When measuring up political play you are really taking into consideration the amount of time, energy and passion as well as interaction spent with the topics.

How much news do you watch?
Do you vote?
When voting do you vote for everything, on every ballot?
Do you research the policies, legislation and people that you are voting for?
Do you not vote because you do not take the time to research?
How many news sources do you use to get your information?
Do you look at global, national, or both?
Do you read the Sports section?
Do you follow the market?
Do you volunteer for your party, a candidate, or a committee trying to get legislation passed?
Do you write your congressman?
Do you know your who your Congressman is?
Do you know what your Congressman has done?
How much do you participate in something that effects you in some way or another everyday?

The politico like a consumption machine. Watches AND enjoys C-Span. Reads more than three newspapers daily and reads news online on at least 10 different sites. Investigates everything they vote on and debate. Writes letters and tries to make a difference for what they believe. Every bite of a topic is another delicious culinary opportunity to explore again. The day of this person is news, news, news, and then a little more news. Most people are not like this armchair pundit.

The last and worst is the denier. Someone who will not even donate 10 minutes of a week to brush up on the news unless it is in Glamour or People or GQ or Playboy. They love to talk about something that they hate so much that they say nothing about it. On and on and on.

“News is just so depressing”
“I have no control over what happens so who cares, it’s a waste of time!”
“It’s the President’s fault”(and it usually is)

That last one could be saidabout many of our Presidents, ANY of them, and still be held in the same regard as the other blind hatred statements. I think most people are of the first type. Headlines and water-cooler speak can work for now, if something major happens someone will alert their e-mail. Life is more than safety through ignorance.

Wake up and get involved.

www.WeDemocrats.com

For 25 years, there has been a ban on offshore drilling off Florida’s Gulf Coast and with good reason. Coastal drilling encourages beach pollution, raises the risk of massive oil spells, and hurts the tourist industry on which the region depends. But that could all change this week if the Senate adopts S.3711, which would allow oil companies to move in and start setting up their rigs.

Led by lead sponsor Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), the House already voted 232 to 187 last month on its version of the bill, H.R. 4761. Pombo says the bill, the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act, will reduce gas prices for consumers by increasing oil supply. But U.S. PIRG estimates that the Florida area being explored for drilling in the Senate’s bill, S.3711, will provide only 26 days worth of oil at the current rate of consumption, and any further oil resources in the area wouldn’t be available until 2022. Rather it will set a precedent to overturn the offshore drilling ban (which the House is already behind), with potentially disastrous consequences for the ecosystems and economies of coastal areas with little long-term benefit to cash-strapped consumers.

If this legislation becomes law, who wins? The big oil companies that have already taken advantage of the energy crisis to rake in record profits and put a squeeze on the pocketbooks of consumers. What’s worse, starting drilling off Florida could be a gateway towards further coastal exploitation.

What’s in it for Pombo? In a word, money. And all politicians, especially those in tough re-election fights like Pombo, need money for their campaigns. That’s why we believe a system of Clean Elections, or comprehensive public funding with spending limits, works best – it frees our elected officials from the pressures of fundraising, and blunts the interest of powerful interests like Big Oil.

Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA), who has taken heat for working closely with convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff on legislation to favor Abramoff’s tribal clients after those clients made hefty contributions to his campaign - $20,000 in total plus another $9,000 from Abramoff.

Pombo has received more campaign contributions from Big Oil than any other California congressman this election cycle . He’s collected $95,900 toward the 2006 elections alone, more than all but three other House members. This marks a big increase for Pombo—the amount is a full 40% of the total--$239,188—he’s taken from Big Oil since he first ran for his seat in 1992. Why are the oil companies giving him such a boost this time around?

The key to honest politicians and honest elections is to remove big business influence in our political system.

Pay-to-pay politics have to be stopped in this country.

The fastest growing cost to consumers in all categories is the administrative costs. This means that when big business gives to a politician, they expect laws that
1. protect them.
2. 2. shifts the burden of paperwork and compliance to the consumer.
3. 3. allows big business to add more home office personnel (so they can say the new law requires it) This makes it look like they are the victim of the law, they probably drafted.
4. 4. increase the expenditure for executive salaries, especially CEO’s

It's time my friends to put a stop to this vicious cycle, its time to say NO to the Bushite Mafia and return the American government to the American people.

Ron McBride
www.WeDemocrats.com

These guys in the Bush administration are obsessed voyeurs, poking their noses into everyone's business, whether the excuse is squelching pornography or preventing terrorism. They simply do not believe civil liberties and privacy are important. It is an executive branch power trip, and completely anti-democratic.

Here at www.USLINX.com we haven't had a problem with the nosey Bushites, at least not yet!

In the world of high-tech privacy, companies like AOL are also two-timers, collecting data on us users of their services so they can better feed us advertising and other revenue generating products, even as they tell us they try to protect that data from identity thieves.

USLINX Clik-N-Search doesn't collect any information on our users, we are FREE to use, and no data is collected.

In giving in to the unwarranted demand of the Justice Department to pore over the companies' records, AOL, Yahoo and Microsoft are sliding down a slippery slope, unconvincingly claiming the data dump to the feds has no implications for online privacy. Does anybody think they won't cooperate if the government comes back and asks for IP addresses - your computer's unique signature on the Web - for everybody who dared type in questionable searches like "growing marijuana" and "fertilizer bombs?" Crap, it has every implication for online privacy, once they get their toe in the door, they will muscle their way in. How? Ever hear of tax audits, fire inspections, accounting reviews, you name it, the Feds have an arsenal at their disposal to make ANYONE do as they request.

The fact is, until Google made its demur public, these companies didn't even tell us about the deals they were cutting with the feds, and they are still not being forthcoming with what exactly they've given up to date. We only have their word that they are protecting our privacy. Makes you wonder how long has this been going on?

"This is the government's nose under the search engine's tent," said Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. "If companies like Google respond to this kind of subpoena ... I don't see why the next subpoena might not say, 'Give us what we asked for the last time - plus a little more.'" Sounds like the favorite phrase of the tax man.

Fortunately, Google, the latest high-tech upstart giant, dared to challenge the government's claim of an unbridled right to break into our information-age virtual homes. While avoiding the privacy argument as the others did because individual IP addresses were not requested at this time, Google forthrightly sounded the alarm on government arrogance.

"Google is not a party to this lawsuit and (the DOJ's) demand for information overreaches," said a company statement. The subpoena is "overbroad, unduly burdensome, vague and intended to harass," argued a company lawyer.

Whether their motivation is moral or simply concern about the bottom line, it is a good thing Google has the corporate guts to resist an administration that is addicted to overreaching.

Stop the Bushite invasion of privacy, elect Democrats in November.

www.WeDemocrats.com

Republicans are taking credit for the first minimum wage increase in a decade through the House early Saturday. The theives think they are smart, they paired it with a cut in inheritance taxes on multimillion-dollar estates.

Democrats are screaming as they should, Democrats should be opposed to the costly estate tax cuts. The Senate is expected to take up the legislation next week.

Gop leaders think its smart combining the wage and tax issues as their best chance for getting permanent cuts to the estate tax, a top GOP priority fueled by intense lobbying by farmers, small business owners and super-wealthy families such as the Waltons, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune.

The rich conservatives, yelled their heads off in opposition to a minimum wage increase, especially since it is being pushed by their so called GOP business allies.

Its estimated that the hybrid bill, in 10-years, will cost $300 billion-plus in these reduced taxes alone. Besides the 10-year, $268 billion cut to the estate tax, the measure contains $38 billion in other tax cuts that enjoy widespread backing, such as the research-and-development tax credit.

Under current law, the estate tax is phased out completely by 2010, but jumps back to 55% on estates larger than $1 million in 2011.

The bill passed Saturday would exempt $5 million of an individual's estate, and $10 million of a couple's, from estate taxes by 2015. Estates worth up to $25 million would be taxed at capital gains rates, currently 15% and scheduled to rise to 20%. Tax rates on the remainder of larger estates would fall to 30% by 2015.

The maneuver was aimed at defusing the minimum wage increase as a campaign issue for Democrats while using the popularity of the increase to achieve the Republican Party's longtime goal of permanently cutting estate taxes.

What the republicans are doing is saying we will raise your minimum wage but only if we can give an estate tax cut to the 7,500 wealthiest families in America. They want their cake and are planning to eat it too.

The average American Worker, works 2,000 hours a year, the proposed increase would be 70 cents an hour, that means he/she would make $1400.00 more a year. With an estimated 39,000,000 Workers in America below the poverty level, most are minimum wage workers, that means that someone will have to pickup the slack in taxes, can you guess who?

Right!

The minimum wage increase will cost businesses $218 Billion dollars, yet the tax cut for the rich will cost the government $306 Billion in taxes. That is going to be made up by these same businessmen and wage earners. $88 Billion out of your pockets to subsidize the Rich.

Can no one see this?

It appears to me that the GOP, wants on the one hand to appear to be doing something and on the other make sure that it doesn't happen.

Typical shady dealing by this administration and congress.

It was during the campaign year of 1996 that Congress last voted to increase the minimum wage. A person working 40 hours per week at minimum wage makes $10,700, which is below the poverty line for workers with families.

Inflation has eroded the minimum wage's buying power to the lowest level in about 50 years. Lawmakers have won cost-of-living wage increases totaling about $35,000 for themselves over the last 10 years.

I think the American people are smarter than we are given credit for, I say we should put a stop to this double dealing GOP gang and vote them out in November, clean the slate, its been said that 99% of the incumbants are re-elected, want to bet that percentage is lower in this election year.

This article appeared in www.wedemocrats.com authored by yours trully, and I felt it needed more exposure, given the facts the voters always manage to do the right thing in the end.

Problem is that sometimes the end is a long time in coming.

NOT this year!

With the nation's trade deficit soaring, Congress wants more U.S. small businesses to get in the global economic game.

Yesterday the House of Representatives passed a bill to create a permanent small business division within the federal Export-Import Bank, a quasi-independent government agency that helps finance U.S. exports and overseas purchases. A separate office to assist socially and economically disadvantaged small businesses would also be created within the division.

House Small Business Committee Chairman Donald Manzullo, R-Ill., a cosponsor of the bill, said an amendment he drafted would give small business specialists within each bank division more power to approve loans, guarantees, and insurance up to $10 million. In addition, the bill improves the Export-Import Bank's ability to delegate loan authority to private banks for medium-term transactions.