W. Va.: Money, Lies, and Election-gate, USA/2012

Sat. Sept. 1, 2012:


Worthy Readers, now that it's September and the November 2012 election campaigns move into the home stretch, Your Reading may not be enough.

You may also need to spread the word, such as the following
West Virginia story.

Unless voters realize what they're doing, they will soon reward
a campaign based on huge influence-money, big lies, and stunning examples of election corruption that would horrify our Founding Fathers.

For the young & busy, here's the West Virginia story.
Read, cringe, and get your friends to VOTE, no matter what the inconvenience:

                                         Don Blankenship, former chief of Massey Energy

A few years ago, West Virginia gave us a taste of what national politics could look like once corporations really take an interest in deploying their cash.

In 2002, a jury in West Virginia ordered the AT Massey Coal Company to pay out $50 million to plaintiffs. During the appeals process, Massey’s chief executive at the time, Don Blankenship, got involved in the campaign to unseat a justice on the state’s highest court — spending $3 million of his own money to support an ally, Brent Benjamin.

Of course, he won. When Massey’s appeal was heard in 2007 and again in 2008, Justice Benjamin joined 3-2 majorities to overturn the award.

The United States Supreme Court saved West Virginia from this apparent purchase of justice — but with only a 5-4 majority and on narrow grounds. Justice Benjamin, it ruled, should have recused himself to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. On the broader issue, the attempt to buy power, the court passed.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/business/analysts-expect-a-flood-of-corporate-campaign-contributions.html?pagewanted=all

[The 2012 Election will be the 1st one held after the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling.]

From today's title, there's your West Virginia, and your Money.  Lies & Election-gate follow.

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________


PLEASE, IF you have more reading time:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/politics/ryans-speech-contained-a-litany-of-falsehoods.html?src=recg
"Ryan's Speech Contained a Litany of Falsehoods"

Notice worrisome Lies and ["Election-gate"] voter-ID & registration scams [just this week overturned by federal judges in Ohio & Texas].

And, notice how these Lies & election scams, plus huge Money, may
doom your family, your nation, and your planet to 4 years or even 8 years of a new government premised on a non-democratic, non-republican fraud.

Can't mince words here:
Although Democratic party campaigners are no angels,
so far the champions of falsehood in 2012 are a Republican campaign so cynical that its leaders have brushed aside complaints in a manner reminiscent of a 1930's German propaganda minister:
Our Speeches Will Not Be Dictated By Fact-checking websites.

The sheer scale of GOP lying should frighten:
______________________________________________________________________________

1.  The GOP Convention slogan "We Built It" is based on such a distortion of one phrase within an Obama statement, that it would be like next week's Democratic Convention pasting every Charlotte, NC wall with Romney's off-hand joke, "I Like Firing People."

2.  "Obama is robbing Medicare of $716 billion," says Romney/Ryan.  For one thing, that figure is

from projected savings taken out of wasted hospital & insurance expenses -- NOT from Medicare recipients!
For another, Ryan's alternative proposal -- replacing Medicare with a "voucher" option, but only for those 55 and older {since his "voucher" option would understandably scare
the hell out of THEM!} -- reckons the exact same figure as Obama's, $716 billion!
Ryan's [and Romney's] Medicare claims are breathtaking.

3.  Ryan alone peddles several other lies.  Here's a sample:
"Obama did not save our Janesville, Wisconsin GM plant, as he had promised."

 Never mind that the GM Janesville closing decision occurred before Obama was even elected president!  Never mind that President Obama's auto industry bailout did indeed enable many other US auto plants to rebound -- although too late for GM's prior Janesville shutdown.


4.  And another:  "Obama rejected Simpson-Bowles" [the bipartisan commission's debt-reduction proposals].  Actually, Obama did NOT reject it, but suggested it could not get enacted until after another round of Congressional elections.

And Paul Ryan himself?

  
He voted against these proposals [which preserved current Medicare], as a member of that same Simpson-Bowles Commission!
Never mentions this in his Tampa speech, and the GOP audience was too rapturous to care.


5.  And another:

"Obama has dropped the work requirement from a Clinton Era work-for-welfare-payments program."  Complete distortion of a state-requested Obama step enabling state officials to use their discretion in a few extreme hardship cases.

6.  Even non-partisan pundits are conceding the point that Romney is a
"successful" businessman.


NOT SO FAST:

Even beyond a few businesses he helped ruin at Bain,
consider this confidential [if unattributed] nugget:

"On paper, Mr. Romney lost tens of millions of dollars on investments, according to a person close to him speaking only on condition of anonymity, who described it as a 'huge hit.' "
[NYT, Thu. August 30, 2012].


7.  Is Romney getting away with never releasing more than his 2011 & 2012 income tax returns?

"Taxes" are CRUCIALLY RELEVANT  to any Romney Administration's fiscal policy -- not to mention his promise to "restore 12 million jobs" [details AFTER the election] through
cutting taxes on the rich and de-regulating throughout banking & Wall Street & commerce & manufacturing.
  



http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/31/us/politics/ryans-speech-contained-a-litany-of-falsehoods.html?src=recg