Category: Economy

As if we didn’t have enough volatile “wedge issues” to put the Nation on Perpetual Pause — Karl Rove has decided to stink up the place, with yet another outrageous Word Bomb …

GOPers Revise History: Say Dems Have Tax Hike Ticking Time ‘Bomb’

Christina Bellantoni, TPMDC — August 19, 2010

Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS this week detailed the “seven public policy initiatives” that will be most important for Congress next year. The group runs ads against Democrats across the country.

On the list at No. 1: “Stop the Obama tax hike time bomb scheduled to detonate on January 1, 2011.”

That’s not a typo. Rove’s group is claiming that Obama set the timer on that so-called “bomb.”

Talk about Revisionist History — of course consider the source — wasn’t it Rove, who claim to have the “Real Numbers” a few years back …

  A relatively obscure case in Norway shows just how different the United States is from the rest of the industrialized world.

  The Oslo Stock Exchange was halted by unusual trade action. It seems two Norwegians were trying to manipulate stock prices.

 We believe the two are behind a number of cases of price manipulation. They have set purchase and sales orders that have not been real, because they have had another motive, namely to move prices, “said Stenberg.

 In other words, they did exactly what every single bank on Wall Street does every single day. In New York it is called High Frequency Trading. In Oslo it is called getting six years of jail time for breaking the law.

 So who is right? Is Norway some Socialist Hell for not allowing the free market to work, allowing faster traders to skim profits from slower traders? Or are laws in the United States too lax, allowing people to take money from the system without adding any value, thus destabilizing the economy?

  To answer that we need to look at a couple more examples.

Two weeks ago we were being told the majority of the Oil Spilled was “mostly” gone …

How did five million barrels of oil simply disappear?

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs points to a pie chart on the BP oil spill during the Daily White House Press Briefing, Washington, DC.

AFP/ Getty Images

Now, University of South Florida, Marine Scientists are reporting Science has a different tale, to tell …

Sometimes stories happen because of planning; other times serendipity intervenes, which is how we got to the conversation we’ll be having today.

In an exchange of comments on the Blue Hampshire site, I proposed an idea that could be of real value to unions, workers…and surprisingly, employers.

If things worked out correctly, not only would lots of people feel a real desire to have unions represent them, but employers would potentially be coming to unions looking to forge relationships, and, just to make it better, this plan bypasses virtually all of the tools and techniques employers use to shut out union organizers.

Since I just thought this up myself, I’m really not sure exactly how practical the whole thing is, and the last part of the discussion today will be provided by you, as I ask you to sound off on whether this plan could work, and if so, how it could be made better.

It’s a new week…so let’s all put our heads together and rebuild the labor movement, shall we?

There are two very important, and full of real facts, op-ed’s in the San Francisco Gate this Sunday morning that should be read and absorbed.

We hear very little, actually almost nothing, about the present costs, nor long term costs, of our long occupations of choice. Especially by those that held the power and readily rubber stamped what their same political party administration wanted. Nor did they feel much need in holding congressional hearings, investigations nor much oversite, not much heard when reports of billions just went poof nor when private contractors on their no bid contracts kept wasting money on shoddy work and much more, while they held the power. They weren’t the only ones, even their supporters and talking heads readily supported everything they did and didn’t do.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Medicare.

If Republicans got their Way … you couldn’t Retire until 70.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d privatize Social Security.

If Republicans got their Way … there would be no more Corporate income tax.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d eliminate taxes on Capital gains.

If Republicans got their Way … they’d cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent.

If Republicans got their Way … the Bush Tax Cut for the Rich would never end.

Factlets from The Republican’s Roadmap for America’s Future:

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

The Ryan Budget’s Radical Priorities

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

By Paul N. Van de Water — July 7, 2010

I. Summary

The Roadmap for America’s Future, which Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) – the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee – released in late January, calls for radical policy changes that would result in a massive transfer of resources from the broad majority of Americans to the nation’s wealthiest individuals.[1]

The Roadmap would give the most affluent households a new round of very large, costly tax cuts by reducing income tax rates on high-income households;

eliminating income taxes on capital gains, dividends, and interest;

and abolishing the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the alternative minimum tax.

At the same time, the Ryan plan would raise taxes for most middle-income families,

privatize a substantial portion of Social Security,

eliminate the tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance,

end traditional Medicare and most of Medicaid,

and terminate the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

  Perhaps the worst insult you can hurl at a politician these days is to give him the middle name of “Hoover”.

  Such as George Hoover Bush and Barack Hoover Obama. 80 years later Herbert Hoover is still the standard for the “do-nothing” president in the face of economic collapse.

 Like most easy comparisons, these examples lack details. That’s because the names are there for the purpose of accusation, rather than enlightenment.

 However, if you dig down into the individual economic policies of Hoover, Bush, and Obama, the story gets much more interesting.

 As Mark Twain once said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” I’m not going to try and find direct connections in this essay, just broad picture comparisons. If the reader confuses the two, then that will only mean I was justified in writing this.

This, directly below, as well as the continuing political? propaganda speak from a certain group that still wear the banner of a once political party, their media mouth and sponsor on 24/7 TV, their so called think tanks and those that want to leave the previous administration in the dust, after agreeing with everything it did, In Our Names, but now don’t want anyone  to think they’re associated with that eight years plus so they formed the so called TEA party or as many did even before that started calling themselves libertarians, Has Been Eating At My Craw!!

Summertime Blues: Senator Tom Coburn, M.D., Senator John McCain A u g u s t  2 0 1 0

100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues 74 page PDF, but there’s plenty of articles, by reliable sources, to read all about without downloading.

As I pick up the pace of work again, coming into the midterms, I have to get some stories cleared off the desk in order to make room for some others, and that’s what we’re about today.

We’ll be talking about saving more than 300,000 of this country’s most important jobs, and paying for it in a way that is not only good policy, but is a real problem for Republicans who are yelling “no new taxes!” once again while pretending they care about actually paying for actual spending and actually want to cut actual unemployment.

We have a bit of work to do today, but we want to keep it somewhat short…so let’s get going.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and The Stars Hollow Gazette