America Panders to The Plutocrats: Apple, Google, Microsoft Avoid Taxes By Keeping Billions In Profits Offshore

America Panders to The Plutocrats: Apple, Google, Microsoft Avoid Taxes By Keeping Billions In Profits Offshore

The Microsoft logo. Microsoft and other companies have been accused of using complicated schemes to avoid paying taxes.

American multinational corporations have something in common with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, aside from being people, too: They both keep a lot of their income overseas to cut their tax bills.

Companies such as Microsoft and Apple quietly dodge billions of dollars in taxes each year with potentially illegal schemes to move their profits offshore, according to a Senate subcommittee report released on Thursday.

"Some multinationals use our current tax system to engage in gimmicks to avoid paying taxes they owe," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee On Investigations, said in a hearing on Thursday. Levin described "a system used to shift billions of dollars of profit offshore and avoid billions in taxes."

Microsoft, Apple, Google and Hewlett-Packard were among the companies Levin singled out for criticism over their tax-avoidance practices, but they are not alone. Most multinational companies pay a tax rate well below the 35 percent rate mandated by law. Some avoid paying taxes altogether, or even get the government to pay them money. These loopholes cost the U.S. government billions of dollars in revenue that could be used to help close the budget deficit.

Using complex schemes to shift U.S. revenue overseas, Microsoft was able to avoid paying taxes on $21 billion in revenue between 2009 and 2011, amounting to about half its total U.S. sales, according to the subcommittee report. The company avoided paying $4.5 billion in taxes, or about $4 million per day, during that time, according to the report.

Using similar schemes, Levin said, Apple avoided taxes on $34.5 billion between 2009 and 2011, and Google has dodged taxes on $24 billion.

Hewlett-Packard, meanwhile, used a series of constantly revolving short-term loans between itself and its subsidiaries that have helped it avoid paying billions of dollars in taxes since at least 2008, according to Levin. Though he didn't say how much money H-P has avoided paying, Levin did say that H-P has kept billions of dollars in cash offshore -- more than $17 billion in 2010, for example -- that it would then "lend" to its U.S. parent company in a steady stream.

"HP has complied fully with all applicable provisions of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code and auditor Ernst & Young has consistently reviewed and approved the accuracy of HP’s financials," Hewlett-Packard responded in a statement emailed to the Huffington Post. "HP has always had an extremely productive and professional relationship with the IRS, who has permanent offices at two of our facilities and has been continually auditing HP since the filing of our 1962 tax return. They have never raised any concerns about these programs. We are disappointed to see what appears to be a politically motivated attack on one of America’s largest employers.”

Apple and Google did not immediately return requests for comment. A Microsoft representative was scheduled to address the subcommittee later on Thursday.

"In conducting our business at home and abroad, we abide by U.S. and foreign tax laws," Microsoft said in a statement emailed to the Huffington Post. "That is not to say that the rules cannot be improved -- to the contrary, we believe they can and should be. U.S. international tax rules are outdated and not competitive with the tax systems of our major trading partners."

The ranking Republican on the subcommittee, Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), defended the companies, saying they were following the letter of the law to avoid what he called onerous tax rates and an overly complex tax code.

"This is perfectly legal tax avoidance," Coburn said, arguing that the 35 percent corporate tax rate mandated by law is twice that of the average rate around the world. "They take advantage of every loophole we have created in the tax system. There is nothing heinous in that. Nothing illegal in that."

Levin responded that he wasn't sure, but it seemed "highly dubious" that Hewlett-Packard's revolving loan program, for example, "complies with current tax law." He also blamed the IRS for lax enforcement of that law.

Just because something is legal does not mean it is ethical. All of these companies depend on U.S. infrastructure and the U.S. military to create a safe and economically advanced country that makes it possible for these companies to even exist.

Freaky conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has accused Amb. Susan Rice of totally unfounded misdeeds, FLASHBACK: When Krauthammer Excused Condi Rice For Pushing "Defective" Iraq War Intelligence

The Republican Speaker of the House is clueless, John Boehner(R-OH): No ‘Difference’ If Revenue Comes From Middle Class Or Super Rich

Values? That is When Wal-Mart Uses Layers of Foreign Contractors To Evade Responsibility

Values? That is When Wal-Mart Uses Layers of Foreign Contractors To Evade Responsibility

Bangladesh is half a world away from Bentonville, the Arkansas city where Wal-Mart is headquartered. This week, Wal-Mart surely wishes it were farther away than that.

Over the weekend, a horrific fire swept through a Bangladesh clothing factory, killing more than 100 workers, many of whose bodies were burnt so badly that they could not be identified. In its gruesome particulars — locked doors, no emergency exits, workers leaping to their deaths — the blaze seems a ghastly centennial reenactment of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire of 1911, when 146 workers similarly jumped to their deaths or were incinerated after they found the exit doors were locked.

The signal difference between the two fires is location. The Triangle building was located directly off New York’s Washington Square. Thousands watched the appalling spectacle of young workers leaping to the sidewalks 10 stories down; reporters and photographers were quickly on the scene. It’s not likely, however, that the Bangladesh disaster was witnessed by anyone from either the United States or Europe — the two markets for which the clothes made inside that factory were destined. For that, at least, Wal-Mart should consider itself fortunate.

The Bangladesh factory supplied clothing to a range of retailers, and officials who have toured the site said they found clothing with a Faded Glory label — a Wal-Mart brand. Wal-Mart says that the factory, which had received at least one bad report for its fire-safety provisions, was no longer authorized to make its clothing but one of the suppliers in the company’s very long supply chain had subcontracted the work there “in direct violation of our policies.”

If this were an isolated incident of Wal-Mart denying responsibility for the conditions under which the people who make and move its products labor, then the Bangladeshi disaster wouldn’t reflect quite so badly on the company. But the very essence of the Wal-Mart system is to employ thousands upon thousands of workers through contractors and subcontractors and sub-subcontractors, who are compelled by Wal-Mart’s market power and its demand for low prices to cut corners and skimp on safety. And because Wal-Mart isn’t the employer of record for these workers, the company can disavow responsibility for their conditions of work.

This system isn’t reserved just for workers in faraway lands: Tens of thousands of American workers labor under similar arrangements. Many are employed at little more than the minimum wage in the massive warehouses in the inland exurbs of Los Angeles, where Wal-Mart’s imports from Asia are trucked from the city’s harbor to be sorted and packaged and put on the trucks and trains that take them to Wal-Mart stores for a thousand miles around.

The warehouses are run by logistics companies with which Wal-Mart contracts, and most of the workers are employed by some of the 200-plus temporary employment companies that have sprung up in the area — even though many of the workers have worked in the same warehouses for close to a decade. Last year, the California Department of Industrial Relations, suspecting that many of these workers were being cheated, charged one logistics company that runs a warehouse for Wal-Mart with failing to provide its employees with pay stubs and other information on their pay rates. Wal-Mart itself was not cited. That’s the beauty of its chain of deniability.

A small band of these warehouse workers has been demonstrating for the past couple of months to bring attention to the bizarrely contingent nature of their employment and the abuses that flow from it. Their numbers were augmented Friday byactual Wal-Mart employees in stores around the nation, calling attention to the everyday low wages and absence of benefits that the vast majority of the company’s 1.4 million U.S. employees receive.

Other discount retailers — notably Costco and Trader Joe’s — pay their workers far more, train them more extensively, have much lower rates of turnover and much higher rates of sales per employee, according to a Harvard Business Review article by Zeynep Ton of the MIT Sloan School of Management. Costco is a very profitable business, but Wal-Mart maintains an even higher profit margin, which it achieves by underpaying its employees.

If Wal-Mart brought half their foreign contractor work back to America and paid employees at factories and at retail stores a living wage, they would still make billions in profits. What they are doing is doing their best to redistribute the fruits of labor to themselves and other wealthy investors. The radical anti-American conservative movement knows that this is the best way to weaken the economic and political will of the average American and make a lot of money doing it.

Fox says Thomas Ricks apologized for 'wing of the Republican party' comment; Ricks says no

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There is nothing more harmful for the middle class than Republican Members of the House in districts that have been gerrymandered so that caricatures like Michele Bachmann (R-Homophobia) only fear in life is a primary challenge from an even more ridiculous Republican.

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Paying Workers at Big Retailers Like Walmart Something Closer to a Living Wage is Good For Everyone

Paying Workers at Big Retailers Like Walmart Something Closer to a Living Wage is Good For Everyone

Chances are you missed this particular bargain on Black Friday: Agree to spend 15 cents more on every shopping trip, and Walmart, Target, and other large retailers will agree to pay their workers at least $25,000 a year.

Big box retailers aren't actually offering that deal, but a new study by the liberal think tank Demos argues that it would be a great bargain for us all if they did. Increasing the average wage at large retailers from $21,000 to $25,000 would probably cost you less than $20 a year at the register yet lift some 1.5 million people out of poverty (including your cashier), create 100,000 new jobs, and boost GDP by some $13.5 billion.

Demos argues that retailers would benefit, despite higher labor costs, because their low-wage employees could suddenly afford to buy more of the basic necessities that they scan and load into plastic bags every day.

If you are still wondering what's in it for you, however, then consider this tidbit from Sasha Abramsky:

    In 2004, a year in which Walmart reported $9.1 billion in profits, the retailer's California employees collected $86 million in public assistance, according to researchers at the University of California-Berkeley. Other studies have revealed widespread use of publicly funded health care by Walmart employees in numerous states. In 2004, Democratic staffers of the House education and workforce committee calculated that each 200-employee Walmart store costs taxpayers an average of more than $400,000 a year, based on entitlements ranging from energy-assistance grants to Medicaid to food stamps to WIC—the federal program that provides food to low-income women with children.

Seen through this lens, the worker protests that erupted after Thanksgiving at Walmart locations around the country might end up being the best Black Friday specials of them all. Think of them as 2-for-1 coupons: Spend more on wages now, improve the economy AND save us all lots of tax money down the road—money that we can spend instead on more important things, like, well, parachutes for our cats.

 Big box retailers like Walmart, Target, Best Buy and even upscale retailers like Macy's have a  not so rare disease called near-sighted tunnel vision. They see quarterly profit statements and bonuses dancing like Christmas faeries, they do not see the USA as a community writ large and what is best for the community in the long run.

Thanksgiving 2012 - 10 Things Americans Can Be Thankful For

Thanksgiving 2012 - 10 Things Americans Can Be Thankful For

Following a long presidential campaign full of policy battles and disagreements, progressives have a lot to be thankful for this holiday season. Here are 10 things we can all celebrate:

We are thankful for the millions of Americans serving our country at home and abroad. This includes 1.4 million Armed Services members, 80,000 AmeriCorps members, and 8,073 Peace Corps volunteers and trainees, 6 million teachers and public school employees, 1.1 million professional and volunteer firefighters, and 22 million total public employees.

We’re thankful for Obamacare. After surviving dozens of repeal votes in Congress, the Supreme Court, and a presidential election, the Affordable Care Act is on track to extending insurance coverage to 30 million Americans and lowering health care spending. Millions of seniors and young people have benefited from the law and inefficient insurers are distributing rebates to consumers.

We’re thankful for the social safety net. Nutrition assistance, welfare, unemployment compensation, Social Security, and other social programs keep millions of Americans out of poverty each year. Though the programs aren’t as robust as they could be, they help provide food, health care, and educational opportunity to America’s neediest families.

We’re thankful for historic progress against the War on Drugs. In passing laws to legalize and regulate marijuana in Washington and Colorado, supporters joined many local jurisdictions that have decriminalized some drug offenses in signaling their willingness to better tailor drug policy to public health and safety goals. Timed to the year when the film The House I Live In is opening new eyes to the War’s decimation of minority communities, the time is ripe to end the War that, since its declaration 40 years ago by President Richard Nixon, has cost the U.S. both money and lives while failing to curb drug use.

We’re thankful for the advocates who protected our right to vote. The past few years saw a raft of new voter suppression laws and tactics, but most of the worst laws were blocked at least temporarily by the courts or repealed by lawmakers. The challenge going forward will be to maintain these victories as litigation in several of these cases continues and the U.S. Supreme Court considers a challenge to the Voting Rights Act.

We’re thankful for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The CFPB, created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform law, has been working on new rules to protect Americans from predatory lenders, bogus credit card deals, and shady mortgage peddlers. It has also won American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in refunds for credit card scams.

We’re thankful for Occupy Wall Street. Since its street protests last year, Occupy Wall Street has kept busy with several important projects. Occupy Our Homes saved many Americans from unfair foreclosures, while Occupy Hurricane Sandy provided aid to victims of the superstorm that battered the northeast. Occupy’s latest project, the Rolling Jubilee, raised millions of dollars in order to buy and then abolish debt.

We’re thankful for the most diverse Congress in history. On Election Day, Americans ensured that the 113th Congress will contain the widest range yet of ethnicities, religious affiliations, and sexual orientations. The incoming freshman class contains 4 African Americans, 5 Asian Americans, 10 Latinos, 24 women, the first openly bisexual congresswoman, as well as the country’s first Buddhist senator and two Hindu representatives.

We’re thankful for religious freedom. The U.S. is a nation of Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Christians, non-believers, and religious and spiritual sects of all stripes. Unlike some other countries, the U.S. protects Americans’ freedom to practice the religion of their choice without fear of repercussion, suppression, or forced religious adherence.

We’re thankful for growing LGBT equality. The sweeping victories for LGBT equality and out candidates in this election demonstrated that this country is on track to providing full benefits and protections to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. While there is still work to be done, schools are becoming safer, families are becoming more secure, and visibility and awareness are helping to lower discrimination rates.

Conservatives are eating some well deserved crow for running for office n one of the most regressive anti-American platforms in modern U.S. history. They wanted to turn back the clock to the glory days of 1850. They declared war on women and pretty much everyone else except rich old white guys who hate everyone.

Dumb tweet of the day: Victoria Jackson’s GMO theory

Dumb tweet of the day: Victoria Jackson's GMO theory (Credit: Wikipedia/Jlamont)

    Victoria Jackson @vicjackshow

    My friend thinks GMO's, genetically modified food might be affecting hormone levels and making more men gay these days.

Fox's Andrea Tantaros Treats Food Stamps As A Diet Plan: "Do You Know How Fabulous I'd Look?"

Republicans Hate American Workers and Think Freedom Means The Right To Treat Them Like Wage Slaves

Republicans Hate American Workers and Think Freedom Means The Right To Treat Them Like Wage Slaves

Getting tired of eating at Chick-Fil-A every day to express your hatred of liberals? Well, now you have a couple more options. You can chow down at Applebee's, where the CEO of their New York franchises went on TV to declare that he won't be doing more hiring because of the costs Obamacare would impose. Or you can head over to Papa John's, whose CEO, John Schnatter, has said that Obamacare could add as much as—brace yourself—10 cents to the cost of a pizza, and since obviously customers would never tolerate such price gouging, he'll just have to cut back employees' hours.

In our new era of corporate political activism, we're goin to be seeing a lot more of this kind of thing. So let's make sure we all understand exactly what it is these chieftains are complaining about: They don't want to give their employees health insurance. That's it. They'd prefer to talk about "regulation" in some general sense, so you might get the impression that Obamacare is making them needlessly remodel their bathrooms or something, but the provision in question mandates that health coverage be offered in any company that has over 50 employees.

And there's something else to keep in mind: Nearly all companies with over 50 employees already offer health coverage to their employees, even though this provision of Obamacare doesn't take effect until January 2014. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 98 percent of companies with over 200 employees offer coverage, as do 94 percent of companies with between 50 and 199 employees. That means when you see some CEO come out and decry the costs of Obamacare, the person you're looking at is one of the jerks, the guy who treats his employees like crap and is angry that the law is going to force him to be a little more humane.

There's a strong argument to be made that we should decouple health insurance from employment altogether. Making people depend on their employers for their health care is an artifact of history (unions began demanding health benefits during World War II, when they couldn't negotiate for pay increases because the government had instituted a wage freeze), not something that came about because it was a particularly rational way to get people insured. But as long as we're sticking with a largely employer-based system, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I'd be more than happy to pay an extra 10 cents for my pizza if it meant knowing that the workers who made it are insured.

No one lives forever. Between the time you start your working lifee and the time you die, Conservatives think it is a fun game to cheat workers out of their fair share of wages and benefits, so that Republicans can win the game. What game? The creepiest most greedy slug who dies with the most toys wins. When you start hearing that simple fact on broadcast media, that will be the day the media became fair and not conservative.

Republicans skip Benghazi hearing; complain about lack of information on Benghazi

The Mind-blowing Hypocrisy of John McCain(R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC): WMD Lie is Good, Repeating Intelligence is Bad

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The Mind-blowing Hypocrisy of John McCain(R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC): WMD Lie is Good, Repeating Intelligence is Bad

The Mind-blowing Hypocrisy of John McCain(R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC): WMD Lie is Good, Repeating Intelligence is Bad

Hypocrisy alert: John McCain supported Condoleeza Rice who misled the public on WMD, causing thousands to die, but now attacks Susan Rice.

Remember when Condoleezza Rice misled the public about Iraq’s WMDs and over 4,000 Americans died? John McCain doesn’t seem to. McCain is trying to sell the idea that Susan Rice appearing on TV to tell the American people what the intelligence community had ascertained about Libya on September 18 was wrong. She should have chosen not to speak on the subject without more certainty, he and Lindsay Graham claim.

Yet, Susan Rice’s statement made it clear that things were not certain. Here, once again, is her statement to the media on September 18 (emphasis mine):

RICE: Well, first of all, Chris, we are obviously investigating this very closely. The FBI has a lead in this investigation. The information, the best information and the best assessment we have today is that in fact this was not a preplanned, premeditated attack… Obviously, we will wait for the results of the investigation and we don’t want to jump to conclusions before then. But I do think it’s important for the American people to know our best current assessment.

Later, when the intelligence community updated their information, we learned that perhaps things didn’t go down as they first thought. Here’s a shocker for Republicans: Now there are reports saying that it might have had something to do with the video after all. The lesson here is that it takes time to gather the information. The Obama administration wanted to give the public the information it had on that date in September, and they continued to update us as they learned more. You can’t know what you don’t know yet. This is not hard to understand.

What is hard to understand is that as National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice made a public case for the Iraq war based on what was misleading information. John McCain later supported her confirmation as Secretary of State in 2005 and said that anyone who questioned her integrity did so for political reasons. McCain lectured, “We can disagree on policy and we disagree on a lot of things, but I think it is very clear that Condoleezza Rice is a person of integrity. And yes, I see this, some lingering bitterness over a very tough campaign.” Oh, do tell, Senator.

Back in 2002, Bush officials made the rounds on TV to claim that Iraq was accumulating high-strength aluminum tubes. Condoleezza Rice said the tubes “are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.” Rice told CNN, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

 Conservatives cannot make up their minds. They want to portray President Obama - head of the administration that finally caught Bin laden, as incompetent, yet they also want everyone to think he has super powers that allow him to see through mountains and walls 10,000 miles away.

Jerome Corsi's final straw

Back in April, after ABC News quoted Jerome Corsi as an authority in an article on so-called "birth tourism," Media Matters' Todd Gregory pointed out how low ABC had sunk:

    Jerome Corsi is the guy who co-wrote Unfit for Command, a book so infamously inaccurate that it helped spawn the term "swiftboating" as a description of a political smear campaign.

    That alone should tell you everything you need to know about Corsi, but there are so many other reasons he's not a credible figure. There's the birtherism. The appearance on a "pro-White" radio show. The bigoted comments on Free Republic. The promotion of laughable conspiracy theories about global government and the "North American Union." The failed Obama smear book.

What has Corsi done since? Well, there's this:

Yeah, that's Corsi at the WorldNetDaily Convention last weekend, saying President Obama has engaged in "identity theft" because he has "stolen the identity of a natural born citizen" by "using someone else's Social Security number."

He also called for Obama to "renounce Lucifer." Seriously.

 Who knows, it is possible that Corsi is evil incarnate. What other kind of being would regulate so much evil and still claim to have American values.

When Republicans Commit Sexual Indiscretions, Other Republicans See another Obama Conspiracy

When Republicans Commit Sexual Indiscretions, Other Republicans See another Obama Conspiracy

Former CIA Director David Petraeus’ resignation last Friday has prompted the right to speculate that Petraeus’ abrupt departure was somehow designed by the Obama administration to prevent Petraeus from testifying before Congress on Libya or that the White House held news of the affair over his head to say the attack was sparked by an anti-Islam video.

Fox News’ Eric Bolling provided an example of the logic behind this latter theory:

    BOLLING: A lot of people are scratching their heads as to why Gen. Petraeus blamed the ['Innocence of Muslims'] video three days after the September 11th attacks. Two days after he blamed the video, Susan Rice went out there, and since then, subsequent to all of this, we found out that as of day one, the Obama administration, intel community, everyone knew it wasn’t the video. They knew it was a terrorist attack. But why would Gen. Petraeus do it? Was there something being held over his head where they said ‘Hey General, go out there and say video because otherwise we are going to blow this thing wide open.’ That’s one theory.

Both the House and Senate are slated to hold closed-door hearings on the intelligence failures before and during the attack in Benghazi. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) seems to buy the explanation that Petraeus was forced out before he could speak under oath. “It’s so suspicious,” he told Fox’s Sean Hannity last night, adding, “It’s not a coincidence to me. He is probably the one that knows most about what happened or didn’t happen in Benghazi.”

Fox’s Gretchen Carlson piled on this morning on Fox and Friends. “I’m wondering if he did come to testify, and that was under oath, that he would have to stick to that story, that it was the videotape?” she asked.

Watch Fox’s conspiracy-peddling here:

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-CA), chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has already said that there is “no link between Petraeus’ resignation and Benghazi.

And evidence so far indicates that Petraeus turned in his letter of resignation to President Obama of his own free will — on the advice of Director of National Intelligence James Clapper — because of an extra-maritial affair rather than anything related to Libya.

A newly uncovered speech by Petraeus’ alleged mistress Paula Broadwell on Oct. 26 also provided ammunition to the conspiracy theorists. In her speech, Broadwell appears to reveal new information about Benghazi, casually mentioning that the CIA had detained several Libyan nationals in the annex that served as its base in the city, possibly prompting the attack that lead to the deaths of four Americans. Such a claim had yet to be reported anywhere in the news media. A CIA spokesperson roundly denied the claim, as it no longer possess detention authority under Executive Order.

Meanwhile, the right is also trotting out another theory that the White House forced Petraeus out to prevent any possible bid by the former general at the presidency in 2016. Fox News analyst Ralph Peters advanced both of theories last night talking to Bill O’Reilly, saying the White House is “lying” about the Petraeus affair because of Benghazi and Obama is trying to prevent Petraeus’ rise to the presidency.

The first wave of right-wing clueless theories said that this was all mean to keep Petraeus from testify, but it turns out he will testify. Petraeus has already resigned so e could use the opportunity to actually bash the White House if he liked. That is the thing about Republicans and their serial lies and myths - they start to crumble at the slightest close examination.

Wackadoos at work, Fox's Kilmeade Fearmongers About Greece-Style Riots In America: Should We "Put Our Extra Money Into Tear Gas?"

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.

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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

Romney, Fox News, Jim Hoft, Michelle Malkin and Other Anti-American Conservatives Lied About Obama and Libya

Romney, Fox News, Jim Hoft, Michelle Malkin and Other Anti-American Conservatives Lied About Obama and Libya

Transcript Truthers: Conservatives Deny Obama Called Libya Attack An "Act Of Terror"

During tonight's presidential debate, moderator Candy Crowley corrected Mitt Romney's false claim that President Obama did not refer to the September 11 attack on the American consulate in Benghazi, Libya as an act of terrorism the day after the attack.

Crowley was right, and Romney was wrong: In his September 12 remarks, the president said: "No acts of terror will ever shake the resolve of this great nation, alter that character, or eclipse the light of the values that we stand for. Today we mourn four more Americans who represent the very best of the United States of America." Despite this, conservatives in the media are insisting that Obama never said that.

(Twitter captures above and at link)

Both Malkin and Hoft linked to a September 30 Commentary blog post by Alana Goodman arguing that "at no point" in Obama's remarks responding to the Benghazi attack "was it clear that he was using that term to describe the attack in Benghazi." Instead, argued Goodman, the line might have been "just a generic, reassuring line he'd added into a speech which did take place, after all, the day after the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks." Even though Obama mentioned the four Americans killed in Benghazi in the very next line.

That makes little sense and is a reed far to thin to stand on. But it's good enough for Fox News and the conservative blogosphere.

Update:

Predictably, Fox News is echoing the misleading defense of Romney. During an interview with Romney surrogate John Sununu, Sean Hannity falsely claimed that when Obama referenced "acts of terror," he was "talking about September 11, 2001. He doesn't talk about Benghazi being an act of terror." Hannity then immediately aired video contradicting his supposed "fact check" of Obama:

Fox News host Bret Baier also tried to discredit the fact that Obama referred to the Benghazi attack as an act of terror. During Fox's coverage of the debate, Baier claimed that Obama wasn't "specifically speaking about Benghazi" when he referred to the attack as an act of terror -- that he was speaking "generically."

Baier also faulted Obama for repeatedly referring to an anti-Islam video as a possible catalyst for the attack and for stressing that an investigation was ongoing.

UPDATE 2: Obama also referred to the Benghazi attack as an "act of terror" while campaigning in Colorado on September 13:

    Let me say at the outset that obviously our hearts are heavy this week -- we had a tough day a couple of days ago, for four Americans were killed in an attack on our diplomatic post in Libya.  Yesterday I had a chance to go over to the State Department to talk to friends and colleagues of those who were killed.  And these were Americans who, like so many others, both in uniform and civilians, who serve in difficult and dangerous places all around the world to advance the interests and the values that we hold dear as Americans.

    And a lot of times their work goes unheralded, doesn't get a lot of attention, but it is vitally important.  We enjoy our security and our liberty because of the sacrifices that they make.  And they do an outstanding job every single day without a lot of fanfare.  (Applause.)

    So what I want all of you to know is that we are going to bring those who killed our fellow Americans to justice.  (Applause.)  I want people around the world to hear me:  To all those who would do us harm, no act of terror will go unpunished. It will not dim the light of the values that we proudly present to the rest of the world.  No act of violence shakes the resolve of the United States of America.  (Applause.)

Conservatives really should learn how to read and write American English, it is the language that most Americans use. After which thy could work on their comprehension and analytical skills. These skills tend to be important and are actually fundamental to having a system of values. Since conservatives seem to have simply learned the words values by way of route memory, perhaps that is why they do not understand American English and the legacy of American values and ideals. No One at The Conservative Anti-American Blog Newsbusters Can Pass a Reading Comprehension Test
One Matthew Sheffield | October 16, 2012 | 23:38 writes,

CNN correspondent and second presidential debate moderator Candy Crowley disgraced herself tonight, repeatedly intervening to save a floundering President Obama and showing why many Americans were rightfully suspicious of her ability to moderate a presidential debate fairly.

Her most outrageous act tonight was her incorrect seconding of Obama's statement that he declared the Libya terrorist attacks to be "terror." While Obama did indeed use the word, this is not what he meant by it. Instead, he was simply referring to "acts of terror." There was no mention of Al Qaeda or any of its affiliates with respect to the actual attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi.

Crowley bungled the facts in attempting to save Obama from his administration's dreadful bungling of the Libya situation. She owes the American people an apology for inserting herself into the debate in such an inappropriate and embarrassing fashion.

Obama clearly ised the word terrorism as the above transcripts show. One of the great things about the web is that anyone, including malciously ignorant neatherthals like Sheffeild can write anything that they like, disregarding the most obvious and easily checkable facts. Conservatives are notorious for exploiting any tragedy that happens to an American for political gain, you could call them the Addicts and Whores of Exploitation. This is easy to see when you compare the response of conservatives to the attacks of 9-11 and Bush's responsibility to Obama and Libya. Bush was in no way responsible for 9-11, yet Obama is responsible for Libya.

In Presidential Debate Romney Acts Like a Child in a Tantrum Rather Than a Principled Adult

Get the truth about these dangerous miscreants hiding their radical agenda behind fake patriotism, 10 Things Paul Ryan Doesn't Want You to Know

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

Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

Why Is CNN Pushing Factually Wrong Picture of Paul Ryan Medicare Plan

CNN's Sanjay Gupta claimed that the proposed changes to Medicare that Congressman Paul Ryan has offered would allow seniors to choose between "a voucher" system and "traditional Medicare," while keeping the system affordable. In fact, experts say the Ryan plan would threaten Medicare's long-term viability and potentially would increase seniors' medical costs by thousands of dollars.

CNN's Gupta: Ryan Plan Will Give Future Seniors Option To Retain "Traditional Medicare"

Sanjay Gupta Claimed Ryan's Proposal Will Give Future Seniors A Choice Between Voucher System And Traditional Medicare. On the September 28 edition of CNN's Early Start, CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta reported on the differences between the Ryan Medicare plan and the Affordable Care Act and claimed that the Ryan plan would offer those under 55 "the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance, or they could stick with traditional Medicare":

    GUPTA: Romney and his running mate Paul Ryan proposed to cap malpractice insurance, cut Medicaid by $810 billion dollars over the next 10 years, give states more control over their Medicaid funds, overhaul Medicare. The overhaul? People now younger than 55, when they reach retirement, would have the option of getting a voucher to purchase private insurance. Or, they could stick with traditional Medicare. [CNN, Early Start, 9/28/12]

But Experts Say Ryan's Plan Threatens Medicare's Long-Term Viability

CBPP: Ryan's Promise To Ensure "Traditional Medicare Remains An Option" Cannot Be Kept. Paul Van de Water, an economist and senior fellow at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in March that Congressman Paul Ryan's plans for Medicare in his latest budget could lead to the unraveling of traditional Medicare:

    Chairman Ryan claims that his proposal "ensur[es] that traditional Medicare remains an option." Unfortunately, that's not the case. Under premium support, traditional Medicare would tend to attract a less healthy pool of enrollees, while private plans would attract healthier enrollees (as occurs today with Medicare and private Medicare Advantage plans). Although the proposal calls for "risk adjusting" payments to health plans -- that is, adjusting them to reflect the average health status of their enrollees -- the risk adjustment process is highly imperfect and captures only part of the differences in costs across plans that stem from differences in the health of enrollees.

    Inadequate risk adjustment would mean that traditional Medicare would be only partially compensated for its higher-cost enrollees, which would force Medicare to raise beneficiary premiums to make up the difference. The higher premiums would lead more of Medicare's healthier enrollees to abandon it for private plans, very possibly setting off a spiral of rising premium costs and falling enrollment for traditional Medicare. Over time, traditional Medicare would become less financially viable and could unravel -- not because it was less efficient than the private plans, but because it was competing on an unlevel playing field in which private plans captured the healthier beneficiaries and incurred lower costs as a result. Ryan also would allow private plans to tailor their benefit packages to attract healthier beneficiaries and deter sicker ones, which only makes this outcome more likely. [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 3/28/12]

CBPP: Voucher Systems That Include Medicare Option Could "Threaten Traditional Medicare's Long-Term Viability." In a September 2011 report titled, "Converting Medicare to Premium Support Would Likely Lead to Two-Tier Health Care System," CBPP explained that under a "premium support" system such as the one in the Ryan plan that was passed by the House in April 2011, "inadequate risk adjustment" could lead to healthier seniors abandoning traditional Medicare for private plans. The report explained that could leave only the less healthy in the traditional Medicare program, which could "drive up its costs and threaten traditional Medicare's long-term viability." [Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 9/26/11]

Brookings Institute: Financing For Ryan Plan Would "Throw Into Doubt The Very Survival Of The Program." Brookings Institute senior fellow Henry Aaron evaluated the Ryan Medicare plan and concluded that "the financing for traditional Medicare would become progressively less adequate, throwing into doubt the very survival of the program":

Liberal media. The only people who think the media is liberal are the same people who dance with ghosts and think the Loch Ness monster talks to them in the shower - oh, and Republicans.

NBC’s David Gregory is a hack. he is of that right-of-center no real news school of journalism. Democrats says world id round, Republicans disagree. Though he has moved on to just making crap up like his conservative brethren - NBC’s David Gregory Misquotes Obama, Falsely Claims President Said ‘Al Qaeda Has Been Defeated’

Mitt Romney: Free Speech Is for Billionaires, Not School-Teachers