CHEVRON Finally Found Guilty of Rainforest Destruction

Amazon Watch and Rainforest Action Network just announced a major victory for the Amazon rainforest. An Ecuadorean judge today found Chevron guilty of one of the largest environmental crimes in history and ordered the company to pay a whopping $8 billion to clean up its damage in the Amazon. 

 Chevron immediately issued a statement condemning the judgment as "illegitimate and unenforceable" and announced plans to appeal.  This ruling clearly has Chevron riled up, as the statement suggests the ruling is "the product of fraud" and included this ominous line: "Chevron intends to see that the perpetrators of this fraud are held accountable for their misconduct."

Chevron apparently fails to see the irony of the phrase "held accountable for their misconduct" since today was a major slap down of the company's destruction of the Amazon rainforest in Ecuador.

AmazonWatch and Rainforest Action Network have released the following statement in response to the verdict:

"As of today, Chevron’s guilt for extensive oil contamination in the Amazon rainforest is official. It is time Chevron takes responsibility for these environmental and public health damages, which they have fought for the past 18 years.

“Today’s ruling in Ecuador against Chevron proves overwhelmingly that the oil giant is responsible for billions gallons of highly toxic waste sludge deliberately dumped into local streams and rivers, which thousands depend on for drinking, bathing, and fishing.

“Chevron has spent the last 18 years waging unprecedented public relations and lobbying campaigns to avoid cleaning up the environmental and public health catastrophe it left in the Amazon rainforest. Today’s guilty verdict sends a loud and clear message: It is time Chevron clean up its disastrous mess in Ecuador.

“Today’s case is historic and unprecedented. It is the first time Indigenous people have sued a multinational corporation in the country where the crime was committed and won.

“Today’s historic ruling against Chevron is a testament to the strength of the Ecuadorian people who have spent 18 years bringing Chevron to justice while suffering the effects of the company’s extensive oil contamination.”

Background

From 1964 to 1990 Chevron (formerly Texaco) operated a large oil concession in the northeastern region of the Ecuadorian Amazon, reaping billions of dollars in profits before pulling out of Ecuador in 1992.

Chevron has admitted during the long-running trial in both US and Ecuadorian courts that it created a system of oil extraction that led to the deliberate discharge of approximately 18 billion gallons of chemical-laden "water of formation" into the streams and rivers of Ecuador's Amazon, home to six indigenous groups.

Over the course of more than two decades of operations, Chevron abandoned more than 900 unlined waste pits gouged out of the jungle floor that leech toxins into soils and streams; contaminated the air by burning the waste pits; dumped oil along roads; and spilled millions of gallons of pure crude from ruptured pipelines. Internal company documents demonstrate that Chevron officials ordered field workers to destroy records of oil spills. The company refused to develop an environmental response plan or pipeline maintenance program, and Chevron never conducted a single health evaluation or environmental impact study despite the obvious harm it was causing.

America is Headed For A Crash and Only the Voters Can Save Us

Our leaders corrupt way of doing things is responsible for every crisis we face in this nation. And by extension, the American voter holds some of that responsibility for allowing these career con men to remain in office.

The following is a list of what I think are the results of our leaders lack of leadership skills:

• Abandonment of the working class - Our social programs are being scrapped while wildly profitable industries get tax breaks and huge subsidies every year. Financial firms are nearly every financial crisis we have ever faced. And every time their bubbles pop, our political leaders are all too willing to bail them out with taxpayer money. Meanwhile, our industrial strength, which used to be the backbone of this once great nation, has been sold to foreign countries in the name of cheaper labor, yet politicians in Washington do nothing as good paying jobs vanish and average workers’ wages drop. Instead, they dupe us with skewed statistics and urge us to spend beyond our means. That way they can keep the sick cycle of our consumer economy spinning.
• The craft of journalism has sold itself out as entertainment – Corporations own most of our national media so we now hear only the news they want us to hear and only with their ‘special’ spin on it.
• Military used as security forces to protect corporations interests overseas - This business-first foreign policy has turned our democratic republic into an empire. Our government now spends half a trillion dollars every year to police the globe. And yet when our soldiers come home from our wars abroad, we treat them like garbage. Worst of all, despite the terrible sacrifices our troops and their families have made, most Americans feel less secure than ever.
• Political hypocrisy – The labels democrat and republican are interchangeable. There is very little difference between the two as they sell their services to the highest bidder.  Washington idea of ‘change’ is the conversion from ‘public servant’ to a ‘shadow government’ run by shortsighted, money grubbing conmen. Big business and its armies of lawyers, accountants and lobbyists run our country. They all siphon billions from our treasury, writes our laws, and dictates foreign and domestic policy.
• Callousness of the wealthy – abuse of the working class for their own gain

The plan that has been in place since Reaganomics became a buzzword is that Americans are being groomed to be the servile class. Our ability to manufacture goods has been taken away when our factories were sent overseas. We are now left with only service jobs with salaries of less than half what previous generations brought home. Funding for education is being systematically stripped away preventing millions of American’s from attaining their dream of higher education while more jobs are requiring higher education. Only the rich will afford to go to university and therefore only the rich will be employable which keeps the money in the hands of the rich, and the gap between rich and poor expands ever wider.

We need to revolutionize our government. The infection eating away at our country is too great for band-aids. Real reform requires a total overhaul of the political system.

Get Rid of Career Politicians

One of the first things that needs to be done away with is career politicians. We have a perfectly workable framework to guide any new politician on how this nation should be run, and supplanting those politicians who have made a career out of hoarding all the goodies for themselves while hard working tax paying Americans struggle just to make ends meet will free up money to balance the budget and make this nation profitable and independent again.

As a part of this plan salary caps need to be instituted. Everyone entering Congress receives the same pay and benefits and they are directly tied to the health of the economy. If things are going well for the economy then they can get modest annual raises, if not then they do not get a raise. They have to feed their own retirement plans and health care plans just as the tax payers they serve do.

We need to crush the old ‘two party only’ system by ridding ourselves of the ‘electoral map’. This is nothing but a tool that has become masterfully manipulated by incumbents to ensure they stay in power. We need independent voices to be heard in debates and on ballots. This is the only way we are going to get politicians to finally listen to the people.

Where is the planning for our future?

This country is making plenty of money to run it. The problem is the greed of the politicians in charge of it. They give it away to special interest groups instead of following a long term and short term plan designed to benefit the people who supplied that money. And about those long-term and short-term plans, the only plans most of these politicians are interested in is their next election, so they spend their time and our money buying support to keep themselves in office. Our leaders don’t how to budget money, nor do they know how to make any plans for our nation’s future. They are ‘re-active’ instead of ‘pro-active’. And everyone knows that this situation is disastrous for the future. To know this is true you only need to try to name something that has gotten better in this country. Everything has only gotten worse.

The starting salary for members of Congress in Washington is $165,000 per year, four times the national average of $40,000 and more than fifteen times the minimum wage. Do you think anyone bringing home that salary can relate to the sacrifices that tax payers make every day to put three decent meals a day on their families table? Do they live without healthcare? Does their spouse have to take on a second job to make it? Do they worry about losing their pension should they fall ill before they retire?

Members of Congress have their own gymnasium, their own stores, and their own hairdressers. They have “franking” privileges, allowing them to send mail at cheaper rates. After only five years of service – that’s right, five years – they qualify for a full pension. They can supplement their retirement fund by putting an additional five percent of their salaries into a 401(k)-style “Thrift Savings Plan.” And while millions of their fellow Americans go without adequate health coverage, thanks in large part to lawmakers’ kowtowing to the health care industry, Congress members enjoy the highest quality medical care. Plus they bring in their family members to ride the gravy train.

Free For All Spending Is Stifling Us

This free for all spending has to end, the sooner the better. Every time our economy is flush and tax revenue is pouring into the coffers Congress spends like there’s no tomorrow. But when money gets tight, do they cut back on their spending in order to stay within our means? No. They demand more and go into debt so they can continue their spending habits. Today, our national debt is over $10 trillion!

I’m just one guy trying to make some sense of how we got to where we are. I can clearly see that something has to give. This bloated and under-funded system is due to collapse. If we don’t change the way politicians do business in Washington every American will pay dearly from the economic crash that is certain to be far worse than the Great Depression. It’s up to the voters because career politicians are not in any hurry to give up the gilded trough they are currently hooked up to.

What TSA reform should look like in this Land of the Free

Cory Doctrow, of boingboing, posted ‘Alaska state rep refuses TSA grope of her mastectomy scars, drives home from Seattle’, which addresses how far Homeland Security’s front line against terrorism in our nation’s airports, the TSA, has overstepped its bounds, again.

One of the comments, submitted by pmocek, sums up the guidelines for what the American people should expect from a bureaucracy that claims to protect us. It is so well written that I could not resist reprinting it here:

So what is to be done? Real reform of TSA procedures would include:

• No more secret laws. TSA has to publish its rules and procedures like every other agency. Any unpublished rule cannot be enforced against citizens. Then the public would have early notice of rules like “You have to either be photographed nude, or groped”. And a flood of negative comments on such proposed rules might dissuade the agency, energize Congress to intervene, or allow a court challenge to be brought — before TSA molests a million more people a day in airports across the country.
• No more groping travelers. Assaults on innocent travelers in a way that the law oif almost every state defines as sexual battery should not be the new standard for Federally-approved suspicionless searches.
• No more suspicionless searches. We are in more danger from physical sexual attack by TSA employees than we are from secret bombers. Terrorism is a minor problem. Drunk drivers are more of a danger to travelers than terrorists. Heart disease kills far more people every week than terrorism did in its worst year. Mandatory heart checkups in lines at the airport would do far more to keep us all alive than mandatory searches. But neither checkups nor searches can be forced on the citizens of a free country. Millions have fought for our freedom; we should not let the government ignore the basic human rights that our families fought to obtain and keep.
• No more secret blacklists or secret “no-fly” orders. The TSA can’t bar “certain people” from flying by secret, extra-judicia administrative orders. If the TSA thinks someone is guilty of something, arrest them and give them their day in court to confront their accusers and defend themselves before a jury, with a presumption of innocence. If TSA can’t arrest them, because they haven’t committed a crime, then it must leave them (and the rest of us) alone.
• No more secret surveillance lists. TSA’s “selectee list” is much larger than the no-fly list. It is how a lot of people end up “randomly” searched every time they go through an airport. Again, if TSA has evidence of a crime, arrest them; otherwise, treat every traveler equally.
• No more lying to the public. TSA claims its searches are random when they aren’t. It claims their machines can’t store nude photos when they can. It claims ID is required when it isn’t. The history of TSA is a history of lying to the public. Congress should make sure it is both a crime and a tort (fraud) for a TSA employee or contractor to lie to a member of the public.
• No more identity checkpoints. Free countries don’t demand that citizens produce their “papers” in order to move around. No more warrantless interrogations (under penalty of denial of travel) or demands for information.
• Restore the right to assemble and the right to travel. Neither the TSA nor any government agency has the right to prevent us from moving around in our own country. If they don’t have cause to arrest us, then we’re presumed innocent and we’re free to move around the airports, the planes, the train stations, the trains, and the country.

It’s up to the public to take action to bring about these changes. So far, the courts have done nothing to stop these abuses or hold the TSA accountable. John Gilmore, for example, sued the TSA in a case that went all the way to the doors of the Supreme Court, over their demand that we identify ourselves in order to move around in our own country. He lost. The issue that he asked the Supreme Court to review was whether an agency like TSA can make up secret rules, never publish them, and require the public to follow them. The Supreme Court declined to take the case.

I fear this is the writing on the wall that U.S. citizens can no longer call this country “the land of the free”. Why more people are not standing up against this injustice is beyond me.

Being obnoxious only makes you look like an ass and no one is going to listen to you.

Show some intelligence and bring something constructive to the discussion or just stay home and shout at yourself in the mirror.

Why Are Atheists Driven to ‘Prove’ Something That Cannot Be Proven?

The recent surge in activity of atheist vs. believers is almost ‘campaign-like’. I get the impression atheists have a single-minded drive to ‘prove’ two things:

1-that they are superior in their belief

2-that those who believe He does exist are foolish.

The following is a sentence taken from the current TV blog:

A new survey by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life found that most religious Americans don't know shit about their own religions. Sample fun finding: "A majority of Protestants, for instance, couldn't identify Martin Luther as the driving force behind the Protestant Reformation."

The use of the word ‘fun’ to describe this finding backs up what I said in my opening paragraph.

All this finding shows is that believers are not receiving a religious education. Just that simple. Ignorance of religion-based facts does nothing to prove existence or non-existence.

I believe that if you go to church you should at least be taught why you are there. Then if you choose not to believe in it then walk away.

How atheists can consider themselves ‘enlightened’ when there is no actual proof of either existence or non-existence is beyond me. To whip themselves into an almost, dare I say it, ‘religious fervor’ to ‘prove’ that which cannot be proven borders on ridiculous.

What is the point? If religious followers want to believe in God then so be it. If atheists want to believe there is no God then so be it. Why should either side campaign to prove their superiority?

There truly are more pressing matters that we should all, as Americans, be concerned with. For instance, we all need to learn:

1. how to accept others regardless of their beliefs
2. what it takes to be an American
3. that we have a responsibility to fight for our constitutional rights
4. how to manage our money (stop allowing the rich to leave the rest of us behind)
5. how to educate our children so they can actually compete with the rest of the world
6. that intelligence has a higher priority than simply ‘looking good’
7. anger management

If anyone has anything to add to this list I am always willing to hear you out.

Medicare Scams: Symptoms of an Uncivilized Society

Greed is the one thing we have come to expect from our fellow man. It’s a sad reality. It’s a weakness, but it can be overcome.

Children succumb to greed, they see something they want so they take it. They don’t understand they can’t have everything they see. If their parent(s) have proper parenting skills they see this as an opportunity to set the child on the path to proper behavior befitting a civilized society.

But we are dealing with adults who years ago should have already learned how to control their instinct to steal. And this is what really pisses me off. The realization that these people are stealing from their own family, their fellow Americans, even themselves, and they are too blind in their greed to recognize this fact.

Medicare is in place to help Americans cover their medical expenses, and, like any other federal social program, is supported by federal tax dollars. Tax dollars that even the people who steal from Medicare are paying. So thieves are essentially stealing from themselves.

Now, they can rationalize all they want about how the system is costing them too much, about all the waste taking place in the system, about how they are entitled to get more out of it, or how they should be compensated more for their work or whatever other excuse thieves come up with. But the bottom line is they are stealing from their fellow Americans. People who are struggling to make ends meet just as they are. People who are now suffering even more because they have been stolen from. This behavior of thieves makes them all the more pitiful.

I don’t understand how adults, supposedly civilized adults, steal from their neighbor? From their own family? From their friends? How do you justify this behavior?

People may dress like civilized adults, but their actions is what truly define them. They may tidy themselves up, get haircuts and shave, put on a show of trustworthiness, but they are still lowlife scumbags who steal from their fellow man. These people make me ashamed to have to associate with them.

How have we gotten to the point where we will steal from our own neighbor, our own family, our own future? Thieves make it even more difficult for the rest of us to get by because of the ripple effect. Theft requires more prevention safeguards to be instituted and the costs of these safeguards get passed onto the honest customer.

I find it especially disheartening to feel the need to say these things to adults, but obviously someone has to do it. Live within your means, stop putting yourselves above others and realize we are all in this together. We are all struggling. Please don’t make the business of survival tougher on the rest of us.

Where is that story from?

Is it asking too much for newspapers to let the rest of the world know where a story takes place? Like, what city and state, for instance.

Now that we are in the ‘internet age’ more and more newspapers are posting their local stories online. Which is great, I really like the ability to see what goes on in small town America. But when a story headline reads “Reward offered in North Arlington rock salt heist; 75 tons stolen”, for instance, I would like to know where North Arlington is.

The body of the story gives no clue whatsoever.

A search for Arlington tells me there is an Arlington in Virginia, Texas, Massachusetts, Illinois.

I’m just saying.


About the rock salt, someone actually stole 75 tons of rock salt from a public works garage. It is reported to be valued at $4,800. Unbelievable. Where would someone hide 75 tons of rock salt? Could this be the work of a neighboring city? Is there some newly discovered drug process that uses rock salt? I’m joking, but this story has got to be a joke.

Year of Democracy in the Middle East?

Protesting for human and political rights is becoming all the rage across the Middle East. After nearly three weeks of Egyptian demonstrations to oust the dictator President Mubarak and gain more individual freedoms, 400 Algerian demonstrators were reportedly arrested out of the thousands of people who defied government ban on such demonstrations. The Algerian people are demanding democracy. This demonstration is the latest in a ‘people’s revolution’ that started in neighboring Tunisia on January 14.

Ali Yahia Abdenour, head of the Algerian League for the Defense of Human Rights, said women and foreign journalists were among those arrested following the demonstration.

After the Egyptian people showed the world that protesting can have positive effects, the Algerian people decided they want some too.

An estimated crowd size of 10,000 skirmished with riot police while chanting slogans like "No to the police state" and "Boutefika out". Officials put the crowd size at 1,500 but isn't that just like officials to downplay what is truly happening?

Don't the leaders and their puppet police know that people want basic freedoms that give them a say in how their lives are run? The day of Kings and dictatorships are numbered and its about time. People everywhere are also tired of their leaders living in luxury while they suffer from lack of employment and decent housing. This is not the Dark Ages, the fear is gone. People are waking up out of their forced enslavement and demanding their rightful stake in controlling their own destiny.

The army's decision to cancel Algeria's first multiparty legislative elections in January 1992 to thwart a likely victory by a Muslim fundamentalist party set off the insurgency. Scattered violence continues.

Common Love of Good

Ring out false pride in place and blood,

The civic slander and the spite;

Ring in the love of truth and right,

Ring in the common love of good.

–Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–92)

This verse is taken from the poem “Ring Out, Wild Bells” written in 1850 as a memoriam to Tennyson’s sister’s fiancé.

The poem is rather long and many of the verses have been taken out and applied to whatever agenda the reader wants to put them to.

Blue ridge blue collar girl uses it as a call for us all to know love and light.

Ring Out The Old, Ring In The New Hymn Lyrics website calls it a Christian Hymn of praise and worship worthy of all Christian denominations.

More Liberty, Less Government uses it to compare policies of Obama, Bush, Gore and the New York Times.

Whether you choose to extract portions of the poem to be used as your personal guide, or ignore it altogether, the poem touches a great number of people in variety of ways.

The poem characterizes the conflict between the Christian faith and the beginnings of the scientific revolution. When we look back on Tennyson’s time, it is easy to imagine that religion played a much stronger role in people’s lives than it does today. This perception may be colored by the seemingly large number of loud voices coming from atheist today and I would not be surprised to learn that there were an equal percentage of atheists in his day.

Many of us today feel we have been betrayed by formal religious institutions. We may remain tenuously connected to our local congregation and retain our belief in the larger religion, but the edge we find ourselves on is strange territory. Sometimes we find ourselves teetering away from belief and practice.

As we go through life we experience change which brings up questions challenging authority, it is the price some say benefit of freedom. We must constantly discover what is right for the individual. Those questions need to be addressed and sometimes they may cause you to leave the faith you grew up with in order to discover God all over again.

This poem acknowledges the darkness that we sometimes find in our lives and what we need to focus on in order to come through that darkness. It challenges all mankind to look beyond the individual and believe in the common good found in all of us.

I hope we can all find goodness in all others, regardless of differences in religious belief or lack thereof. I hope we can all overcome differences of race and ethnicity, and try to understand that each one of us wants peace on this mortal plane. You don’t have to actively help anyone else find that peace but if we can find peace within ourselves and practice it in our relations with others, it cannot help but grow into the wider world.

Founding Fathers and Christianity

The religious right in America likes to believe that America was founded on Christian ideas and is therefore a Christian nation. I must admit at the outset that I believe America was founded on Christian beliefs. America’s Founding Fathers were mostly Christians. Some may have been atheists. I believe it to be inherently impossible for a Christian to write the complex and far-reaching framework that defines this nation without inserting their Christian attitudes. At this time I would like to give my appreciation that they did this. I will attempt to explain this position.

Our Founding Fathers employed a set of values meant to foster tolerance of others and create a moral and ethical foundation to ensure fair and equal treatment to all. If this set of values can be claimed as being Christian, then so be it and I applaud it. However, this alone cannot be taken as positive proof that this nation is Christian or that the Christian religion should have any say in the governance of this nation.

An absolute belief in any system is fraught with fatal pitfalls, and I believe the Founding Fathers understood this. In their lifetime, and in the stories passed down from their parents as European citizens, they knew the trappings of allowing religious leaders to have a voice in government. And so, they took pains to ensure those pitfalls would not be allowed to occur in their creation of our new nation.

When Thomas Jefferson, as well as any other founder, spoke of God, it is in the context of the set of values I mentioned two paragraphs above.

God is the ‘miracle’ we humans have contrived to explain the ‘unexplainable’. The nature that we are all a part of cannot be fully explained with science so we embody the ‘answers’ in a deity we commonly refer to as God. Until scientific explanations can be applied to answer all that we cannot yet prove, ‘God’ will continue to exist in the minds of those who demand an answer now. Thomas Jefferson, with his scientific mind, recognized this simple attempt for what it was and he also saw that people can become so attached to this interim explanation that they turned it into a reality, even without firm foundation.

Any system built on fantasy will eventually fail. Religion in general only persists because science has not been able to dispel it. Unfortunately for common sense and atheists, there are too many people who buy into the argument that since science cannot explain it then this alone is ‘proof’ of God’s existence.

I am going to take this time to say that I believe there is a God. I may believe in this God within an entirely different framework than the reader, but that does not make his existence any more truthful or less truthful to me. He exists for me and I have the right to believe this if I so choose. The same right exists for you. Arguing about something that cannot be proven is an utter waste of time and only leads to hate and distrust.

I’m hoping that we can at least agree that religious zealotry is detrimental to any free society. Mankind has proven throughout history that he cannot be trusted if he makes the claim that his actions are motivated by God. Far too many people have lost their lives based on an idea that cannot be proven. As soon as mankind wields a weapon in the name of God we have destroyed all the ‘good’ that God is meant to embody.

The religious right choose to distort history to fit their own agenda. They have the right to believe in their distorted views. It is my hope they cannot build a large enough following to gain power anywhere in this country. For if they do, we will have headed down a path that can only lead to the end of the freedoms that our Founding Fathers spelled out for us and the death of this nation will soon follow.

Alternative to Internet in Canada

Next up, the Unites States

Stand up for Something

You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.

~ Winston Churchill.

Another False ‘Stop the Madness’ Email

I received yet another email filled with lies and urging immediate action. This one is titled ’35 States file lawsuit……I hope U will agree with it’. This one has been circulating since November 2009.

Here’s the basic premise: 'Congress votes to allow itself to retire with full pay and benefits after serving only one term, they exempt themselves from many laws they expect ordinary citizens to abide by, and they exempt themselves from Healthcare Reform.' The email goes on to say that the proposed 28^th Amendment to the Constitution would force Congress to live under the same rules and regulation that the rest of us do.

This is a cry for more transparency in what Congress does receive in retirement benefits, how much they are paid, and what their benefits consist of while they represent us.

All of this information can of course be found with very little effort but people would rather believe these random emails, get themselves all worked up over the lies presented within, and then share their worked up state with all of their friends.

Honestly, the reasoning behind why these falsehoods perpetuate is beyond me. It doesn’t seem to matter which party is in control of the house so you can’t readily blame Republicans for attacking Democrats and vice versa.

We are all thinking adults and really should know better than to believe everything that lands in our inbox. I know it was difficult to write that line with a straight face.

The ramifications are troubling. If we can so easily believe email can we also be easily mislead by reports from ‘legitimate’ media resources? The sad truthful answer is yes.

The American public needs to stop acting like sheep and lemmings.

The truth

While this idea may sound good in principle to most Americans and there's some historical truth to the claim that Congress has exempted itself from certain laws that apply to the rest of us, the case outlined above is largely inaccurate and outdated.

Ever since the passage of the Congressional Accountability Act in 1995 Congress has been answerable to the same civil rights and equal employment regulations that pertain to private businesses. Other alleged disparities, such as those having to do with Congressional retirement provisions and health care coverage, are misrepresented above as well.

It’s false that members of Congress can retire after only one term with full pay, and false that they don't pay into Social Security. Members elected after 1983 participate in the Federal Employees Retirement System. Members elected before 1983 participate in the older Civil Service Retirement Program. In both cases, they contribute to the plans at a slightly higher rate than ordinary federal employees. How much members of Congress receive upon retirement depends on their age, length of government service, and the configuration of their plan. All members of Congress pay into Social Security.

Once upon a time, members of Congress were exempt from many of the employment and civil rights regulations under which private businesses operate, but no longer, thanks to the Congressional Accountability Act of 1995. Section 201 includes prohibitions against discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, as well as sexual and other harassment in the workplace.

It’s false that Congress has exempted itself from the provisions of the various health care reform bills introduced in the House and Senate in 2009. According to an analysis by FactCheck.org: "Members of Congress are subject to the legislation’s mandate to have insurance, and the plans available to them must meet the same minimum benefit standards that other insurance plans will have to meet."

Congressional Pensions vs. Social Security

Urban Legends, 16 February 2005

Congressional Accountability Act of 1995

Office of Compliance (U.S. government)

Congress Exempt form Health Bill?

FactCheck.org, 20 January 2010

Come on people, stop showing the government how easily we are lead around. It just gives the wrong people dangerous ideas, like Genetically Modified Foods are good for you.

Taxpayers should not pay for infrastructure repair

American taxpayers should not foot the bill for infrastructure improvements around the country, the new White House chief of staff said recently.

“I don’t think raising the taxes on the American people right now is the way to go at this point of our economy," William M. Daley told Bob Schieffer of CBS's "Face the Nation" Sunday.

I agree with Daley, but not for the reason given. He believes the funds should come from private sources both foreign and domestic. This is typical of politicians, never looking to cut somewhere else and or re-prioritize spending, but always going for more, more, more.

Wake up Congress, we are in a recession. You expect us to cut back when you refuse to do so yourselves. Set an example and lead for once in your overpaid privileged lives and learn to live within the budget.

I believe the federal government already takes in enough in taxes to more than cover infrastructure repairs.

Fraud and waste is where, if you look closely enough and get realistic about what you are spending money on, you will find not only enough money but you will also be able to decrease the taxes we pay you. I know that doesn’t sound very American to you, but it can be done.

Military spending reform alone would cover infrastructure as well as education costs. It has already been shown many times that educational costs could be covered for years if you reduce military spending. Also, get rid of a bunch of top heavy school administrators and top level military heads and there you will find an excess of money.

You guys don’t really need more, you just need to learn to live within your means. If you want to learn how to do this just ask poor people, we do it everyday.

Reaganomics