This is WRONG!

How Our Largest Corporations Made $170 Billion During Great Recession And Paid No Taxes

Jun. 1 2011 – 5:27 pm | 6,432 views | 3 recommendations | 32 comments
By RICK UNGAR

Yesterday, I wrote about how the GOP is falsely pushing the argument that America’s corporations are overtaxed. I included some great data courtesy of conservative commentator Bruce Bartlett whose New York Times piece did an extraordinary job of putting the lie to the Republican assertions.

Today, and not a moment too soon, the non-profit Citizens For Tax Justice (CTJ) has put out their findings revealing that twelve of the nations largest Fortune 500 companies, while making $170 billion in profits during the period of The Great Recession, paid an effective tax rate of negative 1.5%.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Not only have these twelve companies paid zero in taxes for the years 2008-2010, they actually received tax subsidies that added $62.4 billion to their bottom lines.

The companies were chosen by the CTJ to represent a range of industries, including manufacturing, energy, services, transportation and high tech and include – in alphabetical order – American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo and Yahoo.

Here are the bullet points presented by the report:

* From 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: –$2.5 billion.

* All but two of the dozen companies enjoyed at least one no-tax year over the 2008-10 period, despite reporting substantial pretax U.S. profits in those no-tax years.

* Eight of the twelve companies reported net tax benefits over the full three-year period.

According to the study, not a single one of these companies paid an amount even close to the 35% statutory tax rate.

In fact, the tax rate paid by Exxon Mobile, when spread over the full three years, was only 14.2% – a full 60% below the 35% rate that corporations are supposed to be paying. And if we take a look at what Exxon paid over just the past two years, it totals a mere 0.4% on their pre-tax profits of $9.9 billion.

And get this – Exxon Mobile paid the most in taxes of any of the twelve companies on the list.

Here is my favorite part – had just these twelve companies paid at the actual 35% tax rate the GOP is telling us they are chaffing under, the sum would have added a full 12% to the totals the United States of America’s treasury received through corporate taxes.

We sure could use that money.

Take a look at this chart, provided courtesy of Thinkprogress.com, and be amazed.

What I don’t know is whether or not the preponderance of American corporations are getting away with the same kind of tax avoidance that these twelve companies are managing to pull off.

Bob McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, seems to believe that they are.

These 12 companies are just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance. Our elected officials have a duty to the American public to make reducing or eliminating the vast array of corporate tax subsidies the centerpiece of any deficit-reduction strategy.

McIntyre is certainly right when he points out the duty of our elected officials. But they are not the only ones with such a responsibility.

We, as voters, also have a duty to react when the GOP majority in the House of Representatives tries to tell us we need to reduce this phantom corporate rate from 35% to 25% so that these corporations can pay even less in taxes while they pocket even greater amounts of taxpayer money via corporate subsidies.

Worse still, Boehner, Ryan and friends have the unmitigated gall to make their pitch while asking the rest of us to give up the social programs that are so essential to most Americans.

Seriously, people, do we need an anvil to fall on our heads before we get it?

These numbers don’t lie – but your GOP Member of Congress is and it’s time to come to terms with this.

For those of you who continue to buy into the belief that following what passes for conservative ideology today will save this country, the rest of us really need you to approach this issue with a more open mind. We ask that in the hope that you might arrive at the conclusion that you are being played solely for the benefit of these large corporations and wealthy Americans who stand in line to bankroll these Republican politicians.

The time to do it is now as we take on the issue of raising the nation’s debt ceiling.

If you don’t believe we should raise our ability to take on more debt because we spend more than we should, I get it.

However, if you believe that the answer to lowering the debt is to cut or destroy services and benefit programs that you depend upon while allowing wealthy corporations and individuals to severely underpay their taxes – or simply pay none at all – then you must examine this self-destructive streak that will, unfortunately, take us all down with you.

The Democrats will agree to budget and deficit cuts when the GOP agrees to get rid of the corporate subsidies and tax shell games that allow the kind of results disclosed today by the CTJ. The Democrats will agree to budget cuts when the GOP agrees to raise taxes on those earning over a million dollars per year.

How does this hurt you?

It doesn’t.

But allowing those who want to sucker you into paying for our deficit while giving a complete pass to the corporate and wealthy interests will most assuredly cause you and your family enormous pain.

The American middle-class must take a step back from the ideological precipice and review what is in their own best interest. Destroying Medicare and Medicaid is not the answer. Threatening to create havoc in the world economic system by playing chicken with the debt ceiling (and no, we don’t know for certain that this will happen but is it really necessary to test it?) is not the answer.

We need to get spending under control to be sure. But we also need to require the entities who have bought their way into legalized greed to pay up. Clearly, they aren’t prepared to do this because it is in the national interest. Thus, we must force them to do so with the only weapon we possess – our votes.

Dear TSA …GO TO HELL

TSA stands by officers after pat-down of elderly woman in Florida

(CNN) — The Transportation Security Administration stood by its security officers Sunday after a Florida woman complained that her cancer-stricken, 95-year-old mother was patted down and forced to remove her adult diaper while going through security.

Reports of the incident took hold in social media, with scores of comments on the topic and reposts appearing hourly on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

The TSA released a statement Sunday defending its agents’ actions at the Northwest Florida Regional Airport.

“While every person and item must be screened before entering the secure boarding area, TSA works with passengers to resolve security alarms in a respectful and sensitive manner,” the federal agency said. “We have reviewed the circumstances involving this screening and determined that our officers acted professionally and according to proper procedure.”

TSA pat downs 6-year-old childVideo

Jean Weber told CNN’s Fredricka Whitfield on Sunday that the security officers may have been procedurally correct, but she still does not believe they were justified, especially given her mother’s frail condition.

“If this is your procedure — which I do understand — I also feel that your procedure needs to be changed,” she said.

Weber said the two were traveling June 18 from northwest Florida to Michigan, so her mother could move in with relatives before eventually going to an assisted living facility.

“My mother is very ill, she has a form of leukemia,” Weber said. “She had a blood transfusion the week before, just to bolster up her strength for this travel.”

While going through security, the 95-year-old was taken by a TSA officer into a glassed-in area, where a pat-down was performed, Weber said. An agent told Weber “they felt something suspicious on (her mother’s) leg and they couldn’t determine what it was” — leading them to take her into a private, closed room.

Soon after, Weber said, a TSA agent came out and told her that her mother’s Depend undergarment was “wet and it was firm, and they couldn’t check it thoroughly.” The mother and daughter left to find a bathroom, at the TSA officer’s request, to take off the adult diaper.

Weber said she burst into tears during the ordeal, forcing her own pat-down and other measures in accordance with TSA protocol. But she said her mother, a nurse for 65 years, “was very calm” despite being bothered by the fact that she had to go through the airport without underwear.

Eventually, Weber said she asked for her mother to be whisked away to the boarding gate without her, because their plane was scheduled to leave in two minutes and Weber was still going through security.

By this weekend, the 95-year-old woman — who was not identified by name — was doing “fine” in Michigan, where her niece and her family “was treating her like royalty because they love her so much.”

“My mother is a trouper,” Weber said.

This is not the first time that the TSA’s pat-downs of passengers have come under fire, nor the first time that the agency has rallied behind its officers and policy.

Last year, the administration announced it was ramping up the use of full-body scanning and pat-downs to stop nonmetallic threats, including explosives, from getting on planes. The goal is to head off attacks such as the one allegedly attempted in Christmas 2009 by Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, who allegedly had a bomb sewn into his underwear on a flight from the Netherlands to Michigan.

The TSA estimates that only 3% of passengers are subjected to pat-downs — and then only after they have set off a metal detector or declined to step into a full-body scanner. Yet the new policy has triggered an uproar online and in airports, from a relatively small but vocal number of travelers who feel their rights and privacy were being violated.

But the federal safety agency hasn’t backed down, making some adjustments but no major changes to its policy.

“Every traveler is a critical partner in TSA’s efforts to keep our skies safe,” Administrator John Pistole, who ordered the new approach, said last fall. “And I know and appreciate that the vast majority of Americans recognize and respect the important work we do.”

More recently, outrage erupted over a video-recorded pat-down of a 6-year-old passenger last April at New Orleans’ airport. The video, which was posted on YouTube, shows the girl protesting the search by a female security officer at first, though she complies quietly while it is underway.

Pistole addressed this controversy at a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee meeting last week, explaining the pat-down was ordered because the child had moved while passing through a body imaging machine. He told committee members that “we have changed the policy (so) that there’ll be repeated efforts made to resolve that without a pat-down.”

The next day, TSA spokesman Greg Soule said that the new policy — which will apply to children age 12 and younger — is in the process of being rolled out. It will give security officers “more options,” but does not eliminate pat-downs as one of them.

“This decision will ultimately reduce — though not eliminate — pat-downs,” Soule said.

How Unions Make Our Lives Better

By Sally Kohn

Published March 10, 2011

If you’re cheering on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s decision to destroy both democracy and working families by ramming through anti-union legislation backed by big business, shame on you! I’m sick of unions being vilified by conservative commentators and voters alike who, in fact, have very directly and tangibly benefited from unionization.

In the 1920s, before the peak of the union movement, income inequality and wealth distribution in America reached dangerous proportions. Incomes for the nation as a whole were barely keeping pace with inflation while incomes for the top 1% of Americans skyrocketed up seventy-five percent. Unions, along with a host of New Deal era accomplishments, helped drastically turn this tide.

In 1955, when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) was formed, Republican President Eisenhower praised the newly combined labor federation and unions in general for achieving economic prosperity for all.

It was widely accepted that following an era in which the robber barons recklessly abused workers in order to extract maximum wealth, unions were the way working class Americans could fight back together for rights, benefits and fair wages.

Which is why big business — and big business-backed politicians like Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker — have worked so hard to destroy unions ever since. Do you really think big business gives a damn about “our economy” or “your jobs”? Come on. They care about their bottom line. That’s what businesses do. Unions care about workers.

Unions raise the wages of workers by roughly 20% and raise total compensation, including both wage and benefits after union dues are deducted, by twenty-eight percent. The effect is even greater for low- and middle-wage workers and those without a college degree.

Unionized workers are significantly more likely than non-union workers to get paid leave, employer-provided health insurance and employer-provided pension plans (in fact, up to 54% more likely). And unionized workers receive 26% more vacation time and 14% more paid leave.

What’s not to like about that?

But here’s the kicker: Even if you’re not in a union, unions help you. There’s an old bumper sticker that reads, “Like your weekend? Thank a union!” A bigger bumper sticker might read, “Like your weekend, your 40-hour work week, your workers compensation program, your employee benefits, your minimum wage, your safety standards on the job? Thank a union.”

But that’s not all.

Unions set a standard that even non-unionized workplaces have to follow. For example, a high school graduate who works in a field that is only 25% unionized earns 5% more than similar workers in less unionized industries. Wouldn’t you take a 5% raise right now?

And no, workers who get good salaries and benefits aren’t taking money out of your pocket. They’re taking it from CEO salaries and bonuses. The top five big banks on Wall Street set aside $89.54 billion for bonuses last year — only a 2.8% decline from the previous year, even though profits were down four percent. In other words, even with lower profits, big business across the country can afford to pay executives a small fortune. They can easily afford to pay decent wage and benefits to average workers.

The same is true for public sector employees. States across the country have been slashing wages and benefits for teachers and other public servants in order to give obscene tax breaks to big business and the super-rich. Note that in Wisconsin, 60% of corporations making more than $1 million per year in revenues pay zero taxes. Zero.

Anti-union oligarchs literally want to take money from working people and put it in the pockets of the super-rich. If you’re against that, find a union and join it.

For the record, unions primarily target large industries and employers so the “this hurts small business” argument is nothing but a distraction. Plus, if a small business is paying such abysmal wages that the unionization of the industry pushes the small business to also raise pay, good — they shouldn’t have been so low in the first place.

And also for the record, many of the talking heads who rail against unions are, in fact, union members. Most every television and radio show host, for instance, belongs to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. They may resent having to be in structures to which they’re so ideologically opposed, but the fact is that their good wages and benefits and working conditions were won and are preserved by their union.

And when these same talking heads suggest that we don’t need unions to level the economic playing field, that plenty of poor people grow up to be rich, most of the examples they cite are union members, too.

Baseball players who rose from the ghetto to the major league? It wasn’t until they unionized that baseball players got rich.

Actors? Unionized, including recent Oscar winner actress Natalie Portman who thanked the Screen Actors Guild union for making sure she got an education and was protected as a child actor.

Anti-union policies hurt all workers. The average worker in a so-called “Right-to-Work” state that hinders unionization makes $5,538 per year less than workers in free bargaining states. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, workplace death rates are 52.9% higher in “Right-to-Work” states than free bargaining states. “Right-to-Work” states have higher rates of poverty, higher infant mortality rates and lower percentages of residents with health insurance.

This is simple. The vast majority of Americans think it’s wrong that 400 obscenely rich people hold more wealth and power than the assets of 155 million ordinary Americans combined. Why? Because it is wrong.

Such monstrous inequality and lack of opportunity for ordinary Americans is not a sign that capitalism is broken but a sign that our economy and politics have been rigged to work for the very few at the top. And since the same few rich people and big businesses at the top make most of the political contributions in our country, politicians are woefully skittish to challenge their greed.

And that’s why the final reason to thank a union, the organized voice — and yes, political money, too — large enough to stand up to the otherwise-unchecked disastrous power of big businesses that care nothing about you or our economy and care only about their profit. That’s not what America is about.

That’s  why we let people vote to join unions, to stand up together for working Americans and to fulfill the vision of freedom and equality for which our nation was founded. — Just like we let people vote anti-democratic, anti-working families politicians out of office.

Sally Kohn is a community organizer and political commentator. She is the Founder and Chief Education Officer of the Movement Vision Lab.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2011/03/10/watching-uproar-wisconsin-protests-time-remember-unions-make-lives-better/#ixzz1GX4o9QLg

So How Are Democrats and Republicans Different?

Just how is the way Wisconsin Republicans have handled the political confrontation over worker rights different than the way Washington, DC Democrats handled last year’s health care vote?

With apologies in advance to Ezra for taking some liberties with his column yesterday evening in the Washington Post:

What happened in Wisconsin [Washington DC] tonight [last March]
By Ezra Klein [Bob Laszewski]

Here’s what just happened [last March] in Wisconsin [Washington, DC]: The rules of the state’s [U.S.] Senate require a quorum [60 votes] for any measures that do [don’t] spend money. That’s how the absence of the Senate’s Democrats [the election loss in Massachusetts] could stymie Gov. Scott Walker’s [the Democrat’s efforts] to block [pass] the proposed budget law [the new health care bill] — it spent [parts didn’t spend] money, and thus it needed a quorum [60 votes].

But in a surprise move earlier today [after the Massachusetts loss], Wisconsin’s [Washington’s] Senate Republicans [Democrats] rewrote the bill [using reconciliation rules] and left out all the parts that spent [didn’t spend] money. Then they quickly convened and passed the new law, which included the provisions stripping most public-employee unions of their collective bargaining rights [a bill that dramatically impacted 14% of the economy and the delivery of everyone’s health care] but excluding everything in the law [by crafting a special a reconciliation bill leaving everything out that] that spent [didn’t spend] money.

What happens [happened] next? Expect the protests over the next few days [ensuing months] to be ferocious. But unless a judge [the Supreme Court] rules the move illegal — and I don’t know how to judge the likelihood of that — Walker’s [the Democrat’s] proposed [new health] law will go forward. The question is whether Walker and the Republicans [Obama and the Democrats] who voted for it will do the same.

Polls in Wisconsin [across the country] clearly showed that Republicans [Democrats] had failed to persuade the public of their cause. Walker’s [Obama’s, Reed and Pelosi’s] numbers dropped, while Democrats and unions [Republicans and the Tea Party] found themselves suddenly flush with volunteers, money and favorable media coverage. And they plan to [did] take advantage of it: Eight Wisconsin Republicans have served for long enough to be vulnerable to a recall election next year, and Democrats have already begun gathering signatures. Now their efforts will accelerate. “We now put our total focus on recalling the eligible Republican senators who voted for this heinous bill,” said Mike Tate, chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party. “And we also begin counting the days remaining before Scott Walker is himself eligible for recall.” [The Republicans scored the biggest off-year election victory in a lifetime.]

Posted by ROBERT LASZEWSKI at 4:41 AM

Labels: Health Care Reform

 

The DUDE who Foreclosed on Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo Meeting Today With Philly Homeowner Who “Foreclosed” On Them (Here’s How He Did It)

By Ben Popken on February 18, 2011 10:00 AM 0 views

(Kyle Cassidy)

Wells Fargo is meeting today at noon with the Philadelphia homeowner who “foreclosed” on them, The Consumerist has exclusively learned. Patrick says he “received a call from upon high” late yesterday and that he now has an appointment, “with a very senior Wells Fargo person.” It will be interesting to see how this plays out. But how did Patrick go from embattled and ignored homeowner to seated across the negotiating table with leverage? I spoke with him to find out more about both how and why he did what he did. His story is an inspiration to anyone who’s dreamed of going toe-to-toe with the big banks and winning. Turns out that armed with persistence, and a little legal know-how, Davids can take down Goliaths.

BACKGROUND

All Patrick, pictured above along with his house, wanted was for someone from Wells Fargo to talk to him. A single, white, goth and industrial music event promoter who declines to give his age, he wanted someone to explain why they were doubling his premiums and requiring him to insure his century-old house for its full replacement value instead of the market value. Wells Fargo wanted him to take out almost a million dollars worth of insurance His broker told him full replacement value would cost about $1 million to insure in the event his house, a 6-bedroom, 3 bath Tudor he paid $180,000 for in 2002, was reduced to rubble and needed to be rebuilt stone by stone to standards from over a hundred years ago. Though he’s diligently paid his mortgage on time for the past seven years, he couldn’t afford the jack-up in premiums, nor did he see a reason why he should have to accept them.

Besides the increase in premiums, Wells Fargo was also tossing extra and inexplicable fees on his account. For instance, they charged him for two home inspections in one month, even though no inspectors had come out to house.

Throughout the process, Patrick admits there was “about 10% revenge” motivating him, but with each escalating step he took he really thought that okay, this is the one that will catch their attention and make them talk to me.

HOW IT STARTED

About two years ago, after Wells Fargo stopped responding to his letters requesting more information, Patrick boned up and learned about a law called the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA). The law was enacted to safeguard homebuyers from anti-competitive and collusive behavior among the companies and agents involved with buying and selling real estate. One of the protections involves the “Qualified Written Request,” or QWR.

WHAT’S A QWR?

The Qualified Written Request is a specific kind of letter that you can send to your mortgage servicer when you believe there is an error on your mortgage account. You have to make sure to follow the rules for formatting it, but the servicer is bound by federal law to respond within a certain period of time. If they don’t, you can go after them for actual damages, costs and attorneys fees, plus $1000 of additional damages if there is a pattern of noncompliance.

This is a sample QWR as found on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development site:

“

Attention Customer Service. It’s important to format it exactly like this and to send it in separately from your mortgage payment:Subject: [Your loan number]
[Names on loan documents]
[Property and/or mailing address]

This is a “qualified written request” under Section 6 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).

I am writing because:

Describe the issue or the question you have and/or what action you believe the lender should take.
Attach copies of any related written materials.
Describe any conversations with customer service regarding the issue and to whom you spoke.
Describe any previous steps you have taken or attempts to resolve the issue.
List a day time telephone number in case a customer service representative wishes to contact you.
I understand that under Section 6 of RESPA you are required to acknowledge my request within 20 business days and must try to resolve the issue within 60 business days.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

”

“Do your research,” says Patrick. When drafting it, besides getting tips on writing one from various consumer sites, he also went to banking sites and saw how bankers were talking about ways they had rejected various QWRs. He made sure to craft his so it couldn’t get disqualified. “Use the internet as your law library,” says Patrick. With a little Googling, he was quickly about to find official resources and templates that guided him, step by step.

More than any site, blog or message board, “Looking at the actual law was a big help,” he said. A lot of websites offered bits and pieces, or their (mis)-interpretation, of the law. The best resources came from going to the official US Government pages and looking at the actual statutes in full. “It took a little bit of time to sit and process the legalese,” but it was worth it.

Within 20 days, the company must say they got the QWR, and they have 60 to take action on it. That action must be to either correct the problem or to respond back with why they think they’re right. They must also give a name and phone number for the borrower to contact with questions about their account.

Wells Fargo did none of these, says Patrick. So he moved on to the next step provided by RESPA: statutory damages, aka, cash money.

DO NOT PASS GO

If a company fails to respond to a QWR, the borrower can take them to court and claim damages. Patrick contacted several attorneys but none wanted to take it on because of the low payout and what they said was the unlikelihood of him winning. So he became his own advocate.

Patrick filed his claim in local municipal court, also known as small claims court. Most of the time it costs less than $100 in filing fees. This post tells you how to get started with your small claims filing. Patrick admits he’s no legal genius. “I couldn’t pass the bar if my life depended on it,” he said, but he found the process wasn’t that hard and it helped that “the courts look kindly on plaintiffs representing themselves pro-se.” If you get in touch with the clerk’s office they can get you started with all the forms and filings you need.

At trial, Wells Fargo didn’t send anyone to represent themselves, so Patrick got a default judgment against them for $1,173. They eventually sent him the amount, but they had still had not responded to his letters or agreed to fix his premiums, as required by law. So he filed for a sheriff’s levy. This directs the sheriff to seize and sell the debtor’s property to pay up. In this case, it was the local branch office of Wells Fargo mortgage, the ones who had been ignoring him all these years.

To get the levy, he presented the court clerk with his default judgment and got the Writ of Execution and the Instructions for Levy which he delivered to the sheriff’s office. He paid them a $50 deposit to cover their administrative costs. A local sheriff then went into the Wells Fargo branch office and took an inventory and posted notice that nothing could be removed. The court also gave him several posters which he was expected to xerox and post around town.

As a music event promoter, he says he’s put up a lot of posters, but these were the most satisfying he’s ever hung. One is reprinted below.

USE THE MEDIA TO TELL YOUR STORY

But far more effective than hanging the posters was emailing the posters along with his press release to local media outlets. Within a day of doing that he had local tv stations and the Philadelphia Inquirer covering his story. Based on his “16 years as a promoter,” Patrick instantly knew the power of “working the PR angle to publicize the sale.”

WHERE IT STANDS

On Tuesday, the court put a temporary hold on the sale and has ordered a hearing on February 23 to figure out the final result. ABC and USA Today have also now picked up his story. Patrick says he’s still owed $50, the fee he paid to initiate the levy, and he’s still in disagreement with them about his premiums being doubled. Wells Fargo is meeting with Patrick today at noon to discuss his situation.

“It does seem to tentatively indicate that someone in the very high ranking position of authority” has finally taken an interest in his case, says Patrick.

“We could have handled Mr. Rodgers very unusual situation better,” said a Wells Fargo spokesperson when reached for comment. “We’re doing our best to resolve everything to everyone’s satisfaction.”

A message left with the Wells Fargo branch manager was not returned.

(Photo: Kyle Cassidy)

Hey Satan Can I Borrow a Buck?

I don’t know why this song made me laugh,but it did.

San Fran May Ban Infant Circumcision

This ones for you Lars! I don’t get it if I was trying to have an abortion these assholes would be tripping over themselves making sure I could get it at any age. But don’t you dare cut off that foreskin or you face 1 year in jail and a $1,000 fine. By the way did you know that Nazi’s didn’t believe in circumcision either. :)

By MATT BAUME

Updated 5:08 PM PST, Mon, Feb 21, 2011

 

 

Self-described “civil rights advocates” say that a ballot proposition to ban circumcision is on track for gathering signatures, meaning that San Franciscans may vote on the measure this November.

The proposed law is being spearheaded by local resident Lloyd Schofield, according to the San Francisco Examiner.

It’s part of a national push to end the procedure, which some say is steeped in tradition but poses risks and has little medical benefit. The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association do not recommend routine circumcision.

Getting on the ballot is the easy part — only about 7,000 signatures are required. Once it’s there, advocates will have to convince voters that snipping off body parts is a bad idea.

Although some studies indicate that circumcision reduces the risk of STD transmission, others have indicated that the procedure is not worth the associated risks and diminished sexual function.

Several Jewish organizations have weighed in against the ban as well, pointing out that circumcision rituals play an important historical role for many Jews. Schofeld counters that under his proposed law, adults would be free to opt-in to circumcision, but infants would not be allowed to have the procedure until they reach 18.

If it passes, those caught cutting foreskins would face a fine of $1,000 and a year in prison. Only people over the age of 18 would be allowed to have their foreskins removed.

Copyright NBC Local Media

First Published: Feb 21, 2011 1:44 PM PST

SF May Ban Infant Circumcision | NBC Bay Area.

Enough with the F’ing Nazi’s…..

My biggest pet peeve in politics is vilifying everything you disagree with by invoking Nazism. Every Damn time! Well you know what I don’t care for chocolate, you know what else? The Nazi’s LOVED chocolate therefore if you like chocolate or even any coco flavored dessert you are either a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer.  STUPID, STUPID, STUPID! Hello dicks you could at least throw in a little Stalinism or cold war communism for variety.

Enjoy this snippet about the idiot Unions and the Nazis.

And ON and ON and ON! Stupid politicians.

Martin Luther King Jr. Last Speech- Happy Presidents Day

Prophetic.  He was assassinated the next day.

A day in the life of Joe Republican

It’s attributed to Jeff Parker – so, I link him here. If it is someone else’s, let me know.

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards. With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised. All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Joe gets it too. He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry. In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air. He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe’s employer pays these standards because Joe’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union. If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he’ll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It’s noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe’s deposit is federally insured by the FDIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression. Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime. Joe is home from work.

He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards. He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans. The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn’t have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn’t mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day. Joe agrees: “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”