Stealing is legal, just ask those that got shoved off the cliff.

What can I say, I’m flabbergasted. Are these crooks in Washington really going to assume the American public is that dumbed down to see through this guise? Uh… never mind.

Let’s call it what it is. This idea that Republicans failed in the “fiscal cliff standoff” is pure poppy-cock. This notion that the Democrats somehow “won” is equally a failure if we value logic and reason. For what we seen these last two days has been what the American people have wanted for years now… compromise.

The federal government finally compromised. Republicans and Democrats finally crossed the isle. With its legislative and executive branches all on board, despite all its fury, anger and alleged partisan indignation, the deal was struck. Just like the bailouts before it, along with every other hot potato-political topic involving money; the sides "somehow" came to an “agreement”. On the outside this looks like a victory for the people, and it would be if it wasn’t such an absolute charade.

This was nothing more then a WWE broadcast, the winners and losers were already predetermined. When push came to shove everyone got what they want: more for them and their sugar daddy's and you footing the bill. The fiscal cliff was likening to a pay per view event, where afterwards, backstage the heel and the face toasted champagne and laughed all the way to the bank in their stretch limos and learjet's. Meanwhile the poor bastards who bought tickets returned home in their minivans and via subways, still in awe and totally oblivious of exactly how the farce that was just performed before their very eyes. 

Here’s the impact:

Almost all of the Bush Tax Cuts are permanent, while this helps everyone who pay tax; it helps the wealthiest substantially more.

Wheres the cuts on defense spending?

The Payroll tax cut that saved everyone who works in our nation an average of anywhere between $500-$2,000 has ended (which is good for Social Security in the long run) thus acting as a tax increase from last year for everyone earning a paycheck. This will essentially raise the taxes for anyone making fewer than 100k by 2%.

Wheres the entitlement restructuring? 

We have also seen the definition of "rich" get a facelift, as “rich” is anyone making over 400k per year. They will see their taxes rise from 35% to 39.6%. This is hardly the 250k cap that Obama sought re-election on.

And last but not certainly least... the dreaded “Death Tax”.

From the Republican perspective, one of the biggest hold-ups in this “fiscal cliff deal” was the death tax or estate tax. It was 35% as of 2012 on Estates valued at five- million or more. The President wanted 45%. They reached a deal at 40%, splitting the difference. Now, in case you are wondering why you don’t know what this is or why you’ve never heard the particulars, its because it doesn’t affect you. That is unless you have an estate valued at $5 million or more.

As of 2010, courtesy of the Federal Reserve board, only 4.4% of American households had financial assets exceeding $1 million, much less $5 million. According to the IRS, the estate tax will only affect about 3k families. With the additional five percent of taxation of those that are required to pay, the liability may rise slightly, but with the exemptions staying the same, there will be no new cap, thus the limits stay the same.

What does it all mean? I’m not telling you anything you already don’t know. It is what it is. This idea that there is a real tangible difference between these two parties …is make believe. The only real differences are on the margins and that is by design. From abortion, death-taxes, tax-break for billionaires, tax-breaks for multinational conglomerates, gay-rights, funding public television, praying in schools, you name it. Basically, anything that doesn’t benefit the bulk of the populous & affects less then 10% of the population is a heated, highly-contested debate.

I don’t despise anyone for their success nor do I feel they should be punished because of it. As being of  Libertarian mindset, how could I?  However, the middle class has been exploited by the wealthy elite who then help run elite corporations that are gaming the system, all the way from General Electric to G.M and everyone in between. Meanwhile the small businesses, who make up the bulk of US employment, continue to be stifled with red tape, over regulation and are continuously outmaneuvered by big business lobbying efforts. And not to be outdone, it cuts both ways.

There are a growing number of people on the bottom of the pyramid, who are out to hustle every organization and opportunity they can. Look no further then - Supplemental Security Income (Social Security Retirement Survivors and Disabilities Income is for those who have paid into it) because they are “too depressed to work” or have kids that are born one day early (purposely) so they qualify for 18 years as a premature baby. I got story's for days on that topic.

Before you utter the words “class warfare”, read the writing on the wall. This fiscal cliff deal did nothing to hurt those at the top or the bottom, just everyone in between. The rich were not hit hard nor was those too poor to pay taxes, with their 6-10k tax refunds on $13,000 in income.

One of the paramount reasons Obama was elected in the first place was his promise of transparency. You can at least say that’s one campaign promise he lived up to. The middle & working class, the backbone of this country, is under siege and its right out in plain sight. So if you are looking for politics for an ally on either “side” you might need to look again because the only thing these two parties have compromised on is you. They say jump, you say how high.

Open mouth, insert 86 year - old foot

I have spent many times on this blog blasting the collective, race baiting pimps that make up the Congressional Black Caucus of the US Congress. People for the most part who are elected based solely on their race because of either white liberal guilt or because they live in predominately black areas; so it’s a vote based of their color of their skin and NOT the content on their Character. No, this is not the dream Dr Martin Luther King envisioned some 49 years ago.    

I have spent other times berating the K-Street connection including, but not limited to, the interchangeable seats between public servants and public leeches; however hard to disambiguate the two may be. People like Chris Dodd, Trent Lott or William Delahunt (just to name few of many), scum bag elites who wouldn’t know what a moral compass was if it was stuck on their dashboard GPS giving them directions from one lobby to the next back to Capitol Hill.

But above all and connected to the former two examples (and this by no way means there is not other examples of dead beats and crooks with their fangs in the public coffers) are this notion that being elected into public office is a job. The founders never envisioned people would want to spend their careers in politics.

They had work of their own to do and they made more money doing it. Insert raise after raise, health benefits and a lucrative pensions plan and don’t forget them paid junkets and viola… federally elected officials have one of the most lucrative positions someone with no real world skills can obtain. Don’t believe me, ask recently "retired" Jesse Jackson Jr for his resume.

Now with this in mind, one of the best quotes I have seen in some time came this week over the “Fiscal Cliff” debate.

"We are concluding one of the most unsuccessful Congresses in history, noteworthy not only for its failure to accomplish anything of importance, but also for the poisonous climate of the institution."

This was from Democratic Representative John Dingell of Michigan. Dingell, 86, is the longest serving member of the House, who was elected for the first time in 1955. It was in his Inaugural Address, when Lincoln said that the American people:

''have wisely given their public servants but little power for mischief, and have with equal wisdom provided for the return of that little to their own hands at very short intervals.''

Its safe to Mr Dingell never read the address. Over 50 years in congress it’s apparent he’s been inside the beltway too long that he cant see that the real reason for this poisonous climate of the institution is his (and others like him) refusal to return that power of mischief back in short intervals. Instead, he and his ilk have done nothing but rape the virtue of this country and kick & scream when a little gridlock prevents them from getting their filthy hands in the till. Where is the Queen of Hearts when we need her?

Piers Morgan: dont let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

I was going do something on our out of control debt and the "looming" fiscal "cliff" but I was distracted reading this piece written by Piers Morgan of CNN published 12-29. The heading states he may deport himself if "America won't change its crazy gun laws". Now given such a heading filled with hyperbole you can expect the rest of his viewpoint will be littered with more attention whoring exaggerations and boy does he not disappoint. 

He starts out with his experience with guns. This, being a singular event, was a trip to Prague where he and some friends shot targets for a few hours and he said afterwards that the experience "quite demonstrably guns are killing machines".

I find that rather meaningless. For I, have never owned or shot a gun at any point in my life. I grew up in a single parent house with my mother and three sisters. Hunting is something I have never done either. But I don't have to hunt nor own a gun or to even have shot one to know guns are killing machines. After all, I have watched thousands of movies and played call of duty until the wee hours of the night (I’m just sticking with the meme). 

After setting up his "experience" he then proceeds to name drop his relatives who are employed in England with exposure to weapons as some type of twisted street cred:

"Well, I do know a bit about guns, actually. My brother’s a lieutenant colonel in the British Army and has served tours of duty in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Iraq and Afghanistan. My sister married a colonel who trained Princes William and Harry at Sandhurst. My uncle was a major in the Green Howards."

I find this rather humorous. I have an Aunt & Uncle who both work in one of the biggest state universities in Pennsylvania in science. Both have their PHD's. I have three other Aunts who are teachers. I have a grandmother who retired with an MBA in accounting and a step father who has worked in a foundry for 35 years. I have a brother in law that is a barber. Do you know what i know about what they do?? Jack-shit. I would also find it disrespectful to assume that i know about what they do, in what, conversations over Sunday dinner at Nana & Papa's house? Please. 

 Mr Morgan demonstrates his arrogance and obvious agenda to make the world England when he uses the reasoning for owning the AR-15 Bushmaster (used in Newtown)  

"The only apparent reason anyone seems to offer up is that using such weapons is ‘fun’. One gun-rights guy I interviewed last week even said admiringly that the AR-15 was ‘the Ferrari of guns’."

When you see someone cite "One guy I interviewed" as backing you know to take that not with a grain of salt; but probably a quarry. Because the bullshit meter is broken. And if you say the "only apparent" reason "anyone" seems to offer up is 'fun' without any evidence, it just compounds the fact that you are basically making it up. What’s next, an "anonymous quote" from a “high ranking official” in the NRA doesn't “really like guns”? Wasn’t  'ol Piers an editor at a newspaper one time in England? 

Well, that doesn't surprise me. Have you ever read a newspaper from England? Look at the link for his piece; it’s plastered in 'tabloid-celebrity' nonsense. Hard news does not exist over there. How do I know? The paper 'has ads for other story's'. It 'apparently' must be devoid of hard news because I cant find a paper in England that doesn't cater to 'tabloid-celebrity' nonsense... see this subjective, make it up as see fit game can be fun and effective!

So, we have established Mr. Morgan's experience and his relatives with guns are bunk or meaningless to the discussion and probably just a cheap way to fill a word count commitment. We also know he has no reasons why people own guns, other than he says, they said: 'its fun'. So there is no opposite side in this piece with relative viewpoints, just his opinions.

Pictured in this article is a picture of a gun show. It also has statistics with gun sales exploding after these last few instances. It has a picture of a man at a gun show holding an AR-15. There is also the statistics that Americans own more guns per person than anywhere in the world outside of Yemen. Do you see the link? These gun sales are going to create more crime. But is that really true? 

According to the 1997 Survey of State Prison Inmates, among those possessing a gun, the source of the gun was from -

• a flea market or gun show for fewer than 2%
• a retail store or pawnshop for about 12%
• family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source for 80%     

During the offense that brought those offenders to prison, 15% of State inmates and 13% of Federal inmates carried a handgun, and about 2%, a military-style semiautomatic gun.

This whole piece written by Mr. Morgan is centered on the use of semi-automatic weapons. So we are talking about 2% of felons using these types of guns. Two must be the magic number because only 2% of felons using a gun - get said gun, at a flea market or gun show. Talk about living on the margins? Maybe Mr. Morgan should spend some time in Switzerland where households pack fully automatic rifles and experience less crime than England, where he says there are only 35 deaths per year due to handguns.

Which I find odd considering this article written in the Wall Street Journal the day after Christmas by Joyce Lee Malcolm, a professor of law at George Mason University Law School - who has written several books on the subject including: "Guns and Violence: The English Experience" 

In this article Ms Joyce points out that: 

"Within a decade of the handgun ban and the confiscation of handguns from registered owners, crime with handguns had doubled according to British government crime reports. Gun crime, not a serious problem in the past, now is. Armed street gangs have some British police carrying guns for the first time. Moreover, another massacre occurred in June 2010. Derrick Bird, a taxi driver in Cumbria, shot his brother and a colleague then drove off through rural villages killing 12 people and injuring 11 more before killing himself."

 

If that wasn't enough Mr. Morgan points to a recent Gallup poll showing that: "58 per cent of Americans now support new gun-control laws, up from 43 per cent in 2011" He then says "that's a big jump"? 

You think? Does he even understand that his network is one of many that help perpetuate these acts by these deranged nut jobs and fears of the public by sensationalizing them at every waking minute to push their filthy ads? Mr. Morgan even takes aim at video games and movies... does he have no culpability in this? No of course not, because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday. You make the news. You're God. 

Now allow me to weave this all together all nice and tight for you, using Mr. Morgan’s own words:

"This gun debate is an ongoing war of verbal attrition in America – and I’m just the latest target, the advantage to the gun lobbyists being that I’m British, a breed of human being who burned down the White House in 1814 and had to be forcefully deported en masse, as no American will ever be allowed to forget – Special Relationship notwithstanding. It’s no exaggeration to say that America’s unique fondness for guns pretty much got cemented by hatred of us Brits and the War of Independence. But the main reason the more fervent gun-rights activists give is a fear of their own US federal government using its army to impinge on their freedom"

Americans don't hate British citizens or look at them with disdain nor reject them simply because of their birthrights. We do have a problem thou with someone from another country telling us how we should change our laws and be more like the country that we fought from our independence from some 200+ years ago. Americans had to use guns to fight off tyranny in the form of the British government. Now you supported using guns to fight tyranny before:

" I’m not a pacifist. Guns win necessary wars and defeat tyrannical regimes like the Nazis"

I find it ironic you do not see the British government circa 1770 a "tyrannical" government. We agree the Nazi regime was just that. This, being the same Nazi regime that took the US and her (gun loving) involvement to keep England from being bombed into oblivion? You know what they say about history don't you, Mr Morgan? If its written by the victors and while we know who won WW2 and the Revolutionary War; maybe you're in need of a history lesson, chap?

Now i saved the best for last:

"Obama should follow up by launching a Government buy-back for all existing assault weapons in circulation (as worked successfully in Los Angeles last week). I would go further, confiscating the rest and enforcing tough prison sentences on those who still insist on keeping one. He should also significantly increase federal funding for mental health treatment for all Americans who need it."

Piers... lets scrap the history lesson, instead lets do a real quick American Civics primer. "He" is just a President, nothing more than a mouth piece for the corporate elite, like the guy before him and the guy before him and the guy after him and so on and so forth. We may elect lackeys and "yes men" but we don't elect Kings. Here all men are created equal; we don't value one person’s blood more than another.

You claim to "love" this country, despite the fact that it’s obvious you don't understand our financial situation as you are directing for "King Obama" to start "buy backs" and additional spending of revenue via mental health (has he not heard of Obama Care), when we are facing two trillion dollar deficits annually. You don't respect our history or even understand it. You want prisons sentences for people wanting to uphold their Bill of Rights. Your views are based on fringe ideas and failed data from England, the country you left - to obviously pursue something better for you and your family. 


 Let me offer you some parting advice courtesy of one, Mahatma Gandhi:

"Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest."(Gandhi, An Autobiography, p. 446 Beacon Press paperback edition)