Sleaze Bag of the Week Paul Ryan (R-WI) - His Votes in Congress Added $6.8 Trillion to Our Nation’s Federal Deficits

Sleaze Bag of the Week Paul Ryan (R-WI) - His Votes in Congress Added $6.8 Trillion to Our Nation’s Federal Deficits

The reputation of Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) as a fiscal hawk is at odds with his record of supporting nearly every single budget-busting law of the past decade. Since 2001 he has voted for at least 65 separate pieces of deficit- and debt-increasing legislation, with the total tab for all those votes a whopping $6.8 trillion in cumulative deficits.

Rep. Ryan has served as a member of the House of Representatives since 1998. That year the budget was in surplus and stayed that way for the next three years. But with the start of the George W. Bush administration came the return of the red ink. In January 2001, before any Bush administration policies had been passed, the Congressional Budget Office, or CBO, was projecting budget surpluses totaling $5.6 trillion over following decade. Instead, we got cumulative deficits totaling $6.1 trillion, an $11.7 trillion difference. CBO estimates that laws passed by Congress and signed by Presidents Bush and Barack Obama are responsible for $8.5 trillion of that difference. Rep. Ryan cast his vote for about 80 percent of that $8.5 trillion.

Indeed, during the period when the bulk of the deficit-increasing legislation was passed during the Bush administration Rep. Ryan’s record as a fiscal hawk is even more dismal. From 2001 to 2008, Congress passed and President Bush signed legislation that increased the deficit (just in that period) by a cumulative $4 trillion (policies passed during those years added over $6 trillion to the deficits through 2011). Rep. Ryan voted for well over 90 percent of that. (see figure 1).

Those debt-increasing votes began with the first round of Bush tax cuts—estimated at the time to reduce the projected surplus by nearly $1.3 trillion—and continued with every subsequent round of tax cuts. In total, since 2001 Rep. Ryan voted for over $2.5 trillion worth of deficit-financed tax cuts.

Rep. Ryan also voted, repeatedly, to increase federal spending without paying for it. Most notably, he voted in support of every single defense spending bill over the past 11 years. These votes, on both the regular defense appropriations bills and on a series of “emergency supplementals,” have added nearly $1.9 trillion to the deficit since 2001.

Rep. Ryan also voted numerous times to increase nondefense spending. Of course, the most well-known of these votes was on Medicare Part D, which added over $270 billion in unpaid-for spending. But there are many lesser-known examples. In 2002 he voted for an agriculture bill that added $80 billion to the deficit. He voted for changes to military retirement in 2003 that cost $20 billion in added spending. And he voted for increased borrowing authority for flood insurance that increased federal spending by $17 billion.

Rep. Ryan also voted in favor of many of the annual appropriations bills that authorized spending increases for “nondefense discretionary programs.” To be sure, Rep. Ryan occasionally voted against a handful of these, but the net effect of all of his votes was to increase nondefense spending by $1.3 trillion.

All told, Rep. Ryan voted in favor of increasing federal spending by $3.2 trillion—all without offsetting the costs. Combined with his support for $2.4 trillion in tax cuts, Ryan’s votes contributed to adding trillions of dollars to the national debt, which itself led to more spending as the interest payments on that debt grew. Put it all together, and Rep. Ryan voted for over $6.8 trillion worth of cumulative deficits over the past 11 years.

Republicans have always been big spenders. They just never pay for what they put on the tax payer credit card. So the borrowed money has to be paid, plus interests. They know that the general public regularly votes to throw out whoever is in power. That makes it easy to blame Democrats who inherit the crazy irresponsible debt that Republicans leave behind. Republicans cat this way because of the twisted psychology of the right-wing conservative mind. They hate democracy, the had the concept of government by and for the people, so they just do not care how much damage they do to America as long as it benefits the Republican party. Today's icing on the lying hypocrite cake - Paul Ryan denied he sought stimulus fundsQuestioned, he acknowledges his requests. When you get close to Ryan that stink is the thick layer of unwashed hypocrisy.

Mitt Romney's Contempt For Morality. Romney's Three Biggest Lies, Just This Week

Mitt Romney's Contempt For Morality. Romney's Three Biggest Lies, Just This Week

“I Have Paid Taxes. Every Year. A Lot of Taxes.”

Romney has been dogged by questions about his tax returns, exacerbated by his steadfast refusal to release more than one year’s worth of taxes. (He’s promised to release one more year in the fall.) Romney faced added scrutiny over the last week, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has said that a reliable source told him that Romney paid no federal income tax for several years, and that is the reason he won’t release his returns.

Romney and Republicans have demanded that Reid retract the statement, but so far, Romney has been unwilling to release the tax returns that could prove Reid a liar. Instead, Romney chose to go before his supporters and declare that he has too paid taxes — trust him.

“Let me also say categorically: I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes,” Romney said Friday. That is, of course, almost certainly true. Romney likely paid sales taxes and property taxes and gasoline taxes, just like everyone else. Of course, Romney left a very important word out of his defense: “income.”

Romney was careful not to claim he paid income taxes every year, which are the taxes Reid was talking about. Does that mean Reid is right? Well, without seeing Romney’s tax returns, it’s impossible to say.

One other part of Romney’s statement is a lie: the part where he says he paid “a lot” of taxes. Romney only paid 14 percent of his income in taxes in 2010. That’s because most of his income was investment income, which is taxed at a far lower rate than job income is. Certainly, the dollar amount Romney paid was higher than your average Joe, but the percentage Romney paid is far from burdensome.

...Obama is Going to “Gut Welfare Reform”

For those of you who are either too young to remember the late 20th century (or for those of you who’ve chosen to block it out), welfare reform was once a great Republican bugaboo, the “immigrants are stealing your jobs” of the Reagan era. Ronald Reagan himself once decried the “strapping young bucks” who used welfare to buy “t-bone steaks,” and if that sounds incredibly racist, you’re right.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton helped Republicans achieve their goal of slashing — er, reforming — welfare. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act made it harder to get public assistance, especially for women who were seeking post-secondary degrees. While the act did have the effect of kicking a lot of people off of assistance, the initial reports of its significant benefits in reducing poverty were primarily due to the roaring economy of the tech boom.

Why do I mention this? Because Mitt Romney’s base is made up of people who were well into adulthood when the PRWOA was signed into law, people who remember welfare reform as a salient issue. Romney is attempting to appeal to those voters with his second-biggest lie of the week, the lie that President Obama wants to “gut welfare reform.”

Romney’s lie hinges on waivers that the Obama administration is issuing to states that want flexibility to adjust work requirements in the face of the current recession. As the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein wrote last month, “The actual language is rather strict and rules out a number of potential waiver applications.” Job requirements are not going to be eliminated; rather, states will be able to use increased flexibility to help move recipients toward long-term employment.

Given the Republican love of giving the states more power, this may seem like something they would support the president in doing, or at the very least, have trouble arguing against. Romney makes the argument simpler by lying; in the ad, the campaign says, “Under Obama’s plan, you wouldn’t have to work and wouldn’t have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check and welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare.”

Incidentally, if you’re wondering where Barack Obama could have gotten the idea of giving states more flexibility on welfare requirements, it may have come from this 2005 letter from the Republican Governor’s Association requesting exactly that from then-Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist. The second signature on the request was then-Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who was for Obama’s welfare rule changes before he was against them.

....“I’ll work to protect the voting rights of our military, not undermine them.”

Mitt’s biggest lie of the past week is a doozy. Romney claimed that Barack Obama was trying to limit the voting rights of members of the military in Ohio, because of a lawsuit filed in the state over Ohio’s decision to eliminate early voting except for members of the military. Was Obama trying to “undermine” the rights of soldiers? In a word, no. Instead, Obama and the Democratic Party sought to give everyone in Ohio the same rights as Ohio wanted to give soldiers — in other words, to give everyone the opportunity to vote early.

Nevertheless, Romney took to Facebook to play more-patriotic-than-thou, lambasting Obama for “claiming it is unconstitutional for Ohio to allow servicemen and women extended early voting privileges during the state’s early voting period,” something Romney said was an “outrage.” Of course, Obama wants to keep those early voting privileges in place for the military, and extend it for everyone — including veterans. Romney would refuse to give veterans early voting privileges. Who’s undermining voting rights now?

Indeed, Romney’s bald-face lie drew a rejoinder from John Soltz of VoteVets.org, who said, “Obviously with the narrative the Romney campaign is pushing, they probably don’t have a lot of people around them who have actually served. We also agree, like the president does, that someone who served in World World II in the Battle of the Bulge or someone who lost their legs in Vietnam has just as much of a right to vote as today’s veteran.”

With three whoppers in the last week, it’s tempting to ask why Romney thinks he can lie with impunity, but of course, the answer is simple: the media won’t call him on it. Given over to fake even-handedness, the media is stuck saying things like this:

The last president we had who was a serial lying sleaze bag sent off over 4,000 Americans to Iraq to die for a lie. He and his Congressional conservative partners in crime also tanked the economy. Romney has exactly the same arrogant attitude.

Anti-American Fox News and The America Hating Steve Doocy Hides Religious Accommodation For Reproductive Health Mandate 

Fox News' Steve Doocy falsely claimed that the Obama administration was forcing churches to provide contraception coverage to employees, ignoring an exemption that explicitly exempts religious institutions.

On Fox & Friends, Doocy reported on tensions between Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan and President Obama due to a Health and Human Services (HHS) rule mandating that all health insurance plans cover women's reproductive health. After religious leaders, including Dolan, protested the move, the Obama administration exempted churches and other religious groups from the mandate.

But Doocy not only ignored the religious accommodations made by the administration on the contraception mandate; he falsely claimed that the mandate still applied to the Catholic Church:

Don't ask me why Fox and Doocy hate America, religious freedom and women's reproductive rights, they just do. Perhaps Steve would be happier in Iran where they believe pretty much the same things Steve and his boss Rupert Murdoch do.

Mitt Romney Wants To Stack His Administration With The Same Corrupt Plutocrats Who Crashed The Economy. Republicans See Corruption As A Virtue

Mitt Romney Wants To Stack His Administration With The Same Corrupt Plutocrats Who Crashed The Economy. Republicans See Corruption As A Virtue

In May, Mitt Romney suggested a new eligibility test in the U.S. Constitution requiring that the President first "spend at least three years working in business." It was bad enough that America's would-be second Harvard MBA President forgot the disastrous record of the first. Now, Mitt has chosen the worst possible week to announce that President Romney's Cabinet will feature people who had "real jobs" and "have experience in the real world, in the private sector." After all, while Romney's campaign was getting battered by mounting questions over his AWOL tax returns and mysterious tenure at Bain Capital, some of the biggest banks on both sides of the Atlantic were revealed to be cheats, gamblers and frauds. And as it is turns out, recent studies suggest those abysmal business ethics are not exceptions to the rule.

To be sure, the Republican nominee and his former firm weren't the only ones to be on the receiving end of headlines like "50 Shades of Bain" and "Did Romney Make a False Statement on His Financial Disclosure?" The mushrooming scandal over Barclay's rigging of the crucial London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) came to the U.S. with word that the New York Fed knew of manipulation in the UK dating back to 2008. (That scandal has already claimed the job of Barclay's CEO Bob Diamond, a man who was to have co-hosted Mitt Romney's upcoming fundraising event in London.) On Friday, JP Morgan once again found itself the under the microscope as the bank reported its growing losses from bad bets placed by the notorious "London whale" may have cost the firm $7 billion. That same day, the New York Times reported that "MasterCard, Visa and major banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America, agreed to pay more than $6 billion to settle accusations that they engaged in anticompetitive practices" in processing credit card payments to retailers. Meanwhile, the nation's largest bank, Wells Fargo, beat earnings expectations on Friday even as it announced a $175 million settlement with the Justice Department over "accusations that it discriminated against some minority homeowners seeking loans from 2004 to 2009."

Reflecting on the LIBOR scandal, University of San Diego Law School professor Frank Partnoy lamented, "I wish I could say I'm shocked, because it is shocking, but regulators have not been particularly effective or aggressive in the past two decades of finance." Simon Johnson summed up the banking scandal that may have impacted $800 trillion worth of business and consumer credit transactions with this powerfully simply headline:

    "Lie More, as a Business Model."

Conservative Republicans like Mitt have be successful in repealing most of the financial regulation that would have prevented the Great Recession. What regulation we had left they were negligent about enforcing. If terrorists had done this much damage to the USA conservatives would be back in shrill paranoid mode. Instead they're asking to help elect more congressmen, senators, governors and a president so they can commit some more domestic terror on working and middle-class America's finances.

Fox's Latest Attempt To Deflect Blame For Recession Away From GOP

Conservative Republican Media Starts Noise Campaign to Drown Out The Fact Obama Has Been a Conservative Spender

Conservative Republican Media Starts Noise Campaign to Drown Out The Fact Obama Has Been a Conservative Spender

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters not to buy into the "BS" of GOP-driven tax and spending claims and pointed to a Wall Street Journal MarketWatch column that noted that government spending is rising at its slowest pace since the 1950s. Far from heeding that advice, right-wing media figures relied on misleading economic talking points to attack Carney

...Right-Wing Media Respond By Saying The Debt Dramatically Increased Under Obama

Fox's Varney: "Obama Has Run Up The Debt A Great Deal More Than President Bush Did In His Full 8 Years." From the May 23 edition of Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto:

    STUART VARNEY (guest host): [I]f you are going to argue that the president is not a big spender, it's very difficult to argue against the hard, solid numbers. I've got figures which show very clearly that President Obama has run up the debt a great deal more than President Bush did in his full 8 years: 4.9 trillion for President Bush in 8 years. 5 trillion and more for President Obama in just three-and-a-half years.

( can Varney and Fox News do simple arithmetic? See charts above)

PolitiFact: "Obama Has Indeed Presided Over The Slowest Growth In Spending Of Any President Using Raw Dollars." From a PolitiFact post rating the MarketWatch finding that Obama has the lowest spending record of any president as "Mostly True":

    Obama has indeed presided over the slowest growth in spending of any president using raw dollars, and it was the second-slowest if you adjust for inflation. The math simultaneously backs up Nutting's calculations and demolishes Romney's contention. The only significant shortcoming of the graphic is that it fails to note that some of the restraint in spending was fueled by demands from congressional Republicans. On balance, we rate the claim Mostly True. [PolitiFact, 5/22/12]

The charts include statistics from the OMB ( Office of Management and Budget, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and Haver Analytic. Those numbers would look even better except that from 2000 to 2008 conservative Republicans put all their spending on the national credit card, leaving those bills for the next guys to pay. Behavior that was both irresponsible and immoral, but hey that is the way conservatism works.

There are several ways to run a free market economy. One way is the Romney way. Where people with lots of money, power and connections give average Americans the shaft and call it "success".Why Mitt Romney’s Time At Bain Capital Matters

Patriotism 101: Why Are Conservative Republicans Lying To America About Food Stamps and Unemployment

Patriotism 101: Why Are Conservative Republicans Lying To America About Food Stamps and Unemployment

In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Robert Barro dismisses Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s claim that every dollar spent on food stamps generates $1.84 of economic activity.  Barro claims Secretary Vilsack’s “Keynesian” estimate conflicts with “regular” economics, which he says predicts that increasing transfer payments like food stamps and unemployment insurance (UI) would lead to a decline in economic activity and a fall in employment because they would “motivate less work effort by reducing the reward from working.”

Contrary to Barro’s assertion, however, the Secretary is in good company appealing to Keynesian multiplier analysis under current economic conditions, and Barro’s assessment is implausible.  For example, the Congressional Budget Office has estimated that transfer payments to individuals like the increase in food stamp benefits and additional UI compensation of the 2009 Recovery Act generate between 80 cents and $2.10 for each dollar spent when the Federal Reserve holds short-term interest rates as low as possible (see Table 2 here).  Barro says “there is zero evidence” that deficit-financed transfers increase economic activity and boost employment;” CBO explains why, taken as a whole, the evidence says they do.

Circumstances matter.  When the economy is humming along on all cylinders and unemployment is very low – think the late 1990s – deficit-financed increases in food stamps and UI would not increase economic activity or boost employment.  The multiplier would be essentially zero because the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates in response.  Any rise in demand stimulated by the increase in transfers would be offset by the fall in demand due to higher interest rates.  Barro’s concern about work disincentives could come into play if transfers were exceedingly generous.

That’s not where we are now.  Higher interest rates due to Fed tightening will not likely be a concern anytime soon.  Instead, we face a long period of high unemployment and excess productive capacity.  These are just the circumstances in which transfers will most likely be effective in stimulating demand and creating jobs.

Food stamp and UI recipients spend most of any increase in income they get, and they spend it quickly.  That means more spending at local businesses and more orders for those businesses’ suppliers.  The additional spending generates income for local businesses and their suppliers, and the boost to demand multiplies through the economy.  With nine unemployed workers for every two job openings and businesses generally operating well below full capacity, constraints on expanding production and employment to meet the increased demand should be minimal.  Treasury borrowing costs will continue to be low and we will increase the odds that a real economic recovery will take hold.

I wish we were at a point where further deficit-financed spending would be counterproductive because growth is strong and full employment is in sight.  But, we’re clearly not there yet and it’s bad economic policy – regular or irregular – to pretend otherwise.

 We do live in a free market society - at least for those in the middle-class and below ( in other words not in the same economic class as George W. Bush and Mitt Romney). When people spend their very small government benefits those dollars do not disappear down a black hole. And when people do get back on their feet - and most Americans do eventually - they pay back into the system and start putting more money in the pockets of American business. At no time in this cycle is there much incentive not to seek work. Having a safety net to provide some protection against ending up living under a bridge is hardly incentive to live off gov'mint benefits. Those benefits are measly at best.

Anti-American Propaganda Channel Fox News Spreads Romney's Dubious Talking Point On Women's Job Losses

The National Review’s fake plagiarism scoop - Updated: After falsely accusing Elizabeth Warren of plagiarism, the conservative magazine apologizes. The Biggest wuss in Massachusetts Scott brown (R) is still using false and distorted claims in his mail campaign about Warren to rise money.

Women for Obama

Sleaze Bag Scott Brown(R-MA) justifies subsidizing a golf course over aid for 9/11 rescue workers

Sleaze Bag Scott Brown(R-MA) justifies subsidizing a golf course over aid for 9/11 rescue workers

Mitt Romney Associate Peter Schaumber Likely Violated The Hatch Act

Sorry for the disturbing images. They are related to this story: Former Republican precinct committeeman in AZ J.T. Ready, Neo-Nazi and One-Time Pal of Russell Pearce's, is Shooter in Gilbert Massacre

The pathological liar and conservative Republican blogger Jim Hoft(The Gateway Pundit) has tried to associate Ready with Democrats and the Occupy movement -  Far Right AZ Neo-Nazi Commits Mass Murder, Wingnut Bloggers Immediately Paint Him as a Left Winger

Mitt Romney Associate Peter Schaumber Likely Violated The Hatch Act

Last week, the Romney campaign finally broke its silence on an advisor’s role in a growing scandal. A report released last night shows why it had to.

In September, Mitt Romney named former National Labor Relations Board Chairman Peter Schaumber as the co-chair of his campaign’s Labor Policy Advisory Committee. Then in March, the NLRB’s inspector general named Schaumber as the recipient of leaked confidential info from current NLRB member Terence Flynn – and the Romney campaign avoided comment for a month.

Last Thursday, Rep. Elijah Cummings announced that the IG would be releasing a follow-up report, and was referring his findings to the Office of Special Counsel “for potential Hatch Act violations due to Mr. Schaumber’s role as a senior advisor” to Romney. (The Hatch Act bans public officials from using government access to advance political campaigns.) The new report, released last night by the House Education and Workforce Committee Democrats, is a sequel that truly outdoes the original.

The same day Cummings announced the forthcoming report, Romney Etch-A-Sketched Schaumber – sort of. The campaign issued no statement, but a “Romney campaign aide” told the Hill that Schaumber had already stepped down from his campaign role sometime in December. That’s the same month that Flynn learned he was being investigated by the IG. (The Romney campaign did not respond to a request for comment.)

“It’s hardly a coincidence,” said AFL-CIO spokeswoman Alison Omens in an emailed statement, “that Schaumber resigned from the Romney campaign the same time his inside source at the board was notified he was being investigated.”

When Romney tried to dump right-wing anti-immigrant warrior Kris Kobach as part of a post-primary pivot, Kobach talked back, telling Think Progress he was in fact still advising the candidate. Romney shouldn’t have that problem with Schaumber, who’s been keeping his mouth shut since being named in the IG report last month. But there are some facts that complicate the Romney campaign’s narrative. A month after Schaumber’s supposed departure, he appeared on Fox News to discuss Republican outrage over Obama’s NLRB appointments (one of whom was Schaumber’s alleged mole, Flynn). The host introduced Schaumber as a “top advisor” to Romney – as did the Fox chyron – and asked him about Romney’s stance on the NLRB. (She also asked him about NLRB investigations of Bain Capital; Schaumber pleaded ignorance of the details, then launched into a blanket defense of companies that get investigated by the NLRB.)

Romney’s website was also slow to adjust to his supposed months-old parting with Schaumber. Until recently, a link to an essay by Schaumber was prominently displayed on his Labor page, and the press release announcing his appointment was in the campaign’s archive. Now, the Web addresses for both bring up pages reading “Access Denied.”

Looks like Team Romney is trying to put distance between itself and Schaumber’s scandal without actually addressing it. But the scandal is just getting started.

Romney and friends see American workers as serfs who should have no rights. Like all good conservative Republicans they think the American workplace should operate like an Antebellum plantation where none of the workers should get too uppity. Talk about elitism gone wild.

Obama's Composite Girlfriend: How Politico and Drudge Created Fake News

Redistributing income upwards, Study: CEO Pay Increased 127 Times Faster Than Worker Pay Over Last 30 Years

Latest Attempt To Deny Obama Credit For Bin Laden Raid Falls Flat

Mitt Romney Spokesman Proto-fascist Richard Grenell Scrubs OnLine Attacks on women

Eight of the Top Ten 2012 Super PAC Donors Are Anti-Democracy Conservatives Hell Bent on Bringing Back Bush Policies

Mitt Romney Spokesman Proto-fascist Richard Grenell Scrubs OnLine Attacks on women

Mitt Romney Spokesman Proto-fascist Richard Grenell Scrubs OnLine Attacks on women

In the Twitter-fueled 2012 election, it's not surprising that reporters quickly began digging through Grenell's Twitter feed, even before he got a chance to scrub out a number of impolitic and sexist comments.

ThinkProgress noted Grenell's tendency to make cutting remarks about the appearances of prominent women in media and politics, including his tweet advising MSNBC host Rachel Maddow "to take a breath and put on a necklace," and another suggesting she resembled Justin Bieber.

In another tweet, Grenell wrote that "Hillary is starting to look liek Madeline [sic] Albright." He discussed First Lady Michelle Obama working out and "sweating on the East Room carpet." He also asked whether Callista Gingrich's "hair snaps on," and on another occasion, commented how Gingrich's third wife "stands there like she is wife #1." Politico flagged more examples and noted Grenell's "old pastime" of "ridiculing the Gingriches."

When contacted about Romney's hiring of Grenell and his removal of online writing, a campaign spokesperson referred The Huffington Post to a response Grenell gave to Politico. "My tweets were written to be tongue-in-cheek and humorous but I can now see how they can also be hurtful," Grenell said. "I didn’t mean them that way and will remove them from twitter. I apologize for any hurt they caused."

Maddow certainly didn't think Grenell's tweets were so "tongue-in-cheek" or "humorous," pointing out the ones written about her during Friday night's show, while asking if the Romney campaign sees "any sign that they understand that a long, string of really nasty, sexist tweets about Callista Gingrich's appearance might be alienating to people who might otherwise consider voting for Mr. Romney."

But Maddow's not the only member of NBC/MSNBC who Grenell has knocked in recent months. Grenell described NBC's "Meet the Press" on Twitter as "a commercial for the Democratic Party & its radical feminist agenda," while taking a few shots at chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell and political director and White House correspondent Chuck Todd.

"[A]re any reporters asking HillaryClinton tough questions?" Grenell asked on April 3. "NBC has expert foreign policy reporter Andrea @mitchellreports asking non-questions." On March 27, Grenell tweeted that MSNBC "has ushered @chucktodd so far left he's lost his ability to see a Russian video moment as anything more than a 2nd term reality." That same day, Grenell said what he "love[s] about twitter and facebook is that it has outed reporters from their phony facade of pretend non-partisan commentary."
Richard Grenell Twitter


He has also taken a few jabs at BuzzFeed, writing that the Ben Smith-led site "looks like it's either working for [liberal watchdog Media Matters for America] or the Obama re-election." (Smith wrote Saturday how the hiring of Grenell, who's openly gay, quickly prompted an attack from Bryan Fischer, the anti-gay chief spokesman of the American Family Association).

Grenell also recently tweeted that New York Times reporter Matt Bai "isn't fit to cover Obama," and once tweeted that this reporter is a "liberal" who "ignores george @stephanopoulos' secret coordination w/ WhiteHouse on contraception," both posts that appear to have been removed. On another occasion, Grenell disputed whether this reporter's article included a "clarification" or, in his view, a "correction." In a subsequent tweet, he alleged that bias was the motivation for clarifying the article.

On his now-removed personal site, according to a few posts archived online, the spokesman takes similar swipes at the "Fourth Estate."

In May 2010, Grenell criticized New York Times columnist Charles Blow in a post headlined "Charles certainly does Blow."

"Blow's writing is choppy and vapid," Grenell wrote in a post that has since been removed. "His filing today is a 474 word piece of partisan whining for his favorite political party labeled 'Liberals in Limbo". While conservatives won't be shocked that Blow is on staff and writing for the Grey Lady, intellectuals everyway [sic] should demand she do better than Blow."

Grenell has blogged for The Huffington Post as recently as last month.

Given Grenell's repeated swipes at the media, reporters may be concerned that they won't get a fair shake and that legitimate questions could be dismissed as being motivated by liberal bias.

Mitt Romney has high standards, yes sir. His idea of running a campaign of substance is to hire a  lunatic who specializes in jokes so bad that no one likes them except Rush Limbaugh fans and cockroaches.

Not Just Labor Rights; America hating Conservative Republican Scott Walker(R-WI) Is Also Dismantling Women's Rights


The Right Wing's Insurrectionist Mindset. Conservatism is fanatical anti-American movement that tries to disguise its radical democracy hating agenda in patriotism.

The 2012 Elections - Another Season of Conservative Republican Lies, Real Values Become an Inconvenience

The 2012 Elections - Another Season of Conservative Republican Lies, Real Values Become an Inconvenience

A spring awash with Etch A Sketch conservatives, camera-wielding GOP con men and a bogus deficit reduction budget from House Republicans shows that for the right, wrong is justified when it achieves the desired results.

A perfect example of this political philosophy is the work of James E. O’Keefe III, a right wing, unsupervised, unaccountable, self-appointed and self-styled “investigative journalist” who has violated federal law, lied about his identity and deceitfully cut and pasted video to destroy what he perceives as liberal institutions.

Oddly for the party that claims conservative Christians as key constituents, O’Keefe’s misbehavior is celebrated by GOP talking heads — the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity. That encourages copycats. The New York Times last week told the tale of one. John M. Howting, a bungling video scam man, sees himself as an O’Keefe apostle.

Honorable journalists abide by an ethics code forbidding lying to secure a story. For them, the end does not justify the means. By contrast, for O’Keefe and today’s Etch A Sketch conservatives, the end they want vindicates any scheme to secure it. Deliberate lying, cynical deceit, cut-and-paste deception – all of that is rationalized by conservatives to get their way. It’s a lovely escape clause they’ve written for themselves from that annoying Judeo-Christian thou-shalt-not-lie commandment.

O’Keefe wanna-be John M. Howting tried clumsily to trod in his disgraced mentor’s footsteps, lying about his name, who he represented and his intentions in a failed effort to discredit a couple of what he perceived to be liberal New York community groups.

O’Keefe had better luck. This right wing rebel without a conscience lied about his name, who he represented and his intentions in successful efforts to manipulate some targets into saying stupid stuff, which he surreptitiously recorded. His deceptive and distorted films destroyed ACORN and damaged other groups he considered progressive. Despite O’Keefe’s liberal use of the Commandment escape clause, he became conservatives’ golden boy.

Among right-wing talk show hosts who urged their conservative Christian listeners to praise the con was Bill O’Reilly who said O’Keefe should be awarded a Congressional Medal. Not so worshiping were federal prosecutors who charged O’Keefe with misrepresenting himself in an attempted phone hacking at the office of U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La. O’Keefe pleaded guilty. And not so revering was the California state attorney general who determined that O’Keefe’s sliced-and-diced video misrepresented the actions of ACORN workers.

Conforming to the conservatives’ philosophy of wrong-is-right-if-the-right-benefits is GOP Presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Like a Judas, he betrayed his own health insurance program.
Romney contended that requiring everyone to get health insurance – known as the individual mandate — was good when he was governor of Massachusetts and signed Romneycare, which includes it. As Congress considered health care reform, Romney repeatedly said Romneycare should be the model for the nation. But later when conservatives blasted the individual mandate in Obamacare, Romney sold out his Massachusetts plan, saying an individual mandate was not good for the nation.

Similarly, in 1994 during Romney’s failed campaign for U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy’s seat, Romney and his wife attended a Planned Parenthood fundraiser and she donated $150 to the group. But now, in pursuit of the vote of the anti-abortion Christian right, Romney no longer likes Planned Parenthood so much, promising:

    “Planned Parenthood, we’re going to get rid of that.”

Are those switches adorable little flip-flops or calculated lying? The comments of a chief Romney aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, show they are calculated. A reporter asked Fehrnstrom how Romney would appeal to crucial middle-of-the-road voters in the fall after taking such hard right positions in the spring to win the primary. Fehrnstrom compared the campaign to an Etch A Sketch:

    “You can kind of shake it up and restart all over again.”

So, basically, tell the conservative Christian primary voters one thing. Then tell the mainstream general election voters something else. This is the campaign of the GOP front-runner, the party’s likely standard-bearer. This is who most Republicans voted for.

It makes sense really. Apparently Republicans don’t expect the truth. Look at the Ryan budget. He calls it the Path to Prosperity. The nation went down this road of tax cuts for the rich and program cuts for the middle class before, under Bush II, and it was a one-way road to increased income inequality. Voodoo trickledown economics is a path to prosperity only for the already prosperous.

Congressman Paul Ryan contends his budget is a deficit-buster, that it would shrink the deficit to 1.2 percent of the gross domestic product by 2022 – which is exactly the same place where the country would be if it did nothing, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office. In addition, the cumulative 10-year deficits under Ryan’s plan would be $200 billion higher than just doing nothing. No busting going on there.

The GOP wants conservative Christian votes so badly it’s willing to break those set-in-stone rules conservative Christians revere.

Conservatives only have two choices if they should wake up one day and be cursed to only be able to tell the truth - they either hate America or they love America the way a child abuser loves their children.

Conservatives are completely out of touch with reality - Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) has 'little tolerance' for student loans

I'm not sure how a full-time college student is supposed to come up with $50,000 per year, unless it's selling things Virginia Foxx probably doesn't approve of. But I guess back when Virginia Foxx went to college the tuition was five pumpkins and a bag of turnips, and if she could come up with it then, surely an 18-year-old can come up with $200,000 now. Get a job! Well, it's minimum wage, so get four jobs, slacker! (Oh, and did I mention that back then, they all tied onions to their belts, which was the style at the time?)

For newcomers who haven't heard of Virginia Foxx before, she is a proud member of the House dimwit caucus, alongside such esteemed freedom-geniuses as Allen West and Louie Gohmert. Amongst their weaponry: Gullibility, foot-in-mouth disease, and a fanatical lack of awareness as to the most basic realities faced by other people in the country. So yes, she says stuff like this all the time.

Anti-American Conservative Myth of the Week - Corporate Taxes Are Too High

Anti-American Conservative Myth of the Week - Corporate Taxes Are Too High

Republicans have been kvetching today about the fact that, as of Sunday, the U.S. will have the highest statutory corporate tax rate in the world following a scheduled cut in Japan’s corporate tax. “The United States is a world leader in countless ways. ‘World’s Highest Taxes’ is a title we should give up as soon as possible,” wrote Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) in a Fox News op-ed.

“This isn’t an April Fool’s Day joke; as of April 1, the United States of America will have reached the inauspicious position of having the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world,” said Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) in a statement “I want America to be number one in many things, but having the highest corporate tax rate is definitely not one of them.”

This is constant refrain from Republicans, who then blame the supposedly high U.S. corporate tax rate for discouraging job creation. But as we’ve noted time and time again, while the U.S. has a high statutory corporate tax rate (meaning the rate on paper), U.S. corporations actually pay incredibly low taxes due to the ever-proliferating loopholes, credits, and deductions in the tax code and the use of overseas tax havens.

U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40 year low of 12.1 percent in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. both taxes its corporations less and raises less in revenue from corporate taxes than its foreign competitors:

Politico’s Ben White also pointed out that Japan has a value added tax, so it isn’t actually true that the U.S. will have the highest corporate tax rate on Sunday. As billionaire investor Warren Buffett has said, “it is a myth” that U.S. corporate taxes are high. “Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness,” Buffett added.

Of course, it is theoretically possible to lower the U.S. corporate income tax rate while simultaneously raising revenue to help reduce the federal deficit by closing loopholes and cracking down on tax havens. But Republicans have absolutely no interest in that.

Those who think everyone across the political spectrum just needs to sit down and have a civil discussion and we'll work out our differences, think again. Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah has made a career out of lying to the American public. he has time and again voted against the best interests of the American people. He hates having a democratic republic and envisions, as all conservatives do, an authoritarian state run by the right-wing elite. Hatch is a typical conservative. he cannot win any debates that require truthfulness and honor, because he has nothing but contempt for those virtues.

A robot makes robocalls, The deeply immoral charlatan Rick Santorum  Records Robocall Supporting Dictator Want-to-be ScottWalker In Wisconsin Recall

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Liberal Media - Cleveland Editor Pushes Bogus Paul Ryan(R-WI) Budget Plan

What Liberal Media - Cleveland Editor Pushes Bogus Paul Ryan(R-WI) Budget Plan

In a March 22 column, Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Kevin O'Brien commenced a pedantic cheerleading session in support of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) controversial new budget plan. After glibly comparing Senate Democrats to preteen children, O'Brien argued that Ryan's infamously austere cuts "would not cut government far enough fast enough." Unfortunately, O'Brien's slash and burn philosophy of congressional budgeting ignores the real-world impact those cuts would have on fellow Ohioans.

He wrote:

    If [Democrats] admit that entitlements are devouring revenues at an alarming and ever-increasing rate, they won't be able to demagogue Social Security and Medicare anymore.

    If they admit that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act that they passed all by themselves isn't going to do the main things they promised -- save money and insure the uninsured -- they open themselves to accusations that they knew all along that it was a scam. And the accusations would be true.

    If they admit that they fully intend to just keep packing the nation's bedroom closet with debt until it explodes, the voters might punish them.

    So, no honesty, no discussion, no vote, no budget.

Of course, O'Brien ignores the realities of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's (PPACA) successes and the harsh human element of Ryan's plan. The PPACA is two years old, and according to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, plenty of previously uninsured Ohioans are now covered as a result of the law. More than 2,000 Ohioans with pre-existing conditions are now covered, and more than 80,000 young adults in the state have gained coverage. The health care security of more than four million residents is no longer threatened by lifetime caps on their coverage.

And as for entitlements, O'Brien doesn't tell his readers that under Ryan's budget (which again, he doesn't think goes far enough), more than 1.8 million vulnerable Ohioans will be at risk of losing food stamp benefits and slipping into hunger. This is according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which yesterday released a detailed look at how Ryan's budget would devastate children, seniors and people with disabilities. From the CBPP:

    House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget plan includes cuts in SNAP (formerly known as the Food Stamp Program) of $133.5 billion -- more than 17 percent -- over the next ten years (2013-2022). [...]

    The overwhelming majority of SNAP households are families with children, seniors, or people with disabilities.  Almost three-quarters of SNAP participants are in families with children; more than one-quarter are in households that include senior citizens or people with disabilities.

By ignoring this grim picture, O'Brien hasn't simply missed the significance of the cuts. He's revealed volumes about where his priorities lie. As he noted:

    [A] budget isn't just a statement of spending and income expectations. It's also a statement of beliefs -- a numerical representation of what is important.

A true statement, to be sure; and Mr. O'Brien's budget proposals reveal just what -- and who -- is important to him.

Ryan's plan is such a joke that conservatives are not even promoting it. It actually increases the debt. One of the reason none of Ryan's half-baked schemes for the budget work is because they all include massive tax cuts for millionaires and corporations.

Guns don't kill people, hoodies do. Geraldo might want to lay off the whiskey, his logic is getting more wobbly than ever.

Why Does Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Hate America and The Middle-class

Why Does Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Hate America and The Middle-class

In his public resignation letter in today’s New York Times, former Goldman Sachs executive Greg Smith said that one of the fastest ways to get ahead with the firm is to persuade clients “to invest in the stocks or other products that [the firm is] trying to get rid of because they are not seen as having a lot of potential profit.” He lambastes a firm culture where colleagues openly boast of “ripping their clients off.”

The sad thing is, this sort of shady might well have been on the way to being curtailed if not for the actions of Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA). After Brown was elected to the senate in 2010, he threatened to join a Republican filibuster of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, using that threat to significantly water down the bill. Among the industry-favored concessions he extracted was weakening of the “Volcker rule,” which was meant to curb risky speculative investments that do not benefit customers.

Thanks to Brown’s maneuver, the final bill upped the amount of risky trading big banks like Goldman could engage in, increasing the amount of gambling they’re able to do by billions of dollars. Since then, financial industry lobbyists have been hammering away at the the rule in an attempt to render it completely meaningless.

The financial sector, of course, has repaid Brown with a flurry of campaign contributions. Between contributions from the firm’s leadership PAC and contributions from company employees, Brown has already received more than $40,000 in campaign cash from Goldman Sachs this cycle.

Brown hates the USA. he hates average Americans - consumers, small investors and middle-class families. he changes course according to which way the wind blows. he stands for nothing except making sure the powerful elite stay in power while the middle-class and working poor struggle. What Brown wants is for the USA to be the Pottersville in the nightmare part of Its a Wonderful Life. Brown and his radical conservative pals have no morals, no vision for America except taking more of what average Americas work hard to earn. he and his unhinged conservative elite want to continue to redistribute most of America's Gross Domestic Product upward to the 10% who work the least.

No, Obamacare’s Cost Didn’t Just Double. Sigh.

Sorting through the deceptive attacks on health care reform gets old, even for me. But on Wednesday the Republicans and their allies made a claim so obviously misleading that they, and the media outlets parroting them, must have known they spreading false information.

The basis for the claim is the Congressional Budget Office’s latest projections for the Affordable Care Act, which critics (and I!) like to call Obamacare. When Congress first passed the law, in the spring of 2010, CBO made official estimates of how much the law would cost, how many people would get insurance as a result, and so on. It updated that estimate one year later and has, now, updated it one more time.

The CBO distributed its report in the morning and, by 11 a.m., Republican offices on Capitol Hill were spitting out press releases about it. According to the Republicans, CBO had discovered that Obamacare was going to cost $1.76 trillion over the next ten years. “The CBO’s revised cost estimate indicates that this massive government intrusion into America’s health care system will be far more costly than was originally claimed,” Tom Price, chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, said. Within a few hours, both Fox News and the Washington Times were carrying online stories making the same claim. According to the Fox News account, CBO was “showing that the bill is substantially more expensive—twice as much as the original $900 billion price tag.”

If CBO had truly determined that health care reform’s cost will be twice the original estimates, it would be huge news. But CBO said nothing of the sort.

To figure out the cost of health care reform, CBO looks at each of the law’s component parts and, for accounting purposes, groups them into different categories. It calls one category “gross cost of coverage expansions”—that’s the amount of money the federal government will spend to help people get insurance, mostly by offering Medicaid to more people or giving people subsidies they can use to help offset the cost of private insurance. Last year, CBO estimated that the gross cost of coverage expansion from 2012 through 2021 would be $1.445 trillion. Now CBO thinks the gross cost will be $1.496 trillion. The number shifted, in part, because the CBO has changed its projections for economic growth. (MSNBC’s Tom Curry has a nice explanation of this.) But, in the context of such a large a budget projection, that’s barely any difference at all.

In the this latest estimate, CBO extends its projection out one more year, to capture the expenses from 2012 to 2022, in order to capture a full decade. In 2022, CBO says, the gross cost of coverage expansion will be $265 billion. Add that to the $1.496 and you get (with rounding) the $1.76 trillion—the one in the press releases and the Fox story.

But there is nothing new or surprising about this. It’s only slightly more money than the previous year’s outlays. The ten-year number seems to jump only because the time frame for the estimate has moved, dropping one year, 2011, and adding another, 2022. Obamacare has virtually no outlays in 2011, because the Medicaid expansion and subsidies don’t start up until 2014, which means the shifting time frame drops a year of no implementation and adds one of full implementation.

Still, doesn’t that just validate what the law’s critics have always said, that the administration was playing games to hide the program’s true impact on the deficit? Hardly. Remember, this is just the raw cost of expanding insurance coverage we’re talking about here—in other words, the money the federal government is sending out the door. The new law also calls for new revenue, in the form of taxes and penalties. It also reduces spending, mostly through Medicare, to help offset the cost of the coverage expansion. When the Affordable Care Act became law, CBO estimated that the net result of all these changes, taken together, would be to reduce the deficit. Now, with this revised estimate, CBO has decided the law will reduce the deficit by even more money.

Yes, you read that right: The real news of the CBO estimate is that, according to its models, health care reform is going to save even more taxpayer dollars than previously thought.

The above picture is yet another example of conservative desperation. Nowhere in his speech does Holder say the word brainwash. Conservatives must lie and lie often to win any debate - read more here, ZombieBreitbart.com Presents: Eric Holder — The Vettening and here, Right-Wing Media Uncover Holder's Plot To Discourage Lawbreaking

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Freedom Hating Sleaze Bag of the Week - Brown Event Hosted By Anti-American Plantation Owner Where Workers labored 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day.

Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Freedom Hating Sleaze Bag of the Week - Brown Event Hosted By Anti-American Plantation Owner Where Workers labored 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day.

Locked in a tight re-election battle, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) has been doing a lot of travel lately to expand his already sizable war chest of money from wealthy special interests. But one recent, little-noticed Florida fundraiser was hosted by a highly controversial sugar magnate.

On February 22, Brown attended a Palm Beach luncheon featuring Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL). One of the official hosts for the event was José “Pepe” Fanjul, the vice chairman, chief operating officer, and president of Fanjul Corp. and Florida Crystals Corporation, two Fanjul-family-owned sugar production companies (subsidiaries include the Domino sugar company).

Who is Pepe Fanjul?

He and his brother has been called the “Koch Brothers of South Florida” for their long record of political involvement and lobbying against industry regulations. A 1998 Time magazine article by legendary reporters Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele called the Fanjul’s “the First Family of Corporate Welfare,” with more than $60 million in corporate subsidies benefiting their companies annually from the federal government.

But most disturbing are reports about the Fanjul’s Dominican Republic operations. In January, the Palm Beach Post reported that Wikileaks documents revealed the Fanjuls and their companies “muscled” lawmakers to kill the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which might have increased competition. A lawyer for the family dismissed any allegations of illegal or inappropriate lobbying as “chatty gossip.”

Big Sugar, a 2005 CBC documentary raised an even bigger concern. According to their investigation, workers for the Fanjul-owned Central Romano plantation work 12-hour days to earn just $2 a day. The workers go hungry in conditions that have been compared to slave labor. In a 2001 Vanity Fair article, attorney Edward Tuddenham called the treatment of sugar cane pickers under the Fanjul’s “modern-day slavery.” Their treatment of workers and the Florida everglades has been heavily questioned. Pepe Fanjul and his brother denied being barons, denied harming the everglades, and denied receiving subsidies in a 1997 New York Times letter to the editor. And in the CBC documentary, he said Centro Romano is the “most progressive employer in the Dominican Republic.”

Fanjul also made news in 2010 when the New York Post reported that his executive assistant is the ex-wife of former KKK leader David Duke and current wife of the former KKK grand wizard who runs a white-supremacist website. A company spokesman told the paper “While we may not agree with someone’s politics, we wouldn’t terminate them for that.”

Florida Sugar Company did not respond to an email requesting comment for this story.

When he kicked off his re-election campaign, Brown boasted, “Once again I won’t have the political establishment behind me – not the one on Beacon Hill, and certainly not the one on Capitol Hill.” Now we see it is the Florida GOP establishment he has in his pocket. But even with more than $750,000 in political contributions over the years, mostly to Republicans, one still has to wonder why Brown would risk aligning himself with a figure like Fanjul.

Time for the Anti-American smiley faced fascists like brown to retire from politics. Brown and his ilk should not be allowed to be anywhere near the public policy of the USA.

Smearing Sandra Fluke wasn't enough, misogynists move on to Anti-Semitic attacks on her boyfriend

Conservative Catholic Bishops threaten women's health and religious freedom in the USA.