I signed a petition urging the president to start an investigation to hold
Wall Street banks accountable for the damage done to our economy. Can you
join me at the link below?

http://pol.moveon.org/bankfraud/?r_by=34957-7654379-EVIjLex&rc=pac_bankfraud_letter.email.g0

Thanks!

If not all of us, at least most of us have been an employee at some time in our lives. Many of us have even been supervisors and managers.

Let’s face it, we all know how important it is to have employee reviews and evaluate our employees based on their skills and accomplishments, on the positive side, and on their failures as well.

Believe it or not, you have employees whether you think you do or not, and you need to start doing employee evaluations on them.

Yes, I’m talking about our elected representatives.

It’s not enough that they’re one party or another, we really need to know how they’ve voted and why. We need to know how much they’re wasting of the expense account we give them for their work.

How many days per week does your representative work and how many times is he AWOL? How much of his expense account is being spent on the wrong things? How much are YOU paying for his haircut? His pedicure? His tanning sessions? His golf afternoons. His private subway? His security?

In order to evaluate our employees, we need to start seeing progress reports, individual progress reports for each. And on this report card, we need to know how much effort they’ve been putting into working to make this a better country and how much time they’ve been voting strictly party line, against the best interests of the country.

We need to start seeing drug tests and alcohol blood tests and pee tests.

And we need to see financial reports monthly of all money raised and by whom. We need to know who is trying to bribe our representatives and we can only do it by demanding this information.

So, some fools in Congress want to drug test recipients of federal funds like welfare. So, if someone has a drug problem, I guess we should just all stand around and watch their children starve to death. It must be mighty strange to be a Republican representative and support those lousy ideas.

But, it is indeed time to start expecting 40 hours a week from the crooks, even if eight of those hours are to be spent back in their own districts. I would like to see a timecard showing what my representatives spend their time on.

We need to start seeing some accountability.

So, what do you think? Should we start drug testing our politicians?

Dear Friend,

The Supreme Court recently decided to hear a case challenging the constitutionality of the new health care reform bill passed by Congress last year, and Justice Clarence Thomas has a supreme ethical conflict.

Amidst accusations of ethics violations, just two weeks ago on the day that the Court decided to hear the challenge of the new health care law, Thomas and Justice Antonin Scalia were honored at a benefit put on by the same firm that is leading the challenge and the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer.

Tell Justice Clarence Thomas: Recuse yourself from deliberations on the constitutionality of health care reform. You can sign the petition at the link below.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/clarence_thomas_recuse/?r_by=30915-3476714-gOP2sWx&rc=paste2

Courtesy of ThinkProgress.

We’ve posted before regarding the need to protect our commons and the damage caused by allowing the greedy to exploit our commons for profit.

I’m glad to see that others are beginning to recognize the unavoidable destruction that comes from the greedy exploitation of our commons.

This is such an important issue that it has to be addressed immediately.

We are allowing some to get rich by mining our minerals, and drilling our oil. I say “our” because everything in the ground belongs to all humans, all of us. Anything and everything we take from the Earth is limited. Sooner or later everything will run out unless we make rules, right now, today, to prevent the extraction of anything that is not replaced at the expense of those benefiting from the taking.

But, stop. Think about this a minute. Aren’t you and I benefiting from having cars to drive and oil and gas to burn to keep us moving and keep our heaters and air conditioners and air filters working? I’m guessing we will all say, yes, we are all benefiting from exploiting our finite resources.

What happens to our kids and grand kids when we’ve used up all those resources? Haven’t we effectively stolen the resources from future generations?

It’s time we started realizing that this Ponzi scheme will only last so long before it will all come crashing down. What will happen to our economy when all the oil is gone? It will be the biggest economic crash we’ve ever seen and it will last the rest of time.

What happens when we’ve used the last of the rare earth minerals that make our technology run? No new computers, no new pace makers, no new technology. What do you think that will do to our economy?

Sure, there’ll be a whole new industry of little Chinese slave labor hands stripping the guts out of our old technology trying to scrounge up enough to make a new computer. What will that do to our computer industry? What will that do to our entire technology industry? It’ll be a disaster like we’ve never seen before.

Sure, we might not run out of oil today and we might have enough rare earth minerals to last a few more years, but sooner or later it will all be gone. We have to start conserving today. We need to start finding alternatives to our limited resources. We need to stop the greedy from exploiting our commons for money. When it runs out, it will be you and me that suffer. It’ll be our kids and grand kids. The greedy will already have their money.

Now, don’t expect the greedy 1% to willingly stop making money stripping away our commons. It has to be you and me to pass the laws that require that our commons be cared for. The only way to protect our commons from the greedy and from ourselves it to educate everyone of the train wreck right around the corner and to pass laws that protect our commons, right now, today.

Here we are now, November 2011, and what have the Republicans in control of the House of Representatives done for America?

In poll after poll, the two most important things on almost every American’s mind is JOBS and the ECONOMY.

What have the Republicans done for America on these fronts? Not a single thing. On the contrary, they have passed bill after bill that destroys jobs, knowing that they will never be accepted into law.

They even obstruct the passing of debt limits in order to prevent We the People from creating jobs through government programs. In fact, the Republicans in the different levels of government have destroyed the jobs of 800,000 public employees. Did they do this to save money? Don’t be silly. They followed up those job cuts with tax give-aways to the top 1%.

The Republicans in office have done everything they can to hurt America in order to make Obama and the Democrats look bad and increase their chances of gaining more power. They even admit that their number one goal is to make Obama a one term president. Got that? The Republican number one job isn’t to fix this mess they made but to make it even worse hoping that the voters will be stupid enough to blame the Democrats for it.

And, you can be sure that the Republican voters who have no idea what’s going on will gladly blame everyone but themselves for voting like the idiots they truly are.

Update: Today the Republicans have filibustered a jobs bill that would have passed if it had been voted on. They obviously don’t want our government to work and they obviously don’t want to fix the economic mess they created.

Update 2: Yesterday they passed a bill that confirms that “in god we trust” is the company motto. Got that? No on jobs,  yes on garbage like this. If you voted for these pigs, I hope you’re paying attention. I hope you’re feeling the pain they are causing, first hand.

Update 3 (Admin): Check out this survey from a Republican politician. Do you see anything important missing? Only the most important thing to America.

No Jobs

Subject: Tell Senate Democrats: Absolutely no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits

Dear Friend,

It’s official: There’s now a bipartisan consensus on the Super Committee to cut Medicare and Social Security benefits.

The Republicans have a longstanding desire to dismantle Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. But according to recent news reports, a majority of Democrats on the Super Committee just proposed their own plan to reduce the deficit that included slashing Medicare benefits by $200 billion and dramatically reducing future Social Security benefits.

It’s hard to imagine how the Democrats on the Super Committee could be any more out-of-touch or wrongheaded.

In the face of massive unemployment, rampant foreclosures, a sputtering economy and widespread anger that the country is systematically prioritizing the needs of the ultra-rich and wealthy corporations over the needs of the other 99% of us, the Democrats who support this plan think the best thing to do is make it harder and more expensive for seniors and the less fortunate to get medical care or pay for their basic living expenses.

Tell Harry Reid and the Democratic senators on the Super Committee: Absolutely no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security benefits.

Click here for more information and an easy way to take action.

http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/supercommittee_mms/

We’ve discussed the need to protect the commons in prior posts. Still, there are many people who don’t grasp the importance of protecting our commons. I’ll illustrate an important aspect of protecting the commons by looking at the crime of exploiting our resources for greed and profit.

In our example we’ll use the idea of exploiting oil even though this applies to all of our resources.

Let’s take the position that I am an oil tycoon and am spending millions of dollars each month to ensure that people continue to use my oil and continue to make billions of dollars in profit for me. Let’s say that I’m even pathological enough to discourage people from believing the catastrophic truth about the negative effects of using my products.

In 40 years I pass my empire on to my children and they pass it along to their children and on and on until it’s the year 2500 and every drop of oil is gone.

Along comes 2501 and the world is faced with a disaster that only oil can resolve.

What I have done as well as my children and grand children is steal the resources from our future children. I’ve taken something from the earth that belongs to every one of us and exploited it to make me stinkingly rich, here, now, today. I have taken the resources away from any future generation that may actually have a use for them that could help everyone.

We all need to start to expect that there should be restrictions on exploiting our non-renewable resources for greed and profit, expect that we would all find it important to protect our resources, especially the ones we can’t get back once they’re squandered.

Even renewable resources need to be protected. Our water supplies are renewable but no one should be allowed to make money by selling something that we all need to survive on this planet. This foolishness will only lead to a shortage of water while some have it all. It always comes to pass that those things that are in the most demand are owned, hoarded, exploited, and controlled by the wealthy.

Resources such as food or lumber are renewable but are also of limited quantity. There is only so much lumber we can grow and so much food.  Both of these must come from the earth which we are all responsible for. If we leave it up to the greedy to strip the land of all ability to grow food and lumber we will be allowing them to get rich while all the rest of us will have to deal with the barren, toxic wasteland the greedy will leave behind.

Sooner or later we will all begin to realize that we are all responsible for this earth we share. And the only way to be responsible for it and to protect it is to have reasonable limitations on how it can be exploited for profit.

There’s an old joke, “Republicans want a leader, Democrats want a meeting.”

Jokes are seldom funny unless there’s a grain of truth to them.

Stop. Before you read any further, answer the question, do you think the joke is true about your political party?

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to the point.

Go find yourself a copy of the US constitution and find who is supposed to be the leader of the people. It’s a short and easy read. The president? Congress? But if you don’t want to go check it out for yourself, I’ll give you a clue. There isn’t one!

The framers of our constitution and the forefathers of our country didn’t want there to be leaders. It is We the People who is supposed to lead the government.

And, what’s the best way to lead the government? Through meetings, negotiations, and compromise.

Got that? The Republicans make lousy American politicians because they try to be leaders. Take George W. Bush as an example. He acted like a leader. A lousy leader with all the wrong and stupid ideas but the Republicans loved him. Why would Americans love a leader who did the damage that Bush did to America? Because they have the mistaken belief that they need a leader. That’s what makes it so easy for a strong leader with destructive ideas to become the leader of the Republicans.

America doesn’t elect leaders. If you’re electing a leader, you’re doing the thing that our founding fathers didn’t want you to do. Don’t be a follower. Be a leader and tell your REPRESENTATIVES what to do.

The Reno Nevada group of #Occupy Wall Street, #Occupy Reno, is preparing to start occupying the closed Moana Pool area at 240 W. Moana Lane. The Reno mayor, Cashell, has met with the group and the city council has agreed to waive the $1,000 per month park fee.

Cashell says that the group need to also consider their elected national representatives in their disgust/anger for the current broken system.