News digest / Catching up on news (09.27.2014)

Here are some more stories over the past 3 weeks that I haven't had time to give their due comment. Enjoy!

"Mr President, will you tell us the truth? 8 questions we must ask Obama about secret war," By Trevor Timm, September 27, 2014. Guardian. URL:http://gu.com/p/42vj3 -- TOO BAD NEITHER PARTY WILL ASK OBAMA THESE QUESTIONS!

"Carl Bildt: Putin Must Face Mothers Of Fallen Russian Soldiers In Ukraine Conflict," By Nathan Gardels, September 26, 2014, WorldPost. URL:http://huff.to/Yiy65q -- TURNS OUT RUSSIAN MOTHERS ARE THE SCARIEST FOE PUTIN HAS FACED THUS FAR

"How ISIS Is Using Us to Get What It Wants," By Alistaire Crooke, September 25, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/1rwy45W -- AS BILL MAHER SAID, ISIS IS SELLING FEAR AND WE'RE BUYING 

"Kansas Is So Broke That It Has To Auction Off Sex Toys," By Samantha Lachman, September 25, 2014, Huffington Post. URL: http://huff.to/YefAey -- THANK GOD THIS MAD TEA PARTY EXPERIMENT HAS BEEN CONTAINED TO SPARSELY POPULATED, RURAL KANSAS!

"The fight against the Islamic State must include Iran," By Fareed Zakaria, September 25, 2014, Washington Post. URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/fareed-zakaria-the-fight-against-the-islamic-state-must-include-iran/2014/09/25/e6757500-44e0-11e4-9a15-137aa0153527_story.html  -- BUT WAIT, SEAN HANNITY TOLD ME THAT IRAN, HAMMAS AND ISIS ARE ALL ONE IN THE SAME, SO WHAT GIVES??...

"Walmart police shooting: 911 call to Ohio dispatcher – video," September 26, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/42vtd  -- GET READY TO SEE MORE OF THESE MISTAKEN SHOOTINGS AS OPEN CARRY AND CONCEALED CARRY BECOME MORE COMMON

"Europe's New Frozen Conflict," By Judy Dempsey, September 22, 2014, Carnegie Europe. URL: http://carnegieeurope.eu/strategiceurope/?fa=56686  -- WHAT PUTIN IS DOING IN UKRAINE IS NOTHING NEW FOR RUSSIA, SADLY

"US nuclear arsenal in Europe is likely to stay," By Ralph Vartbedian and W.J. Hennigan, September 21, 2014, McClatchy. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/21/240563/us-nuclear-arsenal-in-europe-is.html#storylink=cpy  -

"Crimean Tatar Mejlis given 24 hours to leave," By Halya Coynash, September 19, 2014, Human Rights in Ukraine. URL: http://khpg.org/index.php?id=1410985865 -- THIS IS HOW 'ANTI-FASCISTS' BEHAVE ?!

"Russia cries foul over Scottish independence vote," By Luke Harding, September 19, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xyn5  -- LOL!  I'M SURE THE UK IS WORRIED

"To Foil Russia's Food Ban, Imported Ingredients Go Incognito," By Corey Flintoff, September 19, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1qiH5cZ  -- CORRUPT RUSSIAN CUSTOMS OFFICIALS AND MOBSTERS TELL EU, 'THANKS FOR THE NEW RACKET, THE SMUGGLING BUSINESS IS GREAT!'

"Amid Scotland's refendum poll shows quarter of Americans back secession from US," September 19, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xyqb  -- TRANSLATION: 24 PERCENT OF AMERICANS PROUDLY DECLARE THEY ARE IDIOTS

"Want to deplete your tax base? Give 'job creators' what they want," By Richard Florida, September 18, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/18/240229/want-to-deplete-your-tax-base.html  

"BBC journalists attacked and equipment smashed in Russia," By Tara Conlan, September 18, 2014, Guardian. URL: http://gu.com/p/4xktz

"Killing Comes Naturally To Chimps, Scientists Say," By Scott Neuman, September 18, 2014, NPR. URL: http://n.pr/1wsJEyT  -- INDEED, WOMEN ARE THE PEACEMAKERS... EXCEPT WHEN THEY ARE SO ANNOYING THEY MAKE YOU WANNA GO RAY RICE ON THEM (KIDDING)

"US Declares War on Russia – Titanium," By Yves Smith, September 18, 2014, Naked Capitalism. URL: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/09/us-declares-war-on-russia-titanium.html

"Tax cuts can do more harm than good," By David Cay Johnston, September 18, 2014, Al Jazeera. URL: http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2014/9/tax-cuts-economicsreaganbush.html

"The Myth That Sold the Financial Bailout," By Dean Baker, September 18, 2014, Truth Out. URL: http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/26275-the-myth-that-sold-the-financial-bailout

"Black Lung Disease Rates Skyrocket To Highest Levels Since 1970s," By Dave Jamieson, September 15, 2014,  Huffington Post. URL:http://huff.to/XqpqcK  -- BACK TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS!

"The Surprising Reason Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals," By Macrina Cooper-White, September 11, 2014, Huffington Post. URL:http://huff.to/1CVPU6G

"Best evidence Russians are in Ukraine? How good separatist fighters are," By Matthew Schofield, September 9, 2014, McClatchy. URL:http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2014/09/09/239299/best-evidence-russians-are-in.html

"U.S. should not be a silent partner to Israeli settlement expansion," By Jeremy Ben-Ami, September 8, 2014, Los Angeles Times. URL:http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-benami-israel-settlements-usa-20140909-story.html  -- WRITTEN BY A SELF-HATING JEW, NO DOUBT

Waldman: Kansas is a Tea Party lesson for the rest of US

Me and a Democrat buddy of mine (notice I omit the -ic at the end of Democrat to pander to my conservative friends) were complaining about Republican politicians when he said in frustration, "We should just elect all their Tea Party guys and let them run the country into the ground so people can see once and for all what happens."

I admit I'm tempted by that possibility sometimes; then I remember that we're talking about millions of people's lives and well being at stake, including innocent children who would probably lose their food stamps, school meals, libraries, health care, etc. if the Grand Old Tea Party got its way.

Instead we can look to Kansas, one of our 50 "laboratories of democracy," to see what happens when extreme right-wing ideologues take power.  Paul Waldman is Kansas' herald of doom [emphasis mine]:

In 2012 and 2013, [Governor] Brownback and Republicans in the legislature cut income taxes twice, eliminated taxes on corporate profits that are “passed through” to individuals (making it the only state that does this), and since they’re Republicans, made changes to the tax code that had the effect of raising taxes on the poor (the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has agood explanation of the tax changes and their effects). The governor has said his goal is to eventually eliminate the income tax completely.

And what happened? At a time when most states are seeing higher revenues as the country recovers economically, Kansas’ revenues have plummeted. The result has been cuts to schools, cuts to higher education, cuts to libraries, and cuts to local health centers.  Kansas’ job growth and income growth are lagging the nation’s.  In response to the fiscal difficulties, Moody’s recently lowered the state’s bond rating.

Waldman should also have noted that Kansas was not that bad off to begin with in 2012 when the GOP took over. Relatively speaking, Kansas was in the middle. And in terms of economic security as an index of factors, Kansas was one of the most secure economically, post-recession.  

So, based on ideology not fiscal or economic necessity, Gov. Sam Brownback and his GOP super-majority, said basically, "If it ain't broke let's fix it."  

Thankfully, their toxic experiment was contained to relatively isolated and sparsely populated Kansas. The only good results are, as I said, a warning to the rest of us, and that the Kansas GOP is now in a state of "civil war" between Tea Party extremists and everybody else.

GOP governor implements GOP economics, disaster ensues

By Paul Waldman

July 16, 2014 | Washington Post

URL: http://wapo.st/1r4ijC6

Debunking 'job-killing regulations'

A new study shows that, when it comes to the economy, the modern Republican party has one leg less to stand on. 

To wit, we have proof that "job-killing regulations" are just a myth propagated by companies and their lobbyists who want to pass on the real economic costs of their pollution, dangerous operations, and unfair business practices to society at large. 

Ironically, as this study debunking "job-killing regulations" is coming out, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (a glorified wing of the Republican Party) is pledging a "war" on "the vast regulatory state" and an "unprecedented flow of regulations" because, says the Chamber's President, "We must lift the veil of uncertainty hanging over every business and investor if we want to revive our economy."

Another leg of the GOP fell off long ago: tax cuts on the rich (aka trickle-down, voodoo economics and Reaganomics) have never proven effective in growing the economy, jobs and incomes, as even Pope Francis recently noted. 

So now that those two legs of the GOP's three-legged economic stool are gone, what's left? Cutting entitlements. That's right: "Work or Starve." (Official 2014 GOP campaign motto). Well, Republicans have gone ahead and cut food stamps and other forms of "welfare," and we'll have plenty of time to see how badly that works out for Americans and the economy before next November.  

Methinks by then the GOP will be sitting on the floor.

(Now to get a bit wonkish. The true cost of regulations may be hard to calculate; nevertheless, we can compare the U.S. to other countries. After all, everything is relative and businesses can't re-locate to Mars. The World Bank's annual Doing Business survey compares countries on a range of indicators, like ease of starting a business and ease of paying taxes. In 2013, even in the dark depths of the Obama Regime, the U.S. ranks 4th in the world out of 189 countries. As in past years, we are topped only by tiny islands Singapore, Hong Kong and New Zealand. So the United States is still the place to do business, with the best climate for investment and the biggest consumer market in the world. Anybody who says otherwise is a crank or a charlatan.)

UPDATE (06.12.2013): Right on cue, our fair & balanced friends at FOX gave us this big headline: "Regulation Nation: Gov't regs estimated to pound private sector with $1.8 T in costs." On FOX's home page they rounded that estimate, courtesy of the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute, up to $2 trillion. (What's $200 billion nowadays anyway? Just rounding.)  FOX doesn't offer any dissenting opinions on that estimate, or even information how it was derived; it's just presented as fact. Nor does FOX mention that CEI is a libertarian think tank that has defended Big Tobacco, opposed fuel efficiency standards, and disputed global warming science. It's all in day's work shilling for corporate interests.

Right-wing garbage debunked: No, regulation doesn’t kill jobs

By Sean McElwee

December 2, 2013 | Salon 

It’s one of the oldest right-wing claims: “Excessive” regulation will harm job creators and kill the economy. But is it based on sound economics?

One new study, which examines this particular argument, finds it absurd on its face. Taylor Lincoln, who authored the report for Public Citizen, tells Salon the goal was to “point out hypocrisy and contradictions and the chasms between rhetoric and reality.” To that end, the report cites one Heritage Foundation study which asserted that a more efficient regulatory system could create 9.6 million jobs. The problem, as Washington Post columnist Steven Pearlstein noted: “there are only 7 million unemployed Americans.”

Heritage isn’t the only one making this argument. A Phoenix Foundation study claimed that, “a 5 percent reduction in the federal regulatory budget would yield 5.9 million new jobs over five years.” But the Public Citizen report points out that this leads to a ludicrous conclusion: “a 16 percent decrease (a figure the authors chose to parallel the amount by which they say federal spending had exceeded revenue since 2000) would result in the creation of 18.8 million new jobs over five years. In contrast, there are only about 11.3 million unemployed Americans.”

Dr. Thomas McGarity, a University of Texas professor who has studied regulation for decades, finds the right-wing argument wanting. As to whether cutting regulation could increase economic growth, he tells Salon, “it’s a silly argument. The impact of regulation, particularly in this era when it’s so darn hard to write a regulation, is nothing compared to what the Fed does each meeting.” His most recent book, Freedom to Harm, details how a decade-long assault on regulation threatens workers and the environment.

In fact, the OMB estimates that regulations provide huge economic benefits. They find that major regulations benefit the economy between $193 billion and $800 billion a year at a cost of $57 to $84 billion. McGarity confirms this, telling Salon, “The thing that is most troubling to me is, when the right-wing think-tanks or the government estimates the cost of regulation, they never go back and see how much it did cost. The few retrospective studies that have been done have shown uniformly that the cost estimates have been higher, much higher than the actual cost of the regulation. The reason is that once the regulations are in place companies are able to adapt to them very quickly.”

The irony is that Republicans always hail the ability of businesses to innovate and adapt, but their anti-regulatory stance is premised on the idea the businesses cannot adapt to new regulation.

Both McGarity and Lincoln noted that Nixon, Ford and H.W. Bush were all very pro-regulation. McGarity tells Salon that “there used to be strong environmentally conscious Republicans in the House and Senate, [but] you can’t point to one Republican now who is a strong environmental advocate.” Lincoln says the anti-regulatory impulse is tied to the economy. When the economy is strong, businesses quickly adapt to regulation, but in hard times, regulation appears as a scapegoat for the weak economy. Both feared that the Republican party is now ruled largely by business interests unconcerned with the common good.

But it’s not just right-wing think tanks and demagogues claiming that cutting regulation will somehow magically create jobs. The Economist claimed this year: “But red tape in America is no laughing matter. The problem is not the rules that are self-evidently absurd. It is the ones that sound reasonable on their own but impose a huge burden collectively.” The article concludes that regulation may “crush the life out of America’s economy.”

In the New York Times earlier this month, Tyler Cowen wrote:

We don’t really know the total regulatory burden in our economy today, in part because there are too many rules and side effects to add up all the costs. Nonetheless, we are continually increasing the obstacles to doing business. America has lost the robust productivity growth of much of the postwar era, and the share of start-ups in the economy has been falling each decade since the 1980s. Although overregulation is hardly the only culprit, it is very likely contributing to the problem.

When arguing to gut America’s regulatory regime, one doesn’t need data or statistics, just a general feeling that regulation is probably harming economic growth.

Opponents of regulation often suggest that regulations create uncertainty and therefore stymie growth, but in truth they do the opposite. To understand why, imagine a world without regulation, one in which railroad track gauges are divergent, food and drugs are released without trials and buildings are built on a whim.  Americans who visit countries with a weak governance are often surprised to find that the stairs aren’t of equal height. By establishing a minimum standard for environmental degradation, customer safety and worker treatment, regulation can change entire industries.

The auto industry is a quintessential example. Today’s advertisements focus on fuel efficiency and safety, and we take air bags and seat belts for granted, but cars were once death traps. Lincoln explains, “Their market research showed that adding seat belts didn’t help and they’re not seeing profit it it, they’re not seeing dollar signs.” All of that began to change with Ralph Nader’s famous “Unsafe at Any Speed.” Customers didn’t know that cars could be safer and more fuel-efficient until the government began enforcing the regulations. Henry Ford once said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Consumers are naturally conservative and they are heavily influenced by advertising. George McGovern, echoing the arguments of J. K. Galbraith, said that advertising can “brainwash the consumer” because “no one was ever born with the taste for huge automobiles.” Companies were stuck on producing slick fancy cars, not safe cars. Regulation upended the industry and entirely changed the way that customers and society viewed the car: not a luxury toy, but a utilitarian mode of transportation. This changed the way customers thought about safety and companies thought about advertising.

The report shows how regulations we now take for granted — catalytic converters, unleaded gasoline, fuel efficiency standards, worker safety protection, minimum wages, environmental protections — were once denounced by industry shills as “job killing” or “economy strangling.” Industry experts predicted that worker safety regulations would destroy jobs and tank industries. The day before the bills would pass they would shout Cassandra-like warnings and hold up Mayan calendars. But the next day the air was cleaner, workers were safer and the economy chugged along.

Even Tom Donohue, the President of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is forced to concede, “I think we need a strong public sector. We have about a $1.7 trillion a year regulatory bill. Seventy-five, 80 percent of that is very useful. You’ve got to have air traffic control. You’ve got to have food safety.”

Today, the same absurd claims once raised about now banal regulations are being tossed about again. Already industry experts have predicted 12.9 million job losses from Dodd-Frank, the Affordable Care Act and Obama’s GHG regulation proposals. Lincoln’s goal is simple: “We are trying to lay down a record of what they’re saying now, because they are going to be wrong again.”

Krugman: 5 litmus tests for true conservatives?

Krugman is totally right about one's values determining one's view on the welfare state. (I would say it's more a question of aesthetics.)  It's not something you can really debate. Believe me, I've tried.

There really are people who believe in the "work or starve" / "let the devil take the hindmost" philosophy of social Darwinism, and they make up about 20 percent of the U.S. population and the core of the Tea Parties and Republican Party.

When it comes to the general welfare, they are not interested in outcomes, but rather in ideology, in establishing ideal, Randian rules of the game that don't impede the unlimited accumulation of wealth with no responsibility to give anything back.  For them that belief is ironclad; it's beyond argument.

Krugman offers 5 issues, on the other hand, that do hinge on results, on empirical evidence.  One side is definitely right or wrong.  For these issues it's not a question of values or what's "right," but rather what's provably correct.  Krugman observes that while liberals can and do disagree on these 5 issues, and still call themselves liberal without suffering ideological exile, conservatives must answer a certain way on all 5 or else be confined to an ideological reservation for "RINOs."

The Closing of the Conservative Mind

By Paul Krugman

May 25, 2013 | New York Times

URL: http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/krugman/2013/05/25/the-closing-of-the-conservative-mind/

DC Johnston: Average Americans $59 richer since 1966

Everybody's gotta read this. I'm not even gonna give you snippets, just read the whole thing.

My man David Cay Johnston is back on the case!

Income Inequality: 1 Inch to 5 Miles

By David Cay Johnston

February 25, 2013 | Tax Analysts

URL: http://www.taxanalysts.com/www/features.nsf/Articles/C52956572546624F85257B1D004DE3FC?OpenDocument

Taibbi: 'We shouldn't take it seriously'

It's funny that I'm reading this now, after I just debated with a buddy to what extent the media should be calling "bullshit" on liars, and whether and how the media should show stupid people for what they are.  So in his latest post, Matt Taibbi comes with this:

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

Anybody who votes for these hucksters, Romney and Ryan, is either retarded or just flat out hates Barack Obama with so much passion, they wouldn't care who was running against him.  That's all there is to it.  There can't be any other reason. Because, since the GOP primaries, Romney's campaign has lacked any rhyme, reason, consistency or facts.  His campaign is the biggest political snow job I've seen in my lifetime.  

What's most baffling is that I don't get why Romney is doing it, why he's promising a 20-percent tax cut that he knows he can't pay for, when he could just wink at Republicans and say, "Oh, I think I'll take a hard look at cutting taxes after I'm elected, but for now, I'm keeping my options open [wink-wink]."  And that would be enough. They're all going to vote for him anyway; he doesn't even need to lie to them and everybody else so brazenly to get their votes.  

The Vice Presidential Debate: Joe Biden Was Right to Laugh

By Matt Taibbi

October 12, 2012 | Rolling Stone

I've never thought much of Joe Biden. But man, did he get it right in last night's debate, and not just because he walloped sniveling little Paul Ryan on the facts. What he got absolutely right, despite what you might read this morning (many outlets are criticizing Biden's dramatic excesses), was his tone. Biden did absolutely roll his eyes, snort, laugh derisively and throw his hands up in the air whenever Ryan trotted out his little beady-eyed BS-isms.

But he should have! He was absolutely right to be doing it. We all should be doing it. That includes all of us in the media, and not just paid obnoxious-opinion-merchants like me, but so-called "objective" news reporters as well. We should all be rolling our eyes, and scoffing and saying, "Come back when you're serious."

The load of balls that both Romney and Ryan have been pushing out there for this whole election season is simply not intellectually serious. Most of their platform isn't even a real platform, it's a fourth-rate parlor trick designed to paper over the real agenda – cutting taxes even more for super-rich dickheads like Mitt Romney, and getting everyone else to pay the bill.

The essence of the whole campaign for me was crystalized in the debate exchange over Romney's 20 percent tax-cut plan. ABC's Martha Raddatz turned the questioning to Ryan:

MS. RADDATZ: Well, let's talk about this 20 percent.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Well – (chuckles) –

MS. RADDATZ: You have refused yet again to offer specifics on how you pay for that 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Do you actually have the specifics, or are you still working on it, and that's why you won't tell voters?

Here Ryan is presented with a simple yes-or-no answer. Since he doesn't have the answer, he immediately starts slithering and equivocating:

REP. RYAN: Different than this administration, we actually want to have big bipartisan agreements. You see, I understand the –

"We want to have bipartisan agreements?" This coming from a Republican congressman? These guys would stall a bill to name a post office after Shirley Temple. Biden, absolutely properly, chuckled and said, "That'd be a first for a Republican congress." Then Raddatz did exactly what any self-respecting journalist should do in that situation: she objected to being lied to, and yanked on the leash, forcing Ryan back to the question.

I'm convinced Raddatz wouldn't have pounced on Ryan if he hadn't trotted out this preposterous line about bipartisanism. Where does Ryan think we've all been living, Mars? It's one thing to pull that on some crowd of unsuspecting voters that hasn't followed politics that much and doesn't know the history. But any professional political journalist knows enough to know the abject comedy of that line. Still, Ryan was banking on the moderator not getting in the way and just letting him dump his trash on audiences. Instead, she aggressively grabbed Ryan by his puppy-scruff and pushed him back into the mess of his own proposal:

MS. RADDATZ: Do you have the specifics? Do you have the math? Do you know exactly what you're doing?

So now the ball is in Ryan's court. The answer he gives is astounding:

REP. RYAN: Look – look at what Mitt – look at what Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill did. They worked together out of a framework to lower tax rates and broaden the base, and they worked together to fix that. What we're saying is here's our framework: Lower tax rates 20 percent – we raise about $1.2 trillion through income taxes. We forgo about 1.1 trillion [dollars] in loopholes and deductions. And so what we're saying is deny those loopholes and deductions to higher-income taxpayers so that more of their income is taxed, which has a broader base of taxation –

Three things about this answer:

1) Ryan again here refuses to answer Raddatz's yes-or-no question about specifics. So now we know the answer: there are no specifics.

2) In lieu of those nonexistent specifics, what Ryan basically says is that he and Romney will set the framework – "Lower taxes by 20 percent" – and then they'll work out the specifics of how to get there with the Democrats in bipartisan fashion.

3) So essentially, Ryan has just admitted on national television that the Romney tax plan will be worked out after the election with the same Democrats from whom they are now, before the election, hiding any and all details.

So then, after that, there's this exchange.

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: Can I translate?

REP. RYAN: – so we can lower tax rates across the board. Now, here's why I'm saying this. What we're saying is here's a framework –

VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN: I hope I'm going to get time to respond to this.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress –

MS. RADDATZ: I – you'll get time.

REP. RYAN: We want to work with Congress on how best to achieve this. That means successful – look –

MS. RADDATZ: No specifics, yeah.

Raddatz did exactly the right thing. She asked a yes-or-no question, had a politician try to run the lamest kind of game on her – and when he was done, she called him on it, coming right back to the question and translating for viewers: "No specifics."

Think about what that means. Mitt Romney is running for president – for president! – promising an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without offering any details about how that's going to be paid for. Forget being battered by the press, he and his little sidekick Ryan should both be tossed off the playing field for even trying something like that. This race for the White House, this isn't some frat prank. This is serious. This is for grownups, for God's sake.

If you're going to offer an across-the-board 20 percent tax cut without explaining how it's getting paid for, hell, why stop there? Why not just offer everyone over 18 a 1965 Mustang? Why not promise every child a Zagnut and an Xbox, or compatible mates for every lonely single person?

Sometimes in journalism I think we take the objectivity thing too far. We think being fair means giving equal weight to both sides of every argument. But sometimes in the zeal to be objective, reporters get confused. You can't report the Obama tax plan and the Romney tax plan in the same way, because only one of them is really a plan, while the other is actually not a plan at all, but an electoral gambit.

The Romney/Ryan ticket decided, with incredible cynicism, that that they were going to promise this massive tax break, not explain how to pay for it, and then just hang on until election day, knowing that most of the political press would let it skate, or at least not take a dump all over it when explaining it to the public. Unchallenged, and treated in print and on the air as though it were the same thing as a real plan, a 20 percent tax cut sounds pretty good to most Americans. Hell, it sounds good to me.

The proper way to report such a tactic is to bring to your coverage exactly the feeling that Biden brought to the debate last night: contempt and amazement. We in the press should be offended by what Romney and Ryan are doing – we should take professional offense that any politician would try to whisk such a gigantic lie past us to our audiences, and we should take patriotic offense that anyone is trying to seize the White House using such transparently childish and dishonest tactics.

I've never been a Joe Biden fan. After four years, I'm not the biggest Barack Obama fan, either (and I'll get into why on that score later). But they're at least credible as big-league politicians. So much of the Romney/Ryan plan is so absurdly junior league, it's so far off-Broadway, it's practically in New Jersey.

Paul Ryan, a leader in the most aggressively and mindlessly partisan Congress in history, preaching bipartisanship? A private-equity parasite, Mitt Romney, who wants to enact a massive tax cut and pay for it without touching his own personal fortune-guaranteeing deduction, the carried-interest tax break – which keeps his own taxes below 15 percent despite incomes above $20 million?

The Romney/Ryan platform makes sense, and is not laughable, in only one context: if you're a multi-millionaire and you recognize that this is the only way to sell your agenda to mass audiences. But if you're not one of those rooting gazillionaires, you should laugh, you should roll your eyes, and it doesn't matter if you're the Vice President or an ABC reporter or a toll operator. You should laugh, because this stuff is a joke, and we shouldn't take it seriously.

Median, middle and 'moochers'

MB360 has given us some hard income data to mull over:

• 2011 Census data says the the median U.S. household income is $50,500; that means half of U.S. households make more, and half less than $50,500.
• 2010 Social Security data says the median worker's income is $26,000.
• An individual making more than $250,000 is in the top one percent of all earners in the U.S.  
• A household making more than $250,000 per year is in the top two percent of all U.S. households. 
• A household making more than $100,000 is in the top 20 percent of all U.S. households.

$250,000 and $100,000 are common cut-off points in political discussions about who is really middle class, and who deserves a tax cut or a tax hike.  

Mitt Romney told ABC that, "Middle income is $200,000 to $250,000 and less."  (A person making $200,000 or more is in the top four percent of U.S. income earners.) Obama more or less agrees with Romney.  By their definition, 96 percent of Americans are middle class.  That's ridiculous on its face.

More to the point, do average Americans believe that the top 1-2 percent need and deserve a tax cut right now?  Both Obama and Romney do.  I don't.  

Does it even make sense to regard a household earning $100,000 -- double the median household income -- as middle class?  Probably not, relatively.  

Meanwhile, we have 46.7 million Americans receiving food stamps, and 56 million receiving Social Security.  That's about one-third of the U.S. population. That's not to mention 48 million Americans on Medicare, and about 4 million on Medicaid.  Meanwhile, 60 percent of those 65 or older receive at least 75 percent of their income from Social Security. How low would U.S. median income be without these programs?  It's frightening to think about how insecure most Americans are, financially.

Here's what these programs cost, or, to put it in Republican terms, how much wealth they redistribute:

• Food stamps, unemployment insurance, welfare: $210 billion
• Medicaid and CHIP grants to states: $265 billion
• Medicare: $550 billion (2011)
• Social Security: $778 billion

          TOTAL:  $1.8 trillion

But what about the deficit?  As a Bloomberg study revealed, "the rise in the deficit -- from an average of 1.9 percent of gross domestic product in the pre-crisis years (2005 to 2007) to 9.3 percent of GDP post- crisis (2009-2011) -- is almost entirely due to the economic decline, which drove down tax receipts and pushed up spending on unemployment, food stamps and other support programs."

But we already knew that, right?  We must know that 33 percent or 47 percent or whatever share of Americans didn't suddenly become lazy moochers while Obama went on a wild spending spree.  No, it's that suddenly our economy got very, very bad: shrinking 6.3 percent in 2008 alone, erasing $15.5 trillion in U.S. wealth, costing 8.8 million U.S. jobs, and dunking 24 percent of houses -- most Americans' most valuable asset -- underwater.  

Given all this, it is madness to suggest that the answer to our economic malaise is to cut spending for needy Americans while reducing taxes for Americans making $200,000 or more.  

What else is Romney 'completely wrong' about?

Gee, maybe Romney's also wrong about his denial that extending Dubya's tax cuts, plus another 20 percent cut across the board, will increase our national debt by about $4.8 trillion over 10 years? (This is not to mention $2.1 trillion in extra military spending he can't pay for either).  

Romney could make his campaign about anything and have a great shot at winning.  He could say he's in favor of rainbows and ice cream and probably win. But no, he had to propose two big-ass tax cuts that he knows he can't pay for. Why? What on earth?! Either somebody's pulling his strings, or he's mentally retarded, or both. There is no reason for him to go out on a limb with a lie like this, embarrassing himself, and insulting our intelligence. 

And all you "fiscal conservatives," all you Tea Partyers out there who are supposedly so worried about our national debt: you should all be ashamed of yourselves for letting him put this over on you, in your Party's name, as if you've forgotten elementary school arithmetic.  Stand with Romney now and you've lost all credibility (if you had any left).  

Romney on 47% comments: I was 'completely wrong'

By Ashley Killough

October 4, 2012 | CNN

URL: http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/04/romney-on-47-comments-i-was-completely-wrong/?hpt=hp_t2

Romney was a lying sack of s--t last night

Romney may have "won" last night's debate according to snap polls, (I watched the first 15:00 then I couldn't take Romney's lying anymore), but he proved once again that he's willing to say anything to get elected, promising us that we can have our cake ($4.8 trillion in tax cuts) and eat it too (zero deficits).

Welcome back, Big Government Conservatism!  How ya been, Voodoo Economics!

Seriously, we've been through this GOP charade how many times already?  And Republicans just keep on trying it.  You know, like when Dubya cut taxes and it was supposed to grow our economy, not the deficit.  Instead, from 2002-2009, Dubya increased our national debt 91 percent or  $5.9 trillion!

Now here's the truth. This is what the non-partisan Tax Policy Center said in August about Romney's proposed 20 percent across-the-board tax cuts, on top of a permanent extension of Bush's tax cuts:

The basic arithmetic of revenue neutrality requires eliminating $360 billion worth of tax expenditures [in 2013] to offset $360 billion of [Romney's proposed] tax cuts. [...] Thus, in order to offset $360 billion in cuts, one must eliminate 65 percent of all of the available $551 billion in tax expenditures.

TPC says these cuts will total $480 billion by 2015.  Total this up over 10 years, as the Obama campaign did, and you get $4.8 trillion that must be made up for somehow.  PolitiFact confirmed it.  

Romney refuses again and again to tell us what tax expenditures he'll end and which loopholes he'll close.  Where's the money going to come from?  Don't worry, he's a business pro, he'll find it, that's what we're supposed to believe!  (Maybe it's hiding in Romney's couch cushions... or in the couches in his offshore banks).  

And it gets worse: Romney wants to increase military spending by $2.1 trillion. That brings the total of unfunded tax cuts and spending hikes to $6.9 trillion, as President Obama correctly pointed out last night.  

(I guess when you calmly call somebody on his B.S. like Obama did to Romney last night, it's considered a losing tactic.  I suppose Obama should have been screaming, jumping up and down, and accusing Romney of being a pants-on-fire charlatan while doing the "you're crazy" finger twirl next to his temple?....)

   

Anyhow, here's how Romney responded to Obama's telling it like it is:  

I'm not looking for a $5 trillion tax cut.  What I've said is I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit.  That's part one.  So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say 'I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.'  Number two, I will not reduce the share paid by high-income individuals.  [...Romney makes a joke about how often his own children lie to him...]  I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans.  And number three, I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle-income families.  I will lower taxes on middle-income families.  

Exactly.  I mean... huh-what?!?  [Double take.]  Mitt Romney just promised us that he would reject his own tax plan!

The Tax Policy Center's Howard Gleckman summed it up thus: "Romney’s problem is he cannot possibly achieve all of these goals. He is doomed by both political reality and simple mathematics."

Folks, seriously, do the arithmetic.  It's not hard.  Then decide if you want to be deceived or not.  If you want to be lied to then, by all means, vote for Romney.  This guy is an empty suit stuffed with deceit and calumny.  

UPDATE:  Paul Krugman pointed out in the NYT how Mitt also lied his ass off that his healthcare plan covers pre-existing medical conditions, which is just flat untrue. Romney lied many, many more times during the night, but I'd say these were the biggest two whoppers.

Tax cuts don't work in Canada either

"No way, tax cuts are for sucks, eh"

"Tax cuts work every time they're tried," eh?  Not so with our silent neighbors to the north.  Of course, we have plenty examples of our own in the U.S. to prove that they don't work to raise more revenue, there's no need to look up to those Molson-swilling hosers for advice.  Take off, eh.

Canada Proves Conservatives Wrong by Cutting Corporate Taxes By 30% and Still No Jobs

By Ray Medeiros

September 1, 2012 | Politics USA

URL: http://www.politicususa.com/canada-proves-conservatives-wrong-cutting-corporate-taxes-30-jobs.html

Obama owes liberals an explanation -- and an apology

A little grayer, but any wiser after 4 years of giving in to the GOP?

Conservatives dislike Obama for their own silly reasons, most of which relate to his non-traditional background: his mixed race; his peripatetic, multi-cultural, international upbringing (encapsulated in Birtherism); his "inexplicable" entrance into and completion of Columbia University and Harvard Law School; his "angry black" former pastor; his community organizing in Chicago; his proximity to ACORN and Saul Alinsky, etc.  

Indeed, it's quite telling how, even after four years in office, conservatives still primarily fixate on, and object to, Obama's origins, i.e. everything leading up to his term as Senator from Illinois.  It just goes to show that they were never going to accept him, never going to admit him into their country club, no matter what he did.  

Prime example: when Obama rolled out a health care bill after months of consultation with private insurance companies and Big Pharma -- a bill that was originally conceived by the conservative Heritage Foundation, passed into law by Republican Mitt Romney in 2006, and endorsed by Republican Newt Gingrich in 2006 and again 2008 -- because it came from Obama, Republicans called it Socialism and Big Government tyranny.  (And today, the aforementioned three feel not the slightest bit of shame in criticizing it as such!)

Unlike conservatives, we liberal-progressives have real gripes with Obama.  Unlike them, we are entitled to feel baffled and betrayed at Obama's first four years, because we voted for him with hope for change, and then watched as he let himself get beat up, again and again, by the Republican Congress, while he gave up key concessions for nothing, including: 

• the public option in Obamacare; 
• a stimulus bill in excess of $1.2 billion that was not one-third tax cuts; 
• real mortgage modifications with principal reduction for millions of underwater homeowners; 
• letting Bush's irresponsible tax cuts expire; and
• real banking-financial reform to end Too Big To Fail and speculation with taxpayers' guarantee.

This is not to mention Obama's erstwhile support for fast U.S. troops withdrawals from Afghanistan and Iraq, perhaps the most mobilizing issue among Obama's grassroots supporters.  (By the way, during Clint Eastwood's curious, rambling speech at the GOP convention when he called for immediate withdrawal from Afghanistan, the conservative crowd erupted in cheers.  Gee, what a difference four years and a Democratic commander-in-chief makes!)

This past weekend, Sam Stein and Ryan Grim posted a very good synopsis of the disappointments of Obama's first term from a progressive's point of view.  It shows how Obama foolishly tried to play an "inside game" with Congressional Republicans who stated publicly that their #1 priority was to defeat him in 2012, and who sabotaged a deal with Obama on the deficit because it would have helped him get re-elected.

His pointless concessions were even more tragic and stupid, considering Obama's record 13 million e-mail addresses and 3 million individual online donors in 2008. Obama had this huge mass of active grassroots support with which he could have bludgeoned obstinate Republicans into submission, but instead Obama forswore his base, laying down his greatest weapon only to be barraged by Republican fusillades.

Maybe he's just too nice a guy.  Certainly he's too weak.  Maybe he had bad advice. (OK, he definitely had bad advice: Summers, Geithner, Emanuel, Axelrod, et al.)  Or maybe he was vain and bought into the hype that he was a "transformational" leader whom Republicans would have no choice but to bargain with, thanks to his irresistible post-partisan reasonableness.  Whatever the reason, it was such a wasted opportunity.

Obama Owes Us An Explanation

By Peter S. Goodman

September 3, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-s-goodman/barack-obama-economy_b_1847149.html