Tag: 2012 election

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The do nothing Congress will slither out of town seven weeks before the election to hit the campaign trail and leaving a pile of work for November when they return for the lame duck session. Not that most of them aren’t lame now. They had originally been scheduled to work through to the first week of October.

The one bill that will be passed is the bill to keep the government funded once the new fiscal year begins Oct.1. It has already passed the House and is set for a vote in the Senate later this week. it will find the government through to March 27, 2013. The other legislation that will pass at least the House is a resolution expressing disapproval of President Obama’s handling of welfare reform. The administration agreed to to waive existing work requirements for those who receive welfare benefits if states can demonstrate better programs for employing and retaining workers. This waiver was requested by Republican governors, as well as, Democrats and the plans must be approved by the administration. In other words the House Republicans are disapproving something they requested.  

Bur much of what won’t be accomplished could drastically hurt the middle class and the economy.

What’s next for farm bill?

Greatest fallout from deadline miss: uncertainty

The 2008 farm bill, a law including crop insurance, disaster programs and other aid for farmers, along with conservation and food stamp programs, is set to expire Sept. 30, the end of the federal fiscal year. Some key programs could cease or run out of money without a new farm bill.

But farmers and ag policy experts say the most dramatic effects won’t happen until 2013. That’s when farmers will start to plant next year’s crop. Many farm programs operate onthe crop year, not the fiscal or calendar years. [..]

If Congress doesn’t do anything, food prices could soar. That’s because without a new farm bill, the law reverts back to a 1949 farm bill that essentially committed the federal government to purchase crops at fixed prices. But with more than 60 years since those prices were set, in most cases the government would be paying far more than what those crops receive today.

There is the legislation that would provide reforms for the Postal Service, which is plagued by financial shortfalls, and an extension of the Violence Against Women Act, a normally bipartisan bill that authorizes program funding for victims of domestic and sexual abuse.

The biggie is the expiring tax measures, the Bush/Obama and the Payroll tax holiday, and unemployment benefits, that will end December 31. As reported in Politico the House Ways and means Committee, which generates tax bills will meet in a rare closed session on Thursday. They will also meet with the Democratic-led Senate Finance Committee to discuss capital gains taxes.

David Dayen at FDL News Desk isn’t confident that the talks will include an extension of the Payroll Tax Holiday but thinks that this whole sequester mess will kicked down the road:

There’s no guarantee that the payroll tax cut will factor into these negotiations, but they should – or at least something that brings a commensurate level of fiscal accommodation, which preferably doesn’t put the Social Security Trust Fund at risk. The expiration of the payroll tax cut will take $125 billion out of the economy. That’s less than the Bush tax cuts, although since most of those accrue to the rich, the payroll tax cut could have a higher fiscal multiplier. And it’s a larger pullback in fiscal policy than the first year of the sequester, which would take roughly $110 billion out of the economy. [..]

I would like to find the economist who believes that the US can handle taking $125 billion out of the economy without an effect, especially $125 billion targeted loosely (though not as well as Making Work Pay) at those with a high propensity to spend. [..]

It’s entirely possible that everything gets punted for a period of time while opening up some breathing space for Congress to figure the mess out. But I doubt that includes the payroll tax cut. That’s decent enough news for Social Security, but it’s not really good news for the economy.

As a postscript, you gotta love this from a defense lobbyist:

   “Regardless of who wins, the big deal will have tax increases and spending cuts,” said one defense lobbyist, who asked not to be identified. “The ratio will just be different. With taxes playing a smaller role in a Republican plan, entitlement programs like Medicare will have to play a bigger one to protect defense.”

Surely we can all agree that Lockheed Martin needs the money more than an 85 year-old on a fixed income.

Lets see if Obama sticks to his promise to veto any bill that extends the Bush/Obama tax cuts for those who make over $250,000.

Cross posted from The Stars Hollow Gazette

The 2012 Democratic National Platform talks big about job creation and rebuilding the middle class which has been taking hits since the Reagan tax cuts in 1984. While it touts the fact that the private sector has created jobs and the manufacturing sector is growing, its not enough. Most of the jobs that have been created are low paying. The Democratic Party has done little to debunk the lie that the wealthy corporations and individuals are job creators. By rubber stamping the past policies of giveaways to corporations and extending the Bush/Obama tax cuts, the Democrats have made the problems for the ever shrinking middle class even worse.

In two articles at Common Dreams, writers Paul Buchheit and John Atcheson debunk the “job creators fraud” and lay out the real problem ailing the economy, “corporate welfare”. In Mr. Buchheit’s article, he concisely cuts through the “job creator” nonsense with the facts.

Based on IRS figures, the richest 1% nearly tripled its share of America’s after-tax income from 1980 to 2006. That’s an extra trillion dollars a year. Then, in the first year after the 2008 recession, they took 93% (pdf) of all the new income.

He also notes that the wealthiest 10% own 83% of the financial wealth (pdf) and only pay 15% tax under the premise that they would create jobs. Instead they put that wealth into tax fee accounts overseas (pdf).

Mr. Atcheson breaks it down noting that the 15% tax rate allows the wealthy to avoid some $59 billion in taxes per year and by sheltering profits off shore, “(c)orporations are given $58 billion a year in tax breaks (pdf).” Hedge fund managers are given a tax break that allows them to pay only 15% on their earnings, avoiding at least $2.1 billion in taxes a year. Yet, as he further points out:

We spend $59 billion on social welfare programs, but more than $92 billion on corporate subsidies.  According to the Environmental Law Institute, fossil fuel industries alone get more than $70 billion in subsidies, with most going to the oil and gas sector.  Yeah, we certainly can’t afford to deprive Exxon of its record profits just to give money to needy kids.

Add to that $1.2 trillion the $9 trillion in low interest and no interest loans from the Federal Reserve and $700 billion bank bailout that these corporations and banks are making huge profits on and paying no taxes. You have, Mr. Buchheit notes, “$10 trillion in misdirected dollars.  Just 1/10 of that would create 25 million jobs, one for every unemployed or underemployed worker in America. Or a $45,000 a year job for every college student in the United States.”

These are the facts that Mr. Buchheit’s lays out:

The Wall Street Journal noted in 2009 that the Bush tax cuts led to the “worst track record for jobs in recorded history.” 25 million people remain unemployed or underemployed, with 30 to 50 percent of recent college graduates in one of those categories. Among unemployed workers, nearly 43 percent have been without a job for six months or longer.

For the jobs that remain, most are low-paying, with the only real employment growth occurring in retail sales and food preparation. A recent report by the National Employment Law Project confirms that lower-wage occupations (up to about $14 per hour) accounted for 21 percent of recession losses and 58 percent of recovery growth, while mid-wage occupations (between $14 and $21 per hour) accounted for 60 percent of recession losses and only 22 percent of recovery growth.

The minimum wage is shamefully low, about 30% lower (pdf) than the inflation-adjusted 1968 figure. And the tiny pay can’t be blamed on small business. Two-thirds of America’s low-wage workers, according to another National Employment Law Project (pdf) report, work for companies that have at least 100 employees.

All these job woes persist while productivity has continued to grow, with an 80% increase since 1973 as median worker pay has stagnated. [..]

With the bulk of their assets buried in “low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, and real estate”, the wealthy are not creating jobs:

… Only 3 percent of the CEOs, upper management, and financial professionals were entrepreneurs (pdf) in 2005, even though they made up about 60 percent of the richest .1% of Americans. A recent study found that less than 1 percent of all entrepreneurs came from very rich or very poor backgrounds. They come from the middle class.

There is ample evidence that more jobs were created when the top marginal tax rates were high.

Instead of cutting our social safety net, as President Obama has agreed to do in his “Grand Bargain”, we need to end the corporate welfare programs and put an end to the lie that if we tax the wealthy less they’ll create jobs.

Searching high . . .

Tampa expected 15,000 protesters for the Republican National Convention. So far, the city has seen no more than “a couple thousand,” Tampa Police Chief Jane Castor told reporters this morning.  “There aren’t nearly the number of demonstrators we expected,” Castor said.  One reason could be Hurricane Isaac, which forced some bus companies to cancel planned charters of protesters into Tampa Bay..

Searching low . . .

How little impact are the protests at the Republican convention making?  Well, let’s put it this way, yesterday the Tampa chief of police cancelled a scheduled afternoon press conference because there wasn’t enough to report. The Examiner reported Monday that the crowds were sparse at the protests and they haven’t gotten any larger since then. Reportedly, the largest crowd at any protest was 300 people at one at Ybor City, which is about three miles from the convention center.

Searching everywhere they know . . .

There were several protests Wednesday, but none of them were what city officials had feared.  The largest was sponsored by Planned Parenthood at Julian Lane Park about a mile north of the Tampa Bay Times Forum.  It featured speeches and chants like ” Ho ho, hey hey, Planned Parenthood is here to stay.”

At midday, there was a protest at speech featuring former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.  During the speech when Rice was talking about the compassionate Bush administration, a Code Pink protester, former Army Colonel Ann Wright, stood up and said, “You can’t be compassionate and kill people!” However, no one was arrested and for the most part, everything has been extremely calm.

Asking the cops wherever they go . . .

Have you seen dignity?

The first day of the Republican Party Convention in Tampa, Florida was mercifully brief due to tropical storm Isaac. Isaac is now a hurricane and bearing down on the Gulf Coast as a eerie reminder of hurricane Katrina seven years ago and the disastrous Bush regime handling of the disaster. Today the convention hits its stride and was called to order by RNC Chair Reince Priebus at 2 PM. The afternoon covered adoption of the rules and platform. The rules have been changed to stifle other candidates like Ron Paul, who has been denied a speaker’s spot, and former vice presidential nominee, Sara Palan who was not invited.

Tonight’s highlight will be the keynote speech delivered by New Jersey’s own bully-boy governor Chris Christie and the speech delayed from possible future First Lady, Ann Romney with Mitt close by to cheer her.

To fit all of these folks into the 4 hours, all the speakers were told to edit their addresses to fit the time they were allotted, in the case of the first hour that’s less than 10 minutes. That will be quite a feat.  

Here is a list of speakers and the times they are supposed to appear with my take on what they’ll say:

7 p.m.

• House Speaker John Boehner: The Orange Smoking Man wants to throw Obama out of the bar. Then he’ll cry
• RNC Chairman Reince Priebus He’ll reenforce the litany of lies
• Video and Mayor Mia Love (Saratoga Springs, Utah), U.S. congressional candidate: She is the first black woman to run on the Republican ticket. Her roll will be to appeal to black women. Good luck with that one, honey.
• Janine Turner: Actress turned tearless activist who will no doubt insist that Obama was born on Mars in Kenya or someother milder form of birther bs.
• Former Sen. Rick Santorum: Rick will focus on attacking welfare. He still Googles well.
• Host, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers: House rep from Washington with a Down Syndrome child will end the  firsthour with coffee and donuts.

8 p.m.

• Sen. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.), accompanied by Jack Gilchrist: She need a “crutch”?  Gilchrist is the businessman who insists he did it all by himself despite the millions federal assistance and contracts he received.
• Gov. John Kasich (Ohio): Will talk about the great job he’s done trying to suppress workers’ rights.
• Gov. Mary Fallin (Okla.): Looks like she’ll be touting “Drill, baby, drill” theme.
• Gov. Bob McDonnell (Va.), accompanied by Bev Gray: Gray is an architect. I doubt they’ll be talking about transvaginal probe design but that would be a more interesting speech.
• Gov. Scott Walker (Wis.): [Another anti-union speech about how collective bargaining rights destroyed the economy]

9 p.m.

• Gov. Brian Sandoval (Nev.): He’ll attack Obama’s Welfare Waivers after requesting flexibility.
• Sher Valenzuela (small-business owner, candidate for Delaware lt. governor): Another GOP candidate that built her business with 17 million in federal loans & contracts.
• Senate Republican candidate Ted Cruz (Texas): He has the delusional notion that the Hispanic community is conservative & opposed to amnesty.
• Former Rep. Artur Davis: Former Democrat now Republican who claims voter ID laws do not violate civil rights or suppress voter turn out.
• Gov. Nikki Haley (S.C.)

10 p.m.

• Mrs. Lucé Vela Fortuño: Puerto Rico’s First Lady who will introduce Ann Romney
• Mrs. Ann Romney: The “Queen of Equestrian Mean” will deign to address “you people” with hubby Mitt leading the ovation
• Gov. Chris Christie (N.J.): Certainly the highlight of the night will be this blustering buffoon who would love to have you believe he saved New Jersey.
• Benediction by Sammy Rodriguez: Finally, a rousing “amen” from a Hispanic Evangelical. So far no Mormon Tabernacle Choir

He’s fifty, he lost his job three years ago, he won’t ever have a job again because American companies don’t hire the long-term unemployed parasites.  He wakes up Sunday mornings now, with no way to hold his head that doesn’t hurt.  And the beer he has for breakfast isn’t bad, so he has one more for dessert.  Then he fumbles through his closet for his clothes, and finds his cleanest dirty shirt, and stumbles down the stairs to meet the day.

Meet the day, parasite.  Welcome to the Brave New World of the Wall Street Gods, welcome to the Shock Doctrine Century, welcome to hunger games and drones in the sky and batshit ten feet deep in the halls of Congress.  Get ready to dodge bullets when you walk out the door, the NRA has turned America into a free fire zone, remember to salute the Job Creators and the police, bring three forms of photo ID if you’re going to cross the street.  Bring some courage along if you have any left, but leave your dignity behind, you won’t need it out here, hardly anyone in this shit storm that used to be America even remembers what it is anymore.

Steadily increasing child poverty is exposing the moral bankruptcy of America’s political and economic systems and has ominous implications, for as child poverty increases, it’s igniting a destructive chain reaction of cause and effect, with dire long-term consequences for the stability of American society.  

Jillian Berman, “One In Four Young U.S. Children Living In Poverty” . . .

Children who are poor before age 6 have been shown to experience educational deficits, and health problems, with effects that span the life course.  Elevated rates of child poverty could have dire consequences for the country down the line, for child poverty is a leading indicator of a country’s future, nearly all of the social problems that we worry about are heavily correlated with child poverty.

They don’t realize it now, they probably never will, but through their relentless pursuit of policies that only benefit the top one-percent and punish everyone else, the alleged elites of this psychotic system are ensuring their own destruction.  The deceit traffickers in that cartel of criminals that used to be Congress can keep bulldozing piles of cash to the rich, they can keep building more prisons, they can keep militarizing the police, they can keep expanding surveillance, they can keep criminalizing dissent, but none of that’s going to matter when time runs out, when they have no legitimacy left, when poverty has become so pervasive that nothing can contain the bitterness of tens of millions of people betrayed by their own government.  And then betrayed again.

Week in and week out.

Month after month.

Year after year.  

America has never been this fucked up.

That bitter awareness is echoing from one end of reality to the other, it’s rumbling just under the surface of this Wonderland of the One-Percent, it can be heard in the whistling of Wall Street bankers past the graveyard of the economy, in the silence of a million foreclosed homes, in the blowing of the wind through the ragged lines of the unemployed, in the pounding of the waves of karma on the shores of capitalism, where the sandcastles of the American Dream are being swept away, where the piers of the political system are collapsing into the sea, where a long night is falling and the lights along the boardwalk of forgotten freedom are all going out.

Reading Netroots blogs gets depressing, the content is repetitive, the problems are all too well known and the solutions are obvious, but they aren’t seen as solutions by the corporate or political establishments, they’re seen as lethal threats.  So we’re portrayed as radicals, we’re demonized by Republicans and ignored by Democrats, tens of millions of Americans pay no attention at all to us, many of them don’t even know we exist.    

You can look out across cyberspace tonight, you can see all words written on progressive blogs, all of the insights and commentary, all of the assessments, you can see all of the passion and dedication and idealism, but most of all, you can see the futility, the frustration of people who have no power.  It doesn’t matter if you’re Kos or Hamsher or the newest blogger on the smallest blog, the view is the same and so is the dilemma . . .      

You can see a million miles tonight,

But you can’t get very far . . .

History is always written by the winners.  Native Americans know it, African Americans know it, Latinos know it, working class people in every country in this world know it, every union member who has ever lived knows it.  Everyone who has ever been beaten into submission by the power of armies, by the power of economic might, by the power of entrenched conservatism, entrenched conformity, and entrenched bigotry knows it.

When two cultures or belief systems clash, the loser is slandered and condemned by the winner, who writes the history books, books which glorify their culture or belief system and sanctify it as inherently superior.  The truth is ignored.  As Napoleon once said, “What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”

Thomas Wolfe . . .

For everywhere, through the immortal dark, across the land, there has been something moving in the night, something stirring in the hearts of the people, and something crying in their blood–where shall we go now, and what shall we do?

The Right is waiting for great destinies in the old, red light of evening, inhaling and exhaling paranoia like smoke from a crack pipe.  Awaiting great destinies like Reagan’s ninth term, like the destruction of the Usurper, like the banning of contraception, like the vaporizing of Iran.  Fascism is stirring in their hearts, white supremacy is crying in their blood, defying reality is their addiction, burning it at the stake is their agenda.

That’s where they’ll go now.  That’s what they’ll do.  

Steal 15 trillion dollars?  No problem.  

Violate park rules?  Riot police will splatter your blood all over the street.

William Rivers Pitt . . .

Buffalo Springfield was wrong. There’s something happening here, and it is exactly clear. We are, at this moment, in a savagely perilous place.

There are plenty of people out there who will flap the idiots currently running for the GOP in your face in order to dragoon you into supporting President Obama come November, and that’s fine. That’s their job, that’s what they do, and there is no doubt that the comparison favors them…but it is a stone-sharpened fact that, nationally, we are at this moment hedging true fascism as sharply as we were back in the ‘Bad Old Days’ of George and the boys, if not more so.

Some would argue that we are closer now to a true fascist America than we were then, because people of good conscience who fought against George W. Bush’s militant, media-succored fascism tend nowadays to be inclined to let this current happy-faced fascism slide. After all, it’s an election year, “Obama is better than Bush.”

The Onion has a funny video up about Democrat Party voters screwing with Barry Obama's mind as the 2012 election kicks into gear.

Democrats: Obama Has Dicked Us Around For Four Years, Now It's Our Turn

Back in February, The Huffing Post reported that Obama was virtually tied with a generic Republican counterpart going into November.  Rasmussen reported similar polling results last month.  And according to news reports for last week, that slim lead is not getting any wider.  What this means is that the election is well within the theft margin.

The reason for this razor-thin margin is obvious: Obama has adopted so many of the Republicans' core policies – an ABC News poll last year found that a majority of Americans rate Obama as “just as bad” or “worse than” George W. Bush – that he presents no legitimate reasons for people to vote for him.  Web sites such as Obama the Conservative and Activist Post, whistleblowers including Thomas Drake, and bloggers including Glenn Greenwaldhave all documented the many ways in which Obama has adopted or exceeded all of the policies of his predecessors.

When the two major party candidates are so similar to one another, Harry Truman's admonition is as relevant as ever:  “Given the choice between a Republican and someone who acts like a Republican, people will vote for the real Republican all the time.”  Even having watched as Bush and Cheney stole not one but two consecutive presidential elections – thefts that were successful in large part because the Democrat candidates were so close to their Republican counterparts on policy – Obama and his campaign team still think the failed Clintonian model is viable.  And that will cost them dearly come November.

Meanwhile, people are hungry for real alternatives, and they're not buying into the Big Lie of Democrats not being as bad as the GOP anymore.  According to Gallup, forty percent of registered voters now identify themselves as being independent or belonging to one of the minor political parties.

With so many voters looking to punish both major parties in November, the Obama regime would do well to look back and learn from history, lest it become history.