Sadly, Conservatives Are Not Patriots, They are Ethnocentric Nationalists Who Love Their Plutocratic Masters

Sadly, Conservatives Are Not Patriots, They are Ethnocentric Nationalists Who Love Their Plutocratic Masters

Calls to rally the virtuous "producing classes" against evil "parasites" at both the top and bottom of society is a tendency called producerism. It is a conspiracist narrative used by repressive right wing populism. Today we see examples of it in some sectors of the Christian Right, in the Patriot movements and armed militias, and in the Far right. (see chart of US right). Producerism is involved in the relationship between Buchanan, Fulani, Perot, and the Reform Party.

Producerism begins in the US with the Jacksonians, who wove together intra-elite factionalism and lower-class Whites’ double-edged resentments. Producerism became a staple of repressive populist ideology.  Producerism sought to rally the middle strata together with certain sections of the elite. Specifically, it championed the so-called producing classes (including White farmers, laborers, artisans, slaveowning planters, and “productive” capitalists) against “unproductive” bankers, speculators, and monopolists above—and people of color below. After the Jacksonian era, producerism was a central tenet of the anti-Chinese crusade in the late nineteenth century. In the 1920s industrial philosophy of Henry Ford, and Father Coughlin’s fascist doctrine in the 1930s, producerism fused with antisemitic attacks against “parasitic” Jews.

Conservatives like to talk in big expansive terms about freedom, family and values. Dive into the details and you find their family values are all about their families, freedom is only for what they want - much like a five year old, and theyir values rest on the foundation of a cruel dog-eat-dog society perpetually at war.

Conservative Two Faced Hypocrite of the Week Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) - Thinks Government Subsidized Education is OK for Him, Not for American Moms

Conservative Two Faced Hypocrite of the Week Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) - Thinks Government Subsidized Education is OK for Him, Not for American Moms

To avoid a government shutdown at the end of 2011, Republicans succeeded in their campaign to cut the federal Pell Grant program by effectively kicking up to 100,000 low-income students off the rolls.

Last week, Arkansas constituent Kelly Eubanks, a college student who has two jobs and two children, confronted her Congressman, Rep. Steve Womack (R), at a town hall meeting over his attack on the program she now relies on. But instead of any explanation, Womack lashed out at Eubanks, telling her to pay her own way by “joining the military” like he did. After refusing to answer her question, he finally just asked her to “be quiet and listen.” Blue Arkansas reports:

    According to Kelly and a handful of other witnesses, Womack happily retorted that it wasn’t the federal government’s job to pay for education (he’s doing this in a college town mind you) and then quickly added that he paid for his education by joining the military, apparently suggesting that the mom of two do the same and totally oblivious I guess to the fact that it was, in fact, the federal government that paid for his education then. Well Womack tried to skirt the rest of Ms. Eubanks question and she proceeded to try and get him to address the discrepancy she pointed out. Well at this point, according to Kelly and several other people that were in the room, Womack blew a gasket.

    He skirted the rest of my question and I called him out on it.. he ended up getting pissed off.. and screaming at me.. “are you going to be quiet and listen”, [Eubanks said.]

    According to Kelly, some of his aides came up and tried to get the mike from her, but she held her ground and kept her cool, insisting her congressman answer her question.

Watch KHBS news coverage of the town hall:

The irony here, as Campus Progress’ Emily Wood notes, is that Womack actually attended college on taxpayer money by joining the National Guard. But instead of acknowledging that fact, he dodged the issue and had the mike taken away from Eubanks. Eubanks attended the town hall with the hopes of understanding Womack’s view. “I thought maybe meeting him and asking him why he’d vote to hurt students but protect Big Oil interests, face to face, would get me a real answer,” she told the Arkansas Times. “I really thought maybe he could explain it somehow. I did not think he was a heartless or arrogant person going in to this, but I definitely do now.”

Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR) is just one of your typical smiley faced fascist hypocrites otherwise known as a conservative. Government is here to serve the arrogant elite like him, not American moms who are trying their best to improve their lives and that of their children. The fanatics like Womack are destroying America from within. Taking down the educational opportunities that are frequently the only path to a better life - especially sine it has been the policy of conservatives not to attach any strings at all to those jobs big corporations that help Womack get into office, sent to Asia. Womack might be a good citizen we just need to figure out what country he is a good citizen of. It sure isn't the USA.

Republican Presidential Candidates Offer America More Voodoo Economics and No Solutions

Republican Presidential Candidates Offer America More Voodoo Economics and No Solutions

Key proposals from the Republican presidential candidates might make for good campaign fodder. But independent analyses raise serious questions about those plans and their ability to cure the nation's ills in two vital areas, the economy and housing.

Consider proposed cuts in taxes and regulation, which nearly every GOP candidate is pushing in the name of creating jobs. The initiatives seem to ignore surveys in which employers cite far bigger impediments to increased hiring, chiefly slack consumer demand.

"Republicans favor tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, but these had no stimulative effect during the George W. Bush administration, and there is no reason to believe that more of them will have any today," writes Bruce Bartlett. He's an economist who worked for Republican congressmen and in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

As for the idea that cutting regulations will lead to significant job growth, Bartlett said in an interview, "It's just nonsense. It's just made up."

Government and industry studies support his view.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics, which tracks companies' reasons for large layoffs, found that 1,119 layoffs were attributed to government regulations in the first half of this year, while 144,746 were attributed to poor "business demand."
Mainstream economic theory says governments can spur demand, at least somewhat, through stimulus spending. The Republican candidates, however, have labeled President Barack Obama's 2009 stimulus efforts a failure. Instead, most are calling for tax cuts that would primarily benefit high-income people, who are seen as the likeliest job creators.

"I don't care about that," Texas Gov. Rick Perry told The New York Times and CNBC, referring to tax breaks for the rich. "What I care about is them having the dollars to invest in their companies."

Many existing businesses, however, have plenty of unspent cash. The 500 companies that comprise the S&P index have about $800 billion in cash and cash equivalents, the most ever, according to the research firm Birinyi Associates.

The rating firm Moody's says the roughly 1,600 companies it monitors had $1.2 trillion in cash at the end of 2010. That's 11 percent more than a year earlier.

Small businesses rate "poor sales" as their biggest problem, with government regulations ranking second, according to a survey by the National Federation of Independent Businesses. Of the small businesses saying this is not a good time to expand, half cited the poor economy as the chief reason. Thirteen percent named the "political climate."

More small businesses complained about regulation during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, according to an analysis of the federation's data by the liberal Economic Policy Institute.

Such findings notwithstanding, further cuts in taxes and regulations remain popular with GOP voters. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that most Democrats and about half of independents think "reducing environmental and other regulations on business" would do little or nothing to create jobs. But only one-third of Republicans felt that way.

The GOP's presidential hopefuls are shaping their economic agendas along those lines.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney says his 59-point plan "seeks to reduce taxes, spending, regulation and government programs."

Businessman Herman Cain would significantly cut taxes for the wealthy with his 9 percent flat tax plan. Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota said in a recent debate, "It's the regulatory burden that costs us $1.8 trillion every year. ... It's jobs that are lost."

The candidates have said little about another national problem: depressed home prices, as well as the high numbers of foreclosures and borrowers who owe more than their houses are worth.

After the Oct. 18 GOP debate in Las Vegas, a center of foreclosure activity, editors of the AOL Real Estate site wrote, "We didn't hear any meaningful solutions to the housing crisis. That's no surprise, considering that housing has so far been a ghost issue in the campaign."

To the degree the candidates addressed housing, they mainly took a hands-off approach. "We need to get government out of the way," Cain said. "It starts with making sure that we can boost this economy and then reform Dodd-Frank," which is a law that regulates Wall Street transactions.

Bachmann, in an answer that mentioned "moms" six times, said foreclosures fall most heavily on women who are "losing their nest for their children and for their family." She said Obama "has failed you on this issue of housing and foreclosures. I will not fail you on this issue." Bachmann offered no specific remedies.

Romney told editors of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: "Don't try and stop the foreclosure process. Let it run its course and hit the bottom. Allow investors to buy homes, put renters in them, fix the homes up and let it turn around and come back up."

Perry spokesman Mark Miner said the Texas governor's "immediate remedy for housing is to get America working again. ... Creating jobs will address the housing concerns that are impacting communities throughout America."

Bartlett, whose books on tax policy include "The Benefit and the Burden," recently wrote in the New York Times: "People are increasingly concerned about unemployment, but Republicans have nothing to offer them."

The candidates and their supporters dispute this, of course. A series of scheduled debates may give them chances to explain why their proposals would hit the right targets.


A recent study published by Bloomberg shows that the elitist conservative presidential candidates are either out of touch with reality or are lying to the American people about business regulation. Obama Wrote 5% Fewer Rules Than Bush

President Barack Obama’s “tsunami” of new government regulations looks more like a summer swell.

Obama’s White House has approved fewer regulations than his predecessor George W. Bush at this same point in their tenures, and the estimated costs of those rules haven’t reached the annual peak set in fiscal 1992 under Bush’s father, according to government data reviewed by Bloomberg News.

The average annual cost to businesses under Obama is higher than under his predecessors, the Bloomberg review shows. The increase is estimated to total as little as $100 million or as much as $4.1 billion, or at most three one-hundredths of a percent of the total economy.

The scope of government regulation has emerged as a major issue in the 2012 presidential race and on Capitol Hill. Republican presidential candidates have accused Obama of stifling job creation by imposing rules on businesses, and House Republicans have vowed to rein in proposed regulations on everything from the environment to health care to banking.

“This is getting picked up and talked about, but not for any good reason,” Michael Livermore, executive director of the Institute for Policy Integrity at the New York University School of Law, said in an interview. “There’s nothing new about this attack: It comes and goes in good times and in bad.”

How Obama Compares

Obama’s White House approved 613 federal rules during the first 33 months of his term, 4.7 percent fewer than the 643 cleared by President George W. Bush’s administration in the same time frame, according to an Office of Management and Budget statistical database reviewed by Bloomberg.

The number of significant federal rules, defined as those costing more than $100 million, has gone up under Obama, with 129 approved so far, compared with 90 for Bush, 115 for President Bill Clinton and 127 for the first President Bush over the same period in their first terms. In part that’s because $100 million in past years was worth more than it is now due to inflation, Livermore said.

Mitt Romney Used To Have a Heart Now He is Running as a Far Right Conservative - Romney Supported President Bush’s Government Program To Refinance Mortgages

Mitt Romney Used To Have a Heart Now He is Running Far Right Conservative - Romney Supported President Bush’s Government Program To Refinance Mortgages

This week, in an attempt to boost the economy without having to deal with Congress, the Obama administration announced an overhaul of its mortgage refinancing program known as HARP. The changes will allow more people to take advantage of low interest rates, freeing up more money for them to spend elsewhere.

As we noted yesterday, this idea is supported by 2012 GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s top economic adviser, Columbia University’s Glenn Hubbard. Hubbard called Obama’s refinancing plan “a big deal.” “It looks like a good plan; I’m glad they’re doing it,” he said. And as it turns out, Romney himself supported a refinancing plan when President Bush announced one in 2007.
In late August 2007, as the subprime mortgage crisis built up, Bush introduced an initiative overseen by the Federal Housing Authority to “help struggling homeowners find a way to refinance” and stem foreclosures. According to Bush, while it was “not the government’s job to bail out speculators,” there were a lot of homeowners “who could get through this difficult time with a little flexibility from their lenders or a little help from their government.”

A week later, during an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Romney professed no concerns about the program:

    Well, the President has taken action that should calm a good portion of the market, which is he said look, these people who borrowed money from the sub-prime world with these reset provisions, where the payments go up in later months, and they were told by their mortgage banker in many cases don’t worry about that, we’ll refinance it when that time comes, well, now the mortgage banker’s gone, they can’t refinance it. And so he’s saying, the President’s saying let’s have the FHA refinance these mortgages. It’s not a bailout, but it is a setting which gives people stability, and will calm the markets to a certain degree.

In an interview last week with the Las Vegas Review Journal, Mitt Romney opined that the Obama administration has no right to provide assistance to homeowners facing foreclosure, saying that the foreclosure process ought to “run its course and hit the bottom.

However, he did add, “I think the idea of helping people refinance homes to stay in them is one that’s worth further consideration.” So given his prior support for the idea, is Romney on board with the administration’s effort?

Romney keeps drifting back towards being moderate when far right-wing conservatives who control the Republican Party like a brain dead cult want absolute purity. They don't want to help people stay in their homes, but have no problem with too big to fail banks reaping near pre-recession profits. How is it that Wall Street gets government backing and homeowners - who are not responsible for losing $17 trillion of America's wealth get all the protection conservatives can provide.

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

Anti-American Zealot Rep. Allen West(R) Exploits Martin Luther King Jr to Justify His Elitist Agenda

At the dedication of the national Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial last Sunday, the Rev. Bernice King said her father Dr. King would support the 99 Percent Movement: “I hear my father saying what we are seeing now all across the streets of America and the world is a freedom explosion.” She reminded the nation that civil rights leader worked not just for racial justice, but for economic justice as well. “We should never adjust to the one percent controlling more than 40 percent of the wealth,” she said.

Florida Rep. Allen West (R), however, was “born and raised” in the same town that Dr. King grew up in. Therefore, he asserted as a fact today in a Newsmax interview that “Martin Luther King, Jr. would not back these types of protesters”:

    WEST: I was born and raised in the same town that Martin Luther King, Jr. grew up in. Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have backed these type of protesters. First of all, Martin Luther King, Jr. had a focus, he had a message. He was divinely inspired. I don’t know what the inspiration is for these individuals.



Unfortunately for West, geographical proximity clearly did not provide West any insight into the man himself. Like the 99 percent movement, King consistently called for economic justice. He critiqued unregulated free marketism as a system that permits “necessities to be taken from the many to give luxuries to the few.” He envisioned a “Poor People’s Campaign” in which a multiracial coalition would march through the capital to “demand that President Lyndon Johnson and Congress help the poor get jobs, health care, and decent homes.”

King was assassinated just weeks before the march on May 12, 1968. Rev. Ralph Abernathy carried his legacy to DC, stating, “We come with an appeal to open the doors of America to the almost 50 million Americans who have not been given a fair share of American’s wealth and opportunity, and we will stay until we get it.” This, incidentally, is what the 99 Percent Movement is about.

This, however, is also what West sees as “contradictory to the foundational principles and values that we have in the United States.” If West grew up anywhere near Dr. King and his legacy, he has now turned his back on him.

Many Americans may know West as the man who terrorized a bound unarmed man in Iraq. He was kicked out of the military for his cowardly behavior. Unlike what West would have done, the military took pity on him and gave him his tax payer funded military pension. Now West is in Congress ( once again making a living off the government he says he hates) West is doing his best to stop President Obama from creating jobs, while also fighting for even more tax cuts for millionaires. West doesn't seem to have a genuine patriotic bone in his body, no wonder right-wing conservatives love him.

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

Private Wall Street Companies Caused The Financial Crisis — Not Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Or The Community Reinvestment Act

In the four years since the housing bubble burst, triggering a collapse in global financial markets whose value had been propped up through the repackaging and trading of home loans via complex financial instruments, there's been plenty of blame to go around. The Occupy Wall Street protests have called new attention to the root causes of the crisis, and led Republicans to reiterate their claim that government-backed lenders Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were the primary villains. The facts about the subprime mortgage market prove that claim false: Private firms dominated the subprime market boom of 2004-06, and were not even subject to the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act some Republicans vilify. Thanks to decades of financial deregulation, capped by President Bush's decision to appoint Wall Street regulators who believed their job was to help banks rather than curb banking abuses, financial giants were able to turn the mortgage market into a high-stakes casino. As investigative reporters and Congress' Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission have all shown, it was deregulation mixed with irresponsible and potentially illegal practices by private firms on Wall Street that caused both the bubble and the collapse.

...From 2004 To 2006, Fannie And Freddie's Share Of Subprime Market Fell From Almost Half To Just Under One-Quarter. As reported by McClatchy: "But these loans, and those to low- and moderate-income families represent a small portion of overall lending. And at the height of the housing boom in 2005 and 2006, Republicans and their party's standard bearer, President Bush, didn't criticize any sort of lending, frequently boasting that they were presiding over the highest-ever rates of U.S. homeownership. Between 2004 and 2006, when subprime lending was exploding, Fannie and Freddie went from holding a high of 48 percent of the subprime loans that were sold into the secondary market to holding about 24 percent, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance, a specialty publication." [McClatchy, 10/12/08, emphasis added]

    Fannie And Freddie Faced Tougher Regulatory Standards Than The Private Firms. As reported by McClatchy: "One reason is that Fannie and Freddie were subject to tougher standards than many of the unregulated players in the private sector who weakened lending standards, most of whom have gone bankrupt or are now in deep trouble." [McClatchy, 10/12/08]

2006: Private Firms Issued About Six Out Of Every Seven Subprime Mortgages. As reported by McClatchy:

    Federal Reserve Board data show that:

        More than 84 percent of the subprime mortgages in 2006 were issued by private lending institutions.
        Private firms made nearly 83 percent of the subprime loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers that year.
        Only one of the top 25 subprime lenders in 2006 was directly subject to the housing law that's being lambasted by conservative critics. [McClatchy, 10/12/08, emphasis added]

2008: The 15 Largest Subprime Servicers Were All Private Companies, Despite Large Drops In The Volume Of Their Subprime Business Compared To 2007. McClatchy prepared a graphic based on Inside Mortgage Finance data showing the 15 largest subprime service companies in 2008: 

The conservative narrative that blames Fannie, Freddie and working class Americans is all about not admitting that free markets are not perfect. Free markets only work when properly regulated and that regulation enforced. Blaming anyone and any institution that was not pure free market is away to shift blame from the real constituency of the Anti-American conservative movement - the financial elite.

Something Devious Going On - Why Is Darrell Issa (R-CA) Ignoring Bush Era Fast and Furious Type Program

Something Devious Going On - Why Is Darrell Issa (R-CA) Ignoring Bush Era Fast and Furious Type Program

As House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) continues to try to pin the flawed "gun walking" tactic employed in Operation Fast and Furious on the Obama administration, it's becoming increasingly clear that problems with ATF's Phoenix division date back at least into the Bush era.

TPM has obtained the documents relating to another Bush-era ATF operation (on top of Operation Wide Receiver) which deployed the "gun walking" tactic. The development was first reported by Pete Yost of the Associated Press.

In fact, ATF officials wrote in 2007 that the gun walking tactic had "full approval" of the U.S. Attorney's Office being run by an interim Bush appointee and that the U.S. Embassy in Mexico was "fully on-board."

Under DOJ policy, illicit arms shipments are supposed to be intercepted whenever possible. But the emails show that just like in Operation Fast and Furious, official planned to allow guns to "walk" across the border and into Mexico in an attempt to identify traffickers higher up in the operation (rather than low ranking "straw purchasers," who are difficult to prosecute thanks to the lack of an anti-trafficking gun law).

On Sept. 27, 2007 -- when the Justice Department was reeling from the resignation of former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales -- ATF agents in Phoenix and Mexico were conducting partial surveillance of suspects who purchased numerous weapons at a federally licensed firearms dealership.

After they watched the group purchase 19 weapons on Sept. 21 and 24 and additional weapons on Sept. 27, they watched as the weapons crossed the border into Mexico.

"Phoenix AZ ATF agents observed this vehicle commit to the border and reach the Mexican side until it could no longer be seen," ATF assistant director Carson Carroll wrote in a Sept. 28, 2007 email. "We, the ATF (Mexico) did not get a response from the Mexican side until 20 minutes later, who then informed us that they did not see the vehicle cross."

A few days later, William Newell -- the ATF official in charge of the Phoenix division -- tried to assure colleagues that everything would be okay.

"I know you have reservations but please rest assured that this will go as planned, as allowed per MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty) with Mexico, with full approval of the USAO (confirmed again late this afternoon), and will have big payoffs for us and the Department in addresing (sic) Mexico's concerns that we (US) aren't doing enough to address their concerns," Newell wrote in an Oct. 4, 2007 email. "Trust me, I'm with Gov't."

"Wow, I feel so much better," William Hoover, the ATF Assistant Director for Field Operations wrote in an email the next morning.

Hoover's emails lay out all the questions that congressional and Justice Department investigators are examining about Fast and Furious.

"This is a major investigation with huge political implications and great potential if all goes well. We must be very prepared if it doesn't go well," Hoover wrote in a Oct. 5, 2007 email.

"I would like to discuss the following: Have we discussed the strategy with the US Attorney's Office re letting guns walk? Do we have this approval in writing? Have we discussed and thought thru the consequences of same? Are we tracking south of the border?" Hoover wrote in the email.

Current Attorney General and Obama appointee Eric Holder was investigating the Bush era gun walking program. So a fair minded American has to ask themselves who Issa is making it sound as though all this gun walking is some how Eric Holder's fault. Gosh do you think this is yet another political witch-hunt by right-wing conservatives that has about as much substance as Rush Limbaugh's brain. Maybe, just maybe Issa is also trying to distract attention from his own corruption - American Family Voices asks for investigation of Issa.

Is Herman Cain an Anti-American Snake-oil Salesman

Is Herman Cain a Delusional Anti-American Nutbag

“9-9-9 will pass, and it is not the price of pizza because, it has been well-studied and well-developed… The problem with that analysis [that it will not raise enough revenue] is that it is incorrect. The reason it's incorrect is because they start with assumptions that we don't make. Remember, 9- 9-9 plan throws out the current tax code. ... Now, what 9-9-9 does, it expands the base. When you expand the base, we can arrive at the lowest possible rate, which is 9-9-9.” — Herman Cain, Washington Post-Bloomberg debate, October 11, 2011

 A family of four making $50,000 a year “are still going to have some money left over.”— Cain, on MSNBC, October 12, 2011

It almost sounds like something out of the movie “Dave,” in which the accidental president enlists his accountant friend, Murray Blum, to help him figure out the federal budget.

 During Tuesday’s Washington Post-Bloomberg debate, Herman Cain, the former chief executive of Godfather’s Pizza, named Rich Lowrie of Cleveland as “my lead economist” who helped develop Cain’s signature “9-9-9” plan for overhauling the federal tax system. “He is an economist, and he has worked in the business of wealth creation most of his career,” Cain said.

 Actually, according to Lowrie’s Linked-In profile, he has a bachelor’s degree in accountancy from Case Western Reserve University, not economics. Lowrie, in an e-mail, said he did not consider himself an economist, just “senior economic advisor” to the Cain campaign. Donor information maintained by Opensecrets.org shows he has donated $1,500 to Cain in 2010 and 2011, but also contributed $2,300 to Mitt Romney in his first run for the presidency in 2007.

Okay, so Cain may have exaggerated the qualifications of his economic guru. But he has forcefully defended his ‘9-9-9’ plan, both during Tuesday night’s debate and on MSNBC’s “Daily Rundown” on Wednesday. Many readers have asked us to examine the plan and explain it, so let’s take it for a test drive.


The Facts

 The “9-9-9” label is actually a bit of misnomer. Cain would toss out much of the current federal tax code and replace it, eventually and only temporarily, with three taxes — a 9 percent income tax, a 9 percent business transactions tax and a 9 percent federal sales tax. On paper, the first two look like cuts, because payroll taxes for Social Security and Medicare (now nearly 15 percent, including corporate contributions) would be repealed. The sales tax would be new, on top of existing state sales taxes. 

 But note that we said the “9-9-9” would happen eventually — and then only temporarily. That’s because it is only the second step of a planned three-step process. The first step would cut individual and corporate tax rates to a top 25 percent rate (down from a current high of 35 percent). Then the final step would replace all of the taxes — even the 9s — with a national sales tax, known by proponents as a “Fair Tax.”

 (As denizens of Washington, we find this three-step process to be highly dubious. It takes years, even decades, to fundamentally overhaul the tax code. Herman Cain is going to do this three times in his presidency? But we digress.)

 Much attention has focused on whether Cain’s plan, in its 9-9-9 stage, would raise as much revenue as the current tax system. Bloomberg News had calculated it would collect about $2 trillion, thus falling short by about $200 billion a year. But Lowrie sent Bloomberg an analysis on Wednesday that asserted “9-9-9” would actually collect slightly more — $2.3 trillion.

 We think the revenue question is beside the point. Anyone can turn the dials in their computer models to generate the assumptions they want.

Michael Linden of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, for instance, estimates the plan would generate just $1.3 trillion. The biggest difference between the two estimates is that Linden thinks the 9 percent business tax would yield $112 billion a year, and Cain says he would get $862 billion — a gap that simply demonstrates how a few different assumptions can generate extremely different results. (Linden on Thursday updated his analysis, saying he had underestimated how much revenue the business tax would raise.)

 Cain’s proposal is so radical that it makes more sense to examine the potential impact on taxpayers. A key part of Cain’s pitch for the plan during the debate was this: “When you expand the base, we can arrive at the lowest possible rate, which is 9-9-9.”

“Expand the base” really means that more taxpayers will pay taxes under his plan.

Right now, nearly half of taxpayers don’t pay income taxes, but they do pay their share of payroll taxes, which amounts to 7.65 percent of wage income (though much of it is capped at $107,000). Cain would also eliminate the earned-income tax credit, which is intended to lift working Americans out of poverty. Many of these workers currently receive tax refunds.

On top of that, Cain would introduce the new sales tax, which would affect lower and moderate-income people who spend most of their income on purchases, not savings and investments. Depending on how you do the math, people now paying zero or negative taxes might be faced with a 27 percent tax on income.

In other words, while on paper Cain is promising a tax cut, in reality tens of millions of lower-income Americans would face tax increases. People in high tax brackets — 28 percent and higher — would likely see big tax cuts. (As part of his plan, Cain would also eliminate estate taxes and capital gains taxes, which, again, mostly affect higher-income people with stock and real estate investments.)

There have been several interesting analyses done on the “9-9-9” plan. Edward D. Kleinbard of the University of Southern California School of Law identifies several unusual quirks, including a “disguised one-time 9 percent tax on existing wealth — no doubt much to the surprise of Mr. Cain and his followers.” Kleinbard, former chief of staff of the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, says that “contrary to casual impressions, the Plan could be expected to raise substantial amounts of revenue, but does so largely by skewing downwards the distribution of tax burdens when compared to current law.”

Bruce Bartlett, a former Reagan administration official who now calls himself an independent, also offered a critical examination this week on the New York Times Economix blog. He (as did Kleinbard) noted that the business tax allows for no deduction for wages, which he said  “is likely to raise the cost of employing workers, even with abolition of the employers’ share of the payroll tax.”

In other words the working poor - generally people making under $9 an hour would have a huge increase in their federal tax rate. People making over $100k a year would get a huge tax break on their investment income - thus yet another tax break for the well off. Though those people would also lose individual deductions which may have ultimately made their federal taxes lower. Cain will not and cannot give many details because he has never had the plan submitted to a team of independent tax experts to see the effects. Almost 51% of Americans would pay more in federal taxes - those living just below the median, while the wealthy would get even wealthier. As we have all seen the past twenty years wealthy people do not take their extra wealth and create jobs they just bank the money or get more free money from their capital gains. Cain is just bamboozling America with a slightly newer version of voodoo trickle down economics. The kind of economics that are partly responsible for our current economic problems. Herman Cain is just another crazy conservative nutbar who likes to hear the sound of his own delusional and arrogation voice. His supporters are just rubes who want to get through life not paying their fair share for the cost of infrastructure that makes a healthy economy possible.

Herman Cain Owned and Operated by the Koch Brothers

Why Herman Cain Is The Koch Brothers’ Favorite Presidential Candidate

Former pizza executive Herman Cain’s rise to the top of the Republican presidential pack will undoubtedly put smiles on the faces of two brothers: Charles and David Koch.

The Koch Brothers are infamous for using their billions to finance the Tea Party and helping to gut business and environmental regulations. They have not been shy about influencing conservative politics, both through large direct contributions – the Kochs have pledged to raise $88 million for the 2012 election – and funding corporate front groups like Americans for Prosperity.

Though the Kochs have not made a public endorsement in the Republican presidential contest, Herman Cain’s rise from niche radio host to presidential frontrunner appears to have been largely fueled by the Koch network. From Cain’s early foray into politics to his presidential campaign speeches to his top staff, the former pizza executive has had close, consistent ties with the Koch Brothers.

Given the extensive connections between Herman Cain and the Koch Brothers, ThinkProgress asked the former pizza executive about his thoughts on David Koch back in March. Cain called David Koch — as well as his brother Charles — a “patriot”:


Here is a rundown of the numerous ways in which Cain and the Kochs have worked hand-in-hand for years to advance corporate-friendly conservative policies:

    - Cain held an official position in the Koch-funded group Americans for Prosperity: Dating back to 2005, Cain led Americans for Prosperity’s new “Prosperity Expansion Project.” The position allowed Cain to barnstorm the country, giving speeches, holding town halls, and sharpening his skills for an eventual presidential bid.

    - Cain’s campaign manager is the former president of Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin chapter: Prior to becoming Cain’s campaign manager and chief of staff, Mark Block served as the president of Americans for Prosperity’s Wisconsin chapter. At the same time Block was serving in that position, he is credited with “talk[ing] Herman Cain into running for president”. As AFP-Wisconsin president in 2006, Block even tried to convince Cain to run for president in the 2008 election because of the former pizza executive’s rousing speeches at Americans for Prosperity events. Block has a history of electoral dirty tricks and once fined $15,000 for violating Wisconsin election law.

    - Cain attended the Koch Brothers’ private biannual meeting in Palm Springs: In January, the Kochs hosted one of their biannual meetings of top corporate and political figures in order to coordinate strategy and raise money for the conservative movement. Cain was among the small group of conservative politicians invited to attend.

    - Cain traveled to Wisconsin in support of the Koch-funded union-busting bill: During the apex of the fight in Wisconsin over Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) union-busting bill this spring, Cain traveled to the Badger State to support the conservative power-grab, speaking at a rally in February. The Koch brothers were major players in Wisconsin’s anti-union push.

    - Cain headlined a Koch-funded anti-climate rally in New York: As other presidential candidates focused on glad-handing with voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, Cain took time out in June to travel to New York and headline a Koch-backed anti-climate rally. The rally, held by Americans for Prosperity, protested New York’s involvement in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, an important project to fight global warming that has been long-opposed by the Koch Brothers.

    - Cain was a featured speaker at the Koch-funded RightOnline conference: Cain has been a featured speaker at RightOnline, the Koch-backed conservative conference, for the past two years.

The Koch Brothers’ investment in Herman Cain appears to already be paying dividends in advancing their corporatist agenda. Cain has centered his presidential bid around the “999? economic plan, an enormous corporate giveaway that would reduce companies’ income tax rate from 35 percent to 9 percent. Not only would Koch Industries reap massive benefits, but the Koch Brothers themselves — already tied for the fourth richest people in America — would personally see their tax rates fall from approximately 28 percent to around 11 percent.

Cain and the Koch brothers have a lot in common. One of the biggest items on their radical conservative agenda is to transform America into a modern day plantation where workers are only technically free. American workers would be stripped of all rights, unions would be banned, this working class folks would be even more wage slaves than they are now. The cherry on top would be a 9 percent sales tax on in addition to the sales taxes medium and low income workers are paying now. Why? So that billionaire special interests like the Koch brothers can make even more money for exerting no more effort than getting up and going to the office to sit behind their desks.

Joe Bidens' Noble Ownership Of An Economy Republicans Crashed

VP Joe Bidens' Noble Ownership Of An Economy Republicans Crashed

This week, Vice President Joe Biden inadvertently turned the heat up on his boss - and warmed conservative hearts - when he declared it's "totally legitimate" for the 2012 presidential election to be "a referendum on Obama and Biden and the nature and state of the economy" because "we're in charge." His candor and willingness to take accountability is refreshing and even noble. After all, polling from CNN and CBS shows majorities of Americans still blame George W. Bush and the Republicans for the nation's struggling economy. And as it turns out, Biden could have simply taken a page from the Republican playbook. As it turns out, with its bogus claims that Bush "inherited a recession" and Barack Obama was responsible for the Bush economic meltdown even before taking office, Republican mythology wrongly insists America's economic woes are always the Democrats' fault.

While Vice President Biden explained the equivalent of "Bush broke it, we own it," the Republican objective since January 2009 has been to set that ownership in stone. During his admitted debt ceiling hostage-taking, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell explained, "I refuse to help Barack Obama get re-elected by marching Republicans into a position where we have co-ownership of a bad economy."

Of course, trying to evade responsibility for the nation's economic difficulties has been a central GOP strategy for years. As it turns out, George W. Bush and his amen corner continue to insist he inherited a recession from Bill Clinton, a claim then as now unsupported by the facts.

Nevertheless, even as he was ambling out of the Oval Office, President Bush in January 2009 tried to make that case that we blameless for the two recessions which occurred under his watch:

    "In terms of the economy, look, I inherited a recession, I am ending on a recession. In the meantime there were 52 months of uninterrupted job growth. And I defended tax cuts when I campaigned, I helped implement tax cuts when I was President, and I will defend them after my presidency as the right course of action. And there's a fundamental philosophical debate about tax cuts. Who best can spend your money, the government or you? And I have always sided with the people on that issue."

But not the facts. After all, Bush nearly doubled the national debt, as Republican majorities in Congress voted seven times to raise the debt ceiling during his tenure. The first modern President to cut taxes during wartime, Bush's tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were the single biggest driver of red ink during the last decade and, if made permanent, will be for the next. And the meager one million jobs created during his presidency represented what the Wall Street Journal deemed the "The Worst Track Record on Record."

Then there's Bush's claim that "I inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton. As the data show, it's not true. (He did inherit a 4.2% unemployment rate and budget surpluses.) But after ten years of perpetuation by the right-wing propaganda machine, the long-ago debunked myth has remained remarkably durable.

For two terms - eight years - Bush and his apologists - blamed everything on Bill Clinton. Now they blame everything Bush and a Congress controlled by Republicans for 6 of those eight years on Democrats. This is another alarming and pathetic fake patriotism of right-wing conservatives, never be responsible, never be accountable for what they do. No movement with that mindset is fit to govern in any capacity. Republicans hate government and work very hard at making sure government doesn't work for the people. Its time to send them all back to private life where they can be full time irresponsible wackos and leave the rest of us the next twenty years to undo the damage they've done.

The 10 Craziest Republican Governors in America and Their Radical Agenda

The 10 Craziest Republican Governors in America and Their Radical Agenda

10. Robert Bentley, Alabama. Bentley has been one of the quieter governors among the new class, but his lack of Chris Christie-like bluster has allowed some of Alabama's scarier provisions to sneak by unnoticed. A dermatologist who was accused of using his title “Dr.” on the ballot to sway voters, Bentley is also an evangelical Christian who declared on the day of his inauguration that “anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother."

No word if undocumented immigrants who happen to be Christian are his brothers. Alabama passed the nation's most restrictive immigration law just last month, surpassing Arizona's SB 1070 as the worst place in the country to be an undocumented immigrant—or be mistaken for one. The bill, HB 56, was called a “wish list of restrictionist immigration provisions at the state law level,” by Kevin Johnson, dean of the law school at the University of California, Davis.

The bill not only makes it a crime for undocumented immigrants to be in the state, but attempts to criminalize every aspect of their existence. It requires schools to ask students about their immigration status, and bans undocumented students from state universities; it makes it illegal to rent housing to immigrants, and allows police to ask for papers using “reasonable suspicion.” HB56 also makes contracts that undocumented people sign unenforceable—so if employers do break the law and hire immigrant workers, they can treat them as badly as they like without fear of repercussions. And that's just one possibility.

9. Nikki Haley, South Carolina. Nikki Haley, daughter of immigrants, is South Carolina's youngest governor, its first woman, and its first person of color. So we should be proud, right?

Not so much.

Haley defeated the good ol' boys on the campaign trail despite rumors of a sex scandal, mostly by outflanking them to the right. She used her status as the child of immigrants to tout a new, extreme anti-immigration bill, and took to the op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal to decry a decision by the National Labor Relations Board that Boeing was not able to circumvent its union workers by building new planes in non-union South Carolina. “It's called capitalism,” she wrote.

It's actually called union-busting. Boeing decided to move the assembly line to South Carolina after repeated strikes by the union workers in Washington State, and the NLRB ruled that the statements by company executives made it clear the move was in retaliation for union activity. Which is illegal.

Haley pushed for a picture ID law that would require voters to show ID at the polls before voting. In a state with a long history of disenfranchising people of color, the requirement, which makes it difficult for those without drivers' licenses to vote, brings back unpleasant memories.

Haley made national news before she'd even won her primary, but these days the news close to home isn't so good for her. “I believe she is the most corrupt person to occupy the governor’s mansion since Reconstruction,” John Rainey, a longtime Republican power broker told Corey Hutchins at the Nation. She's been replacing the old boys she promised to sweep out with confidantes and campaign contributors, and the only jobs she's created so far have been for close allies. Yet Sarah Palin-like, she remains popular on the national scale and appears to have far-reaching ambitions.

8. Jan Brewer, Arizona. It's Barack Obama's fault that we have Jan Brewer. Janet Napolitano was governor of Arizona, a popular Democrat in the state that gave us John McCain and Barry Goldwater. When she was tapped to become the new Homeland Security secretary, a border state with boiling-hot tension over immigration was left in the hands of the former Secretary of State, a Republican who went on to sign into law SB 1070, the “Papers Please” law that spawned the copycats in Georgia, Alabama, South Carolina and other states around the country.

Brewer likes to talk about the violent crime immigrants are responsible for, claiming “beheadings” despite absolutely no evidence, let alone links to immigrants, and blaming them for nearly every crisis her state (and the country) face.

She's also signed a law that aims to prevent unions from using member dues to fund political activity, and just for good measure cut funding for children's health care. She cut more than $72 million from health services, spearheaded a bill to eliminate KidsCare, the state's Medicaid program for children (though that failed, she pushed through an enrollment freeze on the program), and proposed eliminating the Early Childhood Development and Health Board. (Twenty-three percent of Arizona's children live in poverty).

In the interest of fairness, it is worth pointing out that Brewer has vetoed some of the more extreme bills coming out of the Arizona legislature this year. A “birther” bill that would have required candidates for office to submit a “circumcision certificate” or a “baptismal” certificate if the “long form” birth certificate constantly demanded of President Obama was unavailable was too much even for Brewer. And after the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords, Brewer shot down a bill that would allow guns on “public pathways” close to state schools. State Senator Kyrsten Sinema told the Daily Beast, though, that it's all part of a plan where legislators pass bills to satisfy extremist primary voters, and Brewer, who is not up for re-election, vetoes them.
7. Paul LePage, Maine. LePage, Maine's new governor, first made headlines when he told the NAACP to “kiss my butt” on local television. The civil rights group had expressed anger that the governor would not be taking part in local Martin Luther King Day events. He then joined the ranks of the anti-union crowd when he ordered a labor-themed mural moved away from the state's labor department, claiming that it was not “balanced.”

But LePage's animosity toward labor history extends well beyond art. He recently signed into law a bill that eases child labor laws, lowering restrictions on the hours and days teenagers can work. No word as to what he plans to do about those 8 percent of adult Mainers who are looking for work as well—they want pesky things like health insurance, benefits, full-time hours, and are more likely to know their rights and complain about them than 16-year-olds.

He's been so vitriolic that eight state senators from his own party wrote an op-ed published in three Maine newspapers, asking him to tone it down. "Belittling comments, whether they come from the governor or his opponents, have no place in Maine public life," they wrote.

And while conservatives in Congress take aim at Barack Obama's health care reform, LePage signed into law a rollback of consumer protections against health insurance companies, which can now raise premiums on individuals up to 10 percent a year. Previously, the state had to grant permission to insurance companies before they could hike premiums. Maine progressives are organizing against this move.

LePage is one of many who have also targeted the voting process, aiming to make it more difficult to register to vote and to cast a ballot. First the state eliminated its nearly 40-year-old same-day registration process, a process that was used by 60,000 in 2008 and is credited with being the reason behind Maine's high voter turnout rates. A bill that would have required photo ID to vote did not make it through the legislature. Voter ID laws disproportionately target the elderly, students and poor people who are unlikely to have drivers' licenses; they add one more layer of difficulty between voters and the ballot box. Conveniently, those are all constituencies that usually lean left.

6. Rick Perry, Texas. Oh, Texas. You've given us so much: Ann Richards and Molly Ivins, as well as George W. Bush. And now you have given us Rick “Goodhair” Perry, as Ivins used to call him.

Perry and his hair have been governing Texas since Bush left, and unless he succeeds in seceding from the union or running for president, it looks like he'll be there for a while. So he's had the time to rack up a truly unfair list of achievements, from executing at least one innocent man to hosting Ted Nugent at a concert where Nugent wore a Confederate flag shirt and shouted insults about non-English speakers.

But what has Perry done for us lately? Plenty.

He's signed a voter ID bill, making it harder for elderly Texans, students, and others without drivers' licenses to vote, passed a budget with $15 billion in budget cuts, and a bill requiring women to have sonograms before they can obtain abortions. While a woman can refuse to look at the sonogram, her doctor is required to describe it.

Perry also pushed a bill that would ban so-called immigrant sanctuary cities, putting yet more pressure on Texas' large immigrant population, and a bill that would prohibit “intrusive” airport pat-downs, to curry favor with angry libertarians. Both bills died in the legislature.

Maybe next he'll combine his legislative achievements and require that fetuses have photo ID. If he doesn't hit the national campaign trail, that is.

5. John Kasich, Ohio. Ohio's one of those states that becomes tremendously important to the national political scene come presidential election time. In between elections, it's often forgotten.

But Kasich has done his part to keep Ohio in the news, first by choosing an all-white, mostly-male cabinet (and defending that choice by saying "I don't look at things from the standpoint of any of these sort of metrics that people tend to focus on, race or age, or any of those things"), then killing Ohio's high speed rail project, which would have created jobs and provided faster, greener transportation for Ohioans and those traveling across the state.

The move that drew thousands to protest in the Ohio capitol, though, was SB 5, a bill that eliminates collective bargaining over health care and benefits, bans strikes, and institutes so-called merit pay for the state's public workers. Ohio drew some energy from Wisconsin's labor protests, but has created its own movement to fight back against the law. Just last week, workers marched in a “People's Parade” to deliver their petition to repeal the bill to the Secretary of State; 1.3 million signatures were collected on the petition, more than five times the number required to get the repeal on the ballot in the fall.

Of course, no right-wing governor worth his salt would pass up an opportunity to sign the country's most restrictive anti-abortion bill, right? A bill that would ban all abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected just passed the Ohio House and heads to the Senate.

Kasich's approval ratings have been the lowest for a first-term Ohio governor since 1983, dropping to a low of 33 percent, and Democrats are moving for a recall, though it's unlikely to happen while Republicans still control the legislature. Still, an unpopular Republican governor in the state spells good news for Democrats both on the state and national level.

4. Rick Scott, Florida. Rick Scott wins the award for being the least popular governor in the country. A mere 29 percent of Floridians think their governor is doing a good job.

The good news is Scott is so unpopular that even his party is abandoning their support of his agenda. State Senator Dennis Jones said of his state: “This is certainly not the ‘jobs, jobs, jobs’ that the public expected. If we added everything up, we’re probably in the negative this session for jobs, not the positive.” The bad news is that Scott might actually be the most extreme governor in the country, and he's not giving up on his agenda just because the legislature dislikes him.

Suzy Khimm at Mother Jones wrote:

In 1997, Rick Scott was implicated in the biggest Medicare fraud case in US history, stepping down as CEO of Columbia/HCA after the hospital giant was fined $1.7 billion and found guilty of swindling the government. As Florida's new governor, Scott is now trying to kill off an anti-fraud database that would track the fraudulent distribution of addictive prescription drugs in Florida, over the protestations of law enforcement officials, Republican state lawmakers, and federal drug policy officials.

And that's just one step. Scott was the founder of Conservatives for Patients' Rights, which was out to torpedo health care reform any way it could, and he rejected first $2.4 billion in federal funds for high-speed rail and then $1 billion to implement health care reform. He's slashed 10 percent from the state's education budget, and couldn't even get his own party to vote for an SB 1070 copycat anti-immigrant bill. And like Rick Perry, he's signed a bill that requires pregnant women to get a sonogram before they can get an abortion.

Like in Ohio, a deeply unpopular GOP governor in Florida could be the key to Barack Obama's reelection. Democratic strategists credit anger at Scott for surprise victories in mayor's races, and hope the anger will still be there in 2012.

3. Rick Snyder, Michigan. Michigan has given us one of the most frightening power grabs in a year of power grabs. Snyder's “emergency manager” legislation gives him the power to appoint a unilateral authority over a city or school district, who can then fire officials, close schools, void union contracts, and otherwise assume near-total control.

AlterNet reported recently:

In March, the Michigan legislature passed an update to state law that gave “emergency financial managers” expanded powers over cities and school districts facing financial distress. The provision drew protests immediately, with thousands converging on the Capitol on March 16, the day the law was signed. Unions and community organizations recognized the law as a threat, not just in the cities where emergency financial managers were imposed, but around the state, where unions would be pressured to make concessions in order to keep a financial manager from being imposed on them. Since financial managers have the power to wipe away a union contract with a pen stroke, the unions are left with an impossible choice—concede great chunks of hard-won benefits and wages, or risk losing it all.

That would be enough to land Snyder near the top of this list, except of course it's not all. Snyder eliminated the Michigan Business Tax and replaced it with a flat tax of just 6 percent for corporations, which essentially handed them a $1.8 billion tax cut. To pay for that cut, he cut education spending and of course public workers—and then eliminated the exemption that allows senior citizens not to pay taxes on their pension income. Yes, he taxed old people and cut funding from children to lower the corporate income tax rate.

Of course there are anti-choice bills moving in Michigan, as well as anti-immigrant legislation, and swipes at domestic partner benefits for university employees. But the “emergency manager” law is a unique accomplishment for Snyder, one that warrants the recall campaign against him.

2. Chris Christie, New Jersey. Chris Christie seems to have watched a few too many episodes of "The Sopranos." The New Jersey governor relies on bluster and swagger, taking shots at teachers and legislators and engaging in a very public name-calling match with the very same Democratic State Senate president who helped him pass what has been called the worst anti-union bill in the country. He's made himself a YouTube star, prompting cheers from the right and sending chills up the spine of the left, who fear Christie on a national level.

Christie was the advance guard for the class of 2010, knocking out former Governor John Corzine in 2009 amid cheers from the Tea Party and shivers from Democrats, who were sure this guy couldn't possibly win in New Jersey. He could, and he did, and even though 51 percent of voters now say they'd support someone else, the damage has been done. He's pulled money out of renewable energy and cut $820 million from education budgets—a move ruled unconstitutional because it “fell more heavily upon our high risk districts and the children educated within those districts.”

The reason his former buddy Steve Sweeney is so angry with Christie? After cutting a deal with the Democrats for the anti-union law, Christie used his line-item veto to slash programs Democrats had bargained for:

He mowed down a series of Democratic add-ons, including $45 million in tax credits for the working poor, $9 million in health care for the working poor, $8 million for women’s health care, another $8 million in AIDS funding and $9 million in mental-health services. But the governor added $150 million in school aid for the suburbs, including the wealthiest towns in the state. That is enough to restore all the cuts just listed.

No wonder Sweeney called him a “mean old bastard.”

1. Scott Walker, Wisconsin. We really ought to be grateful to Scott Walker. Because of him and the Wisconsin state legislature, dominated by the Fitzgerald brothers, progressives and especially the labor movement were reenergized. The Tea Party became yesterday's news as protesters thronged the capitol in Madison, refusing to leave for days while the Democratic state senators hid out in another state to prevent a vote on Walker's bill, which eliminated collective bargaining for the state's public workers.

Without Walker, public sector unions wouldn't have become a rallying cry for the left, that's for sure. But he picked the wrong fight in a state with a proud history of organized labor—a state that teaches labor history in the public schools.

Still, the bill passed, Walker's still in charge, and he's been taking aim at those who could defeat him. He got his way with a vicious voter ID bill and his budget cuts hit everything from the state university to the public schools to the state's health care program, one of the best in the country. He targeted rural broadband, people with disabilities and reproductive health care, and he's even messing with craft beer. (He really should know better on that one, but it seems there isn't a fight Walker's unwilling to pick.)

Walker's not eligible for recall yet, but the state senators who're supporting him are, and the elections are already moving forward. And like most of the other states on this list, the results in Wisconsin could have a big impact on the race in 2012.

The rightward shift in the country in 2010 didn't just bring us Tea Party-backed governors salivating over a chance to enact their agenda on the bodies of women, union workers, and immigrants. It also brought us some Democrats who seem to be buying into the same pro-corporate, anti-working people policies. So honorable mention here goes to:

1. Andrew Cuomo, New York. I know, I know, he just passed marriage equality, right? Well, he's taking a bit too much credit for that, since the Republican-dominated state legislature wound up bringing up and passing the bill simply because it was actually really popular right now to do so in New York. Meanwhile, Cuomo's refused to keep the popular “millionaire's tax” and cut a third of homeless youth shelter beds instead. Cuomo too has made enemies within organized labor, freezing workers' salaries and calling for cutbacks, mounting a political campaign even after taking office aimed at demonizing labor.

And this is the leading Democrat being discussed as a presidential candidate for 2016?

Research assistance on this piece came from Charles Monaco at the Progressive States Network.

Notice anything in common. These Republicans governors all ran on a campaign to create jobs. All of them have actually done as much as they can to increase unemployment and at the same time give millions in tax giveaways to corporations that are making record profits. They have all made education cuts which will affect future employment in their states. Business looking for educated young workers to replace retiring older workers will be out of luck. They're spending millions on making it more difficult for students and seniors to vote. They're spending millions to hunt down a relatively few undocumented workers. We all want immigration laws to be enforced, but there is such a thing as putting money into priorities first. People who are here to pick lettuce. wash dishes and cut lawns are hardly a top priority.