Governor Bruce Rauner's Turn Around and Screw Working Class Illinois Residents Agenda

Illinois is now facing the prospect of having gone an entire year without a proper state budget as Bruce Rauner (Ruiner) continues his efforts to subjugate and enslave Illinois workers.

For the last week, vehicle emissions test facilities have had lines backed up for miles. Well, I can tell you anyone going to an emissions test station today is going to wait hours and some of the overworked stations are closing because of mechanical problems. When was the last time Ruiner had to go and get his own vehicle registration? When was the last time Ruiner put on his carhartt jacket and drove his truck for a vehicle emissions test?

My job is never "off". I've worked New Year's Eve, St. Patrick's Day, multiple Christmases, and every other holiday you can think of. I don't regularly get normal holidays off. I've had to work overnight shifts and then work parades a couple hours later. I've gone to court at 26th and California on my off days. I don't have luxury time that a man of leisure like Bruce Ruiner does.

Of course, Ruiner doesn't care. He's on a mission to balance the Illinois budget on the backs of the working class. He's on a mission to sabotage the Illinois Government and then proclaim Government doesn't work. He's on a mission to swindle more pension funds from those people he's already stolen so much from. Like all Plutocrats he's on a mission to turn the government into an unresponsive body which only caters to the whims of other Plutocrats.

So, if this screws over working class people, makes them irritated, causes them to miss work, or incur fines from the State, Bruce Rauner chalks that up as a win. Because the more government is hamstrung, the more the Illinois residents believe "government" doesn't work, the more the Chicago Tribune covers for Rauner, the more leverage he has to push through his agenda of turning the Illinois Worker into a Wage Slave.

Obamacare Follies and the Republican Playbook

The Obamacare role out was a flub, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. Why the administration didn't include a PPACA kiosk in every Social Security Administration office and field banks of 24-hour phone operators throughout the Nation is a mystery to me.

What should not come as a surprise to anyone the least bit familiar with the GOP is the disingenuous despicable evil sabotage and subterfuge Eric Cantor and his party were planning because the Republicans had a playbook designed to sow discontent and anger at the PPACA.

These are the same people who decried fluoridation of water as a "commie plot". These are the same people who originated Truther Movements in the 1940's by claiming FDR knew the Japanese were on the way to bomb Pearl Harbor. These are the same people who distributed JFK: Wanted for Treason fliers in Texas just prior to his assassination.

Republicans hate the Poor, hate Government and hate everything and anything which takes away from their ability to oppress and harm Working Class Americans.

This is what we're faced with; an intransigent Party which will never argue in good faith, will never propose any government based solution, and will do everything in their considerable power to harm the Nation in service to their Moneyed Masters.

So, once the Republican Government Shutdown ended and the Obamacare Website snafus became the focus; our Elite Media reporters, bloggers and newspaper opinion pages dutifully covered Republican drones all repeating the same message from their disingenuous propaganda 'Obamacare failure... Obamacare failure... Obamacare failure... Num Num Num...' and focused on Poor Little Rich Girl sob stories about the troubles the Rich and "Low Affluent" are having with the PPACA, instead of Republican Sabotage or pointing out that Republicans have No Alternative, except if You are Poor Die Quickly."We've got to a point, where money is so powerful a force in politics and in the media that attention is paid, mostly, to people who are wealthy; upper middle class, that define what the politicians are looking at and concerned about and what the media are covering. I wish that were not the case but, in fact, as a political reality that is the case." - Robert Reich on Moyers & Company, 09/20/13

Dylan Ratigan, a multi-millionaire with a 30,000 square-foot hydroponic farm called "Archi's Acres" bemoaned that his catastrophic insurance coverage was going up $4000-a-year. Dylan is rich enough to not need regular healthcare coverage because he can just pay out of pocket. Why can't those poor moochers do the same???

Lori Gottlieb, "Obamacare or Kafkacare?" Unless you've become a Giant Dung Beetle, Lori, this is a lame comparison. But, do go on Lori and "Dare to Complain about Obamacare"

“The nation has been better off,” wrote one friend. “Over 33 million people who did not have insurance are now going to get it.” That’s all fine and good for “the nation,” but what about my $5,400 rate hike (after-tax dollars, I wanted to add, but dared not in this group of previously closeted Mother Teresas)? Another friend wrote, “Yes, I’m paying an extra 200 a month, but I’m okay with doing that so that others who need it can have health care.”

But, what about ME??????? Lori Gottlieb, in 2000, pouted when Six-Figures adds up to Zero, that when she reached an undisclosed six-figure salary in her late 20's and moved to Silicon Valley she was hurt and frustrated because she realized she wasn't wealthy and "could see the wealth all around me -- wealth that I most certainly didn't have." Won't someone please think of the poor put upon Rich Woman?

John Boehner, a chain-smoking, full on progressed cirrhosis individual staged a Obamacare Sign-up stunt which backfired upon him,

As it turns out, his willingness to “keep trying” was a good idea. Boehner, who is not yet eligible for Medicare, “called the DC Health Link help line,” and a “few hours later,” the process was complete. He’d signed up for health insurance.

Nicole L. Hopkins mother, to her shame can now receive medicaid through Obamacare, since she was "Unable to secure employer-sponsored health care," and had to settle for "$276 a month for bare-bones catastrophic coverage."

"How has it come to this?" she asked in one of our several talks over the past few weeks about what was happening. When she was a working mother and I was young, she easily carried health insurance for our whole family. "How have I fallen this far?"

How has it come to this? Because to Republicans if You're not Wealthy You don't get to be Healthy. 

Health care costs are 17-18% of GDP and rising. 20 years ago when costs were 10-12% people in the Medical Profession were alarmed. The proper time to act passed long ago, because while (((America))) is a Center-Left Nation there is a hard nut of Ultra-Reactionaries to whom no Republican is ever conservative enough. To these rabid fanatics Grover Norquist and Mitch McConnell are "squishes" who believe in policies of appeasement.

All of the firebaggers blaming President Obama for not getting Single-Payer, a proven system which has worked in multiple Nations and was recently adopted in the State of Vermont, seem to ignore the fact that a motivated and despicable section of our Nation would never approve and was directly responsible for Single-Payers doom. The United States was never going to get a National Healthcare System, ala Canada or Europe because powerful forces don't want it.

Power and Money concede nothing.

Update:
A reason Republicans loathe Obamacare is because it undermines their key 35 year running Talking Point, i.e. the Ronnie Reagan "Government is the problem," lie.

From The Impolitic, Why Mitch McConnell really hates Obamacare

Meanwhile, it will be too late for McConnell either way. He's led the vanguard against health care for his own constituents, so the newly covered rubes who once believed the lies won't vote for him now and the angry cons who won't ever sign up because, Dimmocrats invented it, won't vote for him because he signed off on a compromise or two. He's pretty well screwed.

Government isn't the problem, Republicans in Government is the Problem.

Let's keep this a secret from the U.S. corporate media, but, as Sy Mukherjee and Andrew Breiner note at ThinkProgress...

On Wednesday, the new head of the White House Council of Economic Advisers released a bombshell report finding that U.S. health care spending since 2010 has increased by just 1.3 percent - the smallest cost growth over a three-year period in American history - while prices in the health care sector rose by 50-year lows, thanks in part to structural changes made by the Affordable Care Act. But most media outlets ignored that story, instead choosing to focus on ongoing glitches with the Healthcare.gov website.

Government of the Rich, by the Rich and for the Rich

"I don’t think $3.5 million is a heck of a lot of money" - Supreme Court Justice Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia. And in comparison to the people with whom Antonin rubs shoulders it isn't. 

Americans are mad. The 1% have always tried to funnel that anger at the Government. By and large the Rich have successfully duped conservatives into believing the Government is the source of their woes.

Look over there! That teacher has a pension! Look over there! That postal employee has good retirement options! Look over there! That Poor person is eating food and has air conditioning!

The Rich and the Republicans have spent years destroying Americans' confidence in Government by deliberate sabotage, demagoguery over "blaah people's lives getting better" from white Iowa farmers money which they use to eat steak, work out and drive Cadillacs.

The fact is the wholly-owned Republican Party and Pro-Business Democrats do the bidding of the Rich and Powerful. That Government act as the Economic Hitmen and Goon Squad enforcing the will of the Rich upon the Nation.

Even now, during the Republican enforced Shutdown, P90X Ryan offered up his Death to the Poor Budget Plan as "an olive branch".

Ryan's plan is, of course, nothing more than the same Right-Wing gibberish and contains the same-old Republicans canards; Raise taxes on the Middle Class ("broadening the tax base"), eliminate medicaid and make medicare more expensive (if you were wealthy you'd be healthy), increase retirement contributions by federal employees (eliminate the middle class), “opening up America’s vast energy reserves to development.” (Drill Baby, Drill!!!)

Nonetheless, the Republicans Coup attempt is not the endgame. The endgame is "Smaller Government". The Smaller Government they want is one just Small enough to fit into the pockets of the Super Rich.

But, it seems the Koch Brothers are a little skittish about the anger they've helped to foment. Koch Industries public relations arm released a memo denying any involvement in the Republican Government Shutdown.

However, Koch has not taken a position on the legislative tactic of tying the continuing resolution to defunding Obamacare nor have we lobbied on legislative provisions defunding Obamacare.  

We believe that Congress should, at a minimum, keep to sequester-level spending guidelines, and develop a plan for more significant and widespread spending reductions in the future 

Meanwhile, the McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission SCOTUS case is clearing the way for Unlimited Campaign Contributions. So, the Rich can choose the 536 politicians in DC who they will instruct to steadily turn the nation into a Neo-Feudalist hellhole wherein 99% of Americans will be born into Wage Slavery and have no recourse and no friend in Government.

But, the apologists for the Rich will tell those slaves that they are free. 

So, Grover Norquist will tell those slaves they don't need the damned government for anything, and when Koch Industries turns the nearby stream into a slurry of coal slag or when ExxonMobil oil pipeline befouls an entire rive and marshland, those American slaves Grover dreams of creating will simply shrug and accept it as the way things ought to be.

Update:
What Corporate Behemoths and Plutocratic Thieves want is a Government in which 99% of the American people literally can not petition for a redress of their grievances. It's the whole point of Privatization, Deregulation and Outscouring to make a Government that does not respond to the 99% but caters to the whims and directions of the Super Rich.

Cheat Sheet Romney "won" the 1st Debate, but jobs numbers don't Lie.

But, Republicans do always. And fervently.

Romney "won" the 1st debate by telling lies by the bushel and by running a rabidly racist campaign. And immediately the Hand-Wringing Began! As Liberals everywhere, perplexed by President Obama's performance went into a tizzy...

What went right for Romney? Well, besides his crib notes on the podium, Romney repeatedly went for the Medicare lie that President Obama is taking $700 Billion away from Seniors.

Mitt Romney also waxed on about Killing Big Bird while he made sure Big Oil Conglomerates knew their Federal Welfare was safe.

But, while Romney refused to be held down by facts or the truth his biggest revelation were the details of his secret budget and tax strategy. Romney admitted he doesn't have any financial strategy other than to raise taxes on the poor and middle class, cut Federal programs and benefits for average Americans and steal $5 Trillion from the US Taxpayer for his Rich Plutocratic friends.

Other than that Romney's vaunted zingers sounded like a 4th rate hack comedian recycling old stolen material. "You don't pick the winner and losers. You just pick the losers!" Chuckle Chuckle, Chuckle...

And then Romney made his dog whistle to the Racists: 

"Mr. President you are entitled to your own house, you are entitled to your own plane, you aren't entitled to your own facts."

3 entitled's in one sentence! You know who else feels they are entitled to hard-working white people's money! Coupling that with the fat odious toad John Sununu's repeating over and over that President Obama is a "lazy" ni... And Newt Gingrich, that fat southern slob who's been stealing tax-payer money as a 30 year DC bureaucrat claimed, 

“I’m assuming that there’s some rhythm to Barack Obama that the rest of us don’t understand. Whether he needs large amounts of rest, whether he needs to go play basketball for a while or watch ESPN..."

You understand the keys to Mitt Romney's Racist Campaign, beyond even Reagan's fantasy stories about meeting black teens who told him they hated the minimum wage and all the phantom Cadillac driving welfare queens and steak-eating young bucks he warned us about.

But, then during their celebration the Right-Wing anti-American assholes got bad news. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics released the September jobs data which showed Unemployment dropping to 7.8%

Conservatives immediately retreated to warm cozy confines of their Alternate Reality insinuating that President Obama, that strange mix of Total "Obamatuer" Incompetence and Marxist Machiavellian Saul Alinskian Super-Genius, had the numbers fixed.

Unbelievable jobs numbers. These Chicago guys will do anything... Can't debate so change numbers. Former GE CEO Jack Welch tweeted

Congressman Allen West picked up on Welch's tweet as did Faux News, Laura Ingraham, and other Toxic Conservative Commentators. As the Right-Wing noise machine immediately went into overdrive. As with everything, if the data does not conform to Conservative Beliefs, then the data must be discarded. Of course, when asked Jack Welch admitted he "didn't have any evidence", but so what! Conservatives don't need evidence, when their vague feelings of I wouldn't put it past that Obama! count for so much in the Court of the Right-Wing Blog-o-sphere...

But, as with the polls the BLS numbers don't lie. President Obama's efforts to overcome the Bush Recession, Republican sabotage and rabid conservative racism are resonating with the American people. He's pulling away and all the racist garbage and all the crazy tweets aren't going to be enough for Romney to steal the White House.