Tina Dupuy

Investigators say due to some creative Ireland-based tax gimmicks, Apple has managed to keep $75 billion away from the IRS’s reach just in the years 2009-2012.

Even Senator John McCain conceded, “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.”

Apple is not alone. They’re in very posh company. Senator Carl Levin, who called Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, to Capitol Hill this week, cited a study by Citizens for Tax Justice that 30 multi-national companies pay zero in federal taxes.

And in case you missed it, Senator Harry Reid, who was widely panned during the election for saying Mitt Romney didn’t pay taxes for a decade, was right! Through some resourceful faith-based loopholes Romney has effectively laundered money through the Mormon Church. There was a very good reason Romney didn’t release his tax returns. They made him look like a tax cheat. Mainly because he is.

What could our country possibly do with all the money innovative accountants ship away? You may have heard about a tornado that hit the suburb of Moore, Oklahoma this week. It leveled a swath of the town causing an estimated $1 billion in damages. The two Senators from Oklahoma both voted no on Hurricane Sandy relief for the North East. Senator Jim Inhofe says tornado aid is “totally different” from aid to another wind-based natural disaster. Senator Tom Coburn, who is usually pro-government-aid when tragedy strikes his own state (like the ice storm of ’07) is asking for off-sets in the federal budget to pay for Moore’s losses. Basically he wants to cut services to the rest of the country so tornado victims can rebuild.

Apparently government aid in the richest country on Earth is a zero-sum game: if one person gets help, someone else gets denied.

And speaking of being the (still) richest country in the world, the American Society of Civil Engineers gives our infrastructure (roads, bridges, levees, dams, sewage system, ports etc.) a D plus. They estimate we need a $3.6 trillion investment in our public infrastructure. And that’s without a Category 3 hurricane hitting our most populated city.

During the Apple hearing, Senator Rand Paul called for Congress to apologize to the company for dragging them to Capitol Hill: “Apple has 600,000 jobs they’ve created—American jobs—and we want to drag them before this committee to chastise them.”

But Paul actually made the most inadvertently salient point: “I am offended by the spectacle of dragging in here executives from an American company that is not doing anything illegal.”

Right. Everything they did was legal. Everything Mattel did to pay no federal taxes from 2008-2010 is legal. General Electric; legal. Verizon Communications, Boeing, Con-Way, Ryder System, Duke Way, El Paso, PG&E Corporation and the rest of the 30 multi-nationals all took advantage of legal tax advantages. Mitt Romney, who came within a mere five million votes of being the President of the United States, did nothing illegal to avoid paying taxes. It’s just unpatriotic. And unethical. But because of their lobbying lawmakers to make loopholes, it’s legal.

But frankly, it’s deplorable.

And here’s why: Because these giant corporations are getting a free pass by the very premise they create jobs. They’re in essence piling their tax burden onto their workers. When sycophantic Senators like Rand Paul genuflect to corporations as “job creators” what they really mean is “taxable income creators.”

So the people who work for a living give a chunk of their paychecks to the government to pay for things corporations need to conduct business (courts to protect; Congress to rig). Workers get to fund the country for the privilege of having a job.

And the (actual) privileged, whose money makes a living gets to outsource their tax obligations as a thank you from lawmakers.

This has led us to two current record highs in America: Corporate profits and Americans on food stamps.

Is there an app for that?

@tinadupuy

In the now-infamous “47 Percent” video secretly captured during a Mitt Romney fundraising speech, the GOP hopeful gleefully mentioned Jimmy Carter’s Iran Hostage Crisis moment and admitted, “By the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.”

On September 11, 2012, he got his “opportunity.” Our embassy in Benghazi, Libya was overtaken and four Americans including Ambassador Christopher Stevens were killed. Mitt condemned the President of the United States that same day suggesting that Obama “sympathized with the attackers.” That’s right. The man who made the call to shoot Osama bin Laden in the head was suddenly a terrorist sympathizer because Romney wanted to be Reagan and needed a Carter.

Would cheerfully ginning up the events in Benghazi win Romney the White House? No, his accusations were offensive and demonstrably untrue.

But losing an election means nothing to Republicans. They’ve had nine congressional hearings about Benghazi. What have they uncovered? The fact that you can have nine congressional hearings and uncover nothing.

According to the Global Terrorism Database amassed by the University of Maryland’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, there were 64 attacks on diplomatic targets during the Bush Administration. Still, former veep Dick Cheney said of Benghazi, “I think it’s one of the worst incidences, frankly, that I can recall in my career.” Having the memory of a goldfish must be very soothing.

Benghazi is a cynical attempt to gain traction with a nontroversy. The more Congress spends time investigating the less time they have to spend being ineffective at negotiating with the President. In other words, doing their jobs. Under John Boehner’s leadership the 112th Congress passed just 219 bills that became laws. The least since we’ve been counting; half the amount of a normal Congress in a two-year term.

But what about all the other scandals!?

Since the president who touted torture as a foreign policy, lied us into two quagmires and outed an undercover CIA agent in retaliation for her husband’s New York Times op/ed, has been out of office for a couple of years, our bar for scandal is pretty low.

The IRS uproar is an example. In the wake of Citizens United, the only agency with the authority to oversee tax exemptions has every right to be skeptical of non-profit 501(c)(4)s. These groups, after all, are begging for a government handout under the guise of providing “social welfare.” Plus they’re allowed the anonymity of their donors. Some tea partiers want to see all welfare recipients take drug tests, you’d think a couple of extra questions on an application would be warranted. According to the Inspector General’s report, of the 300 groups who were flagged by the Cincinnati IRS office for greater scrutiny, only 100 were tea party groups. The other two-thirds—the vast majority of those flagged? Liberal groups. Other non-profits. Has the tea party fallen victim to the worst injustice since colonialism, slavery and the Inquisition combined? Most definitely.

Is this a scandal? Meh. Will this exist everlastingly in the mouth foam of those with Obama-as-Hitler placards? You bet!

The Department of Justice bypassing courts and seizing Associated Press phone records is this week’s only real scandal, the only breaking news story that deals with a violation of Constitutional rights. It’s a clear infringement of the free press. It also happens to be a violation that George W. Bush committed as a matter of policy. The right wing was fine with it when a Republican did it.

But now that it’s Obama’s DOJ it’s a bit less palatable.

The difficulty for the right-wing Indignation Industrial Complex is that they don’t like the press. They only like their press. But they also dislike Obama.

Getting the right wing up in arms over the DOJ intimidating a mainstream media outlet – or even more to the point – a cracking down on whistleblowers within the government – could be tricky. Because the enemy of your enemy isn’t as intriguing as innuendo and just making stuff up.

Or as a tea partier I was on television with this week put it, “We still haven’t seen the birth certificate yet!”

@tinadupuy

Donald Trump thinks it’s a no-brainer that so many American servicewomen are raped by their fellow soldiers. This week when the increase in these crimes is the subject of a Senate hearing, Trump tweeted: “26,000 unreported sexual assults (sic) in the military-only 238 convictions. What did these geniuses expect when they put men & women together?”

I normally ignore The Donald as a publicity-hound half-wit celebrity shill. But now that he’s a rape apologist, he deserves a response:

The natural product of men and women together is not sexual assault. Rape is not an eventuality. It’s not a method of conception as (thankfully still-a-Congressman) Paul Ryan likes to refer to it. It’s not a means of god “gifting human life” like former Senator Rick Santorum believes. There’s not illegitimate rape and legitimate rape as former Congressman and 2012 senatorial candidate Todd Akin felt the need to clarify.

There’s just consensual sex and a felony.

Rape is a crime.

So Trump’s “genius” solution would be to ban women from military service? Segregate the sexes? What about the men who are sexually assaulted by other men? Them too? If we’re going to blame an entire gender for their innate rape-ability, it’s worth mentioning men can also be raped.

But that nuance isn’t what Trump is tweeting about. It’s the idea that men are just going to commit rape, so women need to be covered, hidden, separated, escorted, and armed. A burka and a Beretta: Welcome to Trump’s America.

Ah yes, weapons profiteers conveniently think the cure to rape is arming all women. Well servicewomen are all armed. Try again.

The gun-dealing industrial complex, specifically the NRA, likes to Monday Morning Quarterback all tragedies. How could it have gone better? If you had their product on you. Guns are a crime panacea especially when coupled with hindsight.

Trump has basically blamed all servicewomen for being assaulted. They’re culpable in their own rape because a) they’re women and b) they’re serving alongside men.

Instead of blaming the victims, how about blaming rapists? Instead of banning women, how about banning the perpetrators?

We are so conditioned for deference to all who wear the U.S. military uniform that it’s hard to be critical. Because everyone who serves is automatically dubbed a hero regardless of whether their service is heroic or not. The idea that they could commit hideous crimes is uncomfortable. It’s akin to pedophile priests. Because these are holy men whom we are taught are pillars of their communities, the idea of them being child rapists is tough to accept. We like it when there are good guys and bad guys. Not where there are purported good guys who also commit sexual assault.

We need our boogeymen not to be morally complicated for us. Just simply and purely evil is best.

In the context of rape, the victims are easier to vilify. They could have been asking for it. They could just have “buyers remorse” as former Colorado senatorial candidate Ken Buck put it. They could be lying. They could have put themselves in that position. They could have worn the wrong thing. They could be trying to destroy a good man. They could be too attractive. They could have decided to work in the U.S. military.

No wonder rapes are the most underreported crime we have – we assume rape victims are partially responsible. Rape is something that can be avoided by a victim so the culprit is entitled to some understanding.

Separate the rapists from the military, not the women.

And bring our troops home.

@tinadupuy

If the Tsarnaev brothers—the duo behind the Boston Marathon bombing—set off two of their pressure cooker bombs every day, in a year’s time they’d amass 1,095 victims (providing they killed the same number of people each day). The total would jump to 1,098 if it happened to be a leap year.

There are an average of 10,000 gun homicides every year in the U.S. If you add gun accidents and suicides it’s over 30,000 deaths each year according to the World Health Organization.

We lose the equivalent of a small city of Americans every year to gun violence. Each year an entire Bangor, Maine is gone. Virginia Tech has 30,000 students in total. Every year the equivalent of a Virginia Tech loses their lives.

The Iraq War took 4,488 American soldiers’ over 10 years.

Nearly 10 times that die from civilian firearms. Every year. No war declared. No goal. No land to win. No regime change. No liberation. No spoils to be had. No armistice. No end game. No plan. No strategy.

The only upside is if you’re a weapons profiteer. Then the body count means wealth. Their future, at lease, is secure.

The weapons industry costs taxpayers untold billions in the form of lost wages, court costs, Medicare and Medicaid costs, insurance claims processing costs, emergency responder budgets and increased policing. All due to our cities being awash in their ubiquitous and unregulated product.

Otherwise it’s a pointless public health crisis that Congress seems pretty ok with. They tell us they don’t want to upset hobbyists by entertaining policy that effects personal arsenals. In the U.S. that’s actually a sufficient answer warranting no follow up. Try explaining that to someone in Japan where they have fewer than two gun-related homicides a year.

Thirty thousand Americans were shot and killed last year and roughly 30,000 will be shot and killed this year.

We accept this as a byproduct of freedom. There’s a legally immune, enormously profitable industry that’s spun a jingoistic fairy tale about how buying more of their product will make us safer.

America has the highest civilian gun ownership in the world. We should therefore be the safest country on the planet. We are not. We have the highest rate of firearm deaths in the top 50 industrialized nations. Of those 50 nations there are around 100,000 gun deaths a year. We contribute a third of them.

(John Lott’s “study” claiming higher gun ownership means lower crime has never been replicated. Save your letters, it’s bunk.)

The September 11^th attacks killed 2,996 Americans. We have the equivalent of 10 9/11s every year in gun deaths. They hate us for our freedom.

In Plato’s The Republic, he relays the Allegory of the Cave. There are prisoners who were born and raised in a cave and the shadows of a fire off the cave walls are the only thing they’ve ever seen. It’s their reality. To them it’s normal. Then one prisoner is released. He sees the sun for the first time. He realizes everything he’s ever known was wrong. When he returns to the cave he tries to tell to the rest of the prisoners about the rest of the world. This upsets the prisoners so much, it’s said they’d kill him if given the chance.

This is what it’s like in the gun debate. We’ve accepted our fate—children are occasionally just going to be mowed down by gunfire in school. Or going to a suburban movie theater has certain risks. Or inner cities are just supposed to sound like Fallujah circa 2005. When you bring up other parts of the world that don’t have this issue, you’re treated as a heretic, tyrant and inevitably a Nazi sympathizer/Hitler fanboy.

Yes, the prisoners in the cave suddenly want to kill you. And in this case, they’re armed.

The point remains: We don’t have to have a country like this. We don’t have to live in a country where a 5-year-old kills his 2-year-old sister with a Crickett rifle made for kids. We can pass sound policies which reduce lethal weapons and their capacity. It is possible.

Freedom, after all, is being able to leave the cave, walk down the street and not get shot.

@tinadupuy

Photo by Greg Cohen

My working theory—you could call it a philosophy, or a freestanding reason of how the world works—is what I call the Theory of Relative Laziness. It goes like this: Never attribute anything to conspiracy, coordination or planning when laziness could explain it. Call it Occam’s Armchair.

While perusing the weirder corners of the Internet the other day I stumbled upon the Flat Earth Society’s website. They believe—and claim to have plenty of evidence—that the world is not a sphere, it’s instead flat. Why? According to their site it’s because the world looks flat,. The first question in their FAQs is, “Is this a joke?” The answer: “No.” What about the moon landing and space travel, they’re asked? It’s been faked.

What’s more lazy? Fifty years of an international conspiracy to commit massive (not to mention expensive) fraud to needlessly trick the world into believing our planet is shaped like a basketball? Or some dude looking at the ground beneath him and saying, “It looks flat.”

I find it comforting to think of just how lazy the Boston Marathon bombers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were. Yes, they went through all the trouble of learning how to make a bomb, constructing said bomb and walking to the finish line of the most prestigious street race in the world with moderately heavy backpacks.

But that was basically it. No attempts to hide their identity. No going through all the trouble of writing a manifesto to explain or indicate the goal of causing the senseless deaths of onlookers. Not even a declarative sentence, actually. No saving up money before the event so they could skip town. No trying to get rid of evidence. No attempts to change their identity. No backup plan. No thoughts on maybe not terrorizing your hometown where you’ve gone to school and people recognize you because your picture is in their yearbook.

There are reports the duo were preparing to carry out other attacks; the pitiful half-hearted assertion of slacker terrorists everywhere.

Yes they were cruel, callous and malicious—but thankfully they were also lazy.

This event has inspired a menagerie of conspiracy theories that I put into two categories: the false-reports-are-true theories and our-preexisting-assumptions-are-even-more-valid theories.

There are hypotheses that incorporate since-corrected errors that ended up in the news media: A Saudi national, a “dark-skinned man,” or anything mentioned in the Murdoch-owned New York Post. The idea is that these were the truth and the corrections are the cover-ups. According to my Theory of Relative Laziness when you have journalists not doing their due diligence coupled with a denial of new information (meaning you get to stop reading and think you’re right) both can be attributed to simple laziness.

Within seconds of the bombs going off a popular conspiracy sham artist (I’m not naming) tweeted out something to the effect of “The government did this, the government always does this so they can take away our civil rights.” (Civil rights mean your right to stockpile weapons and ammunition. A “right” that’s not being threatened even in the wake of people with arsenals making threats.) No investigation, no pausing for the victims, no evidence pondered, he knew—the government did it.

Conservatives will tell you government can’t do anything well. Liberals will tell you government is flawed but it’s the best we’ve got. Nowhere on the political spectrum or in any evidence-based reality is the U.S. government hyper-competent and perfect at accomplishing their objectives. Never.

But it’s the laziest punditry there is: Everything went off as planned, everyone is in on it and I’m the only one brave enough to say anything.

It’s apparently also pretty lucrative. Little overhead, low production costs, no need to employ a fact-checker (or copy-editors).

A lot of the world can be explained by the simple fact that someone isn’t putting in a full effort and isn’t interested in doing their job. See every column I’ve ever written about Congress.

@tinadupuy

The Women’s Medical Society in West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania run by Dr. Kermit Gosnell was one of the few places in the state to provide late-term abortions. From witness accounts the clinic smelled of cat urine. There was a free-roaming, flea-infested feline that reportedly defecated all over the medical facility. The clinic, described in the grand jury report as “a criminal enterprise, motivated by greed,” spread venereal diseases to their patients, reportedly delivered live babies and killed them and according to testimony had a 15-year-old high school student medicate and perform most of the clinic’s procedures unsupervised.

Dr. Gosnell along with several co-defendants/employees are charged with eight counts of murder from medical malpractice. They were arrested in January 2011. Their trial is this month.

Who, you may ask, would go to a clinic when it reeked of cat pee? I wouldn’t buy cat food at a place like that. Who would go there to get a medical procedure? Desperate women. Poor women. Due to increased restrictions on abortion procedures: out-of-state women with no other options.

This case is an indictment of oversight of women’s clinics. Gosnell had his practice for nearly 40 years. One example cited in the report was from a decade ago when an employee filed a complaint with the Board of Medicine. The investigator had an off-site interview with Gosnell and then dismissed the complaint as unconfirmed.

To their credit the National Abortion Federation rejected the Women’s Medical Society’s application, but they also never reported them to other authorities. There were several others who turned a blind eye to the abhorrent conditions.

The report notes, “Once law enforcement agents went in, they couldn’t help noticing the disgusting conditions, the dazed patients, the discarded fetuses.”

In a checklist of egregious and shocking allegations, Gosnell, an African-American man, treated white women from the suburbs better than his other patients. White women were attended to by an actual physician (as opposed to employees impersonating one) and seated in the one clean room in the clinic: Gosnell’s office. When asked by his staff why he treated white women differently he remarked that it was “the way of the world.”

Those who want to see all abortion illegal have charged there’s a media blackout on this case. Those who’ve read the report can see this case is about the horrors of illegal abortions. What Gosnell did was not legal, hence why he’s in jail.

The grand jury report sums it up, “We think the reason no one acted is because the women in question were poor and of color, because the victims were infants without identities, and because the subject was the political football of abortion.”

This political football is really at the core of how this clinic was able to operate. It was only shut down due to an investigation of illegal prescription drug activity. If Gosnell would have just stuck to butchering women of color, he’d likely still be open for business.

I’ve written extensively about criminalized abortion, abortion clinics and fake abortion clinics where no doctors work and false medical information (and no health care) is state funded. One piece won an award and the panel of judges possibly doubled the readership of the exposé.

These stories are hard to sell. There’s no demand for these articles. If these tales were centered on erectile dysfunction, there’d be greater public interest and a coinciding news hole. But there’s not. Editors don’t really like stories about abortion. Abortion is icky. It’s a “women’s issue” about their nether regions—way off down there. Abortion is not a happy story. It’s why it’s quietly omitted from publications due to logical editorial decisions everyday.

Women’s publications can’t ONLY cover abortion or they’ll go out of business. So the trumped-up outrage over the alleged lack of press on the Gosnell case is ill-considered. Even John Boehner, the Speaker of the House of two Congresses that have voted to criminalize abortion dozens of times, has jumped onto that conspiracy bandwagon, tweeting: “The American people deserve to hear the whole story about the #Gosnell.”

But those who want to see abortion go back in the shadows are amiss in wanting the “whole story” of Gosnell to be told. The “whole story” is that Boehner and the GOP would rather have more Gosnells practicing illegal abortion than places where women can obtain safe medical care.

So as cynical and pessimistic as it is, Gosnell summed it up best: “It’s the way of the world”—the world of illegal abortion.

@tinadupuy

I was raised as a creationist. I’d come home from school with a brain full of evolution and an enthusiasm for T-Rex and my mother saw it as her mission to put an end to it. To counter my indoctrination she’d say, “Dinosaurs and people were alive at the same time.” The world, she explained, was created in six days. All the animals were there at once. “Why were there no dinosaurs anymore,” I asked? Her answer: “They were too big to get on the boat.” (Noah’s ark.)

Other times she would just go for the shorthand: “Your teacher lies to you.”

For most of my elementary school attendance that was the line: What they’re telling you in school is wrong. When I asked why we had to go to school since they didn’t tell us the truth, she said because that was the law.

The cruelest lie from my teacher was about Santa Claus who was billed as giving toys to all kids who were good. All kids except for poor kids … which were us.

Evolution before the high school years meant very little to me. I was much more incensed about not being able to believe in Santa Claus. Every philosophical debate with my mother started with my adamant pro-Santa position backed by hours of holiday films and ended with a theological stalemate where I doubted my mother’s credibility.

By the time I was old enough to read on my own (my mother refers to all non-bible tomes as “devil books”) creationism was quickly dismissed as nonsense. Great minds had suspected evolution far before Charles Darwin’s, “Origin of the Species,” going back to the ancient Greeks and Chinese. There’s plenty of self-evident evidence (see: the flu virus). Yes, it’s just a theory, but so is gravity.

I say this because I don’t think creationism hurts children any more than Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or the Tooth Fairy. These are myths we’re told as kids, find out they’re not true and go on to tell them to our own kids. It’s tradition; who cares? My mother had every right to fill my head with all of the weird ideas in hers (she also believes in the End of Days which explains her love of Fox News).

It’s the teaching of creationism in schools that’s the issue. First off: you don’t “teach” creationism, you deny science, evidence and reason with a story. Second: Going to the doctor instead of praying is already putting faith in science over religion. That debate is over (unless you’re a Christian Scientist). “Teaching the controversy” is teaching two myths: creationism and that there’s a lack of scientific consensus on evolution. There’s a lack of political consensus on creationism, but that’s it.

We don’t teach the differing opinions in physical education. We don’t say that exercise is what science says is healthy but it’s just a theory and then offer up crackpot alternatives to exercise. We leave that to parents.

The creation myth doesn’t harm children; creationism harms schools. Universal public education is there for the public good (a phrase Republicans replaced with the word “takers”). If they’re not teaching basic science then they’re not doing what we need them to do. The integrity of our public schools is what’s at risk.

Right now, in 2013, states like Montana, Missouri, Oklahoma, Indiana and Arizona are considering bills to discredit their public schools with 1^st century stories about our origins; or even worse with a more recent “creationism-lite”—the misnomer Intelligent Design.  These so-called Academic Freedom bills have been voted down over and over again, but like the mythical nine-headed Hydra, once one head is removed, two heads grow back armed with legal loopholes and code words for creationism.

In Louisiana, where their “academic freedom” bill was signed by the governor in 2008, private schools that now receives taxpayer voucher money are reported to tell their students the Loch Ness Monster (another mythical creature) is proof evolution never happened. The state is third worst in the nation for math and science.

In the Information Age we’re letting our schools erode.

And with some irony, devolve.

@tinadupuy

Since incumbent Republicans are in favor of gay marriage it’s clear—gays are out. Recently Senator Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Senator Mark Kirk (R-Illinois) have endorsed marriage equality. LGBTs are no longer that group Republicans can win elections by promising to keep them away from us. The GOP swore to protect marriage and on their watch the altar was altered anyway. Now the party of Lincoln is gay-friendly or at least not as successfully gay-hostile.

Also Latinos can no longer be characterized as an invading force hell bent on killing us all (remember “the fajita flu?”). Self-deportation, a Republican policy idea to make this country so unpleasant for people who appear to be Mexican that they leave, has attempted to self-deport since Republicans figured out Latinos are also votantes (voters). They are now reaching out to Latinos or as Senator Rand Paul said at the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, “I am a fan of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.”

With no more gays and Latinos to kick around, who’s next? I’m guessing Republicans are not going to run on sound public policy ideas. It’s not that I’ve become cynical watching the Grand Old Party gain ground by telling minority groups to get off their lawn. It’s just that I’m a realist. Republicans have enjoyed the fruits of the Southern strategy (aka the art of blaming “the others”)—it’s not easy to just turn that off.

Who’s next? Perhaps people on food stamps: currently one fifth of the country.

Conservatives have already shown a healthy disdain for people who receive any government aid but reserve special scorn for those on food stamps. About 47.8 million Americans are on the program. During the election, presidential candidate, Newt Gingrich said, “The African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.” People on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) are at an all-time high because well, poverty is at an all-time high. Who’s easier to raise your voice at than the voiceless? I mean, the working-impoverished should be clever enough to ask their parent’s for a loan, right? Republicans should be licking their chops to get a bite out of America’s hungry.

But let’s not forget children on welfare!

Tennessee lawmakers have floated a bill to deduct 30 percent of benefits from families on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families if children don’t get good grades. These kids are getting free school plus a whopping $185 a month for their family to live on?! The poor kid in school everyone picked on for wearing the same sweater every day? Up till now they’ve had it too easy. They could be crowned the Republican’s new welfare queen!

Don’t forget non-Christians!

North Carolina Republicans have introduced a bill saying the part of the First Amendment specifying the state shouldn’t establish a religion doesn’t apply to them. The bill reads: “Each state in the union is sovereign and may independently determine how that state may make laws respecting an establishment of religion.” An official state religion? Why has no one thought to do this before?! Why has no one looked at Saudi Arabia and thought, “This place is great! We should make North Carolina more like it!” But since Americans have made the mistake of letting Buddhists, Hindus, Atheists, Muslims, Jews and Scientologists live here, now they can redeem themselves by letting the GOP malign them to turn out the Republican base.

I’m sure there are many more for Republicans to choose from. Hatred of the French is cyclical. Scientists have an annoying way of disagreeing with Republicans. “Sluts” should also get at least an honorable mention as a potential group. Since conservatives have been against certain kinds of marriages, single mothers have gotten a pass. They could make a comeback. But as long as Republicans don’t stand for anything other than freedom for corporations, they will need to find a group of people to be their boogieman.

Without gays and Latinos, Republicans are just cradling their crosshairs with nothing to point it at. But don’t worry, they’ll find one soon enough.

@tinadupuy

A colleague of mine quipped the other day that the only religion he believes in is his own. “Sure,” I countered. “You piously believe in your own opinion.”

Which pretty much sums up every debate I’ve ever had on religion. Liberals will tell you Jesus was a Middle Eastern Jewish hippie who hated money and communed with the outcasts of Roman society. He threatened the status quo and was executed for it. From this narrative “real Christianity” means challenging authority and helping the poor and the disenfranchised. It’s an all-inclusive religion based on tolerance and peace. Also they’re vehemently opposed to capital punishment.

Conservatives will tell you Jesus battled Satan. They see Satan everywhere: Muslims, Jews, Communists, single women, sex, homosexuals, hippies, Satanists, Atheists, rock music, rap music, facial hair, the Pope, Obama, government spending, China, drug use and (the one I’m totally on board with) yoga. In their Bible there’s war and punishment. There are rules, and if you follow them you don’t incur god’s wrath. It’s simple, it’s rigid and it’s biblical. “Tolerance” is code for Christians being persecuted for their beliefs. Also Jesus loved guns.

In the 1700-year history of Christianity there have been revitalizations, revisions, reformations and Mormons. Christianity is eternally getting back to the true meaning of Truth. It’s a battle over who holds the deed to the proverbial Garden of Eden. Christians disagree with other Christians as to what Christians believe.

The point is: Religion has the charm of conforming to one’s opinion. Christendom has been splintered since the moment it was dubbed Christendom.

The reason? Religion is subjective.

Every group thinks they are the ones doing it right; others are mistaken. Church is a marinade of confirmation bias.

Nowhere is this more tangible than the debate over same sex marriage. Those who have a visceral dislike of homosexuality have decided their version of Christ would also condemn gay rights. Those who think love is the ultimate virtue think their version of Christ is pro-all-marriage. Those who oppose it will point out parts of the Bible that agree with them. Those who are for it will point out the parts of the Bible that agree with them.

Religion and opinion could be synonyms in most instances.

(Author’s note: I will get emails this week telling me that I’m wrong about Christianity and that the real Christianity is something that the writer believes in. The letters will tell me I’ve missed the mark and try to persuade me to their belief of their beliefs. It will happen. It’ll come from very nice, well-meaning people without a sense of irony.)

Which is why a piece of legislation like Kentucky’s House Bill 279, also known as the Religion Freedom Act, should give us all pause. The state’s House Democrats overrode the Governor’s veto to pass the law this week. The real push, I suspect, to fast track this bill comes from church leaders who are paranoid they could lose their tax-exempt status if they openly denounce homosexuality, so they clamored for a shield. The (now) law reads there should be no burden placed on a person’s “freedom of religion.” It then specifies: “A ‘burden’ shall include indirect burdens such as withholding benefits, assessing penalties, or an exclusion from programs or access to facilities.”

The faithful don’t want to be discriminated against for discriminating. Of course they don’t, being discriminated against is awful.

HB 279 is opposed by anyone who’s ever been on the wrong side of vehemence. It gives Kentuckians the right to ignore laws they disagree with based on their opinion/religion. It’s the right to act on prejudice. Or as one supporter told a Focus on the Family affiliate, the bill’s aim is “to practice their beliefs in the open.”

So the question is where does my religious opinion end and your civil rights begin? Does my conviction trump your liberties? It’s a showdown of rites versus rights.

When it comes to equal protection my faith is in the U.S. Constitution rather than the Bible.

@tinadupuy

Why haven’t these clever secularists tried to take over Easter just like they’ve allegedly hijacked Christmas? What’s taking them so long?

Bill O’Reilly deciphered the secret scheme to de-Christian Christmas. On his Christmastime program last year he said, “I absolutely agree 100 percent that the diminishment of Christianity is the target and Christmas is the vehicle because the secularists know the opposition to their agenda—legalized drugs is in that as well—comes primarily from the Judeo-Christian traditionalist people.”

Smother the Christmas and then couples with two grooms will get survivor benefits! Afterwards it’s meth and abortions for all! A reasonable plan.

Every year O’Reilly and his ilk talk about this plot, evidenced by major retailers using the phrase “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Of course “holiday” is a contraction of “holy days,” so their dander is clearly canned snow. But that doesn’t stop it from showing up every December.

Part-term Alaska governor Sarah Palin recently announced her bandwagon hop onto the seemingly one-sided War on Christmas with her upcoming book, “A Happy Holiday IS a Merry Christmas.” (Which is like saying, “A happy Administrative Assistant’s day IS a joyous Secretary’s Day!”) In a statement, Palin said the book “will encourage all to see what is possible when we unite in defense of our faith and ignore the politically correct Scrooges who would rather take Christ out of Christmas.”

Dickens’ Ebenezer Scrooge was a rich miser who had contempt for the poor and the working class. He would totally be against food stamps, social security and Medicare. In short, Scrooge, like Palin, would likely be invited to speak at CPAC and other Americans for Prosperity-sponsored conferences. Palin would hang out with Scrooge in the greenroom.

But let’s say those who are convinced there’s an effort to downgrade Christmas by not commercializing the religious aspect enough are right—why have these cunning secularists left Easter untouched?

Why does the outrage machine not crank up around the end of February to “take back Easter from the godless?”

After all, Easter is named after the Teutonic goddess of fertility, Ēostre. So Walmart using the term “Happy Easter” isn’t playing up the Christian part of the holy day. Eggs are pagan symbols of fertility. Same with bunnies (as in “reproduce like a”). It’s ripe to accuse secularists of trying to make it more about spring and re-birth than Jesus’ resurrection.

So why haven’t they?

I’ll try to answer that with numbers. Americans spend about $16 billion on Easter ($2 billion just on candy) and on Black Friday (Friday named after the Anglo-Saxon goddess Frige), the day after Thanksgiving which marks the beginning of the Christmas buying season, Americans spend around $52 billion. In total we spend in the area of $500 billion on Christmas.

There is a “war on Christmas” because there are spoils to be had over Christmas. There’s a giant Christmas pie and each slice is worth fighting for. If Easter raked in nearly half a trillion in sales, the outragemeisters would suddenly claim it was under attack by pagans trying to obscure the Christian message by making it about pastel colored eggs.

Yes, there would be books, possibly one by Palin’s ghostwriter, about the War on Easter and the over-commercialization of the holy day means you need to buy the book. Better yet, buy some as gifts—there’s a price break at 10!

This stems from the prosperity gospel. It’s where Christians conflate Jesus with Ayn Rand and believe that wealth is a sign of god’s grace and poverty is proof of his contempt. It makes for profit-seeking prophets. So instead of indignation that materialism is corrupting the message of Christ, the umbrage is aimed at mall Santas having the gall to sit near signs reading, “Happy Holidays!”

So why isn’t there a war on Easter? Because there’s really no money in it. It’s not worth the fight since there’s so little payoff. It’s the same reason no one has ever invaded Antarctica.

But conversely, if there were a plan to destroy Christian holidays, Easter would be a great place to start.

The self-appointed watchmen are too busy cashing in on Christmas to notice.

@tinadupuy

I’ve been assured my in-laws don’t read my column. However, because of their mix of shame, guilt and blame, I’ll be vague on some details. They’ve fallen on hard times. No one wants to talk about it, let alone have it written about and syndicated.

But I think their story is illustrative:

My in-laws live in a generic suburb of modest mid-century tract homes in the middle of strip mall sprawl. They have a well-attended lawn; two mid-range cars in the driveway, a loyal lab mix sleeping on the porch. They both worked in middle management in not-important-enough-to-name small businesses tangentially related to serving the housing industry for over 20 years each. They paid off their mortgage. Their son, my husband, was the first in their family to attend college. During the housing boom they looked at the massive amount their small three-bedroom home was worth and opted not to partake in the equity, but knew it meant they were secure.  The future was bright.

In short: They were living every part of the real American Dream. Not the grandiose one where we’re all millionaires or soon-to-be millionaires. The one where we all have a job, a home and our kids are better off than we were. My in-laws had that.

The middle-class mantra since the Great Depression has been if you do the right thing, you’ll be ok. Work, save, pay bills, pay your taxes. You know—be responsible. Those in the middle-class believe everyone gets the opportunity for success, and failure is something you choose. So when bad times fall on those in the middle-class, it’s assumed it’s because of some moral shortcoming. Drugs, gambling, divorce—something they did. Something they therefore could have avoided doing. These tales become suburban parables, gossip with a moral to the story. “So and so had that shopping addiction and now the house is for sale. Tsk. Tsk.”

You’re familiar with the next part of this story. Giant, faceless, soulless corporations gambled, colluded, lied, stole and were otherwise reckless in their deregulated pursuit of profits. These conglomerates were so giant, in fact, they had to be immediately saved by the same government. Too big to fail: the premise of every monster movie ever made.

My in-laws had no part in any of that. They just faithfully and unwittingly paid their taxes to prop up companies like Bank of America. They also pay for government that doesn’t represent them; it instead represents Citigroup.

My mother-in-law was the first to be laid off. A few months later, her husband’s company also downsized. They’re 55 and 56 years old. Too young to retire, too old to be hired. Their health insurance is $1,000 a month each. That’s $24,000 a year just for health insurance (for perspective: the annual salary for a minimum wage worker is $15,000). They’re still a decade away from Medicare.

Their unemployment insurance has, of course, run out. They’ve yet to find work. Their house is worth half of what it was during the boom. They don’t travel. They don’t buy anything. They don’t have much of a choice. Their savings is going quickly.

What happened to them is government and corporations got together to make life fuller (richer) for corporations. Wealth was redistributed away from the middle and went to the very very top. The term a “government by the people” was said with a wink as vampiric corporations were thought of as … people. “People” that do business in the U.S. but magically exist in the Caymans. Yes, coming from a victim, this sounds like a conspiracy theory. “They” raided my in-laws’ retirement.

But really: Their golden years did go to Goldman Sachs.

As Congress shortsightedly wants to outlaw abortion, bicker about debt-ceilings, vilify those on food stamps and take more recesses than the average kindergartener—the middle-class is an abstraction. The middle-class is just a thing they mention to try and mask being an elitist, beltway insider, corporate toady.

But the real middle-class—the actual human beings—are not getting help from the politicians they voted for. Instead, the politicians they voted for are helping the companies that the middle-class, in turn, is forced to subsidize.

It’s not a theory, it’s a conspiracy fact.

@tinadupuy

In Reykjavik, Iceland there is the Icelandic Phallological Museum boasting of the world’s largest collection of penises. For around $20 U.S. you can gawk at the members of many different species: some human. Most in jars. Some more jarring than others. In Lima, Peru the Museo de Larco has an enormous collection of pre-Columbian pottery. One section is devoted solely to “erotic pottery” some pre-dating the Inca and others pre-dating Christ. I’m not spoiling anything here: There are a lot of clay pots representing the male anatomy. In Bhutan it’s a custom to paint a phallus on the front of your home for fertility.

Lest we think for a moment we are somehow beyond Freud’s third stage of psychosexual development, look no further than the gazillions of dollars made off of Viagra and Cialis in this country. Not to mention all the coy commercials with sexy-seeming middle aged dudes we’re now all subjected to.

I relay this because I’ve traveled, I’m married to a dude and I’ve left my apartment occasionally, so I therefore realize and am sensitive to the preoccupation the men of our species have with their manhood. I understand.

But last Tuesday when anti-male-circumcision activists from a group called Intaction (you’d be forgiven for guessing they were called U.S. Uncut), interupted President Clinton at a Clinton Foundation Millennium Network talk in New York, someone had to take umbrage with the outrage.

They were there, eight members strong, to protest Clinton’s support for male circumcision in Africa to battle their very real AIDS crisis.

That’s right, someone is trying to do something about the AIDS epidemic in Africa and there’s a group unrelated to anyone dying of AIDS in Africa protesting one of the tactics. Not because those tactics don’t work (there’s a lot of evidence that they do), but because they personally don’t like them.

I also want to mention that I am very sympathetic to activists. I’ve spent a lot of time with activists. They believe they can change the world because other activists have done just that. They are more sensitive than the rest of us, that’s what makes them activists. In that way they’re our conscience, screaming at us to do the right thing. Even if I vehemently disagree with the cause, I respect taking a stand.

With that being said: Really? Male circumcision?

On Intaction’s website there’s a woman holding a picket sign that reads: “Circumcision removes the most sensitive part of the penis.” Like I said, I’m married, to a dude—therefore (very) skeptical of that claim. There’s really no evidence of that being true in any study (funded or anecdotal).

But my main issue is: of all the things that one can chose as the evil they must devote their lives to stamping out … this is it? Not famine, war, disease, poverty, pollution, corruption, child abuse, slavery, exploited sex workers, exploited children, sweatshops, union busting, soda size-shrinking, forest razing, coal mining, whaling, shark finning, the prison industrial complex, the death penalty, illiteracy, female genital mutilation, AIDS in Africa, being Jamie Dimon, bullying, disenfranchisement, predatory lending, being Walmart, being Monsanto, being any subject of any documentary on Netflix, being Netflix, pornography, child pornography, United Airlines (I don’t forget), censorship, racism, sexism, classism, high taxes, low taxes, handicap access and any land use issue within 10 miles of your home? Not one of those is more important than the extreme ick factor (because it’s not supported by data) of a ubiquitous snip on your extremity?

Not to trivialize anyone’s personal connection—no actually I do want to trivialize it. It seems rather shortsighted to dedicate a bunch of one’s time to being that self-righteous about something that myopic.

What’s really disingenuous about this “cause” is the claim that men are the victims of what they call mutilation. They equate male circumcision with female circumcision, which is false. They also have the gall to compare themselves to the Jews during WWII.

Men have more power than women; historically, currently and otherwise. It’s creepy to have superiority and be a crybaby. It’s like Kim Jong Un feeling sorry for himself.

Call it a-few-inches-below-your-navel-gazing. It’s called junk. It’s just not more important than the estimated 22 million people with HIV/AIDS—70 percent of the world’s cases—in Africa.

Seriously, grow up.

@tinadupuy

Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, now referred to as Factious Disorder by Proxy or FDbP, is where a parent or caretaker enjoys the attention of having a sick child so they exaggerate and sometimes induce their victim’s symptoms. Children are made to be sick; parents are given sympathy for their seeming stoicism. It’s adulation-seeking via child abuse.

In this case the caretaker is Congress (specifically the Republican-controlled House) and the thing they’re enjoying making unwell is, well, us: the country, our economy, postal services, meat inspections, air traffic control, infrastructure, law enforcement, military, credit rating, commerce, and every other part of a country thought of around the globe as a super power.

This disorder can sometimes be traced to an early legit emergency, where the caregiver with FDbP first experiences the rush of admiration they’ll later crave. For the GOP it’s probably September 11, 2001. It was on that day the then-leader of the Republican party (the same dude the GOP no longer acknowledges exists, they’ll even listen to Mitt Romney speak before uttering his name) finally got to do everything he wanted without question — all with an over (and brief) 80 percent approval rating. He preemptively invaded Iraq without paying for it, flattened wages, made the rich richer and transformed higher education into a profit-driven industry. More importantly he got Democrats to shut up while he pretended drunken-sailor-spending was compassionate conservatism.

So the idea was planted: The country in peril equals Republicans to the rescue! Even more important: Republican ideas — no matter how unsound — getting implemented.

“My child is SICK — quick cut taxes!!”

And when deregulating the banking industry led to widespread fraud and abuse that ended up buckling our economy — causing another crisis — again Republicans got to do what they’ve always wanted; privatize profits and nationalize losses. The Republican-president-who-will-not-be-named bailed out the banks – those bastions (bastards) of the alleged and largely make-believe free market, saying famously, “I’ve abandoned free market principles to save the free market system.”

Which is akin to saying you’ve abandoned religion to save the church.

“My baby is running a fever! Hurry up and give wealthy white-collar criminals money and immunity!!”

After Republicans lost the White House in 2008 they decided if Obama succeeds, it’ll be bad for them. It was about getting back those glorious not-spoken-about-GOP-president years when they could rack up debt and use the word “liberal” like it means skin lice. And as soon as the GOP got control of the House the government has been on the verge of a shutdown virtually every month.

Republicans get to hold vigils (press conferences) lamenting the suffering of the country they’ve sworn to protect, while we all stare at our televisions with a creepy feeling and a suspicion we’re not quite able to place.

Republican Factious Disorder by Proxy: “We love our country; we’re the unsung heroes of this inexplicable illness (we’re inducing). All we ask is that you’ll make our monument on the National Mall tasteful.”

Our ailments are fabricated by Republicans and the antidotes are also fabricated by Republicans. Our spending problem? They made it and now only they can fix it. Our deficit? “Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter,” said Veep Dick Cheney. Now? They matter. Especially to Republicans who like to use the word “Reagan.” They’ve shown their willingness to shut down the government (downgrading our credit in the process) to reduce the deficit. They’re basically sabotaging the country and calling it, laughably, patriotism. Or even worse — common sense.

Obama, for his part, keeps on trying to govern by consensus with a Republican party that waits for consensus so they can oppose it.

They have to, in effect, abandon their principles in order to save their principles (see: the individual mandate; Chuck Hagel; the DREAM Act etc.).

Make sense? Of course not. It’s still a guiding ideology for the party of Bush, post-Bush.

We have a factious disorder because of our factually dysfunctional opposition party. Budget showdown, debt-ceiling, fiscal cliff, sequestration – these are all symptoms of grand scale Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome.

Yes, it’s twisted. And yes, we’re sick … and tired of it.

In 2004, the families of eight gunshot victims sued the manufacturer and dealer of the Bushmaster XM-15 used in the DC Sniper rampage for negligence. They won. The NY Times reported, “Under the terms of the settlement, Bushmaster Firearms Inc. of Windham, Maine, the gun’s maker, will pay $550,000 to the victims’ families; Bull’s Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, Washington, the gun dealer, will pay $2 million.”

What about the families from the Amish schoolhouse shootings? Virginia Tech? The 2007 Northern Illinois University shooting? The Gabby Giffords shooting in Tucson? The Carson City, Nevada IHOP massacre in 2011? The Aurora Theater shooting? Or the parents of the first-graders gunned down in Newtown?

Those families will never have their proverbial day in court with gun dealers thanks entirely to what is known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005. A Republican House and Senate sent George W. a piece of legislation shielding gun dealers and makers from lawsuits, ensuring they cannot be held liable for any crimes committed with their products.

In essence it curbs the rights of Americans to obtain redress for wrongs—the basic idea of tort laws.

Wayne LaPierre said of the Arms Act, “This is a historic day for freedom. I would like to thank President Bush for signing the most significant piece of pro-gun legislation in twenty years into law. History will show that this law helped save the American firearms industry from collapse under the burden of these ruinous and politically motivated lawsuits.”

This act of Congress wasn’t about the Second Amendment. It wasn’t about individual rights whatsoever. It was based on the Commerce Clause of the Constitution—commerce, meaning business regulations, not personal liberty.

So let’s recap: The ATF doesn’t have a full-time agency head. It’s under-funded and unable to criminally prosecute gun dealers and straw purchasers. Studies have indicated straw purchasers are the number one way guns flood our streets and get into the hands of “bad guys.” The agency that should be cracking down on this doesn’t have the funding or the leadership. And thanks, again, to the Feds (Congress) weapon profiteers can’t be held civilly liable either. What a wonderful time to be a gun manufacturer.

These arms dealers get to spend their profits to spread Obama-will-take-away-our-guns propaganda, hence driving up sales of their deadly products which are all reward and no risk to them.

It’s like the Wild West but the Wild West had more gun control enforcement.

The Arms Act hoped also to thwart a trend of lawsuits by cities and counties claiming they were picking up the tab for gun violence which could be avoided if the manufacturers made weapons safer (trigger locks etc.), to save the industry from becoming the “next tobacco.” The Detroit Free Press reported in 1999, gun violence cost taxpayers $850 million a year in medical care, increased security, prison costs, lost tax revenues, decreased property values, police salaries and court costs. New Orleans was the first city to try and make the case that gun manufacturers were in fact negligent.

But not now. Not after the GOP gleefully passed the Arms Act.

The industry has lobbied to give themselves blanket immunity. Those who make their living off of making and selling deadly weapons have never had it so good. There is no other industry that gets this kind of freedom. They’re free from innovation and market forces. There’s no other industry (especially one that can easily be held responsible for so many American deaths) that isn’t susceptible to criminal OR civil entanglements. It’s a charmed industry Congress rigged to be successful and bullet proof. If only we all could be so lucky.

From the street level gun dealers’ golden era looks distinctly dystopian.

Any talk of gun safety needs to include tort restoration. Give us back our right to take manufacturers who neglect to make their products safer to court. Give us back our right to hold dealers accountable when they turn a blind eye to selling to straw purchasers and the mentally ill.

Gun owning is about personal responsibility? Then gun dealing should be too.

@tinadupuy