Donald Trump wants even more tax cuts for the rich!

No more tax cuts for rich 💲😳😧❗
Echo opinion letter published in The News-Gazette in Champaign, Illinois:

Dear Editor:  In 1981, President Ronald Reagan presented a new plan for the American economy. The idea he outlined became known as “trickle-down economics.” The plan called for corporate income-tax reduction, tax cuts for the wealthy and deregulation of businesses and industry.

According to this plan, the additional money available to wealthy individuals and corporations would be invested in expanding the nation’s industries, building new factories, upgrading technology and creating more jobs for American workers.

The increase in employment would, in turn, result in a greater demand for goods and services, more consumer spending and a stronger national economy. This was the theory, but this is not what happened.

Instead of investing the money💰 they saved by paying lower taxes, America’s wealthiest corporations and business owners kept the money for themselves. 

Or else, they invested it in foreign countries where labor and material costs were lower, resulting in greater returns for corporate stockholders. During Reagan’s presidency, the rich got richer, but no one else benefited.

President George W. Bush implemented a tax cut in 2003, that appeared to be a revival of Reagan’s plan. Bush’s effort at (failed) “trickle-down economics” produced the worst economic downturn in America since the 1930s.

In 2017, President Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress cut the corporate tax rate and claimed it would raise the average American household income. That did not happen. Corporations and wealthy Americans kept the money. The economy and average Americans suffered.

Do we want this to happen again?

From Mike Woods, in Champaign, Illinois

Wrong minded right wing American history about immigration

There is an ironic inverse correlation about how Republicans misunderstand immigration. 

In other words, conservative Americans who oppose immigration reforms or a path to citizenship aka "amnesty", are ignoring their their owns heritages while truth and facts don't support their extremist points of view.

General George Washington needed the help of the French in the American Revolution

Apparantly, when it comes to immigration, many Americans, who are particularly right wing conservatives, seem to think this issue isn't about "us".  In fact, the "US", to a person, excluding the Native Americans, is an immigrant nation.  

Here are some historical incongruouss facts about the  right wing American assumptions concerning immigration. 

Largely, right wingers like Ted Cruz aka "Cruz to loose", the Republican Senator from Texas and presidential "wanna-be", think immigrants pose a threat to our nation's security and the economy.  "Cruz to loose" and his "think a-likers" are absolutely wrong minded! In fact, the American military employs thousands of patriotic loyal men and women who are either immigrants or first generation immigrants. They are protecting our nation in war and peace. Seconly, immigrants contribute to the growth of our nation's economy, rather than take from it. In fact, immigrants pay taxes, obey the laws, consume goods and work hard at jobs many Americans don't particularly care to do for ourselves.

American history has plentyof examples of wrong minded immigrantion thinking.

1.  Let's begin with the French troops who assisted General George Washington and assisted Americans to win the Revolutionary War!

2.  During America's industrial expansion, when manufacturing companies were thriving, it was immigrants from Ireland and French Canada who helped to keep badly needed mills thriving, while the bosses made fortunes. Often, the immigrant workers, who provided the labor, were required to live in squalor and frequently died of infectious diseases. 

3.  President Eisenhower's "wetback" policy, to respond to a growing Mexican immigration problem, was proven to be a disasterous failure. In fact, operation "Wetback", now a deragatory term, was an immigration law enforcement initiative created by the Immigration and Naturalization Service diirector Joseph Swing. The program was implemented in May 1954 by U.S. Attorney General Herbert Brownell, and utilized special tactics to deal with illegal border crossing and illegal residence in the United States by Mexicans. The program became a contentious issue in Mexico-United States relations. After implementation, Operation Wetback gave rise to arrests and deportations by the U.S. Border Patrol characterized by physical abuse and civil rights violations, and even deportations of hundreds of U. S. citizens unable to convince border agents of their status.  Reports about the deportation process during Operation Wetback described a humanitarian disaster, especially in one incident when 88 deportees died as a result of inhumane conditions in extreme heat.

4.  President Roosevelt's administration prevented the immigration of many Jewish immigrant refugees from Europe, prior to World War II.  Reporting in the Holocaust Encylopedia, establishing a haven in the United States for German Jewish refugees in the 1930s,was extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. Among these were general questions regarding immigration to the United States. The new quota system of the 1924 US Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) imposed severe restrictions on immigration based on nationality. Moreover, in 1930, Roosevelt's predecessor, President Herbert Hoover, announced that, given acute unemployment during the Depression, US immigration authorities would henceforth interpret a 1917 ban on immigration of persons “likely to become a public charge” to include persons who were otherwise able to work, but in the conditions of the Depression were unlikely to find a job. As it turned out, the Jewish immigrants who were turned away during the 1930s, certainly could've been valuable citizens by providing badly needed labor during the World War's defense industrial workforce.  

5.  When it came to providing leadership about immigration reform, it was the conservative Republican icon of the past, for the right wingers, President Ronald Reagan, who gave thousands of alien people a path to citizenship. In the Immigration and Control Act of 1986, President Reagan, in reality, created a GOP supportive voting block among Hispanics when he promoted this "amnesty" legislation. At the time, the Immigration and Naturalization Service estimated that about four million illegal immigrants would apply for legal status through the act and that roughly half of them would be eligible.

Now, right wingers like "Cruz to loose" and think a-likers are saying the US should stop desperate Syrian refugees from immigration into the United States, because one of the killers who attaked Paris on Novembr 13, may have had a Syrian passport? 

"There you go again" as President Reagon once said. This incongruous thinking proved to be wrong minded in the past. Consequently, there's every reason to believe blocking immigration reform is, likewise, wrong for our nation's future.  

America is an immigrant nation and Senator Ted Cruz,, who was born in Canada, knows he's wrong to oppose Syrian immigrants from legally entering the US.

Ted Cruz Test: Republicans are Making a Mockery Out of Our Proud American Democracy

Are any Republicans out there who still believe in the majority rule in democracy?  Listen up!  It's time to count votes and eliminate the (a) stupid budget sequester (b) end the stupid government shut down and (c) stupid obstruction of lifting of America's debt ceiling.  
Can Senator Ted Cruz pass this 2 question test?  
Who said the following?

1.  "No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology."

2.  "Leadership is someone who brings people together."

Both of the above quotes were spoken by Republican presidents.
(1) Ronald Reagan (2) George W. Bush

Republicans and House Speaker John Boehner have departed from the Republican Party as we know it.  

Republican Olympia Snowe, former Senator from Maine says today's GOP is not a political party she recognizes anymore. This, from a leader who gave her all for the Republican party but she wasn't "conservative enough" (whatever that means!).

Snowe of Maine says the Republican Party has bowed to extreme elements, making it unrecognizable from the GOP she joined years ago. "Obviously it’s moved to the extremes. I wouldn’t characterize everybody within the tea party movement, but certainly there are broad elements within the party now that are driving their own agenda for their own advantage, irrespective of what implications it has for the Republican Party," Snowe told Ashleigh Banfield on CNN Newsroom. "And certainly, this isn’t a party that I recognize and the party that I joined when I first enrolled, and that’s regrettable."

Senator Snowe is correct, this mess with the economic shutdowns is regrettable but it's also preventable.  Republicans can recall all the misery they are currently causing themselves and the people being harmed by their right wing extremism by simply taking a vote to stop this madness.  In not calling for a vote, House Speaker John Boehner is in denial about the inevitable.  This power struggle is preventable and a majority vote of the House would fix all of it, presto (!) like a finger snap.  

In not taking a simple majority vote, Speaker Boehner is leading a party movement that's making a mockery of democracy for the world to see, like hanging our dirty laundry out for scrutiny.  Nobody wants to see dirty laundry especially when there's soap and water available.  A vote is the soap and water of this horribly ridiculous economic mess created by a Republican minority in Congress who are being puppet controlled by Tea Party right wing extremists.  This extremism must be eradicated.

Senator Tom Cruz should take a cruise. He needs to return to Canada, where he was born, to learn from their Parliamentary

system how a democracy can work, when the will of the people is the goal of government. 

Republicans must be voted out of office as soon as possible, before they so damage our American democracy, until it becomes unrecognizable. Republicans are on the road to dismantling our democracy and we must fire them all for their complete incompetence. ASAP.

Republican Alert! Government Shutdown Costs Money: Ronald Reagan Quote on Ideology

Republicans usually tremble, tremble, tremble at the mention of President Ronald Reagan. 

So, here's a quote, they'll likely faint after reading:

"No mother would ever willingly sacrifice her sons for territorial gain, for economic advantage, for ideology." Likewise, I doubt any sane son or daughter would willingly sacrifice their mother for ideology, either. http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/keywords/ideology.html#2VCPIelLyRqxOd8H.99
Okay, Republican ideologues, how do you justify sacrificing our US government operations, the "mother" of our nation, for the sake of your minority opinion ideologies (there are too many to mention)?

Honestly, I don't know whether to be angry at the Republicans or at the American people, in general, for putting up with idiots who somehow get elected to Congress and then want to shove their right wing ideology down our throats. Now, these obsessed politicians want to dismantle our government. 

Hello? Our US Constitution wasn't written to fly in the face of voters only when right wing zealots want to protect Second Amendment gun rights!

Congress is supposed to to support all the laws.

Now, a minority of right wing Congressional Republicans are intent, like Kamikaze Pilots, to shut down our government, rather than to uphold the law passed in health care reform. In my mind, this is seditious behavior and they should be punished.

Moreover, Republicans have shamefully failed arithmetic, yet again. GOP right wing zealots are earning their labels as the "stupid party" by continuing to act dumb, because shutting down government wastes money. By the way, the GOP doesn't deserve to be called Grand Old Party, anymore. They've earned the title of Grumpy Old Party, instead. They want to shut down government, harming hard working people as a result, just because they can. They're the spoiled bully thugs hiding behind their mommies skirts in the school yard. Their "mommies" are House Speaker John Boehner, a puppet of the Tea-Party and Texas Senator Ted Cruz. Surely, these idiots must not understand how much their zealotry is costing taxpayers. "Wonklblog" pundit Ezra Klein and others are reporting how the suicidal launch to obstruct government, by shutting it down to prevent implementation of Obamacare (health care reform) will cost taxpayers billions of wasted dollars.

A government shutdown will cost us billions

By Ezra Klein, Published: September 23 at 12:37 pmE-mail the writer 

To understand what Congress is risking every time it nears a shutdown, consider what the past ones have cost. In 1996, the Office of Management and Budget tallied the two major shutdowns of the decade at about $1.4 billion. Adjusting for inflation would bring that total to more than $2 billion in today’s dollars.But as an analysis (pdf) by Roy Meyers, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, found, that estimate left out a lot. It didn’t account for the lost value of work that wasn’t done or the $300 million the federal parks would have taken in or the reduced pace of IRS audits. And then there are the less visible consequences. Meyers suggests that contractors might start charging the government a premium after shutdowns to compensate for the uncertainty of their payments. And a large body of work shows that unstable budget processes at the state level raise borrowing costs, meaning some of the costs are permanent, or at least long-lived.

Even getting near a shutdown costs money. The government must prepare, and that means a lot of hours spent on nothing useful. “You have to pull people off whatever they’re doing to inform employees about what they can do and when they can come in,” said Stan Collender, a budget expert at Qorvis communications. “You have to prepare to change the Web sites with new information about what to do during the shutdowns. You have additional security costs for the buildings because you have to lock them up so no one can get in. You have additional maintenance costs in terms of heating and cooling. And let’s say you’re a supplier who is supposed to deliver parts to the government on Oct. 2. What do you do?”

Okay, Ezra, I'll tell you what to do.

These contractors and everybody else negatively impacted by a government shut down (nearly everybody in America) must vote these stupid GOP party people out of office. If a government contractor can't deliver parts, then the person making the products obviously won't be paid, either. In my mind, that's illegal. Moreover, ask the government contractor to tell his/her suppliers to join in a rebellion, call a special election or another Constitutional Assembly in Philadelphia - (the building is still open, isn't it?) for the purpose of removing every dumb and dumber government ideologue out of office!


Even worse than being dumb is not knowing how to solve a problem. Dumb and dumber Republicans are carrying on like cats in mating season about Obamacare and the cost of government, but offer zero solutions. They're completely void of ideas. Their misplaced energy is engulfed in unfounded zealotry.


Try asking a Republican what they don't like about health care reform, aka "Obamacare" (if they'll let you get a word in edgewise) and they're likely to say they don't want anymore government run programs. Then, after they've predictably said that, ask them to tell you where they earn a living? There's a better than 50/50 chance these zealots earn money off the same government they want to shut down.

Hypocrisy 101 is a subject wheres stupid Republicans might get a passing grade.

President Obama once taught college courses in Constitutional law at the University of Chicago law school.

Surely, Obama knows how his executive leadership is essential at this time, when a government shutdown is looming, because some in Congress won't enforce the Federal Law in Obamacare. President Obama must lead Americans out of this ideological sea of right wing extremism and enforce the Obamacare law without holding government operations hostage to do so.


Meanwhile, Americans may not be able to wait for the next election to rid ourselves of seditious members of Congress who want to bring down government, because they want to break the law. They must be removed for violation of their oath of office, which is to uphold the US Constitution, including Federal Laws. Maybe, President Ronald Reagan's quote on ideology should be included in this solemn oath, presuming the dumb and stupid Republican can read, understand and remember it.

Mourning in America: Navy Yard Massacre and Another Moment of Silence at Boston's Fenway Park: A Nation in Perpetual Mourning

Yet another moment of silence before the United States National Anthem, the Star Spangled Banner, at Boston's Fenway Park. Certainly, the USA knows how to conduct moments of silence because, unfortunately, we have lots of experience.

We're a united in professional mourning caused by gun violence.  

Perhaps, at all events, prior to playing the nation's National Anthem, we should include a moment of silence for the victims of gun violence. After all, every single day in America, we shamefully add more people to the list of those we mourn, because they died too soon, from gun violence. 

This time, at Boston's Fenway Park prior to the Boston Red Sox vs Baltimore Orioles game, a moment of silence was added to the growing mourning list.  

It was a somber public memorial in tribute to the victims of the September 16, 2013 Navy Yard massacre, perpetrated by another crazed gunman, who penetrated a secure facility to kill 12 people. Those murdered were civilians and contractors, just starting their day at a massive military compound that’s normally a bastion of safety, at the Navy Yard.

Yet, the silence created a momentary flashback. It was another reminder of those killed and injured in the domestic terror attack on Boston's Patriot's Day April 16, 2013, in a domestic incident that created "Boston Strong" in an odd irony of coincidental "16" dates.
Of course, the Boston Strong attacks were perpetrated by deadly homemade bombs, but the tragedy continued the litany of America as a violent place and becoming more so.

Moreover, the multiple and growing numbers of "moments of silence" are seemingly an abyss of memorials, in a nation experiencing perpetual mourning. It seems to me, the  United States of America has become States United in Mourning America.  

Perhaps, President Ronald Reagan's memorable "Morning in America campaign ad should be changed to "Mourning in America", and become an "anti violence with guns campaign ad", instead.

In fact, President Reagan, our 40th Commander in Chief, became an advocate of gun regulations after he left the White House. No doubt, he was influenced because of his own survival of an assassination attempt.  President Reagan almost miraculously survived an attack by a gunman on March 30, 1981, in Washington DC, only 69 days into his Presidency.  Reagan's survival was made possible because of rapid transport to a nearby emergency department, after he was shot. His wounds were nearly fatal.

It's simply outrageous for our nation to continue to experience this growing epidemic of gun related incidents.  They're alarmingly predictable and completely preventable.  Each incident shares shameful similarities  a lone gunman, nobody saw the signs, somehow gets guns, massacres innocent people. Then, the follow up, the National Rifle Association pontificates about how the guns don't really kill, as though the incidents happen in the context of a violent video game.  

Even more predictable are the stupid people who are Second Amendment zealots, who virtually believe the National Rifle Association's ridiculous mantra about the people, not guns, that kill. Yet, without guns, there couldn't possibly be any gun violence.

It's a public health axiom - get to the root cause of the epidemic. It's a known fact, supported by medical science, that diseases would never be the root cause of human deaths, if it weren't for the existance of bacteria, aka "deadly germs". Likewise,  with guns.  

Nevertheless, "Mourning in America" will continue until American legislators and the majority opinion of our United States Supreme Court recognizes that among our Constitutional Inalienable Rights is the right to be protected from harm by gun violence.  

This right to safety from gun violence should trump the Second Amendment protections of gun ownership. That which is inalienable cannot be bought, sold, or transferred from one individual to another. The personal rights to life and liberty guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States are inalienable.  

Therefore, this blog is calling for a moment of silence to be led before the playing of the National Anthem at every event where we pay tribute to our nation, which is in perpetual mouring. We must protect the inalienable right to be protected from gun violence caused by guns 

A traditional silence must be included in our public domain, because we do it so well and seems to united us, while drawing essential attention to "Mourning in America".