Saturday, 1/31/15, Public Square

No blocking women’s rights, equal pay for equal work, equal rights for all, separation of church and state, universal health care, care of our veterans, elderly and children…

dreamed

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Filed under The Public Square

10 responses to “Saturday, 1/31/15, Public Square

  1. Asher Bob White

    I fear that dreaming is about all we have left. Corporations rule.

    • I agree! I wonder how long it will take the majority of people to figure this out and revolt? Plus, whenever that revolt happens, will it be peaceful?

  2. Totally off topic, having nothing whatsoever to do with today’s header — hubby and I drove to Guymon, Oklahoma, for a family funeral and I have some observations to share. Some at least have to do with politics.

    For those who don’t know where Guymon is — drive Hwy. 54 west and you’ll be in Guymon in just a little over four hours.

    You lose the signal for KMUW between Kingman and Pratt. Do those people out west never get to listen to NPR? That just might explain a few things!

    Between somewhere around Goddard and somewhere around Pratt you cross over the Ninnescah River or one of its forks at least SIX times. That is one meandering river!

    We left Wichita at 5 a.m. so the first approx. two hours of our trip was in darkness. We saw school buses gathering children in tiny towns in the dark. I wonder how much school consolidation has gone on in those tiny towns and how far some children have to travel in those buses before finally arriving at school.

    The wind farms look very eerie in the dark. All those blinking lights in long rows make you wonder “what am I seeing.” The first and only other time I saw wind farms at night was a trip 6176 and I made to see PrairePond. It took me a while to remember what we discovered on that trip.

    The fences in far western Kansas are totally clogged with tumble weeds. It reminded me of pictures from the dust bowl days when those clogged fence lines got covered over with dirt and disappeared. You could walk right over those fences because they just became hills.

    Every grain elevator we saw — and we saw a BUNCH — also had BIG and many piles of grain on the ground all covered over.
    — Is this natural at this time of year
    — or are farmers holding on for better prices
    — or is the market depressed and there are no buyers?

    In the little town of Liberal gas prices ranged from $1.79 to $2.10. I’ve never seen such a wide disparity in such close proximity. Do you think that station charging $2.10 which was two or three blocks from another selling for $1.79 had any customers!?

    Yes, you can still tell very easily when you leave (or enter) Kansas. Kansas still has far superior roads to Oklahoma (and last time I drove to both Nebraska and Missouri this was also true). I do fear Kansas can catch up with neighboring states and accomplish the same deteriorating roadways under Governor Brownback.

  3. Jeb Bush is his own Dick Cheney.

    Michael Schiavo: ‘Jeb Bush Is A Vindictive, Untrustworthy Coward’

    Jeb ‘Put Me Through Hell’
    Michael Schiavo knows as well as anyone what Jeb Bush can do with executive power. He thinks you ought to know too.
    http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/jeb-bush-terri-schiavo-114730.html#ixzz3QR0u2sU2

    • I remember the Schiavo fiasco – and to think those folks doing all the dictating to Michael Schiavo were those folks who profess the don’t want government interference in their personal lives.

      WTH..

  4. The Koch Brothers Have Decided On Your Next Leader: President Scott Walker

    (from the link): Their previous attempts have used a war hero, then a successful businessman, so why did they decide on using the college dropout who left after an attempt to run for student body president was foiled by a rule violation?

    Most probably because he is completely and absolutely their servant. This was well demonstrated when The BEAST’s Ian Murphy crank called Governor Walker pretending to be David Koch. He owes everything to the Koch brothers, and cannot even step a toe out of line, or else he will lose everything he has. A political slave to big money. He lacks independent wealth, a stock portfolio to fall back on, or even a military career to monetize for support. This means, to the Koch Brothers at least, that he cannot go off-script, and will be their absolute servant.

    This out-of-left-field support for Walker is likely the death knell for the presidential hopes of dozens of Republicans. Without Koch money, they simply can no longer compete against the Democratic grassroots financing of campaigns.

    Why is the GOP bothering with a primary at all, when they have already modified the rules for the GOP’s selection of president such that their candidate will win regardless of primary and caucus results?

    http://www.addictinginfo.org/2015/01/27/scott-walker-new-hope/

  5. This one is too interesting not to share.

    King v. Burwell: The Prohibitive Cost of Any Congressional Response to a Ruling Against the Affordable Care Act

    (from the link): In March, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in King v. Burwell, the latest court challenge to the Affordable Care Act. This time, opponents of the law claim that tax credits should not be available for health plans sold through a marketplace—or “exchange”—run by the federal government via the HealthCare.gov website. If the Supreme Court rules against the Affordable Care Act, more than 8 million Americans would become uninsured, and premiums would increase by more than 35 percent in the market for individuals—even for those who do not receive tax credits or buy insurance through the marketplace.

    The media, health care industry stakeholders, state officials, members of Congress, and the Supreme Court justices themselves should understand that Congress would not be able to take legislative action to prevent these severe consequences from occurring. Due to budget scorekeeping rules, any congressional response to a Supreme Court decision against the Affordable Care Act—whether it be a targeted response or one that makes additional revisions to the law—would cost as much as $340 billion over 10 years. To state the obvious, the challenge of paying for this cost would be insurmountable.

    https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/healthcare/report/2015/01/29/105591/king-v-burwell/?utm_content=bufferb0556&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

  6. Meet John Ellis (known as Jeb) Bush as a young man. WOW! I know if he does actually run for the 2016 Republican nomination we’ll learn much more than we know today, but this piece offers many insights!

    Jeb Bush shaped by troubled Phillips Academy years
    Possible presidential candidate had tumultuous four years at Andover school
    http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2015/02/01/tumultuous-four-years-phillips-academy-helped-shape-jeb-bush/q6ccyHNOtP1n6kqDokMBfK/story.html

  7. The Republican Passed Keystone Pipeline Bill Violates The Constitution

    (from the link): A legal expert wrote a very prescient article explaining why the Koch Congress passing “special legislation written to specifically affect the fate of a particular individual, a small group of individuals, or a company, whose name (or names) is directly mentioned in the legal text itself” is inherently unconstitutional. A University of Toledo College of Law professor, Evan C. Zoldan rightly asserts the “Keystone Bill” is not unlike a 2005 Republican Congress legislation “for the relief of the parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo.” That was the legal dispute between Schiavo’s parents and her husband over whether she should be kept in a ‘persistent vegetative state’ with a feeding tube. That decision was the purview of, and should have been resolved by, the judiciary; not religious right Republicans or George W. Bush. In fact, Professor Zoldan noted that the law specifically “wiped away all previous legal precedent of the judiciary;” particularly because it said “Nothing in this Act shall constitute a precedent with respect to future legislation.”

    In the same manner that the “Schiavo” legislation did not apply to any other Americans other than Schiavo’s parents, the Koch’s Keystone bill “will not let any other pipelines crossing international borders bypass the State Department’s permitting process.” As Zoldan noted, in the Schiavo case Republicans superseded the authority and power of the judicial branch of government, and in the KeystoneXL case Republicans are attempting to supersede and take power out of the hands of the Executive Branch. In the Keystone case it is because an African American man is the President and because Republicans’ allegiance and service is to the Koch brothers; not the American people, not America, and certainly not the United States Constitution.

    In either case there is the same constitutional violation; “the illegal encroachment by one branch of government into the function of one of the other branches.” Something Professor Zoldan said “represents a clear violation of the U.S. Constitution’s separation of powers.”

    http://www.politicususa.com/2015/01/31/koch-congress-keystone-legislation-violates-constitution.html