Running for Office- Episode 6 // F**K GROVER NORQUIST

Seriously. What a dink.

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Empathy -or- The Myth of "Job Creators"

Welfare Talking Points #1

So after my last video on how to fix the USA’s economy, I saw a lot of ignorant comments in the comments section about WELFARE.

They weren’t NEW ignorant comments, they were the SAME ignorant comments that you hear over and over. Apparently nobody out there is challenging people on their declarations, and allowing the virus of ignorance to spread.

So I wanted to make a list of facts and talking points for progressives when confronted with these conservative... well, let’s call them what they are-- they’re LIES, and stop the spread of ignorance in it’s tracks.

So let’s go down the list, and tackle them one by one, shall we?

1) Welfare spending is the reason our government is in debt.
FALSE.

If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose? Hold that thought.

According to USGovernmentspending.com The Federal Government is committed by law to spending 557 billion on welfare in the year 2010. Which seems like “Oh my! That’s a lot of money!” Which, for one person, yeah it is. But for our federal government, not so much.

Especially when you compare that to the $895 billion we’re committed to spend, by law on Defense spending. Which doesn’t account for the $711 billion in our discretionary spending on stuff like the War in Iraq and Afghanistan, and useless cold war-era weapons that we don’t even use, and never will.

Next you have to take into account what we get for those dollars spent.
Most economists agree on the following figures, including conservative ones:
Welfare spending has a fiscal multiplier of about 1.5-- while military spending has a fiscal multiplier of 0.8.

To which you might say, “wow, you just said some numbers, but what the hell does that mean? It means that for every dollar our gov’t spends on welfare, we get one dollar and fifty cents back in the form of GDP. With military spending, for every dollar we spend, we get back $0.80.

That seems really stupid. And that’s because it is. Which is why politicians frame their arguments about or disgustingly wasteful military spending as being “patriotic” or “supporting the troops.”
How much support actually goes to our troops? You, know, like after they come back from getting shot at and having their legs blown off?

According to the White House’s own figures, we’re slated to spend $125 billion on veterans affairs. And we all know about staffing shortages and underfunding that goes on in our VA system. So clearly this isn’t about supporting our troops.
For those who don’t care about human lives, and only the hard economics, I want to ask you again: If you had the choice between giving somebody a dollar and getting back either $1.50 or $0.80, which would you choose?
Now for the humanitarians out there, if you had to choose between giving somebody a dollar to feed their family, knowing you’d get back $1.50, or give somebody $1 knowing that your next door neighbor would have his legs blown off and you’ll only get back $0.80, which would you choose?

BP Built its Crisis Response Center in Photoshop

Thanks to So_You_Know on twitter for pointing me to this post by AmericaBlog

Much like the oil that is spewing from the earth and poisoning the sea and land, BP has been spewing lies and poisoning public discourse.
First they lied about being a Green Company, rebranding as "Beyond Petroleum" after an explosion in a Texas Oil Refinery killed 15 employees, injured more than 170, and released.
They faked their blowout preventer tests on the Deepwater Horizon.
They lied about their preparedness to deal with an oil spill resulting from their drilling.
Then when the Deepwater Horizon went down, they lied about the amount of oil that was spilling from the wellhead. First it was 1,000 barrels a day, then 5,000. We know now that it was likely 60,000 barrels a day, and could have been as much as 100,000 barrels a day.
Then they lied to the press about their safety record.
Then they lied about their cleanup efforts, busing in actors to play the part of oil cleanup extras as a backdrop for Obama's visit.
Now as a patina on this veneer of lies, it turns out that their Crisis Command Center was >built in Photoshop.

From AmericaBlog

---

UPDATE 12:08PM Eastern 7/20/10: BP has faked yet another oil crisis response photo on its Web site.

UPDATE: 11:14PM Eastern: BP has now posted the "original" photo, they claim. Except - surprise - they are refusing to post the high-resolution version of the new "original" photo (update: they've now posted the original photo). They posted the high-res version of the altered photo earlier, and in fact, that version is still live via a link below the new photo. Why not post the high-res version of the new "original" photo? Afraid someone is going to enlarge it and find out it's fake too?

[snip]

Uh, a few questions.

1) Why were the screens in the crisis center blank in the middle of the crisis? Coffee break?
2) The BP spokesman claims that the photographer photoshopped the changes. Really? A professional photographer hired by BP Photoshops so poorly that a 12 year old kid could do a better job. Really? Let me show you what BP said exactly, and then the photo that supposedly this "professional" edited:

Scott Dean, a spokesman for BP, said that there was nothing sinister in the photo alteration and provided the original unaltered version. He said that a photographer working for the company had inserted the three images in spots where the video screens were blank.

Now here is the Photoshop job that the "professional" photographer did - this is just one part of the photo that he screwed up:


Anyone who has ever used Photoshop knows that this is an incredibly amateur job. I can do far better than this, and I tend to play with Photoshop for fun. We're to believe that a professional photographer did this poor a job, for pay, for a huge corporate client? Really? No one would hire this photographer again if this is true. Oh, and the photographer added the fake screens to the photo, what, without BP's permission? That's what they're implying, "the photographer did it."

3) Why does the meta data show that the photo was actually taken on March 6, 2001? Or is BP next going to tell us that their professional photographer has never set the time and date stamp on his multi-thousand dollar camera? Because then all of his photos for all of his clients will be screwed up. Really?
______________________________________

UPDATE: The photo contains data suggesting it was taken in 2001, not July of 2010 as claimed on BP's Web site. That would suggest, at least one possibility is, that BP took an old photo and Photoshopped new pictures of the oil spill over it, to make it look "new." More on this at the end of the post.

I guess if you're doing fake crisis response, you might as well fake a photo of the crisis response center. Why do they need a fake photo at all? Don't they have a real crisis response center they could have used?

Original BP Photo that is linked off of this page, with a snippet of the photo:

[snip]

... [A]n astute reader noticed that the meta info for the photo says it was created in 2001, not July 16, 2010 as claimed on BP's site. It looks like BP took a photo from 2001, and in order to make it look like the command center in July of 2010, they pasted pictures of the oil well leaking over the old photo.

---

Since AmericaBlog posted this article, the Washington Post also picked up on this news nugget, and posted a back and forth analysis between the shitty photoshop job, and what BP claims is the original photo.

In reality, the fact that BP has lied about yet another thing, and an inconsequential one at that, shouldn't be surprising. What's surprising is that even though we keep catching them, even though nobody trusts them anymore, they STILL KEEP LYING.

The fact that they are lying about such inconsequential things makes me think of a dying animal desperately thrashing about. For their own sake, I say it's time for a mercy kill.

Ralph Nader and Judge Napolitano on C-SPAN

View the entire program here:

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/225457

Unfortunately, the C-SPAN isn't allowing this to be embedded, so you have to watch it over on their site.

BP hired faux cleanup crew for show during Obama's visit

About 2 minutes into this otherwise standard newscast about Obama's visit to the Gulf Coast is a startling accusation-- that BP hired a phony cleanup crew for show during Obama's visit.


Watch CBS News Videos Online

If you don't think that a company would do something like this, you should know that they have been doing it for decades.

Read the book "Toxic Sludge is Good For You!: lies, damn lies, and the public relations industry"



+++++++++++++++

UPDATE

+++++++++++++++
So there are now several sources confirming that BP did indeed just bus in actors to pretend to be a cleanup crew during Obama's visit.

Article from NOLA

BP, the oil company taking flak for its inconsistent response to the massive oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico, bused in 400 extra cleanup workers to Grand Isle during President Obama's visit today, Jefferson Parish Council Chairman John Young said.

"It appears to have been a PR stunt by BP, not to say we don't appreciate the extra participation," Young said. "We certainly need them, but we don't need them for just one day that happens to coincide with a visit from the president."

{snip}

Young said he saw the workers dressed in red shirts, blue jeans and black shrimp boots mulling across the beaches and in the mess hall during the president's appearance. They were uniformed in a way "which you don't normally see workers dressed like that," Young said.

After Obama's departure, Young said, the work crews all but vanished.

"This is a total shame that a mockery has been made of this visit by the executives of BP," Councilman Chris Roberts said.

"What we want to make clear (is) if they're going to send them, then send them everyday, not just on the day of the president's visit," Councilman Tom Capella said.

And Councilman Young throws out one of the worst insults a Louisianan can:

Young stopped short of saying Jefferson Parish officials were frustrated with BP's response to a disaster that has affected more than 100 miles of coastline. But he noted that parish officials commandeered idle BP-hired vessels last week to begin skimming oil that had traveled into Barataria Bay.

He said there appears to be a disconnect between the oil company and the Coast Guard, which is in charge of the response effort.

"I would compare BP today to FEMA after Katrina," Young said, recalling the halting response of the federal emergency agency in the days following the 2005 hurricane.

And from this transcript of a BP press conference from GottaLaff of Political Carnival:

CNN: We’ve never had 400 there, they spent time recruiting people for today, then Obama leaves, the workers leave too. Ironic that they’d pull off this type of shenanigans… It’s a slap in face, insulting to Gulf Coast residents and to the president. If they left every day at 2-3 o’clock that would be one thing, but this was no coincidence.

Obama Administration's first outright and total lie:

The Transportation Security Administration, under scrutiny after last month’s bombing attempt, has on its Web site, a false “mythbuster” to reassure the public.

From the New York Times


Myth: The No-Fly list includes an 8-year-old boy.

Buster: No 8-year-old is on a T.S.A. watch list.



“Meet Mikey Hicks,” said Najlah Feanny Hicks, introducing her 8-year-old son, a New Jersey Cub Scout and frequent traveler who has seldom boarded a plane without a hassle because he shares the name of a suspicious person. “It’s not a myth.”

Michael Winston Hicks’s mother initially sensed trouble when he was a baby and she could not get a seat for him on their flight to Florida at an airport kiosk; airline officials explained that his name “was on the list,” she recalled.



The first time he was patted down, at Newark Liberty International Airport, Mikey was 2. He cried.

After years of long delays and waits for supervisors at every airport ticket counter, this year’s vacation to the Bahamas badly shook up the family. Mikey was frisked on the way there, then more aggressively on the way home.

“Up your arms, down your arms, up your crotch — someone is patting your 8-year-old down like he’s a criminal,” Mrs. Hicks recounted. “A terrorist can blow his underwear up and they don’t catch him. But my 8-year-old can’t walk through security without being frisked.”

It is true that Mikey is not on the federal government’s “no-fly” list, which includes about 2,500 people, less than 10 percent of them from the United States. But his name appears to be among some 13,500 on the larger “selectee” list, which sets off a high level of security screening.

At some point, someone named Michael Hicks made the Department of Homeland Security suspicious, and little Mikey is still paying the price. (His father, also named Michael Hicks, was stopped for the first time on the Bahamas trip.)

Both lists are maintained by the Terrorist Screening Center, which includes the Federal Bureau of Investigation. They are given to the Transportation Security Administration, which in turn sends them to the airlines.

A spokesman for the T.S.A., James Fotenos, said that as a rule, “there are no children on the no-fly or selectee lists,” but would not comment on Mikey’s situation specifically.

[Read the full article]
[read a more in depth article on the same subject by Allison Kilkenny over at TrueSlant]

PunkPatriot says: Also, the USA has never tortured prisoners...