Elizabeth Warren Vindicated as Fox News Use Argument That Rich Don't Make It On Their Own

Elizabeth Warren Vindicated as Fox News Use Argument That Rich Don't Make It On Their Own

Last fall, right-wing pundits at Fox News and elsewhere savaged Elizabeth Warren, the Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Massachusetts, after video circulated of the former Obama administration official explaining that because business moguls take advantage of infrastructure and education funded by taxes, "[t]here is nobody in this country who got rich on his own." This morning, an unlikely group offered up comments strikingly similar to Warren's: the hosts of Fox & Friends Sunday.

During a segment on wealthy Americans who renounce their citizenship to avoid paying taxes, Clayton Morris offered up this advice to such persons: "Get out of here. But the point is, you've made all this money on the backs of the infrastructure, taxpayers that got you there, the roads that taxpayers pay so you can drive back and forth to work to get rich on a regular basis, and now you're going to leave so you're not going to pay taxes."

Alisyn Camerota added, "[A]re they just greedy? I mean, are they just -- after this country allowed you the entrepreneurial spirit, the freedom to make all this money, now you're going to leave it? I mean, that does send the message that you care more about your money than you do about your country."


Compare their comments to those Warren made during a campaign stop in August while pushing back against claims that asking the wealthy to pay more in taxes is "class warfare":

    WARREN: There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there -- good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory and hire someone to protect against this because of the work the rest of us did. Now look. You built a factory, and it turned into something terrific or a great idea -- God bless! Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

There are some differences, of course. Fox & Friends being what it is, the segment concludes with the hosts determining that "the answer" is to "be part of the solution" by "stay[ing] here and... fight[ting] for better tax laws," followed by a series of jokes about European toilets. But both make the case that the private sector success of the wealthy is driven by government investments funded by the public. Fox, of course, has long been a chief promoter of the very claims of "class warfare" Warren criticized.

In October, Fox News' Andrew Napolitano responded to Warren's comments by labeling her a "crazy lady." Reason magazine editor in chief Matt Welch called them "the best advertisement I've seen in a long time for limiting the size and scope of government" and "terrifying." Other right-wing commenters termed her remarks "dunderheaded" "piffle" that made her sound like a "guileless, fevered Marxist."

It remains to be seen whether the right will similarly target the "Marxist[s]" on Fox & Friends' curvy couch.

The least Fox News could do is send Warren a check for co-opting her speech. But like your average conservatives, the Fox News propaganda channel tends to take what it wants, earning it or creating something themselves would just be too much work.

It's Not About the Damn Ponies

It's true that Romney makes most of his annual income off of dividends and capital gains he earns by investing his fortune. But he made $374,327.62 in 2010 on speaker's fees alone. That's a figure, by the way, that Romney characterized as "not very much" money. Kathleen Parker thinks people are just hating on the Romneys' success out of some kind of pony-envy, but we're really appalled about something completely different. We're appalled that he wants to cut way back on programs to help the poor and middle-class survive and advance in our society at the same time that he wants to hand out a $250,000 annual income tax break to millionaires. Over a four-year presidential term, that would be a million dollar tax break to everyone who made a million dollars a year for those four years. You can't make a proposal like that when you are worth a quarter of a billion dollars and then complain about the budget deficit and call for massive cuts in social spending, and then think you'll be above criticism.

As for Ann Romney's horse, Ms. Parker doesn't get into the specifics for a good reason. Apparently, the Romneys formed a corporation to deal with this horse, and they declared a $77,000 loss in 2010 for that corporation. If the corporation ever makes any money by, for example, breeding this Olympic-performing horse, they can write off those losses. And you thought the Olympics were about amateur sports!

Romney says our taxes - the lowest they have been in fifty years - are too high. Yet here we are subsidizing Romney's expensive hobby. Mitt and Ann are welfare queens, simple as that.

If they gave Olympic Gold Medals for lying, Mitt Romney would have a mansion full of them. Character does matter. Romney says he is a man of character and morals. When can the American people start to see some of that character and morality? After the election will be too late.

Sleaze Bags of the Week - Conservative Republican Super PACs Buying Democracy Like Its French Champagne

I love screwing over seniors and the disabled. My plan would gut that Marxist program called Medicare

Sleaze Bags of the Week - Conservative Republican Super PACs Buying Democracy Like Its French Champagne

If you’re visiting a candidate this summer and looking for a thoughtful Super PAC donors have money to spare, but it's democracy they're burning to the ground.house gift, might we suggest a nice Super PAC? Thanks to the Supreme Court and Citizens United, they’re all the rage among the mega-wealthy. All it takes is a little paperwork and a wad of cash and presto, you can have, as The Washington Post describes it, a “highly customized, highly personalized” political action committee.

It’s easy -- Super PACs come in all amounts and party affiliations. You don’t have to spend millions, although a gift that size certainly won’t be turned aside.  Cable TV tycoon Marc Nathanson got a Super PAC for his friend, longtime Democratic Congressman Howard Berman from California, and all it cost was $100,000. Down in North Carolina, Republican congressional candidate George Holding received a handsome Super PAC that includes $100,000 each from an aunt and uncle and a quarter of a million from a bunch of his cousins. Yes, nothing says family like a great big, homemade batch of campaign contributions.

You can start a Super PAC on your own or contribute to one that already exists. Super PACs are available for every kind of race – presidential, congressional or statewide. But there are other ways you can help buy an election. Look at the Wisconsin recall campaign of Republican Governor Scott Walker. At least fourteen billionaires rushed to the support of the corporate right’s favorite union basher. He outraised his Democratic opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, by nearly eight to one. Most of his money came from out of state. More than sixty million dollars were spent, $45 million of it for Walker alone.

Here are just a few of the satisfied buyers:

Wisconsin billionaire Diane Hendricks contributed more than half a million dollars on Scott Walker’s behalf. Her late husband built ABC Supply, America’s largest wholesale distributor of roofing, windows and siding.  Fearful the United States might become “a socialistic ideological nation,” she’s an ardent foe of unions and, in her words, “taxing job creators.” True to her aversion to taxes, she paid none in 2010, despite being worth, according to Forbes magazine, about $2.8 billion dollars.  

Before he launched his crusade against the collective bargaining rights of working people, Governor Walker had a conversation with Diane Hendricks, in which she asked, “Any chance we’ll ever get to be a completely red state and work on these unions… and become a right to work [state]? What can we do to help you?”

Walker replied, “We`re going to start in a couple weeks with our budget adjustment bill. The first step is, we`re going to deal with collective bargaining for all public employee unions, because you use divide and conquer.”

And so he did.

Walker also hauled in checks for nearly half a million from the Texas oligarch Bob Perry. He made his fortune in the home building business and is best known nationally for contributing four and a half million to the Swift Boat campaign that smeared the Vietnam War record of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry back in 2004.

In Texas, Bob Perry is known for his cozy relationship with the state’s Supreme Court.  He once gave money to every one of its nine elected judges.  And guess what?  Those same nine judges later overturned an $800,000 judgment against his building company for faulty construction.  Bob the Builder, who’s naturally eager for help in the cause of tort reform -- that is, making it hard for everyday people to sue corporations like his for malfeasance -- has so far given four million to the pro-Romney Super PAC, Restore Our Future, and millions to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads Super PAC.

Then there’s casino king Sheldon Adelson, who gave Scott Walker’s cause $250,000. That’s a drop in the old champagne bucket compared to the $21 million Adelson’s family gave to the Super PAC that kept Newt Gingrich in the race long after the formaldehyde had been ordered.  According to The Wall Street Journal, Adelson did not long mourn Gingrich’s passing, and has now given at least $10 million to the Restore Our Future Super PAC supporting Romney. By all accounts, what he expects in return is that his candidate hold unions at bay and swear that Israel can do no wrong.

Next up on Scott Walker’s list of beneficent plutocrats: Rich DeVos, owner of the Orlando Magic basketball team and co-founder of the home products giant Amway, which, thanks to Republican leaders in Congress, once shared in a $19 million tax break after a million-dollar DeVos contribution to the Republican Party.  He’s a long-time member of the secretive Council for National Policy, a who’s who of right-wing luminaries.

Let’s not forget cowboy billionaire and born again Christian, Foster Friess, Rick Santorum’s moneyman, who told us about the good ol’ days when womenwould “use Bayer aspirin for contraceptives. The gals put it between their knees and it wasn't that costly.”And Louis Moore Bacon, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Moore Capital – which in 2010 was fined $25 million for attempted commodities manipulation. A big backer of Romney, he, too came to Walker’s aid in Wisconsin.

So did Dallas oil and gas wildcatter Trevor Rees-Jones, who’s given millions to Karl Rove’s American Crossroads, in anticipation of another administration as friendly to taxpayer subsidies for big oil as the Rove-Bush White House. Last year, Rees-Jones’ company, Chief Oil, and a partner sold to Chevron nearly a quarter million acres in northeast America’s Marcellus Shale – the epicenter of the raging controversy over fracking. Estimated price: one billion dollars.

We could go on and name more, but you get the picture. These are the people who are helping to fund what the journalist Joe Hagan describes as a “tsunami of slime.” Even as they and their chosen candidates are afforded respectability in the value-free world of plutocracy, they can hide the fingerprints they leave on the bleeding corpse of democracy in part because each Super PAC comes with that extra special something every politician craves: plausible deniability. When one of their ads says something nasty and deceitful about an opponent – when it slanders and lies – the pol can shrug and say: “Not my doing. It’s the Super Pac that’s slinging the mud, not me.”

And that’s how the wealthy one percent does its dirty business. They are, by the way, as we were reminded by CNN’s Charles Riley in his report, “Can 46 Rich Dudes Buy an Election?” almost all men, mostly white, “and so far, the vast majority of their contributions have been made to conservative groups.”  They want to own this election.  So if there are any of you left out there with millions to burn, better buy your candidate now, while supplies last.

by Bill Moyers. Reprinted for educational purposes.

Since that column was written Sheldon Adelson has said he plans to give -not $10 million to Romney, but a $100 million. Democracy has always been tainted by money. It has simply become worse then ever, a nightmare of perverted democracy. Conservatives Republicans have no conscience or moral qualms about it because winning is everything, If they have to win down and dirty, they will. Conservative Republicans have given lip service to morals for decades, but they never actually live up to their moralizing.

TV Media Ignore Romney's Clean Energy Contradictions. Admittedly it will take a little more than money to become president. Romney is going to lie about everything all the time.

Romney's Big Lie on the Economy Now Bigger than Ever 

Conservative Republicans Want to Rise Taxes for Low Income Americans and Lower Taxes Again for Millionaires

Conservative Republicans Want to Rise Taxes for Low Income Americans and Lower Taxes Again for Millionaires

An oft-repeated Republican talking point is that close to half of all federal income tax filers have no tax liability. Prominent Republicans often imply that these people ought to be paying federal income taxes — and that they don’t is a major cause of the budget deficit.

Last year, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the tax-writing Senate Finance Committee, declared that taxes on the rich should not be raised until the poor are taxed. “I think many taxpayers are skeptical that the answer to our fiscal problems is for them to sacrifice more, when almost half of all households are not paying any income taxes,” Mr. Hatch said.

In April, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said it was “unfair” that 45 percent of people don’t pay any federal income taxes. Asked if he wanted to increase taxes on these people, he replied, “You’ve got to discuss that issue.”

In May, Richard Mourdock, the Republican Senate nominee in Indiana, likened the current split between taxpayers and nontaxpayers to the pre-Civil War division of the nation between slave and free. Consciously using Abraham Lincoln’s famous “house divided” terminology from 1858, Mr. Mourdock said, “When 47 percent are paying no income taxes — they do pay Social Security, but they are not paying income taxes — and 53 percent are carrying the load, we are a house divided.”

In a McClatchy-Marist College poll in early November, 71 percent of Republicans said they believed the poor should not be exempt from income taxes and only 26 percent said they thought the poor should not have to pay them.

This is ironic, because two of the measures most responsible for the rise in the number of nontaxpayers are the earned income tax credit and the child credit — both Republican initiatives. Together they account for 30 percent of the nontaxpaying population, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Once upon a time, Republicans were more concerned about the number of rich people with no income tax liability.

On Jan. 17, 1969, just days before Richard Nixon’s inauguration, the departing treasury secretary, Joseph Barr, disclosed that in 1967, 155 Americans with an income of more than $200,000 had no income tax liability, including 21 with an income above $1 million.

This was considered such a scandal that Nixon sent a tax package drafted by the Johnson administration to Congress with his endorsement. When the Tax Reform Act of 1969 was enacted, including a minimum tax to force rich people to pay something, he praised that provision.

As Nixon said in his signing statement:

    A large number of high-income persons who have paid little or no federal income taxes will now bear a fairer share of the tax burden through enactment of a minimum income tax comparable to the proposal that I submitted to the Congress, which closes the loopholes that permitted much of this tax avoidance.

Ronald Reagan defended his tax reform proposal on the grounds that it would reduce the number of nontaxpaying rich people. In a June 6, 1985, speech, he said:

    We’re going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that have allowed some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share. In theory, some of those loopholes were understandable, but in practice they sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary, and that’s crazy. It’s time we stopped it.

Among the specific measures Reagan supported to increase tax fairness was an increase in the tax on capital gains to 28 percent from 20 percent.

From Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul. Bartlest is partially wrong on one point - the earned income credit - mostly aimed at low income families - was a bi-partisan effort. remember when every once in a while Washington would do something good and bi-partisan. Conservatism has become a joke. It ran up massive deficits and as Dick Cheney explained - "deficits don't matter". Then that Democratic guy became president and suddenly deficits became urgent. Only conservative busted the economy - not a good time to focus on deficits. A time when sane people would focus on rising revenue from the people that can most afford it - the very wealthy.

The knuckle draggers at Breitbarf are trying to recycle the Bill Ayers meme against Obama. Not able to find any actual damning evidence they just make things up - because having all the integrity of a cockroach is a conservative value - #Breitbart.com Bombshell Exclusive: Professor Did Not See Barack Obama at Bill Ayers’ House!

Just Five Facts of Conservative Policy That Are Eating Away at The American Dream

Just Five Facts of Conservative Policy That Are Eating Away at The American Dream

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses...I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" These words, from poet Emma Lazarus, were inscribed on the Statue of Liberty over 100 years ago. Today the golden door has a lock on it, paid for with record profits from the health care, education, and financial industries.(Painting: 1886 by Edward Moran)

1. We're near the bottom of the developed world in children's health and safety

According to a 2007 UNICEF report, the U.S. ranked last among 21 OECD nations in an assessment of child health and safety. The assessment measured infant mortality, immunization, and death from accidents and injuries.

A related 2009 OECD study generally agreed, placing the U.S. 24th out of 30 OECD countries for children's health and safety. It also showed the devastating effects of inequality in our country. Despite having the second-highest average income for children among the 30 OECD countries, the U.S. ranked 27th out of 30 for child poverty (percentage of children living in households that are below 50% of the median income).

2. We've betrayed the young people who were advised to stay in school

Over 40% of recent college graduates are living with their parents, dealing with government loans that average $27,200. The unemployment rate for young people is about 50%. More than 350,000 Americans with advanced degrees applied for food stamps in 2010.

As Washington lobbyists endeavor to kill a proposed bill to reduce the interest rates on student debt, federal loans remain readily available, and so colleges go right on increasing their tuition.

Meanwhile, corporations hold $2 trillion in cash while looking for investments and employees in foreign countries, and American students are forced to accept menial positions. Yet delusions persist about our new generation of would-be workers. Conservatives are all bubbly about today's young entrepreneurs creating their own jobs -- jobs that "don't yet exist."

3. The main source of middle-class wealth has been largely wiped out

American homeowners owe almost as much as the students, with $700 billion of debt over and above the value of their homes.

This removes the only source of wealth for middle America, especially for blacks and Hispanics. Remarkably, for every dollar of NON-HOME wealth owned by white families, people of color have only one cent.

So when minority families were specifically targeted for high-risk, subprime loans that could be re-packaged and sold for a quick short-term profit, most of their assets were erased. Median wealth fell 66% for Hispanic households and 53% for black households. For whites the decline was 16%.

With a disturbing note of irony, Sanford Weill, the banker largely responsible for the reversal of the mortgage-protecting Glass-Steagall Act, was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences for "extraordinary accomplishment and a call to serve."

4. We give prison sentences for smoking marijuana, but not for billion-dollar fraud

About half of our world-leading prison population is in jail for non-violent drug offenses. Americans have also been arrested for handing out free food in a park. Mothers in Ohio and Connecticut were jailed for enrolling their kids in out-of-district schools. As of 2003 in California there were 344 individuals serving sentences of 25 years or more for shoplifting as a third offense, in many cases after two non-violent offenses.

How does the market deal with this steady tide of petty crime? It strives for more. The new trend of private prisons is dependent on maintaining a sizable prison population to guarantee profits, with no incentive for rehabilitation.

As the number of inmates has surged, the people who devastated countless American lives "get out of jail free." The savings and loan fraud cost the nation between $300 billion and $500 billion, about 100 times more than the total cost of burglaries in 2010. The financial system bailout has already cost the country $3 trillion. Goldman Sachs packaged bad debt, sold it under a different name, persuaded ratings services to label it AAA, and then bet against their own financial creation by selling it short. Other firms accused of fraud and insider trading were Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Bank of America, Countrywide Financial, and Wells Fargo. The New York Times reported in 2008 that the Justice Department had postponed the bribery or fraud prosecutions of over 50 corporations, choosing instead to enter into agreements involving fines and 'monitoring' periods.

5. You can have health care, if you pay for it

A recent Commonwealth Fund study compared U.S. health care spending to 12 other OECD countries. The data shows that reducing our costs to the median level of spending among the OECD countries would save us $1.5 trillion a year, more than our entire deficit.

Unfortunately, insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and hospital administrators won't hear of it. There's too much money to be made. Bypass surgery in the U.S. costs 2 to 3 times more than in Great Britain, Canada, France, and Germany. Cataract surgery costs 4 times more.

That's if you can pay for it. There are currently about 50 million uninsured Americans. At the other extreme are $2,400 oxymoronic penthouse hospital suites complete with butler and grand piano. Or, for those who don't get out much, emergency rooms in the home, with private cell-phone access to "concierge doctors."

Inequality in our country is so severe that 120,000 health care workers could have been hired with the salary paid to one man. That's a $40,000 salary for 40 health care workers for every one of the 3,000 counties in the United States. Instead, $5 billion dollars went to one man who reportedly made his first big haul ($4 billion, in 2007) by conspiring with Goldman Sachs in the above-mentioned short sale subterfuge.

The result of ignoring the health needs of the greater population, according to a report in the Annual Review of Public Health, is that "the health rankings of the United States have declined substantially when compared with other nations."

Conclusion

Privatization simply hasn't worked for health care, mortgage banking, higher education, or prison management. There is little incentive for profit-motivated firms to invest in disadvantaged or underemployed Americans. That's why taxes are necessary -- to provide for the common good, and to return some of the gains from 60 years of productivity to the great majority of Americans who contributed to our growth. Unfortunately, the golden door on the Statue of Liberty seems to have an invisible hand holding it shut.
Paul Buchheit

Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org),

While some Democrats have certainly been part of creating and maintaining these horrific priorities, make no mistake they are ideologically conservative policies. Policies that have created one America - for those at the top and another America for those in the bottom half. The bottom half plays by the rules and pays the price when they make bad decisions and when the upper ten percent make bad decisions. The upper ten percent - America's reinvention of old European aristocracy does not pay for their mistakes - its called socialism for the elite, like Mitt Romney.

What You Need To Know About The Morally Challenged Ed Klein, Author Of “The Amateur.” The Amateur Reads Like an old tabloid that features two headed martians on the cover. Who are the freaks that buy this kind of anti-American conservative trash?


Obama-Hating Anti-American Marine Gets Sympathetic Platform On Fox Propaganda Channel


Fox News Misrepresents EPA Climate Rule. Only a network of anti-American zealots would want America and the world to ignore the dire consequences of global warming. Why do conservative Republicans hate the truth, real values and the Founders tradition of rational inquiry.

The Koch Brothers Anti-American Agenda Exposed and They're Not happy About It

The Koch Brothers Anti-American Agenda Exposed and They're Not happy About It

With my new film Koch Brothers Exposed set for release, the billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch are doing everything they can do hide their behavior. First they got their lawyer to fire off a menacing letter that all but threatened news organizations that dare to cover the film’s content. Now they’re insisting — get this — that there’s nothing to debate anyway.

That’s right. In response to my offer to a debate or public discussion, the Koch brothers, hiding behind their attorney, wrote, “We are confused about what there is to debate.”

Perhaps the Kochs have not seen what my team and journalists such as Lee Fang, Adele Stan, and Jane Mayer have uncovered. What we’ve found is that Charles and David Koch are using their vast fortune to buy the political and legal process. They are corrupting democracy in ways that are harming the 99% while serving their own economic interests.

One area of excessive influence is energy policy. The Kochs own Koch Industries, one of the top 10 polluters in the nation, which means they have a strong interest in eliminating or preventing environmental regulations. The Kochs have given over $500,000 to members of the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee, which proposes environmental regulations and is supposed to hold polluters accountable. Indeed, as our film reveals, the Kochs are the oil and gas industry’s single biggest donor to that committee. Is it any wonder that Congress won’t pass bills to curb climate change or tackle other environmental problems?

In fact, the Kochs frequently have secret summits where they host wealthy right-wing donors as well as federal policymakers to talk strategy and fundraising. Participants have included U.S. Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., and Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Those two justices recently increased the Kochs’ power by voting in the Citizens United case to allow unlimited corporate money into politics. And just last week, the justices heard a case challenging the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act — a bill that the Koch-founded and -financed group Americans for Prosperity has been pushing to overturn. Should our system permit such a conflict of interest, enabling the Kochs to wield influence that virtually no other citizen can match?

This influence also extends to the state level. The Kochs have given at least $1 million to the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a group that writes pro-corporate laws that are often passed nearly verbatim in state legislatures across the country. Among these laws are onerous voter ID restrictions (to reduce the number of votes from the young, the elderly, the poor, and people of color) and various bills that undermine workers, consumers, and the environment.

Moreover, the Kochs have been propping up Wisconsin’s anti-union governor Scott Walker, who recently rammed a bill through his state legislature to gut the rights of public sector unions. AFP ran attack ads and organized a bus tour to stymie the union members opposing Walker’s power grab. Although the Kochs’ lawyer tries to distance his clients from all of that unpleasantness, he cannot take back what David Koch recently told a reporter: “We’re helping [Scott Walker], as we should. We’ve gotten pretty good at this over the years…We’ve spent a lot of money in Wisconsin. We’re going to spend more.”

Why won’t the Kochs debate these things? What are they hiding from? The fact is they have an undue, indeed corrupting, influence on our democracy, and they don’t want anyone to notice. After all, true democracy isn’t just a process where the rabble get to enter a voting booth every couple of years while the rich guys fund the candidates, think tanks, media campaigns, and on-the-ground organizations that set the parameters of public debate. Democracy is supposed to be a vibrant, participatory process where every citizen can have an impact on how the country is governed and narrow interests can’t commandeer the process for themselves.

Surely, that’s something worth debating.

Some days it is as though real life has become an episode of the Twilight Zone. We have proto-fascist like the Koch brothers and their bought and paid for puppet conservative politicians actually trying to end our democratic republic, all the while accusing President Obama, Democrats and anyone to the left of Mussolini of being dangerous.

My 14 Year Old Son Has Brain Cancer - Without Obamacare, We May Have Been Dropped By Our Insurance Company

The GOP’s nuke-dump donor. Another Koch brother type, Harold Simmons has given the most money to Republicans this election. Could his nuclear-waste dump be the reason? It has become as easy to buy a conservative Republican as it is to buy a loaf of cheap white bread. Simmons and the Koch brothers are the kind of people that Scott Brown (R-MS) calls his friends.

RNC chairman reflects on women, caterpillars

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

Welcome to Conservative America Where Wealth is Rewarded and Work is Punished

The Wall Street Journal noted this week that CEO pay lagged behind profits and productivity last year, mirroring a trend that has been occurring with workers’ wages for decades. But even that slight modicum of moderation regarding executive compensation evidently didn’t extend to Bank of America, which gave CEO Brian Moynihan a $7.5 million pay package — six times as much as he made in 2010 — following a year in which the company’s stock plummeted:

    Bank of America gave its CEO a pay package worth $7.5 million last year, six times as large as the year before. It happened while the company’s stock lost more than half its value and the bank lost its claim as the biggest in the country.

    The package for CEO Brian Moynihan included a salary of $950,000, a $6.1 million stock award and about $420,000 worth of use of company aircraft and tax and financial advice.

For those keeping score, Bank of America’s stock dropped 58 percent in 2011 and the bank surrendered its title as the nation’s largest to JP Morgan Chase. A good chunk of the stock award was actually given to Moynihan for the bank’s 2010 performance, when it lost money.

In addition to seeing its stock tank, Bank of America has also been, according to a whistleblower suit, intentionally blocking troubled homeowners from receiving mortgage aid. The whistleblower alleges that BofA misled borrowers about their eligibility for federal mortgage aid programs and that “the bank and its agents routinely pretended to have lost homeowners’ documents.” (But remember, Bank of America will modify your mortgage as long as you erase all the mean things you’ve been saying about it on Twitter.)

BofA has also been tied up in the foreclosure fraud scandal, and just a few months ago paid $335 million to settle charges that its subsidiary discriminated against minorities in its lending. If this is how much Moynihan gets after that sort of year, what will he receive if the bank actually has a good one?

While financial reform passed by Democrats and President Obama does not micro-manage businesses to the point where reform can limit CEO pay, it does address regulation of some of Wall Street's worse abuses like defrauding regular working Americans. This would be the financial reform that conservatives have pulled every obstructionist trick to stop from being implemented. Why? Because they see CEOs like Brian Moynihan as their base of support. Conservatives figure if they protect the financial elite the financial elite will look out for them.

CEOs like Moynihan are the people that Sen Scott Brown(R-MA) considers his best friends.

America Should Know: Romney Has Deep Convictions About One Thing

America Should Know: Romney Has Deep Convictions About One Thing

If he weren’t so smug, it would almost be possible to feel sorry for Mitt Romney. Beyond the flip-flopping, has any worse actor ever attempted the role of presidential candidate? It’s beyond Romney’s powers to persuade most people of his sincerity about things he does believe, much less the many tenets of contemporary GOP faith he probably doesn’t share — assuming for the sake of argument that anybody, including himself, knows which is which.

There’s little doubt, however, that Romney believes he deserves to be president, in rather the way the fictional Lord Grantham deserves to preside over Downton Abbey. It’s his inability to conceal that sense of entitlement that makes him such an awkward politician.

The candidate’s cringe-inducing attempts to present himself as a Regular Joe almost invariably end in boasting. Campaigning in his native Michigan, he assured voters that his wife drives not just one $50,000 Cadillac, but two — one at their Boston home, the other at their seafront mansion near La Jolla, Calif., as aides subsequently clarified. No word how Mrs. Romney gets around at their New Hampshire lakeside compound or their Park City, Utah, ski palace.

Visiting the Daytona 500, Romney admitted he’s not a keen NASCAR fan, but does have friends who own racing teams. Defending himself on CNN from the perception that his wealth leaves him “out of touch,” he allowed as how, “If people think that there is something wrong with being successful in America, then they better vote for the other guy, because I’ve been extraordinarily successful and I want to use that success and that know-how to help the American people.”

On the “Today” show, Romney explained that people concerned with income inequality are simply jealous. “You know, I think it’s about envy,” he said. “I think it’s about class warfare. When you have a president encouraging the idea of dividing America based on the 99 percent versus 1 percent—and those people who have been most successful will be in the 1 percent — you have opened up a whole new wave of approach in this country, which is entirely inconsistent with the concept of one nation under God.”

Got that, peasants? God’s behind the 13.9 percent tax rate Romney paid on $43 million he earned in 2010 while technically unemployed. Anybody who thinks differently is merely eaten up with resentment. In my experience, the more money people inherit, the more they’re tempted to lecture others about talent and hard work. And to cry the blues about the indignity of paying taxes.

Romney’s air of personal superiority appears to be the one topic about which the poor dork is absolutely sincere. That’s what makes him such a terrible liar. He’s almost frantic with it, like a golden retriever with his ball. Even with the mute button on the TV pressed, you can almost hear him panting.

Look — modest, humble people don’t run for president. President Obama often appears to have trouble restraining his bemusement at the antics of less intelligent people. Nevertheless, Romney’s unrestrained egotism is the reason I think Paul Krugman (among others) has made far too much of an offhand remark the candidate made seemingly renouncing the central tenet of GOP economic dogma.

“If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting [government] spending,” Romney told a group of Michigan voters, “as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy.”

Well, no kidding.

To Krugman, Romney’s slip of the tongue revealed him as a “closet Keynesian” who “believes that cutting government spending hurts growth, other things equal.” The columnist added that, after all, “Mr. Romney is not a stupid man. And while his grasp of world affairs does sometimes seem shaky, he has to be aware of the havoc austerity policies are wreaking in Greece, Ireland and elsewhere.”

Oh no he doesn’t.

Or, to be more precise, Romney can be perfectly aware and blithely unconcerned. Krugman left off the next sentence where Romney stipulated that cutting spending alone wasn’t enough. “You have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

Translation: even lower taxes for multimillionaires.

But I’d never presume to argue economics with professor Krugman. My point is that Romney’s tycoon capitalism has only partly to do with jobs, money and the real economy. It’s also about cultural revanchism, putting the right people back firmly in charge and the lower orders back in their place.

Tycoon capitalists like Romney see a prolonged slump as an opportunity to render the workforce more docile and grateful. Remember, this is the same guy who opposed government loans to save Chrysler and General Motors. Better to crush the Auto Workers Union. Who said the best way to resolve the national foreclosure crisis would be to speed it up, so that “investors” could buy people’s houses cheaply and rent them out.

In the end, it’s all about No. 1.

Who is Romney or the conservatives who claim that generations of wealthy families are achievers and successful. They took their inherited wealth and made more money from money they already had. Its not hard. Anyone who wins a couple million in a lottery just distribute that around into savings accounts, certificates of deposit, some safe mutual funds and you can live off the interests. That is nice, but is hardly being an achiever. Romney and his friends, seating in leather chairs in big comfortable offices and moved numbers around on spread sheets. OMG, they must have been so tired at the end of those grueling days.

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