Electing our congressional executioners

First published in Blasting News:

In America, land of the free home of the brave we get to “elect” our executioners who serve in congress. 

Congress is coming off their vacation ready to ram through TPP a job killing, people killing trade deal.  Assured there will be no price to pay they plan a brutal assault on US citizens in the lame duck session.  The election system in America has been so rigged by the two parties that elections have devolved into a system of choosing our executioners.

Protecting merchants of death

Our elected officials pass laws not to advance the greater good, but to protect war profiteers, chemical death agents, lethal pharmaceutical peddlers, death armament agents and classroom to prison charter schools.  If you are one of the few they allow to vote you’re herded like sheep into poll stations to choose which executioner a corporate, for profit media has convinced will be the most humane when they put you to death.    

The choices are death by lethal chemical extermination, death by bombs and bullets in a foreign land, death by genetically altered flora and fauna, death by untreatable lab created microorganisms or death by congressionally protected carcinogens.  Our flag has come to represent global killing fields.  Nothing is sacred, not hospitals, not ancient artifacts, not religious buildings.  All must be leveled to make way for exploitation of the natural resources that lie under earth’s surface. 

Legislated spike in pregnancy related deaths

The GOP is run by the Koch Brothers’ ALEC who writes legislation to foist federally funded lethal products and policies upon the electorate.  In Texas the GOP slashed funding for Planned Parenthood and closed low income women’s health centers.  The result, the rate of pregnancy-related deaths in Texas has doubled since 2010 making Texas one of the most dangerous places in the world to have a baby.

Pay up for Epi-pens or die

Democrats are no better, in West Virginia, the CEO of Mylan Pharmaceutical has hiked the price of life saving Epi-pens that deliver epinephrine to people having a fatal allergic reaction by over 450%.   The pens, once $50 have increased to over $600.  Mylan CEO Heather Bresch is the daughter of Senator Joe Manchin.  Bresch relocated Mylan’s headquarters to the Netherlands last year after a corporate “inversion” merger with Abbott Laboratories.  They now enjoy a low tax rate with corporate citizenship in Holland and Bresch’s salary went from $2 million to $18 million.

 Congress gives Monsanto immunity from prosecution

In Missouri the EPA has been inundated with reports of crop damage from Monsanto’s dicamba herbicide.  Even though the EPA has not approved the highly volatile herbicide, Monsanto released the GM soybean and cotton seeds this spring.  Monsanto’s decision came after congress slipped a provision into Toxic Substances Act in March giving Monsanto immunity from prosecution. More than 10 states have had devastating possibly permanent damage to crops including peaches, tomatoes, cantaloupes, watermelons, rice, peas, peanuts, alfalfa, cotton, and soybeans as well as Missouri’s largest peach farm. 

 Deadly global warming

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg.  In northwestern Greenland, where the US has a cold-war era toxic waste dump containing radioactive waste along with biological and chemical waste, global warming threatens nearby ecosystems.  The toxic waste is beneath 100 feet of ice that threatens to melt dumping it into the sea.  But our congress has ensured the US voters have no way to get them out of office.  The only choice you have is to elect your executioner.

By Patricia Baeten

Oligarchs circle wagons to save Paul Ryan and TPP

First published in Blasting News

Paul Ryan, who has waged war on retirees, school children and veterans is “polling” at 80% in oligarch owned Washington Post.

Paul Ryan the billionaires’ advocate in Washington is facing a challenger in his bid for reelection in Tuesday’s rigged Wisconsin primary.  The 1^st district congressman and Speaker of the House is a member of ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Koch Brother’s bill mill.  Ryan has advanced some of ALEC’s most egregious agenda items like lax banking laws, privatization of public utilities and cuts to veterans’ benefits, food stamps, social security and Medicare.  Ryan has been pivotal in the destruction of public education and the proliferation of privately owned charter schools.

 Taxpayer funded Charter school benefit foreigners through H1B visas

Charter schools are publicly funded privately operated and provide wealthy foreigners taxpayer funds to promote ideological causes.  The owner of the largest chain of U.S. charter schools is Fathulla Gülen, the Turkish Imam and CIA asset who has been granted asylum in the US after facing terrorism charges in Turkey.  Gülen has funded over 200 trips to Turkey for lawmakers and their staff and is the largest recipient of H1B visas to bring teachers from Turkey to teach in America’s taxpayer funded charters. 

Congress and their staff receive lavish trips for their service

Lawmakers have received lavish privately-funded trips in addition to their taxpayer funded salaries and bennies.  Roll Call reported on some of the hidden sources that pay for the trips, that weren’t vetted by the House Ethics Committee.  One recipient of an all-expenses-paid jaunt to five-star hotels was Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y.  Clarke accepted an $8,700 nine-day trip paid for by the Council of Turkic American Associations.  In 2013 she stayed at Istanbul’s Crowne Plaza & Hagia Sophia and the Rixos Grand Ankara.

The same nonprofit paid for Rep. Leonard Lance, R-N.J., to travel to Turkey where he stayed at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski billed as “a former palace converted into a luxury hotel with suites that promise the exclusive ambiance once enjoyed by the majestic Sultans of the Ottoman Empire."  Rep. Michelle Lujan Grisham, D-N.M., and her fiancé accepted a package paid for by the Turquoise Council of Americans and Eurasians that included $1,500 for meals and taxis.  The TCAE has refused to cooperate with ethics investigators.

Paul Ryan’s campaign and trips funded special interests

Paul Ryan has received 17 domestic and foreign privately-financed trips.  Much like Fathulla Gülen, Ryan lives in a gated, heavily guarded compound in Janesville, Wisconsin where he enjoys a pampered taxpayer funded life of a royal.  His opponent Paul Nehlen once a staunch Ryan supporter is running against Ryan’s cronyism and corruption. Eighty percent of Ryan’s campaign funding comes from outside his district mainly from DC and Virginia.

 Phony Washington Post poll puts Ryan ahead 80% to 20%

The oligarchs have invested too much in Paul Ryan to allow him to be defeated in Wisconsin’s primary.  An ABC-Washington Post poll was cited Sunday showing Donald Trump trailing Hillary Clinton by 8 points.  What they don’t tell you is that the poll is skewed and includes third party candidates to give Clinton the bump.  The Post’s poll also showed Ryan leading Nehlen in the race 80% to 20%, a margin a tin pot dictator would die for.  The oligarchs are circling the wagons and will stop at nothing to ensure a Ryan victory, but will the voters buy it?  We’ll see Tuesday.

By Patricia Baeten

TPP and capitalist crimes against humanity

First published in Blasting News

American congress with the aid of a compliant press is rushing through TPP to cover up the capitalist crimes they have committed against humanity. 

The Vladimir Lenin said “All over the world, wherever there are capitalists, freedom of the press means freedom to buy up newspapers, to buy writers, to bribe, buy and fake public opinion for the benefit of the bourgeoisie.”  The bourgeoisie press was on full display at the DNC and RNC when they featured grieving Gold Star parents to attack presidential candidates Clinton and Trump. 

Oligarchs interfere with Presidential election

Barack Obama took advantage of the press conference from the East Room of the White House where he stood alongside Singapore’s Prime Minister and called Donald Trump unfit for the Presidency.  "The notion that he would attack a Gold Star family that made such extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our country, the fact that he doesn't appear to have basic knowledge of critical issues in Europe, the Middle East, in Asia, means that he's woefully unprepared to do this job.”

After attacking Donald Trump who opposes TPP, Obama pushed TPP saying "Right now I'm president, and I'm for it, and I think I've got the better argument. I've made this argument before. I'll make it again. We are part of a global economy. We're not reversing that." Obama, the RNC and DNC don’t give a rip about the Gold Star families they are just using them for political gain. 

American Exceptionalism

Meanwhile W. Bush, speaking at the Diamond Club also took a swipe at Trump saying Trump is a threat to “American exceptionalism.”  As, Bush made those comments Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan released a campaign ad in Wisconsin focused on American exceptionalism and passing the TPP.  Ryan is being challenged by anti-TPP businessman Paul Nehlen.  Nehlen an early Trump supporter released this ad.

Ryan has been guaranteed reelection after Wisconsin passed one of the most oppressive voter I.D. laws in the US.  The 4th Circuit of Appeals overturned significant portions of Wisconsin's law that were designed to repress minority voters in cities like Milwaukee.  Republicans are appealing the decision and plan to have the law reinstated as written in time for the primary August 9^th. 

Rush to pass TPP

The Oligarchs intend to pass TPP no matter what the results of November’s election are.  They have already passed the Monsanto protection law that prohibits states banning GMO’s and GMO labeling laws that limit identification to bar codes.  The FDA has allowed Oxitec to release millions of genetically engineered mosquitos in Florida, to “fight” the Zika virus. 

 The genetically engineered mosquitos carry a “suicide” gene that causes the females to destroy their own larvae.  These genetically engineered mosquitoes were designed to die in the absence of antibiotics, assuming they would NOT have access to that drug in the wild. But Tetracycline and other antibiotics are now showing up in the environment, in soil, in water pools and lakes.  With tetracycline exposure these mutant insects thrive in the wild, creating a nightmarish scenario. 

If a genetically modified female mosquito bites a human, the protein which kills their own larvae, could be injected into the human when the mosquito sucks their blood, with unknown and potentially ghoulish consequences.  Just as with genetically engineered (GE) foods, the long-term effects of GE insects are completely unknown—the Earth and its inhabitants are being used as a laboratory for grand scale genetic experiments. It's a blatant violation of human rights with regard to human experimentation.

That is why congress is rushing through TPP.  Whatever the November election results may be, the best the world can hope for is that the American people drive a stake through the heart of the mutated two party system.  It’s time to end the capitalist crimes against humanity.

By Patricia Baeten