Rupert Mudoch's Anti-American Fox News and Its Anti-American Team of Hacks Claim Stimulus Failed

Rupert Mudoch's Anti-American Fox News and Its Anti-American Team of Hacks Claim  Stimulus Failed

Fox News' Stuart Varney is citing revisions to economic projections for 2012 to revive the myth that the 2009 stimulus failed. In fact, independent economists agree that the stimulus significantly raised employment and increased GDP, and experts say it is the winding down of stimulus spending that is causing a "fiscal drag" on the economy.

Fox's Stuart Varney: Unemployment Forecast Proves The Stimulus Failed

OMB: Unemployment Expected To Average 9 Percent In 2012. The White House Office of Management and Budget released its mid-session budget review on September 1, projecting that the average monthly unemployment rate in 2012 would be 9 percent. [Fiscal Year 2012 Mid-Session Review, Office of Management and Budget, 9/1/11]

Stuart Varney: OMB's Updated Forecast Proves That The Stimulus Failed. On Fox & Friends, Fox Business host Stuart Varney said:

    VARNEY: Look, there's a lot of pressure on the president to come up with something big, bold and new come next Thursday evening. And there's a lot of skepticism that he can do it. Is he going to propose a brand new trillion dollar stimulus program? I mean, this forecast of nine percent unemployment is an admission that the first stimulus program did not work. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 9/2/11]

But Economists Have Said It's A Decline In Stimulus Spending That Is Causing A "Fiscal Drag" On The Economy

CBO: 85 Percent Of Stimulus Funds Spent By End Of June. In its latest report on the effects of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, the Congressional Budget Office reported that 85 percent of the stimulus had been spent by the end of June 2011. [Congressional Budget Office, August 2011]

Krugman: "When The Spending Begins To Tail Off, The Effect On Growth Turns Negative." Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winning economist and New York Times columnist, wrote in December 2009 that stimulus spending was projected to peak in 2010. He added:

    And when the spending begins to tail off, the effect on growth turns negative. [The New York Times, The Conscience of a Liberal, 12/27/09]

Deutsche Bank: "As Stimulus Programs Wind Down" In 2011 "We'll Then Have A Straight Four Quarters Of Fiscal Drag." According to a November 2010, Business Insider report, Deutsche Bank projected that "the real effect of lost stimulus will start to hit" in the first quarter of 2011. The report continued:

    We'll then have a straight four quarters of fiscal drag. [Business Insider, 11/5/10]

Mark Zandi: "The Benefit [Of The Stimulus] Is Fading, But This Is By Design." According to Talking Points Memo, Mark Zandi, Moody's chief economist, explained that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act "was never intended to be a source of long-term economic growth," and that the stimulus provided "a significant benefit to the economy's performance over the past more than two years." Zandi added:

    This benefit is fading, but this is by design. [Talking Points Memo, 7/5/11]

The fact is ( facts are terrible things thus Fox does not report them) Obama and Democrats stopped the economy from hemorrhaging jobs.

Conservatives are always prattling on about how they are for freedom. This is just a recent example of a Conservative being honest about what he thinks of one of the fundamental elements of freedom in the USA. Freedom is for the select few  - Columnist: Registering Poor To Vote 'Like Handing Out Burglary Tools To Criminals'

Climate Science - Do The Right-Wing Reporters At Fox Have a Reading Comprehension Problem

Climate Science - Do The Right-Wing Reporters At Fox Have a Reading Comprehension Problem

Fox and other conservative media claim that CERN's study of cosmic rays "concluded that it's the sun, not human activity," causing global warming. In fact, at this point the research "actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate," according to the lead author, and it certainly doesn't refute human-induced global warming.

Findings Say "Nothing" About Effect Of Cosmic Rays On Climate

CERN Studied Effects Of Cosmic Rays On Aerosols, Which Contribute To Clouds. From the press release about the study by CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research:

    In a paper published in the journal Nature today, the CLOUD experiment at CERN has reported its first results. The CLOUD experiment has been designed to study the effect of cosmic rays on the formation of atmospheric aerosols - tiny liquid or solid particles suspended in the atmosphere - under controlled laboratory conditions. Atmospheric aerosols are thought to be responsible for a large fraction of the seeds that form cloud droplets. Understanding the process of aerosol formation is therefore important for understanding the climate.

    The CLOUD results show that trace vapours assumed until now to account for aerosol formation in the lower atmosphere can explain only a tiny fraction of the observed atmospheric aerosol production. The results also show that ionisation from cosmic rays significantly enhances aerosol formation. Precise measurements such as these are important in achieving a quantitative understanding of cloud formation, and will contribute to a better assessment of the effects of clouds in climate models. [CERN, 8/25/11]

Lead Author: Paper "Says Nothing About" Effect Of Cosmic Rays On "Clouds And Climate." Nature reported:

    For a century, scientists have known that charged particles from space constantly bombard Earth. Known as cosmic rays, the particles are mostly protons blasted out of supernovae. As the protons crash through the planet's atmosphere, they can ionize volatile compounds, causing them to condense into airborne droplets, or aerosols. Clouds might then build up around the droplets.

    The number of cosmic rays that reach Earth depends on the Sun. When the Sun is emitting lots of radiation, its magnetic field shields the planet from cosmic rays. During periods of low solar activity, more cosmic rays reach Earth.

    Scientists agree on these basic facts, but there is far less agreement on whether cosmic rays can have a large role in cloud formation and climate change. Since the late 1990s, some have suggested that when high solar activity lowers levels of cosmic rays, that in turn reduces cloud cover and warms the planet. Others say that there is no statistical evidence for such an effect.

    [...]

    Early results seem to indicate that cosmic rays do cause a change. The high-energy protons seemed to enhance the production of nanometre-sized particles from the gaseous atmosphere by more than a factor of ten. But, [Physicist Jasper] Kirkby adds, those particles are far too small to serve as seeds for clouds. "At the moment, it actually says nothing about a possible cosmic-ray effect on clouds and climate, but it's a very important first step," he says. [Nature, 8/24/11, emphasis added]

Kirkby: The Study Adds A Piece To The Big Picture, "But In No Way Disproves The Other Pieces." Live Science reported:

    The research doesn't call into question the basic science of greenhouse gas warming, Kirkby emphasized, but rather refines one facet of the research. Climate models currently predict an average global temperature increase of 3 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100.

    The data generated by the CLOUD experiment (CLOUD stands for "Cosmics Leaving Outdoor Droplets") will feed into global models of aerosol formation, Kirkby said, which in turn will carry into global climate models.

    "It's part of the jigsaw puzzle, and you could say it adds to the understanding of the big picture," he said. "But it in no way disproves the other pieces." [Live Science, 8/24/11]

Rupert Murdoch's 24/7 America hating Fox News could at least try and sound like they know what they're talking about. No wait, they don't care if they spew a bunch of junk science because their viewers are science illiterates who swallows every piece of right-wing propaganda that Rupert Murdoch's fascist-lite network puts out.

Mealy Mouthed Republican of the Week - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Knows How to Save Social Security But Won't

Mealy Mouthed Republican of the Week - Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Knows How to Save Social Security But Won't

Constituents waved signs and gave boisterous applause when one Iowan after another stood up and urged Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) to strengthen Social Security rather than cut the retirement program at a town hall in Carroll, Iowa on Monday.

One middle-aged woman, Rosie Partridge, pointedly asked Grassley, “Why can’t we raise the wage cap in order to ensure that Social Security can continue on as it is without talking about cutting it?” (The current payroll tax does not tax income above $106,800.) Partridge, a small business owner, went on to tell her senator that despite the fact her business “would pay more” in payroll taxes, “you know what? No complaints. We want to have Social Security!” Grassley, who helped lead his party’s efforts to privatize Social Security in 2005, backed down, saying, “You have to have everything on the table”:

PARTRIDGE: My husband and I have a business in Carroll County. [...] My question is, why can’t we raise the wage cap in order to ensure that Social Security can continue on as it is without talking about cutting it? [Applause] And if we, as a business, we would have some people that would be giving more to that, actually a family member that’s part ownership of the business. And the business would pay more, too. And you know what? No complaints. We want to have Social Security! [Applause]

GRASSLEY: I think when it comes to Social Security, if anybody’s going to bargain in good faith, you have to have everything on the table. But if your point of view is to solve the Social Security problem just by taking the cap off, that isn’t going to solve it, as the trustees looked at it and said five years.

Watch it: video at link.

In fact, lifting the payroll tax cap would keep Social Security solvent for the next 75 years. Last week, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced he would introduce legislation to this effect, because doing so would keep Social Security fully-funded without having to cut benefits.

Though it may be tempting to hear “everything [is] on the table” and believe that Grassley is open to Partridge’s proposal, this is a phrase he commonly employs in tough policy fights. Optimists may believe that Grassley genuinely considers all options; pessimists will point to the health care reform debate when he made similar musings, only to string Senate Democrats along for months before criticizing the bill for supposedly allowing government to “pull the plug on grandma.”

Later in the town hall, another older woman chastised Grassley and his fellow Republicans for including Social Security in the recent debt ceiling standoff. “We have not caused the debt,” the woman said. “You owe Social Security recipients just like you owe China and anybody else that has treasury bonds.”

Grassley worships at the alter of no increase in taxes even if hard working average Americans have figured out that sacrificing a few dollars now means income security for millions of Americans for the next 75 years. Like all weird cultish thinking Grassley doesn't have to make sense or justify what he believes, he just believes it and that should be enough.

Three Charts To Email To Your Right-Wing Brother-In-Law - America has a revenue problem, not a spending problem. It is exactly in bad times like these the government should spend.

How did Gretchen Morgenson, one of America’s best financial reporters, get the story of Fannie Mae’s role in the financial collapse so wrong? Fannie and Freddie have some mud on them, but it was private sector banks who went hog wild on sub-prime loans.

America Hating Gov. Rick Perry Again Claims Social Security is Unconstitutional

America Hating Gov. Rick Perry Again Claims Social Security is Unconstitutional

During a campaign stop in Des Moines, Iowa today, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) reaffirmed all the views expressed in his book Fed Up!, including that Social Security is unconstitutional, despite previous attempts by his campaign staff to walk back the candidate’s words.

In Perry’s book, released just nine months ago, he writes on page 48 that Social Security is “by far the best example” of a program “violently tossing aside any respect for our founding principles.” On page 50, he goes on to say that we have Social Security “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

Last week, Communications Director Ray Sullivan tried to limit the damage from Perry’s book by saying that its contents were, as the Wall Street Journal writes, “not meant to reflect the governor’s current views on how to fix” Social Security.

ThinkProgress asked Perry today whether, in light of his campaign’s statements, states rights supporters should be worried that his views on Social Security have shifted now that he’s running for president. Perry dismissed his Communications Director’s comments, declaring “I haven’t backed off anything in my book. Read the book again, get it right.”

KEYES: But should states-rights supporters be worried that, as governor you said that Social Security is not something that falls in the purview of the federal government, but in your campaign, have backed off that?

PERRY: I haven’t backed off anything in my book. Read the book again, get it right. Next question.

Social Security is an income insurance program started by one of America's greatest presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt. It currently keeps 20 million Americans out of poverty. The Supreme Court of the U.S. has made three major decisions regarding the constitutionality of Social Security. They have all confirmed Social Security is constitutional and is well within the right of the people and their representatives in Congress to make laws that provide for the common good of the people.

The Myth That The Obama Administration Are Big Spenders


Conservative Republican Media Distort Study To Blame Obama For Poverty

Conservatives Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

Conservatives Force Poor Women Into More Unwanted Pregnancies

In denying undeniable human nature – that people will have sex, regardless of how much moralizing they're exposed to or whether or not they receive abstinence-only education or wear “chastity rings” – the Christian right, which claims that abortion is “murder,” is doing its part to bring the long decline in the number of abortions in this country to a halt. In fact, they've succeeded. After a quarter-century-long decline in abortions -- from 29.3 per 1,000 women in 1981 to under 20 per 1,000 in 2005 -- the rate began to tick up again in the latter years of the Bush administration.

A number of factors impact those numbers. One of them is the belief that by limiting women's access to contraceptives, they'll be less likely to have sex outside of marriage. Give a high-school girl access to a condom, and get a reckless slut; deny her that access and she'll be as chaste as Doris Day until her wedding night. It's self-evident nonsense that only leads to more unintended pregnancies.

A new study (PDF) by Lawrence Finer and Mia Zolna of the Guttmacher Institute tells the tale. It found that the rate of unintended pregnancies in the United States has remained relatively stable over the years – about 5 percent of women will have one each year. But those overall numbers obscure a dramatic story of racial and class division; while unintended pregnancies among women aged 15-44 whose incomes were at least double the poverty line declined by 29 percent between 1994 and 2006, among women struggling to get by beneath the poverty line they rose by 50 percent.

The sharp rise in unplanned pregnancies among low-income women – disproportionately women of color – leads to a higher rate of abortions; according to Guttmacher, 43 percent of unintended pregnancies are terminated. And with a threadbare social safety net providing scant support and the least-flexible workplaces on the planet, those who choose to bring a pregnancy to term often end up trapped in a grueling cycle of poverty. That's because of a sad truth in this country: women are punished economically for giving birth. And significantly so -- Jane Waldfogel of Columbia University found that a first child lowers a woman's earnings by 7.5 percent and a second child lowers her income by another 8 percent.

According to Guttmacher, “In contrast to the high rates among certain groups, some women in the United States are having considerable success timing and spacing their pregnancies.”

Higher-income women, white women, college graduates and married women have relatively low unintended pregnancy rates (as low as 17 per 1,000 among higher-income white women—one-third the national rate of 52 per 1,000), suggesting that women who have better access to reproductive health services, have achieved their educational goals or are in relationships that support a desired pregnancy are more likely than other women to achieve planned pregnancies and avoid those they do not want.

It also suggests that women who rely on publicly funded family planning services have seen a surge in unintended pregnancies while those more likely to have the means to buy contraceptives – or a high-quality health plan that pays for them – have had a different experience.

The study speaks to this point, noting that “family planning programs are under unprecedented attack.”

Some of these attacks appear purely ideological. For example, the House of Representatives earlier this year moved to strike all funding for Title X for the remainder of the current fiscal year... Although the Senate blocked that move, funds for the program were eventually cut by $17 million. Such cuts were disproportionately higher than those made to other programs, ultimately leaving Title X at 64% below what the program had been funded at in 1980, when inflation is taken into account...

Moreover, both in Congress and in the states, opponents of family planning are taking aim at the network of family planning providers. The funding bill approved initially by the House would have denied federal funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates, a move that ultimately was... blocked. Nonetheless, opponents of family planning have tried to emulate this approach on the state level, with efforts (some of which currently are being litigated) in five states...to either limit or deny funding to Planned Parenthood affiliates specifically or specialized family planning providers more generally.

Social conservatives have also championed “conscience clauses” allowing fundamentalist health-care providers to pick and choose which drugs and services they find sufficiently moral, and fight laws compelling insurers that cover other prescription drugs to pay for FDA-approved contraceptive drugs and devices. Again, more than four in 10 unintended pregnancies end in abortion, so whether or not they know it, the religious right is driving an increase in what they call “baby-killing.”

One really has to question the bottom line of right-wing social conservatives. Do they want fewer abortions or do they want control over women's bodies. It seems to be the latter when we study the facts.

Rick Perry Sought State Profits From Teacher Life Insurance Scheme

Why Does Gov Rick Perry Hate America and Capitalism

Why Does Gov Rick Perry Hate America and Capitalism

On Sunday afternoon—just 24 hours after Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced his presidential candidacy—an email arrived in my inbox titled, “14 Reasons Why Rick Perry Would Be a Really, Really Bad President.” The article contained in the email took such a harsh tone toward Perry, I assumed, for a brief moment, that a liberal interest group was quickly jumping on the newest entrant in the Republican presidential field. In turns out, however, that the piece was the product of a right-wing website called The American Dream. The author of the article argued that Perry, the supposed savior of conservatives nationwide, is actually a RINO—a Republican in Name Only.

For Texans, this line of argument is nothing new. Indeed, for anyone who’s closely followed Perry’s tenure in Texas—as I have, covering the governor for The Texas Observer since 2003—it’s no secret that some of the state’s conservatives and libertarians dispute his conservative credentials. It’s true that Perry has trafficked heavily in anti-Washington rhetoric, especially in the run-up to his candidacy to become president. But the closer you look at Perry’s record in Texas, the harder it is to discern any coherent ideology at all. When GOP primary voters in other parts of the country examine his signature legislative accomplishments and policy stances, some won’t like what they find.

The first Perry proposal to rile some Texas right-wing activists was the Trans-Texas Corridor—an ambitious plan to cover the state in a series of toll roads. Perry first pitched the idea during his 2002 campaign for governor. The plan would have used government’s eminent domain authority to seize rural farmland not just for multi-lane tolled highways, but also for rail and utility lines. Perry’s office and the Texas Department of Transportation gained legislative approval for the plan in 2003. The state handed the contract for the road planning and building to a Spanish-based company named Cintra.

The backlash from rural Republicans was intense. It was a text-book example of a policy that classic small-government conservatives would hate: Seizing farmland with eminent domain, then handing public money to a foreign company that would built roads Texans would have pay tolls to drive on. Anti-Trans Texas Corridor buttons soon became one of the most popular items among delegates at Republican State Party Conventions in 2004, 2006 and 2008.

Perry’s plan for a comprehensive network of toll-roads would eventually die slowly over the next four legislative sessions, meeting resistance from conservative Republicans. Toll roads are still being built in Texas, but the corridor plan is remembered as a colossal failure for the governor.

Perry caused conservative revulsion again in 2007 when he proposed that all young girls in Texas receive the HPV vaccine. The drug company Merck had just put the drug on the market, and the governor’s office made a heart-wrenching case for why all Texans should have access to it. His office brought to the Legislature a young woman with terminal cervical cancer, caused by HPV, to meet with the press and argue for mandatory vaccinations.

Some Texas Democrats agreed with Perry’s position. But the governor’s critics also pointed out that Perry’s former chief of staff, Mike Toomey, was serving as a lobbyist for Merck, which stood to make millions from the vaccine requirement. In the end, conservative Republicans in the Legislature bucked at the thought of requiring young girls to receive an STD vaccine, and Perry's effort died in the Legislature.

Then there’s the one major proposal that Perry did, in fact, pass into law—the state’s business tax. This tax increase on business was crafted in 2006 as part of a school-finance reform. The idea was to cut local property taxes and replace the lost revenue with a new business margins tax. This 2006 tax “swap” was the one instance during Perry’s decade as governor when he proposed a wide-ranging plan and successfully pushed it through the Legislature mostly unchanged. It will likely be remembered as his signature legislative accomplishment.

The problem is, it’s been a disaster. Small businesses hate it because they’re forced to pay regardless of whether they’re turning a profit: it seemed to be the very definition of a “job-killing” tax. Some conservatives simply hate it on principle. A few even argued that Perry’s business tax is unconstitutional—amounting to a tax on income, which is forbidden by the Texas Constitution.

But worst of all, the tax doesn’t even generate enough revenue. The tax “swap” has cost the state $5 billion a year for five years running. The Texas budget now faces an ongoing structural deficit because of the underperforming business tax. And with a tax increase on small business and a structural budget deficit to boot, it’s clear that Perry hasn’t taken conservative economists like Milton Friedman as his inspiration.

Another example of his conservative heresy is the Texas Enterprise Fund, which Perry seem to be especially proud of. The purpose of the Fund is to dole out public money to lure companies to Texas. It has created tens of thousands of jobs in the state, but critics have not incorrectly, labeled it “corporate welfare,” a slush fund for well-connected businesses. The Observer investigated the fund in 2010 and found that several companies with political ties to Perry had received state grants.

All of this probably makes little difference to the anti-American conservatives who see Perry as a wing-nut god of sorts. he speaks their special coded language, he uses all the buzz words to inflate his and their fake patriotism to make it look real. He is dumb as a rock, just the way conservatives like their leaders. Modern conservatism holds knowledge and enlightened thought in contempt and so does Perry. So Perry can climb trees and yell like a baboon with rabies and the fake patriot conservatives will smile and pull that lever knowing that one of their own will lead the country into the dysfunctional utopia they dream of.

Republicans Are Still Trying To Kill Grandma

Anti-American Republicans Are Still Trying To Kill Grandma

ThinkProgress previously reported on the network of front groups advancing the “Health Care Compact,” a massive deregulation idea to turn over federal money used for health reform, Medicare, Medicaid, and other health programs to state governments along with the power to use that money however they see fit, even if it has nothing to do with actual health care. The idea, hatched earlier this year by a political operative named Eric O’Keefe, is designed to dismantle major safety net programs and energize Tea Party activists into the 2012 elections.

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) recently signed a Health Care Compact bill into law. But just as the group begins to gain ground, Leo Linbeck III — the wealthy heir to the Linbeck construction fortune in Houston financing the Health Care Compact group — is signaling that organizers may look beyond health care soon. Linbeck, an active participant in public online forum on Pajamas Media called the Belmont Club, described his next steps in posting on July 18 (view a screenshot here):

The cancer is well-advanced. Therapies that rely upon the federal government to self-restrain will not work. The states must engage. We are left, then, with two broad options:

1. Compacts, that allow for piecemeal deconstruction of the federal state (BTW: Gov. Perry signed the Health Care Compact yesterday, making it the fourth state to join. There will be a big push in 2012 in many more states, and we are adding an Education Compact and Banking Compact to the mix.)

If the Banking Compact looks anything like Linbeck’s Health Care Compact, he could obliterate what’s left of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, and the other financial regulators that are already under-staffed and partially captured by bank lobbyists. Linbeck’s “piecemeal deconstruction of the federal state” will be as disastrous for banking regulation as it is for health care.

Moving authority for banking regulation from the federal government to the states has been tried, with results that have hurt consumers and enriched financial industry corporations. For instance, credit card deregulation in the 70s allowed credit card companies to comply only with the regulations of the state they are based in. Credit card executives lobbied the South Dakota and Delaware to lift the cap on interest rates, which averaged about 12 percent in most states before deregulation, and before long credit card companies had the power to hike rates as high as they wanted. While President Obama has made steps to finally reign in out of control usury, with credit card reform and the Dodd-Frank Act, a move back to state-based regulation will amount to an even greater level of bank-led cartels.

Linbeck has aligned himself with a network of front groups associated with the Tea Party billionaires Charles and David Koch. Linbeck’s top operative, Eric O’Keefe, has spent a career setting up libertarian and anti-government front groups on behalf of his wealthy patrons. And while Linbeck does not call himself a Tea Party activist, he characterizes Obama’s slightly left-of-center approach with doomsday rhetoric. “Should Obama win and enter Washington as Napoleon entered Moscow, the question is how our nation will respond,” he warned before the 2008 elections.

As many of us remember the Paul Ryan(R-Wisconsin) to make Medicare into some kind of voucher plan would have resulted in gutting Medicare while also greatly increasing out of pocket expenses for seniors and the disabled. This new plan by the radical Right would have the same if not worse effects. Gutting financial regulation would point average Americans at risk to pay for another Wall St meltdown. As anyone over 55 has seen, when you deregulate anything in the financial sector the big financial firms push risk taking to the point of being a reckless gamble. They do not gamble with their money, they gamble with America's money - our savings, our homes, our pension funds.