House Republicans routinely herald the hard work they have done in passing the 30-some "jobs bills" in the slideshow below, while they antagonize the Senate for its failure to act on the measures. But economists warn that the House-passed bills won't do much to create jobs -- which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says is the explanation for why the bills have stalled.
GOP Republican Jobs Bills Won't Actually Create Jobs, Say Economists
House Republicans routinely herald the hard work they have done in passing the 30-some "jobs bills" in the slideshow below, while they antagonize the Senate for its failure to act on the measures. But economists warn that the House-passed bills won't do much to create jobs -- which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) says is the explanation for why the bills have stalled.
GOP Debate WarMongers Target Iran - Miltary Industrial Complex
The biggest of which must be: to someone out there who's hurting, they spend the whole two hours yammering away about earmarks and illegal immigrants and contraception and every other peripheral, wish-I-had-the-time-to-worry-about-it issue they can think of.
Then there is the elephant of how they all -- with the sometime exception of Ron Paul -- nod along to insane statements just because they don't want to ever look like they're to the left of anybody, on anything, especially the evilness of Barack Obama. So Wednesday night when Newt said the president of the United States had a history of practicing infanticide... yep, yep, yessir, that's what he does all right. Clubs infants like baby seals in his spare time. Ike played golf, Kennedy liked boating...
Ron Paul said foreign aid just helps our enemies. Which, I believe, would make Israel and Egypt our two biggest enemies. Yup, yup, hate foreign aid. A meaningless percentage of the budget, btw.
Newt said where government becomes the central provider of services, it's a move towards tyranny -- yeah, except in all the countries where it isn't, like all of Scandanavia and much of Europe. Today a barium enema paid for by medicare, tomorrow Poland.
And isn't a highlight of every debate when Mitt Romney takes umbrage at being accused of the best thing he ever did in his life -- Romneycare? Something he should be proud of? Last night he took out his dueling glove and declared that when he was governor, he made sure there was NO requirement from the church to provide morning after pills for rape victims. They will be punished with a baby, as Jesus would want. Mitt's attitude is always, "How dare you accuse me of helping people or being compassionate! Why, I'll have you know I'm every bit as much of a cold hearted bastard as any of these other pricks up here with me!"
"But Mitt, we have a picture of you giving money to a homeless person."
"I did NOT give a bum money! I was paying him to blow me!"
This Republican field over the last year has been such a comedy gold mine -- which I have compacted into a stand-up special I'm doing Thursday night, February 23, called #CrazyStupidPolitics -- it's free, and it's live-streamed on Yahoo! 10:30 Eastern (with a mindblowing announcement at the end). I apologize for the shameful plug, but I just want you to have a good laugh! Thank you Arianna, you're the best... and now back to our blog.
The biggest elephant in the room tonight for me was Satan. All day, TV news was talking about Satan because of Rick Santorum's dug-up (but, no doubt still accurate) comments about Satan from 2008. It just shows you how when someone is a nobody politically speaking -- as Santorum was in 2008 -- you can say any kind of crazy shit and it's not newsworthy. But when you are seeking the highest office in the land... in the world -- it really worries me that you believe in demons and a personified creature named Satan.
People get mad at me for using the phrase "this stupid country", which I sometimes do -- but, I'm sorry -- Satan? In 2012? This elephant is not only in the room at the debates, but everywhere on TV today where people were talking about this and not breaking down in the middle and screaming, Wait a minute -- We're modern people, surely we don't give any credence to this comic book character that was created in the bronze age!! It's barely worthy of a children's story, and people take it to the Oval Office -- Bush did -- and it affects their thinking and our lives. Why is Santorum so against contraception? Because there's a line in Genesis about not spilling your seed. A random brainfart from some desert dweller 3,000 years ago, before people knew about germs or atoms or round planets, and it gets written down and passed down and in 2012 people like Rick Santorum are still too R-word to see that, and that's why some woman in Akron, Ohio might not get birth control.
And as far as Rick's claim tonight that even though he holds these beliefs, he wouldn't legislate them? Bullshit -- he said states absolutely had the right to outlaw contraception. That's the same thing -- as an officer of the government, he should take the opposite position. Ron Paul would.
My favorite moment of the debate was the last question, when they all were asked to summarize themselves in one word: Ron Paul said "consistency," and you know what? I have no argument with that. It's true, and he's earned it.
The other ones however, I think I could find a more honest word. Mitt Romney said "resolute." I would have gone with "shapeshifter." Or perhaps "irresolute." Rick Santorum said "courage" , whereas I would have said "Bellevue." And Newt Gingrich said "cheerful." I was thinking "pus."
One other thing: in the overtime, I heard Ron Paul make the point to John King that his foreign policy was similar to Eisenhower's, how Ike avoided getting militarily involved in Vietnam or the Suez Canal and got out of Korea. Because he was a military man. Ron Paul served, also -- the other three not so much. I know it will never become law, because it would require a constitutional amendment, but I don't think it would be such a bad thing if you had to have served in the military if you wanted to be president. Kennedy also avoided war where many would not have. After him, though, we got into the era of non-servers and draft-dodgers, and used the military like a toy. Ex-soldiers understand it's not. And the president is Commander-in-Chief -- shouldn't you have served some time in an organization you're the head of?
I hope this was the last Republican debate. Well, I say that, but I'll need the material after I use up an hour of good jokes tomorrow night, so, fuck it, keep going.
Last bullshit call: In his closing statement, Rick Santorum said that in the race against the Evil One (no, not that Evil One, he was talking about Obama), the president would have the media in his pocket (yeah, except Fox News, lots of newspapers, all of radio... ), and way more money. Huh? Sheldon Adelson this week said he might give $100 million to Newt Gingrich! If he'd give that to Newt who has no chance, he might give more to Romney. And he's just one old cranky billionaire who hates Obama, there's a whole gaggle of them.
And Sheldon, if you want to blow money so bad, just walk into one of your hotels in Vegas and go to the Roulette table.
The truth GOP are to blame for the USA economy failures
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jared-bernstein
Jared bernstein ....huffington post blogger
Why, you may be wondering, do politicians refuse to take the necessary fiscal steps to dislodge the unemployment rate from its elevated perch of 9.1%? Why, to the contrary, do they seem if anything intent on austerity measure that will push it in the wrong direction?
I can think of three reasons:
1) They want the president to fail;
2) They don't believe fiscal measures will work;
3) They irrationally fear a higher budget deficit, even temporarily.
Re 1, what can anyone say? If you're willilling to throw the economy under the bus to gain political advantage, you -- not the millions hurt by your actions -- should be the one who loses his job.
Re 2, I've got more sympathy for you. Folks have a hard time accepting counterfactuals -- the idea that things would have been worse absent the Recovery Act. But the evidence is at this point pretty plain to see: here, where the economy improved while the Recovery Act was in place and stumbled as fiscal stimulus come off too soon, in the UK, where austerity is clearly stifling growth, and in southern Europe as well.
Re 3, it can't be emphasized enough that temporary spending measures, even large one, are not what drive the long-term debt problem. Note how the Recovery Act -- all $800 billion of it -- adds nothing to the growth of the debt/GDP ratio starting around now. The culprit there would be the Bush tax cuts -- it's the permanent spending, not the temporary stuff that whacks you here.
I'm all for laying the groundwork to get on a sustainable budget path once the private sector is back in the business of creating jobs for people here in America. For now, the question regarding budget deficits should be: are they large enough to help pick up the slack until that moment arrives?
David Frum...shines a light on republicans The Party Of No
Michelle had in mind items like this blogpost, in which I enumerate the ways the GOP is wrong about the present economic crisis.
That latter post prompted a rejoinder from Scott Galupo at US News. Galupo's comment is especially noteworthy since he's a former staffer to Speaker John Boehner and a writer for the Washington Times. Galupo says of my "GOP is wrong" list:
"This is, to put it mildly, an exhaustive and damning litany. But the actual point of Frum's blog post was that former Gov. Mitt Romney kinda-maybe-sorta doesn't agree with this consensus, and therefore offers the best hope (but only a "slender" hope!) that the Republican candidate will be on the right side of the 'most urgent economic issue of the day...'
"I have to ask: Dude, why are you over there? You just more or less said you're going to vote for the guy who might agree with you and not for the guy who definitely does.
"As someone who's working through these issues myself, I'm being sincere here; I'm not playing 'gotcha.' This seems like an awfully risky bet.
"David: What's the dealbreaker for you?"
Galupo's question is one I hear a lot, both from puzzled Democrats and from annoyed Republicans.
My answer begins on this basis:
Yes I am dismayed that my party is wrong on the most urgent issue of the day. But in addition to what is most urgent, I am guided by concerns that if less immediate remain very important -- and on which I trust the GOP more than I trust the party of Barack Obama.
The Republicans are the party of American nationalism. We live in a world in which powerful economic, demographic and cultural forces are breaking down the concept of the nation altogether. But if nations don't matter, why should rich Americans care about the distress of poorer Americans -- who, after all, remain inconceivably wealthy by the standards of poor Africans? The flag-and-country themes of the GOP can be kitschy. They also are the indispensable basis of any idea of social cohesion across the vast continent.
Republican policies of lower taxes, less regulation, and restrained social spending may be poor medicine for the immediate crisis. But they remain the best formula to support the longer-term growth of the economy -- way better than the Democratic preference for high taxes and opportunistic economic interventions. The difference between the U.S. growing at an average of two per cent vs. three per cent over the next decades will determine not only the life-chances of the next generation of Americans, but the power balance of the planet between the U.S. and China.
Like the late Herb Stein, my preferred approach to federal budgeting starts with national defence. Defence and national security are the supreme priority of the state. Only after fully funding defence can you then worry about the appropriate level of spending for everything else, and the appropriate level and form of taxation to pay for that spending.
I intensely oppose any aid or subsidy to particular companies or firms except in cases of the most extreme national necessity, e.g. TARP. Solyndra is only the latest example of the zeal of Democratic administrations dating back to Jimmy Carter's to solve America's energy problems by inserting government into the business of "picking winners." Now as in 1977, I say no, no, no.
The omnipresent system of racial preferences built since the late 1960s in hope of compensating for the effects of slavery and segregation is not only a moral inequity, but also a practical disaster. The gap in wealth between white and black families -- 10 times greater than the gap in income -- has widened under affirmative action. As the Pew Foundation's research shockingly demonstrates, the children of the black middle-class experience frightening downward mobility, discrediting the most basic assumption on which the racial preference system has been built. And this system is one of the most basic political commitments of the modern Democratic party.
I remember that from Teddy Roosevelt and the national parks to George HW Bush and acid rain, real progress on the environment almost always comes under Republican presidents.
Public sector unions rank as one of the most important obstacles to the improvement of public services from education to transit. And the Democrats are the party of the public-sector unions.
Democrats were wrong on crime from the 1970s through the 1990s, and I'm still mad about it.
I believe that the elected prime minister of Israel is a better judge of Israel's national security than the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs. Democratic administrations typically seem guided by the opposite theory.
I admire business people, and the GOP is the party more sympathetic to business concerns and challenges.
Modern democracies generate a choice between one party offering more public services and higher taxes and another offering fewer services and lower taxes. Under the pressure of the current crisis -- intoxicated by anti-Obama feelings and incited by talk radio and Fox -- Republicans have staked out an extreme position on the role of government. They are expressing opinions they have never acted on in office and won't act on if returned to office. They're talking to relieve their feelings, always a big mistake. I remain convinced that the Tea Party moment is a passing infatuation, a rhetorical over-indulgence, that will fade as soon as Republicans re-encounter the responsibilities of governing -- just as the Democrats' over-heated MoveOn.org type rhetoric about the war on terror was quietly retired by President Obama in favor of continuing most of the anti-terrorism policies of the Bush years. In a more normal kind of contest between the party of less (not zero) government and the party of more and bigger government, I'm with the party of less government. Especially because I feel confident that as the passions of the current crisis fade, Republicans will return to the kinds of ideas we've been advocating at my website, FrumForum.
For three years, my political party has veered in a direction I cannot follow. And if the GOP insists on framing the 2012 election as a ballot question on fiscal and monetary austerity, or if they nominate somebody manifestly incompetent to do the job of president, they're going to lose me -- and a lot more people beside me.
But I don't believe they will do either of those things. I believe that as the election draws closer, the GOP will recover its bearings and its good sense.
Those of us who publish at FrumForum have taken a stance -- not against the Republican party, but in favor of what we regard as the party's true nature, best traditions, and highest ideals. We remain confident that the party will rediscover those ideals, and as it does so, we'll be here, waiting.
GOP jostling : Prime time : SunNews Video Gallery
George Will Washington Post Column on Romney
By George F. Will, Published: October 28
The Republican presidential dynamic — various candidates rise and recede; Mitt Romney remains at about 25 percent support — is peculiar because conservatives correctly believe that it is important to defeat Barack Obama but unimportant that Romney be president. This is not cognitive dissonance.
Obama, a floundering naif who thinks ATMs aggravate unemployment, is bewildered by a national tragedy of shattered dreams, decaying workforce skills and forgone wealth creation. Romney cannot enunciate a defensible, or even decipherable, ethanol policy.
Life poses difficult choices, but not about ethanol. Government subsidizes ethanol production, imposes tariffs to protect manufacturers of it and mandates the use of it — and it injures the nation’s and the world’s economic, environmental, and social (it raises food prices) well-being.
In May, in corn-growing Iowa, Romney said, “I support” — present tense — “the subsidy of ethanol.” And: “I believe ethanol is an important part of our energy solution for this country.” But in October he told Iowans he is “a business guy,” so as president he would review this bipartisan — the last Republican president was an ethanol enthusiast — folly. Romney said that he once favored (past tense) subsidies to get the ethanol industry “on its feet.” (In the 19th century, Republican “business guys” justified high tariffs for protecting “infant industries”). But Romney added, “I’ve indicated I didn’t think the subsidy had to go on forever.” Ethanol subsidies expire in December, but “I might have looked at more of a decline over time” because of “the importance of ethanol as a domestic fuel.” Besides, “ethanol is part of national security.” However, “I don’t want to say” I will propose new subsidies. Still, ethanol has “become an important source of amplifying our energy capacity.” Anyway, ethanol should “continue to have prospects of growing its share of” transportation fuels. Got it?
Every day, 10,000 baby boomers become eligible for Social Security and Medicare, from which they will receive, on average, $1 million of benefits ($550,000 from the former, $450,000 from the latter). Who expects difficult reforms from Romney, whose twists on ethanol make a policy pretzel?
A straddle is not a political philosophy; it is what you do when you do not have one. It is what Romney did when he said that using Troubled Assets Relief Program funds for the General Motors and Chrysler bailouts “was the wrong source for that funding.” Oh, so the source was the bailouts’ defect.
Last week in Ohio, Romney straddled the issue of the ballot initiative by which liberals and unions hope to repeal the law that Republican Gov. John Kasich got enacted to limit public employees’ collective bargaining rights. Kasich, like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, is under siege. Romney was asked, at a Republican phone bank rallying support for Kasich’s measure, to oppose repeal of it and to endorse another measure exempting Ohioans from Obamacare’s insurance mandate (a cousin of Romneycare’s Massachusetts mandate). He refused.
His campaign called his refusal principled: “Citizens of states should be able to make decisions . . . on their own.” Got it? People cannot make “their own” decisions if Romney expresses an opinion. His flinch from leadership looks ludicrous after his endorsement three months ago of a right-to-work bill that the New Hampshire legislature was considering. So, the rule in New England expires across the Appalachian Mountains?
A day after refusing to oppose repeal of Kasich’s measure, Romney waffled about his straddle, saying he opposed repeal “110 percent.” He did not, however, endorse the anti-mandate measure, remaining semi-faithful to the trans-Appalachian codicil pertaining to principles, thereby seeming to lack the courage of his absence of convictions.
Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate. Republican successes down the ticket will depend on the energies of the Tea Party and other conservatives, who will be deflated by a nominee whose blurry profile in caution communicates only calculated trimming.
Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis, a technocratic Massachusetts governor who takes his bearings from “data” (although there is precious little to support Romney’s idea that in-state college tuition for children of illegal immigrants is a powerful magnet for such immigrants) and who believes elections should be about (in Dukakis’s words) “competence,” not “ideology.” But what would President Romney competently do when not pondering ethanol subsidies that he forthrightly says should stop sometime before “forever”? Has conservatism come so far, surmounting so many obstacles, to settle, at a moment of economic crisis, for this?
Obama gives in to ruthless GOP cuts against poor rich keep tax breaks
Inside The Budget Deal: Vulnerable Populations Targeted, But Family Planning Saved
First 12-04-2011 11:44 AM EDT | Updated: 12-04-2011 12:00 AM EDT
But not the budget items that are off limits during elections...both democrats and republicans avoid the big three where the most money is wasted...
WASHINGTON –- Congressional leaders unveiled their final budget deal early Tuesday, a $1.049 trillion spending plan that axes billions of dollars for some of the most vulnerable populations while preserving a handful of priorities for both parties.
The budget, which will keep the government funded through the end of September, includes an across-the-board cut of 0.25 percent to every domestic agency.
Key highlights include:
$600 million in cuts to community health centers.
$414 million in cuts to grants for state and local police departments.
A whopping $1.6 billion cut in the Environmental Protection Agency's budget, of which nearly $1 billion comes from grants for clean water and other projects by local governments and Indian tribes.
Cuts to homeland security programs for the first time ever, though much of the agency's two percent decrease stems from a $786 million cut in first responder grants to state and local governments.
A $7 million cut to the Bureau of Public Debt, which accounts for and provides reports on the debt.
A $1 billion cut to HIV and disease-prevention funds.
A $3 billion cut to agriculture programs, the biggest portion of which comes from the Women Infants and Children fund, which loses $504 million.
A $390 million cut to low-income heating assistance; Community Development Funds are cut by $942 million.
Contributions to the United Nations and other international institutions are cut by $377 million.
$45 million pulled from nuclear nonproliferation funds.
A $650 million cut to federal highway investments.
A rider tucked in by lawmakers from Western states that allows states to remove wolves from the endangered species list.
Democrats were able to preserve some of their education priorities, including keeping Pell Grant awards at $5,550 and giving a slight boost to funds for Head Start. They also prevented Republicans from slashing funds for the National Institutes of Health: The agency will absorb a $260 million cut, rather than the $1.6 billion cut sought by House Republicans.
Democrats also rescued family planning programs from elimination; instead, they will face a five percent cut. But the budget does restore the D.C. abortion ban, which prohibits the city from using federal or local funds for abortions, for five months.
Republicans can claim victory in defunding two programs under health care reform: the Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan and Free Choice Voucher programs. They also succeeded in eliminating several of the Obama administration’s “czars” for healthcare, climate change, autos and urban affairs.