartment of hypothermia after the utility company had turned off her heat.

When we got the bill passed in the next session, I thought of her. I was proud that no one would die in the coming years in Iowa because of having their heat turned off, but I was also mourning that we were too late to save her. And I vowed to keep my promise to her as long as I lived, that I would keep fighting for her and people like her.

It’s 30 years later, but I still have promises to keep, as do all Democrats who claim to be on the side of the middle class and poor. As Dean Baker makes clear, if the President’s apparent offer of changing the CPI formula is part of the budget deal, it will be a very hard blow for generations to come for seniors who will be unlikely to have decent pensions or much in the way of savings to cushion the blow of these cuts. And with prices for necessities (utility prices, gas, groceries, health care) tending to go up more than the inflation rate in general, this is the absolute worst kind of cut to be making.

I have been having some interesting conversations with Democrats over the last 24 hours about what being a loyal Democrat means with the President seeming likely to go forward with this deal. The point has been made that the Republicans are far worse than Obama on these issues, as all they want to do is to gut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other programs for the poor, and that is definitely true. The fact that the President is, according to the Washington Post, proposing to exclude SSI disability payments and provide a bump-up in benefits for those 85 and older is a good thing and much appreciated. People have said to me that the President’s heart is in the right place, and that he is working hard to get the best deal he thinks he can get, which may well be true- I gave up judging politicians’ motives long ago. And I have been told I should be a loyal Democrat, that the President is our party’s leader, and we should be unified in supporting him.

But here’s the deal: I didn't get into politics to help the Democratic party. I came to the Democratic party because they more often wanted to help the people I cared about helping- the poor, the disabled, the middle class folks fighting for a decent life for them and their families. When forced to choose, as it looks like I will in this case, I will choose the people I got into this work to fight for.

My first loyalties are to my middle class family, who will depend heavily on Social Security because they mostly won’t have lots of savings or generous pensions; to the kids I grew up with in a working class part of Lincoln, NE, who are getting ready to retire and mostly don’t have those savings or pensions either; to the people like my late brother Kevin who have lived with serious disabilities, who may or may not be taken care of depending on what is negotiated away next; and to the poor people and seniors who I got to know as a young organizer, like the elderly woman I made a promise to that I would keep fighting for her.

If the President decides to give into Republican demands to cut this kind of deal, thinking that launching a civil war with people like me who were part of his winning coalition in the election is better for the country and worth the trade-off, he will do what feels like he should. The DC pundits will be ecstatic (“the President is so brave to take on those seniors and cut Social Security”). Wall Street will be thrilled, they have been wanting to cut middle class benefits and the Social Security system for years. But on behalf of those people to whom I owe my first loyalties, I will do whatever I can to fight the kind of plan being described in news accounts today. I hope the rest of the progressive movement that has pledged to fight this kind of deal will fight the good fight along with me. The President will do what he thinks is best. The rest of us need to as well. If the deal goes down, it will be quite a way to start the President’s second term, an ugly fight with the people who fought by his side to elect him. We’ll see what’s ahead.


If you agree with Michael Lux, please add your name to the petition:
https://secure.americanfamilyvoices.org/page/signup/dont-take-the-deal

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/18/1171530/-First-Loyalties

Let's Talk .....

The Republican House slashed Food Stamps and free school meals programs and hungry Americans failed to arouse the ire of voters even though the federal budget defines who we are as a nation.

Programs to intercede with troubled kids are slashed as the US jail population grows to record levels.

The Right Wing promotes for-profit private prisons to house the growing prison population that should embarrass us as a nation.

The Big Mouths, like Rush Limbaugh, denounce the 'socialist' governments around the world, betraying their own ignorance and the successful statistics that define those nations.

Too many, content to behave like sheep, accept the propaganda, fail to question the results, and wring their hands when tragedies, such as Newtown are displayed shortly before Christmas.

At what point do we, as a nation, re-think the failures of 'Trickle Down Economics' that solely benefits the wealthy?

I remember being struck when a candidate for Sheriff explained that most of the inmates were illiterate, lacking job skills.

And yet we have a Governor, pushed by contruction unions, no longer living in the vulnerable slums of his childhood, promoting the community destruction of Predatory Gambling as his lasting legacy. Yes! It's all connected!

The banners of 'Social Justice' and 'Family Values' matter little when there's no substance.

We have forgotten who we are. We have lost our compassion.


Parramore: '45 million American adults suffer from mental illness.' (photo: unknown)

In the Wake of Another Mass Shooting, Let's Talk About America's Dangerously Gutted Mental Healthcare System

The Right’s program for public safety: Everyone should have a gun and few should get adequate mental healthcare.

December 14, 2012 |

Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

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The scene has replayed itself over and over -- in Tucson, at Virginia Tech, at Columbine. On Friday in Connecticut, another unstable man has taken innocent lives in a burst of terrifying violence.

Inadequate gun control is only one half of the story. The other is the shameful job America does of treating the mentally ill. Today, 45 million American adults suffer from mental illness. Eleven million of those cases are considered serious. Most of these people are not dangerous, but if they can’t get treatment, the odds of potential violence increase.

Yet the mentally ill are finding it increasingly difficult to get help. Mental health funding has been plummeting for decades. Since 2009, states have cut billions for mental health from their budgets. As Daniel Lippman has reported in the Huffington Post:

Across the country, states facing severe financial shortfalls have cut at least $4.35 billion in public mental health spending from 2009 to 2012, according to the National Association of State Mental Health Program Directors (NASMHPD). It's the largest reduction in funding since de-institutionalization in the 1960s and '70s. In fiscal year 2012 alone, 31 states that gave their numbers to the association reported cutting more than $840 million.

Thanks to the misguided austerity policies embraced by conservatives, more people are falling through the cracks. There are not enough psychiatric beds, treatment services or community support programs. Medication is expensive, and insurance companies routinely leave patients inadequately covered (the Affordable Care Act will hopefully address this problem by finally putting psychiatric illnesses on par with other health issues).

Mental healthcare workers have been laid off. Vulnerable people are neglected until their situation becomes acute – often after it’s too late. Many are incarcerated, often subjected to solitary confinement because prison officials don’t know what to do with them. Others are homeless – as many as 45 percent of the people living on the streets suffer from mental illness.

This situation is no accident, and it is not inevitable. Economics 101 tells you that when you have a massive economic crisis, the government must step in to fill the gap until the economy can recover.

The United States government, unlike, say, a state or a country like Greece, does not have to balance its budget. The U.S. has its own currency and is well-equipped to provide stimulus money to states to make up for budget shortfalls. What gets in the way of meaninful action is political obstruction, not economics. Federal stimulus dollars and other grants have made up for some of the cuts to mental healthcare, but thanks to constant efforts to block adequate stimulus measures, not enough. And if conservatives have their way, budget cuts to programs like Medicaid will continue to ensure that high-risk people can’t get help.

With proper treatment, people with severe mental illness are no more likely to commit crimes than others. But without treatment, the potential for tragedy is painfully evident.

The Right’s program for public safety appears to be that everyone should have a gun and few should get adequate healthcare. That’s a recipe for death and destruction. Killing sprees are on the rise. How many more people will have to die before mental healthcare becomes a national priority?

Lynn Parramore is an AlterNet senior editor. She is cofounder of Recessionwire, founding editor of New Deal 2.0, and author of 'Reading the Sphinx: Ancient Egypt in Nineteenth-Century Literary Culture.' She received her Ph.d in English and Cultural Theory from NYU, where she has taught essay writing and semiotics. She is the Director of AlterNet's New Economic Dialogue Project.

Follow her on Twitter @LynnParramore.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wake-another-mass-shooting-lets-talk-about-americas-dangerously-gutted-mental

Thank you, Rep. Gary Ackerman!

Benghazi was the cost of Tea Bagger Tax Cuts!

From: Too Informed To Vote Republican

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