Washington County Democratic Party Featured Content

Seniors In Dark About Health-Care Benefits

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 03:07:00 PST

Senior Citizens In the Dark on Benefits of Health-Care Reform

By karoli Wednesday Jul 28, 2010 7:00am

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be limited to senior citizens. Over the past couple of months, the Chamber of Commerce has taken great pains to misinform small businesses about what the Affordable Care Act does for them, too. But out of nearly 700 seniors quizzed about what health-care reform meant for them, not one was able to get all of the answers right.

A recent National Council on Aging poll conducted between July 9 - July 12, 2010 yielded some pretty startling statistics.

21% of respondents said they were "very familiar" with the law, and an additional 64% said they were "somewhat familiar" with it. Of those, 60% said they were satisfied that the information they received was accurate and reliable.
Yet, when asked if the new law would result in future cuts to their basic medicare benefits, 55% of the "very familiar" group answered "Yes", as did 47% of the "somewhat familiar" group.
62% of the "very familiar" group said they believed the new law would increase the federal budget deficit over the next 10 years, with 57% of the "somewhat familiar" group concurring.
Half of those "very familiar" with the law believes it does not improve the quality of care for beneficiaries with chronic illnesses, and 46% believe Medicare payments to doctors will be cut.
Remarkably, only 52% of the seniors "very familiar" with the law agreed that uninsured Americans will be covered and younger people would have extra protections.

I would love to know how many of those claiming to be "very familiar" with the law watch Fox News. I would put money on it being more than half. Reading these results made me want to go out and scream from a tall building "This is why we can't have nice things!!!!".

Fortunately, NCOA is a little more measured than me. They've created materials to help seniors understand the law and what their benefits are under the law. Now we need to get out there and help them understand it, because seniors' health is as important a feature of the new law as coverage of the uninsured.

(Note - Be sure and check out the NCOA site, link above. The information is geared toward Senior citizens' benefits)

Howard Dean - No More Apologies, It's Time To Stand Up For Our Convictions

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:07:00 PST

For some time now, various "reporters" and on-air personalities on the Fox News Network have failed to report the full story or relevant facts, instead indulging in race baiting in order to exploit people's fears and crank up the fringe of their audience. This was exemplified by Glenn Beck's nightly assault on Van Jones earlier this year. Recently, Fox has cranked up stories about the Department of Justice's decision not to prosecute a voter intimidation case against a Black Panther group and even worse, calls for Atty. General Holder's resignation. And now, the Sherrod Debacle.

Turns out Van Jones' name was added to a website without his permission, a fact the group finally admitted some time after he resigned. And maybe he said some things about the Republican Party that he shouldn't have -- but that has nothing to do with the fact that he is a brilliant environmental organizer. It also turns out that it was the Bush Administration who decided not to prosecute the case against the black panthers because as Bush's Assistant Attorney General Perez testified, "the facts did not constitute a prosecutable violation of the criminal statues, and under the Obama Administration Justice Department a judgment was won in a civil case.

And by now we all know how the Sherrod story went down. Despite his claims to the contrary on Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace didn't have his facts quite right. As a media matters study showed, Fox News did in fact spend a lot of air-time on July 19th and 20th cranking up the false story. Not to mention that foxnews.com bragged that shortly after they posted a "report" about the video Mrs. Sherrod resigned.

None of this is new. I don't believe all or even most of the Republican party voters are racist, but going at least as far back as Lee Atwater, the Willie Horton ads, and the attacks on John McCain in the South Carolina primaries in both 2000 and 2008, the immigration debate in 2006, there is a persistent willingness in the Republican party to use race baiting for electoral advantage. The fact is, this is racist behavior.

Now if the Tea Party, which is not a professional group of politicians have the decency to repudiate the racist fringe in their group, why can't the Republicans? Obviously they think this approach works on the margins, but even if this stuff works, it sure doesn't produce good leaders or a civil society, and it certainly doesn't produce a stronger America, it produces an even more polarized and angry America. It's that willingness to put party ahead of country that has the Republicans in such low regard.

There are lessons to be learned here. Tom Vilsack stated the first one best: don't make decisions without all the facts. To that I would add: consider the source. If it is a group of individuals or a corporation that has chronically ignored the facts and engaged in race baiting in the past, they are likely to do it again. A report by Fox News, Breitbart or Matt Drudge, ought to have -- as it does in most people's minds -- little credibility.

The second lesson is harder. Stand up for what you believe in. I admire Nancy Pelosi because she is tough, gets things done, and doesn't take crap from the right wing or any one else. After the year and a half this country has just been through, it is pretty obvious that the right-wing has no intention of cooperating with anyone, and that they will do anything to regain power, just as they were willing to do anything to hold on to it. The only reasonable approach is to stand up to them as you would any group of bullies. Call them out for what they do- or don't do as the case may be. If the Tea Party can call out some of their own members, surely we can call out a group of people who have put their party ahead of their country.

I have often said the biggest problem with the Democrats is that we are not tough enough. Now is the time to be tough. The fact is that the stimulus package has reduced unemployment from where it would have otherwise been in this Bush-induced recession (based on policies most of the Republicans now in Congress voted for). The fact is, as 60 members of the House and the CBO showed last week, the Public Option, or Medicare Buy-in, as it should more correctly be called, would have reduced the deficit over ten years by an additional $68 million dollars. The fact is that President Obama -- despite Republicans killing the climate change bill -- has done more in 18 months to change America's approach to the environment and green jobs than any president in memory.

The fact is that if we are going to tackle the deficit, it makes no sense to cut taxes for people with plenty of money while we tell people who depend on Social Security and Medicare that they have to do with less, or to play games with unemployment insurance for those who need it most.

The fact is that the Democrats won the election in 2008. The Republicans refuse to do anything for the country except say "no". That means we have to work hard and do what we believe is right. And we have to stop apologizing for it. We have to stand up for what we believe in and stop trying to make deals with people who cannot be trusted to make deals for the good of our country. It's not too late to win in 2010. Conviction politics works. Just ask the right wing!

From Huffingtonpost.com

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:07:00 PST

Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession

From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
• 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Article link

Economy Performs Better Under Democrats

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:07:00 PST

Democrats. Saving American Capitalism Since 1933.

Even as President Obama prepared to meet with the CEO's of the nation's largest banks and financial institutions, his detractors' hysteria about his plans to rescue the economy reached a fever pitch. In Washington, GOP leaders decried Obama's "banana republic" budget, only to unveil warmed-over tax cuts certain enrich the wealthiest Americans while accelerating the Reagan-Bush emptying of the Treasury. Meanwhile the Wall Street Journal spoke in apocalyptic terms of "civil war" as "Democrats bid business adieu."

Of course, forgotten in Republican fear and loathing is the inescapable historical truth. Since the time of Herbert Hoover, Wall Street and the American economy overall almost always do better under Democratic presidents.

Still, the WSJ's Daniel Henninger used the vitriolic rhetoric surrounding the AIG bonus imbroglio and the House's punitive tax in response to proclaim "the national Democratic Party has disconnected itself entirely from the private sector." A month after he warned of Barack Obama's would be "a radical presidency,"Henninger predicted economic equivalent of the End of Times under Obama's watch:

"A Democratic Party that was always anti-Wall Street is becoming anti- Main Street."

Sadly for Henninger, the record shows that from GDP growth and job creation to managing the national debt and producing gains for investors, it is the Democratic Party which is the friend of Wall Street and Main Street alike.

Just days after the Washington Post documented that George W. Bush presided over theworst eight-year economic performance in the modern American presidency, the New York Times in January featured an analysis comparing presidential performance going back to Eisenhower. As the Times showed, George W. Bush, the first MBA president, was a historic failure when it came to expanding GDP, producing jobs and fueling stock market growth. And across almost every indicator (article here, charts here), Democrats outperformed their Republican counterparts:

For the investor class so fond of perpetuating the myth of Republicans' superior economic stewardship, the collapse of the stock marketing during the Bush recession must be particularly galling. The Standard & Poor's 500 spiraled down at annual rate of 5.6% during Bush's time in the Oval Office, a disaster even worse than Richard Nixon's abysmal 4.0% yearly decline. (Only Herbert Hoover's cataclysmic 31% plunge makes Bush look good in comparison.)

As it turns out, as the New York Times also showed in October, the Democratic Party "has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole." To make its case, the New York Times asked readers to imagine having put their money where its mouth is. Contrary to Republican mythology, Americans fare better - much, much better - under Democratic administrations:

As of Friday, a $10,000 investment in the S.& P. stock market index would have grown to $11,733 if invested under Republican presidents only, although that would be $51,211 if we exclude Herbert Hoover's presidency during the Great Depression. Invested under Democratic presidents only, $10,000 would have grown to $300,671 at a compound rate of 8.9 percent over nearly 40 years.

(For the eye-popping chart of the S&P's performance under each of the presidents from Hoover through Bush 43, visit here.)

As the broader record shows, the best path to prosperity is to elect Democratic presidents.

The superior performance of Democratic presidents covers virtually the entire spectrum of economic indicators. As Elliott Parker of the University of Nevada, Reno detailed in a 2006 paper, since 1949 Democratic administrations have done better than Republican ones when it comes to unemployment (5.2% to 6.0%), job creation (-.0.4% decrease in unemployment, compared to 0.3% increase), GDP growth rate (4.2% to 2.9%), and even corporate profits as a share of GDP. And to be sure, he found the Dow benefits from Democrats in the White House.

There's no shortage of studies to show that stock market returns are higher under Democratic leadership. (As it turns out, Wall Street's performance is also better whenDemocrats control Congress.) In 2000, Pedro Santa-Clara and Rossen Valkanov of UCLA's Anderson School of Business concluded that "that the average excess return in the stock market is higher under Democratic than Republican presidents - a difference of 9 percent per year for the value-weighted portfolio and 16 percent for the equal-weighted portfolio." As the New York Times noted of UCLA study in 2003:

"It's not even close. The stock market does far better under Democrats...
...Professors Santa-Clara and Valkanov look at the excess market return - the difference between a broad index of stock prices (basically the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index) and the three-month Treasury bill rate - between 1927 and 1998. The excess return measures how attractive stock investments are compared with completely safe investments like short-term T-bills.

Using this measure, they find that during those 72 years the stock market returned about 11 percent more a year under Democratic presidents and 2 percent more under Republicans - a striking difference."

In 2002, Slate similarly concluded that "Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans":

Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader's Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century's bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of '29, the early '70s oil shock, the '87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.)
According to almanac editor Jeffrey Hirsch, the presidential party figures are among the most significant he's found. If the stock market were random, we'd expect such a result only one-quarter of the time. "I don't know why people are convinced Republicans are good for the stock market," Hirsch says.

Why? Because Republican water carriers like Daniel Henninger and Larry Kudlow continue - with great success - to perpetuate the myth that the regulation-free policies of the GOP that so benefit them personally somehow help the American people overall.

Desperate to change their miserable present, Republicans are traveling back in time to rewrite the past. Despite the easily debunked claim, Republican leaders still insist FDR made the Great Depression worse. Similarly, in Republican lore, George W. Bush inherited a recession. And Barack Obama didn't.

In the meantime, the Republican brain trust and its amen corner will continue their drumbeat against President Obama and the Democratic majority in Congress. But even as they regurgitate their slanders about "radicals" and "socialism," the truth is plain for the American people.

Democrats. Saving American capitalism since 1933.

Crossville Woman Denied Right To Vote

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 04:07:00 PST

July 20, 2010

Panel denies Eldridge right to vote

Action comes despite taking GOP pledge

By Michael R. Moser Editor

CROSSVILLE — The brouhaha over one person's right to vote in the primary they chose spewed over Tuesday morning when the spurned voter returned to the county election commission office and again was denied the right to vote in the Republican Primary despite taking an oath to support the party.

A panel of three Republican-appointed election judges voted to deny Mickey Eldridge, a long-time Democrat, the right to vote in the Republican Primary despite Eldridge taking an oath. Eldridge responded that the entire episode smacked of hypocrisy and blamed three people for being denied to vote for friends and acquaintances on the Republican ticket that she said she would vote for.

"Linda Thompson, State Rep. Eric Swafford's aunt, State Rep. Eric Swafford and Sharon York (Cumberland County Election Administrator) are the three responsible for denying me my right to vote," Eldridge repeated again Thursday, and even hinted that there was a conspiracy to deny her vote in the GOP election.

For two days in a row, Eldridge has claimed that as soon as she entered the election office Monday and requested a Republican Primary ballot to cast her early vote, York picked up the phone and called Thompson, who was across the street and wearing a State Rep. Eric Swafford shirt while campaigning for the incumbent.

An eyewitness told the Chronicle Monday that Thompson was observed receiving a phone call, ran to a vehicle parked near the Chamber of Commerce office, changed shirts and then ran to the election office where she formally challenged Eldridge's vote.

On Monday when told of Eldridge's claim, York stated that simply was not true and that it was Thompson who contacted her about the challenge.

When Crossville attorney Jimmy Smith, representing Eldridge, repeated the claim in front of Thompson during the hearing, Thompson did not challenge the validity of the claim.

Eldridge went on to state, "This entire affair is hypocrisy at its worst. Eric Swafford has in the past asked me to vote for him, has asked me to cross over and vote in the Republican Primary for him.

"That was OK. But now that there is a perception that I might be one of the ones not voting him, suddenly me voting in the Republican Primary is wrong."

Eldridge went on to state that Swafford was a Democrat and voted in Democratic Primaries prior to his decision to run for state representative on the Republican ticket, the presumption being that the Fairfield Glade GOP block vote is needed to win that seat.

Tuesday, Eldridge returned to the election office to cast her vote, accompanied by Crossville attorney Jimmy Smith. Again, she was pulled to the side and told her vote in the Republican Primary was being challenged.

Accompanied by the media and her attorney, Eldridge this time did enter York's office, at which time York read the challenge to Eldridge. The three-member judges panel, which consisted of Rebecca Abner, Gail Hubbard and James Snodderly, all election machine operators and appointed by the Republican Party, were also present.

At that time York administered an oath to tell the truth followed by a question on whether Eldridge was pledging her support to the Republican Party.

Eldridge read the following, "I, Mickey Eldridge, in order to exercise my constitutional right to vote in the current primary election, hereby declare my allegiance to the Republican Party within the meaning of TCA (Tennessee Code Annotated) 2-7-115(b)(2)."

A signed copy was then presented to York.

A copy of Eldridge's voting record was then sought and provided, with Eldridge verifying to its authenticity.

York then asked each election judge if they wished to ask any questions. Hubbard asked Eldridge if she was joining the Republican Party, to which Eldridge responded, "At this time..."

Abner questioned Eldridge's motive for voting in the Republican Primary and Smith answered, "She just wants to vote like every other person in Cumberland County."

He added that she is due a constitutional right of equal protection and that singling Eldridge out raises constitutional issues that could change the way primary voting is handled in Tennessee.

Of the three election judges, Hubbard seemed to have the most difficulty in dealing with the issue at hand and at one point, teared up as she issued a statement saying she respected everyone's right to vote.

After several moments, Snodderly finally broke the ice and announced he was voting no to allowing Eldridge to vote in the Republican Primary. Abner said no, questioning Eldridge's motives for doing so, and after much consternation, Hubbard made it unanimous.

Afterwards, Eldridge did vote in the County General Election and cast a paper ballot that was signed and sealed. The three election judges are to sign the sealed envelope and post their reasons for the rejection.

That ballot will not count unless the decision is appealed to Chancery Court at which time the Chancellor will open the ballot, hear evidence and decide whether the vote is a legal vote or not.

Observers say this is the first time a voter has ever been challenged in Cumberland County, and some claim the first time in the state, although verification of that is not possible.

When asked if she would appeal, both Eldridge and Smith said that decision had not been made. Eldridge was adamant, however, in repeating earlier statements. "I want my vote to count.

Video at http://crossville-chronicle.com/breakingnews/x1060806491/Panel-denies-Eldridge-right-to-vote