Tina Dupuy Posts

Aaron Alexis killed 12 people in the Navy Yard in our nation’s capital on Monday. There are an average of 10,000 gun homicides every year in the U.S. Basically, two of the Navy Yard casualties a day. Everyday. If you add gun accidents and suicides, we as a country averages 82 gun deaths a day. Everyday. The equivalent of Bangor, Maine. Everyday.

We are all celebrities now. Ever since we won Time Magazine’s Person of the Year in 2006, the same year we first found out about the National Security Administration spying on us, we’ve all become essentially public figures.

It’s the new equality: We are all stars!

Tina DupuyI’m a marathon runner. A few years ago my coach was diagnosed with cancer. The first thing his ragged team of runners did was sign him up with Livestrong. Through the course of his treatment he would show up to track with his yellow beanie warming hi...

Charles Dickens, an advocate for the poor, certainly never meant for Ebenezer Scrooge’s name to be applied to those with a paycheck the size of Bob Cratchit’s.

Bob Cratchit – Scrooge’s underpaid underling – is nice to people all year round even though he’s paid hardly anything. You know, Tiny Tim’s dad. That’s who 98 percent of Americans are.

We’re a nation of Bob Cratchits who are terrified of being Scrooges.

And if you ask the most vehement gun rights advocate why Everyman Gun Owner shouldn’t have nuclear weapons, I’d bet you’d get the same answer as to why we don’t want every country to have the capability: “Because they could get into the wrong hands.”

Tina DupuyWalmart is the biggest retailer in the world. It boasts of having 1.2 million Americans on their payroll. Its reported annual profits are around $13 billion. So it’s safe to say since it is so big – and so ubiquitous – and so obviously successful – the go...

Walmart is the biggest retailer in the world. It boasts of having 1.2 million Americans on their payroll. Its reported annual profits are around $13 billion. So it’s safe to say since it is so big – and so ubiquitous – and so obviously successful – the government can now stop subsidizing it.

Tina Dupuy“If elected, I will repeal Obamacare on day one,” promised the grandfather of Obamacare, Mitt Romney. Of course, he wasn’t elected. There will be no Day One for Romney; no un-signing spectacle moments after a decaffeinated virgin daiquiri Inauguration. Romney lost t...

Freshman Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey recently introduced a bill that would ban “the sale or manufacture of food or products which contain aborted human fetuses.” After a collective brow-raise over such a bizarre proposal, Shortey told theL os Angeles Times he got the idea “while doing some research on the Internet.”

Tina DupuyRepublicans say the polls are skewed until they show their guy in the lead. Then the polls are clearly right and we should all take note! Democrats panic when the polls fluctuate in the least bit and start using words like “outlier” and...

Tina DupuyI don’t really make predictions. But my prediction is in 10 years, we will all snidely refer to anything inept, broken, petty and lazy as like the 112th Congress.Coach...

Tina DupuyIn the summer of 1959 then-Vice President Richard Nixon flew to Moscow to speak at the opening of the American National Exhibition. The exhibit was intended to showcase the advantages of American capitalism to the S...

Tina Dupuy

Last year when I was covering the Occupy movement, I crashed a “teach-in” at the Cal campus (a public—meaning—government university) where an activist announced they didn’t need government. “We can govern ourselves!” She declared. Now the problem with a group of people governing is they essentially become (wait for it) a government.

It’s a bit like saying, “We don’t need food—we can just eat pizza!”

This is a confusion the right wing revels in. It’s why during the health care debate there were protest signs demanding the government stay out of Medicare. “We’re here, we’re misinformed—get used to it!”

“Sometimes, even presidents need reminding, that our rights come from nature and God, not from government,” says GOP VP nominee Paul Ryan on the stump.

It’s a hefty statement that has yet to get a follow up question. Which rights do we get from god, exactly? The right to choose another religion? Isn’t Free Speech an affront to a couple Commandments? Has anyone ever checked out a theocracy like Saudi Arabia and thought, “Look at all those civil rights!”?

Ryan is bastardizing the battle cry to establish self-governance against the divine right of kings. Prior to the French and American Revolutions, in the Dark Ages, kings were assumed to be kings because it was thought god wanted them to be kings—therefore everything they did was god-like.

So thinkers—and this country was founded by thinkers—came up with a way to separate the powers of god and rulers—self-governance: Three branches of self-government; a bill of rights; checks and balances. Specifically a secular government made up of regular citizens and not kings. This government framework being a design to secure individual rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness etc. etc.)

Is the right wing denouncing self-governance? Well, yeah, pretty much. If rights, according to Mr. Ryan, come from whichever purely subjective interpretation of god is en vogue this week and not from the body of democratically elected leaders adhering to a constitutional guide, it’s a position the Tories or the crown loyalists would have supported.

And the alternative to self-governance? The alleged free market? Privatized tyranny is still tyranny to its subjects.

Personally, Time Warner is not my idea of freedom.

Which leads me to the question: Since corporations are people according the Romney/Ryan ticket, does god give them rights? We’re talking about the divine right of Exxon-Mobile here: this is important.

“There are 47 percent who are with him [Obama],” said Romney on a recently verified tape made last May. “Who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims.”

There’s something very telling about a dude sneering at those dependent on the government while being under Secret Service protection.

What of this remaining 53 percent Romney is trying to woo: Who’s independent of the government? Walmart depends on the government to feed their workforce via food stamps. Nearly all other businesses depend on the government for law and order so they can conduct business. Wealthy people have property. Government protects property rights. Banks got bailed out—by the government. Roads are maintained by the government. Air travel, regulated by the government. Also our elderly, disabled and yes our poor, assisted by the government.

If you’re voting for a president, you’re voting for a government worker. Your vote means you have some confidence in government as to its legitimacy and efficiency. If you’re donating to a presidential candidate (or some sympathetic superPAC) you’re putting your faith in Government.

Which means, in short, you are depending on government.

We are all the 47 percent.

Tina Dupuy
Taking Eternal Vigilance Too Far

Published: Friday, 21 September 2012

LA Progressive

We have rain gear, protein bars and a couple of flashlights. No we're not auditioning for the next season of Storm Chasers, we're at the RNC! Or what will be the RNC once the sky stops falling.

Our sources on tell us all events are cancelled for Monday. Our coverage will (hopefully) start up Tuesday. Stay tuned!

We can all stop pretending continued Republican anger about the Affordable Care Act is news. Some figured a Supreme Court ruling would settle things. And since the GOP said it was unconstitutional with the same fervor as people who’ve read the Constitution — it was easy to assume a decision from the nine justices in the highest court in the land — regardless of the outcome—would chill them out.

They would say things like “We are a nation of laws.” Things they say when they agree with the law — however unjust it may be (i.e. immigration).

No, instead there are calls for revolt. The perennially reasonable Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) said in a written statement: “Just because a couple people on the Supreme Court declare something to be ‘constitutional’ does not make it so.” And then added, “The whole thing remains unconstitutional.” Which is akin to saying just because something is a law doesn’t make it legal. Or just because they have hair on their face doesn’t make them mammals. The court, not some junior senator from a small state, ultimately decides what is or what is not constitutional. But unconstitutional is the word conservatives use for illegitimate. In chess this move is called flipping the board over and stomping away.

But it also feeds into the right-wing narrative that they are history’s most frequent victims. To them, the more egalitarian the country becomes the more persecuted conservatives are. The sentiment can be traced back to 1845 and the founding of the Know Nothings, a nativist group concerned the country was being overrun with German and Irish immigrants. The current Tea Party finds its sympathies much more inline with the Know Nothings than anyone who ever threw tea in the Boston Harbor. They’re each backlash movements sparked by “change.”

The Know Nothings became split on the issue of slavery, and in the Southern states morphed into what we identify as the Confederacy. Here you have a region of the country that quite literally fired the first shots of what was to be the bloodiest war in American history and to hear them tell it, it was the “war of Northern aggression.”

The Civil War for many didn’t settle things so why would we assume a 5-4 decision could?

Conservatives are still mad about the New Deal, even though it worked to pull the country out of the Great Depression. They’re still miffed about women suffrage, the Civil Rights bill and Roe v. Wade. In fact any movement forward giving more people more rights and greater acceptance is a point of contention with conservatives. Gay rights is framed as Christians losing their rights to vilify whomever they want. Women not being forced to pay for birth control out-of-pocket is the government restricting the freedom of religion institutions to dictate policy to the government.

Conservatives in the current incarnation of the Republican Party think rights are a zero sum game. If one group gains acceptance, it means another falls out of favor. The cornerstone of trickle-down economics is that a rising tide raises all boats — but not when it comes to social change in the right-wing mindset. Then there are winners and there are losers. And conservatives on some level have to lose to prove their preexisting condition: They’re not bullies but martyrs — always hanged in the public square for their belief that only they should benefit from the Bill of Rights.

The Affordable Care Act is a law of social change. It insists on greater equality for women in health care. It stands up for the sick over the bottom line. It’s a step forward for human rights (finally) in our medical system. And it mandates personal responsibility (as with most laws). It’s far from perfect, and as with anything it can stand improvement — but does that make it an affront to Republicans?

In a word: Yes.

It’s health care reform policy, Republicans, going all the way back to Nixon, have touted as a way to avoid socialized medicine in America. So naturally its implementation is a major loss for their team.

Now more Americans can get private medical insurance and insurance companies have to spend a higher percentage of premiums on actual health care — but most importantly conservatives get to be the victims of “a communist plot to kill our freedom.”

Tina Dupuy
Taking Eternal Vigilance Too Far

Posted: Thursday, 5 July 2012

Predictable Outrage over Health Care Ruling is a post from: LA Progressive