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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Immoral Mitt Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform

Immoral Mitt Romney Releases Another False Ad, Revives Claim That Obama ‘Gutted’ Welfare Reform

After releasing false radio and television ads about the auto bailout, Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign unveiled a new commercial that highlights another one of the candidate’s favorite false claims. This ad, first flagged by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, revives Romney’s claim that President Obama has “gutted the welfare work requirement” through a waiver program that Republican governors, including Romney himself, have long asked for.

The ad hits Obama on a number of issues, but the most blatantly false of its claims are aimed at welfare:

    NARRATOR: If you want to know President Obama’s second term agenda, look at his first: gutted the work requirement for welfare. Doubled the number of able-bodied adults without children on food stamps. Record unemployment. More women in poverty than ever before. Borrowed from China and increased the debt to over $16 trillion, passing the burden onto the next generation. We may have made it through President Obama’s first term – it’s our children who can’t afford a second.

Watch it:

As reporters, fact-checkers, and the directive Obama signed made abundantly clear, the welfare work requirements will remain in place even if states are granted waivers. The major change is that states will be granted more leeway in how they transition welfare recipients into jobs. That is a change sought and supported by many Republican governors, like Romney endorser Rick Snyder (MI), who said of the program, “More flexibility to governors is a good thing.”

The Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program certainly needs changes — since 1996, it has failed to provide America’s poorest families the assistance they need. But with the election in the balance, Romney has now resorted to making claims in multiple advertisements that even members of his own party say are false.

Maybe Romney has had a head injury and now thinks that being a sleazy serial liar is a virtue.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Condi Rice Pours Cold Water On ‘Benghazi-Gate’

Republican and Retired General Colin Powell endorses President Obama

Republican and Retired General Colin Powell endorses President Obama

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corporate profits up under Obama

S&P 500 up under Obama

Dow industrial up under Obama

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