GOP: ‘No Jobs For You’
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, congress, Democrats, Economy, National Politics, Republicans, This Blog, Unemployment on October 11, 2011
Tonight’s Senate vote on President Obama’s anemic jobs bill will be nothing more than political theater, thanks to the now-standard filibuster by the Republican minority. But the audience is bored and tuning out.
A month ago, the President called for Congress to pass the American Jobs Act immediately, pointing out that it is loaded with GOP policy proposals such as an extension of the payroll tax cuts and a tax holiday for multinational corporations. These provisions of the bill won’t create any jobs, but they might help avert another recession next year. Once again, the Republicans in Congress are voting against their own ideas, hoping to prolong the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
Given that the Party of NO is automatically going to block anything he proposes, why didn’t President Obama go with a REAL jobs agenda, like the emergency jobs bill proposed by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL)? And why is Obama pursuing a job-killing trade deal with South Korea?
All the Republicans plan to do is sit tight, and blame the Obama administration. It’s all they know how to do anymore. Meanwhile the 99 Percent Movement is telling us that our political system is broken.
More info:
American Jobs Act to Be Filibustered Later Today
Because It Was Always Going to be the Same – Reflections on the crash, the stimulus and the Great Recession
Posted by Glenden Brown in 2008 Election, 2012 Elections, American History, Bailout, Barack Obama, Economy, Elections, This Blog, Unemployment on October 10, 2011
I’m offering this post to expand on something Richard posted today:
If anyone wants to know why Americans who represent the 99 Percent are camping out on Wall Street, in Pioneer Park, and in dozens of cities, this is why: a majority of us voted for change in 2008, and we didn’t get it. Three years later the rich still have their tax cuts, and the debate in Washington is all about budget cuts and eliminating public sector jobs. None of the Wall Street criminals have been sent to jail, instead the Obama DOJ is trying to work a deal to keep state attorneys general from conducting fraud prosecutions.
To my mind, the Obama team and Congressional Democrats were too timid. Faced with a massive meltdown, they played it “safe” and that’s why too little change has been enacted and hope was allowed to fade.
Over the weekend, Ezra Klein published a lengthy and interesting piece Could this time have been different? that examined the policy concerning the economic crash and questioned if better policy could have been crafted and if so, could it have passed and what would it the effects have been. It’s a thoughtful and long piece so difficult to excerpt but here’s a passage that jumped out at me: Read the rest of this entry »
Malefactors of Great Wealth
Posted by Richard Warnick in 2012 Elections, American People, Bailout, Barack Obama, Deficit, Democrats, Economy, Federal Budget, Free Speech, National Politics, Poverty, Republicans, Tax Policy, This Blog, Unemployment on October 10, 2011
President Theodore Roosevelt (a Republican as well as one of this nation’s greatest presidents, by the way) explained the problem back in 1907. The top 1% in terms of financial wealth, and the politicians they control, can make the other 99% of Americans suffer if they don’t get their way. Emphasis added:
“It may well be that the determination of the government (in which, gentlemen, it will not waver) to punish certain malefactors of great wealth, has been responsible for something of the trouble; at least to the extent of having caused these men to combine to bring about as much financial stress as possible, in order to discredit the policy of the government and thereby secure a reversal of that policy, so that they may enjoy unmolested the fruits of their own evil-doing. . . . I regard this contest as one to determine who shall rule this free country—the people through their governmental agents, or a few ruthless and domineering men whose wealth makes them peculiarly formidable because they hide behind the breastworks of corporate organization.”
It’s been said that today’s Republicans don’t need to offer a jobs program, because if they can defeat President Obama and the Democrats in Congress in the next election their corporate friends (today’s “malefactors of great wealth”) will simply start hiring again. I don’t think it’s that simple. Tomorrow, President Obama will meet with his so-called “jobs council” that is made up of job-cutting executives.
“Nobody should expect this group to come up with innovative ways of investing in the American workforce and generating not only more jobs but higher wages,” said Robert Reich, who was Labor secretary during the Clinton administration. “That’s just not what these big companies do.”
In fact, it was mentioned on MSNBC today that a new study by Princeton University economists found that those laid-off workers in the last recession who have found new jobs took an average 17.5 percent pay cut. Real median annual household income fell more during the economic recovery (down 6.7 percent to $49,909 from June 2009 to June 2011) than during the recession itself (down 3.2 percent to $53,518 from December 2007 to June 2009).
What’s the answer? Not the Obama administration’s anemic jobs bill. America needs an emergency jobs program along the lines of the one introduced in Congress by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL).
If anyone wants to know why Americans who represent the 99 Percent are camping out on Wall Street, in Pioneer Park, and in dozens of cities, this is why: a majority of us voted for change in 2008, and we didn’t get it. Three years later the rich still have their tax cuts, and the debate in Washington is all about budget cuts and eliminating public sector jobs. None of the Wall Street criminals have been sent to jail, instead the Obama DOJ is trying to work a deal to keep state attorneys general from conducting fraud prosecutions.
This is about who shall rule, the people or a few ruthless and domineering men. This is about the survival of democracy, and if the two-party system can’t do what we want then we’ll need to replace it.
UPDATE: I never thought I would be quoting Glenn Beck now that he’s off TV, but his hysterical reaction to the peaceful 99 Percent Movement indicates that corporate America may already be worried.
“Capitalists, if you think that you can play footsie with these people, you are wrong. They will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you. They will do it. They’re not messing around. Those in the media – and I am included in this – they will drag us out into the streets and kill us. If you’re wealthy, they will kill you for what you have. You cannot tolerate this kind of stuff. You certainly do not encourage it.”
Needless to say, no one in the 99 Percent Movement is advocating violence. It’s all about democracy, having a voice — which apparently seems to scare the powerful people who have spent the past couple of decades ignoring us.
UPDATE: In the latest poll, eight in 10 Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support raising taxes on households earning over $250,000 a year. A full 81 percent of Democrats were behind the plan, along with 67 percent of independents and 53 percent of Republicans. Washington politicians are not representing us.
Not of great import but . . .
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on October 8, 2011
This evening, with nothing else pressing, I decided to indulge and get something I’ve long been told every man should get – a professional shave. It was an experience to say the least. Hot towels, oil treatment, straight razor shave, skin treatment.
So yeah I’m gonna say every man should at least once treat himself to a professional shave.
Children Are Not Objects or Possessions of their Parents
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on October 8, 2011
I admit it. I’m coming out of the closets. I believe in the rights of the child. I believe children have rights all their own, that they are not possessions of their parents to which parents can do what they like.
I’ve been thinking about this since I read this piece from Marcia Segelstein. I’ve criticized her positions before but in this case, I’m less concerned with the specifics of her article, which is as usual standard fare right wing fear-mongering about the gone to hellness of the world – than about what is revealed by a statement in her article.
Like it or not, parents can’t control every aspect of their children’s lives: what they’ll overhear at baseball practice, what they’ll see on TV at a neighbor’s house, or on a computer screen while on a playdate. Peer pressure isn’t a fanciful concept: it’s real.
Read that passage carefully – Segelstein is bemoaning the fact that parents can’t treat their children like objects and control their every move. The notion of trusting their children is entirely absent here. Entirely absent as well is the notion that children are not objects to be handled and treated as parents wish.
There’s a great line in an episode of The West Wing in which the characters are talking about decriminalizing drugs and legalizing marijuana. One of the characters says “Parents are keeping their kids away from drugs with a whip and a chair . . .” Parental fears about their children are authentic and real but the lack of absolute control over them that Segelstein bemoans is impossible is not the answer. It’s exhausting for the parents and guaranteed to breed resentful, unhappy children.
I know it’s hard for some people but accepting that children are independent beings who have and deserve their own rights is the only answer and treating them as such – giving them age-appropriate, accurate, complete information on a wide range of issues – is the only way to handle difficult things. Raise them right, trust them, and keep the lines of communication open.
Not Expecting an Answer
Posted by Larry Bergan in Conservatives, Laugh, SLC Politics, Society, Tea Bag Party on October 8, 2011
As an Ancestral Mormon:
There are just two questions I would ask of the two Mormon candidates in the Republican race for president:
What do you think about the present day “Tea Party”?
and…
What do you think about the “Book of Mormon on Broadway” Play?
Corporate Media Pretend to Be Baffled By 99 Percent Movement
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Activist groups, American People, Bailout, Bill O'Reilly, Capitalism, Corporate Socialism, Democracy, Economic Exploitation, Economy, Free Speech, Hypocrisy, National Politics, Poverty, Unemployment on October 6, 2011
From Think Progress: a compilation of CNN’s Erin Burnett, Bill O’Reilly from Faux News Channel et al. playing innocent, obtusely claiming not to know what the Wall Street protesters are angry about. You know they never said that about the Tea Party.
Really, the spokespersons for the 1 percent know what this is. First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you. And then they build monuments to you. It’s impossible to ignore 99 percent of Americans for very long, and their attempts at ridicule are pretty lame.
Now the attacks have started. Protests against Wall Street are “un-American,” says Herman Cain. They are “an attack on freedom,” claims Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA). The 99 Percent Movement is a “parade of human debris,” according to Rush Limbaugh. “We are going to have riots in this country because of what these people are doing,” says Senator Orrin Hatch.
But this is only getting bigger, as yesterday’s rally drew 20,000 participants. MSNBC’s Ed Schultz did his show live from Wall Street last night.
UPDATE: Occupy Salt Lake City begins today in Pioneer Park. We are the 99 percent.
UPDATE: Thanks to Occupy Wall Street, ABC’s Jake Tapper asked President Obama why there have been no prosecutions of Wall Street executives for their fraudulent actions during the run-up to the financial crisis. As far as I know, Obama has never had to answer for this before.
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald wonders about Erin Burnett’s alleged “journalism”:
Would it ever occur to CNN that perhaps a former Wall Street banker at Goldman Sachs, currently engaged to a Citigroup executive, might not be the best person to cover [the Wall Street] protests? Of course not: that’s exactly the bias that makes her such an appropriate choice in the eyes of her Time Warner bosses.
…It’s the opposite of surprising that large corporations which own media outlets want to hire people to play the role of journalist on the TV who are slavishly devoted to their culture and their agenda. But that’s the point: the pretense that these people are “objective journalists” delivering opinion-free facts is so discredited that they should just stop pretending. It’s embarrassing already. Few things have exposed their deep, embittered biases as much as their snide, defensive reaction to these Wall Street protests.
UPDATE: House Majority Leader Rep. Eric Cantor:
“If you read the newspapers today, I for one am increasingly concerned about the growing mobs occupying Wall Street and the other cities across the country.”
…to the crazy ones
Posted by Shane Smith in This Blog on October 6, 2011
Few people can actually say they changed the world before they die. Even fewer can say they did it multiple times.
Steve Jobs, 1955-2011
Herman Cain’s ’999′ Plan Gives The Rich A Bigger Slice of Wealth
Posted by Richard Warnick in 2012 Elections, Deficit, Economic Exploitation, Federal Budget, National Politics, Republicans, Tax Policy, This Blog on October 5, 2011
The Center for American Progress (CAP) ran the numbers on Herman Cain’s “999″ tax plan, which would implement a 9 percent flat-tax on personal income and corporate income, along with a 9 percent national sales tax, while scrapping the rest of the tax code (including all of the deductions, the inheritance tax, and all of the taxes on investment income such as capital gains).
Cain touts his plan as “revenue neutral,” but CAP’s analysis found it would result in deficits over 11 percent of GDP. That’s bigger than any deficit since WWII, including the deficits of the past three years.
Cain claims that his proposed tax structure would not be regressive. In fact, he wants to increase taxes on working Americans to pay for a giant tax cut for the rich.
[S]omeone in the bottom quintile of earners — who currently pays about 2 percent of his or her income in federal taxes — would pay about 18 percent under Cain’s plan (9 percent on every dollar they make, plus 9 percent on every dollar they spent, which would likely be close to all of them). A middle-class individual would see his or her taxes go from about 14 percent to about 18 percent. But someone in the richest one percent of Americans would see his or her tax rate fall from about 28 percent to about 11 percent.
…As Center for American Progress Vice President for Economic Policy Michael Ettlinger put it, the plan “would be the biggest tax shift from the wealthy to the middle-class in the history of taxation, ever, anywhere, and it would bankrupt the country.”
A vote for Herman Cain is a vote for record federal deficits, and for giving the wealthiest an even bigger slice of the pie than they have now.
UPDATE: Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan Hits Poor, Blows Up Deficit, Threatens Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security
UPDATE: Herman Cain: Tax Poor People’s Food To Finance Massive Tax Break For The Rich
A Third of Veterans Say Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Not Worth Fighting
Posted by Richard Warnick in 9/11, Afghanistan, American History, American People, Disaster, Iraq, Military, National Politics, Veterans, War on October 5, 2011
U.S. forces were sent into Afghanistan in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks on the United States to topple that country’s Taliban leaders who had harbored the al-Qaeda terrorists responsible. What initially seemed like a quick victory became the longest war in American history. The Taliban made a comeback, and now have shadow governments in nearly every Afghan province. They seem likely to overthrow the U.S.-backed government in Kabul when our troops are withdrawn.
The invasion of Iraq was launched by the Bush administration based on false claims. It was a breach of the United Nations Charter, a war of aggression. By September 2004, the Iraq Survey Group final report concluded that the dangerous weapons of mass destruction cited by President Bush as a threat to U.S. national security never existed. By March 2007, the Pentagon finished reviewing more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the U.S. invasion. The conclusion: there is no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime ever had any operational links with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network.
Therefore, it should not be surprising that 33 percent of the post-9/11 veterans who took part in a recent poll by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center said neither of those two wars was worthwhile considering the costs versus the benefits to the United States. That compared to 45 percent of nonmilitary poll respondents who said neither war was worthwhile.
More than 4,400 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq and almost 1,700 killed in Afghanistan. These figures do not include suicides.
If you needed a reason to love Cher, here it is
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on October 4, 2011
‘Cause Girls are Icky
Posted by Shane Smith in This Blog on October 4, 2011
Facebook… Wow, I am one word into this post and I already feel I need to make some disclaimers. This is going to be hard.
Facebook is just about pure evil. First of all it is evil on a sort of passive day to day basis. Do I really need to post that I am waiting with my kids at the doctors office? Do I care that the niece is creating pointless drama about a guy that she will like for less time than it takes me to grade papers? Does this matter? At all?
killed
wounded
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