We should thank our lucky stars that we have Bernie Sanders in the Senate. The Senate on Friday evening voted to block cuts in benefits for Social Security and disabled veterans.

The amendment by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) put the Senate on record against changing how cost-of-living increases are calculated in a way that would result in significant cuts.

“The time has come for the Senate to send a very loud and clear message to the American people: We will not balance the budget on the backs of disabled veterans who have lost their arms, their legs and their eyesight defending our country. We will not balance the budget on the backs of the men and women who have already sacrificed for us in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor on the widows who have lost their husbands in Iraq and Afghanistan defending our country,” Sanders said.

The amendment opposed switching from the current method of measuring inflation to a so-called chained consumer price index. President Barack Obama favors a chained CPI as part of what the White House calls a “grand bargain” that Obama hopes to reach with congressional Republicans.

The proposed change would affect more than 3.2 million disabled veterans receiving disability compensation benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Veterans who started receiving VA disability benefits at age 30 would have their benefits reduced by $1,425 at age 45, $2,341 at age 55 and $3,231 at age 65. Benefits for more than 350,000 surviving spouses and children who have lost a loved one in battle also would be cut. Dependency Indemnity Compensation benefits already average less than $17,000 a year.

More than 55 million retirees, widows, orphans and disabled Americans receiving Social Security also would be affected by the switch to a chained CPI. That figure includes 9 million veterans with an average yearly benefit of about $15,500. A veteran with average earnings retiring at age 65 would get nearly a $600 benefit cut at age 75 and a $1,000 cut at age 85. By age 95, when Social Security benefits are probably needed the most, that veteran would face a cut of $1,400 – a reduction of 9.2 percent.

A chained CPI would cut Social Security benefits for average senior citizens who are 65 by more than $650 a year by the time they are 75 years old, and by more than $1,000 once they reach 85.

In this new ad from MoveOn.org, voters remind President Obama that one of the reasons they voted for him in November is because they trust him to protect Social Security and Medicare.

One week after the release of secretly taped videos of Mitt Romney from a private fundraiser sent his poll numbers into a tailspin, the Obama campaign is using the controversial comments in a new television commercial that began running Monday.

In the 30 second ad, the narrator gets straight to the point, saying “Mitt Romney attacked 47% of Americans who pay no income tax, including veterans, the elderly and disabled."

The narrator refers to the secret video clips released last Monday in Mother Jones of Romney at a private fundraiser in Florida in May. The material, recorded without the candidate’s knowledge, showed the Republican challenger telling the audience that 47% of voters are dependent on the government, see themselves as victims, and would “vote for the president no matter what.”

One of the clips is incorporated in the new spot. “My job is not to worry about those people,” Romney says while standing at the podium.

The narrator then asks viewers “Doesn’t the President have to worry about everyone?”

“Mitt Romney paid just 14.1 percent in taxes last year,” says the narrator, claiming that “he keeps millions in Bermuda and the Cayman islands.”

The spot ends with the narrator saying "Maybe instead of attacking others on taxes, Romney should come clean on his."

Just don't hold your breath waiting for that to happen!

Paul Ryan is the mastermind behind the extreme GOP budget plan. It's a plan Mitt Romney endorses.

But what does that budget mean for America? The GOP budget plan hurts seniors, it hurts middle-class families, and it hurts students. All to pay for tax cuts for those at the top..

Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan: back to the failed top-down policies that crashed our economy.

Paul Ryan’s top-down budget plan is a sham

Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both support trillions in budget-busting tax cuts for millionaires that will result in tax hikes on the middle class and deep cuts in education and other investments we need to grow. Ryan’s extreme budget plan, which Mitt Romney has embraced, would make deep spending cuts now to pay for tax cuts for the wealthy, which would weaken the recovery and cost the economy jobs.

According to Harvard economist Jeffrey Liebman, based on Mitt Romney’s own projections on the impact of deep spending cuts on the economy, Paul Ryan’s budget plan could cost the U.S. more than 1 million jobs.

Paul Ryan’s plan would raise taxes on the middle class and cut taxes for the wealthy

Ryan’s extreme budget plan would benefit the wealthy while raising taxes on middle-class families, slowing our economic recovery and hurting seniors and the middle class.

Deep tax giveaways for the wealthy:

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget includes a tax “reform” plan that would make the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, and give millionaires an additional tax cut worth over $250,000 a year. Paying for these tax cuts for the most fortunate families would require higher taxes on the middle class, gutting investments in our future, and ending Medicare as we know it.

Raise taxes on the middle class:

Just like Mitt Romney’s tax plan, middle-class families could pay thousands of dollars more a year in taxes to help fund tax cuts for millionaires. Ryan would cut or eliminate middle-class tax deductions like mortgage interest, charitable contributions, and health premiums.

Paul Ryan’s plan would gut middle-class investments

To pay for tax cuts for the wealthiest, Paul Ryan would gut investments critical to middle-class security.

This includes cutting Pell Grant scholarships for nearly 10 million students, cutting clean energy investments by 19%, and slowing scientific and medical research by eliminating tens of thousands of grants.

Paul Ryan’s plan would end Medicare as we know it

Paul Ryan’s extreme budget would end Medicare as we know it, turning it into a voucher program which would increase seniors’ health costs by $6,350 a year. Ryan has also proposed a plan that would have privatized Social Security, subjecting seniors’ retirement security to the whims of the stock market.

Paul Ryan is severely conservative

Like Mitt Romney, Ryan’s severely conservative positions are out of touch with most Americans’ values. He would take us backward on women’s health and equal rights.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on women’s health:

Ryan cosponsored a bill that could ban in-vitro fertilization, as well as many common forms of birth control, including the pill. It could also ban all abortions, even in cases of rape or incest. He supported letting states prosecute women who have abortions and doctors who perform them.

Paul Ryan would take us backward on equal rights:

Ryan voted against the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which helps women fight for equal pay for equal work. He voted against repealing the discriminatory policy of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and supports writing discrimination into the Constitution by amending it to ban gay marriage.

If this isn't enough information on Paul Ryan, and what Romney & Ryan would mean for America, let me sum it up briefly:

Any questions?

Note: No senior citizens were harmed in the making of this video.

On August 8, 2012, during a direct action at Occupy Gracie Mansion, protesters said that NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg has "Shown nothing but contempt for the disability community, has stomped on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and bought high-placed defenders of corporate-power in order to use our law against us in court."

They further blasted what they say is Bloomberg's "hypocrisy" by throwing a party in honor of the ADA.

NYPD disrupted the peaceful protest of about 50 activists as the protesters yelled "Shame !" to the police officers. There were 7 or 8 arrests in all, with the final four protesters in wheelchairs arrested and taken away in a confiscated Access-A-Ride vans after a nearly hour-long standoff with police.

All were released a short while later without any charges.

Arthur's story is highlighted from the beginning, in the upcoming documentary, INSPIRED: The Movie.

Arthur Boorman was a disabled veteran of the Gulf War for 15 years, and was told by his doctors that he would never be able to walk on his own, ever again.

He stumbled upon an article about Diamond Dallas Page doing Yoga and decided to give it a try -- he couldn't do traditional, higher impact exercise, so he tried DDP YOGA and sent an email to Dallas telling him his story.

Dallas was so moved by his story, he began emailing and speaking on the phone with Arthur throughout his journey - he encouraged Arthur to keep going and to believe that anything was possible. Even though doctors told him walking would never happen, Arthur was persistent. He fell many times, but kept going.

Arthur was getting stronger rapidly, and he was losing weight at an incredible rate! Because of DDP's specialized workout, he gained tremendous balance and flexibility -- which gave him hope that maybe someday, he'd be able to walk again.

His story is proof, that we cannot place limits on what we are capable of doing, because we often do not know our own potential. Neither Arthur, nor Dallas knew what he would go on to accomplish, but this video speaks for itself. In less than a year, Arthur completely transformed his life. If only he had known what he was capable of, 15 years earlier.

Do not waste any time thinking you are stuck - you can take control over your life, and change it faster than you might think.

Hopefully this story can inspire you to follow your dreams - whatever they may be.

Anything is Possible!

For more information about DDP YOGA, visit http://bit.ly/Kqewdp

My name is Olivia. I can’t hold a sign because I’m so little.

I was born with club feet. One was so bad, it was nearly upside-down. My feet have been stretched into place and casted into position every week since I was 3 weeks old. It really hurts. I’m 3 and a half months old now, so I’ve done that a lot. It costs about $500 each time. (You can see one of my casts peeking out under my dress.)

On March 21, 2012 I had my first surgery, because the stretching wasn’t working. That cost nearly $9,000, but if my feet don’t get fixed, I’ll never be able to walk.

Medicaid is paying to fix my feet. My Daddy is a disabled veteran, but his insurance won’t cover my feet. My Mom is trying to raise my 3 brothers and I while she wracks up student loans getting her college degree, because minimum wage isn’t enough to keep a roof over our heads.

WIC is paying for my formula, because Mom’s milk never came in. She feels kinda bad about that, but sometimes these things just happen.

I hear that some people want to get rid of Medicaid, the Pell Grant, and WIC, so that the 1% can have even more tax breaks. Well, I want to be able to walk. I need to eat. And my Mom would like to be able to provide for me better someday. I don’t understand why people want to take that away from me. What did I do wrong?

[Via]

The Disabled National Veterans Foundation has spent more on marketing services than on actually helping veterans. A private company runs its fundraising, which often ends up costing more than $1 to raise $1. The foundation does sometimes send charities "badly needed" donations. "They sent us 11,520 bags of coconut M&M's," said one charity's executive director. "We didn't have a lot of use for 11,520 bags of coconut M&M's."

Full Transcript:

A national charity that vows to help disabled veterans and their families has spent tens of millions on marketing services, all the while doling out massive amounts of candy, hand sanitizer bottles and many other unnecessary items to veteran aid groups, according to a CNN investigation.

The Disabled Veterans National Foundation, based in Washington, D.C., and founded in 2007, received about $55.9 million in donations since it began operations in 2007, according to publicly available IRS 990 forms.

Yet according to the DVNF's tax filings with the IRS, almost none of that money has wound up in the hands of American veterans.

Instead, the charity made significant payments to Quadriga Art LLC, which owns two direct-mail fundraising companies hired by the DVNF to help garner donations, according to publicly available IRS 990 forms.

Those forms show the charity paid Quadriga and its subsidiary, Brickmill Marketing Services, nearly $61 million from 2008 until 2010, which was the last year public records were available.

The independent group CharityWatch gave the DVNF an "F" grade. More than 30 veterans charities were rated by the independent group by the amount they spend on fundraising compared to actual donations, and two-thirds were given either a D or F grade, according to CharityWatch president Daniel Borochoff.

"Up to $2 billion is raised in the name of veterans in this country and it's so sad that a great deal of it's wasted," Borochoff said. "Hundreds of millions of dollars of our charitable dollars intended to help veterans is being squandered and wasted by opportunists and by individuals and companies who see it as a profit-making opportunity."

Continue reading »

The Guardian: Occupy Wall Street: the story behind seven months of protest:

In September last year, anti-corporate activists descended on a small park in lower Manhattan and Occupy Wall Street was born. As protesters ready for a spring resurgence, film-maker Kat Keene Hogue looks back at more than six months of Occupy, a movement that spread from Zuccotti Park to over 100 cities around the world

Inflation Is Outrunning The Earnings of Workers

Consumer prices rose modestly in March amid signs that a spike in gasoline costs was ebbing, but inflation still outpaced workers’ earnings, the Labor Department said Friday.

Geithner Slams Mitt on Women’s Jobs

Statistics are the smoke and fog in the war on women. Sunday, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner struck out against Mitt Romney’s repeated claims that women made up more than 92 percent of jobs lost under President Obama’s watch. “It’s just a political moment,” Geithner said on CBS News’ Face the Nation, arguing that there was more job loss among men at the beginning of the recession and that Obama inherited economic decline that began under the previous White House. Romney’s campaign isn’t budging, though. “The President should stop making excuses for his failures,” spokesperson Andrea Saul said in an email to reporters. “He is entitled to his own spin but not his own facts.” Too bad Geithner didn't have any facts to back up his idiotic running off at the mouth.

Via Think Progress: Bank of America Forecloses On Homeowner With Disabled Daughter After Offering Her A Modification:

Rodriguez took out a loan to retrofit her house for her special-needs daughter. After she fell behind on her payments, the Bank of America lowered her monthly obligation, but then sold the house at a foreclosure auction last September. The new owner, a house flipper from El Segundo called West Ridge Rentals, moved to evict the family. [...]

Yet still nearly 7,000 Occupy Wall Street protesters have been arrested to day. Bankers arrested? Zero.

The Gothamist:

There were only around 40 protesters last night who chose to unfurl their sleeping bags and ground pads on the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street in "sleepful protest" last night. But unlike the vibrant, if somewhat insulated atmosphere of Zuccotti Park, Occupy Wall Street's newest encampment is positioned at the nexus of a neighborhood, and residents and passersby seemed eager to engage the demonstrators on the well-lit corner a few yards away from the New York Stock Exchange.

An impeccably dressed, if somewhat intoxicated man began speaking with protesters and eventually sat down, legs crossed, deep in dialogue. His expensive watch peeked out of the cuff of his starched shirt as he made motions with his hands. His wife had left him and he stressed that he had problems, too.

Another man wearing a blue Oxford and carrying his dinner—a frozen chicken dish from Duane Reade—began speaking to a group after he asked one protester, "Tell me again why you're here?" What followed was a conversation that lasted over an hour, ranging from cutting the cost of higher education ("We gotta stop subsidizing four-year colleges,") to the tax rate on capital gains, to solutions to house the homeless.

Also from Think Progress, if Mitt Romney could relate at all to the general population, wouldn't he support paid sick days for workers?

Forty percent of private sector workers and 80 percent of low-wage workers do not have a single, paid sick day to recover from a short-term illness or to provide care for their loved ones. This leads to impossible choices for moms in the sandwich generation who are often working while serving as the main caregiver for an aging parent or school-age children. Missing just three days of work to care for a kid with chicken pox would mean losing the entire month’s healthcare budget for the average two worker, two child family without access to paid sick days.

Paid sick days legislation would enable workers to accrue paid sick leave and provide for provisions to help employers manage. It also makes economic sense as it costs businesses more in lost worker productivity to have sick employees come in, than it would cost to offer paid time off in the first place.

President Obama has come out in favor of such legislation. Mitt Romney, who claims to understand the plight of working people, has been silent.

See how much more effective actual facts are, Mr. Geithner?

Occupy Ninjas, coming to a bank near you soon.

Occupy Detroit is celebrating their 6 month anniversary all weekend:

A general assembly will be held at noon at Eastern Market. The group also will hold an open house from 4-10 p.m. Saturday at its new home at 5900 Michigan Ave. Events will include an ox roast and musical jam session around a bonfire.

From TeacherKen at DailyKos, A Veteran’s Death, the Nation’s Shame:

HERE’S a window into a tragedy within the American military: For every soldier killed on the battlefield this year, about 25 veterans are dying by their own hands.

As TeacherKen notes, there is so much more work that needs to be done before military suicide can be effectively prevented.

Buffet Rule Vote on Monday

On Monday, April 16, the U.S. Senate will debate and vote on the "Buffett Rule," which guarantees that millionaires will no longer pay a lower share of taxes than working people.

Join SEIU and Daily Kos by sending an email (super easy, just click the link) to your senators, telling them to vote in favor of the Buffett Rule. No matter whether your senators are Democrats or Republicans, they all need to know there is big support for making the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes.

Please join with Daily Kos and SEIU and tell your senators to pass the Buffet Rule, it only takes a few seconds.

Ike Libby is the owner of Hometown Energy in Dixfield, Maine. He drives the truck that delivers heating oil to homes in the area that residents depend on for heat in the cold, winter months. Many people are struggling to keep their homes warm this year after cutbacks reduced the budget for the federal Low Income Heating Assistance Program (LIHEAP) from $56.5 million to $39.9 million there.

Mr. Libby is a kind-hearted man, who isn't able to turn away customers who can't afford to pay for their heating fuel. One of his customers, the Hartfords, are a disabled and retired couple who have been hit especially hard by the budget cuts to LIHEP.. They need to survive on a fixed income of $1,200 a month. The couple offered Libby the title to their only vehicle until they could pay off their heating oil bill.

"Its tough to tell somebody you can't bring them oil," Libby said. "We have been in business for eight years and we are further in the hole than when we started."

Libby often tries to help those that he can. He will make small deliveries, wave service fees or set up payment plans that often leave his checkbook empty.

"He didn't even know us," Hartford said. "He just has a heartbeat beyond most people."

Libby was interviewed for an article that appeared in the New York Times on Saturday about the struggle faced by the people in Maine to keep their homes warm during these difficult economic times. The article featured the story of the Hartfords.

Since the article appeared, Hometown Energy has been swamped at the office, with phone calls from people wishing to donate money to Mr. Libby to help ensure that people in need have enough heating oil to keep warm. The business that he has run from his heart touched the hearts of complete strangers who have so far donated $100,000. Libby is now in the process of setting up a trust fund for people in the community having trouble paying for their fuel.

The Hartfords received some donations directly, as well.

You can help, too:

To donate to a trust set up to help people who cannot afford heating oil, contact Hometown Energy at 562-8822 or mail checks to Hometown Energy at P.O. Box 485, Dixfield, ME 04224 or through www.HometownEnergyMaine.com.