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| From RealAmericanLiberal.blogspot.com via TeaPartyJihad on Facebook |
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| From DonkeyHotey at Flickr. License and credit see below. |
(Image licensed via Creative Commons composed by DonkeyHotey at Flickr)
Rosemarie, do you remember what was happening four years ago? Try to remember how difficult things were back then in the fall of 2008 and the winter of 2009.
We were losing 700,000 jobs a month when Obama took office, and weekly first time unemployment claims kept increasing to over 600,000 to 700,000 a week. We had lost a total of 4,400,000 jobs BEFORE Obama took the oath of office.
The stock market had tanked, the banks were virtually insolvent, the auto industry was bankrupt and on its last legs, and people were scared. I didn't know anybody in those months and weeks who wasn't terrified and unsure of what the future was going to bring.
Deficit? Certainly you realize that you can't put a dent in the deficit when the economy is in a shambles and there are millions of people out of work and plenty without enough money to pay for their basic necessities; surely you understand that, Rosemarie? As it is, the percent increase in the federal deficit in the past fiscal year is one of the lowest increases on record, which is actually pretty amazing. Remember that the GDP, the Gross Domestic Product or all products and services produced in this country, was DECREASING when Obama took office and, within 6 months, it had turned around. But if you are watching Fox or listening to right-wing talk radio or reading right wing blogs, you won't know these things.
Jobs: As I said above, we were losing 600,000 to 800,000 jobs a month the last few months of the Bush administration and the first few months of the Obama administration. We now have added 4,500,000 new private sector jobs since that time. Yes, we need more jobs, but considering that we lost 8 million jobs, regaining 4,500,000 jobs while the Republicans plotted to make Obama fail, obstructed decent laws with impunity, and created the most relentless, nastiest opposition for decades, is actually quite an accomplishment. Too bad you can't see that.
Considering the situation of the economy (and knowing the problems of the Great Depression), it's clear that we were right at the edge of an abyss. That things are as well as they are now is an accomplishment. Now, if you were driving down the street and saw a house on fire, would you obstruct the fire department when they come to put it out? You know it takes time to get that fire under control, to put it out, to clear the debris, to start rebuilding, right? If the fire fighters don't put the fire out fast enough, would you heckle them? Would you blame them the firefighters or the clean up people or the rebuilding people for the fire in the first place? And think about how long it takes to pull a car out of a ditch and fix it so that it is again driveable.
How long do you think it would have taken McCain and the despicable P woman to start adding jobs? How many jobs would you have had to see by now to feel that job growth was adequate?
Yes, many people are still struggling, particularly older people due to serious age discrimination, and some parts of the country are experiencing more problems than other parts. However, the business people that I know have all said the worst is over. I see new businesses popping up in empty store fronts all over town. I don't know any young people with degrees right now who are still unemployed, and some of the people I know who lost jobs and started mini businesses a couple of years back are now seeing earnings and profits from those businesses. Are things as they should be? Of course not! The middle class has been decimated for decades now, since the Republicans began increasing power in the 1980's, and it is going to take a lot of work to get things turned around.
Rosemarie, it is absolutely shameful that you have such a poor understanding of the issues of this country. Rampant income and wealth inequality, which will only get worse with the policies of the Vulture and the Voucher, should scare all of us unless we are filthy rich. Please review that Ryan Budget and tell us why you think it will help you and your loved ones.
Why do we always have money for war? Why do we always have enough money to incarcerate people? Why do we always have enough money for chauffeur driven vehicles for high ranking politicians? Why do we always have enough money to repair the buildings of government? and....
At the same time there is no money for schools, for health care, for feeding the hungry, for housing the homeless, for recre
ation programs for kids, for higher education, for caring for the elderly and disabled.
I don't care which side of the political aisle you inhabit and vote. You are a human being, with an infinite capacity for loving, compassion, and goodness. None of those things will harm you; they will make you feel good. So why do you fill your body with the poisons generated by hatred and intolerance for one another? Why do you neglect your brother, your neighbor, your friend? Why do you celebrate death dealing and vilify the gifts of a good life?
The answers to these questions elude me as they do you. I just don't get it, and I never will. I will say this. It's taken thousands of years, but I think we've succeeded at getting the gun pressed up against our head as a species. I can only hope that we can grow up before we pull the trigger and put an end to further questioning.
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| From Disclose Act petition on care2.org |
Nearly 700 independent political groups have poured more than $187 million into 2012 campaigns nationwide so far, according to FEC records compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. More than $41 million of that has come from groups that disclose only a limited amount of information about their donors, or none at all.
About $140 million of the total has been spent by conservative groups, with most of that laid out during the Republican presidential primary battles, according to the group, which runs the campaign-finance website OpenSecrets.org.
"Democrats can call this bill whatever they want, but they cannot conceal its true intent, which is to encourage their allies and discourage their critics from exercising their first amendment right to speak their mind," (Minority leader Senator Mitch) McConnell said.
Republicans also complained that the measure gave an unfair break to labor unions, which typically contribute to Democrats. Unions have to disclose their expenditures, but individual members' dues would most likely fall below the $10,000 threshold for disclosure.
"What is the final difference between one $10,000 check and 1,000 $10 checks?," asked Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, co-author of a bipartisan 2002 campaign finance law. "Other than the impact on trees, very little. So why should one be free from having to disclose its origin?"
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, says ... "But unions already disclose the amount they spend, and its source -- members' dues -- is a known quantity, she said.
"What we don't know is who is bankrolling these patriotic-sounding but vague and unfamiliar groups which are funded to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by individuals, by corporations and trade associations," she said. "... We don't have good enough and routine enough information about union spending to these outside groups, but we have no information from the other side." (emphasis added)
Labor groups now have to report political expenditures of more than $5,000, though they don't have to disclose individual members whose dues are pooled to provide that money. Philadelphia labor lawyer Richard Poulson told CNN that's not a break for the unions, just a reflection of the comparative wealth involved.
"The Republicans are essentially crying foul because individual union members are not wealthy enough," said Poulson... "If we were to go back to square one, I don't think anyone on labor's side of the fence is particularly happy the floodgates have been opened with respect to political spending," Poulson said. But he added, "Workers are never going to have as much money as the bosses, and that's just a fact. And you shouldn't punish workers for banding together to get some sort of a voice in the process."
The Texas GOP can't be any plainer when it says "We oppose the teaching of...critical thinking skills".
Originally Posted by New York Times No Comment Necessary: Texas GOP’s 2012 Platform Opposes Teaching “Critical Thinking Skills” By ANDREW ROSENTHAL Via Talking Points Memo The Republican Party of Texas’s 2012 platform has a plank on “Knowledge-Based Education” that reads: We oppose the teaching of Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS) (values clarification), critical thinking skills and similar programs that are simply a relabeling of Outcome-Based Education (OBE) (mastery learning) which focus on behavior modification and have the purpose of challenging the student’s fixed beliefs and undermining parental authority. It also says, “[e]very Republican is responsible for implementing this platform.” Party spokespersons say the plank should not have included the line on “critical thinking,” but that it will remain unchanged until 2014. |
"Be it ideology or stratagem, the GOP has blocked pro-growth policy and backed job-killing austerity – all while blaming Obama
Why has job creation in America slowed to a crawl? Why, after several months of economic hope, are things suddenly turning sour? The culprits might seem obvious – uncertainty in Europe, an uneven economic recovery, fiscal and monetary policymakers immobilized and incapable of acting. But increasingly, Democrats are making the argument that the real culprit for the country's economic woes lies in a more discrete location: with the Republican Party.
In recent days, Democrats have started coming out and saying publicly what many have been mumbling privately for years – Republicans are so intent on defeating President Obama for re-election that they are purposely sabotaging the country's economic recovery. These charges are now being levied by Democrats such as Senate majority leader Harry Reid and Obama's key political adviser, David Axelrod.
For Democrats, perhaps the most obvious piece of evidence of GOP premeditated malice is the 2010 quote from Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell:"The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."...There is circumstantial evidence to make the case. Republicans have opposed a lion's share of stimulus measures that once they supported, such as a payroll tax break, which they grudgingly embraced earlier this year. Even unemployment insurance, a relatively uncontroversial tool for helping those in an economic downturn, has been consistently held up by Republicans or used as a bargaining chip for more tax cuts. Ten years ago, prominent conservatives were loudly making the case for fiscal stimulus to get the economy going; today, they treat such ideas like they're the plague.
Traditionally, during economic recessions, Republicans have been supportive of loose monetary policy. Not this time. Rather, Republicans have upbraided Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, for even considering policies that focus on growing the economy and creating jobs.
And then, there is the fact that since the original stimulus bill passed in February of 2009, Republicans have made practically no effort to draft comprehensive job creation legislation. Instead, they continue to pursue austerity policies, which reams of historical data suggest harms economic recovery and does little to create jobs. In fact, since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, Republicans have proposed hardly a single major jobs bill that didn't revolve, in some way, around their one-stop solution for all the nation's economic problems: more tax cuts....
As Paul Krugman wrote earlier this week, in the New York Times, while a Democrat rests his head each night in the White House, the United States is currently operating with a Republican economy. After winning the House of Representatives in 2010, the GOP brokered a deal to keep the Bush tax cuts in place, which has reduced the tax burden as a percentage of GDP to its lowest point since Harry Truman sat in the White House. At the insistence of the White House, Congress also agreed to extend unemployment benefits and enact a payroll tax cut – measures that provided a small but important stimulus to the economy, but above all, maintained the key GOP position that taxes must never go up.
But as Congress giveth, Congress also taketh. The GOP's zealotry on tax cuts is only matched by its zealotry in pursuing austerity policies. In the spring of 2011, federal spending cuts forced by Republican legislators took much-needed money out of the economy: combined with the 2012 budget, it has largely counteracted the positive benefits provided by the 2009 stimulus.
Subsequently, the GOP's refusal to countenance legislation that would help states with their own fiscal crises (largely, the result of declining tax revenue) has led to massive public sector layoffs at the state and local level. In fact, since Obama took office, state and local governments have shed 611,000 jobs; and by some measures, if not for these jobs, cuts the unemployment rate today would be closer to 7%, not its current 8.2%. In 2010 and 2011, 457,00 public sector jobs were excised; not coincidentally, at the same time, much of the federal stimulus aid from 2009 ran out. And Republicans took over control of Congress.
These cuts have a larger societal impact. When teachers are laid off, for example (and nearly 200,000 have lost their jobs), it means larger class sizes, other teachers being overworked and after-school classes being cancelled. So, ironically, a policy that is intended to save "our children and grandchildren" from "crushing debt" is leaving them worse-prepared for the actual economic and social challenges they will face in the future. In addition, with states operating under tighter fiscal budgets – and getting no hope relief from Washington – it means less money for essential government services, like help for the elderly, the poor and the disabled.
This is the most obvious example of how austerity policies are not only harming America's present, but also imperilling its future. And these spending cuts on the state and local level are matched by a complete lack of fiscal expansion on the federal level. In fact, fiscal policy is now a drag on the recovery, which is the exact opposite of how it should work, given a sluggish economy.
This collection of more-harm-than-good policies must also include last summer's debt limit debacle, which House speaker John Boehner has threatened to renew this year. This was yet another GOP initiative that undermined the economic recovery. According to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in 2008." Only after the crisis did the consumer confidence stabilize, but employers "held back on hiring, sapping momentum from a recovery that remains far too fragile." In addition, the debt limit deal also forced more unhelpful spending cuts on the country.
Yet, with all these tales of economic ineptitude emanating from the GOP, it is Obama who is bearing most of the blame for the country's continued poor economic performance.
