Go to Veracity Stew - another progressive
Podcast and a Must Listen (warning: contains occasional adult language and
sensitive material-NSFW):
Question: "Separation between Church and State." Who coined the
Phrase? Give up? Answer: Thomas Jefferson - one of
the founding fathers of this great Nation and a creator of the U.S.
Constitution and the First Amendment to that same Constitution. Thomas
Jefferson, in 1802, wrote a Letter to the Danbury Baptist Association,
referring to the First Amendment to the US Constitution. In it he
said:
Believing with you that religion is a
matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to
none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of
government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with
sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared
that their legislature should "make no law
respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church &
State. Adhering to this expression of the
supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I
shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments
which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no
natural right in opposition to his social duties.
I reciprocate your kind prayers for the
protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and
tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my
high respect & esteem.
Th Jefferson
Jan 1, 1802
We will leave it up to the
reader to determine whether
John Boehner
has made serious errors in in judgment. John has supported a
Conservative Far Right Christian position especially when it comes to Church
and State issues. It is apparent from the data collected, that the
first amendment is in danger from his past and future actions as well as
other constitutional sections. He supports deregulation of banks and
the SEC causing the current economic Depression.
John Boehner's office stated
that his position is that Certain Religions aren't "Real"
religions. What is a real religion, Mr. Boehner? What you
have been practicing? He says on the one hand that only certain
Christian denominations are valid. Read the following and remember:
"By their Works may they be known." This is a summary of information
collected from New York Times, bloomberg.com, CBS News, Fox News, Atlanta
Journal Constitution, Huffingtonpost.com, and crooksandliars.com about
Rep. John Boehner.
(Remember it is best to investigate on your
own when looking at allegations about anyone. Don't
believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself! And
remember, the First Amendment Coalition and Religious Freedom Coalition of
the South East do not represent any political party nor do we recommend any
political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political
process.)
EXTREMIST
(TEA PARTY) REPUBLICANS ARE THE ENEMY AND TRAITORS TO AMERICA by R.
Blackbird
Extremist Conservative Republicans are selfish, power hungry,
hateful of the poor, disloyal to the nation and its people, dishonest,
avaricious, scornful of the nation's history, the dignity of its
institutions, its standards of political morality, and its vision
of advancement for all the people. The Extremist Republicans love war as
long as they and theirs do not have to put on helmets and carry guns
into the fighting. They use lies to start wars that kill hundreds of
thousands of innocents and thousands of our own military service people.
They love massive war-time profits, unavailable to their rich masters if
war is absent.
Those Extremist Republicans hate the rest of us,
which they must, in order to pass away from themselves and onto us, the
financial burdens and losses their crimes, schemes and thefts cause.
They are prolific, incessant, and destructive liars. They are
blasphemers for they insist that their hateful and destructive deeds are
the work of God. They are apostates for they gleefully attack the poor,
the immigrants, the old and the sick, of whom God has commanded all of
us to be mindful.
There is no reasoning with them, for all their logic is built on
false premises. There is no appealing to them for honor's sake for they
have lost all sense of shame and have no honor, there is no appealing to
them for the nation's sake for that it what they hate the most.
Excerpts from an article posted by David on
crooksandliars.com Jul 25, 2011
If it appears
that John Boehner is suffering from
multiple personality disorder over
the
debt ceiling
stand-off,
that's because he is. Torn between
his duty to the national interest as
Speaker of the House and to the
Tea Party
caucus
that put him there, for months
Boehner has ping-ponged between
truth and lies on the debt ceiling.
Long before he
breached faith
with the President
on Friday, John Boehner tried to
have it both ways on virtually every
aspect of the
debt ceiling
crisis manufactured
by the Republican Party he struggles
to lead.
As
Jed Lewison
documented, Speaker
Sybil
couldn't get his story straight on
Friday's walkout. While he insisted
during his press conference
afterward that "we had an agreement
on a revenue number," in a letter
that same day to House Republicans
Boehner insisted that "A deal was
never reached, and was never really
close."
As it turns out, John Boehner's
duplicity started long before he
picked up the Speaker's gavel.
In the wake of
the Republicans' overwhelming
triumph at the polls last fall,
Speaker-to-be Boehner was his
party's voice of reason on the debt
ceiling. As the
Wall Street
Journal reported on November 18
("Boehner Warns GOP on Debt
Ceiling"), Boehner pressed his newly
enlarged Republican caucus on the
need to raise the debt ceiling and
so protect the full faith and credit
of the United States.
"I've made it pretty
clear to them that as we get
into next year, it's pretty
clear that Congress is going to
have to deal with this," Mr.
Boehner, who is slated to become
House speaker in January, told
reporters.
"We're going to have
to deal with it as adults," he
said, in what apparently are his
most explicit comments to date.
"Whether we like it or not, the
federal government has
obligations and we have
obligations on our part."
If an increase in the
current debt limit of $14.3
trillion does not pass, it would
suggest the country may not meet
its obligations and would shake
the financial system. It could
rock the bond market, rattle the
dollar and scare away foreign
buyers of U.S. debt.
In January,
Boehner echoed Paul Ryan's warning
that "you can't not raise the debt
ceiling" and Lindsey Graham's dire
prediction that failure to do so
would produce "collapse and calamity
throughout the world." As Speaker
Boehner put it then:
"That would be a
financial disaster, not only for
our country but for the
worldwide economy. Remember, the
American people on Election Day
said, 'we want to cut spending
and we want to create jobs.' And
you can't create jobs if you
default on the federal debt."
But that same
month,
Boehner was also insisting President
Obama would have to make concessions
to Republicans on the debt ceiling
that George W. Bush, needless to
say, never faced:
The American people will
not stand for such an increase
unless it is accompanied by
meaningful action by the
President and Congress to cut
spending and end the job-killing
spending binge in Washington.
After bringing
the government to the brink of a
shutdown over budget cuts demanded
by the GOP in April, a newly
confident Speaker Boehner made
abundantly clear he would join the
hardliners in the House and Senate
holding the $14.3 trillion debt
ceiling hostage. As
Politico
reported, Boehner set out to prove "there's
no daylight between the Tea Party
and me":
House Speaker John
Boehner (R-Ohio), fresh off the
budget talks, told donors this
weekend that if Obama wants an
up or down vote on the debt
ceiling he's not going to get
it.
"The president says I
want you to send me a clean
bill," Boehner said. "Well guess
what, Mr. President, not a
chance you're going to get a
clean bill."
"There will not be an
increase in the debt limit
without something really, really
big attached to it," he
continued in a clip of his
remarks at a fundraiser that was
played during "Face the Nation."
In a rare moment of candor, Speaker
John Boehner admitted as much.
As
Reuters
detailed, Speaker Boehner told a
gathering of Buckeye state Tea
Partiers in April that the $14.3
trillion debt ceiling must be raised
now - and not for the last time:
The private April 25
meeting was convened by the
Speaker of the House of
Representatives at the request
of Tea Party leaders, who were
seething over recent Republican
compromises, most notably on the
2011 budget.
One of the 25 or so
leaders, all from Boehner's
district, asked him if
Republicans would raise
America's $14.3 trillion debt
limit.
According to half a
dozen attendees interviewed by
Reuters, the most powerful
Republican in Washington said
"yes."
"And we're going to
have to raise it again in the
future," he added. With the mass
retirement of America's Baby
Boomers, he explained, it would
take 20 years to balance the
U.S. budget and 30 years after
that to erase the nation's huge
fiscal deficit.
If Congress
doesn't raise the debt limit by
August 2nd,
Speaker
Boehner agreed with President Obama
that the federal government could
not guarantee that Social Security
checks would sent out as required.
And as
Boehner
explained just 10 days ago,
that's just the beginning of the
dire consequences if the Treasury's
August 2 deadline is missed:
"Missing August 2nd could
spook the market. And you could
have a real catastrophe. Nobody
wants that to happen."
"Dealing with this
deficit problem is far more
important than meeting some
artificial date created by the
Treasury secretary."
Of course, John Boehner played
a vital role in the creation of the
massive national debt he now
routinely decries.
Leave aside
for the moment that
Ronald Reagan
tripled the national debt
and
increased the
debt ceiling 17 times.
Forget also George W. Bush nearly
doubled the
debt
or that the
Bush tax cuts
were the biggest driver of debt over
the past decade, and if made
permanent, would be continue to be
so over the next. Pay no attention
to the
federal tax
burden
now at its lowest level in 60 years
or
income
inequality
at its highest level in 80 years
after a decade of
plummeting
rates
for America's supposed
job creators
who don't create jobs.
Ignore for now that
Republican
majorities voted seven times
to raise the debt ceiling under
President Bush and the current GOP
leadership team voted a combined 19
times to bump the debt limit $4
trillion during his tenure. Look
away from the two unfunded wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq, the
budget-busting Bush tax cuts of 2001
and 2003 and the Medicare
prescription drug program because,
after all, John Boehner voted
for all of it.
Alas, that was
then and this is now. And now, a
Democrat is in the White House.
Which means for John Boehner,
raising the debt ceiling at all is
now a "concession."
As UPI reported two weeks ago:
At a news conference
Monday before heading to the
White House for a meeting,
Boehner said the only Republican
concession Obama should expect
is a vote raising the federal
debt limit itself.
"Most Americans would
say that a 'balanced' approach
is a simple one -- the
administration gets its
debt-limit increase and the
American people get their
spending cuts and their
reforms," he said. "And adding
tax increases to the equation
doesn't 'balance' anything."
House
Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) told Fox
News's Chris Wallace Sunday that any
deal to raise the debt ceiling must be
within the "cut, cap and balance"
framework that has already been rejected
by the Senate.
"I am going to continue to work
with my congressional colleagues in both
parties and my House Republican
conference to try to develop a framework
within the cut, cap and balance effort
that the House passed this past week,"
Boehner insisted. "I think a preferable
path would be a bipartisan plan that
involves all of the leaders, but it is
too early to decide whether that is
possible."
"There will be a two-stage
process, it's just not physically
possible to do all of this in one step.
Having said that, Chris, I know the
president is worried about his next
election. But my God, shouldn't he be
worried about the country?" the Speaker
wondered.
"So are you suggesting you might
pass a short-term plan in the House and
in effect, dare the Senate, dare the
White House to block it?" Wallace asked.
"We passed cut, cap and balance,"
Boehner said.
"But they have been defeated,"
Wallace noted. "You talked about putting
a framework out today. You are saying
you would not do that unless you have
Democratic buy-in?"
"I would prefer to have a
bipartisan approach to solve this
problem. If that is not possible, I and
my Republican colleagues in the House
are prepared to move on our own,"
Boehner explained.
"I continue to believe that a
balanced budget amendment is the
greatest enforcement mechanism to bring
Washington spending under control," he
later added.
Washington
Monthly's Steve Benen
observed
that Boehner's threat to act alone may
show that he is willing to let the
country default on its debts.
"What
Boehner is describing is a path that
makes his caucus happy," Benen wrote.
"Boehner's comments this morning -- 'I
and my Republican colleagues are
prepared to move on our own' -- sounded
a lot like a House leader who's not even
interested in finding a solution at all.
His goal is likely to avoid blame, not
to resolve the problem."
"In other words, Boehner sees the
car headed for the cliff, and appears
ready to put a brick on the
accelerator," he concluded.
Excerpt from an article posted on NY
Post and Huffington Post by Nick Wing
09-24-10
House Minority Leader John Boehner
was asked by a liberal blogger
Thursday to answer questions about
an affair with a lobbyist, an
allegation that will reportedly be
the focus of an upcoming New
York Times expose. Boehner
ignored the question outright.
The N.Y.
Post
sees a
journalistic plot
to drop a bombshell on the upcoming
midterm elections by smearing a
high-profile GOP leader:
Insiders on Capitol Hill are
buzzing about an upcoming New
York Times exposé that will
detail an alleged Boehner
affair. Sources say the Times is
looking for the right time to
drop the story in October to
sway the election, similar to
how the Times reported during
the 2008 presidential campaign
on an alleged John McCain affair
that supposedly had taken place
many years before and that was
flatly denied by the woman in
question.
Mike Stark, an
activist and blogger,
intercepted
Leader Boehner after his highly
publicized "Pledge to America"
unveiling to ask him about the
accusation:
"Speaker Boehner, have you been
cheating with Lisbeth Lyons, the
lobbyist for the American Printing
Association?" Stark asks. Boehner
did not respond.
Stark later
contacted
Lyons,
the Vice President of Government
Affairs at Printing Industries of
America, to get a comment on the
allegations. She didn't provide any.
The New
York Post has since
caught up
with Lyons, who said the rumors were
"unfounded."
"As
you can imagine, I was stunned by
such a question," Lyons told the
Post. "I found it to be highly
insulting, particularly as a female
political professional, as well as
unfounded. Beyond that, I have no
further comment on the matter."
A
Boehner spokesman blamed Democrats'
allies in the liberal media for
fabricating the charges.
"This
is bull[bleep]," the spokesman told
the Post. "The American
people oppose Washington Democrats'
job killing, so their desperate
liberal allies are resorting to
outright lies. It's low, and it's
dirty."
[UPDATE: Boehner spokesman Michael
Steel tells HuffPost Hill, "It is
deeply disappointing that even a
scandal-mongering rag like the NY
Post prints ‘bull(bleep)’ when the
spokesman clearly said it’s
‘bullshit.’"]
No man can serve two masters; for either he will
hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold
to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God
and mammon. Matthew 6:24
Last week John Boehner presented a letter to the public
signed by 150 ‘economists’ supporting the Republican
agenda: greater corporate tax breaks at the expense of
spending cuts to spur job growth and the economy.
Methinks these 150 ‘economists’ were actors culled from
a casting call.
Go here
to read some of the looney tune
things these partisan hacks masquerading as economists
have said on a variety of topics.
Last month, John Boehner delivered
the commencement address
at Catholic University of
America in Washington. Boehner was raised in a devout
Catholic family, and beforehand he was delivered
a letter
in public signed by more than 75 professors from
Catholic University and other colleges, stating: “the
Republican supported budget he shepherded through the
House of Representatives will hurt the poor, elderly and
vulnerable, and therefore he has failed to uphold basic
Catholic moral teaching.”
He never acknowledged the letter’s contents.
John ignored his spiritual fathers to heel to and heed
his corporate masters.
Now, the Catholic church doctrine varies from the very
Bible it claims to be the inerrant word of God. They
teach and utter repetitious prayers, which Christ warned
against. They remove the second commandment, that
against making and worshiping idols, and repeat the
tenth as the ninth and tenth, which conveniently allows
them to sell billions of statues of Jesus and Mary and
Joseph and saints.
Go here,
scroll down a bit and see for yourself. They sanctify
Mary as a virgin, when in fact she and Joseph gave Jesus
brothers and sisters. There is no purgatory, the church
invented it as a revenue stream many centuries after
Christ. Jesus was crucified at Passover, not Easter, and
was three days and nights in the heart of the earth
before resurrecting, not the Friday to Sunday the church
recognizes. Evil popes, indulgences and inquisitions
were all works of the Devil.
Notwithstanding, the Catholic church would have been
right to quote this scripture to the lost sheep of their
flock:
Know ye not, that to whom ye yield yourselves
servants to obey, his servants ye are, to whom ye obey;
whether of sin unto death, or obedience unto
righteousness? Romans 6:16
Heed those words
John. Because if you don't you will be collected
by Satan and deposited in Dante's Ninth Level of Hell.
John Andrew
Boehner (born November 17, 1949) is an American Republican
politician, United States Representative from Ohio,
tanorexia sufferer, House Minority Leader, Nancy Pelosi
nemesis, and a
Very Dishonest Representative.
In May 2009, weekly
tracking polls indicated that Boehner remained the most
unpopular politician in the United
States, though it is
unclear if this statistic factored in his favorability among
elderly conservative women or the staff of
Jamaica Me Tan
in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Boehner spent most of
his political career railing against corruption and scandal
in Washington, though—ironically—it was a series of
Washington scandals that directly resulted in the few
professional successes Boehner's had, including his
Congressional seat and House Majority leadership.
Undoubtedly eliciting
countless giggles in high school Civics classrooms
nationwide, the Congressman's surname is correctly
pronounced "BAY-ner." Though—fittingly—its phonetic
pronunciation is a colloquial term for an erection of the
male reproductive organ.
"John Boehner is one of the great pulsars of
our times: a collapsed gravity well of unblinking stare. People
innocently walking down the street, are drawn into his
orbit, helplessly drawn in by how utterly dense he is. They cannot
escape the completely impenetrable mass of
evil darkness surrounding his
mind and become totally crushed & moronized by him."
By a Friend of
Religious Freedom
Financials
House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio)
Earned income: $193,400. Boehner
was House minority leader in 2010
Honoraria, all donated to charity: None
Major assets: Franklin Templeton
Mutual Global Discovery fund, $100,001-$250,000;
Henderson Global Investors International Fund,
$100,001-$250,000; Harbor International Fund IRA,
$100,001-$250,000; UBS Liquid Assets Fund IRA,
$100,001-$250,000; 12 investments valued from
$50,001-$100,000, including a Congressional Credit
Union account, a state of Ohio public employees
pension plan, and various funds and IRAs.
Major sources of unearned income:
Davis New York Venture Fund dividends/capital gains,
$15,001-$50,000; American Funds' Growth Fund of
America, dividends/capital gains, $15,001-$50,000.
Major liabilities: None.
Gifts: None.
Narrative:
Boehner reported 121 transactions in which he bought
or sold investments. The largest were a sale of
shares of American Funds' Growth Fund of America for
$50,001-$100,000; purchase of shares in the Franklin
Templeton Mutual Global Discovery Fund for
$50,001-$100,000; and sale of shares in Vanguard's
Selected Value Fund for $50,001-$100,000. He took a
two-day trip to Palm Beach, Fla., in March 2010,
sponsored by the conservative Club for Growth; the
value of the trip was not disclosed.
House Speaker John
A. Boehner is a multi-millionaire with financial
investments in some of the nation’s largest
corporations.
Boehner had
minimum financial holdings of $2 million at the end
of 2010, while his top deputy was worth at least
$3.4 million, according to financial disclosure
forms that were released Wednesday. His true net
worth is likely to be far greater because lawmakers
are only required to reveal a broad range of their
financial holdings and the value of their primary
residences is not mandatory in the disclosures.
The forms,
which all members of Congress had to file Wednesday
unless specifically granted an extension, are
designed to disclose the financial holdings of
lawmakers in order to provide some transparency in
their legislative maneuvering so voters can be aware
of any potential conflict of interest.
The group
who fueled the rise of House Republicans —
those 87 GOP freshmen elected
in last fall’s wave election
— have a mixed record in terms of their own
finances. At least 19 own assets worth more than $1
million, according to a Washington Post review of
2010 financial disclosure forms. However, after
winning election on a platform of reigning in U.S.
debt, at least 19 of those freshman listed personal
liabilities in excess of $100,000.
The largest
investments for Boehner, a former plastics executive
from southwestern Ohio, come from mutual funds and a
collection of individual retirement accounts. The
speaker’s IRA is invested in a who’s who of Fortune
500 companies, ranging from WalMart (at least
$15,000); Xerox ($15,000); Pfizer ($15,000); Goldman
Sachs ($15,000), according to his forms.
John's
Early life
Boehner was born in
Cincinnati to Mary Anne (Hall) and Earl Henry Boehner, not
this man
as many had suspected.
He grew up as one of
twelve children, which, in part, explains why he would later
so adamantly oppose including funding for those
contraceptives in the original stimulus package. (Of course,
it's common knowledge that unwanted teen pregnancies
ultimately cost far more than sending a box of
condoms
to some high school kids, but that would require Boehner to
take five minutes of free time to think about it instead of
doing all that manscaping.)
Boehner attended
Catholic all-boys high school, an institution that spawns
both social conservatives and closeted homosexuals with
equal and astounding frequency. Interestingly, Boehner is a
fellow alumnus with Ken Griffey Jr, another gentleman who
would begin his professional career with incredible
popularity among his fan base only to never accomplish
anything.
From 1985-1990, Boehner
served in the Ohio House of Representatives where he managed
to have a distinguished yet uneventful tenure without
getting too many bronzer fingerprints on his legislation.
Political Career
In 1990, Boehner took
advantage of the Republican politician disaster-scandal
trifecta that befell Ohio Congressman Buz Lukens who was
caught engaging the services of a prostitute. An
African-American one. A sixteen-year-old one. For 40
dollars. (Though nearly everyone has denounced Luken, many
do admire his frugality.)
Helping to lift the
people of Ohio and their respected Senate seat being
involved with an underage sex scandal, Boehner entered the
United States House of Representatives where he would later
be involved with a an underage sex scandal.
15 years afterward,
Boehner would learn about creepy emails Congressman Mark
Foley sent to a young page, but not tell anybody about it
until months later. Except then-Speaker of the House Dennis
Hastert, which he's "99% sure" he did. Overall, most people
remember pretty clearly whether or not they helped cover up
for a sleazy old man harassing children, but John Boehner is
not most people.
In his first year,
Boehner and six other congressmen formed the gang of seven.
Among the major achievements of the gang of seven are the
public exposure of politicians who'd overdrawn their bank
accounts and cracking down on the free ride that congressmen
were getting at that national travesty: the congressional
barbershop. Not so much a "gang" as, say, a coterie, this
"gang" was just like the Crips if instead of robbing and
murdering people, they solely went around committing
municipal code violations.
Boehner was one of the
chief authors of the Contract with America, a document that
many citizens remember existing though no one can actually
recall the contents of it. This may be attributable to the
Contract's ardent support for a series of initiatives that
many Americans agreed with in principal but realistically,
couldn't give a damn about.
In 2006, Beohner again
displayed his aptitude for taking advantage of other
people's criminal indictments when he succeeded Tom Delay as
the House then-Majority leader.
Electrifying
conservatives with his stern pro-business, anti-corruption,
small government positions, Boehner would quickly disappoint
most of his supporters by approving $9.8 trillion dollars in
President Bush's budgets. While most lawmakers are unable to
follow through on every promise they make, it is uncommon
for a politician to do the complete inverse of every promise
they made.
"Thankfully," following
the 2008 Presidential election, Boehner returned to his
original stance against major government spending once it
became politically convenient. While it's difficult to argue
that he has displayed consistency in his Republican
"beliefs," there is one position he has been able to
stringently adhere to: being opposed to whatever the
overwhelming public opinion supports at the time.
Political
Positions
While Boehner has
recently become known for
insulting reporters haircuts
and skipping out on the supposed Republican "revolt" to play
golf,
Boehner does have several notable policy positions.
In 2007, Boehner argued
that benchmarks for the Iraq war would ensure failure, a
measure supported by the Democrats. In weeks prior, he
agreed with President Bush that benchmarks for the Iraq
war were "good" and "very important." Many political
scientists argue that it's probably not a great sign if
one of the leaders of your party can't make up his mind
about a central issue of an entire campaign cycle.
Boehner does not believe
in human contribution to global warming and
once remarked:
"The idea that carbon dioxide is a carcinogen that is
harmful to our environment is almost comical. Every time
we exhale, we exhale carbon dioxide. Every cow in the
world, you know when they do what they do you've got
more carbon dioxide." While many scientists have taken
exception to the 15 things that are factually incorrect
about that statement, researchers are most surprised at
Boehner's inability to just say the word "defecate."
Boehner receives campaign donations from what is
essentially the set-up to a joke about republican
stereotypes: pharmaceutical and cigarette manufacturers,
health insurance companies, oil companies, military
contractors, and Native Americans. One wonders how that
Crying Indian would feel about donating his casino
profits to a guy who has defended his environmental
position by citing cow feces.
That's not to be confused
with "chicken
feces," a designation,
Boehner used in regards
to President Barack Obama.
With no immediate
solution to the current recession, it remains to be seen if
Boehner will remain firm, rigid, and inflexible in his
positions or whether the potential success of the Democratic
majority will cause him to shrink away limp, deflated, and
flaccid.
Contains excerpts from an article posted
by James Rowley and Mike Dorning on bloomberg.com May
11, 2011 and articles on huffingtonpost.com
House Speaker
John A. Boehner addresses the Economic Club
of New York on May 9, 2011. Boehner is
demanding that President Obama and Senate
Democrats agree to spending cuts of $2
trillion in exchange for lifting the limit
on federal borrowing to finance the
government's deficits. Photographer: Spencer
Platt/Getty Images
U.S. House
Speaker John Boehner. Photographer: Spencer
Platt/Getty Images
House Speaker
John Boehner,
giving Wall Street leaders his prescriptions for growing the
U.S. economy and reducing the nation’s debt, built his case
on several assertions that are contradicted by market
indicators and government reports.
The
following excerpt is from Crooks and Liars posted on
5/12/2011 by Murshed Zaheed who currently works as a
senior progressive Democratic strategist in D.C.
"First of all I
want to say thanks to John Amato and his amazing C&L
crew for giving me the wonderful opportunity to
write at one of the premier progressive media
outlets in America. I will chime in here every now
and then based on my experience in the campaign,
legislative and progressive online world on matters
related to our village media culture and a crazy
Republican party, which is now being led by bunch of
fringe extremists. So, on that note, I wanted to
zero in on a really ugly week for House Speaker John
Boehner.
"Before
anyone starts attacking the messenger by barking out
tired and stale George Soros line to attack that
MMAN link, let me just take you over to this
brutal piece from Bloomberg
just
eviscerating “Boehner’s views
on economy” by
pointing out all the contradictions (Bloomberg folks
are exceedingly polite, we can use the word
“debunking”) from leading market indicators and
government reports. It gets worse for the Speaker.
“Even
more alarming, because it has consequences
beyond the debt-ceiling debate, is the
incoherent, impervious-to-facts economic
philosophy undergirding Boehner’s
remarks…Listening to Boehner, I began to think
the country suffers from two deficits: the gap
between spending and revenue, and the one
between reality and ideology. The first cannot
be solved unless we find some way of at least
narrowing the second.”
“Even
before the White House and the Republicans began
talks on the debt limit, John Boehner made clear
that he was looking for a political fight, not a
compromise. There is no way to solve the
country’s fiscal ills without an accurate
diagnosis and rigorous prescriptions for a cure.
Mr. Boehner’s speech was devoid of both…
[Boehner’s argument] makes no economic sense.”
What
Boehner tried to do is pretty clear now. His
economic nonsense about debt-ceiling
has nothing to do with
reducing our national debt.
It had everything to do with playing politics and
push longstanding, extreme right wing Republican
ideas about size of government and rants against
tax.
Guess a
horrible week for this embattled Speaker could get
even worse. Stay tuned. It may not be too long
before we see
the pathological crier
bawling on national TV again.
And these
excerpts from bloomberg.com and huffingtonpost.com :
Boehner
said in his May 9 speech to the
Economic Club of New York
that government borrowing was crowding out private
investment, the 2009 economic-stimulus package hurt
job creation, and a Republican plan to privatize
Medicare will give future recipients the “same kinds
of options” lawmakers have.
With Democrats and
Republicans sparring over legislation to extend the
government’s $14.29 trillion debt limit and trim budget
deficits, negotiations are being complicated by disputes
over basic economic facts.
“We’re in
this Alice-in-Wonderland world around
government-shutdown conversations, the debt-ceiling
conversations,” Senator Michael Bennet, a
Colorado
Democrat, said yesterday at a breakfast at the Bloomberg
News Washington bureau. The debate “has not established
a shared understanding of the facts” about the nation’s
economic problems, he said.
Boehner’s
spokesman,
Michael Steel,
rejected the premise that the speaker’s economic
analysis was incorrect, saying in an e-mail that
“reality” doesn’t support the criticism.
Boehner’s
statement in his Wall Street speech that
government spending
“is crowding out private investment and threatening the
availability of capital” runs counter to the behavior of
credit markets.
“Look at
interest rates.
Look at capital spending,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief
economist of IHS Inc., a research firm based in
Englewood, Colorado. “It’s very hard to come to a
conclusion that there’s any kind of crowding out.”
The cost of
borrowing is low by historical standards. Yields on
10-year Treasury notes were 3.21 percent and yields on
2-year Treasury notes were 0.59 percent at 5 p.m. in
New York
yesterday, according to Bloomberg Data. Average spreads
on investment-grade corporate bonds have narrowed from
1.64 a year ago to 1.39 on May 9, according to
Barclays Capital.
The TED spread, the
difference between what banks and the U.S. government
pay to borrow for three months, fell 2.2 basis points
since May 9, the biggest drop since April 5. A narrowing
spread means banks are more willing to lend. The
23.87-point spread is just below the two-year average.
Business investment
in equipment and software was up 15.3 percent last year
and 11.6 percent at an annual rate in the first quarter
of this year, according to the U.S. Commerce Department.
Backed by Greenspan
Still, some
economists, including former Federal Reserve Board
Chairman Alan Greenspan and Stanford University
Professor John B. Taylor, a Treasury undersecretary in
Republican President
George W. Bush’s
administration, have argued that the deficits have been
crowding out private investment.
Greenspan said the
deficit is one reason that corporate investment as a
share of profits is lower than historical patterns, in
an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box on Dec. 3, 2010.
“Approximately one-third of the decline in capital
investment as a share of
cash flow
is directly attributable to” the “crowding out by U.S.
Treasury borrowing,” Greenspan said in the
interview.
Boehner, 61,
an Ohio Republican, also said the 2009 stimulus program
“hampered
job creation
in our country,” a view at odds with the
Congressional Budget Office’s
findings last August. The stimulus package increased the
number of people employed by between 1.4 million and 3.3
million and cut unemployment by between 0.7 percentage
point and 1.8 percentage point, according to CBO.
Medicare Costs
The speaker also
repeated an assertion made by House Republicans that
their plan to privatize Medicare will give future
recipients “the same kinds of options that members of
Congress currently have.”
The CBO
projected in an April 5 report that under the Republican
plan, by 2030 the government would pay 32 percent of the
health-care costs of a typical 65-year-old. The U.S.
Office of Personnel Management’s benefit
handbook
says the government pays as much as 75 percent of the
health-care costs of federal workers, including members
of Congress.
Taxes are a
flashpoint in the budget talks, with Republicans
rejecting increases in the negotiations, which continued
yesterday at the White House between Vice President Joe
Biden and bipartisan congressional leaders.
In his speech,
Boehner criticized a 1990 budget deal that included a
tax increase, saying “the result of that so-called
bargain was the recession of the early 1990s.” The
speaker said, “it wasn’t until the economy picked back
up toward the end of that decade that we achieved a
balanced budget.”
1993 Tax Increase
The speaker didn’t
mention a 1993 tax increase that raised the top
individual marginal rate to 39.6 percent, where it stood
until 2001. In 1998, the government recorded its first
budget surplus in almost 30 years.
The
U.S. economy
grew at an annual rate of 4.1 percent in 1994, the year
after Congress passed the second tax increase of the
decade. The growth rate dropped to 2.5 percent in 1995,
and thereafter rose to 3.7 percent in 1996. The economy
grew more than 4 percent a year from 1997 through 2000.
The 1990s
were a period of “stalemate between the Republican
Congress” and President
Bill Clinton,
a Democrat, that paved the way for balanced budgets
because there was “no major giveaway legislation,” said
Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury Department official
who is Institute Chair at the Urban Institute, a
nonpartisan research center in Washington.
Fannie, Freddie
Boehner also
repeated familiar Republican political criticisms that
Fannie Mae
and
Freddie Mac,
the two government mortgage companies, “triggered the
whole meltdown” of the U.S. financial system.
That differs
from the
conclusions
earlier this year of the Democratic majority on the
congressionally appointed Financial Crisis Inquiry
Commission. It
reported
that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “participated in the
expansion of subprime and other risky mortgages, but
they followed rather than led
Wall Street
and other lenders in the rush for fool’s gold.”
Three of the
panel’s four Republicans, while faulting Fannie and
Freddie, didn’t place the blame squarely on the two
mortgage giants.
“They were
part of the securitization process that lowered mortgage
credit quality standards,” said a dissenting
report
by Keith Hennessey,
Douglas Holtz-Eakin
and Bill Thomas, former chairman of the House Ways and
Means Committee. In a Wall Street Journal essay, the
three said laying primary blame on government
intervention is “misleading” and cited 10 reasons, taken
together, for the crisis.
Only
Peter Wallison,
the other Republican commissioner, offered support for
Boehner’s view that Fannie and Freddie caused the
mortgage bubble and subsequent collapse. Wallison’s
dissent
put most of the blame on government housing policies
that encouraged Fannie and Freddie to buy more subprime
mortgages to promote home ownership among low-income
people.
While making the rounds
on the Sunday morning talk shows to peddle the Republican
"Pledge for America," House Minority Leader John Boehner
(R-OH) made an interesting revelation. According to
Rep. Boehner, the American people are just not ready for any
real solutions to the enormous problems facing this country,
which is precisely why the Republicans have not presented
any.
Excuse me?
In a stunning display of twisted logic and campaign rhetoric
over actual leadership, Rep. Boehner said that all he and
his colleagues hoped to do was to "lay out the size of the
problem." Even conservatives are blasting the Pledge
for American as meaningless in addressing the real problems
facing this country, and it would appear that Rep. Boehner's
initial strategy is to agree with those critics.
Or is it?
One of the strongest critiques of the Republican proposals
is that it does nothing to deal with rising entitlement
spending in the face of continuing lagging revenue
collection. And the Republicans have put forward their
vision of how to deal with entitlement programs, offering
many solutions from cutting Medicare and Social Security
benefits, raising the retirement age and privatizing the
endeavor all together. Some in the right have even
gone so far as to declare all social safety programs
unconstitutional.
So why run away from these Republican "solutions?"
Could it be that all of them are deeply unpopular with the
American public and that Rep. Boehner is waiting until after
the election to spring them in another classic GOP bait and
switch? You be the judge. Watch the
Representative talk about offering no solutions here:
“Republicans in Congress – and
reform-minded GOP governors like Scott Walker, John Kasich [OH] and
Chris Christie [NJ] – are daring to speak the truth about the dire
fiscal challenges Americans face at all levels of government, and daring
to commit themselves to solutions that will liberate our economy and
help put our citizens on a path to prosperity.”
House Minority Leader Rep. John
Boehner (R-Ohio) said Thursday that he's never met an American who supports
the creation of a public health insurance option as part of the legislative
reform effort.
"I'm still trying to find
the first American to talk to who's in favor of the public option, other
than a member of Congress or the administration," Boehner
said, according to Politico's Glenn
Thrush, who noted that
Boehner made this claim with a "semi-straight face."
Really, is it that hard to find someone who
supports a public option?
Terri Nelson, a psychotherapist who lives and works
in Oxford, Ohio, in Boehner's district, told the Huffington Post that
she has repeatedly contacted the leader's office to voice support for
the public option.
"I've contacted him twice in writing since the
spring, and he's responded to me twice in writing," Nelson said. "And I
contacted his office by phone maybe six or eight times."
Her repeated message to Boehner, she said, goes
like this: "It is imperative that we have a public option."
Boehner spokesman Michael Steel responded in a
statement to the Huffington Post: "Obviously, Boehner was glad to hear
Ms. Nelson's concerns, and hopes his response convinced her of the
dangers of a government takeover of health care."
The Democratic Congressional
Campaign Committee immediately fired up an
online petition
for folks to email Boehner about their support of a public option.
The
Progressive Change Campaign Committee
announced $10,000 in online advertising targeting Boehner, a
campaign asking folks to "invite" Boehner to meet with constituents who
favor the public option, and a video by a
constituent who'd like to meet him.
And, in response to his
remark that the public option "is about as unpopular as a garlic
milkshake," Boehner's colleague, Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.) brought
him several cloves of garlic on Friday. Gilroy, Calif., which Honda
represents, is the "Garlic
Capital of the World."
Honda also shared a limerick that absolutely
stinks, even next to garlic: "Two things make for a strong healthy
heart. Gilroy garlic, for one, a good start. Public option? Also
high, in the American eye, 65 percent n'er want it to part."
Steel reacted: "We said 'thanks.' We like
garlic. The point Boehner made yesterday was simply that garlic
milkshakes aren't popular, like the Democrats' government takeover
of health care."
House Speaker John Boehner
(R-OH)(photo: TalkMediaNews via Flickr)
Progressives could use some
positive political news, and here is the best I’ve heard in some
time: John Boehner’s speakership in the U.S. House of
Representatives might be short lived.
Boehner has been involved
in extramarital
affairs with at least two women,
according to a new report in the National Enquirer. We
don’t normally cite supermarket tabloids as primary source material.
But the Enquirer was first to write about the John Edwards’
infidelity, and the newspaper proved to be right on target. And back
in the early ’90s, the mainstream press picked up on the Bill
Clinton/Gennifer Flowers story after it broke in a tabloid.
In Boehner’s case, the Enquirer
gets into specifics–and that gives the story a ring of truth:
Capitol Hill insiders and
political bloggers have been buzzing about an upcoming New
York Times probe–detailing an alleged affair that the
61-year-old married father of two had with pretty Washington
lobbyist LISBETH LYONS.
And an ENQUIRER investigation
has uncovered a bedroom encounter that Boehner–second in
line of succession to the presidency–allegedly had with
LEIGH LaMORA, a 46-year-old former press secretary to
ex-Colorado Congressman JOEL HEFLEY.
Who is Lisbeth Lyons?
Here is her
biography from the Printing
Industries of America Web site. Here are her duties:
Lisbeth Lyons is the Vice
President, Government Affairs for the Printing Industries of
America, having joined PIA/GATF in March 2005 as Director of
Legislative Affairs. In this position, she is responsible
for providing direct advocacy before Congress and the
Administration on key industry legislative initiatives, as
well as for the strategic direction of the organization’s
grassroots and external outreach activities.
You can check
out her Facebook page here.
Among her likes? John Boehner. That’s our girl. Sounds like her
advocacy, indeed, has been rather direct with Mr. Speaker.
With the somnolent nature
of today’s mainstream press, there’s no telling if this story will
gain traction. Mike Stark at StarkReports.com is giving
the story serious attention. In
fact, Stark contacted Lisbeth Lyons and found her to be not terribly
anxious to comment:
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Political
Excerpt from an article posted on NY Post and Huffington Post by Nick Wing 09-24-10