WASHINGTON -- The Senate voted Tuesday to keep a controversial provision to let the military detain terrorism suspects on U.S. soil and hold them indefinitely without trial -- prompting White House officials to reissue a veto threat.
The measure, part of the massive National Defense Authorization Act, was also opposed by civil libertarians on the left and right. But 16 Democrats and an independent joined with Republicans to defeat an amendment by Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) that would have killed the provision, voting it down with 61 against, and 37 for it.
"I'm very, very, concerned about having U.S. citizens sent to Guantanamo Bay for indefinite detention," said Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the Senate's most conservative members.
Paul's top complaint is that a terrorism suspect would get just one hearing where the military could assert that the person is a suspected terrorist -- and then they could be locked up for life, without ever formally being charged. The only safety valve is a waiver from the secretary of defense.
"It's not enough just to be alleged to be a terrorist," Paul said, echoing the views of the American Civil Liberties Union. "That's part of what due process is -- deciding, are you a terrorist? I think it's important that we not allow U.S. citizens to be taken."
Democrats who were also concerned about liberties compared the military policing of Americans to the detention of Americans in internment camps during World War II.
"Congress is essentially authorizing the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who offered another amendment -- which has not yet gotten a vote -- that she said would correct the problem. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."
more at link above.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
10 Ways to Stay Depression-Free
By Catherine Winters, Special to Lifescript
Reviewed By Edward C. Geehr, M.D.
Published October 28, 2011
"You finally beat depression. But even after the sadness lifts, your symptoms may return. So how can healthy habits like ditching the booze, getting more vitamin D or practicing yoga help? We talked to experts about the top 10 natural ways to manage moods. Plus, how much do you know about depression? Take our quiz to find out...
After months of battling depression, you’re feeling normal again. Your doctor or therapist has given you tools for staying positive, and you know the warning signs of a depressive episode so you can get help as soon as you sense them.
Now’s the time to enjoy life – and to take better care of your physical and mental well-being. Depression is a lifelong, chronic condition, and it needs to be maintained like any other disease.
“You have to approach depression the same way you would diabetes. There’s a vigilance you have to maintain for a balanced life,” says Alan Manevitz, M.D., associate professor of clinical psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
Besides medication or therapy, that means practicing healthy habits associated with better moods.
Healthy living is an important part of self-care, Manevitz says. For example, when you eat right, brain cells get appropriate nutrition so “the brain works at its maximum,” he explains. And exercise releases endorphins, brain chemicals that act as natural antidepressants.
Here are 10 lifestyle changes that can keep you feeling your best. "
(See link above for some great reminders of how to get out of a funk... )
Reviewed By Edward C. Geehr, M.D.
Published October 28, 2011
"You finally beat depression. But even after the sadness lifts, your symptoms may return. So how can healthy habits like ditching the booze, getting more vitamin D or practicing yoga help? We talked to experts about the top 10 natural ways to manage moods. Plus, how much do you know about depression? Take our quiz to find out...
After months of battling depression, you’re feeling normal again. Your doctor or therapist has given you tools for staying positive, and you know the warning signs of a depressive episode so you can get help as soon as you sense them.
Now’s the time to enjoy life – and to take better care of your physical and mental well-being. Depression is a lifelong, chronic condition, and it needs to be maintained like any other disease.
“You have to approach depression the same way you would diabetes. There’s a vigilance you have to maintain for a balanced life,” says Alan Manevitz, M.D., associate professor of clinical psychiatry at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City.
Besides medication or therapy, that means practicing healthy habits associated with better moods.
Healthy living is an important part of self-care, Manevitz says. For example, when you eat right, brain cells get appropriate nutrition so “the brain works at its maximum,” he explains. And exercise releases endorphins, brain chemicals that act as natural antidepressants.
Here are 10 lifestyle changes that can keep you feeling your best. "
(See link above for some great reminders of how to get out of a funk... )
Monday, October 31, 2011
11 simple ways to support the occupy movement without sleeping in a park
Posted by lauren in "I am Lauren Leonardi"
Since Occupy Wall Street began, a lot of people I know have expressed interest in my involvement. I’ve been making suggestions about how people can get involved on their own terms, and I thought it seemed time for a public overview.
This list includes actions large and small that just about anyone, anywhere, can do to support the movement.
I consider this list to be alive, and wide open and available for edits, additions and suggestions. So comment below, on Facebook, mention @Averse2Ennui on Twitter, or get in touch if you have ideas for the list.
See link above for the eleven items..
Since Occupy Wall Street began, a lot of people I know have expressed interest in my involvement. I’ve been making suggestions about how people can get involved on their own terms, and I thought it seemed time for a public overview.
This list includes actions large and small that just about anyone, anywhere, can do to support the movement.
I consider this list to be alive, and wide open and available for edits, additions and suggestions. So comment below, on Facebook, mention @Averse2Ennui on Twitter, or get in touch if you have ideas for the list.
See link above for the eleven items..
Monday, October 24, 2011
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
This document was accepted by the NYC General Assembly on September 29, 2011
Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian
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 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, who are responsible for 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 or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial 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!
Translations: French, Slovak, Spanish, German, Italian
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 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, who are responsible for 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 or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial 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!
Saturday, October 22, 2011
The New American Way of War
By: David Dayen Saturday October 22, 2011 9:22 am
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We don’t quite know how Moammar Gadhafi was killed. Photos and videos appear to show Gadhafi alive when he was found hiding in a drainage pipe by Libyan rebels, so the killing had to have taken place afterwards. He may have been shot shortly after capture, or he may have succumbed to previous wounds. The UN will investigate whether Gadhafi was executed, in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, after being taken into custody by Libyan forces. Eventually we’ll have a clear answer.
But what we do know is that Gadhafi was traveling in a convoy out of Sirte, shortly after the city had been captured by the rebels, when a NATO airstrike stopped the convoy cold. And we know that the NATO attack on the convoy included a US Predator drone. NATO has since tried to back off of this, because they know the implication, that they chased down and prevented the convoy from escaping, in yet another example of how the humanitarian intervention mission drifted into a hunt for Libya’s former leader. Multiple bombing runs on the Presidential palace already proved this, but even at the very end, it was NATO facilitating the execution of Gadhafi.
The involvement of the Predator drone means that drones played a role in all three of the recent foreign policy “successes” of the Obama Administration. A drone helped to stop the Gadhafi convoy in Libya; stealth drones were used in the raid on Osama bin Laden, as well as the surveillance of the Abbottabad compound; and of course, a drone strike killed American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. More recently, another drone killed Awlaki’s 16 year-old son. You can not talk about US foreign policy without noting the central reliance on deadly unmanned flying robots. Seventeen years ago the Predator drone flew its first mission; now it’s the key tool in the American arsenal.
It used to be that America measured foreign policy successes differently than merely with a body count. We could instead judge the foreign policy record of the Obama Administration on diplomatic successes. On that front, with the departure this week of the special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, every single envoy placed in diplomatic hotspots around the world has left, with their missions unfinished in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, Sudan and North Korea. This change in personnel doesn’t necessarily mean that diplomacy has failed in all of these countries – in fact, there are meetings next week in Geneva with the North Koreans to try and restart negotiations on its nuclear program – but it means that there clearly haven’t been any breakthroughs.
We could measure foreign policy success by the end of military deployments abroad. And here, with the announcement of a withdrawal of military forces in Iraq, it is true that deployments will be cut in half from the beginning of the Obama Administration by the end of the year.
But that statistic needs some additional context. First, the Administration didn’t want a full withdrawal; they could not get the Iraqis to agree to an extended military presence with legal immunity for the soldiers that stayed. Josh Rogin avers that this was a bungled negotiation, though I would add that this is the second US President that the Iraqi leadership has outwitted and outlasted, getting them to agree to a resolution that they didn’t initially seek. I don’t know another country on Earth that has gotten the better of two consecutive US Presidents in this way. So maybe we should give some credit to the Iraqis for ending the war in Iraq.
In addition, there’s the massive State Department footprint that will be in Baghdad, Irbil and Basra for the foreseeable future, including up to 5,000 private military contractors providing security. That’s not so much a drawdown as a uniform change, and a potential international incident waiting to happen.
But it’s worth seeing this as a true end to something, and that’s the American way of war. In some sense, the Obama Administration has taken the Pentagon strategy of “transformation” put forth by Donald Rumsfeld to its logical conclusion. Rumsfeld sought a light footprint in warmaking, a small, agile force that could quickly move through regions with superior firepower. The innovation from Obama’s Administration has been to get rid of the footprint altogether. Instead of standing armies occupying foreign countries, the move is toward shadow wars, and unmanned flying robots, and special operations forces. That is the new American way of war. Here’s Charlie Pierce:
Beyond that, there is something very chilly and soi-disant about the way we’re waging wars these days. It is good that there were no American boots on the ground in Libya, but there were American airplanes and American ordinance. It is good that we’re a bit more modest about our role in NATO. (Whether there still needs to be a NATO is another question entirely.) But the president persisted in his short address today on drawing a distinction between the Libyan people, for whom our ordinance was protection, and the Libyan opposition forces, as though all our firepower was dedicated to the first (and more noble) task and had little or nothing to do with the second. The way we protected the civilians was by lining up our military might on one side of a civil war. It does us no good to pretend otherwise, or to make the absurd distinction between our humanitarian ends and the violence means with which we attained them. We had enough of “freedom bombs” with the last guy, thanks.
With two major and bloody exceptions, we fought our Cold War battles the way Rome did, through proxies at the edges of our “sphere of influence.” (One thing about the Cold War, it made for great turns of phrase. The Soviets had a “bloc.” We had a “sphere of influence.”) Now, we don’t even do that. Iraq and Afghanistan aside, we fight our wars by automation, hurling thunderbolts from beyond the horizon, like Jove. There’s something scarifying about that, especially when it’s aimed at an American citizen, and it kills his teenage son, and the people who threw the thunderbolts don’t even try to show us why these people had to die. For a long time, we had people who said that the reason we were sending the Army all over the world was because there wasn’t any draft. One of the most apt criticisms of the “war on terror” was that it was being conducted without engaging the entire country in the effort. Now, not only is the combat removed from the citizenry, it’s increasingly removed from soldiers. Some guy at a console in Kansas City is making war on Pakistan. That makes me nervous.
Maybe one of the reasons why Republicans are so petulant and reluctant to offer credit to this President is that he’s unlocked the magic box for how to continue the belligerence of American foreign policy without the downside of having to send someone’s son or daughter into hazardous combat. Instead of spending $3 trillion on the Bush wars, the military spent $1 billion in Libya. Instead of presiding over the deaths of 5,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, no American died in Libya (how many Libyan died I fear we’ll never know). Instead of having to do the tedious work of getting authorization from Congress to fight wars abroad, the Administration just barreled forward, relying on dubious legal theories about what constitutes “hostilities.” It was fitting that, the same week that the 8-month conflict in Libya was coming to an end, a federal judge quietly threw out a lawsuit from members of Congress challenging the intervention in Libya as unconstitutional.
This is the new American way of war. It is located in the executive branch, at the Pentagon, at the CIA, with new acronyms like JSOC and UAVs leading the way. Most Americans don’t know a whole lot about it. It’s a secretive shadow war fought in multiple areas all over the world. It’s fought with robot planes and covert operatives. It doesn’t have the burden of oversight or media spotlight or really anything, since it’s undeclared and excessively secretive.
I agree with Pierce and others that this should be troubling, even when, as in Libya, it’s wrapped up in a language of humanitarian responsibility to protect. Maybe this has always been an element of American warmaking. But now it seems like the primary policy, that we will respond to a perceived threat by either sending in a secret group of commandos to take out individuals, or raining bombs over them from the sky using a plane with no pilot.
It’s worth questioning how compatible this all is with democracy.
comment on this39 Comments
Tags: Barack Obama, military, war machine, Libya, foreign policy, Moammar Gadhafi, diplomacy, Predator drones, CIA, covert operations
TweetTweet29
digg stumbleupon
We don’t quite know how Moammar Gadhafi was killed. Photos and videos appear to show Gadhafi alive when he was found hiding in a drainage pipe by Libyan rebels, so the killing had to have taken place afterwards. He may have been shot shortly after capture, or he may have succumbed to previous wounds. The UN will investigate whether Gadhafi was executed, in violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions, after being taken into custody by Libyan forces. Eventually we’ll have a clear answer.
But what we do know is that Gadhafi was traveling in a convoy out of Sirte, shortly after the city had been captured by the rebels, when a NATO airstrike stopped the convoy cold. And we know that the NATO attack on the convoy included a US Predator drone. NATO has since tried to back off of this, because they know the implication, that they chased down and prevented the convoy from escaping, in yet another example of how the humanitarian intervention mission drifted into a hunt for Libya’s former leader. Multiple bombing runs on the Presidential palace already proved this, but even at the very end, it was NATO facilitating the execution of Gadhafi.
The involvement of the Predator drone means that drones played a role in all three of the recent foreign policy “successes” of the Obama Administration. A drone helped to stop the Gadhafi convoy in Libya; stealth drones were used in the raid on Osama bin Laden, as well as the surveillance of the Abbottabad compound; and of course, a drone strike killed American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki. More recently, another drone killed Awlaki’s 16 year-old son. You can not talk about US foreign policy without noting the central reliance on deadly unmanned flying robots. Seventeen years ago the Predator drone flew its first mission; now it’s the key tool in the American arsenal.
It used to be that America measured foreign policy successes differently than merely with a body count. We could instead judge the foreign policy record of the Obama Administration on diplomatic successes. On that front, with the departure this week of the special envoy to North Korea, Stephen Bosworth, every single envoy placed in diplomatic hotspots around the world has left, with their missions unfinished in Afghanistan and Pakistan, Israel and Palestine, Sudan and North Korea. This change in personnel doesn’t necessarily mean that diplomacy has failed in all of these countries – in fact, there are meetings next week in Geneva with the North Koreans to try and restart negotiations on its nuclear program – but it means that there clearly haven’t been any breakthroughs.
We could measure foreign policy success by the end of military deployments abroad. And here, with the announcement of a withdrawal of military forces in Iraq, it is true that deployments will be cut in half from the beginning of the Obama Administration by the end of the year.
But that statistic needs some additional context. First, the Administration didn’t want a full withdrawal; they could not get the Iraqis to agree to an extended military presence with legal immunity for the soldiers that stayed. Josh Rogin avers that this was a bungled negotiation, though I would add that this is the second US President that the Iraqi leadership has outwitted and outlasted, getting them to agree to a resolution that they didn’t initially seek. I don’t know another country on Earth that has gotten the better of two consecutive US Presidents in this way. So maybe we should give some credit to the Iraqis for ending the war in Iraq.
In addition, there’s the massive State Department footprint that will be in Baghdad, Irbil and Basra for the foreseeable future, including up to 5,000 private military contractors providing security. That’s not so much a drawdown as a uniform change, and a potential international incident waiting to happen.
But it’s worth seeing this as a true end to something, and that’s the American way of war. In some sense, the Obama Administration has taken the Pentagon strategy of “transformation” put forth by Donald Rumsfeld to its logical conclusion. Rumsfeld sought a light footprint in warmaking, a small, agile force that could quickly move through regions with superior firepower. The innovation from Obama’s Administration has been to get rid of the footprint altogether. Instead of standing armies occupying foreign countries, the move is toward shadow wars, and unmanned flying robots, and special operations forces. That is the new American way of war. Here’s Charlie Pierce:
Beyond that, there is something very chilly and soi-disant about the way we’re waging wars these days. It is good that there were no American boots on the ground in Libya, but there were American airplanes and American ordinance. It is good that we’re a bit more modest about our role in NATO. (Whether there still needs to be a NATO is another question entirely.) But the president persisted in his short address today on drawing a distinction between the Libyan people, for whom our ordinance was protection, and the Libyan opposition forces, as though all our firepower was dedicated to the first (and more noble) task and had little or nothing to do with the second. The way we protected the civilians was by lining up our military might on one side of a civil war. It does us no good to pretend otherwise, or to make the absurd distinction between our humanitarian ends and the violence means with which we attained them. We had enough of “freedom bombs” with the last guy, thanks.
With two major and bloody exceptions, we fought our Cold War battles the way Rome did, through proxies at the edges of our “sphere of influence.” (One thing about the Cold War, it made for great turns of phrase. The Soviets had a “bloc.” We had a “sphere of influence.”) Now, we don’t even do that. Iraq and Afghanistan aside, we fight our wars by automation, hurling thunderbolts from beyond the horizon, like Jove. There’s something scarifying about that, especially when it’s aimed at an American citizen, and it kills his teenage son, and the people who threw the thunderbolts don’t even try to show us why these people had to die. For a long time, we had people who said that the reason we were sending the Army all over the world was because there wasn’t any draft. One of the most apt criticisms of the “war on terror” was that it was being conducted without engaging the entire country in the effort. Now, not only is the combat removed from the citizenry, it’s increasingly removed from soldiers. Some guy at a console in Kansas City is making war on Pakistan. That makes me nervous.
Maybe one of the reasons why Republicans are so petulant and reluctant to offer credit to this President is that he’s unlocked the magic box for how to continue the belligerence of American foreign policy without the downside of having to send someone’s son or daughter into hazardous combat. Instead of spending $3 trillion on the Bush wars, the military spent $1 billion in Libya. Instead of presiding over the deaths of 5,000 soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, no American died in Libya (how many Libyan died I fear we’ll never know). Instead of having to do the tedious work of getting authorization from Congress to fight wars abroad, the Administration just barreled forward, relying on dubious legal theories about what constitutes “hostilities.” It was fitting that, the same week that the 8-month conflict in Libya was coming to an end, a federal judge quietly threw out a lawsuit from members of Congress challenging the intervention in Libya as unconstitutional.
This is the new American way of war. It is located in the executive branch, at the Pentagon, at the CIA, with new acronyms like JSOC and UAVs leading the way. Most Americans don’t know a whole lot about it. It’s a secretive shadow war fought in multiple areas all over the world. It’s fought with robot planes and covert operatives. It doesn’t have the burden of oversight or media spotlight or really anything, since it’s undeclared and excessively secretive.
I agree with Pierce and others that this should be troubling, even when, as in Libya, it’s wrapped up in a language of humanitarian responsibility to protect. Maybe this has always been an element of American warmaking. But now it seems like the primary policy, that we will respond to a perceived threat by either sending in a secret group of commandos to take out individuals, or raining bombs over them from the sky using a plane with no pilot.
It’s worth questioning how compatible this all is with democracy.
comment on this39 Comments
Tags: Barack Obama, military, war machine, Libya, foreign policy, Moammar Gadhafi, diplomacy, Predator drones, CIA, covert operations
Thursday, October 20, 2011
Warren Buffett's quotes about the debt ceiling and "Congressional Reform Act of 2011"
The Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street have set something in motion, our voices should be added.
Warren Buffett's quotes about the debt ceiling and "Congressional Reform Act of 2011"
Clear and concise ...
Please read to the end. Interesting and important to know.
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best
quotes about the debt ceiling:
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law
that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all
sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th
amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months
& 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in
1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to
the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the
land...all because of public pressure.
Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of
twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do
likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the
message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
*Congressional Reform Act of 2011* (continued below)
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office
and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All
funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security
system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system,
and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for
any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans
do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay
will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the
same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American
people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective
1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen
made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor,
not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours
should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take
three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is
time.
Warren Buffett's quotes about the debt ceiling and "Congressional Reform Act of 2011"
Clear and concise ...
Please read to the end. Interesting and important to know.
Warren Buffett, in a recent interview with CNBC, offers one of the best
quotes about the debt ceiling:
"I could end the deficit in 5 minutes," he told CNBC. "You just pass a law
that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all
sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. The 26th
amendment (granting the right to vote for 18 year-olds) took only 3 months
& 8 days to be ratified! Why? Simple! The people demanded it. That was in
1971...before computers, e-mail, cell phones, etc. Of the 27 amendments to
the Constitution, seven (7) took 1 year or less to become the law of the
land...all because of public pressure.
Warren Buffet is asking each addressee to forward this email to a minimum of
twenty people on their address list; in turn ask each of those to do
likewise.
In three days, most people in The United States of America will have the
message. This is one idea that really should be passed around.
*Congressional Reform Act of 2011* (continued below)
1. No Tenure / No Pension. A Congressman collects a salary while in office
and receives no pay when they are out of office.
2. Congress (past, present & future) participates in Social Security. All
funds in the Congressional retirement fund move to the Social Security
system immediately. All future funds flow into the Social Security system,
and Congress participates with the American people. It may not be used for
any other purpose.
3. Congress can purchase their own retirement plan, just as all Americans
do.
4. Congress will no longer vote themselves a pay raise. Congressional pay
will rise by the lower of CPI or 3%.
5. Congress loses their current health care system and participates in the
same health care system as the American people.
6. Congress must equally abide by all laws they impose on the American
people.
7. All contracts with past and present Congressmen are void effective
1/1/12. The American people did not make this contract with Congressmen. Congressmen
made all these contracts for themselves. Serving in Congress is an honor,
not a career. The Founding Fathers envisioned citizen legislators, so ours
should serve their term(s), then go home and back to work.
If each person contacts a minimum of twenty people then it will only take
three days for most people (in the U.S.) to receive the message. Maybe it is
time.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
MIT economist: Wall Street created worst recession since WWII
MIT economics professor Simon Johnson said on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show on Wednesday night that Wall Street “blew itself up,” which lead to the “most severe recession since World War II.” The former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund added that the enormous economic damage was “a direct consequence of what the biggest banks did and were allowed to get away with.”
Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, at link above.
ms noodlebrain comments:
I think we need to prosecute criminals for crimes. What do you think? Congress and Supreme Court Judges have been derelict in their duties and not obiding by their oath of office. They need to be ousted. ASAP. We need new leaders.
Watch video, courtesy of MSNBC, at link above.
ms noodlebrain comments:
I think we need to prosecute criminals for crimes. What do you think? Congress and Supreme Court Judges have been derelict in their duties and not obiding by their oath of office. They need to be ousted. ASAP. We need new leaders.
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