Immoral Mitt Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform

Immoral Mitt Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform

After releasing false radio and television ads about the auto bailout, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign unveiled a new commercial that highlights another one of the candidate’s favorite false claims. This ad, first flagged by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, revives Romney’s claim that President Obama has “gutted the welfare work requirement” through a waiver program that Republican governors, including Romney himself, have long asked for.

The ad hits Obama on a number of issues, but the most blatantly false of its claims are aimed at welfare:

    NARRATOR: If you want to know President Obama’s second term agenda, look at his first: gutted the work requirement for welfare. Doubled the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps. Record unemployment. More women in poverty than ever before. Borrowed from China and increased the debt to over $16 trillion, passing the burden onto the next generation. We may have made it through President Obama’s first term – it’s our children who can’t afford a second.

Watch it:

As reporters, fact-checkers, and the directive Obama signed made abundantly clear, the welfare work requirements will remain in place even if states are granted waivers. The major change is that states will be granted more leeway in how they transition welfare recipients into jobs. That is a change sought and supported by many Republican governors, like Romney endorser Rick Snyder (MI), who said of the program, “More flexibility to governors is a good thing.”

The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program certainly needs changes — since 1996, it has failed to provide America’s poorest families the assistance they need. But with the election in the balance, Romney has now resorted to making claims in multiple advertisements that even members of his own party say are false.

Maybe Romney has had a head injury and now thinks that being a sleazy serial liar is a virtue.

President Obama Was Right - The Private Sector is Doing Fine

President Obama Was Right - The Private Sector is Doing Fine - Corporate Profits Just Hit An All-Time High, Wages Just Hit An All-Time Low

In case you needed more confirmation that the priorities of US companies and the US economy are screwed up, here are three charts for you.

1) Corporate profit margins just hit an all-time high. Companies are making more per dollar of sales than they ever have before. (And some people are still saying that companies are suffering from "too much regulation" and "too many taxes." Maybe little companies are, but big ones certainly aren't).

Corporate profits are climbing yet private sector not adding jobs

2) Fewer Americans are working than at any time in the past three decades. One reason corporations are so profitable is that they don't employ as many Americans as they used to.



Right-Wing Media Side With Pro-Romney Forces In Wash. Post's Internal Bain Capital Dispute. Romney and Bain sent jobs, from companies they raided and sent them to Asia and Mexico. That is a fact and no amount of conservative Republican word games will change that fact. The reason conservative propagandists like Fox News, Hot Air and The Blaze are so outraged is that this fact about Romney screws with their lame attempts to portray Romney as someone who can relate to the middle-class.

Despite The Media Narrative, Obama Was Right About Private Sector

Why President Obama was right even if his choice of words was not perfect. The Private sector is doing well and the public sector is under assault, thus slowing the recovery, America’s Hidden Austerity Program

Why is the recovery from this recession different from recoveries from past recessions? In the previous two recessions, it took 32 months for nonfarm employment to reattain its June 1990 peak, and 48 months for it to reattain its January 2001 peak. Assuming the economy keeps adding nonfarm employment at the current rate, it will have taken 88 months to reattain its January 2008 peak. The explanation most often heard is that “financial crises are different”: after a debt crisis, shaken consumers are reluctant to spend and shaken firms are reluctant to hire, slowing private-sector job growth even after the recession has bottomed out.

There is some truth in this, but it is not the whole story. In fact, while the latest recession was particularly deep, the recovery in private-sector employment, once it finally started, has not been particularly slow by recent historical standards. In the 27 months since the start of the current employment recovery, the private sector has added 4.3 million jobs, fewer than the 5.0 million it added in the 27 months after February 1992 but not many fewer than the 4.5 million it added in the equivalent period after August 2003.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

But there is something historically different about this recession and its aftermath: in the past, local government employment has been almost recession-proof. This time it’s not. Going back as long as the data have been collected (1955), with the one exception of the 1981 recession, local government employment continued to grow almost every month regardless of what the economy threw at it. But since the latest recession began, local government employment has fallen by 3 percent, and is still falling. In the equivalent period following the 1990 and 2001 recessions, local government employment grew 7.7 and 5.2 percent. Even following the 1981 recession, by this stage local government employment was up by 1.4 percent.
Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

Who is losing these local government jobs? In 1981 it was mostly teachers. Now, the losses are shared by teachers and other local government workers alike.

State government is much less important than local because it is a much smaller share of total nonfarm employment: 4 percent versus 10 percent. Nevertheless, a similar story can be told there. This far into each recession since 1955, state government employment had grown. Since the start of the latest recession, state government employment is still down 1.2 percent.

Without this hidden austerity program, the economy would look very different. If state and local governments had followed the pattern of the previous two recessions, they would have added 1.4 million to 1.9 million jobs and overall unemployment would be 7.0 to 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent.

This post is just pissing in the wind. The Conservative Republican media has already written its narrative and turned a poor choice of words into what they see as one of the biggest gaffes ever. The private sector has been growing. Corporate profits are still high. Executive pay is still very high. At the same time public sector employees are being laid off. Some teachers and police can find other work, but those are specialty skills. If you trained to be a teacher that does not translate into easily find a job in engineering or programming, and the same is true for police and firefighters.

Stimulus funds are still creating some jobs- FTA Deputy Administrator McMillan Joins Missouri and Illinois Officials to Kick Off Eads Bridge Rehabilitation Project.

The Crazy Anti-Americans at National Review Cling To Fantasy That Obama Is A Secret Radical

In The World of Shadowy Campaign Cash, Mitt Romney, Who has The Values of a Thug, Rules

Republicans Do Not Care About The Deficit. They Care About Cutting The Safety Net for Seniors and Children

Republicans Do Not Care About The Deficit. They Care About Cutting The Safety Net for Seniors and Children

OK, so why does everyone think the deficit is out of control and a threat to the existence of the republic? Good question. It's probably way too late to pull us out of the rabbit hole we've collectively dived into, but anyone reporting on this really owes it to their readers to explain the basic political dynamics at work. So why do Republicans and Democrats both think the deficit is a problem?

    Answer for Republicans: They don't think the deficit is a problem. If they did, they'd favor tax increases, Pentagon cuts, and Medicare cuts, since even the most dimwitted among them knows that cutting domestic discretionary spending won't make a dent in the deficit. But they favor none of these things.

    Rather, they think federal spending on liberal social programs is a problem, and yammering about the deficit is a good way to force cuts to these programs. And there's nothing wrong with this. It's good politics. Why waste a crisis, after all? But anyone reporting on this issue really needs to be honest about what's going on. Republicans want to cut social spending. The deficit is just a handy cudgel to make this happen.

    Answer for Democrats: I'm actually a little stumped here. I think most Democrats understand that the short-term deficit really isn't a problem, and they also understand (I hope) that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire and letting the economy recover will get us very close to eliminating the primary deficit (i.e., the deficit minus interest payments). If we do that, then publicly held debt as a percent of GDP stabilizes and the deficit problem becomes pretty manageable. The chart on the right from CBPP shows this graphically.

    In the longer term, Medicare growth is a problem — which is just another way of saying that healthcare spending in general is a problem. This needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed for its own sake, not just because it affects the federal deficit.

    So why have Democrats joined the deficit chorus? I'm not sure, really. I'd guess it's mainly just fear that they've been outflanked on the issue, and if they want to stay in office they have to yammer about it. But that's just a guess.

In any case, Republicans are wrong: we don't have a spending problem, we have an aging problem. As America ages, Social Security and Medicare are going to cost more, and unless you want to start killing off old people Soylent Green style there's no way to avoid this even if we do get a handle on rising healthcare costs. This in turn means we're going to need more revenue to care for the elderly. As Jon Cohn says today, "It's ridiculous to have a conversation about balancing the budget that won't even contemplate higher taxes."

A perpetually growing deficit will eventually drive up interest rates and slow economic growth, so it's something we should take seriously. But slashing social programs is exactly the opposite of taking it seriously. We need to let the Bush tax cuts expire, get out of Iraq and Afghanistan, keep working hard on reining in healthcare costs, and accept the fact that we're going to need to fund an aging population whether we like it or not. Do that, and all we'll need is modest discipline in the rest of the budget. The long-term deficit is a problem, but it's not a crisis

Perhaps the biggest piece of evidence that conservative Republicans only care about deficits as a political wedge is that they ran up historic deficits from 2001 to 2008 and did not rise one dollar in revenue to pay the deficit down. Mitt Romney has a deficit "reduction" plan, full of accounting gimmicks it will increase the deficit by at at least $3 trillion dollars while cutting the safety net and buying the newest toys for the military.

The Debt Increase Under Obama Is Largely A Result Of Bush-Era Policies

Trump on Romney: ‘He’d Buy Companies, He’d Close Companies, He’d Get Rid Of Jobs’

Where Does Mitt Romney Stand on Veterans Issues? He'll Get Back To You When He Gets Around To Considering Them

Where Does Mitt Romney Stand on Veterans Issues? He'll Get Back To You When He Gets Around To Considering Them

President Obama announced today at Ft. Stewart in Georgia that he will sign an executive order to protect veterans, members of the military and their families from deceptive and predatory marketing practices by some for-profit higher educational institutions.

Mitt Romney’s campaign tried to get out front of the news today by issuing press releases suggesting that the president hasn’t done enough for the nation’s veterans. Campaign spokesperson Andrea Saul said:

    “Under President Obama, all Americans have suffered from one of the worst job markets in recorded history — and our nation’s veterans have been among the hardest hit. With more than twelve percent of our most recent veterans struggling to find work and nearly a million veterans unemployed, it’s clear that we need to do more to grow our economy and ensure that those who fight for America can find a job when they return home.”

Saul didn’t expand on the “do more” part of her critique. The other press release titled “Mitt Romney Will Give Veterans A Chance to Find Good Jobs” links to a page on the campaign website that makes no mention of any plan for veterans.

And it appears that no plan exists on Romney’s campaign website to address various issues affecting the U.S. military — for example, veterans’ health care and unemployment or, as Obama addressed today, servicemembers’ education. The “Issues” page lists 23 separate issues Mitt Romney has apparently chosen to focus on during his presidential campaign and none is “Veterans” or “Military.”

It seems like the only outline of any plan Romney has for veterans is to, as he said in a speech to the VFW last August, use “billions of dollars in waste and inefficiency and bureaucracy from the defense budget” and “spend it to ensure that veterans have the care they deserve.” He mentioned no specifics.

Romney announced a Veterans Policy Advisory group back in October to “help to formulate policies that will ensure America keeps its commitments” to veterans but it is unclear what those policies are.

Romney has even praised President Obama’s veterans initiative to encourage companies to hire veterans, saying last November that “it’s a good idea.”

On Veterans Day last year, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee did float a plan to privatize the veterans health care system but he was forced to back away from the proposal after swift condemnation from veterans groups.

Romney has also said he supports Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal. That budget “would cut $11 billion from veterans spending.”

ThinkProgress asked the Romney campaign if the former Massachusetts governor has a detailed plan to address veterans issues but it did not respond before this post was published.

In a primary season that has lasted a year and included over 30 debates and Romney thinks veterans are so important that he will come up with a veterans policy some day.

Digby takes a look at how the no nothing/do nothing little bug named John McCain has exploited war anytime he thinks such exploitation will get him votes - The maverick has a fainting spell

Back in 2010, Rep. Darrell Issa called Obama one of the most corrupt presidents in history, and pledged to investigate his administration. After a year’s worth of hearings and investigations, Issa has come out empty-handed. Of course, when has lack of proof stopped anyone from making ridiculous accusations in politics?

Newt Gingrich is a Living Saint That Would Never Lie About Obama and Food Stamps

Newt Gingrich is a Living Saint That Would Never Lie About Obama and Food Stamps

The former speaker made that claim Jan. 16 in a Republican debate in Myrtle Beach, S.C., and his campaign organization quickly inserted the snippet in a new 30-second TV ad that began running Jan. 18 in South Carolina.

Gingrich would have been correct to say the number now on food aid is historically high. The number stood at 46,224,722 persons as of October, the most recent month on record. And it's also true that the number has risen sharply since Obama took office.

But Gingrich goes too far to say Obama has put more on the rolls than other presidents. We asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition service for month-by-month figures going back to January 2001. And they show that under President George W. Bush the number of recipients rose by nearly 14.7 million. Nothing before comes close to that.

And under Obama, the increase so far has been 14.2 million. To be exact, the program has so far grown by 444,574 fewer recipients during Obama's time in office than during Bush's.

It's possible that when the figures for January 2012 are available they will show that the gain under Obama has matched or exceeded the gain under Bush. But not if the short-term trend continues. The number getting food stamps declined by 43,528 in October. And the economy has improved since then.

Obama's responsibility

Gingrich often cites the number of persons on food stamps to support his view that the U.S. is becoming an "entitlement society," increasingly dependent on government aid. And he has a point. One out of seven Americans is currently getting food stamps.

But Gingrich strains the facts when he accuses Obama of being responsible. The rise started long before Obama took office, and accelerated as the nation was plunging into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

The economic downturn began in December 2007. In the 12 months before Obama was sworn in, 4.4 million were added to the rolls, triple the 1.4 million added in 2007.

Day after day, year after year conservatives show utter contempt for many values, especially the truth. In matters of character and leadership how can a political movement based on a foundations of lies, smears, distortions and myths be trusted. When a political movement lies this much it historically means they are sleaze bags of one sort or the other.

Liars of the Week - Right-wing Conservative Bloggers. Obama Did Not Offer to Apologize for Hiroshima

Obama Did Not Offer to Apologize for Hiroshima

Here we go again. Based on a (probably deliberate) misreading of a diplomatic cable released by Wikileaks, the right wing media are having yet another attack of the vapors. Linked at Drudge Report...

Leaked cables show Japan nixed a presidential apology to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for using nukes to end the overseas contingency operation known as World War II. Will the next president apologize for the current one?

    The obsessive need of this president to apologize for American exceptionalism and our defense of freedom continued recently when Barack Obama’s State Department (run by Hillary Clinton) contacted the family of al-Qaida propagandist and recruiter Samir Khan to “express its condolences” to his family.

There is only one tiny problem with Drudge, Investors and the right-wing nutbars who echoed the story above. The very cable these honorless serial liars are using from Wikileaks says no such offer of an apology was ever made. In fact the Japanese sated that should anyone in the administration be thinking of apologizing, don't.

It never stops. No matter how many Al Qaeda terrorists the Obama administration eliminates, these people just keep feeding the right wing base fairytales about Obama’s “weakness” and his “apology tours.”

Here’s the truth, not that it matters in the wingnut echo chamber:

    A senior White House official asserts to ABC News that there was never any plan for the president to apologize for Hiroshima.  The cable does not state that the idea was from the U.S. Rather, Roos writes that Yabunaka thought that following President Obama’s call earlier that year for a world free of nuclear weapons, anti-nuclear groups would speculate as to whether he would visit Hiroshima.

In other words, there’s absolutely no evidence that this “apology” was proposed by the Obama administration. None. Here’s the actual cable they’re freaking out about:

    VFM Yabunaka pointed out that the Japanese public will have high expectations toward President Obama’s visit to Japan in November, as the President enjoys an historic level of popularity among the Japanese people. Anti-nuclear groups, in particular, will speculate whether the President would visit Hiroshima in light of his April 5 Prague speech on non-proliferation. He underscored, however, that both governments must temper the public’s expectations on such issues, as the idea of President Obama visiting Hiroshima to apologize for the atomic bombing during World War II is a “non-starter.” While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such program in the November visit.

The official U.S. line of apologizing for Hiroshima is that the U.S. will not apologize until the Japanese make several apologies that include Pearl Harbor, the March to Bataan and some other WW II atrocities. The Obama administration is sticking to those terms.

Ron Paul Calls Out Herman Cain For Lie Over Fed Audit During GOP Debate

Open Letter to that 53% Guy

Bachmann, Gingrich and WSJ agree: The financial crisis is poor people's fault. Maybe these right-wing freaks keep spreading the same falsehoods because they don't understand the truth.

Ironically Working Class Republicans Are Helping The Wealthy Conservatives With Class Warfare

Ironically Working Class Republicans Are Helping The Wealthy Conservatives With Class Warfare. While this article is primarily about Democrats and cautioning them not to back off the class warfare rhetoric. It notes that blue-collar/working class conservatives are helping the wealthy take away their earning power and labor rights.

While the GOP has been attempting to get the whole “Obama as class warrior’ narrative to catch on for a few years now, it appears that the phrase ‘class warfare’ may finally be taking root in the public consciousness.

It’s about time.

On Sunday, the Republican Congressional leadership launched a concerted effort to sell the notion of the president fomenting class warfare by his insistence that wealthy Americans pay more in taxes to help bring down the nation’s debt obligations while financing the federal government.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday”, GOP Budget Committee Chairman, Paul Ryan, had this to say -

    Class warfare may make for good politics, but it makes for rotten economics. We don’t need a system that seeks to divide people. We don’t need a system that seeks to prey on people’s fear, envy and anxiety.

Since Ryan’s appearance - one echoed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell during his own Sunday morning talk show turn -the GOP has been using every opportunity to parrot the phrase.

In response, the Democrats have taken every chance presented to them to once again go on defense by rejecting the allegation. By so doing, they are completely forgoing the opportunity to acknowledge that there is most assuredly such a war, it’s been raging for decades, and it’s high time that people begin to focus on who is on the side of the rich and who is on the side of the middle class and the poor.

Considering that this war was launched in the mid-1970’s, when CEO’s decided that it no longer served their interest to continue paying their workers a fair wage, it’s difficult to understand how anyone could be shocked to learn that the middle class has been under attack since Jimmy Carter sat in the White House or be persuaded that, somehow, Barack Obama is responsible for its creation.

Back in the 1970’s, before the first shot was fired, the richest 1 percent of Americans earned 9 percent of the income. By 2007, that 1 percent was taking 23.5 percent of the money. The numbers are even more depressing when we add in the next 4 percent at the top of the income scale. Meanwhile, everyone else has been left to suffer stagnating household incomes.

What does the wealthy class have to do to make it any clearer that they’ve been fighting a war where the other side has not only done little to nothing to fight back but is incapable of acknowledging the war even exists?

With these being the rules of engagement, who can blame the GOP for trying to pin the tail on Obama?

Not only have the forces of the wealthy, under the capable direction of four star generals like Charles and David Koch, managed to have their way with relative ease, they’ve cleverly succeeded in convincing many of their victims to join in on their side.

Exhibit ‘A’ to support that reality would be the Tea Party, a collection of middle class people financed by the Koch brothers who have locked arms with their enemy without even knowing they have done so. By sounding a false alarm about the dangers of big government, the upper class has fooled these people into believing that laying down the only defenses they’ve ever had - government and unions-is the way to solve the problems that plague them.

With successes like this in hand, it’s no wonder that Republicans believe they can sell the notion that Obama is somehow responsible for trying to start a class war that has already been going on for decades.

And yet, rather than take advantage of the opportunity the GOP has presented, the Democrats have chosen to take the narrow, defensive position of protecting the president from the attacks without taking the proverbial bull by the horns and sounding the alert that it is time to join the battle and fight back.

Democrats will not get a better chance to do what they should have done years ago. Not only is it good politics in an election year, it is an obligation that they cannot continue, in good conscious, to pass up.

As the president likes to say, it’s a simple math.

If those tasked with fighting the political battles for the middle class continue to engage in political malpractice by refusing to stand up to the forces of the wealthy, others will take up the fight for them. But these warriors will fight the battle beyond the walls of the Capitol and the White House. They will replace floor fights in the House of Representatives to battles that will play out on the streets of our largest cities.

Is this really the way we want to see this war go?

Democrats who play the game on the national scene need to follow the lead of the courageous Democrats in states like Wisconsin- Democrats who were willing to engage in the fight to stop the advances of the wealthy class.

This week, the President set the tone. Now his party must stop playing defense and step up to the fight.

Republicans Are Telling a Dangerous Lie About Obama and Spending

Bush vs. Obama on Spending: It's No Contest - See chart above.

The No. 1 Republican talking point these days seems to be this: Profligate spending by President Barack Obama is the reason we face a debt-ceiling crisis.

Any rational, reasonably well informed citizen should know that is not true. But prominent GOPers still chant it like a mantra. God only knows how many otherwise sane Americans are starting to believe it.

That's why a chart in Monday's New York Times should be sent to every household in the US of A. It shows, in clear, indisputable numbers, that policy decisions by Republican president George W. Bush led to spending that dwarfs financial outlays under Obama. (See the chart at the end of this post.)

In fact, the cost of just the Bush tax cuts ($1.8 trillion) exceeds the costs of all spending under Obama ($1.4 trillion).

The final tally--$5.07 trillion of spending under Bush, $1.44 trillion under Obama. By the way, those figures for Obama are projections from 2009 to 2017. In other words, both presidents are being judged in eight-year time frames. And Bush "wins" the spending contest in a runaway.

If my math is correct, spending under Bush was more than three times greater than that under Obama. Yet we still get bilge like this from the blog of U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA): "President Obama Refuses To Acknowledge That His Out Of Control Spending Sparked A Debt Crisis."

In a piece titled "The Chart That Should Accompany All Discussions of the Debt Ceiling," James Fallows of The Atlantic explains why the Times' graphic handiwork is so important:

It's based on data from the Congressional Budget Office and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Its significance is not partisan (who's "to blame" for the deficit) but intellectual. It demonstrates the utter incoherence of being very concerned about a structural federal deficit but ruling out of consideration the policy that was the largest single contributor to that deficit, namely the Bush-era tax cuts.

The chart is titled "Policy Changes Under Two Presidents," and Fallows says it is called that for a reason:

An additional significance of the chart: It identifies policy changes, the things over which Congress and Administration have some control, as opposed to largely external shocks--like the repercussions of the 9/11 attacks or the deep worldwide recession following the 2008 financial crisis. Those external events make a big difference in the deficit, and they are the major reason why deficits have increased faster in absolute terms during Obama's first two years than during the last two under Bush. (In a recession, tax revenues plunge, and government spending goes up--partly because of automatic programs like unemployment insurance, and partly in a deliberate attempt to keep the recession from getting worse.) If you want, you could even put the spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in this category: Those were policy choices, but right or wrong they came in response to an external shock.

The point is that governments can respond to but not control external shocks. That's why we call them "shocks." Governments can control their policies. And the policy that did the most to magnify future deficits is the Bush-era tax cuts. You could argue that the stimulative effect of those cuts is worth it ("deficits don't matter" etc). But you cannot logically argue that we absolutely must reduce deficits, but that we absolutely must also preserve every penny of those tax cuts. Which I believe precisely describes the House Republican position.

In other words, the GOP of 2011 is utterly illogical. But large chunks of the America public still lap up Republican sound bites.

It is dangerous to the economy to make Americans think we're in a debt crisis when we're not. Americans stop spending because they lack confidence in the economy and that lack of spending makes the economy worse. Which is likely the reason Republicans are lying about spending because they want the economy they crashed to crash again under a Democratic president. Conservatives have always put their radical Anti-American agenda before what is best for the nation. So this is nothing new.