Romney's Economic Plan Relies on Magic, Not Math

Romney's Economic Plan Relies on Magic, Not Math

Joseph Stiglitz has a decent résumé. He won the Nobel Prize in economics and served as chairman of Bill Clinton’s Council of Economic Advisers before being named chief economist of the World Bank. His C.V. , however, pales before his passionate commitment to pushing for economic policies that help the poor and powerless — inside and out of the United States. For Stiglitz, economics and social justice can’t be separated.

Since the election of Barack Obama, Stiglitz has also been something of a thorn in the side of the current administration, consistently critiquing the White House for falling short. He wasted no time in pointing out that Obama’s stimulus was too weak and his housing policy woefully ineffective — and he’s been particularly biting on the topic of Obama’s subservience to banking interests. But with Election Day fast approaching, it’s always useful to look at what the other guys would do, instead. Stiglitz took some time out to explain to Salon why, when the topic is economy, there’s really no choice for progressives in this election.

What’s at stake in this election for the U.S. economy?

Quite a lot. First, there’s what we call the macro-economy. The budget cuts that Romney/Ryan propose will certainly slow growth. If the European downturn continues that could tip us into a recession. The cuts certainly won’t provide the kind of stimulus that Obama’s jobs bill, for instance, pushes. Romney’s plan is based on magic: Just because he gets elected, the economy is supposed to take off. There is no evidence that anything like that would happen. Quite the contrary — I think the opposite would happen. The business community would see the cutbacks coming and that would itself cause a slowdown in the economy.

So that’s the macroeconomy. Secondly, the Romney/Ryan budget promises to spend more on the military while cutting taxes and cutting the deficit, and that means only one thing. If you look at the arithmetic, it means less investment in infrastructure, R&D, education … it just can’t add up any other way. And that means we’ll be growing more slowly in the future.

The irony is that these two things — lower growth now and lower growth in the future — means that our debt-to-GDP ratio won’t improve, it will get worse. So even if you were foolish enough to think that the debt-to-GDP ratio is the main determinant of future prosperity — which it’s not — the Romney agenda will fail.

And although I don’t like what’s called “presidential economics,” where you look solely at what happens under a particular presidential regime, the fact is that Romney has many of the same economic advisers that Bush did. Those economic advisers essentially doubled the debt in eight years. And that was in a period of relatively high growth. Why would we think that wouldn’t happen again? I don’t see any reason for that. Particularly when the global environment is more adverse.

And then the third part has to do with what kind of society we will be. If Romney wins, we will become a more divided society, a more unfair society. And that in turn will bring greater inequality, and will also undermine our growth.

Your most recent book is titled “The Price of Inequality.” Conservatives are pushing back, however, at the very idea that inequality is growing. One of Romney’s advisers just published an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal declaring, basically, that because everybody has a cellphone and an HDTV now, we’re better off than we were 10 years ago.

A lot of people living in shacks in South Africa also have cellphones and TVs, but that doesn’t mean they have an adequate standard of living — adequate nutrition or access to adequate healthcare, adequate life expectancies …

In any case, when we measure inequality we take into account the fact that the prices of some things go down while the prices of other things go up. That’s what we call “real income” — adjusting for those prices. And median household real income today is lower than it was 15 years ago.

You’ve made the negative case for how the economy will suffer if Romney is elected. Is there a positive case to be made for Obama? You’ve been one of the people on the left most critical of Obama’s efforts on the economy. Why should progressives vote for him now?

I think the main reason, quite honestly, to vote for him is that if he loses there could be a major step backward in every aspect. Not the least important of which is the importance of the Supreme Court, which would affect inequality of political power, as with the Citizens United case. The Court will also rule on basic human rights, gender rights, discrimination, things I think progressives should care a lot about.

But in terms of the economy, while I’ve been critical, there still has been progress in an awful lot of areas. Less progress than there should have been, less progress than was promised, but progress all the same.

Where do you see that progress?

Healthcare. Access to healthcare for everybody is an important step. It wasn’t the kind of deep reform that one would have liked where you would have done something about the pharmaceutical industry and health insurance industry and so forth, but it did result in increased access and that was terribly important. In education, getting the banks out of student loans saved $80 billion over 10 years. That’s a big deal. So while the housing program …

I was about to ask, what have been your biggest disappointments?

Housing policy has been a big disappointment. But compared to Bush, who didn’t do anything, and the Republicans, who haven’t proposed anything — Romney has been totally silent on the issue — at least Obama did something. So I am disappointed, but it represents a small step forward rather than zero. And I am worried that under Romney we will go back to the kind of deregulatory environment where we allow the banks to exploit our homeowners once again.

Looking ahead, are there things Obama could do that would represent a real step forward, rather than just consolidate what has already been achieved, or simply prevent going backward?

There aren’t many magic bullets, but let me talk about a couple things. Obviously, more progressive taxation — getting rid of the distortionary provisions in corporate welfare, special treatment of capital gains, carried interest — would make our economy more efficient and less unequal.

Conservatives seem to think if they try the same failed policies over and over again with different faces those regressive policies will magically work eventually.

How Fox News Created a New Culture of Idiots. Just a caution that this article makes some good points about how Fox has dumped down the news, but there is some strong language.

Last-Minute Ohio Directive Could Trash Legal Votes And Swing The Election

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republicans Try To Censor Report That Shows No Connection Between Low Taxes For Millionaires and Economic Growth

Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Republicans Try To Censor Report That Shows No Connection Between Low Taxes For Millionaires and Economic Growth

The New York Times reports that on September 28 the Library of Congress's nonpartisan Congressional Research Service withdrew, under pressure from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R.-Ky., and other Senate Republicans, a widely-circulated study concluding that since 1945 tax cuts have had no measurable impact on economic growth. I have cited the study repeatedly since its September 14 release, and so have many other journalists and academics within what Karl Rove once scornfully called the “reality-based community.” The withdrawal won’t have any impact on the report’s availability, except perhaps that more people will read it now. That's because CRS reports are never released to the public anyway. (Its Web site is useless unless you're looking for a job there.) They’re released to members of Congress. Then the interesting ones trickle out onto nongovernmental Web sites or those of individual senators or representatives. McConnell can tell the New York Times all he wants to take down its copy of the report, but he probably won't bother, because it’s public information and it has no conceivable relevance to national security.

The withdrawal is, nonetheless, outrageous. McConnell spokesman Don Stewart told the Times that the CRS report wasn’t just criticized by Republican senators; it was also criticized by what the Times (in a paraphrase) calls “people outside of Congress.” I wish the Times had taken the opportunity to say who these “people outside of Congress” are. You can probably guess. There’s the conservative Heritage Foundation. And there’s the Tax Foundation, a conservative nonprofit (not to be confused with the Tax Policy Center, which is non-ideological and nonpartisan but has nonetheless been vilified by the right for pointing out that Mitt Romney’s proposed tax cut benefited the rich at the expense of the middle class). The author of the CRS study, Thomas Hungerford, has written many excellent studies on themes directly or indirectly related to income distribution, and that’s made him a conservative target for some time. This past April, Kevin Hassett of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (a prominent income-inequality denialist and Romney adviser doomed never to live down his co-authorship, shortly before the dot-com bust, of a book titled Dow 36,000) testified before Congress’s  Joint Economic Committee that a different Hungerford report was “radically at odds with the literature. I relish academic debate, and think that authors serve a valuable service when they challenge research. But a CRS report that is supposed to inform about the consensus of the literature that veers so far from that activity is a disservice to Congress, and the taxpayers.” When Hassett cites “the literature” he means “the literature acceptable to AEI hacks and their Republican allies in Congress,” or what Jacob Weisberg has felicitously labelled “the Conintern.”

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What’s the matter with the CRS report? Well, it calls the Bush tax cuts “the Bush tax cuts,” which is somehow deemed partisan but in fact is merely explanatory. The Bush tax cuts were tax cuts passed when George W. Bush was president. Bush proposed them, pushed them through Congress, and signed them into law. Even Republicans call the Bush tax cuts “the Bush tax cuts.” The CRS report also stands accused of making reference to “tax cuts for the rich.” This is unacceptably hurtful, I suppose, to a group that any sensitive person would know to call the “special-incomed.” As it happens, though, my PDF search of the CRS report reveals that nowhere does the phrase “tax cuts for the rich” appear. The word “rich” does appear here and there, but always in a neutral context, such as, “Under both definitions of the top of the income distribution (i.e., the rich) the income shares were relatively stable until the late 1970s and then started to rise.”

I'm not sure why Mitch and his gang of lying sleazebags thinks this report is so special. The reports have been showing for years that the wealthy just squirrel away their wealth when the taxes on their unearned income are low -  15 Things Conservative Republicans Do Not Want You to Know About Taxes and the Debt. The nation's infrastructure gets beaten down, we spend less on science research, and on education and the environment. The general quality of life goes down because the wealthy are allowed to be piggish with the total GDP produced by the nation.This is a link to the report to download - for as long as the link is good anyway.

Romney’s Tax Secrecy: Did He Get Away With It?

Bill Clinton Cites Economist Republican Kenneth Rogoff To Argue Obama Needs Four More Years

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.

Not Competent Enough To Lead: Mitt Romney Has a Dismal Record of Disaster Management

Not Competent Enough To Lead: Mitt Romney Has a  Dismal Record of Disaster Management

Now that he's again decided to mention (obliquely) that he was our governor once, and we're all up here in the Commonwealth (God save it!) being awakened by the sweet sounds of woodchippers in our streets, we should look back at the one natural disaster (locally, anyway, Katrina being a whole 'nother story) that occurred while Willard Romney was still nominally governor of Massachusetts: the great Mother's Day floods of 2006.

The entire region was under flood warnings, but the problem was especially acute along the Merrimack River, especially in the city of Lowell, where Romney's response was considered, well, leaky. The right-leaning Lowell Sun was particularly displeased.

We find it inconceivable that Gov. Mitt Romney claims the state can do nothing to help those residents still struggling to rebuild homes and businesses after the May flood. Massachusetts is sitting on millions in unspent emergency funds from Hurricane Katrina and more than $1 billion in cash reserves, yet Romney has failed to even respond to the Lowell delegation's requests to discuss additional aid for victims. The governor's spokesman — since Romney can't be bothered to comment now that the photo opportunities have dried up even though some residents' basements haven't — said the state will not consider spending its own money for flood victims until it's clear how much cash the federal government will give.

Then, he joined several of his predecessors in being something of a deadbeat:

Governor John Lynch today wrote Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney to tell him that New Hampshire will take legal action if Massachusetts doesn't act to pay the $3.2 million it owes New Hampshire communities for flood control dams. "Nearly 50 years ago, New Hampshire communities agreed to sacrifice land and future property tax revenues in order to build flood control dams to help protect the people of Massachusetts. We saw during the floods of Mother's Day Weekend just how valuable those dams were in saving lives and property," Governor Lynch said. "Yet despite the proven value of these dams to the citizens of Massachusetts, Massachusetts is still reneging on the commitments it made when our two states established the flood control system," Governor Lynch said. "It's time for Massachusetts to meet its obligations and pay what it owes New Hampshire, or we will take legal action." New Hampshire and Massachusetts entered the Merrimack River Valley Flood Control Compact in 1957. Under the Compact, Massachusetts agreed to reimburse New Hampshire 70 percent of the amount of property taxes lost because of the acquisition and ownership of the dams and reservoirs comprising the Merrimack River Valley Flood Control Project. Massachusetts made no payment to New Hampshire in 1994, only partial payments from 1995 to 2002, and has not paid anything since 2003.

That would track with Governors Weld, Cellucci, and Romney, Republicans all, by the way.

At the time, Romney pretty much had given up his job as governor and was gearing up for the seven-year run at the presidency that will climax, one way or the other, next Tuesday night. He was just beginning the job of polishing up his conservatism, and abdicating on government flood relief was one of the first steps he took in that direction. (This is the very public process that he's now pretending didn't happen. Not even last spring, when he was talking about chloroforming FEMA, which he now says he didn't mean.) At the same time, he was using the federal government as alibi, scapegoat and ATM machine.

Romney has said that he would abolish FEMA. You know, because a modern complex society like the USA don't need no stink'n professional response to disasters. Romney seems to have based hos management style on the old incompetence Soviet Politburo. 

Down To The Wire It Is All Lies All the Time For Romney

Down To The Wire It Is All Lies All the Time For Immoral Mitt Romney

How desperate is Mitt Romney to win Ohio? Before you answer, pay attention to what he and his campaign have been saying about the auto industry in the last few days.

As you may have heard, Romney on Thursday scared the bejeezus out of Ohio autoworkers when, during a rally, he cited a story claiming that Chrysler was moving Jeep production to China. Thousands of people work at a sprawling Jeep complex in Toledo and a nearby machining plant. Many thousands more work for suppliers or have jobs otherwise dependent on the Jeep factories. It’s fair to say that they owe their jobs to President Obama, who in 2009 rescued Chrysler and General Motors from likely liquidation. If Chrysler moved the plants overseas, most of those people would be out of work.

The story turns out to be wrong. As Chrysler made clear the very next day, in a tartly worded blog post on the company website, officials have discussed opening plants in China in order to meet rising demand for vehicles there. They have no plans to downsize or shutter plants in the U.S. On the contrary, Fiat, the Italian company that acquired Chrysler during the rescue, just spent $1.7 billion to expand Jeep production in the U.S. That includes $500 million to renovate and expand the Toledo facilities, with 1,000 new factory jobs likely to follow. On Monday, about the same number of people will report for their first day of work in Detroit, when Chrysler adds a third shift to a Jeep plant it operates there.

Did Romney intend to mislead Ohio voters? I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Presidential campaigns are chaotic, particularly in their final weeks. Maybe somebody on Romney's staff read the story, which bubbled up in the right-wing press and included a genuinely confusing statement from Fiat, and gave it to the candidate without checking its veracity. But, even after Chrysler clarified its intentions, the Romney campaign refused to answer questions from reporters about the erroneous claim. Now I think I know why: A new Romney ad references the same story.

The campaign does not appear to have announced the ad. The Obama campaign captured video of it, during a broadcast in the Toledo area. Here's how it ends:

    Obama took GM and Chrysler into bankruptcy, and sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job.

Although the statements about Chrysler are true individually, together they imply that the Obama Administration's action led to the outsourcing of American jobs. That is obviously false, both in the specific sense of what Chrysler is doing and in the more general sense of what the entire auto industry is doing. Just look at the numbers (or the graph below). According to the Bureau of Labor of Statistics, the number of autoworkers fell almost in half between 2002 and 2009, from around 1.1 million to around 600,000, as the industry was in something like a death spiral. Then, as Chrysler and GM were on the brink of true collapse, the Obama Administration stepped in with federal loans and a managed bankruptcy. Almost immediately, the automobile manufacturing sector started growing again. Since July, 2009, the workforce has risen by about 150,000 jobs and that's purely in manufacturing. If you include parts manufacturing and other related jobs, it's 250,000.

And that's the net increase. By providing Chrysler and GM with the financing they needed to avoid liquidation, the Obama Administration prevented those companies from putting more people out of work Overall, according to estimates by the Center for Automotive Research, the rescue probably saved at least a million jobs.

Of course, this kind of deception is emblematic of the campaign Romney and his supporters have waged in the last few days. They insist that Romney never thought government should let Chrysler and GM collapse. But Romney's vague and inconsistent rhetoric included statements that he would have opted for a “private sector bailout”—something that was not possible in 2009, because private investors were in no position to make the necessary loans.* As Detroit Free Press columnist Tom Walsh wrote on Friday,

    Throughout the primary campaign, [Romney] joined other Republican candidates in a chorus of bailout-bashing and union-bashing when the auto bailouts came up, painting the Obama administration's crisis-management effort as a reckless campaign to run up the national debt and do favors for labor unions.

Romney’s advisers have also tried to downplay the importance of the issue altogether. A Romney strategist recently told Politico’s Mike Allen that Obama’s constant invocation of the rescue makes the president a “one-trick pony,” even though one of eight jobs in Ohio is tied to the auto industry.

Mitt can use all the lipstick in the world, he'll still be a pathological lying pig. When a pol has to lie this much to sell their agenda, its past time for buyer beware, and time for caring Americans to say enough of this garbage passing for public policy answers.

Mitt Romney Poses As Hypocrisy Poster Boy At Company That Benefited From Stimulus Funds

Mitt Romney Poses As Hypocrisy Poster Boy At Company That Benefited From Stimulus Funds

On Friday, Mitt Romney will make his closing argument on the economy in what his campaign is touting as a major address. The site Romney has chosen, however, exposes the hypocrisy and fallaciousness of one of Romney’s central economic arguments: the notion that government has no role in growing the private economy and helping businesses expand. Romney frequently mocks Obama’s “didn’t build it” remarks and routinely derides the 2009 Recovery Act as a failure that did nothing to create jobs.

But now, the GOP presidential candidate is delivering one of the last speeches of the campaign at Kinzler Construction Services in Ames, Iowa. A search of Recovery.gov shows that the firm benefited from hundreds of thousands of dollars in contracts funded by the Recovery Act. Kinzler received $649,944 in contracts under stimulus-funded Department of Energy weatherization programs. The company also received $39,370 as a sub-contractor on a federal government contract to renovate a building owned by the federal government, making for a total of $689,314 in stimulus funds.

The firm’s website even includes a section touting its “featured projects.” Several of the projects appear to be publicly-funded renovation or construction projects, including public schools in Nebraska and Iowa, a community center in Iowa, and the new central station for Des Moines’ public transportation system:

This is not the first time that Romney has spoken at venues that undermine his economic claims. Earlier this week, Romney and his running mate campaigned at the Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, a national landmark built as a public works project during the New Deal. Ann Romney recently visited a Florida cancer center that received nearly $24 million in stimulus funds. And, among many other examples, Romney bashed the stimulus at a college that received stimulus funds for federal work-study programs that help make college more affordable.

How can this be. Conservative Republicans do everything alone without any help from government and government does not create jobs. Sure Romney and his buddy are lying hypocrites - conservative voters are obviously very pleased that they are. The bigger issue is how far detached conservatives are from reality. Should people who live in a fantasy world be in charge of governing this great nation. 

Condi Rice Pours Cold Water On ‘Benghazi-Gate’

Republican and Retired General Colin Powell endorses President Obama

Republican and Retired General Colin Powell endorses President Obama

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell on Thursday endorsed President Barack Obama for reelection, arguing the president has improved the poor economy he inherited and sharply criticizing Mitt Romney’s foreign policy’s positions a “moving target.”

“I voted for him in 2008, and I plan to stick with him in 2012,” Powell said of Obama on CBS’s “This Morning.” “I’ll be voting for he and for Vice President Joe Biden next month.”

One of the most coveted endorsements remaining in the 2012 presidential race, Powell said Obama walked into a horrendous economic situation and has begun to turn it around.

“I think, generally, we’ve come out of the dive and we’re starting to gain altitude,” said Powell, who served as George W. Bush’s secretary of state. “It doesn’t mean all our problems are solved.”

While Powell, a Republican, said that he had the “utmost respect” for Romney, he charged that the former Massachusetts governor hasn’t outlined how he would pay for increased defense spending or for his proposed across-the-board tax cut.

Powell had even harsher words for Romney’s foreign policy, questioning his changing stances on withdrawing from Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The governor who was speaking on Monday night at the debate was saying things that were quite different from what he said earlier,” Powell said.

“I’m not quite sure which Governor Romney we would be getting with respect to foreign policy,” he added. “I don’t sense he’s thought through these issues as thoroughly as he should have. He gets advice from his campaign staff that he then has to modify as he goes along.”

While in the Bush administration, Powell regularly clashed with neoconservatives, some of whom are now advising Romney. Powell said he has “trouble with” some of Romney’s “very strong neoconservative views.”

While Powell has endorsed the Democratic presidential candidate in back-to-back elections, he said he remains a Republican.

“I think I’m a Republican of more moderate mold and that’s something of a dying breed, I’m sorry to say,” Powell said.

Powell's endorsement is great, but his self image as a moderate Republican is somewhat misleading. Powell is pretty fair Right, it is just that the conservative movement moves further and further to the radical smiley-faced fascist Right every year. They just get wackier and crazier and Republican voters don't seem to punish them for moving so far from the mainstream that Republican candidates see no reason to reign in the craziness. Top 6 Lies Romney Has Told Women in an Election Season Full of Whoppers

Even the conservative magazine The Economist thinks Romney's budget is a laughable farce, The Economist Pounds Romney on the Economy

Want an Incoherent, Unsubstantial, Banal Elitist Airhead For President, Vote Romney

Want an Incoherent, Unsubstantial, Banal Elitist Airhead For President, Vote Romney

Mitt Romney has nothing really coherent or substantive to say about domestic policy, but at least he can sound energetic and confident about it. On foreign policy, the subject of Monday night’s final presidential debate, he had little coherent to say and often sounded completely lost. That’s because he has no original ideas of substance on most world issues, including Syria, Iran and Afghanistan.

During the debate, on issue after issue, Mr. Romney sounded as if he had read the boldfaced headings in a briefing book — or a freshman global history textbook — and had not gone much further than that. Twice during the first half-hour, he mentioned that Al Qaeda-affiliated groups were active in northern Mali. Was that in the morning’s briefing book?

At other times, he announced that he had a “strategy” for the Middle East, particularly Iran and Syria, and really for the whole world, but gave no clue what it would be — much like his claim that he has a plan to create 12 million jobs and balance the budget while also cutting taxes, but will not say what it is. At his worst, Mr. Romney sounded like a beauty pageant contestant groping for an answer to the final question. “We want a peaceful planet,” he said. “We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they’re going to have a bright and prosperous future and not be at war.”

He added that the United States “didn’t ask for” the mantle of global leadership but was willing to wear it. We wondered what Ronald Reagan would have thought of that.

Mr. Romney’s problem is that he does not actually have any real ideas on foreign policy beyond what President Obama has already done, or plans to do. He supports the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan — and was quick to insist on Monday night that he would pull out by 2014. He thinks there should be economic sanctions on Iran, and he thinks the United States should be encouraging Syrian opposition forces that seem moderate. Mr. Romney said he would work with Saudi Arabia and Qatar on this, but those governments are funneling arms to the jihadist groups that he says he abhors.

The president kept up the attack at virtually every opportunity, showing no sign of the oddly disconnected Barack Obama who lost the first debate. When Mr. Romney called for spending more money on the military than the United States can afford or the military wants, Mr. Obama moved in: “You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.” Mr. Romney tried to revive the Republican claim that Mr. Obama conducted an “apology tour” at the start of his presidency, which Mr. Obama correctly called “the biggest whopper” of a campaign that has been filled with them. And he took a dig at Mr. Romney’s recent world travels. “When I went to Israel as a candidate,” he said, “I didn’t take donors, I didn’t attend fund-raisers.”

Mr. Romney tried to say that the president had “wasted” the last four years in trying to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But Mr. Obama said, “We’ve been able to mobilize the world. When I came into office, the world was divided. Iran was resurgent. Iran is at its weakest point, economically, strategically, militarily.”

Mr. Romney tried to set himself apart from Mr. Obama on Iran, but ended up sounding particularly incoherent. At one point he said he would indict President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on genocide charges. He gave no clue how he would do that; like many of his comments, it was merely a sound bite.

Mr. Obama hit Mr. Romney hard on his ever-shifting positions on world affairs, including comments he made in 2008 disparaging the idea that killing Osama bin Laden should be a priority. “You said we should ask Pakistan for permission,” Mr. Obama said. “If we had asked Pakistan for permission, we would not have gotten it.”

Mr. Romney’s closing statement summed it all up. He said almost nothing about foreign policy. He moved back to his comfort zone: cheerfully delivered disinformation about domestic policy.

To the conservative movement it doesn't matter that Romney is just a plutocrat who is way out of his depth. What matters is that Romney has promised the radical anti-American right-wing conservatives He will be even more right-wing than Bush. That together he and Ryan will finally destroy safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security because only evil communists provide for the health and well being of the elderly and disabled.

Inside Bain's Chinese Sensata Factories (they used to be in Illinois), Where Workers Put in 12-Hour Days for $.99-$1.35 an hr

Corporate profits up under Obama

S&P 500 up under Obama

Dow industrial up under Obama

Why The Charge That Obama Is ‘Anti-Business’ Is Ridiculous, In Three Charts

The Tragic Embassy Attacks in Libya Are The Iranian Style Crisis Immoral Mitt Romney Was Hoping For

The Tragic Embassy Attacks in Libya Are The Iranian Style Crisis Immoral Mitt Romney Was Hoping For

Mitt will work to take advantage of an "opportunity" of American's suffering during a crisis?
   
    This guy is a real piece of work and one has to ask, what loyalty does he have to America? How about none. His only loyalty is to himself and his bank account. What a disgusting tool.

- In the video, Romney is caught hoping for an Iran hostage type situation to help propel him into the White House. Is it any surprise that he has tried to make political hay out of the Benghazi terror attacks?
   
        As you watch the video, notice the man (is that a British accent?) asking Romney how he can “duplicate” an Iran hostage type scenario. Instead of dismissing the question as going against American interests, Romney agrees that the strategy would be beneficial. The entire video is worth a listen but at the end, Romney says, “if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to take advantage of the opportunity.”

   Transcript courtesy of kossack rovertheoctopus and Mother Jones:

Audience member: If you get the call as president, and you had hostages…Ronald Reagan was able to make a statement, even before he became, was actually sworn in—
   
        Romney: Yeah—
   
        Audience member: the hostages were released—
   
        Romney: on the day of his inauguration, yeah.
   
        Audience member: So my question is, really, how can you sort of duplicate that scenario?
   
        Romney: Ohhhh. [A few chuckles in audience.] I'm gonna ask you, how do I duplicate that scenario.
   
        Audience member: I think that had to do with the fact that the Iranians perceived Reagan would do something to really get them out. In other words [unintelligible]…and that's why I'm suggesting that something that you say over the next few months gets the Iranians to understand that their pursuit of the bomb is something that you would predict and I think that's something that could possibly resonate very well with American Republican voters.
   
        Romney: I appreciate the idea. I can't—one of the other things that's frustrating to me is that at a typical day like this, when I do three or four events like this, the number of foreign policy questions that I get are between zero and one. And the American people are not concentrated at all on China, on Russia, Iran, Iraq. This president's failure to put in place a status forces agreement allowing 10-20,000 troops to stay in Iraq? Unthinkable! And yet, in that election, in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we have hostages in Iran, I mean, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the desert, I mean that's—that was—that was the focus, and so him solving that made all the difference in the world. I'm afraid today if you said, "We got Iran to agree to stand down a nuclear weapon," they'd go hold on. It's really a, but…by the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity.

Much like they exploited 9-11 for political gain - election cycles in 2004/2006/2008 all used ads that either implied or outright said if you do not vote for conservative wackos you'll all die. Romney and conservatives who are trying to turn the tragedy of the Libyan embassy deaths into their substitute for an Iranian hostage crisis are not concerned about the morbid and shameless nature of their unfounded attacks, they're smiling from ear to ear at the great timing of the deaths so they can exploit for for political gain.

Jen Rubin: The Beltway's Waldorf and Statler

The Washington Post writer's attack on Hillary Clinton over Benghazi manages to get everything wrong about feminism in less than 100 characters.


Secretary Hillary Clinton took responsibility for the situation in Benghazi on Monday, noting to the press that the “president and the vice-president wouldn't be knowledgeable about specific decisions that are made by security professionals.” There are a number of appropriate reactions this statement. One could assume it’s a bit of politicking during election season, an attempt to take the heat off the president and help his re-election bid. One could see it as a diplomatic move, aimed at quelling tensions in the Middle East. One could take it at face value. Or, one could lose her ever-loving mind and accuse Clinton of betraying feminism.

The last option was the one chosen by WaPo's Jennifer Rubin, whose writing has become synonymous with “mindless partisan bleating.”

That is some far fetched partisan twisted logic to exploit Benghazi to go after women's rights.

Mitt Romney and Family Are Not Capitalists, They're Looters and Plutocrats

 Mitt Romney and Family Are Not Capitalists, They're Looters and Plutocrats

Marc Leder, a wealthy investor, played host to Mitt Romney last May at a private fundraiser at his $4 million home in Boca Raton. Little did Leder know at the time, however, that someone would videotape the event and later leak it to the world, revealing the GOP standard-bearer in the act of caustically dismissing 47 percent of the country as too “dependent upon government” even to consider voting for him this year.

Leder attempted to duck the ensuing storm of media attention, telling Fortune that he had simply “hosted a fundraiser for an old friend.” But Leder’s ties to the candidate run deeper than campaign contributions or an old friendship. As an investor, he is part of a network of links to the Romney family business empire that will acquire enormous relevance if the GOP nominee manages to ascend to the White House.

In 2008, soon after Romney ended his first bid for the presidency, his eldest son Tagg and his chief fundraiser, Spencer Zwick, formed Solamere Capital, a private equity firm named after the exclusive community in Utah where Romney owned a vacation ski lodge.

What Tagg lacked in experience in the world of high finance, he made up for with a vast network of political connections forged through his father, who seeded the firm with $10 million and was the featured speaker at its first investor conference in January of 2010. Romney also reportedly gave strategic advice to the company, which secured prominent campaign donors as some of its first investors.

Unlike most private equity firms dedicated to analyzing and buying companies, Solamere specializes in something else: billing itself as a “fund of funds” with “unparalleled networks,” it provides investors with “unique access” to an elite set of other private equity firms and hedge funds. Sun Capital Partners, the fund founded by Leder, is one of at least thirteen Romney-linked firms in Solamere’s network, according to a prospectus circulated among potential investors and uncovered by The Boston Globe last year. Solamere also has an investment relationship with Bain Capital, the pioneering fund founded by Mitt Romney.

Solamere, a firm predicated on its founders’ relationship with Romney, presents a channel for powerful investors to influence the White House if he wins. Private equity executives looking to lobby a Romney administration may very well have a leg up if they are already doing business with the firm that the president created for his son.

Requests for comment from a Solamere representative for this article were not answered.

The looming conflicts range from general matters that affect all private equity firms—such as tax changes or the new rules mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill—to more specific concerns relating to businesses owned or controlled by Solamere’s partner firms. Many of these businesses, in fact, depend on government contracts; indeed, some have been accused of fleecing taxpayers (which is ironic given that many private equity titans claim to support Romney for his unabashed belief in small government and free enterprise). A Romney administration could directly affect the profitability of these companies—and, by extension, potentially the success of Tagg’s venture.

“It’s absolutely a conflict of interest,” says Adam Smith, the communications director for the group Public Campaign, which works on issues concerning money in politics. “Romney can’t un-know that his son’s investment company could benefit financially from his policies. And the other investors—many of whom are likely Romney campaign donors—will have extra access and influence in a Romney administration.”

* * *

Take Leder, Romney’s Boca Raton host, whose Sun Capital firm bought a stake in the Scooter Store last year. The company, known for its ubiquitous television ads promising seemingly free motorized wheelchairs for Medicare beneficiaries, has struggled as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency that governs the programs, implements rules to curb rampant billing fraud. As a CMS report noted last year, 80 percent of the claims for scooters and power wheelchairs did not meet Medicare requirements, meaning that $492 million a year is being improperly spent.

In 2007, the Scooter Store gave up $13 million in Medicare payments and paid $4 million to settle with the Justice Department over allegations that it had overbilled for its electric wheelchairs. The company, which has been bleeding money over the years as regulators moved to curb waste, still faces challenges that could make or break its business model—challenges that could be mitigated by pressure from the executive branch.

A Romney administration, for example, would have a role in the fate of a recently launched pilot program ensuring that patients see a doctor face to face to determine if a Medicare scooter is medically necessary—a program that has reportedly already reduced billings to the Scooter Store. Another challenge for the company is Section 3136 of the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. If Romney wins and repeals significant portions of the ACA, would he retain this provision, which compels Medicare to have a competitive bidding process for motorized wheelchairs?

Leder, who has donated nearly $300,000 to Romney and other Republicans in this campaign and another $225,000 to a pro-Romney Super PAC, didn’t respond to a request for comment. Disclosures, however, suggest that pressuring the government is the only way his investment in the Scooter Store can turn a profit.

Since Leder’s firm invested in the Scooter Store, the company has spent nearly $900,000 on lobbyists to push back on these two latest challenges to its motorized-scooter empire. Lobbyists not only try to influence legislation; they are also paid to gather information. Tips about government regulatory decisions can be as good as gold to investors who can act before the information is public knowledge. But what if the company had the ultimate lobbyists: the president’s oldest son, brother and personal fundraiser?

The Birth of Solamere

Shortly after his father conceded the Republican nomination to John McCain in 2008, Tagg Romney and Spencer Zwick went to dinner at a San Diego resort with John R. Miller, the CEO of National Beef Packing Company. The pair had a proposition for Miller: that he should invest in their new business venture.

Miller, who has served as a top fundraiser in both of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaigns, signed on and even became an operating partner at Solamere. The scene, recounted earlier this year by The New York Times, is one of the precious few details made public about Solamere’s investment portfolio and client list, both of which are kept secret.

What is known has been drawn largely from a trail of documents filed by the investment group. Records indicate the firm was incorporated at the same Boston office where Romney’s campaign headquarters had been located, and later shared an office address with Romney’s PAC.

Zwick first worked for Romney during the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. A student at Brigham Young University at the time, he has been at Romney’s side ever since, serving on his campaigns, working as an aide and leading his fundraising efforts since 2007. He has been referred to as Romney’s “sixth son.” And by all accounts, he’s one of the most trusted advisers in Romney’s circle. “When you’re talking to him, you know he’s got the ear of the candidate,” one Romney donor remarked to the press.

Two weeks after Romney’s concession speech in February 2008, Solamere Capital registered with the State of Massachusetts. Zwick and Tagg joined with Eric Scheuermann, a former Jupiter Partners executive, as the three managing partners of the firm.

Scheuermann was the only one with prior experience in private equity; Zwick had none, and Tagg’s previous experience ranged from working at the Monitor Group, an international consulting firm, to sports marketing jobs with Reebok and the Los Angeles Dodgers.

However, success for the firm seemed preordained. A press release the following year hinted at the type of assistance Solamere was enjoying from the Romney network. It announced that Lee Scott, the former Walmart CEO, was joining the firm as an operating partner. Eric Fehrnstrom, Romney’s longtime press aide, was listed as the contact name on the release. The former Walmart chief’s entry came after G. Scott Romney, Mitt’s brother, signed up as an adviser with the firm. So did Matt Blunt, the former Republican governor of Missouri.

Solamere surpassed its $200 million fundraising goal with help from an elite set of “high net worth” individuals, many of whom are close Romney allies. Meg Whitman, the former eBay executive, current Hewlett-Packard CEO and Republican gubernatorial nominee in California two years ago, invested with Solamere (and her son scored a job at the firm). Two Romney donors, L. Scott Frantz, an investor and Connecticut state senator, and Mark Chapin Johnson, the CEO of a medical supply company, were also among the sixty-four investors to entrust Solamere with their money.

As a managing partner of Solamere, Tagg stands to make millions of dollars. The three managing partners will receive $16.8 million in management fees over the first six years, as well as “performance-based incentive” pay, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Little is known about the exact investment decisions at the firm. A tax return filed by Mitt and Ann Romney, made public in September, showed that Solamere has used an array of Cayman Islands entities to reduce its investors’ tax liability on its income. Rebecca Wilkins, a tax expert with Citizens for Tax Justice, says that Solamere likely uses “blocker corporations” to help its tax-exempt investors avoid paying the unrelated business income tax.

It seems that Tagg has taken after his father, whose former firm Bain Capital also uses these offshore structures. Most of the offshore entities do not have to file a tax return in the US or anywhere else in the world, making them an ideal shelter for Solamere’s investors, says Wilkins. “To me, the most egregious part of this is that they’re facilitating tax evasion.”

A complaint filed in August with the US Office of Government Ethics argues that Mitt Romney’s investment portfolio violates the Ethics in Government Act because so much of his money rests in opaque funds, like private equity firms and limited partnerships. The law states that presidential officeholders must disclose their investments and their investments’ underlying assets worth more than $1,000. The law, however, carries an exemption for qualified blind trusts.

In June, the Romney campaign announced that if he’s elected, the candidate would move his assets into a federally qualified blind trust, and would also likely sell off any assets that “are not fully compliant with federal disclosure and other rules applicable to the office of the presidency.” But if Romney wins, there’s almost no chance that the underlying assets of his son’s firm, Solamere, will be revealed. Solamere could have assets involved in healthcare, energy, telecommunications or any number of other industries, but the public will be left in the dark.

According to Republicans they're all risk takers that build stuff. Pull back the curtain and they're just mostly lazy pigs feeding at the trough.

How The Media Used Biden's Smile To Deflect From Ryan's Dishonesty

At The Vice Presidential Debate: Ryan Told 24 Myths In 40 Minutes. Ryan arrived thinking that it was not a debate, but a race to see how many falsehoods and bizarro conservative talking points he could spew. Ryan should not be vice president or a congressman or allowed anywhere near government. He is barely qualified to walk a dog much less govern this great country.

Can Magic Solve Real Problems, Mitt Romney Seems to Think So

Can Magic Solve Real Problems, Mitt Romney Seems to Think So

At last week’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

He punched and parried, feigning the great Muhammad Ali.

Any likeness between the two is, however, mere illusion. America has seen victory by Muhammad Ali. America worked through disputes with Muhammad Ali. Now America admires Muhammad Ali. And Mitt Romney is no champion. Instead, Romney's a magic man. He employs sleight of hand. He uses smoke and mirrors to confuse and obscure. Unlike President Obama, Mitt doesn't do math. He performs tricks, sorta like Muhammad Ali said in his rhyme – Now you see severely conservative Romney, now you don’t. The GOP nominee asks Americans to engage in magical thinking – to believe his hocus-pocus is not just a stage show but will actually painlessly solve problems.

Last week, Romney promoted his magic show during the debate. He promised his performance as president would be fabulous, stupendous, unprecedented! He bragged [2]:

    “My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before.”

Specifically, he was talking about his tax plan. Romney has pledged to reinstate the Bush tax cuts [3] should they expire at year’s end as scheduled, then further slash income taxes by 20 percent for everyone [4]. Also, Romney has vowed to eliminate and cut other federal taxes [3], including the estate tax.

Here’s the part where Romney promises to accomplish something never done before: he says he’ll slash and burn all these taxes but not add a dime to the deficit or to the tax burden of the middle class. When Ronald Reagan made a similar promise, George Bush I called it voodoo economics. George Bush II tried this magic trick and failed. Bush gave everyone, particularly the rich, tax breaks. Then the federal deficit skyrocketed.  To quote a bumbling former Republican presidential candidate, “Whoops.”

Romney says that won’t happen when he performs as president. He’s too good. The illusionist swore to the nation Wednesday night [2]:

    “My, my number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

He hasn’t specified how he’d accomplish that because, as you know, magic tricks are proprietary secrets. He’s offered a couple of enticing tidbits, however.

One is that he’d close tax loopholes and deductions to recoup income lost because of all those tax cuts. But he won’t say which ones [5] because, again, those proprietary magic secrets.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) analyzed Romney’s proposal and concluded it didn’t add up – even when they gave him lots of breaks because his plan is clandestine. To get back $1 from closed loopholes for every $1 in tax cuts, the TPC determined that Romney would have to eliminate breaks favored by the middle class, [6] such the mortgage deduction. And that means Romney’s plan would cost middle class families an additional $2,000 a year on average [7], the TPC said.

Still, Romney assured the American people last week [2]:

    “I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.”

Abracadabra!

Romney insists his bag of tricks contains one that will enable him to defy the math of the TPC economists, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations [8]. One way would be to do what Bush did, just cut taxes and increase the deficit. Romney contends that’s not in his repertoire: [2]

     “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.”

Nobody can say it if Mitt Romney says they can’t! He dismisses pesky economic experts with a wave of his magic wand.

Just as he’d heal the budget, Romney would patch up the nation’s health care system -- with pixie dust.

First, he says he’d repeal Obamacare on day one [9]. Second, he told debate listeners: [2]

    “What I support is no change for current retirees or near-retirees to Medicare.”

Logically, or mathematically, or realistically, that won’t work. As of August, 5.4 million seniors had saved $4.1 billion [10] on prescription drugs, about $768 each, because Obamacare closes the Medicare prescription plan donut hole. And, under Obamacare, this year more than 18 million Medicare recipients [10] received at least one preventive service for free. Killing Obamacare would mean seniors would have to pay those costs once again from their own limited funds. This would be a costly change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

Also, Obamacare extended the life of Medicare by eight years. [11] It did so by reducing payments to medical facilities by $716 billion over a decade, reductions accepted by the providers when the law was negotiated. [12] Romney says he will eliminate the savings to Medicare and give those payments to the medical facilities. [2] That, logically, would snuff out the life of Medicare eight years earlier, which would be a tragic change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

But, you know, presto-chango, Romney says it ain’t so.

Many aspects of Obamacare are beloved by those who have benefitted, including extending coverage for young adults on their parents’ plans, eliminating coverage caps and instituting rebates when insurers charge too much. But perhaps the most important Obamacare protection was the specification that insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Repealing Obamacare would eliminate that benefit. Romney’s response at the debate: [2]


    “In fact, I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.”

Romney’s plan could exclude millions, however, since it guarantees insurance only if the person with a pre-existing condition has maintained coverage without a lapse longer than three months [13].

But, no worries. In Romney’s magical world, if we all just clap loudly enough, Tinker Bell won’t die!

Like any good magician, Romney keeps the details of his plans for America hidden up his sleeve. Taking a cue from that Muhammad Ali rhyme, he believes:

Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

If the average American's accountant, banker or tax prep helper said the made the kind f crazy statements that Romney makes, most reality based Americans would run to the door. Yet  - who knows why - he has a nice haircut and wears a white shirt and has the nerve to claim he loves America and has values, some of those same common sense Americans are willing to vote for him. Like P.T. Barnum once said, there is a sucker born every minute.

Which way is Romney's foriegn policy wind sock blowing today, Romney Endorses Middle East Peace Process He Mocked


Even neon-confederate traitors like Republican alcoholic, wuss wearing camos and nut job Ted Nugent get equal time. being wacko has become cool - Ted Nugent: Discovery Channel Special Will Advance My View In "Culture War". Ted is a prime example of wing-nut welafre. He has no job skills so the conservative noise machine pays him to teach as many Americans as possible how to be a traitor.

Sen. Scott Brown Says He Would Stalk Pussycat Dolls 

People wonder why government does not work. Scott Brown is the poster boy for being a puppet for special interests. He makes it his job to make sure the government is by and for the Koch brothers, not by and for the people. But hey he runs around in a truck pretending to be a an average citizen. People should vote for Brown if they want to gut Medicare, widens the wage disparity gap, make the too big to fail banks even less accountable and give yet more tax cuts to billionaires.

In Mitt Romney's Debate Performance He Proved That Shameless Lies Trump Facts

In Mitt Romney's Debate Performance He Proved That Shameless Lies Trump Facts

Mitt Romney turned in a polished performance in last night's presidential debate – and revealed himself to be an accomplished and unapologetic liar. In an evening where he sought to slice and dice the president with statistics, Romney baldly misrepresented his own policy prescriptions, made up numbers to fit his attacks and buried clear contrasts with the president under a heaping pile of horseshit.

Here are mendacious Mitt's five most outrageous statements:

1. "I don't have a $5 trillion tax cut." Romney flatly lied about the cost of his proposal to cut income-tax rates across the board by another 20 percent (undercutting even the low rates of the Bush tax cuts). Independent economists at the Tax Policy Center have shown that the price tag for those cuts is $360 billion in the first year, a cost that extrapolates to $5 trillion over a decade.

2. "I will not reduce the taxes paid by high-income Americans." Romney has claimed that he will pay for his tax cuts by closing a variety of loopholes and deductions. The factual problem? Romney hasn't named a single loophole he's willing to close; worse, there's no way to offset $5 trillion in tax cuts even if you get rid of the entire universe of deductions for the wealthy that Romney has not put off the table (like the carried interest loophole or the 15 percent capital gains rate.) The Tax Policy Center report concludes that Romney's proposal would create a "net tax cut for high-income tax payers and a net tax increase for lower- and or middle-income taxpayers." Moreover, some of Romney's tax cuts are micro-targeted at American dynasties, particularly his proposal to eliminate the estate tax, which would reduce his own sons' tax burden by tens of millions of dollars.

3. "We've got 23 million people out of work or [who have] stopped looking for work in this country." Romney is lying for effect. The nation's crisis of joblessness is bad, but not 23 million bad. The official figure is 12.5 million unemployed. An additional 2.6 million Americans have stopped looking for jobs. How does Romney gin up his eye-popping 23 million figure? He counts more than 8 million wage earners who hold part-time jobs as also being "out of work."

4. Obamacare "puts in place an unelected board that's going to tell people ultimately what kind of treatments they can have." Romney is reviving Sarah Palin's old death panels lie here. Obamacare does establish an Independent Payment Advisory Board to help constrain the growth of Medicare spending. The body has no authority to dictate the practices of the private insurance marketplace. And the law also makes explicit that this body is banned from rationing care or limiting medical benefits to seniors.

5. "Pre-existing conditions are covered under my plan." In the biggest whopper of the night, Romney suggested that his health care proposal would guarantee coverage to Americans with pre-existing conditions. This is just not true. Under Romney, if you have a pre-existing condition and have been unable to obtain insurance coverage or if you have had to drop coverage for more than 90 days because you lost your job or couldn't afford the premiums, you would be shit out of luck. Insurance companies could continue to discriminate and deny you coverage, as even Romney's top adviser conceded after the debate was over.

But conservatives and the media say that Romney won. In other words lies and moral corruption won. As if the USA was not already being dragged down the rabbit hole of moral nihilism by the conservative movement. Greed, theft, unpaid for wars, lying us into wars, bankrupting the nation - these things are patriotic according to the morally bankrupt conservative Republican movement. Romney;s lack of conscience is seen as a plus among that crowd. At Last Night’s Debate: Romney Told 27 Myths In 38 Minutes. Mitt and Republicans think the trip to the gutter is a race. Whoever can be the most soulless wins.

Conservatives think the improved job numbers are part of a conspiracy. Most people are made of about 75% water, conservative are made out of urban myths.

GOP in Florida: Crying Fraud, Then Creating It. When Republicans voted for criminal Rick Scott as governor, that was not a stupid mistake. They needed a 'Godfather" type figure as head of their organized crime organization.

Republicans have obstructed 3 jobs bills, Obama moving forward anyway

The Laughable Myth That Taxes and Regulations Are Hurting Economic Recovery: Bank Profits Rebound To 2006 Levels, But Bankers Still Complain About Regulations

The Laughable Myth That Taxes and Regulations Are Hurting Economic Recovery: Bank Profits Rebound To 2006 Levels, But Bankers Still Complain About Regulations

In the last four quarters, the six largest Wall Street banks have made $63 billion, the most they’ve made since 2006. Despite having pushed the nation to the brink of economic collapse, and after receiving billions of taxpayer dollars, the banks are back to where they were when the housing bubble inflating.

However, according to Bloomberg News, a return to sky-high profits isn’t enough for the banking industry, which reacted to the numbers by whining about regulation and “a backlash against bankers“:

    Those billions of dollars in profits aren’t enough, according to interviews with more than a dozen bank executives and analysts. The lowest leverage in a decade, return on equity at a third of 2006 levels, higher capital requirements, shares trading below book value, declining bonuses, job cuts, the European sovereign-debt crisis and a backlash against bankers have damped the joys of profit, they said.

These six banks — Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley — “will have combined profits of $9.9 billion in the third quarter, $17.4 billion in the last three months of the year and $75.8 billion in 2013? according to estimates. “When the banks say, ‘We’re doing very well but not getting a return on our capital,’ it’s completely incomprehensible, and it’s angering to the average American,” said Michael Greenberger, a former regulator who now teaches at the University of Maryland’s law school.

The banks’ return to massive profitability also refutes the argument that the Dodd-Frank financial reform law will cripple the ability of financial services companies to make money. According to a recent study, the nation’s banks went right back to making risky loans after receiving their taxpayer-funded bailout.

Higher taxes have actually helped with past economic recoveries.

Excellent satire on the Romney mentality: A manifesto for the entitled

Paul Ryan Fears the 30 Percent

RERUN: Fox, Carlson, Drudge Attacked Obama's Hampton Speech Five Years Ago. Carlson, Fox, Drudge and Hannity have hyped so much pure bullsh*t that has hurt America, one wonders how they can possibly think of themselves as patriots. Yet they never apologize or correct themselves. It is always onward to the next faux scandal, the next set of immoral lies, the next wave of racist tinged talking points.