The Shutdown in 10 Infuriating Sentences & The 10 Saddest Government Shutdown Goodbye Notes 4&1OKT13

JUST the facts on the federal government shutdown, with links to articles backing up their statements, from Mother Jones.....

At its core, the dispute over the budget and the debt ceiling isn't complicated at all. But it is full of misconceptions and urban myths. Here are the 10 facts worth remembering past all the obfuscation:

1. Democrats have already agreed to fund the government at Republican levels.
2. Despite what you might have heard, there have only been two serious government shutdowns in recent history, and both were the result of Republican ultimatums.
3. Democrats in the Senate have been begging the House to negotiate over the budget for the past six months, but Republicans have refused.
4. That's because Republicans wanted to wait until they had either a government shutdown or a debt ceiling breach as leverage, something they've been very clear about all along.
5. Republicans keep talking about compromise, but they've offered nothing in return for agreeing to their demands—except to keep the government intact if they get their way.
6. The public is very strongly opposed to using a government shutdown to stop Obamacare.
7. Contrary to Republican claims, the deficit is not increasing—it peaked in 2009 and has been dropping ever since, declining by $200 billion last year with another $450 billion drop projected this year.
8. A long government shutdown is likely to seriously hurt economic growth, with a monthlong shutdown projected to slash GDP in the fourth quarter by 1 percentage point and reduce employment by over a million jobs.
9. No, Democrats have not used debt ceiling hostage taking in the past to force presidents to accept their political agenda.
10. This whole dispute is about the Republican Party fighting to make sure the working poor don't have access to affordable health care. 
11. 

    
    

    Political Blogger
    

    Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. RSS |TWITTER

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      30 Ways the Shutdown Is Already Screwing People

      The government shutdown is bad news for children, children with illnesses, and people who care for children with mysterious illnesses. Also: unemployed goats.

    • Can Obama Disrupt the Shutdown Narrative?

      Perhaps it's time for a "have you no decency" moment.

    • No, the House GOP Isn't Standing Up for Kids With Cancer

      The National Institutes of Health has become a symbol of the shutdown. But the GOP's preferred budget enshrines massive cuts.

    • Now the Government Shutdown Is Stopping Blood Drives

      Canceled federal agency blood drives threaten to leave DC-area hospitals in short supply
      .http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2013/10/shutdown-debt-ceiling-explained
      

      The 10 Saddest Government Shutdown Goodbye Notes

      "Only websites necessary to protects lives and property will be maintained."

      —By Dana Liebelson

      | Tue Oct. 1, 2013 12:34 PM PDT

      You probably haven't heard, but the US government has shut down as of midnight on Tuesday, and it won't reopen until President Barack Obama and Congress quit bickering over Obamacare. Online, some government agencies appear to be in denial about the shutdown—the US Mint is still tweeting about coin laser imprints, and GOP.gov is running normally. But most of them are shuttering their Twitter feeds and websites, and leaving sad goodbye notes. Without further ado, here are 10 of the most tragic:

      1. The National Zoo promises that someone's still feeding the animals. But, sorry folks. No pandacam!

      

      2. USA.gov wins the politeness and optimism award.

      

      3. The US Geological Survey doesn't beat around the bush.

      

      4. The Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade informs us that, until hisinterns come back, small businesses are screwed.

      

      5. US Fish and Wildlife Service leaves duck-stamp enthusiasts hanging.

      

      6. The NSA isn't updating its site, but it's probably still spying on you!

      

      7. The National Archives and Records Administration is basically in chaos.

      

       

      8. The Government Accountability Office takes the opportunity to remind Americans that it won't be doing any government oversight while the government is shut down.

      

      9. The White House thumbs its nose at Republicans.

      

      
      And one bonus non-governmental Tweet: (we initially labeled this as an official NASA account, but a NASA spokesperson clarified that it is not.)

      10. The NASA's Voyager 2 goes nihilistic.

       

      
      
      

      

      98

      

      Reporter

      Dana Liebelson is a reporter in Mother Jones' Washington bureau. Her work has also appeared inThe Week, TIME's Battleland, Truthout, OtherWords and Yahoo! News. RSS | TWITTER

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        Should Obama Reveal His Inner Pissed-Off President?

        With a government shutdown looming, it might be time for the chief executive to tell voters what he really thinks of the House Republicans.

      • Here's Why the Public Blames Republicans for an Imminent Government Shutdown

        Because Republicans said all along that's what they wanted.

      • 48 Ways a Government Shutdown Will Screw You Over

        Who is affected when the government doesn't show up for work? Poor people, people with immune systems…basically everyone
        
        .

      http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/10/10-best-government-shut-down-suicide-notes

Sequester Cuts: Senate Democrats Settle On Replacement Plan & Advancing the State of the Union: More Than Just the President's Job 14&13FEB13

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

- Plato

THE Democratic Party has presented this proposal to address the looming cuts that would come with sequestration. The rich must pay their fair share. Corporate welfare must be cut. And the Defense budget must be cut in a way that eliminates the war profiteering of the military-industrial complex. Social safety net programs including Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security must not be sacrificed to protect the lifestyles of the rich and famous or to reward American companies who outsource jobs and who protect their profits from taxes in offshore tax havens. A link for the details of the Democrats proposals can be found at the end of this article from HuffPost, followed by a very well written piece from the Rev Al Sharpton calling on all Americans to fulfill or obligations and responsibilities to our nation....

Senate Democrats have settled on a plan to replace the looming sequester cuts.

WASHINGTON -- Senate Democrats have settled on a final plan to replace 10 months' worth of sequestration cuts, aides said on Thursday.

The plan, called the American Family Economic Protection Act, pinpoints $120 billion of savings, split evenly between cuts and revenues, that would replace the sequestration-designated cuts to defense and domestic spending until the end of December.

Party leadership sold the package to the caucus during a lunch session on Thursday. Whether it could get the votes of at least five Senate Republicans -- the number needed to overcome a likely filibuster attempt -- remains to be seen.

As designed, the plan would raise $55 billion in revenues over the next 10 months while slashing roughly $55 billion in spending during that same time period. The remaining $10 billion would come from interest savings.

The revenue side is made up of three main policies. The first is the so-called "Buffett Rule," which would set a minimum 30 percent tax rate phased in on incomes between $1 million and $2 million. Aides say that such a proposal would raise more than $50 billion (though last week, they had estimated that amount would be a bit lower).

The rest of the revenue would come from eliminating businesses' ability to take deductions by relocating facilities overseas, raising an estimated $200 million, and from a provision closing the tar sands loophole, raising $1.7 billion. Under current law, there is an eight-cent-per-barrel tax on oil, both imported and domestically produced. That money supports an oil spill liability trust fund used to pay for cleanup after oil spills. The tax, however, isn't levied on oil produced from tar sands, even though producers of that oil have access to the liability trust fund should a spill occur. The Senate Democrats' sequestration plan would change that.

On the spending side, Senate Democrats are pinpointing two areas in which to make cuts. The first is defense spending, though the specifics aren't yet clear. The second is agriculture subsidies, with lawmakers specifically targeting direct payments to large farmers. A Senate aide projected the savings at $27.5 billion for each.

Several Republican lawmakers have expressed openness to revenue hikes as part of a larger proposal to replace the looming sequestration, which, if no action is taken, would cut defense, Medicare provider and discretionary spending by $1 trillion over the next decade. But their position has always been that the revenue-raisers would be need to replace the sequester's defense cuts. The Senate Democratic proposal leaves defense cuts in while still adding revenue-raisers, making it a likely non-starter among Republicans.

Still, the plan represents the first attempt by the Senate to find a replacement. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has said he won't act unless the Senate moves first. Sequestration is set to begin on March 1.

UPDATE: 3:15 p.m. -- The Democratic Senate aide sent HuffPost a fact sheet about the bill.

The American Family Economic Protection Act

The Democratic proposal to replace the first year of sequestration with a balanced approach that works for middle class families and the economy

The American Family Economic Protection Act would replace sequestration through January 2, 2014 with an equal amount of balanced and responsible deficit reduction. Following the precedent set in the bipartisan year-end deal that replaced the first two months of sequestration, the Democratic proposal includes half new revenue and half responsible spending cuts, with half of the spending cuts coming on the defense side in a way the Pentagon can implement responsibly, and the other half coming from smart reductions to domestic spending.

This proposal would protect the economy from the shock of the scheduled automatic cuts that would threaten jobs and weaken the economic security of the middle class. It would make sure families and communities are protected from the devastating cuts to education, law enforcement, food safety, and so many other critical programs impacted by sequestration. And it would give the Pentagon time to make modest spending cuts responsibly as they draw down troops from overseas.

Sequestration was included in the bipartisan Budget Control Act in order to push both sides to compromise and to work together on a balanced replacement. The American people have made it clear that they favor a balanced approach to deficit reduction that includes responsible spending cuts and new revenue from those who can afford it most. The Democratic proposal delivers that, while the only ideas that Republicans have come out with so far would protect the rich from paying a penny more in taxes and would be even worse for seniors and families in the long run.

The American Family Economic Protection Act includes:

New revenue from the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations: $55 billion:
The American Family Economic Protection Act includes the Buffett Rule, which reduces the deficit by $53.6 billion by making sure that taxpayers with a gross adjusted income above $1 million cannot pay tax at a lower effective tax rate than middle class families. Specifically, it would require these taxpayers to pay a 30 percent tax on all of their adjusted gross income (less charitable contributions), phased in between $1 million and $2 million. The proposal also eliminates a tax break that encourages companies to ship job overseas by denying tax deductions for costs associated with outsourcing, reducing the deficit by $200 million. And it eliminates a special tax loophole now enjoyed by the oil industry by including oil from tar sands among the petroleum products that are subject to taxes that support the oil spill liability trust fund, which would reduce the deficit by $1.7 billion.

Responsible defense cuts: $27.5 billion:
The American Family Economic Protection Act includes modest reductions in the overall level of defense spending phased in responsibly to time with the troop drawdown in Afghanistan in 2015, and continuing through 2021. The reduction would be about $3 billion in Fiscal Years 2015 and 2016, and then would rise slowly to a high of about $5 billion in Fiscal Year 2021.

Responsible domestic cuts: $27.5 billion:
The American Family Economic Protection Act saves $27.5 billion over 10 years by ending direct payments, which are currently provided regardless of yields, prices, or farm income.

UPDATE: 4:15 p.m. -- House Democrats, meanwhile, have introduced a sequestration replacement bill of their own. Dubbed the "Stop the Sequester Job Loss Now Act" and introduced by Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), the bill would repeal subsidies for oil and gas companies, cut farm subsidies and institute the Buffett Rule to pay for a 10-month replacement of the sequester. Details of the bill can be found here.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/14/sequester-cuts-senate-democrats_n_2687872.html?utm_source=Alert-blogger&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Email%2BNotifications

Advancing the State of the Union: More Than Just the President's Job

Leadership is defined not only by our words and our will, but by the very actions we take to back up our vision. Last night, President Obama delivered his State of the Union address (SOTU) to a nation that gave him the majority of its vote in 2012, and to a citizenry that is still overwhelmingly ready to continue moving forward. The president encouraged unity, economic growth, increasing the minimum wage, protecting voting rights, salvaging the middle class, combating climate change, enacting safe gun legislation, utilizing clean energy, educating our youth, bringing our troops home, immigration reform and much, much more. After his address, the president conducted a conference call with grassroots supporters, then took his message on a three-city tour. He backed his own words with action; now we, the people, must do the same. After all, movements begin in our own homes -- they don't come from the White House. If we want to see real substantive change in our lives and in society, then each and every one of us has to make it happen, period.

"We may do different jobs and wear different uniforms, and hold different views than the person beside us," stated the president in his SOTU remarks.

But as Americans, we all share the same proud title -- we are citizens. It's a word that doesn't just describe our nationality or legal status. It describes what we believe. It captures the enduring idea that this country only works when we accept certain obligations to one another and to future generations, that our rights are wrapped up in the rights of others....

Perhaps nothing summarizes the task before us all more than these words. It is not enough for us to simply list our grievances, or acknowledge challenges that exist; we must consistently work and strive to create the progress we seek. The president is our leader, and while he may guide us in the right direction, it is incumbent upon all of us to work together, take concrete steps and create a society that is more fair and more just for all.

As our economy continues to recover from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, many of our fellow Americans are finding themselves forced into working multiple low-paying jobs in order to put food on the table. We owe it to them, and to the countless others that weren't afforded the same opportunities for advancement as the wealthy to raise the minimum wage. As the president highlighted in his address, 19 states have already chosen to raise their minimum wage; now the rest of the nation should follow suit. We must start organizing and mobilizing around the president's push for a minimum wage of $9/hr. In a country as powerful as ours, we can never forget about the least of these. We must help neighbors push for the increase, and help educate others on how it will in turn benefit entire communities and the nation as a whole. Take the time to uplift your fellow citizen and watch as you find yourself uplifted in the process.

The same can be applied to all of the tasks that remain before us. Whether it's fighting voter suppression tactics and streamlining the voting process, or creating effective solutions to the growing threat of climate change, or working to ensure that all young people receive a quality education and a shot at the American dream, or finally establishing safe gun laws that protect young babies from Newtown to the streets of Chicago, or passing real immigration reform that protects those who were brought here through no fault of their own and keeps the brightest in the country, or any of the host of challenges that remain before us, the time for complacency has long expired. It's people that have always pushed this nation forward. Whether it was civil rights, women's rights, or gay/lesbian rights, it has always been the work of everyday Americans on the ground that educated, mobilized and created mechanisms for change. Coupled with the right leadership, that's how progress has won throughout our history. As we witnessed during the SOTU, we have the right leadership at this very moment; now it's up to us to keep advancing forward.

During the president's address, he acknowledged 102-year-old Desiline Victor from North Miami, who patiently waited hours just to vote in the last election. Also among those sitting in the first lady's box that he mentioned were Cleopatra Cowley-Pendleton and Nathaniel A. Pendleton Sr., the parents of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton who was murdered at a park near her school on Chicago's South Side days after participating in the president's inaugural celebration. Until elderly women do not have to deal with mechanisms designed to stifle their vote, and until young women do not have to grow up in a society dodging bullets, our work remains. There's an old adage that states: actions speak louder than words. If we truly care about leaving a more advanced and a more equalized nation to our children and their children, then we must act now. In the words of the president, "It remains the task of us all, as citizens of these United States, to be the authors of the next great chapter of our American story."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-al-sharpton/advancing-the-state-of-th_b_2680429.html?utm_hp_ref=daily-brief?utm_source=DailyBrief&utm_campaign=021413&utm_medium=email&utm_content=BlogEntry&utm_term=Daily%20Brief

BE A CITIZEN SUPPORTER: THE GRAYSON-TAKANO LETTER AGAINST BENEFIT CUTS (SOCIAL SECURITY, MEDICARE & MEDICAID) 14FEB13

The gop / tea-baggers in the House are demanding cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security to protect the rich and corporate America from increased taxes and cutting corporate welfare so that they will finally pay their fair share and meet their obligation to the social contract of the nation. Rep Alan Grayson D FL and Rep Mark Takano D CA are circulating a letter among members of the House, asking them to sign on, demanding Pres Obama not agree to any cuts to these programs and to not raise the eligibility are for any of these programs. The letter commits the signatories to vote against any budget agreement that violates these terms. The Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Democracy for America are collecting signatures as citizen supporters of this letter. Please click the link below to add your name in support, and contact your Representative asking him / her to sign the letter in the House http://www.house.gov/representatives/find/

Republicans want to cut key benefits. Congressmen Alan Grayson and Mark Takano are fighting back and asking his colleages to join him on a letter that states: 

We will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.

Can you add your name as a citizen supporter of this letter, so other congressional offices see the broad public support? http://act.boldprogressives.org/survey/survey_ss_grayson/?rd=1&source=e3-dem-don&t=2&referring_akid=12071.177676.boYG6k#fullletter

Dear President Obama:

We join millions of Americans in applauding your Inaugural Address declaration that “we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”

Democrats have built the most popular government programs in American history – including Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security -- by working with Republicans whenever possible and by defeating Republican opposition whenever necessary. The torch has been passed to today’s elected officials, and we must carry it forward boldly.

Voters across the political spectrum oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, and we must do whatever it takes to protect these vital benefits from cuts.

That’s why we write to let you know that we will vote against any and every cut to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits -- including raising the retirement age or cutting the cost of living adjustments that our constituents earned and need.

We firmly believe that the best way to reduce our deficit and make our economy grow is to create jobs, and we look forward to a returned focus on this core issue.

We also know that there are common-sense reforms that would reduce health-care costs and save taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars without cutting benefits. If Republicans oppose these reforms, and insist on benefits cuts, that proves they are not concerned about the deficit – but instead are trying to tear the social safety net and cause pain for our constituents who can least absorb it.

Finally, Americans agree that there is more that must be done to require the rich and giant corporations to pay their fair share. Indeed, it is their patriotic duty to do so.

As you negotiate with Republicans, you deserve to know that millions of Americans and the below signed Members of Congress stand ready to fight for the principles listed above.

Sincerely,

Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL)

Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA)

Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN)

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-AZ)

Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-IL)

Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH)

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA)

Rep. George McGovern (D-MA)

Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN)

Rep. Jose Serrano (D-NY)

Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY)

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA)

Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY)

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI)

In the Fiscal Debate, an Unvarnished Voice for Shielding Benefits 13DEZ12

A profile of a real champion of all Americans, especially the poor, retired, working class, those in need, the least among us and all of us threatened by the wanton greed for more wealth and power of the rich and corporate America. God bless Sen Bernie Sanders I VT!!!!!! From the NY Times...

Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

Senator Bernard Sanders of Vermont, an independent who calls himself a socialist, in Washington last week.

 By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON — When President Obama cut a deal with Congressional Republicans in December 2010 to extend tax cuts for the wealthy, Senator Bernard Sanders, the brusque Vermont independent who calls himself a socialist, decided it was time for a protest.

He had a cup of coffee and a bowl of oatmeal in a Senate cafeteria, marched into the chamber and began talking. He talked for so long — railing for 8 hours 37 minutes about economic justice, the decline of the middle class and “reckless, uncontrollable” corporate greed — that his legs cramped. So many people watched online that the Senate video server crashed.

Today the issue of tax cuts for the wealthy is once again front and center in Washington, as part of the debate over how to reduce the federal deficit. And Mr. Sanders is once again talking, carving out a place for himself as the antithesis of the Tea Party and becoming a thorn in the side to some Democrats and Mr. Obama, who he fears will cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits as part of a deficit reduction deal.

A number of Congressional Democrats agree with Mr. Sanders that “no deal is better than a bad deal,” but he may be the most vocal.

He is emboldened by his recent re-election with more than 70 percent of the vote — “Seventy-one percent, but who’s counting?” Mr. Sanders said — and he appears to be making a little headway. Mr. Sanders has been pressing Mr. Obama to take Social Security off the negotiating table, and the White House now says changes to the retirement program should be considered on a “separate track” from a deficit deal.

“I think maybe he has learned something,” Mr. Sanders, 71, said of the president, who is 20 years his junior. “After four years he has gotten the clue that you can’t negotiate with yourself, you can’t come up with a modest agreement and hope the Republicans say, ‘That’s fair, you’re O.K., we’ll accept that.’ He’s reached out his hand, and they’ve cut him off at the wrist.”

The Senate is a polite place, so Republicans have little to say about their colleague from Vermont with the thick Brooklyn accent. (He acquired it growing up in Flatbush.) After four years of accusing Mr. Obama of practicing “European-style socialism,” they are hardly enamored of a man who actually embraces European-style socialism, and who carries a brass key chain from the presidential campaign of Eugene V. Debs, who ran in the early 1900s as the Socialist Party candidate.

“Bernie?” Senator John Cornyn, the Texas Republican, said with a raised eyebrow and a sly smile. “He’s one of a kind.”

Vermont Republicans are a bit more pointed. Richard Tarrant, a businessman who ran against Mr. Sanders in 2006 and was trounced, agrees with him that taxes should rise for the rich. But he sees his former opponent as a populist “advocating class warfare” and raising “false hope” about programs that are unsustainable.

Mr. Sanders, who has a habit of answering questions with questions, says it is Republicans who are engaging in class warfare.

“Do we really say we’re going to balance the budget on making major cuts in disability benefits for veterans who have lost their arms and legs defending America, while we continue to give tax breaks to billionaires?” he thundered, without pausing for breath. “Is that what the American people want? They surely do not, and only within a Beltway surrounded by Wall Street and big-money interests could anyone think that is vaguely sensible.”

Mr. Sanders, who on Wednesday was appointed chairman of the Veterans Affairs Committee, has 28 of the Senate’s 51 Democrats with him on keeping Social Security out of the deficit talks; all signed a letter that he and the Senate Democratic leader, Harry Reid, sent to the president. In the House, 104 Democrats — more than half of the caucus — signed a similar appeal. And 13 Senate Democrats, plus Mr. Sanders, signed a second letter demanding that entitlement programs be spared “harmful cuts.”

To Mr. Sanders, “harmful cuts” means any cuts in benefits. He says that entitlement spending should be trimmed only by wringing out inefficiencies. Many budget experts say that is unlikely to produce as much savings as the president and Republicans want. But Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat, believes that Mr. Sanders has some silent support.

“I think Senator Sanders represents the majority of our caucus,” Mr. Harkin said. “Not all of it, but the majority. They may not be saying it in the same way that Sanders says it, not as aggressively as Senator Sanders. But I think that’s where they are.”

With his gruff exterior and utter lack of interest in the false pleasantries of politics, Mr. Sanders, a onetime college radical who led a sit-in in 1962 at the University of Chicago to protest discriminatory housing policies, is an unlikely figure to have gained admittance to the Senate, often called the world’s most exclusive club.

Before becoming successful in politics, he knocked around from job to job — carpenter, tax clerk, freelance writer. He took his first trip to Vermont in the mid-1960s after picking up a tourist brochure at Rockefeller Center. He and his wife at the time bought 85 acres of woodlands for $2,500 and began spending long summers in a “sugar cabin” — a shack where maple syrup is made — without electricity or indoor plumbing. In 1968, they moved permanently.

In 1971, he ran for the Senate in a special election on an antiwar platform and got 2 percent of the vote. Ten years later, he squeaked past a six-term Democratic incumbent to become the mayor of Burlington, winning by 10 votes. In a small state like Vermont (population 626,000), Mr. Sanders has proved to be a master of retail politics. This year, he held dozens of town meetings and won without running a single television advertisement.

“Bernie engages everyone,” said Garrison Nelson, a political scientist at the University of Vermont. “He walks the streets of Burlington alone, without an entourage. People will come up to him and say, ‘You lousy communist S.O.B.,’ and he’ll say: ‘What do you mean? Clarify yourself.’ ”

If Mr. Sanders could have his way, the United States would be like Finland or Sweden, where the government guarantees child care and health care. His philosophy flows from his Brooklyn boyhood; he grew up the son of a paint salesman in a home, he said, where “money was always a source of friction.”

The family lived in a one-bedroom apartment; the young Mr. Sanders slept in the living room with his older brother. His mother, who died at 46, dreamed of owning a “private house.” His father, a Polish immigrant, reminded him of Willy Loman, the hard-working character in “Death of a Salesman,” who is fired after 34 years with the same company.

The play offers a lesson that the senator says is too often forgotten in Washington, “of people who have money not understanding what it’s like not to have money.” Mr. Sanders intends to make people understand, and if he thinks it is necessary to stand on the Senate floor for another 8 hours 37 minutes, he just might do it. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/14/us/politics/bernard-sanders-a-voice-for-shielding-entitlements.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=sherylgaystolberg&&pagewanted=print 

Clinton And Other Dems Did Some Cherry-Picking, Fact Checkers Say 6SEP12

IN an attempt to be fair, because we should be honest in our politics, here is the latest analysis of the speeches from the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, NC. Politicians should be honest in their statements because if they are saying, proposing, supporting and doing the right thing there is no reason to lie about it. I do take issue with the Washington Post Fact Checkers on including the savings from ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in Pres Obama's deficit reduction numbers. The savings from ending those wars should be included, it is part of the reduction in spending by the federal government and so contribute to the reduction of the federal deficit. Their opinion as well as mine are point of view and so the claim by the Obama administration is not false or even manipulation.

 

by Mark Memmott

Enlarge Mladen Antonov /AFP/Getty Images Former President Bill Clinton at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Wednesday night.

Good morning.
Just as they did during the Republican National Convention, independent fact checkers are watching and listening to what's said at the Democratic National Convention. While they aren't yet slamming the Democrats for fudging their facts, they are finding some claims that don't add up or are misleading, both Tuesday night and again on Wednesday:
  — "When former President Bill Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, he portrayed President Barack Obama as a pragmatic compromiser who has been stymied at every turn by Republicans," The Associated Press writes this morning. "There was no mention of the role that the president and the Democrats have played in grinding compromise to a halt on some of the most important issues facing the country.
"That was among the lines by the former president and others Wednesday that either cherry-picked facts or mischaracterized the opposition."
— PolitiFact gives Clinton a "true" rating for saying that there have been 42 million private sector jobs created since 1961 when Democrats were in the White House, vs. 24 million under Republicans (a period over which Republicans held the White House for five more years than Democrats). It also rated as "true" Clinton's "claim that Obama's stimulus program 'cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people.' "
But PolitiFact dinged Delaware Gov. Jack Markell for saying that Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney "likes to fire people." According to PolitiFact, "that cherry-picks what Romney actually said, which was a comment on the advantage of being able to switch health insurance companies if a provider isn't giving good service. We rated Markell's claim False."
— FactCheck.org says Clinton's "stem-winding nomination speech was a fact-checker's nightmare: lots of effort required to run down his many statistics and factual claims, producing little for us to write about." (Which sounds to us like a good thing, overall.)
It adds that "the worst we could fault him for was a suggestion that President Obama's Affordable Care Act was responsible for bringing down the rate of increase in health care spending, when the fact is that the law's main provisions have yet to take effect."
— But The Washington Post's The Fact Checker takes fairly strong issue with Clinton's statement that Obama's deficit reduction plan "uses the bipartisan commission's balanced approach. It reduces the deficit by more than $4 trillion."
According to The Fact Checker:

"The repeated claim that Obama's budget reduces the deficit by $4 trillion is simply not accurate. By the administration's math, you have nearly $3.8 trillion in spending cuts, compared to $1.5 trillion in tax increases (letting the Bush tax cuts expire for high-income Americans). Presto, $1 of tax increases for every $2.50 of spending cuts.
"But virtually no serious budget analyst agreed with this accounting. The $4 trillion figure, for instance, includes counting some $1 trillion in cuts reached a year ago in budget negotiations with Congress. So no matter who is the president, the savings are already in the bank. Moreover, the administration is also counting $848 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end."

You can find all our posts about fact checks of the Republican and Democratic conventions here.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/itsallpolitics/2012/09/06/160656546/clinton-and-other-dems-did-some-cherry-picking-fact-checkers-say?ft=3&f=1001&sc=nl&cc=nh-20120906