At What Cost?

At What Cost ?


According to an  October 5, 2013  New York Times article, "A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning" , the government shutdown has been in the planning since the re-election of President Obama in 2012.  Before Ted Cruz was appointed talking mouth for the movement,   former Reagan Attorney General Ed Meese III and leaders from more than 36 Conservative groups had been strategizing  a massive plot all along......  a "blueprint to defund Obamacare" by shutting down the government..

Who would be so arrogant as to dismiss and disregard the voice of the American people and our Democratic system of government that passed the Affordable Care Act by majority rule into a law  that  was ultimately upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States?  Who would derail democracy and risk defaulting on the debt?


Koch Konservatives. .... Government dictated by  ideological  despots whose billionaire status not only affords them the protection of Citizens United to manipulate  our elections , but now, apparently,   the veto  power to override our   legislative  process?  Americans have not experienced this type of takeover  since the  attempted corporate coup on President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, when a group of wealthy businessmen created a veteran's organization in a plot to overthrow the President of the United States.   What?  A group of patriot Americans  manipulated by big money  to destroy a President??

Freedom, Patriot,  Prosperity, Heritage....apparently these labels are not so  American after all.  "Freedom" is just a  "front" to these ultra-rich oligarchs whose  egos are too swollen to swallow the loss of an election campaign they funded or the passage of a bill that did not  meet   their  own narrow, self-serving political view.

Minimum wage?  Pension funds?  Jobs for Americans in America?  The  only jobs Koch Konservatives are concerned about appear to be paying right wing political advocates:

Freedom Partners is a tax exempt business organization with over 200 members who pay at least $1,000,000 in annual dues.  The Board is headed by an executive of Koch Industries and they fund   organizations like the Tea Party Patriots to push to defund the Affordable Care Act.

According to PBS Bill Moyers and Company,  Freedom Partners spent $250,000,000 in 2012 to shape political and policy debate to sabotage the Affordable Care Act including dubious studies, misinformation in talking points, and even raunchy television commercials involving proctologists,  all contributing to an  epidemic of Obamacarephobia.

The Tea Party Express has spent 2.1 million it has raised on campaign consultants .

Heritage Action is one of many leadership institutes  that has trained 6,000 paid "sentinels" to openly "confront" elected officials at open meetings.

The directives that come to these right wing organizations are clear:   "Koch Konservatives should not approve a CR unless it defunds Obamacare!".  At any cost!

The House of Representatives, with the most novice members  vulnerable to strong-arming by  ultra-rich oligarchs bankrolling campaigns, has become the broken branch of our government.  A small band of ruffians  sit like mischievous imps on the edge of a teetering branch, chain saw in hand, taunting, "Make me! Make me!", while gleefully touching the blade to the trunk of  a majestic ancestral tree.  They will cause suffering for working families and the economic advances we have made, risk  the  country's credit rating,  and tarnish our credibility and stance  in the world,  before they accept defeat.

Our world neighbors who are watching our country  wonder how a small group of anarchists can wield so much control in a nation  that touts free elections and the democratic process to the rest of the world.

So what good is the democratic process when we cant believe in it anymore?    What happens when powerful corporate forces in this country   write  the legislation through ALEC for states to pass,  push to privatize Social Security and Medicare, fight against workers rights,  and gut environmental deregulation, all in the name of weakening  our government ……until it is  too  disjointed  to function and people are too demoralized to vote?

Sweep the house in November!  That's what  the American people can  do  to counteract this ploy by the faux government of the Kochs, by the Kochs, and for the Kochs in our nation.

It wont be easy.  The power and extent of the Koch Konservative dominion is deeply funded, organized with people motivated by winning no matter what the costs, and billionaires who can pay them very handsomely for their efforts.


There are "scorecards"  that are kept to log how a Republican voted on any given issue.  Moderate Republicans who are not Koch Konservatives are "targeted" in the next election with Tea party challengers.  The Kochs and other billionaires get what they want or else.  If they cant get it through Republican incumbents , they fund Tea Party candidates ......and gerrymander the district so the elected official can sit on the proverbial Tea Pot and do nothing.

Your Representative in the House  will probably turn a deaf ear  to your concerns if you arent part of the "score card" gestapo. Those  incumbents take their paycheck from the government,  but take their orders from  the Koch Konservative machine.


But Republicans, Democrats, and Libertarians may be  keeping their own score cards in this shameful game. Do we all abide by the Constitution of the United States, or only when it works for our side?   The only Americans who can afford to win  "at any cost"  are the billionaires.  And losing  the Democratic process in this country is too high a price to pay.

Armed and Way Too Dangerous

 Armed and Way Too Dangerous: In 2005, George Zimmerman was charged with "resisting an officer with violence" and "battery on a law enforcement officer&quo...

Armed and Way Too Dangerous

In 2005, George Zimmerman was charged with "resisting an officer with violence" and "battery on a law enforcement officer".

The officer didnt shoot George Zimmerman.

Before the Zimmerman jury was sent into deliberations, they were given the  following instruction:
"If George Zimmerman was not engaged in unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had the right to be,  he had not duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force" ... (Sounds so far like Trayvon Martin).
..... "including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to to do so too prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony."

In 2005, ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force,   co-chaired by Wal-Mart, the nations largest seller of rifles, ratified the Stand Your Ground Law which was eventually adopted in26 states, including Florida.

Trayvon Martin had the same right to meet force with force.  Zimmerman was a stranger who chose not to identify himself as the Neighborhood Watch, not to wait for the police officer to  arrive, but to struggle with a young man who had just celebrated his 17th birthday three weeks previously.  And shoot him in the heart.

StandYour Ground is a bad law.  It is an NRA backed broadening of gun rights based soly on the subjective decision by the gun owner.  The victim has no rights.

Did Zimmerman "reasonably believe" his injury was life threatening?  He refused treatment for his bloody nose and cuts to the back of his head until the following day.

The American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ) is a group of state legislators and corporate lobbyists funded by the most powerful corporations in the United States.  They write legislation benefitting corporate interests. Not so much the common man.

Thanks to ALEC, Stand Your Ground not inly is it less safe for unarmed citizens to walk the streets and hold perpetrators responsible for the death of a citizen,but also more difficult to hold corporations responsible for causing death or injury.  71 ALEC bills introduced in 2013 would weaken the legal rights of the common citizen to take legal action against oil, tobacco, pharmaceuticals, and health insurance companies.
ALEC , which is overwhelmingly Republican in membership, has written legislation that makes it harder to vote, destroys unions, protects corporations from civil liability, and suppresses environmental protection, all in the name of furthering corporate power and profit in this country.

The next time you hear certain politicians speak of Americans losing their rights and freedoms in this country, ask yourself who is responsible.

Obama? Or the NRA GOP, ALEC , KOCH and multi million dollar legislative machine that operates behind closed doors.

Its too late to ask Trayvon Martin.