Richard M Mitzel, PA recently moved his Spring Hill office. The new office is at:
4225 Rachel Blvd #101
Spring Hill, FL 34607
(352) 577-0724
http://accidentlawyerspringhill.com
Richard M. Mitzel specializes in the following types of cases: car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, medical malpractice claims, nursing home negligence and abuse, premises liability including slip and fall and assaults, and product liability cases.
Additionally, Mr Mitzel is one of the few attorneys that meets personally with every client and personally manages their case from start to finish.
Richard M. Mitzel has his main office:
101 South Main Street
Brooksville, Florida 34601
352-796-3383
Richard M. Mitzel, Attorney at Law announced today that he added a mobile site to his website http://accidentlawyerbrooksville.com so that mobile users could easily access and navigate his website. Anyone navigating to his website on a smart phone will be automatically connected to his mobile site.
Richard M. Mitzel handles the following types of cases: car accidents, truck accidents, motorcycle accidents, medical malpractice claims, legal malpractice claims, nursing home negligence and abuse, premises liability including slip and fall and assaults, and product liability cases.
Richard M. Mitzel has his main office:
101 South Main Street
Brooksville, Florida 34601
352-796-3383
with additional offices at:
Richard M Mitzel PA
318 Beverly Ct
Spring Hill, Fl 34606
352-577-0214
Richard M Mitzel Atty
1520 West Cleveland Street
Tampa, Fl 33606
813-259-1098
March 19, 2012 by Bob Livingston
PHOTOS.COMMonsanto is the largest producer of genetically engineered seeds.Monsanto should be named an enemy of the State. It’s definitely an enemy of the people. Instead, the company has essentially become another branch of government.
Monsanto is engaged in government-sponsored agricultural terrorism. It’s government-sponsored because there is a revolving door between the company, the Food and Drug Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency and firms that lobby Congress on Monsanto’s behalf. Dow, Bayer, other chemical companies and Big Agriculture are Monsanto’s co-conspirators in agricultural terrorism.
In addition to contaminating our food supply with pesticides, hormones and genetic modifications, water supplies are being contaminated as well — even for those who live in the city far away from farmland. And anyone trying to grow crops uncontaminated by Monsanto’s genetically engineered (GE) frankenseeds can be slapped with a lawsuit if the prevailing winds or pollinating insects cause pollen from Monsanto-patented crops to mingle with non-Monsanto GE crops.
The Union of Concerned Scientists recently listed eight ways Monsanto fails at being a good steward of food and moves over to food and environmental terrorism:
- Promoting pesticide resistance: Monsanto’s Roundup Ready and Bt technologies lead to resistant weeds and insects that can make farming harder and reduce sustainability. The idea is, supposedly, to create crops that ward off insects and other pests. But the result has been to create insects that are pesticide-resistant. And even worse, application of systemic pesticides like Dow Chemical’s Clothianidin or GE crops that kill “pests” are behind the deaths of hundreds of thousands of honeybee colonies through colony collapse disorder. In almost every case, the EPA and/or FDA ignored science or used junk science to justify approval of the chemicals and crops.
- Increasing herbicide use: Roundup resistance has led to greater use of herbicides, with troubling implications for biodiversity, sustainability and human health. By planting crops engineered to be resistant to herbicides, farmers are able, in theory, to keep down weeds by spraying increasing amounts of herbicides. But these toxic chemicals are finding their way into our foods and contaminating our water supplies. Roundup’s key ingredient, glyphosate, is also linked to a decrease in the monarch butterfly population by killing the plants butterflies rely on for habitat and food. Roundup is also linked to the spread of fusarium head blight in wheat, which makes the crop unsuitable for human or animal consumption. Now we also know that use of these herbicides has created “super weeds” that have developed a resistance to Roundup. So Monsanto and Dow are combining to reintroduce the use of the herbicide 2, 4-D, one-half of the defoliant Agent Orange used in Vietnam. Agent Orange is a carcinogen that caused Hodgkin’s lymphoma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, leukemia and other diseases in Vietnam veterans.
- Spreading gene contamination: Engineered genes have a bad habit of turning up in non-GE crops. When this happens, sustainable farmers — and their customers — pay a high price. In other words, GE crops are contaminating the crops of those who want to use natural or heirloom seeds and eat and grow foods the way God intended. There is no way of telling what long-term ramifications of these contaminated crops will have on the foods we eat – and, therefore, our health. Plus, as we mentioned above, small farmers are being attacked in courts by Monsanto if their crops — through no fault of their own — become contaminated by Monsanto GE crops. According to a report released by Britain’s Soil Association, GE crops have cost Americans $12 billion in farm subsidies in the past three years and is bankrupting wheat and cotton farmers.
- Expanding monoculture: Monsanto’s emphasis on limited varieties of a few commodity crops contributes to reduced biodiversity and, as a consequence, to increased pesticide use and fertilizer pollution. Monoculture, the planting of a single crop on large swaths of land, is anathema to nature. Everyone knows that crops must be rotated to keep the soil properly balanced. Different plants that bloom and pollinate at different times are essential to sustain the nourishment needed by many insects, birds and animals. Yet Monsanto, Dow and huge corporate farms disavow the laws of nature for profit, and the environment suffers. Monoculture also provides a vast feeding ground that attracts ever-stronger pests, creating a cycle of increased use of pesticides to combat the problem created by the use of monoculture and more pesticides. And when the pests, as in the case of the corn rootworm develop a resistance to the engineered pesticide, they can wipe out thousands of acres of crops, driving up food prices and causing food shortages.
- Marginalizing alternatives: Monsanto’s single-minded emphasis on GE fixes for farming challenges may come at the expense of cheaper, more effective solutions. Relying on genetic engineering to fix the problem creates more problems while limiting natural or less expensive solutions.
- Lobbying and advertising: Monsanto outspends all other agribusinesses on efforts to persuade Congress and the public to maintain the industrial agriculture status quo. Worse, as noted above, it has become a revolving door that sees members of Congress passing to the company to become executives and lobbyists, and company executives moving to the regulatory agencies to regulate their former employer. This is simply crony capitalism at its worst.
- Suppressing research: By creating obstacles to independent research on its products, Monsanto makes it harder for farmers and policy makers to make informed decisions that can lead to more sustainable agriculture. And through its system of crony capitalism, research benefitting the company — even when fraudulent — is approved by the regulatory agencies, while natural alternatives are suppressed or outlawed altogether. Independent organizations attempting to provide a rebuttal to the flawed research are often quashed and silenced.
- Falling short on feeding the world: Monsanto contributes little to helping the world feed itself, and has failed to endorse science-backed solutions that don’t give its products a central role. In fact, what Monsanto is doing is acquiring a state-sponsored monopoly on seeds. GE crops create non-renewable seeds that do not germinate from year to year. This requires the farmer to go back to Monsanto each year to purchase the seeds for the next year’s crop, rather than saving seeds and using seeds from last year’s crop (using the seed corn). This also happens to farmers using heirloom seeds whose crops are contaminated by GE crop pollen.
The European Union has mandated labeling of GM ingredients in food and feed. But that doesn’t happen in the United States, and efforts are afoot to prevent special labeling. But evidence shows that exposure to GE plants and GM feed affects food animals in many ways.
What all this means is that even with the knowledge and desire to avoid GE or GM foods, as the Monsantos and Dows of the world gain more of a hold on world agriculture, it’s going to eventually become impossible to avoid exposure to them. Even planting your own garden with heirloom seeds won’t guarantee you the ability to avoid genetic pollution if someone nearby is using GE crops and pollinators cross pollinate the fields or winds blow the pollen into your garden and it pollinates your crop.
And pesticides and GE and GM foods are being linked to myriad negative health effects including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, obesity, diabetes and hormonal disorders. The insecticide-producing Bt gene is even being detected in the blood tests of people who eat a typical diet, including in pregnant women and their fetuses. Research shows it also kills human kidney cells.
Fascism is the union of government and big business. In this system, the people are pawns. Government, Big Agriculture and their partners in crime Monsanto, Dow and Bayer are engaged in a fascist system in which an unwitting populace is kept fat and stupid and without choices, and even those who understand and recognize the system for what it is are allowed fewer opportunities to opt out.
These are who the War on Terror should truly be against. And thanks to global activism and the growth of the Internet and advent of social media, the war on the real terrorists is gaining headway against their war on our health.
We can battle agricultural terrorism on our own by minding what we are buying and eating. When you grocery shop, refuse to buy GMO products. Many food producers are now labeling their non-GMO foods as such. You can also use the “Non-GMO Shopping Guide,” available for download here.
Sad... what can be done?
Earlier this week, Cumulus Media sent out an email blast to fellow radio station owners with a photoshopped picture of former U.S. Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, promoting him as the conservative talk radio host of the future.Though the email did not name Rush Limbaugh, the long-running, top-rated talk radio host whose program is nationally syndicated by Cumulus' rival, Clear Channel Communications, the intent was obvious to some recipients.
"They are going after Rush's affiliates," said one radio company executive who received Cumulus' email and spoke on condition of anonymity. "They are positioning Huckabee as the safe, non-dangerous alternative to Rush and saying to station owners, 'If you are looking for conservative content, we want you to consider our guy instead of theirs.'"
Huckabee presented Cumulus with its best chance ever to grow into a national competitor to Clear Channel in the radio syndication market even before Limbaugh on February 29 ignited his latest controversy by calling birth-control activist Sandra Fluke "a slut.
That the April 9 launch of "The Mike Huckabee Show" comes amid an exodus of advertisers from Limbaugh's program and an Internet-driven boycott is simply serendipity for Cumulus.
In an interview with Reuters on Friday, Cumulus co-Chief Operating Officer John Dickey described the Huckabee emails as "standard operating procedure" and said the company was "proud to offer up our content to the industry at large."
"Only one station in a city can offer Rush, so there are lots of other stations that are looking to put up an alternative to him regardless of whether he put his foot in his mouth," said Dickey. He was referring to how Limbaugh's contracts typically contain exclusivity clauses restricting him to one station in a market, instead of it being simulcast on multiple stations.
"We have been growing the affiliate base on that fact alone, but recent developments with Rush have put some wind in our sails and accelerated our efforts," Dickey said.
Cumulus owns the second-largest U.S. radio network, with 580 stations, behind Clear Channel, which owns about 900 stations. Cumulus ranks as the third-largest radio company by revenue, behind Clear Channel and CBS Radio.
Huckabee's show, which was born out of a dinner conversation between a representative for the former Arkansas governor and Dickey in the fall of 2010, will go head-to-head against Limbaugh from noon to 3 p.m. in all time U.S. time zones, Monday through Friday.
Limbaugh has dominated terrestrial talk radio ever since shock jock Howard Stern fled for the less regulated confines of satellite radio in 2006. The portly conservative pundit's program is broadcast on 600 radio stations across the country (20 more stations than Cumulus owns in total), and is heard by about 20 million listeners weekly.
As of last week, about 140 stations had signed on to carry Huckabee's show, and Dickey said that number is growing daily.
More important, only about 45 of those stations are owned and operated by Cumulus, meaning that the other stations that agreed to carry Huckabee's show have no affiliation with the company. Dickey said some of these stations plan to swap in Huckabee once their contracts with Limbaugh expire, though he declined to name which ones or where they were located.
Limbaugh's annual income, based in part on licensing fees for his show, is estimated by industry sources at $50 million.
Calls to Clear Channel for comment were referred to Premiere Networks, the company that syndicates Limbaugh's program.
"Rush Limbaugh continues to be the No. 1 talk radio host in America," a Premiere spokesperson said in a statement, noting that all his long-term sponsors remain with his show. "Mike Huckabee is the latest in a long line of those who have attempted to compete with Rush. We wish him the best with his new show."
A source familiar with Premiere's thinking put it more bluntly: "We have 900 stations. If Rush gets removed from a few, we have plenty of other places to put him."
TWO DEALS REALIZED
Cumulus' plan to take on Clear Channel in the syndication market were put in motion long before the impending Limbaugh-Huckabee battle. The roots can be traced to two deals: the $1.2 billion purchase of Susquehanna Radio in 2006 and $2.4 billion acquisition of Citadel Broadcasting in 2010.
Those deals transformed Cumulus from a sleepy small- to mid-market company into a national player. Before them, the largest market in which Cumulus had a presence was ranked 125th nationally. Now, the family-run company is in seven of the top 10 U.S. radio markets.
With a big national footprint and its own network, Cumulus is now able to develop and syndicate its own content as opposed to paying to license it from competitors such as Clear Channel.
Moreover, Cumulus can now shop its content to outside radio station owners, potentially stealing market share from Clear Channel. In essence, Cumulus has gone from being a purchaser of content to a creator of one.
"We eat our own cooking here. If something works for us, it should also work for others in the industry," said Dickey, referring to Cumulus' goal to license homegrown talent to others in the industry.
The company last month announced that it was replacing "Coast-to-Coast," a show produced by Clear Channel, with Cumulus' own "Red Eye Radio" on 22 of its stations. Earlier in March, Cumulus said it was dropping "The Billy Bush Show," produced by Dial Global, for an upcoming show of its own.
Cumulus licenses Limbaugh's show on about three dozen of its own stations. It is expected to replace Limbaugh with Huckabee once these contracts expire.
"I can guarantee you that the minute Cumulus' contract with Rush expires in New York, they will replace him with Huckabee," said Joel Hollander, the former CEO of CBS Radio now running private investment firm 264 Echo Place Partners.
For now Limbaugh has some breathing room - the vast majority of his contracts with Cumulus do not expire until next year. Dickey said Cumulus has "no plans to drop Rush" from any of its stations at this time and will "honor its contracts."
Dickey's diplomacy is smart radio politics. Cumulus must navigate a delicate divide between competing and cooperating with Clear Channel. The radio industry as a whole has been in secular decline for more than a decade, as Apple Inc's iPods, satellite radio Sirius XM Radio Inc and Internet streaming services such as Pandora Media Inc have eaten away at advertising sales and audience share.
Traditional radio companies have been forced to look for new avenues of growth, often in partnership with each other. Cumulus recently announced a deal to stream its stations on Clear Channel's iHeart-Radio digital platform. The two companies also joined forces on "SweetJack," radio's version of Groupon Inc's daily deals, set to launch nationwide on May 1.
"Cumulus does have a lot of holes across the country where it will need to work with Clear Channel and others radio companies, so what you are going to see is a lot of horse trading," said Hollander.
LACK OF RADIO STARS KEEPS RUSH ON AIR
Not unlike Howard Stern or Glenn Beck, Limbaugh is one of the few talk radio hosts who have a large and loyal enough fan base that he can leave the air waves altogether for satellite radio, the Internet, or something even more experimental.
But if Limbaugh does stick with traditional radio, he will likely remain a major voice for two main reasons: a shortage of stars and political talk radio has a rabid fan base.
Traditional radio's lack of stars is the reason Don Imus returned just eight months after being removed in 2007 for calling the Rutgers University women's basketball team a bunch of "nappy-headed hoes." And it is the reason why the source familiar with Premiere's thinking said the syndicator has no intention of removing Limbaugh from its air waves.
Indeed, some outside radio companies that syndicate Limbaugh's show are also sticking with him.
"We carry Limbaugh live in Bakersfield and we have no plans to change," said Joe Bilotta, CEO of independently owned Buckley Radio.
Moreover, Huckabee has to execute for Cumulus' grand plan to pay dividends. If he cannot attract an audience and prove that he can carry a show by himself, then all the talk about unseating Limbaugh will be just that - talk.
Interesting.
Efforts to silence Rush Limbaugh are apparently having a significant impact on the talk radio business as a whole, including syndicated radio shows hosted by Sean Hannity, Mark Levin and Glenn Beck.After provocative comments made about a female Georgetown law school student, Limbaugh's show has been targeted by liberal groups that have pressured more than two dozen advertisers to drop his program from their ad buys.
Now, Rush's syndicator, Premiere Networks, is losing advertisers for other conservative programs it airs.
According to an internal Premiere memorandum obtained by Radio-Info.com, the company says 98 advertisers no longer wanted to air ad spots on any "offensive or controversial" talk programs.
Radio-Info says the list of advertisers include "carmakers (Ford, GM, Toyota), insurance companies (Allstate, Geico, Prudential, State Farm) and restaurants (McDonald’s, Subway)."
An excerpt of the Premiere memo follows:
“To all Traffic Managers: The information below applies to your Premiere Radio Networks commercial inventory. More than 350 different advertisers sponsor the programs and services provided to your station on a barter basis. Like advertisers that purchase commercials on your radio station from your sales staff, our sponsors communicate specific rotations, daypart preferences and advertising environments they prefer… They’ve specifically asked that you schedule their commercials in dayparts or programs free of content that you know are deemed to be offensive or controversial (for example, Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, Tom Leykis, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity). Those are defined as environments likely to stir negative sentiment from a very small percentage of the listening public.”
Hmmm.
Low-tax crusader and Republican strategist Grover Norquist tells Newsmax the country is suffering from a very weak recovery because President Barack Obama “did all the wrong things” in reaction to the recession.But as pundits tallied up the results from Super Tuesday, Norquist on Wednesday struck an optimistic tone on the GOP's chances in November.
Whoever wins the exhausting battle for the Republican presidential nomination, he points out, that candidate will be a staunch Reagan conservative with a tough fiscal approach on spending. That's true whether it's Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum or Ron Paul.
But if Obama somehow gets re-elected, Republicans more than likely will be in control of both the U.S. Senate and the House, meaning Obama will not have any power of the purse.
“If there is a Republican president then you can immediately move to do a budget and extend all the tax cuts and begin to cut spending," Norquist says. "If Obama is still the president, we have a train wreck, and Obama likes train wrecks because he takes advantage of that kind of crisis to try to push for bigger government.
“Certainly it’s important to have a Republican House and Senate even with a Democratic president, but it’s difficult to get legislation passed. You can not give the president money, that’s not a bad first step, but you can’t cut taxes without the president’s signature.”
Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, says Republican voters are engaged in “sort of serial monogamy” in choosing a front-runner because the candidates are “pretty much the same.”
Story continues below video.
Americans for Tax Reform is a coalition of taxpayer groups, individuals, and businesses opposed to higher taxes at the federal, state, and local levels.
Norquist is also on the board of the American Conservative Union, a regular Newsmax contributor, and co-author of the new book “Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future.”
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax.TV, he assesses the current state of the American economy.
“We had a problem with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mal-investing, then Obama, Reid, and Pelosi came in and they made everything worse,” he says. “So we have a very, very weak recovery going on now. This is a much weaker recovery than we’ve had in the past. In the third year of Reagan’s presidency he created 4 million jobs. We created like a million jobs last year.
“We have a weak recovery because Obama did all the wrong things in reaction to the recession, and now what we need to do is the opposite — spend less, lower taxes, have deregulation, fix Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The banking regulation bill did everything except fixing the people who caused the problems for the banking crisis.
“We have a huge challenge. Obama’s been taking us in the wrong direction for three years now. We need to do a U-turn.”
Asked about the likely scenario in the immediate aftermath of November’s presidential election, Norquist responds: “It all depends on who comes in.
“Right now it looks like the Republicans will hold the House and win the Senate — half the Democrats running for the Senate are vulnerable, very few Republicans running for the Senate are vulnerable. It should be a Republican House and Senate."
Norquist says the current race for the Republican presidential nomination is different from those in the past.
“In the old days — Taft, Eisenhower, Goldwater, Rockefeller — there were these ideological divides. You had two different wings of the modern Republican Party that wanted to go in two different directions.
“Today the candidates running for president are all Reagan Republicans. So when Republicans are looking, they can be excused for lusting after Rick Perry and then moments later Herman Cain and then Newt Gingrich and then Rick Santorum. They go from one to the other in a sort of serial monogamy because they’re all pretty much the same.
“So people pick odd reasons for being for one and not another. But it is a healthy thing that they’re all Reagan Republicans and we can choose.”
In a similar vein, Norquist says that Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum split the tea party vote in Tuesday’s Ohio primary because both seek to reduce spending.“The tea party is new people coming into the party. Tea party people weren’t politically active before but were terrified by Obama’s spending, so they came in and want to fix the spending issue. They can go for any of these candidates.”
All the Republican candidates are “moving in the same direction of reducing rates and broadening the base and not bringing a tax increase,” he adds.
“I think Rick Perry had the best tax plan of the year, and Newt Gingrich has one that is similar. They’ve all basically come out and said let’s dramatically reduce rates, let’s simplify the code. They’re looking at what Reagan did in 1986.”
Legislators are reportedly working behind the scenes to formulate a program to combat the deficit that could resemble the Simpson-Bowles plan, which called for reduced spending and increased taxes. Asked if they are likely to have any success in pushing the new program forward, Norquist says flatly: “No, because the whole goal of Simpson-Bowles was to raise taxes significantly to pay for the bigger government of Obama.
“The reason why Obama liked it was in the middle of it was a $2 or $3 trillion tax increase over the next decade. There were in theory some spending cuts. Obama never put any of those into his budget. Unfortunately all you get from putting Simpson-Bowles on the table is a tax increase, no spending cuts.”
Assessing the success of his years-long crusade for low taxes, Norquist tells Newsmax: “The top tax rate is 35 percent, half of what is was when Reagan came into the presidency, so we’ve made some progress on reducing marginal tax rates.
“But Reagan got it down to 28 percent, and now it’s drifted back up again, so we need to get back to the Reagan levels and then back on track to continue to reduce rates. The total tax burden and the total spending have shot up significantly unfortunately over the past years.”
Asked if cutting taxes is the only way to shrink the size of government, Norquist responds: “Step one is never raise taxes. That’s why [we have] the Taxpayer Protection Pledge that Americans for Tax Reform shares with all candidates and incumbents in the House and Senate. If you say that taxes are off the table, we’re never raising taxes, then and only then do you get to a conversation of reforming spending.
“Politicians like to raise taxes instead of reforming government. They want to raise taxes instead of reducing spending. So first you say no new taxes.
“Now we need to do more reforms like some of our governors have done around the country — Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Rick Scott in Florida, Perry in Texas, New Jersey’s Chris Christie, those are all governors who said no to tax increases, yes to spending cuts.
“But if you don’t say no to tax increases you never get to the second part of that project. Our friend George W. Bush got the no tax increase part. He forgot the second part of the dance sheet, which is stop spending so much.”
Interesting
David Koch, the billionaire businessman and philanthropist, says he was the target of 100 credible death threats last year alone because of his opposition to unions in the United States.The influential conservative, who founded and funds the tea party-friendly group Americans for Prosperity, told The Palm Beach Post that he's no "bully."
"They make me sound like a bully," Koch told the Post, complaining of press coverage. "Do I look like a bully?"
The Post detailed a charity dinner that Koch and his wife, Julia, hosted recently at his Palm Beach home for the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center.
In 1990s, Koch discovered that he had prostate cancer. The Anderson Center successfully treated and cured him.
Koch said he is remaining active in political battles despite the criticism and threats he has received.
He told the Post that Americans for Prosperity is helping Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who faces a recall election after taking on public employee unions.
"We're helping him, as we should. We've gotten pretty good at this over the years," he said. "We've spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We're going to spend more."
Americans for Prosperity reportedly is spending about $700,000 on television ads supporting Walker and his reformist union policies.
But the Post notes that Koch and his brother Charles, who share the No. 4 rank in the Forbes billionaire list, have broader charitable interests than just politics. David "holds board seats with 23 nonprofit groups and has pledged gifts totaling more than $750 million for cancer research, the arts and cultural institutions, according to his foundation," the Post reported.
Good for him.
Americans believe Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton will go down in history as the best among recent U.S. presidents -- with at least 6 in 10 saying each will go down in history as an above-average or outstanding president, according to a new Gallup poll. Only about 1 in 10 say each will be remembered as below average or poor.Meanwhile, three years into Barack Obama's presidency, Americans are divided in their views of how he will be regarded, with 38% guessing he will be remembered as above average or outstanding and 35% as below average or poor.
Compared with Gallup's previous update -- conducted in January 2009, just before Bush's presidency ended and Obama's began -- ratings of several presidents are up.
• Positive ratings of George W. Bush increased from 17% to 25% since 2009, while negative ratings of him declined from 59% to 47% in the three years since he left office.
• Positive ratings of Clinton, Reagan, and the elder Bush are also higher than in January 2009.
Democrats tend to believe history will judge Democratic presidents more favorably than Republicans do, and Republicans believe Republican presidents will be regarded more favorably than Democrats do. But partisans do not universally rate all of their party's presidents better than all of the other party's presidents.
• 36% of Republicans believe Clinton's presidency will be viewed as outstanding or above average, a higher percentage of GOP supporters than believes that about Republican presidents Ford (25%) and Nixon (18%).
• Democrats are more likely to believe Reagan will get favorable historical judgments (47%) than that Carter will (31%).
• With a 46% outstanding/above-average rating from Republicans, George W. Bush joins Carter, Ford, and Nixon as presidents getting less-than-majority positive ratings from their own party's supporters.
Interesting.
The ignorance surrounding the payroll tax cut extension President Barack Obama is pushing is “appalling,” and the measure will gut Social Security, Rush Limbaugh said today on his radio show.“I do not understand why somebody doesn’t characterize this payroll tax cut for what it is — gutting Social Security because it is not being, quote / unquote, paid for,” Limbaugh said. “The Republicans, for as long as I’ve been alive, have been accused of gutting Social Security. Here’s Obama doing it. Obama and the Democrats are actually doing it.”
He shamed the GOP for reaching across the aisle and trying to compromise with the Democrats rather than using the payroll tax cut extension against the opposition party.
“From a political standpoint, it’s a gold mine here, and they’re not using it,” he said.
On the issue of the newly released budget, Limbaugh called the document “outrageous” and “simple irresponsibility.”
“If everything happened that Obama wants in this budget, folks, it’s over,” he said. “It may be over anyway, if Obamacare is fully implemented.”
Interesting
Conservative voters in Colorado, Minnesota, and Missouri carried Rick Santorum to three victories in the Republican presidential race Tuesday because the former Pennsylvania senator embodies their beliefs, Rush Limbaugh said on his radio show today.“I’m not surprised by this,” Limbaugh said. “It’s one of the reasons that I haven’t been panicking throughout all of this. I think I have a pretty good understanding and idea of where the Republican base is. If they’re given the opportunity to vote for what they think is important, they’ll do it.”
The Republican establishment is “unsettled” today because the electorate in all three states didn’t flock to Mitt Romney, Limbaugh said.
Santorum won Colorado by a narrow margin, and skated to victory in Minnesota's Republican caucuses, relegating the former Massachusetts governor to a distant third-place finish that raised fresh questions about his ability to attract ardent conservatives at the core of the party's political base. The former senator also was victorious in a nonbinding Missouri primary that was worth bragging rights but no delegates.
“The Republican establishment has no idea this was percolating out there,” he said. “I can’t believe how insulated they are.”
Limbaugh dispelled the notion that voters chose Santorum over Romney “because I’m telling them to, or because anybody else is telling them to.”
“They’re doing it because they genuinely have a problem with Romney,” he said. “If you’re looking for a conservative who is the least corrupted, who has the least number of periods of wandering off the reservation . . . then you get Rick Santorum.”
Interetsing
February 8, 2012 by Bob Livingston
UPIWhen Marco Rubio was born, his parents were not U.S. citizens.And I’m not talking about President Barack Obama, who has produced a (fake) copy of his birth certificate only to prove that he really isn’t a natural born citizen.
I’m talking about Tea Party hero Marco Rubio, the Senator from Florida who is being touted by the Republican establishment as the likely pick for the GOP Vice Presidential nominee.
Rubio’s parents came to America from Cuba sometime between 1956 and 1959 (the exact date is in dispute) and became naturalized U.S. citizens in 1975. Rubio was born May 28, 1971. This fact makes him a U.S. citizen, but it does not make him a natural born citizen according to the definition intended by the founders.
Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution, says, “No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President…”
Arguments over what constitutes “natural born” abound. But the Naturalization Act of 1790 probably defines the Founders’ intent better than anything. It reads: “…the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond Sea, or out of the limits of the United States, shall be considered as natural born Citizens.”
Rubio’s parents were not citizens at the time of Rubio’s birth, so Rubio can’t be President.
And by the way, Obama’s fake birth certificate proves his ineligibility to hold the office, for if the elder Barack Obama from Kenya, East Africa is Obama II’s father, he was not then and never was a U.S. citizen. Hence, Obama is not a child “of citizens of the United States.”
The mainstream media will not tell you any of this.
Is this right?
February 8, 2012 by John Myers
UPIMitt Romney is a venture capitalist.“Greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works.” — Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street”
“Like Gekko, Romney made his fortune buying and selling companies.” — Salon.com, Jan. 9
Republican Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has accumulated a vast amount of wealth and in doing so probably hasn’t broken a law or bylaw. However, Romney isn’t being honest about what kind of business he operated and he greatly exaggerates his business know-how.
Romney made that money not by building things but by tearing things down. His wealth was created through takeovers, buyouts and mergers. So his claim that he knows how to renew the American dream is disingenuous at best.
Vulture Economics
Romney founded Bain Capital in 1984 and oversaw the operations of the firm for several years. That put him in charge of business takeover operations similar to what the fictional Gordon Gekko ran ruthlessly in Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street.”
Private equity firms like Bain shift capital around. They prey on companies that they take over. Sometimes, they burden them with huge debts. Sometimes, they leave them with zero real assets. Many of the companies go bankrupt while the private equity firms pad their balance sheets.
Private equity firms buy companies they plan to bankrupt. They don’t care about how many pink slips are handed out. Their goal is to make sure that creditors collect as little as possible. To accomplish their goal, they transfer the assets of the acquired companies into other companies. That means big profits for private equity firms, but the economy gains nothing.
There is nothing illegal in it (unless, like Gekko, you use insider trading to fatten your profits), but it doesn’t add jobs. If anything, Romney is in the business of slashing jobs to get a bigger bottom line.
Romney Is No Henry Ford
Romney uses his resume to proclaim that he knows how to energize the American economy. Buying companies and trading stocks and bonds doesn’t so much as put a shingle on a barn.
Romney argues that he was helping workers and investors. Ron Paul disagrees. According to Paul, under the terms of a typical leveraged buyout, “The wealth is taken from the middle class and it goes to the select few, who are the insiders.”
Former GOP Presidential candidate and Texas Governor Rick Perry agrees with Paul.
“I happen to think that companies like Bain Capital could have come in and helped these companies if they truly were venture capitalists,” Perry told voters in Lexington, S.C. “But they’re not — they’re vulture capitalists.”
Romney doesn’t help himself. Not only does he wear expensive suits like Gekko, but he seems to have some of the same attitudes. In “Wall Street,” Gekko says, “If you need a friend, get a dog.”
Romney expressed pretty much the same view when he said: “I like being able to fire people.” Like Gekko, Romney could have added: “Lunch is for wimps.”
On Jan. 19, Sun Sentinel.com ran a column by Bill Press that argued against Romney’s public relations blitz regarding his business expertise.
There’s a big difference between the attacks on John Kerry’s war record in 2004 and the questions raised about Mitt Romney’s business record in 2012. The entire Swift Boat campaign was nothing but one big fat lie. But Gingrich and Perry are only telling the truth. Corporate predators like Bain Capital do, in fact, swoop in on distressed companies, leverage them with debt, strip them down, fire workers or export jobs, and then sell companies off for scrap — while investors walk away with huge profits.
Citing the success of Domino’s, Sports Authority and Staples, Romney brags about creating a “net 100,000 new jobs.” But he’s offered no proof of that claim, and his numbers don’t add enough. The 100,000 figure includes current employers of all three companies, hired long after Bain left the scene. And it doesn’t factor in the thousands of jobs Romney/Bain destroyed by looting other companies. Indeed, out of 77 companies taken over by Bain, the Wall Street Journal found that 22 percent had either filed for bankruptcy or simply shut their doors. The truth is, Romney was never a job creator. He was a wealth creator. And it’s a lie for him to suggest otherwise.
Just as it’s a lie to suggest that he ever lived in fear of getting a “pink slip.” As reported by the Boston Globe, Romney had a deal with Bain Capital that allowed him to return to his former job at his former salary if things didn’t work out. For him, there was zero financial risk.
There is also the contradiction between Romney the venture capitalist and Romney the political leader. As the Governor of Massachusetts, his reduction of the State bureaucracy was modest, as Boston Globe reporters Scott Helman and Michael Kranish report in their book, The Real Romney: “After four years, he reduced the payroll of agencies under his direct control by 603 jobs, according to his administration’s tally.”
Helman and Kranish point out that Romney’s predecessor, Republican Governor William F. Weld “had closed state hospitals, privatized services, and slashed about 7,700 jobs during his first term, though the numbers had later increased when the economy improved.”
The Men That Built America
As for Romney, the businessman, some of you may believe that plundering is straightforward economic Darwinism — a necessary and, ultimately, good thing. If that is true, then Bain Capital not only survived but thrived under Romney’s leadership.
What is not true is that Romney has business experience that builds up corporations and creates a vast number of jobs. Perhaps that is not his fault. He might have been born a century too late.
I came across a list of the richest individuals in history. Nobody alive is on that list. Men like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are not even in the same ballpark as that crowd. The Americans who are on the list are the magnates of industry who were building their fortunes and the Nation in the early 1900s.
John D. Rockefeller is noted as the richest individual ever. His personal fortune peaked at $318.3 billion in 2007 U.S. dollars.
The second richest ever — Andrew Carnegie — had his personal wealth top out at $298.3 billion, again adjusted for inflation.
Others in the top 10 list include William Henry Vanderbilt, Andrew William Mellon and Henry Ford. They were the builders. The others in the list were plunderers, including: Marcus Licinius Crassus at No. 8 with $170 billion; and Nicholas II, the last tsar of Russia, at No. 3 with $253.5 billion.
What America so desperately needs today are leaders and builders like Carnegie and Ford, not pillagers like Crassus and Nicholas. What disturbs me most about Romney in his campaign for the Presidency is that his business model more closely resembles the latter than it does the former.
Yours in good times and bad,
Interesting perspective.
Roman Catholic pressure to get the Obama administration to back down from its insistence that they provide free contraceptives in their healthcare plans appeared to be paying off on Tuesday.Now the White House may be ready to work with the church to find a way to get around the mandate, said David Axelrod, a top adviser to President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.
"I think we need to lower our voices and get together," Axelrod told MSNBC’s Morning Joe.
“We certainly don’t want to abridge anyone’s religious freedoms, so we’re going to look for a way to move forward that both provides women with the preventative care that they need and respects the prerogatives of religious institutions."
“The president and the administration will move forward, but with a grace period or time period in order to work this thing through,” Axelrod added. “We want to resolve it in an appropriate way.”
Axelrod said Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius had already given churches an exemption to the mandate, against the recommendation of the Institute of Medicine. “The question now is about these extended affiliated institutions … and there are tens of thousands – hundreds of thousands – of women who work in these hospitals and universities who are not Catholic or they may be Catholic and they use birth control.
“The question is whether they are going to have the same package that every other woman in the country has to the same right and access to basic preventive care.”
Axelrod’s stance was in stark contrast to the message put out by White House press secretary Jay Carney less than 24 hours earlier.
“These services are important,” Carney said on Monday. “American women deserve to have access to that kind of insurance coverage regardless of where they work.”The administration’s insistence that religious organizations provide insurance that covers contraceptives – including abortifacients such as the morning-after pill – has led to claims that Obama is anti-religion. Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, who converted to Catholicism in 2008, said last week, “The Obama administration is raging a war against the Catholic Church.”
Fellow Catholic candidate Rick Santorum said the church should have fought harder against the whole Affordable Health Care Act. “I told the Catholic bishops years ago when they were … promoting Obamacare, be careful what you wish for,” he said. “They got what they deserved.”
Catholic bishops wrote letters that were read to parishioners from the pulpit over the weekend. “We cannot – we will not – comply with this unjust law,” was the message in the letter from many of the bishops. “People of faith cannot be made second-class citizens.”
Sister Mary Ann Walsh of the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops likened the regulation to forcing a Jewish deli to sell pork chops while Archbishop Timothy Dolan of New York said, “In effect, the president is saying we have a year to figure out how to violate our consciences.”
Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas City went so far as saying the church may drop healthcare coverage altogether if a way cannot be found out of the impasse.
But whether the bishops have the backing of their followers is unclear. A USA Today poll released Tuesday showed that 58 percent of Catholics support compulsory contraceptive insurance. That figure rose to 62 percent among Catholic women.
Sebelius revealed the plan in late January, saying it would help guarantee universal access to birth control under Obama’s signature healthcare laws. The mandate is due to go into effect during 2013.
“The public health case for making sure insurance covers contraception is clear,” Sebelius wrote in an article in USA Today. She claimed the administration had worked to strike a balance between the rights of religious employers and the healthcare needs of their workers.
Interesting.
February 7, 2012 by Paul Craig Roberts
PHOTOS.COMIn a prolonged downturn, seasonal adjustments and the birth/death model produce nonexistent employment.Last Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in the first month of this year 243,000 jobs were created and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3 percent. This good news is a mirage. It is due to faulty seasonal adjustments and to the BLS birth/death model. In a prolonged downturn, seasonal adjustments and the birth/death model produce nonexistent employment.
The unadjusted data show a rise in the unemployment rate. The birth/death model, which estimates the net effect of jobs lost from business failures and jobs created by new start-ups, was designed for a normal growing economy, not for a prolonged downturn. Statistician John Williams (shadowstats.com) reports that the BLS adds 48,000 new jobs per month to the payroll employment report based on the birth/death model even though the economy has not come out of the deep recession. In other words, over the course of a year, the birth/death model adds about 580,000 jobs to the reported jobs numbers. End-of-year benchmark revisions quietly take the nonexistent jobs out of the totals, but these revisions do not receive headlines and pass largely unnoticed.
The reported January jobs gains are contradicted by other official reports. For example, the January payroll jobs report shows 50,000 new jobs in manufacturing, but according to the recently released fourth quarter gross domestic product, 81 percent of the reported growth consisted of undesired inventory accumulation. Normally, companies produce for sales, not for inventories. Why would manufacturers be hiring people to produce goods for undesired inventories?
Most of the new reported January jobs are in services. The January jobs report has 24,500 new jobs in wholesale and retail trade and 13,100 new jobs in transportation and warehousing. However the data show that inflation-corrected real retail sales are down. Why does it take more people to sell fewer goods?
The other remaining sizable components of the January jobs number are: professional and technical services (30,000), administrative and waste services (36,700), health care and social assistance (29,700), and leisure and hospitality (44,000) of which the largest component is food services and drinking places (32,800).
The leisure, waitresses and bartender employment numbers seem high for January. Perhaps it was an excellent ski month in the United States. However, accommodation (hotels) does not support this conclusion, as accommodation lost 3,900 jobs.
The BLS reports 21,000 new jobs in construction. However, the housing report says that housing starts dropped more than forecast in December, falling 4.1 percent. Why does it take more construction workers to produce fewer houses? Building permits, a proxy for future construction, were little changed.
As the adjusted data produce phantom jobs and employment, the BLS should headline the raw unadjusted data. With so many discouraged workers unable to find jobs, dropping discouraged workers out of the measure of unemployment seriously understates the true magnitude of the unemployment problem. If Americans were aware of the double-digit unemployment rate, would they be as tolerant of Washington’s multitrillion-dollar wars? Would Obama be facing a tougher re-election campaign? Would Republicans be pushing to reduce the Federal budget deficit at the expense of the social safety net?
The phony data serve many interests, but not those of the American people.
Surprise, surprise...
On Wednesday, Wall Street Journal editors argued that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney must focus more on policy ideas and less on his background. On Thursday, Journal contributing columnist Karl Rove made the same point.“The Romney campaign is tilted too heavily toward biography and not nearly enough toward ideas,” former President George W. Bush’s senior adviser writes.
“It should make its mantra a line from President Ronald Reagan's final address to the nation: ‘I never thought it was my style or the words I used that made a difference: It was the content. I wasn't a great communicator, but I communicated great things.’"
Romney has proven his skill at eviscerating Newt Gingrich with a negative attack. But now he must build something positive, Rove says. “He should become bolder in his prescriptions, presenting a confident agenda for economic growth and renewed prosperity through reforms of tax, regulatory and energy policies.”
That shouldn’t be a problem for the former Massachusetts governor, Rove says. “While Mr. Gingrich called Congressman Paul Ryan's entitlement reforms ‘right-wing social engineering,’ Mr. Romney complimented them last November,” he writes.
Romney simply needs to repeat that speech of support. “He can also build on his best moments in recent debates, when he unapologetically and passionately defended free enterprise,” Rove says. “Far better to best Mr. Gingrich in the weeks ahead by taking the fight to President Obama, challenging the incumbent's unpleasant attempt to appeal to envy and resentment.”
Following that advice will help Romney unite Republicans, win the nomination more quickly and stand better prepared for the race against President Barack Obama, Rove maintains. “If not, the GOP contest will go on, the bitterness will linger, and the road ahead could be treacherous,” Rove writes.
“With his substantial war chest, Mr. Romney can easily saturate airwaves, stuff mailboxes, and jam phone lines to win most contests and more delegates. But Mr. Romney should be looking ahead and realize that what worked against an underfunded Mr. Gingrich won't work against the well-funded Barack Obama.”
Agreed.
President Barack Obama linked his economic policies to his Christian faith, saying on Thursday that meeting the nation's challenges requires strong values as much as smart policies.
Obama, making his third appearance as president at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, used his remarks to justify many of his actions, such as his call for the wealthy to pay more in taxes and his health care overhaul. He said they were not only economically sound but also rooted in his Christian values.
"When I talk about shared responsibility, it's because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling and at a time when we have enormous deficits, it's hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income or young people with student loans or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone," Obama said.
"But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus' teaching that, for unto whom much is given, much shall be required," he said.
His remarks came one day after Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney created a flap with clumsy comments about the struggling middle class. "I'm not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I'll fix it. I'm not concerned about the very rich. They're doing just fine. I'm concerned about the very heart of America, the 90-95 percent of Americans who right now are struggling. You can focus on the very poor, that's not my focus," Romney said.
Obama didn't mention Romney or the other Republican candidates. But his defense of his policies was a rare injection of politics into the prayer breakfast. The annual event is hosted by lawmakers from both parties, and speakers usually refrain from direct political references, sticking instead to calls for civility and respect in Washington.
The president said his faith also guides some of his foreign policy decision, including supporting foreign aid or sending U.S. troops to Africa to target a notoriously violent rebel group.
"It's not just about strengthening alliances or promoting democratic values or projecting American leadership around the world, although it does all those things and it will make us safer and more secure," he said. "It's also about the biblical call to care for the least of these, for the poor, for those at the margins of our society; to answer the responsibility we're given in Proverbs to speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."
Obama said that while personal religious beliefs alone should not dictate a politician's decisions, leaders should not abandon their faith entirely.
"We can't leave our values at the door. If we leave our values at the door, we abandon much of the moral glue that has held our nation together for centuries and allowed us to become somewhat more perfect a union," he said.
Obama speaks often about his faith but prefers to worship in private. He said Thursday that he starts each morning with a brief prayer, then spends time reading scripture. Sometimes, he said, pastors come to the Oval Officer to pray with him, for his family and for the country.
Nothing new here.
