The Republican Party DECIDED to commit ECONOMIC TREASON against this country beginning January 20, 2009.
The very night of Barack Obama's inauguration, a group of GOP leaders met, and decided, in the midst of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression that they only would not work with this President to try and fix the economy, but that they would actively work against ANYTHING that he brought forth.
THAT is why, when one looks back at the list of accomplishments by President Obama in his first term in office..
They were done WITHOUT GOP votes.
That CHOICE of ECONOMIC TREASON has continued throughout the Presidency of Barack Obama.
It is the reason why this recovery hasn't gotten as far as it could have. While the private sector has rebounded, the GOP, specifically, the GOP in the STATES, took a buzzsaw to Government Employees, and it is the downturn in PUBLIC SECTOR EMPLOYMENT that drags the economy down.
They took 43 votes to repeal Obamacare
But couldn't put the President's American Jobs Act forth for ONE vote. Nor, have they brought forth ONE single jobs bill since they took over the house in 2011.
Since taking over the House in 2011, there hasn't been ONE piece of meaningful legislation that has been brought forth by the GOP.
Rachel Maddow did a terrific piece on this. She opens up the segment explaining and detailing all the legislation that the President was able to bring forth when he had a Democratic House and Senate. The list was more than impressive.
Then, she brought up what the GOP has done since retaking the House...absolutely nothing.
Since they took over the House, there has been nothing meaningful coming out of there, including a BUDGET.
This country has been forced to run itself on continuing resolutions.
The President said the other day that the two things the House of Representatives are charged with are the following:
1. Produce a budget
2. Pay the bills the United States runs up
And, they have DELIBERATELY been AWOL with both duties.
The party that inherited a BUDGET SURPLUS from Bill Clinton and didn't two shyts about budget deficits as they:
1. Lied us into not one, but TWO wars that were kept ' off the books'
2. Put in place tax cuts during wartime - something NEVER EVER done before
3. Put in place the unpaid for Medicare Part D
THAT Party began screaming about deficits once a Black man was elected President. But, since they didn't open up their mouths about it before hand as George W. Bush spent us into all this debt, I never took them seriously and saw them for what it was.
They were negligent about doing their duty because they wanted to SABOTAGE THE ECONOMY as to harm the President's re-election chances. It's as plain as day. They CHOSE to betray this country because they thought a bad economy would be a great way to run against President Obama. In addition to this, they also planned using unlimited financial resources - hence, the Citizens United decision, and a willing MSM media - remember the Study confirming that NINETY PERCENT of the President's coverage was NEGATIVE. On top of this, don't forget the Voter Suppression bills put forth by the GOP that the MSM, save for a few hearty and loud souls, kept quiet about during the 2012 election.
So, let's look at the stacked deck:
1. Sabotaging the American Economy - check
2. Unlimited financial resources - check
3. Compliant MSM Media that wouldn't report Willard's lies - check
4. Attempted Voter Suppression from coast to coast - check
ALL this, so that the Black man wouldn't win a second term.
When President Barack Obama won his second term, and did so convincingly, some of us thought, FINALLY, they would get the message.
This is one of my favorite pieces after the election. Rachel Maddow's opening segment the night after the election. While now, the GOP pretends that there were no clear issues discussed during the 2012 campaign season, Maddow breaks it down.
So, fast forward to now.
We have a federal government that is shutdown and we are barreling towards the default of the United States of America.
This is nothing organic.
This didn't just happen.
This was planned and calculated.
And NOTHING that the President did or did not do would have avoided this moment. Let's make that absolutely clear.
From the New York Times:
A Federal Budget Crisis Months in the Planning
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG and MIKE McINTIRE
Published: October 5, 2013
Shortly after President Obama started his second term, a loose-knit coalition of conservative activists led by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III gathered in the capital to plot strategy. Their push to repeal Mr. Obama’s health care law was going nowhere, and they desperately needed a new plan.
Out of that session, held one morning in a location the members insist on keeping secret, came a little-noticed “blueprint to defunding Obamacare,” signed by Mr. Meese and leaders of more than three dozen conservative groups.
It articulated a take-no-prisoners legislative strategy that had long percolated in conservative circles: that Republicans could derail the health care overhaul if conservative lawmakers were willing to push fellow Republicans — including their cautious leaders — into cutting off financing for the entire federal government.
“We felt very strongly at the start of this year that the House needed to use the power of the purse,” said one coalition member, Michael A. Needham, who runs Heritage Action for America, the political arm of the Heritage Foundation. “At least at Heritage Action, we felt very strongly from the start that this was a fight that we were going to pick.”
Last week the country witnessed the fallout from that strategy: a standoff that has shuttered much of the federal bureaucracy and unsettled the nation.
To many Americans, the shutdown came out of nowhere. But interviews with a wide array of conservatives show that the confrontation that precipitated the crisis was the outgrowth of a long-running effort to undo the law, the Affordable Care Act, since its passage in 2010 — waged by a galaxy of conservative groups with more money, organized tactics and interconnections than is commonly known.
This shutdown was bought and paid for by the Koch Brothers.
THE EXCUSE that they wanted to use was Obamacare. They wanted to shut down the United States Government in order to deny 30 MILLION AMERICANS the access to healthcare.
So, that's what this group of evil asses chose as an excuse.
But, they really wanted the DEBT CEILING.
They are mad that this country, despite all the ways that they set it up, shot them down and RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT OBAMA.
They want to PUNISH this country for re-electing this President.
So, after the shutdown, they sent out a ransom letter. The ransom letter to this country was nothing but Mitt Romney's platform.
In this country, we have a transfer of power from one President to another through elections.
We might not like the results of the election, and we might feel rotten if our candidate loses, but we accept the process. And, sometimes, accepting is harder than others - like when George W. Bush was SELECTED President by the Supreme Court...that was as bitter as bitter gets, but he was declared President, and it is what it is.
But, not this group.
They are attempting with this debt ceiling ransom note to invalidate the Presidency of Barack Obama.
I am not the only one thinking this.
This is a brilliant piece by zizi at The Obama Diary:
COUP D’ETAT: KOCHS ARE WARLORDS
@zizii2
I have lived through 5 coups d’état. I know a coup d’état when I see one. USA is living through one right now as we speak. A Coup doesn’t have to have guns (yet) and a military takeover of power to be one.
****
A nation is manipulated through a series of fiendishly planned rolling crises. Inchoate mass fear grows but its targeting is skillfully re-directed toward infighting, such that it becomes diffuse and rather impotent against the actual instigators. Trust for government and national institutions grows rancid.
Then a messiah runs to the rescue, suspends the constitution, promises to get rid of “waste, fraud, & abuse.” Says the abrogation of said Constitution is only “temporary.” Commandeers media to support “the people” in their new “Freedom, Liberty, Fraternity”. Flag and anthem totems resurge in fresh parades glorifying the mother/fatherland. Power has been seized. Resistance is futile.
****
My native country went 5 times through this familiar choreography in its first 24 years after independence from colonial rule. Western Scholars of “the Third World” posited that these upheavals were the result of societies that had yet to build:
1. Strong Democratic governing institutions, rather than strongmen
2. Consensus of the governed
3. A national Identity rather than ethnic loyalties
4. An educated ruling elite that creates mechanisms for distributing political power efficiently among different constituencies
5. Capitalist ethos that productively harnessed and competitively rewarded the nation’s talents
6. Rule of Law and a Constitution that balanced majority rule with protecting minority rights
****
Well then, so why is the good old USA, the “oldest democracy” hurtling toward the fissures that cause a FAILED STATE, ripened for a coup d’état? It is no hyperbole to identify all the symptoms of a coup d’état in the making, from the GOP hostage taking underway.
No 2, “Consensus of the governed” is a key linchpin in how a Democracy works. But it also the weakest link in the components of a functioning Democracy. In the founding of this country a lot of quill pens were nubbed in structuring how this republican form of government would function democratically without giving all power DIRECTLY to the governed for 2 reasons. First, fear of mob rule and secondly, the dissolution of a fragile union of disparate states.
...............
First, like an opportunistic disease the Kochs took over the Republican party completely and ravaged its innards, and implanted the suicide caucus, plus a choir of well-heeled local luminaries in towns and red states to enact their agenda. Now they have used their bought national pols to enact phase 2 of their planned disbanding of constitutional rule, damn the consequences save their narrow greed.
***
So why destroy America? What America? The warlords of Somalia in the aftermath of Siad Barrre’s ouster in 1992 provide a clue. They have no use for the notion of sovereign state with obligations to the people. The Kochs just want the spatial USA as a staging ground for their Bircher dystopia, not the sovereign country governed by it’s restraining ‘Constitution, and certainly not the people within it that they consider undesirable.
****
Folks we have to take this Koch threat seriously. Many of us have seen this menace on a comparatively smaller scale and it is not to be trivialized. They already showed us what that dystopia will look like. It’s the Ryan Social Darwinist budget unfettered.
Please read the entire piece.
Found this over at DailyKos about what American Default will accomplish for the GOP:
GOP Wants Nothing We Dems Have To Offer In Trade...
Thing is, the President doesn't seem to be very good at destroying America. So the Tea Partiers, the energizing heart of the modern Republican Party, are very thoughtfully helping him fulfill the destiny they've assigned him.
You might wonder what does default get them?
One, it destroys the reputation of Obama's presidency.
Two, it moots any issue about Obamacare; defunding's a given.
Three, it defunds everything else.
Four, if the government ever plans to borrow ever again it will have to do so at much higher interest rates. That will crowd out ALL domestic spending programs, even force the government to lapse some of them
Five, there will be far less money to fund national security initiatives among them drones and NSA super surveillance
Six, because it kicks Democrats' asses, that's why. Less crassly, it's a specific, achievable goal with immense impact that accomplishes specific ideological ends in which Republicans and Tea Partiers in particular embrace.
Seven, a hollowed-out catastrophically underfunded Federal government will be incapable of stopping subsequent initiatives toward the goal of creating a much more conservative-friendly regime.
Eight, yeah about 2014 elections. We'll probably have them but, wow. Polling places are expensive to maintain so we'll be consolidating those. You know, since the default... there's just no money...
And this is why I think Democrats have nothing to offer in trade that Republicans want in lieu of the default.
They get everything they want by pushing America over the edge.
On top of this, if the President uses his Executive Power, through the Constitution to prevent default, make no mistake about this:
THEY WILL IMPEACH THE PRESIDENT.
Which is something they've also wanted to do since the day he was inaugurated. So, when this President saves this country - AGAIN - just get ready for it.
And, just in case you have doubts about what the debt ceiling default, further explanation about how serious this is.
This is what's at stake with debt ceiling default: what it means for the FULL FAITH AND CREDIT of the United States to be in doubt for the first time in this country's history.
From Daniel Gross
Debt-Limit Disaster Is Exponentially Worse Than 2008 Lehman Debacle
by Daniel Gross Oct 8, 2013 5:45 AM EDT
A U.S. debt default, or the whiff of one, would be a much more significant financial event. As Yalman Onaran of Bloomberg noted, “The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008.” True. But the increase in damage wouldn’t be arithmetic, it would be exponential—Lehman to the 10th power rather than Lehman times ten. A debt default, even if momentary and partial, wouldn’t be like blowing up a much bigger stick of dynamite. As Warren Buffett suggests, it would be like detonating a nuclear bomb.
Why would a default be so much worse than Lehman Brothers? It has largely to do with who owns U.S. government debt and how much debt those companies and institutions have. Lehman caused a company to fall, a sector to fall, and stocks to fall a bunch. A U.S. government default—or again, even the whiff of one—would cause all that to happen, plus it would bring down a bunch of governments and possibly ignite a revolution and a couple of wars.
Most people who own stocks pay for them with cash. Sure, some hedge funds use leverage, and some investors buy stocks on margin (effectively borrowing money from their broker), and certain exchange-traded funds allow investors to make leveraged bets on stocks. But the leverage surrounding stocks is never that great. So in the event of a sharp downdraft in stocks, even a very severe decline of 30 percent or 40 percent, several hedge funds and mutual funds might be wiped out and there would be widespread pain. But it wouldn’t cause massive institutions to fail.
........................
So anything that would reduce the value of government or agency debt rapidly overnight would unleash a tsunami of value destruction around the world. These central banks would suddenly find themselves sitting on hundreds of billions of paper losses. Any analyst who says he or she knows with certainty what the social, economic, and geopolitical impact of the overnight destruction of hundreds of billions of dollars in value would be is likely blowing smoke. Perhaps highly nationalistic countries would take this kind of financial damage lying down. Perhaps they wouldn’t.
Ultimately, the Lehman damage, while massive, was limited. And that’s because once the bank fell, the government—the Federal Reserve, Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the taxpayers—was waiting with its printing presses, guarantees, and bailout facilities. In September and October 2008, the U.S. government effectively substituted its credit for that of the private sector. That was enough to stop the panic. But it’s unclear how effective the Fed could be in a situation where its assets are shriveling. A debt default would be much more like September 11, 2001, than September 15, 2008. The first responders would be among the hardest hit.
Bruce Bartlett piece
Getting back to the potential problems in financial markets, many Wall Street analysts emphasize the unknown factor. As financial relationships have become more complicated, the full implications of a severe shock to the system cannot be fully anticipated. As UBS Bank economists Maury Harris and Drew Matus have explained:
The main impact on markets would come from sharply reduced liquidity in the U.S. Treasury market, as financial firms’ procedures and systems would be tested by the world’s largest debt market being in default. Given the existing legal contracts, trading agreements, and trading systems with which firms operate, could U.S. Treasuries be held or purchased or used as collateral? The aftermath of the failure of Lehman Brothers should be a reminder that the financial system’s “plumbing” matters. All the legal commitments and limitations in a complex financial system mean a shock from an event that is viewed as inconceivable – such as a U.S. Treasury default – can cause the system to stall. The impact of a U.S. Treasury default could make us nostalgic for the market conditions that existed immediately after the failure of Lehman Brothers.
Voicing a similar opinion, Wells Fargo Bank economist Scott Anderson has said of a default, “It would be an earth-shattering event. It’s taken as given that U.S. Treasuries are a safe asset. Once you question that assumption, it shakes the foundations of global finance and the way it’s been established over the last 50 years.”
University of California, Berkeley, economist Barry Eichengreen, a world-renowned expert on the international monetary system, warned that a debt default could lead to a run on the dollar if foreigners come to feel that the U.S. is being run by irresponsible leaders. As he put it:
If there is a threat to the dollar, it stems not from monetary policy, but from the fiscal side. What is most likely to precipitate a dollar crash is evidence that U.S. budgets are not being made by responsible adults. A U.S. Congress engaged in political grandstanding might fail to raise the debt ceiling, triggering a technical default. Evidence that the inmates were running the asylum would almost certainly precipitate the wholesale liquidation of U.S. Treasury bonds by foreign investors.
On July 22, 2011, Macroeconomic Advisers, a well-known economic forecasting company, warned its clients that a one-month delay in raising the debt limit would reduce real gross domestic product growth by 0.6 percentage points in the second half of the year and the unemployment rate would rise by 0.4 percentage points. Interest rates would rise 20 basis points and the stock market would fall 5 percent. The result would be a “growth recession.”
Congress finally acted in the nick of time and the debt limit was raised on August 2, 2011. Three days later, Standard and Poor’s lowered its rating on U.S. Treasury securities from AAA to AA+. It cited continuing political difficulties in raising the debt limit in a timely manner as a key factor in the downgrade. As it explained:
More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011.
Since then, we have changed our view of the difficulties in bridging the gulf between the political parties over fiscal policy, which makes us pessimistic about the capacity of Congress and the Administration to be able to leverage their agreement this week into a broader fiscal consolidation plan that stabilizes the government's debt dynamics any time soon.
This shutdown is NOT about Obamacare.
It's about President Barack Obama and attempting to destroy HIM and HIS PRESIDENCY.
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