Small Business Owners Leave Republican Plantation Over Tax Cuts For the Rich

It is becoming ever more painfully obvious that the Republican Tax Giveaway to the Rich is a major element in the country’s finances being in freefall. The Chamber of Commerce has increasingly become noting but a propaganda arm of the Republican Party, much like Faux News.

Small Business Owners Demand Repeal Of Bush Tax Cuts For The Rich

Michael Teahan, like his father, mother, and uncles before him, is a small business owner. The 52-year-old has spent most of his adult life running his own businesses: a restaurant, a coffee bar and various companies involved in the espresso machine business.

“I was the only person in my family to go to college, because that’s not what we did — we all opened up businesses,” Teahan says. “For some people, that’s a big hurdle … for us, it was like having lunch.”

Teahan currently operates Espresso Resource, a company that imports espresso machine parts from Europe to sell to U.S. restaurants and coffee shops. And he’s doing very well for himself: The two-man operation clears about $1 million a year in total sales, Teahan says — enough to secure himself annual income in excess of $250,000.

That makes Teahan one of the few small business owners to actually benefit from the Bush administration’s tax cuts for the wealthy. He says the cuts save him about $12,000 a year, compared to what he paid before they were enacted. But as debates over the federal budget deficit have intensified, Teahan has found the political discussion increasingly divorced from the reality of his experience as a small business owner.

Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Teahan, will do nothing to bolster his firm. They won’t affect his hiring decisions, they won’t encourage him to buy new equipment or help him move into a bigger warehouse. He says all of those decisions — the nuts and bolts of actually running a small company — depend on the his customers’ economic conditions, not his personal tax rate.

“What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources — that has very little to do with tax policy,” Teahan says. “I map my business based on my customers, and what my customers want to buy, and what they can afford to buy.”

Betsy McCaughey, Anthony Weiner, and Dylan Ratigan – health care

This is an absolute ass whuppin’!

Betsy McCaughey was the lead conservative who helped destroy Hillary Clinton’s Health Reform effort in 1994. She did that with an article in the New Republic which turned out to be false, and full of deliberately misleading information.

This time around, killing Health Care Reform isn’t so easy –

The New Republic, in an article entitled No Exit – The never-ending lunacy of Betsy McCaughey, apparently doesn’t like being made fools of the first time around. This time they are doing the background and fact checking – and a really ugly picture has emerged –

Pick an inflammatory, misleading rumor that has sprung up in this debate, and chances are McCaughey had a hand in springing it. She has, for instance, warned that a provision buried in the stimulus bill will soon have computers dictating doctors’ treatment of patients based on government protocols. More notably, she sounded the (false) alarm that the White House aims to ration care based on patients’ value to society–an idea that swiftly morphed into the “death panel” hysteria and then quickly became entangled in McCaughey’s equally outrageous claim that the proposed reforms would force seniors into regular chats with their doctors about how to end their lives. That such claims are untrue in no way dims McCaughey’s zeal. Confronted with conflicting information, she plows ahead with her unique interpretation of reality, leaving critics on both the left and the right nonplussed. One’s only options, they say, are to ignore her and hope that she fades away– or to go negative in the hope of discrediting her.

So it is that Aaron finds himself standing in the Crystal Ballroom of the Doubletree Hotel in Arlington, Virginia, running through PowerPoint slides that detail–quote by excruciating quote–McCaughey’s reputation as among the most irresponsible, dishonest, and destructive players on the public stage. He starts with Politifact.com’s categorization of her commentary as “Pants on Fire,” followed by New York Times articles debunking her assertions, followed by complaints from economist Gail Wilensky (adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign and head of Medicare financing under the first President Bush) that “these charges of death panels, euthanasia and withholding care from the disabled give rational, knowledgeable, thoughtful conservatives a bad name.” Next comes a denunciation of McCaughey’s “fraudulent scare tactics” by John Paris, professor of bioethics at Boston College; AARP executive vice president John Rother’s protest that her statements are “rife with gross–even cruel–distortions”; a scolding editorial by The Washington Post about McCaughey’s characterization of White House health policy adviser Ezekiel “Zeke” Emanuel as “Dr. Death”; and, to wrap it all up, Stuart Butler, vice president of domestic policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, expressing dismay that the “personal attacks on good people like Zeke are outrageous. There are real policy issues that should be debated vigorously, but slandering a good person’s name is beyond the pale.” At one point, the debate moderator felt moved to reach over and give McCaughey’s hand a comforting pat. She dipped her chin and stuck out her bottom lip in good-humored appreciation.

Betsy, not surprisingly is the source who was quoted by the Sno’ Ho’, when she cited “Death Panels” in her post goodbye broadside after resigning as Governor of Alaska. Betsy is a favorite of the Tea Bagger groups.

So like the foul-mouthed androgynous “Awful Annie” Coulter, McCaughey’s stock in trade is lies and distortion albeit with a mouth that doesn’t need washing out with lye soap. And it is real hard to generate any sympathy whatsoever for yet another “blond conserva-bimbo” whose stock in trade is lies and fake outrage.

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No Health Care For Republicans!

They want to piss and moan about it… Fine!

Let ‘em croak!

Wil E. Rethugly's Long Fall in Electorate Canyon

Republicans, fresh from lying about “Death Panels” have come up with yet another creative illusion for their cretin base…

Democrats won’t let Republicans have Health Care!

GOP hints Dems would deny Republicans health care

WASHINGTON — The national Republican Party has mailed a fundraising appeal suggesting Democrats might use an overhaul of the health care system to deny medical treatment to Republicans.

A questionnaire accompanying the appeal says the government could check voting registration records, “prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system.”

It asks, “Does this possibility concern you?”

Katie Wright, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, said the question was “inartfully worded.”

But she said people should worry because government officials would have access to personal financial and medical data.

“The RNC doesn’t try to scare people,” said Wright. “We’re just trying to get the facts out on health care. And that’s what we do every day.”

Obama would deny Health Care based on Party Affiliation?

WTF they think he is… George W. Bush?

Michael Steele’s Death Panels

The first clip here is of Uncle Mikkie spouting the Republican Party line – which just happens to be the same line spouted by the “Deathers”, a radical right wing offshoot of the Tea Bagger sect –

The second is, the unfortunate truth for Uncle Mikkie –

Whoops! There it is.

Faux News "Source"

Weekly Address: Myths and Morality in Health Insurance Reform

President Obama debunks the Rethugs lies on Health Care Reform.

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Keith Olbermann’s Lights up the Sno’ Ho’s Political Whoring

Olbermann lights off another fusillade!

The Sno’ Ho’ is perfectly willing to prostitute her children in an effort to lie and score political points with the wingdizzie crowd…

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Fight back against health insurance lies

A short film about the private Health Insurance companies – and why Americans can’t get adequate care under the current system…

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