imawene04's posterous

Denny Rehberg fights corruption, one half pint of milk at a time

Three to six trillion of these were lost to fraud in Iraq &
Afghanistan. But Denny Rehberg (R-MT) wants to take them
out of school kids' lunches.
Millionaire cashmere rancher Denny Rehberg frequently worries, probably between bites of filet mignon at The Palm with a lobbyist, that some kid who's merely poor-ish is sticking it to The Man for a price break on school lunches:
Rep. Dennis Rehberg (R-MT), who?s expected to face Sen. John Tester (D) in the Montana Senate race next year, is worried that some families who receive federally-subsidized lunches may be gaming the system and therefore bilking you out of your hard-earned taxpayer dollars.

Mmm! School lunch! Can't wait to steal some!

The Billings Gazette covered Rehberg's tour of a local school, where his sister is the principal. Rehberg's big question: "whether families ever dupe the free and reduced-price meal system."

Billings School District 2 K-12 executive director Brenda Koch answered him:

[E]ach year, a random sample of families who sign up and qualify are audited by the district to make sure they meet the income guidelines.

On top of that, she said, the district is audited by the state every year on how its Title I dollars are spent.

But Rehberg needed a target. ?I?d like to punish those systems that rip the taxpayers off,? he said.

Would you now, Denny? Because I heard there was $30-60 billion ripped off over in Iraq and Afghanistan. But I suppose it's easier to just hover over the shoulder of poor kids in Montana and pester them between sporkfulls of cafeteria macaroni & cheese about whether their daddies really for serious only made $16,000 shoveling cashmere goat shit last year.


Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/zs17K_Zo3Ug/-Denny-Rehberg-fights-corruption,-one-half-pint-of-milk-at-a-time

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Nobody could've predicted that slashing budgets crashes economies

Jobs Growth
Thousands of U.S. jobs created per month in 2011 (data source)
 
It's not rocket science, yet people are still shocked when austerity doesn't improve economies.
They kept spraying water on the wood, but they just couldn't get the fireplace started. The Post wrote the equivalent in an article on the Greek crisis:

"The government has raised taxes and cut services and is announcing tougher steps every other week. So far it has been to no avail; the economic outlook keeps getting worse, not better."

When the government pulls money out of the economy by laying off workers, cutting government workers' pay, and raising taxes, the expected result is a weakened economy. This is exactly what has happened in Greece. It is difficult to understand what the Post meant in saying "to no avail."

I've been asking conservatives everywhere I can to cite ONE example of a country that ended recession with austerity measures. I just want one example! But there are none. I should ask the same of traditional journalists, who are seemingly so enamored with their GOP budget-busting, entitlement-ending daddies that they can't be bothered to ask that question themselves.

There is a lack of consumer demand in today's economy. This has nothing to do with businesses being hampered by anything?be it regulations or capital constraints or the Kenyan socialist in the White House. If consumers want to buy shit, businesses will make it and sell it. It's that simple.

So how do you build consumer demand? You pump money into the economy! Yup. Stimuli. But absent that, the worst thing you can do is take money out of the economy, and that's what austerity does. There is no sound economic theory backed by reality and real-world success that suggests otherwise.

(Via Atrios, who has beating this drum for a depressingly long time.)


Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/t0Dpssv4O9w/-Nobody-couldve-predicted-that-slashing-budgets-crashes-economies

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First official statement from Occupy Wall Street

(@DarylLang/Twitpic)
Note: The photo that originally appeared with this post has been removed.

What follows is the first official statement released by Occupy Wall Street. It was voted on and approved on Thursday night:

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one?s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers? healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people?s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.*

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

Or, summed up by a chant today: "We're young, we're poor, we're not gonna take it any more!"

This is an open thread on Occupy Wall Street. Be sure to follow the Occupy Wall Street tag at Daily Kos for 50 blog posts on Occupy events today alone.


Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/P4pbu63j6oE/-First-official-statement-from-Occupy-Wall-Street

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