Congressional House Leader John Boehner(R-OH) Is Hoping The Middle-Class Cannot Do Tax Math

Congressional House Leader John Boehner(R-OH) Is Hoping The Middle-Class Cannot Do Tax Math

Countering President Obama’s plan to avert the fiscal cliff released last week, House Republicans unveiled their own plan this afternoon that is presented as a major gesture of compromise as it finally puts tax revenues on paper and with House Republicans’ endorsement.

The big question, of course, on the fiscal cliff negotiations is what happens to tax rates for the wealthiest Americans — Democrats want them to go up, Republicans want them to stay the same. Realizing that they have to offer some kind of revenue increases, Republicans have been searching for a way to do that that doesn’t actually raise tax rates and thus violate Grover Norquist’s pledge. Boehner did that today in his proposal, which keeps revenues where they are today (by extending the Bush tax cuts on the top 2 percent of Americans), but calls for the elimination of tax deductions.

Boehner does this by leaning on the Simpson-Bowles plan, which, in case you haven’t been watching “Morning Joe” or reading David Brooks, was put forward in 2010 by a deficit-reduction commission convened by President Obama and co-chaired by former Republican Sen. Alan Simpson and former Clinton Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles.

Setting a target of $800 billion in new revenue, Boehner writes in his letter to Obama, “Notably, the new revenue in the Bowles plan would not be achieved through higher tax rates, which we continue to oppose and will not agree to in order to protect small businesses and our economy.”

Boehner has one key thing very wrong, though, as others have already noted. While the entire purpose of Boehner’s tax plan is to preserve the tax breaks for the top 2 percent, the Simpson-Bowles plan begins by allowing those rates to go up by assuming the expiration of all the Bush tax cuts. It then eliminates deductions and uses the money saved to reduce all tax rates a bit. Boehner’s plan does the opposite: It assumes the extension of the Bush tax cuts and then tries to find ways to pay for them by eliminating deductions.

The problem with this approach is that it’s basically impossible to raise any significant amounts of money without hitting the middle or lower class. Capping deductions gets you closest to that goal, as the wealthy are the most likely to take advantage of deductions, but it still doesn’t quite add up.

A $50,000 deduction cap would yield about $760 billion, just shy of what Boehner is aiming for. That cap would mostly impact the rich, according to the Tax Policy Center, but not entirely. At least 4 percent percent of the increased tax burden would fall on the lower 80 percent of Americans.

That might not seem like much, but think about that this means. Essentially, Republicans are proposing a way to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy by likely increasing taxes on the middle class, even if just a little.

So conservatives do not mind raising taxes as long as they are raising taxes on sales clerks, teachers and truck drivers. Boehner seems to think Republican leadership is a contest with Paul Ryan (R-WI) to see who can be the best at pretending to be a wonk who understands numbers. His offer is a joke, What's Wrong With the Republican Fiscal Cliff Counteroffer.

Rupert Murdoch's Wacky Anti-American Fox News Pushes Conspiracy Theory That DOJ Wants To Release Gitmo Terrorists Onto U.S. Streets

It’s Not a Fiscal Cliff, It’s an Austerity Crisis

It’s Not a Fiscal Cliff, It’s an Austerity Crisis

Washington is not known for the stunning clarity with which it frames and addresses tough issues. But has there ever been a debate so mired in confusion as the one around the so-called fiscal cliff?

The trouble starts with the term “fiscal cliff,” which misstates the nature of the problem and provides no hint of how to solve it. I prefer the term “austerity crisis,” which at least describes the real issue -- too much austerity, imposed too quickly. (This has the added advantage of sidestepping an increasingly inane discussion over whether the problem is really a “cliff,” “curb,” “slope” or perhaps a “bomb.”)

Here is the crux of it: Depending on what you throw into the pot, the sum of the expiring Bush tax cuts along with currently mandated spending cuts would equal somewhere between $500 billion and $700 billion in deficit reduction in 2013. That’s more than enough fiscal contraction to throw the U.S. into recession. The tax increases alone would reduce the average family’s take-home pay by more than 6 percent. Because everyone agrees that’s a bad thing, Congress could pass a law, tomorrow, preventing it. Done.

But Congress won’t pass that law. Although the problem may be too much austerity too quickly, most everyone in Washington is insisting that the solution should encompass much, much more. In theory, this crisis should be easily resolved: If you have too much austerity, lighten the load. The reason the austerity crisis has become so messy is that the connection between the problem and its solution has been severed.

Wrong Solutions

In fact, proposed solutions inevitably include four or even five distinct categories of policy. There are proposals to address the crisis itself -- to reduce the dangerous size and speed of the scheduled deficit reduction in 2013. There are proposals to replace the scheduled deficit reduction with a different set of deficit-reducing tax increases and spending cuts, to be phased in over a longer term. There are policies to redesign the tax code or reform certain entitlements. There’s the need to raise the debt limit, as the Treasury is expected to run out of borrowing authority in February. Finally, there are policies to increase the amount of short-term stimulus and boost infrastructure investment.

So while the proximate problem is too much austerity, too quickly, the solutions being offered address an array of other concerns. Meanwhile, amid these wide-ranging proposals, the conversation in Washington tends to focus exclusively on achieving deficit reduction -- even though the economic threat we face in January is too much deficit reduction.

A more sensible approach would deal directly with the problem at hand: the austerity crisis. And that could be defused fairly simply, without doing overly much to harm the deficit. The path would involve identifying policies that pack a big stimulus punch without significantly increasing the deficit. Such “mismatched” policies abound.

The liberal Economic Policy Institute estimates that continuing the payroll-tax cut would create 1 million jobs in 2013 at a cost of about $115 billion. By contrast, maintaining the Bush tax cuts -- yes, all of them, including those on income less than $250,000 -- would create only 600,000 jobs while costing $202 billion. Adding to the appeal of the payroll- tax cut is that it’s designed to expire once the economy has strengthened. The Bush tax cuts, once renewed, will probably continue costing the Treasury year after year.

This is what the public sees - we have to make balancing the budget a top priority and we have to make massive spending cuts. You know why the public sees the fiscal "cliff" in that frame, because the media have become hand maidens for the radical Right conservatives. Conservatives do not want to admit that we have a revenue crisis, another way of saying austerity crisis - because that would point to one somewhat simple solution -raising revenue from taxes on people who have so much money they ponder how many McMansions they feel like owning or whether they should have the chauffeur wash the Mercedes seven days a week or just every week day.

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Wants To Be President So He Can Give Himself an $80 Million Dollar Tax Cut

His Royal Highness Mitt Romney Wants To Be President So He Can Give Himself an $80 Million Dollar Tax Cut

The U.S. tax code may be difficult to grasp, but understanding the presidential candidates' plans for it doesn't have to be. President Obama wants to raise his own taxes, while Mitt Romney wants to dramatically reduce the already small slice he pays to Uncle Sam.

Of course, that simplification doesn't shed light on just how dramatic President Romney's windfall for his family would actually be. Mitt's plan, which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center forecast would cut taxes for the richest five percent of earners while increasing the tax bill for the other 95 percent of Americans, could slash his own annual IRS payment by almost half. And by eliminating the estate tax, the $250 million man would potentially divert $80 million (and possibly more) from the United States Treasury to his own heirs

On Friday, Governor Romney defended his mystery finances, declaring, "I have paid taxes every year. A lot of taxes. A lot of taxes." But when he announced Sunday that he wants "something dramatic" to boost the economy, he must have been speaking about his own.

Here's why.

At the end of 2012, the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 will expire. Among other changes to the tax code, President Obama wants to let the top 35 percent tax rate for income over $250,000 to return to its Clinton-era level of 39.6 percent and implement the Buffett Rule guaranteeing millionaires pay a minimum 30 percent effective tax rate. Obama would also end the "carried interest exemption" that allows Mitt Romney and other similar financiers to pay under 15 percent to Uncle Sam each year. In contrast, Romney would not only make the Bush tax cuts permanent, but deliver a 20 percent across-the-board tax cut. Upper income taxpayers would not only see their rate slashed to 28 percent, but would benefit by the elimination of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

While conservatives and their friends in the media have decided we have a deficit problem, we in fact still have a revenue problem. They are at their lowest level since the Reagan years - the last time we had a major recession. The major reason conservatives want to frame the issue this way is to make everyone believe we can cut spending to balance the budget. The only way to do that is to gut the safety net programs like Medicare.

Why Does Mitt Romney Want To Restrict Voting Rights For More Than 900,000 Ohio Veterans?

Scott Brown (R-MS) has a well deserved reputation for being lazy. So lazy that he is letting his buddies at the Anti-American Fox News do his attacking for him, REPORT: Fox Spends Over 43 Minutes Smearing Elizabeth Warren. Why is Scott Brown afraid of doing his own dirty work. Would making these kinds of false smears ruin little Scotty's fabricated image as a nice guy.

Killing The Dreams of America's Founders: Mitt Romney's Sees a Future That Excludes Government By And For The People

Killing The Dreams of America's Founders: Mitt Romney's Sees a Future That Excludes Government By And For The People

"Too much money" sounds like an oxymoron, especially when applied to American politics. But in the last week, Republicans are beginning to learn that lots of money can have its downside. Thursday's story that Romney may have actively directed Bain Capital three years longer than he claimed – a period in which Bain Capital-managed companies experienced bankruptcies and layoffs – caps what must be the worst weekly news cycle of any modern American presidential candidate. From images of corporate raiding, to luxury speedboats, to offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, to mega-mansions in the Hamptons, this week's stories suggest that the candidacy of Mitt Romney – poster-boy for the symbiotic relationship between big money and the modern Republican party – is in serious trouble.

Last weekend's photos of the Romney clan on a luxury speedboat cruising around a lake in New Hampshire, where their multimillion-dollar compound sits, were startling in their tone-deafness. And just to make sure the sentiment wasn't lost on anyone, at a campaign event the same week, Obama recounted childhood memories of touring the US with his grandmother by Greyhound bus, even the thrill of staying at a Howard Johnson motel. In a smart political calculation, the Obamas chose to forgo their annual summer vacation in Cape Cod (a nice upper-middle class vacation spot, mind you, but nowhere near the same league as the Romney estate). Instead, Obama was photographed visiting a senior citizens' home in the battleground state of Ohio.

And the hits kept coming. Next, Vanity Fair published an article listing the Romneys' various offshore investment accounts worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in the secretive tax havens of Cayman Islands and Bermuda, as well as a since-closed Swiss bank account. Democrats stoked the predictable outrage from the revelations. On the Sunday ABC news program "This Week", Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley thundered:

    "Mitt Romney bets against America. He bet against America when he put his money in Swiss bank accounts and tax havens and shelters."

On the same program, Bobbie Jindal, Republican governor of Louisiana, could only lamely respond:

    "In terms of Governor Romney's financial success, I'm happy that he's a successful businessman."

While there is no evidence that the Romneys illegally evaded taxes through their various offshore accounts (their secretiveness making it impossible to tell), the reek of entitlement became overwhelming when it was revealed that the Romneys had accumulated somewhere between $20m and $101m in an "IRA", a tax-advantaged retirement account designed for middle-class savers, limited to a few thousand dollars a year contribution. As one commenter parried, "I may be stupid, but I ain't no fool." In other words, we might be too stupid to understand how Romney was able to obtain all these tax breaks legally, but we aren't fooled about unfairness of it all.

Well, at this point, you might of think that the next sighting of Romney would be of him clothed in ash-cloth ladling out soup at an inner-city soup kitchen. But no. Next, we were regaled with the New York Times story of a lavish fundraiser in the Hamptons hosted by the infamous David Koch, the billionaire benefactor of conservative causes. The optics were worse than bad, as the the Times recounted how one woman in a Range Rover, idling in a 30-deep line of cars waiting for entry, yelled to a Romney aide, "Is there a VIP entrance? We are VIP."

Romney was expected to haul in several million dollars from his trip to wine and dine with the billionaires of the Hamptons. But why risk confirming the very message that Democrats have been hammering upon: that Romney is a super-wealthy elitist whose objective is to further the interests of the 0.01%?

Certainly, billionaires for Romney would have given him those millions without the face-time and the photo-ops, the chance to dress up and be seen. And to be heckled by Occupy Wall Street protesters and parodied by reporters. What is so very puzzling about the whole episode is the sheer in-your-face-ness of it.

Yet, perhaps that is the point. As a very perceptive article in the New York Magazine, Lisa Miller describes how new psychological research indicates that wealth erodes empathy with others. In the "Money-Empathy Gap", Miller cites one researcher who says that:

    "The rich are way more likely to prioritize their own self-interests above the interests of other people. It makes the more likely to exhibit characteristics that we would stereotypically associate with, say, assholes."

Researchers found a consistent correlation between higher income, management responsibility and disagreeableness. One researcher interpreted her findings to imply that money makes people disinterested in the welfare of others. "It's not a bad analogy to think of them as a little autistic" says Kathleen Vos, a professor at the University of Minnesota.

If this research is accurate (as it seems to be, replicated in various ways by several researches), the synergies between it, the increasing concentration of wealth and the Citizens United ruling, have striking implications for the future of the Republican party. As Newt Gingrich, the uber-southern politician, plaintively explained how he lost the Republican primary: "Romney had 16 billionaires. I had only one." The domination by the super-wealthy means that Republicans not only have no interest in the welfare of the rest of the 99.9%, they have no understanding of why this is a problem. The noblesse oblige days of the old money, such as the Bushes, the Kennedys and the Roosevelts are long gone, replaced by the new mega-money of hedge funds, corporate raiders and global industrialists.

How else can one explain the allegiance of the Republican party to the profoundly unpopular Ryan tax plan, which would eviscerate Medicare and Medicaid while delivering more tax cuts to the rich? What is the future of a party in a democracy when the powers-that-be can no longer even understand, much less address, the welfare of the vast majority of its citizens?

Articles like this are an appeal to humanity and the common good. Admirable in its intentions, but lost on Republicans who have nothing but contempt for the notion of the common good. Conservatives seem to collect as much, if not more government benefits than everyone else, so its kind of like saying their soda is sugar free, but actually has more sugar in it than other drinks. There is the real world that descent normal Americans live in and there is a fantasy world where conservatives live. They are not now, nor have they ever been against big government for themselves, they're just against the people acting together to provide a safety net for themselves like Medicare. Some reasonable Americans look around and see the reality of how Republicans crashed the economy and say it is only common sense they we provide something for ourselves because Republicans keep giving America the shaft ( the last very bad recession we had was courtesy Saint Ronnie Regan).

Romney: Gold Medal in Dishonesty

Conservative Bill O'Reilly makes a reported $3 million dollars a year for sitting behind a desk acting like an arrogant assclown. What a nice way to cruise through life, never doing a honest day's work, making fun of the disabled and seniors, - "Are You Weak?" Bill O'Reilly Belittles Social Safety Net Recipients

EXCLUSIVE: Romney Bundler A Registered Foreign Agent For Hong Kong

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

To Mitt Romney Apologists Having Blind Investments is The Same Thing as Hiding Money in Switzerland and The Cayman Islands

The book cover is related to this essay at The Root, How Did Blacks Travel During Segregation? - The Negro Motorist Green Book was helpful for navigating Jim Crow America.


To Mitt Romney Apologists Having Blind Investments is The Same Thing as Hiding Money in Switzerland and The Cayman Islands

Mitt Romney and his right-wing media allies appear to be going into full-panic mode over the Obama campaign's increasingly successful efforts to define Romney as a hopelessly out-of-touch multimillionaire.

Obama is leading in swing states where the president's campaign and pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA have run ads attacking Romney's record as a corporate predator who put Americans out of work by sucking the life out of their companies and sending their jobs overseas.

    [I]n toss-up states, 16 percent say Bain is a reason to support Romney, while 32 percent say it's a reason to oppose him. More people have an opinion on Romney's business record, too. In February, 36 percent said Romney cut jobs while 32 percent said he created them. Now 40 percent say he cut them and 36 percent say he created them.

Today, Romney began hitting back against the Obama attacks. Well, "hitting back" might be too strong a term.  "Nanny-nanny boo boo" is more accurate:

    No you’re the “outsourcer-in-chief.”

    In what has become a signature move for Mitt Romney, Republicans are trying to rebut attacks against their nominee by accusing President Obama of doing the exact same thing. Or something vaguely related to it.

The substance (for want of a better term) of the Romney counter-slap is his claim that money from the American Recovery Act allegedly went to companies that employed some foreign workers. 

In addition to the candidate's pushback, at least one right-wing media outlet is trying to help Romney deflect criticism of his personal finances, including questions about his unreleased tax returns, and the vast sums of money he is reported to have hidden away in tax havens such as Bermuda and Switzerland. 

The Weekly Standard is out with a report that it apparently hopes will expose Rep. Debbie Wasserman Shultz as a hypocrite for demanding that Romney come clean about his finances.  The website's scoop: that the DNC chair has some of her own money invested in "Swiss Banks, Foreign Drug Companies, and the State Bank of India:"

    But disclosure forms reveal that in 2010, Wasserman Schultz invested between $1,001-$15,000 in a 401k retirement fund run by Davis Financial Fund. As the fund discloses, it is invested in the Julius Baer Group Ltd. and the State Bank of India GDR Ltd., as well as other financial, insurance, bank institutions.

The report does not appear to be a satire. The Weekly Standard is seriously suggesting there is an equivalence between a few thousand dollars in a managed 401k and hundreds of millions of dollars shielded from U.S. taxes in Swiss bank accounts and offshore shell corporations.

This panicked, flailing reaction tells you everything need to know about the narrative Obama is crafting against Romney:  it's working.

UPDATE

Right on cue, the wingnut blogosphere is all, "Yeah, so THERE!!1!"

PJ Tatler:

    If overseas investments are “toxic” for Romney, they’re also toxic for the Democrat Party chairman hand-picked for that role by President Barack Obama.

Daily Caller (Jim Treacher):

    Overseas investments are bad except when they’re not. And one way to tell they’re okay is when they’re made by Democrats.

    Oh, and DWS won’t release her tax returns, either. Again: she’s a Democrat. The same standard doesn’t apply to her. Duh.

These right-wing Anti-American nitwits want everyone to believe that Mitt Romney is a financial genius that knows what he is doing - that means he knows that hiding funds in Switzerland and the Cayman Islands is very different from the people who handle your 401k have a diversity of investments. Hiding money versus investments. See how simple that is. If they were the same thing we would use the same WORDS to describe them. When the average person puts money into their 401k do they think they are hiding money in foreign accounts.

Memo to Republicans... Entrepreneurship is Actually Declining Thanks to Policies Like Yours

Mitt Romney or Mr Morality, lied about leaving Bain in 1999

The USA Sinking Back Into the Regressive Age of The Robber-Barons, The Corrupt and Elite

The USA Sinking Back Into the Regressive Age of The Robber-Barons, The Corrupt and Elite

Over the past 40 years, corporations and politicians have rolled back many of the gains made by working and middle-class people over the previous century. We have the highest level of income inequality in 90 years, both private and public sector unions are under a concerted attack, and federal and state governments intend to cut deficits by slashing services to the poor.

We are recreating the Gilded Age, the period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries when corporations ruled this nation, buying politicians, using violence against unions, and engaging in open corruption. During the Gilded Age, many Americans lived in stark poverty, in crowded tenement housing, without safe workplaces, and lacked any safety net to help lift them out of hard times.

With Republicans more committed than ever to repealing every economic gain the working-class has achieved in the last century and the Democrats seemingly unable to resist, we need to understand the Gilded Age to see what conservatives are trying to do to this nation. Here are 8 ways our corporations, politicians and courts are trying to recreate the Gilded Age.

1. Unregulated Corporate Capitalism Creates Economic Collapse

In the late 19th century, corrupt railroad capitalists created the Panic of 1873 and Panic of 1893 through lying about their business activities, buying off politicians and siphoning off capital into their own pockets. Railroad corporations set up phony corporations that allowed them to embezzle money from the railroad into their bank accounts. When exposed, the entire economy collapsed as banks failed around the country. The Panic of 1893 lasted five years, created 25% unemployment, and was the worst economic crisis in American history before the Great Depression.

In the early 21st century, the poorly regulated financial industry plunged the nation into the longest economic downturn since the Depression. Like in the Gilded Age, none of the culprits have served a day in prison.

2. Union Busting

In the Gilded Age, business used the power of the state to crush labor unions. President Hayes called in the Army to break the Great Railroad Strike of 1877; President Cleveland did the same against the Pullman strikers in 1894.

Today’s corporations don’t have to use such blunt force to destroy unions, but like in the past, they convince the government to do their bidding. Whether it is holding up FAA renewal in order to make it harder for airline employees to unionize, Republican members of the National Labor Relations Board leaking material on cases to Republican insiders, or governors Scott Walker and John Kasich seeking to bust their states’ public sector unions, not since before the Great Depression has the government attacked unions with such force.

3. Income Inequality

Today, we have the highest levels of income inequality since the 1920s and the gap is widening to late 19th century levels with great speed. In those days, individuals like John D. Rockefeller had more money than the federal government, while the majority of Americans lived in squalor, poverty and disease.

In the Progressive Era, we started creating laws like the federal income tax, child labor laws and workers’ compensation to begin giving workers a fair share of the pie. For decades, labor fought to increase their share and by the 1970s, had turned much of the working class into the middle class. Today, that middle class is under attack by a new generation of plutocrats who wish to recreate the massive fortunes of the Gilded Age.

4. Open Purchase of Elections

In 1890, copper magnate William Clark paid Montana lawmakers $140,000 to elect him to the U.S. Senate. While most plutocrats did not share Clark’s interest in being politicians, they ensured their lackeys would serve in office, often by offering corporate stock to politicians. Disgusted by this corruption, America in the Progressive Era of the early 20th century created a number of reforms, including the 17th Amendment that created direct elections of senators, as well as a 1912 Montana state law limiting corporate expenditures in politics.

Beginning with the Citizens United decision and continuing with the recent overturning of that 1912 law, the Supreme Court has allowed corporations and wealthy plutocrats to buy elections openly once again.

 It is odd that conservative blue collar workers would actually help the multinational corporations and billionaire elitists like the Coors beer family, casino wacko Sheldon Adelson and the Koch brothers to help undermine their economic futures. These elites buy the white southern blue collar workers with talk about religion - but which the billionaires themselves feel no real obligation to. They buy the lower middle-class with promises of returning to a time when men were men and women will do what they're told - never going to happen for good reason  - women do not want to return to spending their lives with so few options being ordered around like servants. The elite, our modern barons buy off those white blue collar workers with cultural issues that will make their lives harder and less free. A neat trick that Old World aristocrats used on serfs. keep us in power or your world will fall apart.

Yep big gov'mint is bad until the day your house burns down. Wildfire Tests Police Force in Colorado Home of Anti-Tax Movement. Look to federal government for help..

Is Limbaugh back on drugs and having visions? Limbaugh Falsely Claims IRS Is Hiring "16,000 New Agents" To Implement Health Care Reform

How a Brutal Strain of Conservative Republican Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America

How a Brutal Strain of Conservative Republican Aristocrats Have Come to Rule America

It's been said that the rich are different than you and me. What most Americans don't know is that they're also quite different from each other, and that which faction is currently running the show ultimately makes a vast difference in the kind of country we are.

Right now, a lot of our problems stem directly from the fact that the wrong sort has finally gotten the upper hand; a particularly brutal and anti-democratic strain of American aristocrat that the other elites have mostly managed to keep away from the levers of power since the Revolution. Worse: this bunch has set a very ugly tone that's corrupted how people with power and money behave in every corner of our culture. Here's what happened, and how it happened, and what it means for America now.

North versus South: Two Definitions of Liberty

Michael Lind first called out the existence of this conflict in his 2006 book, Made In Texas: George W. Bush and the Southern Takeover of American Politics. He argued that much of American history has been characterized by a struggle between two historical factions among the American elite -- and that the election of George W. Bush was a definitive sign that the wrong side was winning.

For most of our history, American economics, culture and politics have been dominated by a New England-based Yankee aristocracy that was rooted in Puritan communitarian values, educated at the Ivies and marinated in an ethic of noblesse oblige (the conviction that those who possess wealth and power are morally bound to use it for the betterment of society). While they've done their share of damage to the notion of democracy in the name of profit (as all financial elites inevitably do), this group has, for the most part, tempered its predatory instincts with a code that valued mass education and human rights; held up public service as both a duty and an honor; and imbued them with the belief that once you made your nut, you had a moral duty to do something positive with it for the betterment of mankind. Your own legacy depended on this.

Among the presidents, this strain gave us both Roosevelts, Woodrow Wilson, John F. Kennedy, and Poppy Bush -- nerdy, wonky intellectuals who, for all their faults, at least took the business of good government seriously. Among financial elites, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet still both partake strongly of this traditional view of wealth as power to be used for good. Even if we don't like their specific choices, the core impulse to improve the world is a good one -- and one that's been conspicuously absent in other aristocratic cultures.

Which brings us to that other great historical American nobility -- the plantation aristocracy of the lowland South, which has been notable throughout its 400-year history for its utter lack of civic interest, its hostility to the very ideas of democracy and human rights, its love of hierarchy, its fear of technology and progress, its reliance on brutality and violence to maintain “order,” and its outright celebration of inequality as an order divinely ordained by God.

As described by Colin Woodard in American Nations: The Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, the elites of the Deep South are descended mainly from the owners of sugar, rum and cotton plantations from Barbados -- the younger sons of the British nobility who'd farmed up the Caribbean islands, and then came ashore to the southern coasts seeking more land. Woodward described the culture they created in the crescent stretching from Charleston, SC around to New Orleans this way:

    It was a near-carbon copy of the West Indian slave state these Barbadians had left behind, a place notorious even then for its inhumanity....From the outset, Deep Southern culture was based on radical disparities in wealth and power, with a tiny elite commanding total obedience and enforcing it with state-sponsored terror. Its expansionist ambitions would put it on a collision course with its Yankee rivals, triggering military, social, and political conflicts that continue to plague the United States to this day.

David Hackett Fischer, whose Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways In America informs both Lind's and Woodard's work, described just how deeply undemocratic the Southern aristocracy was, and still is. He documents how these elites have always feared and opposed universal literacy, public schools and libraries, and a free press. (Lind adds that they have historically been profoundly anti-technology as well, far preferring solutions that involve finding more serfs and throwing them at a problem whenever possible. Why buy a bulldozer when 150 convicts on a chain gang can grade your road instead?) Unlike the Puritan elites, who wore their wealth modestly and dedicated themselves to the common good, Southern elites sank their money into ostentatious homes and clothing and the pursuit of pleasure -- including lavish parties, games of fortune, predatory sexual conquests, and blood sports involving ritualized animal abuse spectacles.

But perhaps the most destructive piece of the Southern elites' worldview is the extremely anti-democratic way it defined the very idea of liberty. In Yankee Puritan culture, both liberty and authority resided mostly with the community, and not so much with individuals. Communities had both the freedom and the duty to govern themselves as they wished (through town meetings and so on), to invest in their collective good, and to favor or punish individuals whose behavior enhanced or threatened the whole (historically, through community rewards such as elevation to positions of public authority and trust; or community punishments like shaming, shunning or banishing).

Individuals were expected to balance their personal needs and desires against the greater good of the collective -- and, occasionally, to make sacrifices for the betterment of everyone. (This is why the Puritan wealthy tended to dutifully pay their taxes, tithe in their churches and donate generously to create hospitals, parks and universities.) In return, the community had a solemn and inescapable moral duty to care for its sick, educate its young and provide for its needy -- the kind of support that maximizes each person's liberty to live in dignity and achieve his or her potential. A Yankee community that failed to provide such support brought shame upon itself. To this day, our progressive politics are deeply informed by this Puritan view of ordered liberty.

In the old South, on the other hand, the degree of liberty you enjoyed was a direct function of your God-given place in the social hierarchy. The higher your status, the more authority you had, and the more "liberty" you could exercise -- which meant, in practical terms, that you had the right to take more "liberties" with the lives, rights and property of other people. Like an English lord unfettered from the Magna Carta, nobody had the authority to tell a Southern gentleman what to do with resources under his control. In this model, that's what liberty is. If you don't have the freedom to rape, beat, torture, kill, enslave, or exploit your underlings (including your wife and children) with impunity -- or abuse the land, or enforce rules on others that you will never have to answer to yourself -- then you can't really call yourself a free man.

When a Southern conservative talks about "losing his liberty," the loss of this absolute domination over the people and property under his control -- and, worse, the loss of status and the resulting risk of being held accountable for laws that he was once exempt from -- is what he's really talking about. In this view, freedom is a zero-sum game. Anything that gives more freedom and rights to lower-status people can't help but put serious limits on the freedom of the upper classes to use those people as they please. It cannot be any other way. So they find Yankee-style rights expansions absolutely intolerable, to the point where they're willing to fight and die to preserve their divine right to rule.

Not everyone in the South believes in reliving the Southern Plantation culture - replacing slaves with wage slaves who have no power. By way of relatively small majorities the radical conservatives just happen to get their way. With the exception of Texas most southern states have a disproportionate amount of federal representation because everyone gets two senators - conservatives are thus over represented in Congress. Wherever conservatives are from - the east, west or south they share a dream of an America where there are no morals restraining anything that will generate a profit or more profits. That is why they hate labor laws that protect workers and environmental laws that protect your family's health. They hate science and education because they do not want anyone reading about their rights or learning about rationalism and The Enlightenment. 

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

It's Not About the Damn Ponies

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

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

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

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

Scott Brown(R-MA)'s Email Revelations Make Him The Corrupt Puppet of the Week

Scott Brown(R-MA)'s Email Revelations Make Him The Corrupt Puppet of the Week

In Massachusetts' closely-watched U.S. Senate race, incumbent Sen. Scott Brown (R) frequently boasts that he was "the tie-breaking vote on Wall Street reform." There are a few problems with the claim, including the fact that when a bill passes 59 to 39, no one cast the "tie-breaking vote."

But the point of the claim is that Brown wants voters to perceive him as someone who's willing to challenge the financial industry, and who won't do Wall Street's bidding. What the campaign claims don't include, however, is the fine print.

    Senator Scott Brown has trumpeted his role in casting the deciding vote in favor of the 2010 Wall Street overhaul, but records show that after he voted for the law, he worked to shield banks and other financial institutions from some of its tough provisions.

    E-mails between Brown's legislative director and US Treasury Department officials show that Brown advocated for a loose interpretation of the law so that banks could more easily engage in high-risk investments.

    While the law, known as Dodd-Frank, sets broad parameters for how the financial industry must behave, the interpretation of the law, and the rules that follow, will govern Wall Street's daily business.

Brown, who has benefited from the remarkable generosity of Wall Street donors, took a particular interest in the Volcker rule, which the Massachusetts Republican weakened in the Senate before the vote, and then urged the Treasury Department to loosely enforce after the reform package became law, urging regulators to interpret the rule "broadly and to offer banks some leeway to invest in hedge funds and private equity funds."

Simon Johnson, a former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund and now a professor at MIT, told the Boston Globe the positions outlined in Brown's e-mails amount to a "significant loosening of the regulations and absolutely serving the interests of people who do not want to have meaningful reform.'' Johnson added, "This is a treatise on how to gut the thing."

Pat Garofalo recently added, "According to the Center for Responsive Politics, employees from the securities and investment industries have given more money to Brown than those of any other industry. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which just lost billions of dollars on the sort of trading that the Volcker Rule was originally meant to curtail, are amongst his top ten donors."

Bank robbers and other thieves should fellow Scott Brown's example. he and his Wall Street pals are responsible for stealing trillions in assets from the middle-class. Brown thinks he should be rewarded with another term so he can help special interests steal some more. They don't use a gun to steal, they use influence pedaling.

Mitt Romney's Pants Are on Fire. Does America Want a Sleazy Serial Liar As President

Mitt Romney's Pants Are on Fire. Does America Want a Sleazy Serial Liar As President

Yesterday, Mitt Romney gave a big speech in which he accused Obama of lighting a “prairie fire of debt.” It’s a good line, and it has received widespread media coverage.

Romney’s speech has already been dissected by Jonathan Chait and Steve Benen. They note that it’s entirely at odds with conventional understanding of how deficits work, and utterly disconnected from context, rendering it almost unquantifiably misleading.

But I wanted to make another point. If you scan through all the media attention Romney’s speech received, you are hard-pressed to find any news accounts that tell readers the following rather relevant points:

1) Nonpartisan experts believe Romney’s plans would increase the deficit far more than Obama’s would.

2) George W. Bush’s policies arguably are more responsible for increasing the deficit than Obama's are.

Oh, sure, many of the news accounts contain the Obama campaign’s response to Romney’s speech; the Obama campaign put out a widely-reprinted statement arguing that Romney’s plans would increase the deficit and that he’d return to policies that created it in the first place.

But this shouldn’t be a matter of partisan opinion. On the first point, independent experts think an actual set of facts exists that can be used to determine what the impact of Romney’s policies on the deficit would be. And according to those experts, based on what we know now, Romney’s policies would explode the deficit far more than Obama’s would.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has taken a close look at this question. It has determined that relative to current policy — that is, if you keep the Bush tax cuts in place, as Romney wants to do — Romney’s tax cutting plans would increase the deficit by nearly $5 trillion over 10 years. That’s on top of keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich. Romney has promised to close various loopholes to pay for his tax cuts, but he hasn’t specified which ones. Until he does, the Tax Policy Center concludes, his plan would cost $5 trillion — which would be added, yes, to the deficit.

By contrast, Obama’s plans would not increase the deficit by anything close to that amount. Relative to current policy, the Tax Policy Center has found, Obama’s plan would reduce the deficit by approximately $2 trillion over the next decade. Now, under Obama, the deficit would still increase. That’s because current policy means we’re forgoing the $4.5 trillion in revenues we’d gain if we let all the Bush tax cuts expire. But neither candidate is going to do that. Obama, however, would end the Bush tax cuts for the rich and bring in revenues through a variety of other tax increases. Bottom line: relative to current policy, Obama’s plan would reduce the deficit by bringing in $180 billion or more in revenues a year, or approximately $2 trillion over 10 years; Romeny’s plan would increase the deficit by nearly $500 billion a year — $5 trillion over ten years.

The Tax Policy Center’s Roberton Williams summed it up perfectly in a quote to me:

    “The bottom line is that whatever baseline you use, until Romney makes good on his promise to pay for his tax cuts, he would increase the deficit far more than Obama would.”

On the second point, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has determined that the policies put in place under Bush are the main driver of the deficits that are projected over the next decade.

Yet anti-American PACs like American Crossroads are running ads complaining about the deficit. They support a Romney presidency and the Romney/Paul Ryan (R-WI) economic plan which will increase the deficit and mean severe cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Obama's debt bad, conservative Republican debt is good. Its the Bush 43 presidency redux. Tell the Big Lie and repeat constantly.

Another thing the current pro-Romney ads are claiming is that Romney is a job creator. We have been through this round of lies already and the Romney as job creator myth will continue. Only the numbers will never add up. If Romney practiced accounting the way he figures his jobs record he would be arrested for fraud, but since he is a conservative he gets away with pants on fire lies. The ads are only using the jobs that some companies added, but they do not count the number of jobs lost. In a rare moment of candor - Romney Camp Admits That Its Bain Job Creation Number Is Bogus

Mitt Romney, last night’s Iowa caucus winner, has been on the campaign trail claiming that the private equity firm he ran, known as Bain Capital, was responsible for creating loads of jobs. Romney responded to criticism about his time at Bain by saying, “I’m very happy in my former life; we helped create over 100,000 new jobs.”

When a group of Romney backers ran an ad making the same claim, they were unable to back up the number with data. And as it turns out, the Romney camp can’t either, as it admitted that the statistic is nothing but cherry-picked job growth from a few companies that did well after they were bought by Bain:

    [Romney spokesman Eric] Fehrnstrom says the 100,000 figure stems from the growth in jobs from three companies that Romney helped to start or grow while at Bain Capital: Staples (a gain of 89,000 jobs), The Sports Authority (15,000 jobs), and Domino’s (7,900 jobs).

    This tally obviously does not include job losses from other companies with which Bain Capital was involved — and are based on current employment figures, not the period when Romney worked at Bain. (Indeed, Romney made his comments in response to a former employee of American Pad & Paper Co. who says he lost his job after Bain Capital took it private.)

Bain Capital has been responsible for thousands of layoffs at companies it bankrupted, such as American Pad & Paper, Dade International, and LIVE Entertainment, which Romney’s stat completely leaves out. He’s also taking credit for jobs created long after he left the firm to launch his political career. To sum it up, the stat Romney uses is incredibly dishonest, like much of his jobs rhetoric.

Only in conservative LalaLand could Romney be thought of as a "success". When the rich rob the middle-class to make money that is a kind of theft, not success.

Thank Your Conservative Republican Neighbors For Killing America The Land of Opportunity

Thank Your Conservative Republican Neighbors For Killing America The Land of Opportunity

America likes to think of itself as a land of opportunity, and others view it in much the same light. But, while we can all think of examples of Americans who rose to the top on their own, what really matters are the statistics: to what extent do an individual’s life chances depend on the income and education of his or her parents?

Nowadays, these numbers show that the American dream is a myth. There is less equality of opportunity in the United States today than there is in Europe – or, indeed, in any advanced industrial country for which there are data.

This is one of the reasons that America has the highest level of inequality of any of the advanced countries – and its gap with the rest has been widening. In the “recovery” of 2009-2010, the top 1% of US income earners captured 93% of the income growth. Other inequality indicators – like wealth, health, and life expectancy – are as bad or even worse. The clear trend is one of concentration of income and wealth at the top, the hollowing out of the middle, and increasing poverty at the bottom.

It would be one thing if the high incomes of those at the top were the result of greater contributions to society, but the Great Recession showed otherwise: even bankers who had led the global economy, as well as their own firms, to the brink of ruin, received outsize bonuses.

A closer look at those at the top reveals a disproportionate role for rent-seeking: some have obtained their wealth by exercising monopoly power; others are CEOs who have taken advantage of deficiencies in corporate governance to extract for themselves an excessive share of corporate earnings; and still others have used political connections to benefit from government munificence – either excessively high prices for what the government buys (drugs), or excessively low prices for what the government sells (mineral rights).

Likewise, part of the wealth of those in finance comes from exploiting the poor, through predatory lending and abusive credit-card practices. Those at the top, in such cases, are enriched at the direct expense of those at the bottom.

It might not be so bad if there were even a grain of truth to trickle-down economics – the quaint notion that everyone benefits from enriching those at the top. But most Americans today are worse off – with lower real (inflation-adjusted) incomes – than they were in 1997, a decade and a half ago. All of the benefits of growth have gone to the top.

America has become a country not “with justice for all,” but rather with favoritism for the rich and justice for those who can afford it – so evident in the foreclosure crisis, in which the big banks believed that they were too big not only to fail, but also to be held accountable.

Defenders of America’s inequality argue that the poor and those in the middle shouldn’t complain. While they may be getting a smaller share of the pie than they did in the past, the pie is growing so much, thanks to the contributions of the rich and superrich, that the size of their slice is actually larger. The evidence, again, flatly contradicts this. Indeed, America grew far faster in the decades after World War II, when it was growing together, than it has since 1980, when it began growing apart.

Conservative Republicans seem to be stuck in permanent adolescent mode with a wild crush on the super rich kids. That is not politics, that is some kind of deep-seated physiological problem. Conservatives are concerned that some poor kid and his mother might be getting some apple juice they do not deserve, but could care less that billionaires - 1% of so of the population - are sucking up three fifths of the nation's productivity.

Romney's (non) military record faces new scrutiny. Just call Mitt, Mr. Deferment.

Sleaze Bag of the Week - Scott Brown (R-MA) is Getting Desperate and Dirty with Sexist Attack On Warren

Sleaze Bag of the Week - Scott Brown (R-MA) is Getting Desperate
and Dirty with Sexist Attack On Warren

In my latest column, “Dems' war FOR women,” I suggested that a power-hungry politics and rightist extremism has led Republicans into attacks on programs vital for women and against pay equity for women. These attacks at times veer into personal campaigns against the women themselves. Witness the many efforts against Hillary Clinton over the years and now, in Massachusetts, witness the slander against Elizabeth Warren by Scott Brown.

In a recent column suggesting that Warren is the great voice of workers, consumers and men and women who are the backbone of the nation I did suggest that Scott Brown was decent. It did not take long for Brown to prove me wrong about that. His dishonest and scandalous attacks against Elizabeth Warren put to shame Brown's argument that he is some sort of "bipartisan" "reasonable man.”

In the end, Scott Brown is just another politician, a handsome and charming guy who will ultimately do anything to win when he fears he could lose.

First Brown implied that Warren was a Harvard elitist. Presumably Brown would attack John F. Kennedy for the same reason. Now Brown suggests that Elizabeth Warren is not really qualified to teach at Harvard. Huh? Brown's using the old Karl Rove-style "dog whistle" attack, suggesting Warren just maybe got the Harvard job because of affirmative action.

What sexist garbage it is that Scott Brown is trying to sell?

Elizabeth Warren got the Harvard job because she was supremely qualified, as are most women who are attacked in this way.

Elizabeth Warren is outstanding by any and all measures at Harvard, admired by her peers and respected by her students.

What is special about Elizabeth is that given her enormous talents she could have sold out like so many others, and made her fortune with any law firm or investment bank, but did not. Instead:

She has fought for women and men who are workers and consumers, fought for economic fairness and financial integrity, fought for lower credit card rates and against banks that charge Mafia-like rates, fought for homeowners against banks that would foreclose upon them (which is why many of those banks hate Warren and support Brown).

If you like the banks, vote for Brown. If you like the consumers, vote for Warren.

Warren has fought in support of active-duty military troops, in support of America's military families, and against those who cheat and abuse our military families and vets (who desperately favor Brown).

Warren has fought for the middle class, for the poor, for the workers and military families and consumers of Massachusetts.

No, Sen. Brown, Elizabeth Warren is not some woman who got a job through affirmative action. She is partially Native American but she has achieved much in life not because of her gender or heritage as you, Sen. Brown, and your great ally, Karl Rove, would suggest, but because of her talent, ability, integrity and hard work.

Elizabeth Warren could have made tens of millions of dollars selling out to greed, as so many of Scott Brown's campaign donors have, but instead, she is one of the most courageous fighters on behalf of workers and consumers and veterans who has ever served in public life in Washington or anywhere else.

Shame on you, Scott Brown.

Thank goodness there are still good people like Elizabeth Warren who are still willing to serve in public life in a system too often dominated by charmers who use dirty politics to support those who cheat the workers and consumers and vets Elizabeth Warren has used her God-given talents fighting for throughout her career.

Many Americans were wondering just who Scott Brown is, he has so many faces it is hard to keep up. Now desperate that he might lose the election to someone who is genuinely concerned with working families, brown has shown his real face. he is a petty pathetic little wing-nut conservative in the pocket of special interests and he cannot compete with a woman of substance and the kind of integrity America needs in Washington. What is Elizabeth Warren's big unforgivable crime? her parents told her she was part Native-American.Conservatives, you know those people who lied us into a 3 trillion dolar war and bankrupted the country wants an election decided on what might be slight exaggerations from someone's parents. Conservatives are once again taking Americans for fools. Let us hope for the future of this great country that this time conservative smears do not work.

11 Ways Mitt Romney Shows He is a Clueless Rich-Guy

The Austerity Agenda is just an excuse to give working class Americans the shaft.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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