02.28.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, WhiteManistan at 12:26 pm by George Smith
Only a day after Arizona governor Jan Brewer vetoes Hate-the-Gays in Arizona because it would be bad for business and a Texas judge strikes down a forbid-gay-marriage law in Texas, the Grand Old HateMongers vow more vigorous efforts to burn witches “continue to press for additional legal protections for private businesses that deny service to gay men and lesbians, saying that a defeat in Arizona this week is only a minor setback and that religious-liberty legislation is the best way” to hate gay people.
It is the height of religious intolerance, anti-American and unwholesome to not allow WhiteManistan to burn witches refuse to do anything for gay people if their religious beliefs requires them to hate and punish said gay people.
As WhiteManistan tries to enact Uganda lite, in its honor, Autotune Eat da Poo Poo.
NSFW/Vulgar.
“Religious-freedom measures that could have implications for gay rights are pending in Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri and Oklahoma,” read the Washington Post this morning.
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02.25.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, WhiteManistan at 10:48 am by George Smith
For Arizona, one of the red beating hearts of WhiteManistan. Take the Super Bowl off them even if the anti-gay law is vetoed. You know they’re not sincere, They just regret the outrage directed at the state.
“In Tea-Bag USSippi, only heterosexual Joes!”
From three years ago. Nothing has changed. If anything, the hatred is more virulent.
It’s all in there. Ted Nugent, punish gay people, global warming is a hoax, Darwin’s theory of evolution is a joke, the hard concrete of the proper life in Republican WhiteManistan. Enact law that strikes at everyone not like you.
If I were a state legislature person in California, and – sadly – I am not, I would promise to immediately introduce law to allow California businesses to refuse to serve or cater to people from Arizona or Kansas or Texas or Florida. It would make it mandatory for patrons to show driver licenses on request. There are more details but I’d call it “Show Your Ground.”
This under the reasoning that they don’t like us in California, anyway. Nobody wants to eat food in a group where no one likes each other. It’s bad for the digestion.
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02.24.14
Posted in Bioterrorism, Crazy Weapons, Ricin Kooks, WhiteManistan at 5:22 pm by George Smith
From last week:
Well over a quarter of a century ago I was always able to find Hutckinson’s recipe for abrin [and ricin] at the end of a telephone line. With the squeal of a US Robotics modem you would find it archived, along with lots of other alleged means to easy mayhem and malice, on bulletin board systems run off PCs in the bedrooms of young men.
With regards to the poison and other informations from the computer underground, what it was called back then, not much has changed.
Keep it in mind, it will have some relevance later.
In the last few years anti-terror training has moved from drills centered around Muslims to those involving domestic terrorists.
One such drill was briefly mentioned in the news last year, from Ohio:
A dead science teacher, weapons of mass destruction, first responders in hazmat suits and the Ohio Army National Guard all near the Municipal Stadium in Portsmouth, Thursday. There’s no cause for alarm — this is just a drill!
The mock disaster training exercise is being done with Scioto County first responders and the Ohio Army National Guard 52nd Civil Support Unit.
“It’s the reality of the world we live in,” says Portsmouth Police Chief Bill Raisin. “Don’t forget there is such a thing as domestic terrorism. This helps us all be prepared.”
The make-believe scenario is timely. Two school employees who are disgruntled over the government’s interpretation of the Second Amendment, plot to use chemical, biological and radiological agents against members of the local community.
On hair-trigger over being potentially painted as domestic terrorists, gun rights supporters used the Freedom of Information Act to pry loose training documents on the incident.
They are here.
The papers show a theoretical plot in which a disgruntled janitor in the Portsmouth School District cooks up some sulfur mustard and ricin, dispersing the former in a plot which caused minor burns. Ricin was put into the school lunches of children, sending many to the hospital with “flu-like” symptoms.
The scenario shows the janitor inspired by William Pierce, a famous American neo-Nazi known as the author of “The Turner Diaries,” America’s foremost example of race hate and government overthrow fiction. Pierce died a number of years ago but his book was a bestseller within the neo-Nazi violent right underground. Timothy McVeigh was one infamous domestic terrorist influenced by it.
The ricin recipe was also reproduced in the documents. It is illustrated as originating from the “Second” Temple of the Screaming Electron 2 website.
I could not find it on TOTSE2, so it is possible that for the drill, something was put together that looked like the chat board.
The original Temple of the Screaming Electron, although it no longer seems to exist, is archived in more than one place on the web and the mirror includes its old ricin recipe. The ricin recipe was a procedure bowdler-ized from far right kook Kurt Saxon’s Weaponeer and The Poor Man’s James Bond where it was attributed to someone named Punk Rock Girl.
Or maybe it is there at TOTSE2 and my search-fu was not strong enough. Or perhaps it was taken down.
On the Temple of the Screaming Electron, by me at the Register, in 2007:
During the [anti-terror] sweep which netted the alleged ricin cell, one young man was arrested with a copy of the ricin recipe downloaded from the Temple of the Screaming Electron, which is where Google will take you if you punch in “how to make ricin” and then click the “I’m Feeling Lucky” tab. He was subsequently released.
The person apprehended turned out to be a researcher with the wrong kind of name.
Over a quarter of a century ago, The Temple of the Screaming Electron was a bulletin board system hosted on a PC at the end of a telephone line. It archived computer virus source code, hacking files and, of course, things like the ricin recipe from self-published pamphlets authored by the violent right, then called anarchy files.
It was later migrated to the world wide web where it lasted, I’m guessing, for about a decade.
In the anti-terror exercise in Portsmouth, Ohio, the perpetrator was
drawn as someone striking back in retaliation against perceived effort to change or eliminate the 2nd Amendment.
However, in terms of motivation, how poisoning young children with ricin at lunchtime would symbolically be seen as having something logical to do with 2nd Amendment rights escapes me. If recent history is a guide, domestic terrorists have planned to attack government workers and installations.
Continuing, domestic right-wingers were recently been convicted in a ricin plot.
One such group was puckishly referred to as the Georgia Ricin Beans Gang in 2011.
Two members of that group were recently convicted by a jury in 90 minutes for conspiring to attack the government with ricin. Two others had previously taken guilty pleas on weapons offenses.
And a few days ago the FBI arrested three more men who were allegedly conspiring to attack the government with pipe bombs.
They were observed and engaged by the FBI and two confidential informants while on Facebook:
Three Georgia men tried to buy pipe bombs and other explosives and discussed attacking power grids, water treatment plants and other infrastructure in a plot to incite other militias to fight the federal government, authorities said.
Brian Edward Cannon, 36, and Cory Robert Williamson, 28, appeared in federal court Friday in Rome and were denied bond. Terry Eugene Peace, 45, is due for his first court appearance Monday. A criminal complaint charges them with conspiring to receive and possess firearms, specifically pipe bombs and thermite grenades. Thermite grenades are military-grade weapons typically used to destroy vehicles, weapons systems and other equipment …
Between Jan. 23 and Feb. 15, the three men participated in online chat discussions about carrying out an operation against the government in February, according to a written statement from an FBI agent. The online chats were monitored by the FBI.
‘‘Peace encouraged members of the militia to review guerrilla warfare tactics, small unit tactics, accumulate supplies and prepare family,’’ the agent’s statement says.
In a recorded phone call on Feb. 8, an FBI source told Peace he had a contact who could provide the materials the men sought. Peace said during the conversation, ‘‘… if he can hook us up with say 12 pipe bombs that will be sweet,’’ according to the agent’s statement.
A second FBI source told agents he had a conversation with Cannon on Feb. 8 during which Cannon said the group planned to ‘‘start the fight’’ with the government by sabotaging power grids, transfer stations and water treatment facilities to create mass hysteria, the agent’s statement says. That would push the government to declare martial law, which would push other militias to join the fight.
The FBI arranged for one of the informants to supply the men with a dozen dummy thermite bombs, at which point they were arrested.
As mentioned last week, it’s quite clear Homeland Security and the FBI monitor networks for this kind of thing.
And the right is a bit perturbed about the Oho anti-terrorism drill.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 1:53 pm by George Smith
Please proceed, Ted.
Bowing to reader request, more Ted Nugent!
Today, from Media Matters where they listen to all, and I do mean all, his radio broadcast appearances:
NUGENT: Well I got to tell you, Dennis, I just don’t agree at all. There was an incrementalism to what happened in Germany and other places historically, where they came in slowly. And they started, you know, the power struggle between the different races, and the power struggle between different elements of society. And they incrementally worked their way in. And I think that’s what Obamacare is, that’s what I think most of what he represents. The IRS — I really believe that what we see with the IRS can be compared accurately and historically to the early maneuvers of people like jack booted thugs, like the brownshirts. I really believe that and I think that you are being too soft on them, because —
DENNIS MILLER: No, we just disagree Teddy.
NUGENT: I think [Obama] really wants to destroy America. I think he wants to follow the Saul Alinsky Rules for Radicals book, destroy our economy, have a — I can’t even think of the term right now — but the war between the haves and the have-nots, when the haves have because they try really hard and the have-nots don’t have because they don’t try as hard.
Give the poor, like me, access to health care they didn’t have before, or who paid out for years into useless junk policies, it’s just like Nazism. But still rather mild when put alongside the routine of comparing a couple famous Jewish people to Joseph Goebbels.
I doubt Ted Nugent has ever read the must cited Saul Alinsky. It’s something he learned about from watching Glenn Beck on Fox News a few years ago.
“He’s a little over the top but he’s funny,??? said Mitchell Creson of Nugent.
The above, from a North Carolina newspaper, today, on Nugent being given two handguns decorated with a custom decal process made by a local company.
In Texas, the Republican gubernatorial candidate, Greg Abbott, still has a significant polling lead over Democrat Wendy Davis. Despite Nugent, Texas will elect the Republican.
On Friday I asked a couple rock journalists who were in Michigan at Creem magazine in the early-70’s if Ted Nugent had actually always been like this, just without the media megaphone and people willing to reprint it.
No one seemed to know or be willing to comment directly although they did inform that he’d always been something of a fraud.
Also confirmed by a friend from Texas: In the context of state politics Nugent is not much of a liability because his presence brings people to rallies and, paradoxically, the base shares his “family values.??? Or they think they do. The distinction between what is reality and what’s imagined is not important.
Krugman, on the GOP and Obamacare, today:
Even supporters of health reform are somewhat surprised by the right’s apparent inability to come up with real cases of hardship. Surely there must be some people somewhere actually being hurt by a reform that affects millions of Americans. Why can’t the right find these people and exploit them?
The most likely answer is that the true losers from Obamacare generally aren’t very sympathetic. For the most part, they’re either very affluent people affected by the special taxes that help finance reform, or at least moderately well-off young men in very good health who can no longer buy cheap, minimalist plans. Neither group would play well in tear-jerker ads …
No, what the right wants are struggling average Americans, preferably women, facing financial devastation from health reform. So those are the tales they’re telling, even though they haven’t been able to come up with any real examples.
Hey, I have a suggestion: Why not have ads in which actors play Americans who have both lost their insurance thanks to Obamacare and lost the family farm to the death tax?
Comparison to Nazism apparently not working.
However, in California some agency has been working to convince seniors that signing up for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, here it’s called Medi-Cal and it’s what I have as of January 1, may have their estates seized as part of the state’s attempt to recoup medical costs after the patient dies.
From the LA Times, over the weekend:
Despite government assurances that the vast majority of Medi-Cal patients needn’t worry about the state trying to claim their assets, growing numbers of new enrollees under Obamacare are voicing concerns after reading warnings on healthcare notices that after their deaths the state “must seek repayment of Medi-Cal benefits” for services provided once they turn 55 …
Established in 1993, the federal government’s estate recovery program was chiefly intended to recoup outlays for lengthy nursing home stays and skilled nursing care, which are among its biggest expenses.
But California and other states have exercised an option in limited instances to recover payment for medical services, from doctor visits and surgeries to managed care payments and drugs.
Norman Williams, a spokesman for the state Department of Health Care Services in Sacramento, says only a tiny fraction of the 9 million patients using Medi-Cal will be affected by cost recovery actions against their estates. Less than a quarter of a percent of the more than $600 billion the state spent on Medi-Cal over the past 20 years has been recovered, he said …
Doreena Wong, a project director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice – LA, an advocacy group, said that the estate collection program is “a barrier to our community” and discouraging many people from completing applications for coverage.
At the Chinatown branch of the Los Angeles Public Library, where Wong’s group has stationed a Chinese-speaking health educator to assist with enrollments, a quarter of potential Medi-Cal recipients are walking away instead of signing up, she said. Many, she added, cite worries about losing their estates.
The newspaper estimates that an additional 2 million people in California will be covered by Medi-Cal through the Medicaid expansion in Obamacare.
It also notes that some Medi-Cal eligible readers have written letters to the newspaper citing fear for their estates after they are die. Health care advocates tell the newspaper when the conflict between the state law and the new conditions of nationwide health care where not forseen. They believe the problem can be remedied by making only nursing home care potentially recoverable or extending exemptions because eligibility is now being determined by income, not including assets like homes and cars.
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02.21.14
Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 12:42 pm by George Smith
It was all the usual good fun for Ted Nugent when he called the President a “subhuman mongrel” for his base of crazy and rotten middle-aged guys from WhiteManistan at a gun show last month. After all, this is a man who’s made a routine of comparing Jewish people to Joseph Goebbels in the last couple weeks.
But then Ted Nugent went on the campaign trail with Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbot. The media interest in the Texas race refocused on his history. And the “subhuman mongrel” bit, along with his other things, are exploding in his face.
Told ya so.
This, at images.google.com, is really bad juju.
The world Google-bombed Ted Nugent and he is now inextricably linked with calling the President a “subhuman mongrel.” Everyone knows what he really wanted to say.
At the LA Times, minutes ago:
“I did cross the line. I do apologize — not necessarily to the president — but on behalf of much better men than myself,??? Nugent said Friday in an interview with Ben Ferguson, a Dallas-based conservative talk radio host.
Nugent said he regretted “using the street-fighter terminology of ‘subhuman mongrel’ instead of just using more understandable language, such as ‘violator of… the Constitution…. the liar that he is.’???
As an apology, it’s small beer. As well as tortured.
Nugent has crossed the line many times. But this is the first instance in which he seems to be regretting it. If he he now feels some fear it’s only because he may realize what the media could do to him.
The mainstream media pretty much made Ted Nugent over the last two to three years. They considered him controversial, clickbait and good for views, a charismatic character.
But Ted Nugent’s soul is twisted and stained in ways most can’t imagine. He is as vile a figure as you can find in the public light in 2014 and he has never had any sense of self-control. The “subhuman mongrel” moment and his applauding audience of gun-nut riffraff are on video and it cannot be removed from the net.
The mainstream media can turn on people like Ted Nugent, as quickly as they hoisted them up. And no one will mourn the passing.
Other Republicans, famous ones, have been forced to confront Ted Nugent’s poison. Rick Perry, Rand Paul and John McCain are three who have denounced him for it, according to the Times.
Actually, this is what Rick Perry said:
“I’ve got a problem with someone calling the president a ‘mongrel.’ That is an inappropriate thing to say.”
So the subhuman part was OK, though.
This is your Republican Party. The people running the show are, as said in the lede, crazy and rotten men from WhiteManistan, the same demographic defined by Ted Nugent.
America’s favorite ranting racist is their guy!
Please proceed, Ted.
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02.20.14
Posted in Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 2:19 pm by George Smith
When Ted Nugent called the President a “subhuman mongrel” in January at a gun expo it cost him nothing. In fact, it got him cheers from his usual base of rotten and crazy dudes in WhiteManistan.
However, Texas Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott’s choice to campaign with Nugent has taken both of them into the media spotlight, and not in a good way.
What had been generally ignored a month ago is no longer.
The consequences are read, provided by a political correspondent at a Houston newspaper:
Most political prognosticators, including yours truly, have been predicting that while state Sen. Wendy Davis will probably make the best showing by a statewide Democratic candidate in Texas in decades, she still is likely to come up short in beating Republican gubernatorial candidate Greg Abbott in November …
However, this week, Abbott may have made just the fatal mistake we did not expect. For reasons beyond comprehension, Abbott decided to campaign with rock star-turned-political wacko, Ted Nugent …
He has admitted that he frequently slept with under-age girls while on tour, a felony in Texas. Although he frequently invokes fallen American military servicemen in his political rants, he also admitted to an elaborate scheme to dodge the draft and the Vietnam War.
But what Abbott is going to really find problematic in his quest to become the next governor is that there is no governor on Nugent’s mouth. According to him, President Obama is a “subhuman mongrel” and a “piece of s—.” He referred to Hillary Clinton as a “bitch” and worse. He has said he would shoot those crossing the border illegally, that it might have been better if the South won the Civil War, that feminists are “fat pigs” and he sees nothing wrong with using the N-word.
The media have exploded with stories about the joint appearance, and each one has chronicled some of Nugent’s most despicable comments or positions. Now Abbott is stained with Nugent and has provided Davis with material for powerful negative campaign ads. The campaign event was a potentially catastrophic blunder …
“I think the GOP has grossly underestimated the depth of resentment the Nugent episode has engendered with women,” continues the Houston columnist. He adds that some Republican voting women have told him they will be quietly voting for Abbott’s challenger, Wendy Davis.
He also uses the word “despicable” in describing Nugent. It is one of the most honest pieces on Nugent that I’ve seen from the mainstream in a while. And it was published in Texas.
“Subhuman mongrel” in the Google News tab.
“Subhuman mongrel” — Google general search.
And most choice — “subhuman mongrel” — at images.google.
Slowly but surely, this one’s going to hurt America’s most public bigot.
However, I have my doubts whether being tarred with Nugent’s comments means much in Texas politics.
Nationally, though, a different story.
At WorldNetDaily, Ted makes no mention of this. Instead, today, he devotes his column to naming all the hunting gear companies that send him stuff.
Excerpted, it’s pathetically amusing:
We practiced diligently with our Mathews bows and Excalibur Matrix crossbow and headed out for afternoon number two …
Shemane [Nugent’s wife] settled into her Primos Double Bull blind with ace SpiritWild VidCamDude Kris Helms running the camera for her. The nonstop flutterfest of birdlife is always fascinating …
Shemane had her Matrix solidly on her Caldwell portable shooting bench when a handsome butterball forkhorn … She is a patient hunter and was committed to wait for a nice buck for her Queen of the Forest hunting segment on our “Spirit of the Wild??? TV show on Outdoor Channel.
Shemane smoothly squeezed the Excalibur trigger, and the glowing orange Lumenok …
You will see the moment of glory on high definition video when this Queen of the Forest episode of “Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild??? airs on Outdoor Channel later this year…
Kris and Shemane walked straight to the mighty buck that died within a few yards and a matter of seconds from the razor-sharp Muzzy Trocar three blade broadhead.
Muzzy!
And, Sarah Palin: “If [Greg Abbott] is good enough for Ted Nugent, he is good enough for me!???
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02.17.14
Posted in Crazy Weapons, WhiteManistan at 9:55 am by George Smith
From the Cult of Electromagnetic Pulse Crazy:
Iran’s surprising decision to move warships off the Atlantic coast poses a potential catastrophic threat to America from a nuclear or electromagnetic pulse attack, according to an expert who foresaw Iran’s move …
Peter Pry said the ships are probably conducting a test for a future visit from an Iranian freighter that would launch the attack.
“I think the Iranian Navy patrols off our coasts may be intended to lull us into complacency, to get the U.S. Navy accustomed to an Iranian naval presence in our hemisphere, so eventually they could contribute to ‘Zero Hour’ and the great day when the Mullahs decide to drop the nuclear hammer on America,??? said Pry, who staffed a former congressional EMP commission.
From last week, here:
Or perhaps they will be sending this [cargo ship] and it will have a Scud in it with an atomic warhead and next week I won’t be able to post to the blog because electromagnetic pulse will have wiped out US civilization.
Preppers, rejoice, more material for another couple hundred book’s worth of white survivalist romance genre fiction on the end of America.
Hurry, there may still be time to join Peter Pry and the Noah Project by securing your own bug-out retreat in the high mountains of WhiteManistan Appalachia, just like Roscoe Bartlett, before the pulse and the shit hits the fan, bringing an end to American civilization as we know it.
Ready for anything, even the Iranian Navy.
Dead in Congress, prepper psychosis is taken to the Tea Party legislatures in Red States
From Arizona:
Legislation approved Wednesday by the Senate Public Safety Committee would require the state Division of Emergency Management to come up with recommendations about what kinds of things Arizonans should buy now and store in the garage, basement or storage room just in case some enemy detonates a nuclear or other bomb that wipes out power and communications in the state …
SB 1476 is being pushed by Sen. David Farnsworth, R-Mesa, amid concerns about an electromagnetic pulse that can be caused by certain types of explosion …
`Hopefully this will start the discussion and the awareness that we as a government cannot feed all these people,’ Farnsworth said. “As responsible citizens, we need to do our part to make our own private preparations.’
Every man for himself when under nuclear attack. The government can’t and won’t help. Hoard. Build your bunker. Purchase more ammo. Because you know the liberals will come out of the cities looking for your stuff.
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02.14.14
Posted in WhiteManistan at 4:12 pm by George Smith
Consider that other entitlement, Medicaid.
Thanks to Obamacare, the number of beneficiaries of Medicaid is soaring. And even should the GOP capture the Senate in 2016, a Democratic minority would filibuster to death any bill to cut Medicaid.
— one time GOP presidential wanted-to-be, Pat Buchanan, today
Google results for Medicaid expansion and socialism.
I don’t want to pay for someone else’s health care! — Google search.
Medicaid Moochers.
Medicaid and Hitler.
I’m a Medicaid moocher. Fuck you, WhiteManistan.
My experience, here:
After years of having no health insurance, no health care of any kind, this week I was informed I would qualify for the Medicaid expansion, funded under Obamacare, in California. And I received my benefit identification card in the mail. Prior to the years of zero health insurance I had a junk insurance policy, sold by one of the big providers nationally and in the state. It paid only for some part of a catastrophic illness that would probably kill you within a year. It was the perfect example of a large predatory fee to the insurance industry for years, in return for absolutely nothing, a tremendous business model in American capitalism.
And here:
Yesterday I went off to get a flu shot. It gave me the opportunity to see of my Medi-Cal health insurance was active, part of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion in California.
It was.
However, it did not cover the flu shot. Why? I went to the Ralphs supermarket to get the cheapest price at their pharmacy and was informed by their pharmacist that Medi-Cal requires recipients to be referred to a doctor’s office for the immunization.
I paid for it in cash. It was easier and relatively inexpensive. But I was still happy to be informed that I had the health insurance benefit.
This is a very big deal …
Because Obamacare and Covered California, the state run on-line exchange made it relatively easy.
It was not without glitch. From the start, Covered California was swamped by volume. This made it impossible to get someone on the phone if you had a question. And if you tried to get someone in on-line chat, also recommended by the site, that also proved problematical. Sheer numbers of people applying did it.
But I was able to enter all my information on the website and after analysis, Covered California determined I was eligible for Medi-Cal.
And behind the scenes wheels began to turn.
My materials were handed off to a state social services division in southern California, as well as one in Sacramento. At the beginning of January, I received my benefit card.
On Monday, I received notification that my policy had been active since January 1. It also informed that the card would follow.
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Posted in Culture of Lickspittle, Psychopath & Sociopath, Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 10:04 am by George Smith
If you don’t like my song you’re a moron and should not be reading this blog.
From CNN Money, Tom Perkins, who is now doing it just because it gets him video attention:
“The fear is wealth tax, higher taxes, higher death taxes — just more taxes until there is no more 1%. And that that will creep down to the 5% and then the 10%.”
“The Tom Perkins system is: You don’t get to vote unless you pay a dollar of taxes.”
“But what I really think is, it should be like a corporation. You pay a million dollars in taxes, you get a million votes. How’s that?”
I thought that last bit was already true. Many think the same, no?
This puts Perkins in company with others, notably Ted Nugent, who has lobbied twice for the reciprocal: denying the vote to those who allegedly pay no tax.
Nugent means the poor, the 47 percent, anyone on the left and everyone not-white. And they actually do pay taxes, lots of them. Payroll, sales, regular state-administered car fees, phone service taxes, etc.
From 2012:
“Let’s also stop the insanity by suspending the right to vote of any American who is on welfare. Once they get off welfare and are self-sustaining, they get their right to vote restored. No American on welfare should have the right to vote for tax increases on those Americans who are working and paying taxes to support them.”
And again, last year:
He’ll use his NRA clout to make it law that everyone who buys a gun at a gun show go through a background check if the rest of us will campaign for and help enact law that takes the right to vote for presidential and congressional candidates in elections away from people who pay no income tax.
In his blog, and today in his column at the New York Times, Paul Krugman has been working over the same issue:
In fact, the people who seem least inclined to respect the efforts of ordinary workers are the winners of the wealth lottery. Over the past few months, we’ve been harangued by a procession of angry billionaires, furious that they’re not receiving the deference, the acknowledgment of their superiority, that they believe is their due. For example, last week the investor Sam Zell went on CNN Money to defend the 1 percent against “envy,??? and he asserted that “the 1 percent work harder. The 1 percent are much bigger factors in all forms of our society.??? Dignity for all!
And there’s another group that doesn’t respect workers: Republican politicians.
“[When] it comes to Americans down on their luck, conservatives become insultingly paternalistic, as comfortable congressmen (in this case, he specifically aims at Paul Ryan) lecture struggling families on the dignity of work,” Krugman adds.
And then there’s the whole thing of denying health care for the poor through the Medicaid expansion because of hatred of the president and … freedom.
The malevolence is personal.
Also by way of Krugman, an academic paper on factors causing rises in inequality, in this case, “capital account liberalisation,” aka rewarding money holders and the ease of sloshing it around the globe, and “fiscal consolidations,” aka policies of economic belt-tightening or “austerity:”
Last month’s World Economic Forum at Davos will be remembered as the one where the rich realised that incomes were unequal. One suspects the rich had always been dimly aware of this fact, but even they seem to have been astounded by the degree of inequality.
There is clear evidence that the decline in budget deficits was followed by increases in inequality.
Fiscal consolidations are followed by an increase in long-term unemployment.
The past three decades have been associated with a steady decline in the number of restrictions that countries impose on cross-border financial transactions …
What happens to inequality in the aftermath of these episodes? The evidence is that, on average, capital account liberalisation is followed by a significant and persistent increase in inequality.
It is a short and easy to grok read.
Sam Zell — from the archives.
Tom Perkins.
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02.12.14
Posted in Ted Nugent, WhiteManistan at 12:29 pm by George Smith
From Gibson:
Great Gibson electric guitars have long been a means of fighting the establishment, so when the powers that be confiscated stocks of tonewoods from the Gibson factory in Nashville—only to return them once there was a resolution and the investigation ended—it was an event worth celebrating. Introducing the Hector Heathcote Government Series II Les Paul, a striking new guitar from Gibson USA for 2014 that suitably marks this infamous time in Gibson’s history.
Fighting the establishment.
From The Grist, a couple years ago:
If you’ve tuned into any of the major jobs speeches recently or the conservative media’s political coverage surrounding them, you’ve heard about newly minted Tea Party hero, Gibson Guitar CEO Henry Juszkiewicz. He was sitting in House Speaker John Boehner’s box during President Obama’s jobs speech …
According to a count by the nonprofit Media Matters, Fox News has featured his company 24 times in the last couple of weeks.
From the Dept. of Justice, in 2012:
Gibson Guitar Corp. entered into a criminal enforcement agreement with the United States today resolving a criminal investigation into allegations that the company violated the Lacey Act by illegally purchasing and importing ebony wood from Madagascar and rosewood and ebony from India …
The criminal enforcement agreement defers prosecution for criminal violations of the Lacey Act and requires Gibson to pay a penalty amount of $300,000. The agreement further provides for a community service payment of $50,000 to the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to be used to promote the conservation, identification and propagation of protected tree species used in the musical instrument industry and the forests where those species are found. Gibson will also implement a compliance program designed to strengthen its compliance controls and procedures. In related civil forfeiture actions, Gibson will withdraw its claims to the wood seized in the course of the criminal investigation, including Madagascar ebony from shipments with a total invoice value of $261,844.
The harvest of ebony in and export of unfinished ebony from, Madagascar has been banned since 2006.
Gibson purchased “fingerboard blanks,??? consisting of sawn boards of Madagascar ebony, for use in manufacturing guitars. The Madagascar ebony fingerboard blanks were ordered from a supplier who obtained them from an exporter in Madagascar. Gibson’s supplier continued to receive Madagascar ebony fingerboard blanks from its Madagascar exporter after the 2006 ban. The Madagascar exporter did not have authority to export ebony fingerboard blanks after the law issued in Madagascar in 2006.
Note difference in the Hector Heathcote Les Paul. It does not feature an ebony fingerboard:
The glued-in mahogany neck features a comfortably rounded late-’50s profile, while the unbound fingerboard—with a Corian™ nut, 22 frets and traditional trapezoid inlays just like the very first Gibson Les Pauls—is made from solid rosewood returned to Gibson by the US government.
The government raid, unsurprisingly, probably took many things from Gibson facilities. Apparently, unbanned materials were returned. Which appears to be a bit of a favor to Gibson.
Ted Nugent, in 2012, on the Gibson case (Nugent plays Gibson guitars):
Gibson guitars reportedly ran afoul of Uncle Sham’s Lacey Act, which is one of the most overreaching, bizzaro, contemptuous laws in the history of the United States.
Armed federal agents raided two Gibson guitar plants looking for allegedly illegally obtained wood from Madagascar and India …
This mindless abuse of Gibson by the heavy hand of the out-of-control federal government is a perfect reason why millions of Americans believe the corrupt, abusive power of Fedzilla needs to be reined in.
Paradoxically, Ted Nugent, also ran afoul of the Lacey Act. From the DoJ, also in 2012:
U.S. Attorney Karen Loeffler announced that Theodore A. Nugent pled guilty to and was sentenced in federal court today in Ketchikan for violating the Lacey Act by possessing and transporting a black bear, taken in violation of state law.
Nugent, 62, of China Springs, Texas, pled guilty to a single misdemeanor count of the Lacey Act before United States Magistrate Judge Michael A. Thompson.
According to Assistant U.S. Attorney Jack S. Schmidt, Nugent, who stars in and produces the outdoor hunting show, “Ted Nugent Spirit of the Wild???, was filming a black bear (Ursus Americanus) bow hunt on Sukkwan Island, on U.S. Forest Service Land. Nugent utilized a number of bear baiting sites between the dates of May 21, 2009, to May 26, 2009. On May 22, 2009, Nugent shot and wounded a black bear at one of the registered bait sites. Nugent failed to harvest the wounded black bear, and continued hunting in violation of Alaska state law, which counts a wounded black bear towards the hunter’s bag limit, one black bear per regulatory year. Nugent continued to hunt another black bear in violation of Alaska law and subsequently harvested another black bear at a bear baiting site on May 26, 2009, which put Nugent over the regulatory bag limit for that year …
Nugent cooperated with law enforcement and indicated that he was unaware of the state law requiring a hunter to count a wounded black bear towards his bag limit.
Under the terms of the plea agreement, Nugent will be placed on probation for two years and is required to pay a $10,000 dollar fine and restitution in the amount of $600 dollar to the State of Alaska for the illegally taken bear. Special conditions of probation also prohibit Nugent from hunting or fishing in Alaska and on any U.S. Forest Service land for a term of one year.
My suggestion would have been to make one of the Hector Heathcote series of Gibson guitars, a Tea Party Ted Les Paul special.
Here is Nugent’s Lacey Act case, discussed in depth at an Alaska newspaper.
And from this blog, on the Gibson case, back in 2011:
Readers know I like Gibson guitars. They may have read when I tried to do the company a favor by successfully pressing the Washington Post and others to drop website ads selling Chinese counterfeits of the iconic brand.
But it’s been increasingly hard to not be turned off by Gibson. And this is all due to its CEO, Henry Juszkiewicz.
With his company raided twice by government agents — the first time for buying blackmarket protected wood from Madagascar, the second time for impropriety with Indian imports — Juszkiewicz decided to go extreme right wing and cry about the alleged tyranny of the US government.
Gibson Hector Heathcote Government II series — MSRP — $1,099.
So buy me a Hector Heathcote, or write Gibson to send one to me. For establishment fighting, since I’m on Medicaid and can’t afford it. I would make it my number one instrument.
“Gibson sticks thumb in Obama administration’s eye with ‘Government Series’ guitars,” reads the Breitbart place. The US investigation of Gibson was started during the administration of George W. Bush.
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