Category Archives: budget
Hard To Believe Dept. – Where Economic Strategies Come From
Former President George W. Bush is writing a book on—wait for it—strategies for economic growth.
Yeah, that George W. Bush.
The one who ate up our budget surplus that he inherited after the Clinton administration and turned it into massive debt. The one who got us into this great recession BEFORE Obama ever took office.
As the Economic Policy Institute put it best of all:
“…between the end of the 2001 recession (2001Q4) and the peak of that expansion (2007Q4), the U.S. economy experienced the worst economic expansion of the post-war era.”
So, unless Bush calls his book “What I Did Wrong” I’m not sure anyone will take it with any seriousness.
Thanks to All Hat, No Cattle.
The real war on coal
My friend Sean O’Leary wrote this well researched op-ed in the Martinsburg Journal, and I reproduce it here in its entirety… maybe now we can get Bob Manchin off Obama’s ass…
Much is made of President Obama’s and the Environmental Protection Agency’s “war on coal”. And it’s true. In order to reduce air pollution and retard global warming, this administration, along with the governments of nearly all industrialized nations, is trying to reduce the burning of coal for the generation of electricity.
But, how much of a difference are the president’s policies making on the amount of coal that’s mined and on the number of jobs in the mining and power generation industries? In fact, let’s ask the big question. If this president is swept from office in November and the EPA’s power to regulate carbon dioxide emissions is removed, as presumed Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, has said he would do, what would it mean for America’s coal industry?
Would there be a rebirth? Would coal-burning power plants that are currently slated for closing become viable again? Would new coal-burning power plants be built to meet the growing demand for electricity? Would mines that have been closed be reopened? And would there be a rebound in hiring creating thousands of new jobs in the mining industry?
If you believe that the answer to any of these questions is, yes, you haven’t been paying attention to the market forces that, far more than government action, are killing coal in general and the Appalachian coal industry in particular.
What are those market forces? First, there is natural gas.
If the Obama administration is conducting a “war” on coal, then the English language hasn’t invented a word of sufficient ferocity to describe the conflict between coal and natural gas. Although West Virginia politicians are loath to admit it, every new gas well that’s sunk in West Virginia is another nail in the coffin of coal. Why?
The practice of fracking has greatly increased supplies of natural gas and reduced the price to the point that it costs only half as much to generate a megawatt of electricity from natural gas as from coal half as much.
That’s warfare. And, in case you’re under the delusion that the competition between coal and gas is friendly, consider that between 2007 and 2010 Aubrey McClendon, CEO of Chesapeake Energy, the largest gas driller in West Virginia, donated $26 million to the Sierra Club’s campaign to block the construction of coal-fired power plants. Just last month McClendon did a victory dance when a Wall Street Journal writer asked him about his reputation as “the scourge of coal”. McClendon said, “I probably am not as strident as I used to be because I don’t have to be. Natural gas has won in the marketplace and it is continuing to win.”
Far more than the president’s “war on coal”, the natural gas industry’s war has had measurable effects. Last year the amount of the nation’s electricity generated by coal dropped by 8.9 percent and coal is now responsible for less than 40 percent of the electricity generated in the US. This was partially attributable to warmer-than-average winter weather, but the bigger factor was natural gas which saw its volume grow by 7.2 percent.
And natural gas’s price advantage isn’t going away anytime soon. One of the reasons gas is so cheap is that the “wet gas” found in many of the Marcellus shale wells in West Virginia, also produces byproducts such as ethane, which is used in the plastics industry. At current prices, these byproducts almost double the value of natural gas. Economically this functions as a subsidy for which coal has no answer.
The second market force crushing coal in Appalachia is cost. The volume of Appalachian coal produced per miner dropped by 25 percent between 2001 and 2008. This decline in productivity is driven by the exhaustion of easily accessible coal seams and produces higher costs and reduced competitiveness in the face of the onslaught by natural gas.
The third market force killing coal is the American people.
In its April issue, Mother Jones magazine ran a story by Mark Hertsgaard documenting the virtual moratorium that has fallen upon the construction of new coal-fired power plants, particularly in the eastern part of the country. While there are just over 30 new coal-fired plants currently under construction in the US, more than 160 have been blocked often by local residents who don’t want what they perceive as a dirty industry in their back yards. The look not only at the global warming impact of coal burning, but at its effect on health as measured in elevated levels of asthma attacks and death.
By the end of the decade these combined market forces will have produced almost twice as much of a reduction in carbon emissions as would have been achieved under the proposed (and, in West Virginia, the much-reviled) cap and trade legislation that died in 2010.
Does that mean that Obama administration actions on coal are irrelevant or superfluous? Not altogether. Clean-air regulations are causing some older coal-fired power plants to be taken offline sooner than they otherwise would be because it’s not worth the cost to retrofit them with pollution control equipment. However, this is only slightly speeding up the inevitable. Those plants, like the coal industry as a whole, are dead men walking, not because of government action, but because of the free market. And the question for West Virginia’s political leaders is whether they will finally focus on building a post-coal economy rather than trying to postpone the inevitable.
– Sean O’Leary can be reached at seanoleary@citlink.net.
If Romney ever told the truth we could all go back to bed…
From Bob Cesca in The Daily Banter:
A couple of months ago in Arizona, Mitt Romney attacked the president on this topic with a whopper lie: “He said he’d cut the deficit in half. He’s doubled it. He’s doubled it.”
Mitt Romney actually said that. Well, no, the president didn’t cut the deficit in half. And he hasn’t doubled it. Obviously. Romney lied again. Actually, the president is on course to erasing the entire deficit by 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The 2017 budget deficit, which will reflect President Obama’s final spending requests (a similar dynamic to Bush’s last deficit of 2009), could end up being zero.
Conversely, the Tax Policy Center reported that the Romney tax plan would explode the deficit by nearly $3 trillion over ten years. And that doesn’t even take into consideration the reversal of the president’s deficit cutting policies like the Affordable Care Act, or another recession, or whatever Romney decides to do in Iran.
Romney is either incapable of telling the truth, or he has no intelligence to evaluate the numbers showing how things really are. Or… he is under the thumb of the not-running Republican managers and Super Pacs that are spending millions to show Obama in a false light.
It’s up to all of us to make sure the REAL TRUTH gets out and that Karl Rove, Ricketts, The Koch Brothers and all their rich buddies are dipped in wax and burned like candles.
Do not, PLEASE, do not just ignore them and let it rest. Even if you are upset with SOME things Obama has done, who do you think is more likely to change over the next four years? Republicans?
Not a chance.
Related articles
- “Out Of Egypt, Into The Red Sea”: Romney’s Cowardly Speech On The Deficit (mykeystrokes.com)
- The Romney Con (themoderatevoice.com)
- Mitt Romney rumbles through Florida, raising cash and bashing President Barack … (miamiherald.com)
- Romney, GOP try to shift focus to deficit (politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com)
- Mitt Romney Doesn’t Remember What He Said, But Stands By ‘Whatever it Was’ [Video] (gawker.com)
- Romney’s Budget Fairy Tale (nymag.com)
- When Mitt ridiculed Clinton (salon.com)
- The Romney con (prairieweather.typepad.com)
The TED Talk they tried to keep off the Net…
Young multi-millionaire Nick Hanauer gave a TED Talk that the TED folks originally refused to put up (not like them). Hanauer persisted and it is now up. If you want to hear a rich guy’s view of where jobs come from in this economy, then I URGE you to watch this one… and pass it on:
So when Romney says not to tax the wealthy because they create jobs, ask him where the jobs are.
Related articles
- Too Hot for TED: Income Inequality (nationaljournal.com)
- Question: What other TED Talks about writing and creativity do you recommend? (gointothestory.blcklst.com)
- The TED Talk That Could Spawn A City (npr.org)
- Practicality and common sense (elaine-copeland.com)
- TED-Ed (colleenyoung.wordpress.com)
- TED-Ed: Lessons worth sharing (helichrysums.wordpress.com)
Spending, Taxes and Deficits are all down…
Think Progress has raised an interesting issue:
“Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.”
“In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.
“Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.
“One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.”
So when Romney says all this stuff is going up, up, up… then we should show him our thumbs are down, down down.
Gosh, I wish I was a multi-billion-dollar Super Pac so I could match liars like Crossroads dollar-for-dollar with ads that tell the truth. What I’ve got, however, is this little blog and a growing quantity of thinking readers, many of whom are passing the word around.
Elizabeth Warren only takes 52 seconds to make it clear that Romney is out of step concerning economic regulations.
First, watch this segment from Rachel Maddow‘s show:
http://video.msnbc.msn.com/the-rachel-maddow-show/47422131#47422131
Elizabeth Warren‘s key statement on Dimon’s excuse for the J.P. Morgan fiasco and how Romney’s claim that economic regulations are stifling growth:
“You know, you really want to say did he hear what Jamie Dimon just said? Jamie Dimon’s own words were that this was stupid. This was sloppy, so stupid, and so sloppy that it wasn’t even picked up by a regulator. There was no one to say hey, wait a minute; I want to review your risk practices. I want to see the kind of risk that this huge financial institution is taking on, because we’re just about three and a half years past the time when you took on so much risk that you brought this economy almost to its knees. So the idea that Mitt Romney thinks that the banks are over regulated. It’s an alternative reality. It’s simply not true. The problem right now is that there’s not adequate regulation.”
Got it? Regulation (which we used to have in adequate amounts due to the abandoned Glass-Steagall Act) used to keep our economy safe. Romney supports big banks over small Americans. And which of these hold the majority vote (provided they are not conned by Tea Bag Republicans)?
It’s up to all of us to get educated and get the word out.
Related articles
- ELIZABETH WARREN: Jamie Dimon Should Resign From The Fed (businessinsider.com)
- Elizabeth Warren on Jamie Dimon: NY Fed. role poses conflict of interest; ‘this is about accountability’ (cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com)
- Elizabeth Warren: ‘There’s Been a Guerrilla War’ on Financial Regulations (commondreams.org)
- Elizabeth Warren seeks ouster of top JPMorgan official from New York Fed (boston.com)
- After $2B JPMorgan Loss, Senate Candidate Elizabeth Warren Calls For ‘New Glass-Steagall Act’ [FULL TEXT] (ibtimes.com)
- Jamie Dimon: “I Was Dead Wrong, We Were Sloppy… Stupid” (inquisitr.com)
- Maybe Jamie Dimon Doesn’t Understand the Situation… (delong.typepad.com)
- JPMorgan’s Dimon — What, Me Worry? (thestreet.com)
- Richard Zombeck: Below the Fold: JPMorgan’s $2 Billion Fail Whale (huffingtonpost.com)
- Dimon’s Unshakable Hubris (thedailybeast.com)
We must out-fund Monsanto’s Lobbyists (or die eating our unlabeled veggies!)
Volunteers across California are making history. On May 2nd, the California Right to Know campaign turned in nearly 1 million signatures to place a ballot initiative to label GMOs on the November 2012 ballot.
But this is only the beginning. We know that Monsanto and their minions will do everything in their power to spread lies and confuse voters. They have proven this time and again and most recently in Vermont and Connecticut where citizens in those states overwhelmingly supported bills to require labeling of genetically engineered foods.
Only a few days after voters in California qualified the historic initiative to label GMOs, Monsanto and biotech lobbyists were working behind closed doors in Connecticut to kill the bill that would have made it possible for the residents in that state to know what’s in their food.1 In the final hours of the 2012 legislative session, the biotech industry succeeded in getting Connecticut’s governor and House leaders to strip the bill of its labeling requirement as it was on the verge of passing with bipartisan support. Now, this year alone, governors in Vermont and Connecticut have both caved under the biotech industry’s threats to sue them if they pass a bill to label GMOs. This is an outrage!
While these backroom shenanigans can’t happen in California, since the ballot initiative will be put to a vote of the people, we know that Monsanto’s minions will be up to their usual dirty tricks. Already, a powerful biotech front group is starting to spread misleading stories in the media and distorting the real facts about the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act of 2012.
This has been called “the Food Fight of Our Life” and we need your help in making sure that we succeed in November.
Will you chip in to make GMO labeling a reality? Only with your help can we win in November!
We can win in California, but we need your help today! Here’s how. Between May 1 and May 26, a broad coalition of food, farm, health, public interest, and environmental groups all over the country, joined by leading organic food companies, will attempt to raise one million dollars to support the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act, a citizens’ ballot initiative, and other state GMO-labeling campaigns.
In an extraordinary gesture of support and solidarity in the fight for GMO labeling in California, Mercola.com, the largest alternative health website in the world, along with a group of leading organic companies including Nature’s Path, Lundberg Family Farms, and Eden Foods, and other nonprofit organizations, have pledged another one million dollars to the “Drop the Money Bomb on Monsanto” campaign – but only if we reach our goal of $1 million by May 26.
Please help us raise $1 million by May 26 for the California Right to Know GMO Labeling Campaign so we don’t miss out on this $1 million matching gift!
http://fdn.actionkit.com/go/591?akid=549.271844.mqPu-i&t=10
Thank you for contributing what you can today – Together we can win!
Now’s the time. Let’s drop the money bomb on Monsanto and take back our food supply!
Thanks for participating in food democracy,
David Murphy
President, Food Democracy Action!
P.S. All money raised for this campaign will go through Food Democracy Action!, a 501(c)4 allied organization of Food Democracy Now!, focused on grassroots lobbying and legislative action. Donations are not tax-deductible. Thank you for your support!
Source:
1. “GMO ‘Right to Know’ campaign in CT fails — Lawsuit threatened”, Digital Journal, May 5, 2012
http://action.fooddemocracynow.org/go/590?akid=549.271844.mqPu-i&t=12
Related articles
- You’ll Probably Accidentally Eat This Toxic Food Today (articles.mercola.com)
- Food Manufacturing Editorial – Don’t Run from GMO Labeling (foodidentityblog.com)
- GMO Legislation Update: Monsanto Trumps Democracy in Vermont, Connecticut (eatdrinkbetter.com)
- GMO Labeling Initiative WILL Be On The Ballot In CA (12160.info)
- Something Historical is About to Happen – But Your Participation is Critical (articles.mercola.com)
- California Wants to Label GMOs (eatdrinkbetter.com)
- The Toxin So Dangerous It’s Causing Catastrophic Birth Defects (foodfreedomgroup.com)
- Millions against Monsanto: The food fight of our lives (blogginghounds.wordpress.com)
- California public to vote on GMO Label Act; Biotech lies begin (blacklistednews.com)
Quote of the Day – A campaign is suspended
“I will no longer spend resources campaigning in primaries in states that have not yet voted. Doing so with any hope of success would take many tens of millions of dollars we simply do not have.”
– Ron Paul
Although his chances of winning the Republican nomination are virtually non-existent, Paul said that he and his remaining staff will spend time gathering delegates for the Republican Convention.
The Party leaders are not trying to pull Paul out of the game altogether out of fear that he will start up a third party and cut into the Romney vote. (Personally, I’d encourage him to do just that – either he believes in what he is saying or not.)
Related articles
- Paul Effectively Suspends Campaign (politicalwire.com)
- Ron Paul Suspends Active Campaigning in Future Primaries; Will Continue Delegate Strategy (thehollywoodgossip.com)
- Ron Paul 2012 To Pursue Delegate Strategy Despite Suspending Active Campaigning (ibtimes.com)
So J.P Morgan Chase got screwed on our money and will now look for a new bailout…
…Perhaps we should listen to Robert Reich:
Let’s hope Morgan’s losses don’t turn into another crisis of confidence and they don’t spread to the rest of the financial sector.
But let’s also stop hoping Wall Street will mend itself. What just happened at J.P. Morgan — along with its leader’s cavalier dismissal followed by lame reassurance — reveals how fragile and opaque the banking system continues to be, why Glass-Steagall must be resurrected, and why the Dallas Fed’s recent recommendation that Wall Street’s giant banks be broken up should be heeded.
This is the end of a great column which you can read HERE.
As to resurrecting Glass-Steagall, some don’t think it is possible, but we have to get back to regulations separating investment banks from the banks Americans save their money in. We had it like that for close to eighty years without the economic catastrophes we have now.
Thanks to Brion Emde for his overnight contribution to this blog…
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A Quote from Author (and Rich Man) Stephen King:
Mitt Romney has said, in effect, “I’m rich and I don’t apologize for it.” Nobody wants you to, Mitt. What some of us want—those who aren’t blinded by a lot of bullshit persiflage thrown up to mask the idea that rich folks want to keep their damn money—is for you to acknowledge that you couldn’t have made it in America without America. That you were fortunate enough to be born in a country where upward mobility is possible (a subject upon which Barack Obama can speak with the authority of experience), but where the channels making such upward mobility possible are being increasingly clogged. That it’s not fair to ask the middle class to assume a disproportionate amount of the tax burden. Not fair? It’s un-fucking-American is what it is. I don’t want you to apologize for being rich; I want you to acknowledge that in America, we all should have to pay our fair share. That our civics classes never taught us that being American means that—sorry, kiddies—you’re on your own. That those who have received much must be obligated to pay—not to give, not to “cut a check and shut up,” in Governor Christie’s words, but to pay—in the same proportion. That’s called stepping up and not whining about it. That’s called patriotism, a word the Tea Partiers love to throw around as long as it doesn’t cost their beloved rich folks any money.
I think Mr. King has hit the nail on the 1%er’s heads. It isn’t fair to burden the shrinking middle class with a “disproportionate amount” of the tax burden (unless, of course, they deposit their paychecks in banks on the Cayman Islands.).
Did someone say Romney had outstanding business experience?
He doesn’t seem to know much about the history of labor and the monthly creation of new jobs.
Obama just announced an increase in jobs by 115,000 in April. Romney’s comment:
“We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs per month,” Mitty said on “Fox & Friends.” “This is way, way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery.”
It could be that Romney doesn’t know what a “normal recovery” has as monthly jobs growth. During George W. Bush‘s presidency, there was never a single month in which job growth topped 400,000, let alone 500,000, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics. Think Progress pointed out:
“there have only been 16 months since 1939” in which the economy added half a million jobs in one month.
Obama inherited a more severe recession than Bush (and, of course, he inherited it FROM Bush), which meant that he had a greater need for a quick and pronounced recovery. Also, as Bush was dealing with the bursting of the dot.com bubble, September 11th happened, further elongating the timeline for recovery.
And yet, by strictly numerical measures, Obama at this point is doing better than Bush… so somebody should point this out to “Mr. Business”.
Quote of Day – on the summer of economy repair
From Sandy Underpants at The Aristocrats:
if the Obama team is any good, and I think they are, they are going to spend every penny they can spend, every squirreled away billion is going to hit the economy. if it
is possible for us to have a recovery summer, this will be the summer we get it. of course it can’t be done without fingerprints and Republicans will all squeal like a stepped on cat every time a dollar gets spent. President Obama won’t be able to have an extra squirt of
creamer in his coffee without being accused of juicing the economy. so that will be our long boring political summer. to the extent that anyone pays attention it’ll be a long boring political summer that Democrats win.
You know, I agree with him and I’ll be promoting the Democratic program here on this blog all summer.
4 and a half minutes with the Medical Industry
I blew my morning this morning with a Neurologists visit in Hagerstown. I see this doctor every six months because he has me on a prescription to not have the strange blackouts I had last year (he says they are seizures, but apparently I function normally during them…I just don’t remember what I’ve done when I recognize my surroundings again.
Anyway… it takes close to an hour to drive to this Dr.’s office, five or six minutes to go over insurance information and copay stuff with the girl at the front desk, then, being shown to a little room, I wait.
By around 10:30 I have been waiting for my 10:15 meeting with the Dr. for fifteen minutes.
Then he comes in and asks me if I’m taking my meds (yes, I say) and have I had any seizures (no, I say)…good, he says, I’ll see you in November.
My total time with the Dr. is 4.5 minutes. I don’t know how much the insurance company is paying for this, or what they are going to charge me, but my main thought is “I could have done this over the phone.”
You’d think he’d tap my knees or look in my ears or something. But he didn’t (I didn’t even get put on a scale…the girl who checked me in asked me what I weighed. I could have said anything.)
The medical world is a gaggle of thieves.
Quote of the Day – What Congress Does
Congress creates a new achievenment record…achieving nothing.
“If you were to stroll by the House chamber today — or tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that — you would arrive at the ideal time to see what the lawmakers do best: absolutely nothing.”
“It’s another recess week for our lazy leaders… By the time the Republican-led House returns next week, members will have been working in Washington on just 41 of the first 127 days of 2012 — and that was the busy part of the year. They are planning to be on vacation — er, doing ‘constituent work’ — 17 of the year’s remaining 34 weeks, and even when they are in town the typical workweek is three days.”
– Dana Millbank
And we pay these people?
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So many of you have been following this blog since 2004 that I feel like a member of a huge web community.
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I really need YOUR help to keep it going. I’m hoping you will make a small 
contribution, by PayPal or credit/debit card, in support of Under The LobsterScope. You’d be amazed at how much $5.00 can do to help me bring more and more to these pages. And it is probably the LOWEST annual subscription fee you will make to any publication… interactive or not.
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Do you believe it? Sean Hannity has a lack of knowledge…
“Mr. President where were you for three and a half years on student loans?”
Sean, of course, is trying to make everyone think that Obama has done nothing on his 2008 campaign promise to help with increasing costs of student loans. The smug smile on his face shows that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
For instance, on March 30, 2010, President Obama signed the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010, which saved $68 billion by removing banks from the student loan processing business and freed up more to be given that could be spent on helping students pay for college.
Also, he saw to it that the law stated:
“New borrowers who assume loans after July 1, 2014, will be able to cap their student loan repayments at 10 percent of their discretionary income and, if they keep up with their payments over time, will have the balance forgiven after 20 years.”
Borrowers are allowed to consolidate some of their payments and save a half of a percentage point interest. (Republicans are now trying to double the interest rate in student loans.)
President Obama has done a great deal to remove the big bank corruption from the student loan program and has made the program more about actually helping students get an affordable education, not adding to corporate bottom line.
What has Obama done for students who have loans? More that Sean Hannity’s lying heart will ever be able to admit.
—-> Thanks to Politicus USA
Related articles
- Sean Hannity Gives Cornel West And Tavis Smiley A Hard Time Over Their Poverty Initiative (mediaite.com)
- Rich Guy Sean Hannity Thinks Poor People Should Survive on Beans [The War on Welfare] (inquisitr.com)
- Hannity embarrasses himself again (respectinpolitics.org)
- House keeps lid on student loans (timesleader.com)
- Watch: President Obama on student loan interest rates (mnn.com)
- Obama Will Veto Student Loan Bill (lezgetreal.com)
- House Passes Student Loan Bill (myfoxphoenix.com)
- Obama Pushes Low-Rate Student Loans (npr.org)
Here’s your chance to get a world famous artwork… got $80,000,000?
Sotheby’s is honoured to announce that Edvard Munch’s masterpiece The Scream will lead its Impressionist & Modern Art Evening Sale in New York on 2 May 2012. The iconic work is one of the most instantly recognizable images in both art history and popular culture, perhaps second only to the Mona Lisa.
The present version of The Scream dates from 1895, and is one of four versions of the composition, and the only version still in private hands. It will be on view in London for the first time ever, with the exhibition at Sotheby’s opening on 13 April. In New York, and also for the first time ever, it will be on exhibition at Sotheby’s in advance of the sale beginning 27 April. The work is owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen, whose father Thomas was a friend, neighbour and patron of Munch.
The estimate of value is $80 Million bucks for this pastel version of Munch’s famous piece. The question is, will this remain in private hands or be purchased by a major museum, making it accessible to the public?
Of the four versions of the work, the present Scream is distinguished in several remarkable ways: it is the most colorful and vibrant of the four; the only version whose original frame was hand-painted by the artist to include his poem detailing the work’s inspiration; and the only version in which one of the two figures in the background turns to look outward onto the cityscape. This version has never before been on public view in either the UK or US, except briefly in the National Gallery in Washington D.C. decades ago.
I just checked my bank account and I can’t afford to bid on it. Can you?
Watching Romney, Boehner, Ryan and the rest of them on Television, I realize that Republicans lie.
And not just a couple of mistaken notions here and there, but outright lies…some of them so far out that I couldn’t have imagined them if I tried.
Why is it, then, that we let them keep doing it? Why do the news shows repeat these gems in their speeches without pointing out the basic lack of truth? Perhaps there is influence being peddled here.
For instance, Mitt is always saying that Obama has made the recession worse…without mentioning, of course, that the Dow hit its 4-year high and NASDAQ hit its 11-year high under the President’s time in office. Or Chrysler posted its first profit in more than a decade and expects those profits to continue growing. The industry has hired enough workers to make up for all those laid off during the recession, and American and foreign automakers plan to add 167,000 jobs at American plants this year. So how has he made the recession worse?
Romney, Ryan and others have said that taxes are skyrocketing under Obama.
In reality, the U.S. tax burden is not only hovering around a historical low — it’s also low compared to other advanced industrialized nations.
Boehner has said that the President has accomplished NOTHING in his first term, ignoring everything from wiping out Osama Bin Laden, saving the auto industry and getting his health care plan PASSED.
According to Romney: President Obama “went around the world and apologized for America.” Obama, however, has never used the word ‘apologize’ in a speech about U.S. policy or history. Any assertion that he has apologized for U.S. actions rests on an intentionally misleading interpretation of the President’s words.
The Republicans lie about everything. They deny the reality of global warming and the carbon emissions crisis. They deny the responsibility of Reagan and Bush for the deficits that they caused and that Obama inherited (along with a recession). They deny Clinton the credit for the vast economic growth that took place in 1990s as a result of his economic policies and for the fiscal sanity that his policies accomplished. They blame everything on the “liberal” academia and give credit for everything to Republicans, never mind that academic science is behind everything that business sells, and without it capitalism would be nothing more than exchange of basic commodities.
And they repeat this stuff over and over… a trick that Goering used in Nazi Germany when they had control of the media: repeat a lie often enough and people start thinking it is true.
Then there are the two big ones that Republicans try hard not to deny, but continue to perpetuate: that Obama was born in another country and that Obama is a socialist/communist trying to nationalize America’s industries (evidenced in the editorial page press by cartoonists like Glenn McCoy:
…if you see what I mean.)
So dealing with Republican lies now through November’s election is going 
to be an ongoing headache. I’ll just have to make sure that I point them out with some regularity and hope it keeps a few people from buying into this crap.
Related articles
- Boehner emerges as Romney’s chief ally on Capitol Hill (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)
- John Boehner’s blues (salon.com)
- Boehner escalates attacks on Obama (politico.com)
- Another Trumped Up Lie Goes Pop In Obama’s Face (tarpon.wordpress.com)
- John Boehner Rips Obama’s Record: President ‘Lost His Courage,’ ‘Checked Out Last Labor Day’ (mediaite.com)
Please think before you buy into the Conservative Right’s view on cutting Social Security
This article is from Just The Messenger:
There Still Is No Social Security Crisis: Truth About the 2012 Social Security Trustees Report
April 24, 2012
Excerpts:
There Still Is No Social Security Crisis
By Richard (RJ) Eskow, April 23, 2012
“‘Medicare and Social Security’ don’t have a long-term problem: Medicare has a problem. No amount of spin or double-talk can change that. This year’s slight downturn in Medicare and Social Security finances was caused by the financial crisis of 2008, as lost jobs and wages led to lost revenue for the program. And that disaster was caused by the deregulation of Wall Street, which was carried out the same bipartisan crowd that’s now pushing cuts to these programs … Now they want ordinary Americans to take a hit to both their Social Security and Medicare benefits. A Social Security cut would be needless and counterproductive, and the nation would be better served with a benefit increase … What’s more, since Social Security is forbidden by law from contributing to the deficit, it’s absurd to connect its financing to discussions of the Federal debt. Medicare’s another story. Unless we address the runaway cost of providing health care to seniors, our Federal budget and are entire economy are in dire trouble. Notice, however, that we said ‘address the runaway cost’ and not ‘shift the runaway cost,’ as the Republican proposal would do.”
,…, “Social Security is essentially healthy, and its long-term issues can be fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap. A “Grand Bargain” to cut Social Security and Medicare will only make things worse. What we really need an overhaul of our health system to remove the corrosive effects of the profit motive on our medical economy – but they don’t want to talk about that.”
,…, “The report released today by the Trustees of the Social Security Administration has already occasioned some of the usual nonsense from the wealthy and highly-funded insider group represented by Clinton and his peers in both parties”.
__________
Richard (RJ) Eskow is a well-known blogger and writer, a former Wall Street executive, an experienced consultant, and a former musician. He has experience in health insurance and economics, occupational health, benefits, risk management, finance, and information technology. He has a somewhat unique perspective on the current financial crisis, since he worked for AIG for a number of years (although not in its infamous Financial Products division).
Richard has consulting experience in the US and over 20 countries. Past clients include USAID, the World Bank, the State Department, the Harvard School of International Public Health, the Government of Hungary, as well as corporations and investors. He has experience in financial and data analysis, systems design, operations, and management.
Related articles
- Social Security And Medicare Running Out Of Money (fox2now.com)
- More Falsehoods About Social Security And Medicare (duanegraham.wordpress.com)
- Social Security Is Still Doomed Sometime in the Future Based on Questionable Assumptions (mikethemadbiologist.com)
- Social Security and Medicare: Behind the Numbers and the Spin (crooksandliars.com)
- Social Security, Medicare Reaction Reflects Partisan, Election-Year Divide (npr.org)
- Insolvency, tax cuts, military spending and social security (dailykos.com)
Business Week says Newt is wasting YOUR money….
If you thought you were as important as Newt Gingrich thinks he is, you might be asking for Secret Service Protection since you were a Presidential candidate who was likely to win.
What? Newt isn’t that important? Then why does he have the Secret Service?
Let’s ask Business Week:
His think tank went bankrupt. His campaign is $4.3 million in debt. He doesn’t hold a prayer of beating Mitt Romney, something he has all but conceded. And yet since March 6th, the Secret Service has honored his request for protection at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $40,000 a day (or, to translate that into a metric Newt might favor, enough to supply 13,333 people a day with food stamps).
…..
Candidates must meet certain benchmarks earn Secret Service protection. Oddly, though, once protection has been awarded, there is no level of support beneath which it gets revoked. Newt will only stop leeching off taxpayers when Romney becomes the nominee or when he voluntarily gives up his security detail. But the latter option would be an admission that his campaign is hopeless.
It strikes me as odd that Newt campaigns on government overspending and increase of debt. Hell, he also wants to cut lots of budgeting for the poor, so if this can be shown to keep 13,333 hungry folks away from Federally funded food stamps (ah, alliteration), then his potential as a President is obvious.
So, what is Romney planning to do if he gets elected?
Mitt Romney wants to shut down or amalgamate several US government departments if elected president, but has no plans to tell voters which ones in advance of November’s general election. However, he told some wealthy campaign donors yesterday at a Florida fundraiser when an NBC reporter caught some live comments on tape:
“I’m going to take a lot of departments in Washington, and agencies, and combine them. Some eliminate, but I’m probably not going to lay out just exactly which ones are going to go.
“Things like Housing and Urban Development, which my dad was head of, that might not be around later. But I’m not going to actually go through these one by one. What I can tell you is, we’ve got far too many bureaucrats. I will send a lot of what happens in Washington back to the states.”
When he says “far too many bureaucrats” that he wants to get rid of, remember Harry Truman‘s very old comment:
“A bureaucrat is a Democrat who holds some office that a Republican wants.”
He does seem to be planning to destroy the Education Department and many of the offices that support all those things we of the middle class depend on. If this is what you are looking for in a President from the 1%, then he pretty much admits that’s what he will be.
Related articles
- I Won’t Tell You Which Departments I’ll Eliminate (kaystreet.wordpress.com)
- The Romneys Accidentaly Told the Truth at a Private Fundraiser, and the Media Was Eavesdropping (slog.thestranger.com)
- First Thoughts: Romney’s own hot-mic moment (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)
- Romney offers policy details at closed-door fundraiser (firstread.msnbc.msn.com)
- “Don’t Tell Anybody”: Romney Offers A Peek Behind The Policy Curtain (mykeystrokes.com)
Cartoon(s) of the Week – The politics of money…
Jim Morin in the Miami Herald:
America seems to be based on the importance of money…
– and –
Ben Sargent in the Austin American-Statesman:
…and it is easy to sell the rich folks’ budget to the candidate…
– and –
Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune:
… and money leads principle in getting the nomination…
– and –
Steve sack in the Star Tribune:
…and let’s make sure the government doesn’t get what’s due…
– and –
Mike Luckovich in the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
… as long as the Middle Class gives its all.
Under The LobsterScope 