Gov. Rick Perry - Bad Christian and Fake Patriot

Five Scriptures You Won’t Hear at Rick Perry’s Prayer Event by Jim Rigby, pastor of St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Austin, TX.

As a native Texan, I’m used to crazy religion and crazy politics. So, the announcement of Gov. Rick Perry’s plans for “The Response,” a prayer event scheduled for Aug. 6 at Houston’s Reliant Stadium, was not a surprise.

But as a Presbyterian minister and community organizer, it’s part of my job to stand up for my neighbors. The use of the governor’s office to promote one religion in a country with such rich religious diversity is obviously unhealthy politics, but -- if one takes the Christian and Jewish scriptures seriously -- it is also unhealthy religion. Here are five rather important verses of scripture you aren’t likely to hear at “The Response”:

Don’t make a show of prayer

“And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray in public places to be seen by others… But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your heavenly parent, who is unseen.” (Matt. 6:5-6)

While Jesus never addressed the issues most important to some of this event’s co-sponsors, such as homosexuality and abortion, he did speak out against public displays of religion. Whatever Jesus meant by the word “prayer,” it seems to have been about the quiet and personal. The disciples had to ask Jesus how to pray, which is a pretty good indication that he wasn’t praying a lot publicly. What he did say about prayer carried a warning label: “Don’t rub it in other people’s faces.”

God doesn’t withhold rain because we’ve done something wrong

“God causes the sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” (Matt. 5:45)

Perry recently called Texans to pray for rain, which implies that God steers clouds toward the worthy. According to Right Wing Watch, one of the events co-sponsors has said the earthquake in Japan happened because the emperor had sex with the Sun Goddess. It may be a part of our lower nature to blame disasters on people we don’t like or understand, but Jesus taught that God sends rain on the just and unjust. Furthermore, he said our love should be equally nonselective.

I have chosen Christianity as my life’s religion, but when nonjudgmental love is taken out of its center, it becomes poisonous and predatory. The word “God” can be a helpful symbol for all the transcendentals of life, but the symbol becomes instantly pathological when used as a scientific explanation or political justification.

God doesn’t have favorites

Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism.” (Acts 10:34)

When the Bible says that God is not a “respecter of persons” it means that God doesn’t have a favorite country or religion. The idea that God wants Christians to be in charge of other people violates Jesus’ teaching that we are to take the lowest place. We are to change the world by humble persuasion and good example, not by messianic coercion. The assumption that Christianity and America are God’s two favorite things will be particularly ironic, as the prayer event falls on the anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima.

Worship by those who neglect the poor is offensive to God

“I hate, I despise your religious festivals; your assemblies are a stench to me… Away with the noise of your songs! I will not listen to the music of your harps. But let justice roll on like a river, righteousness like a never-failing stream!” (Amos 5:21-24)

The prophet Amos chastised the religion of his day for praying to God while mistreating people. Texas leads the nation in citizens who are uninsured, who work for minimum wage, and who die from unsafe working conditions on construction sites. Our state has the widest gap between rich and poor of any in the union. If the governor wants to call us to repentance it should begin with our real sins against the poor not the imaginary sins dreamed up by his friends.

The heart of Christian ethics is being a good neighbor

When Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37) it was to teach humility to a rich young zealot who thought he was approaching moral perfection. The Samaritans were the scapegoats of the day. The rich young ruler would consider Samarians heretics and immoral people. Jesus used a merciful Samaritan as the example of ethical perfection. It is a lesson many Christians have yet to learn.

One sponsor of the event, the American Family Association, is listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a hate group. The group’s director of analysis for government and policy is quoted by the SPLC as saying that Hitler was “an active homosexual” who sought out gays “because he could not get straight soldiers to be savage and brutal and vicious enough.” He also said Muslims should not be allowed in the military or be allowed to build mosques in the United States.

None of this analysis springs from malice. In fact, I must confess that I have a soft spot for Rick Perry. When the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act in Texas was passed, I had the honor of pushing the wheelchair of Byrd’s mother into the governor’s office for the signing. I privately thanked Perry for his courage in standing up to all the groups who had fought against the bill; I knew he might pay a political price for signing the bill. Tears came to his eyes, and he said, “It’s the right thing to do.”

I can’t know what is in Perry’s heart, of course, but I do know the problem isn’t one politician but rather a nation that has embraced an unhealthy political arrogance undergirded by even unhealthier religious hubris. The “prayer” that is most needed at this time is for each of us, believer or not, to go into our own heart and find the humility and empathy that is at the core of righteousness, political and spiritual.

Americans who care about the Constitution can help fight against hypocrites like fanatical conservative Rick Perry by joining Americans For The Separation of Church and State.

They Eat Their Own. Right-wing Republicans Frank Gaffney Accuses Wing-nut Republican Herman Cain of Conspiring With Terrorists

They Eat Their Own. Right-wing Republicans Frank Gaffney Accuses Wing-nut Republican Herman Cain of Conspiring With Terrorists

Last week, Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain met with Muslim leaders outside Washington, DC in a laudable attempt to make amends for the Islamophobic positions that had come to characterize his candidacy. Cain had previously declared he will not appoint Muslims in his administration — he later backtracked and said he would only require a special loyalty oath from Muslim appointees — and argued that Americans have the right to ban mosques.

However, not everyone was pleased with the former pizza executive’s recent move.

Last weekend, ThinkProgress spoke with Frank Gaffney, a conservative conspiracy theorist who nevertheless enjoys outsized influence on the right. The Center for Security Policy president had a unique take on the matter: Herman Cain had actually been meeting with the Muslim Brotherhood.

According to Gaffney, the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center, where Cain met with Muslim leaders last Wednesday, is “a prominent Muslim Brotherhood apparatus in Washington DC.” The Center’s Imam, Mohamed Magid, is actually, says Gaffney, “the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States”:

KEYES: Where would you say Herman Cain’s at now?

GAFFNEY: I only saw one press report of it, and it sounded as if some of what you just described was said by people, Muslim Brotherhood people frankly, with whom he was meeting rather than the candidate himself. [...]

KEYES: Those were Muslim Brotherhood people that he was meeting with?

GAFFNEY: Oh yeah. The ADAMS Center is a prominent Muslim Brotherhood apparatus in Washington DC. It’s one of the most aggressive proponents of its agenda in the city. [...] Specifically, meeting with Mohamed Magid who is the president of the largest Muslim Brotherhood front in the United States, who happens also to be the Imam at the ADAMS Center. It’s one of those things, it’s a very problematic departure from what I think had been a generally sensible… I don’t agree everything he has said and some of the positions he has taken, but I think generally speaking he’s been forthright in raising a concern that I think is warranted. And if in fact he’s now changed his position in ways that are being reported, that’s even more troubling than if he was spending time with Muslim Brothers.



Such a charge would be shocking, were it not made by a man who says the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the federal government and CIA chief David Petraeus is submissive to Sharia law.

Cain joins a long list of prominent figures that Gaffney accuses of working with the Muslim Brotherhood, including CPAC, Grover Norquist, David Petraeus, the federal government, and Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan.

Despite Gaffney’s outlandish beliefs, he remains an extraordinarily influential figure on the right. Members of Congress regularly appear on his radio show, Secure Freedom Radio. He is an advisor and close friend to Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN), a leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. And along with a small group of like-minded conservatives, Gaffney has turned Islamophobia into an industry.

With his latest accusation against Herman Cain, Gaffney is well on his way to becoming the 2011 version of Rudy Giuliani. Gaffney’s every utterance now boils down to “a noun, a verb, and ‘Muslim Brotherhood.’”

Most Americans see radical Muslims as just flesh and blood human beings who can be brought to justice - like President Obama and our Special Forces did with Osama Bin Laden. On the other hand many on the conservative Right, such as Gaffney and Michele Bachmann see radical Muslims as supermen who are everywhere and have supernatural influence over others. Herman Cain is a conservative nut, but as far as any proof that he is conspiring with terrorists, well there is no evidence. This is how conservatism works. They just fling insults and call people names without any evidence to back them up. It is as though they have embraced the fanatical and UnAmerican as the new morality. I guess they never read that bit about not bearing false witness.

Conservative Republican Debt Ceiling Circus Will Make Recession Worse

Conservative Republican Debt Ceiling Circus Will Make Recession Worse

On Monday, the House finally passed a deal to raise the debt limit after weeks of wrangling with a cadre of reactionary, Tea Party-endorsed lawmakers. The measure, which will force some serious cuts to public spending, is expected to easily pass in the Senate. When it does, a painful second "dip" into recession becomes far more likely -- all the conditions are there.

Last week, a depressing report on economic growth caught many observers by surprise. The take-away was that gross domestic product (GDP) – the measure of economic activity within our borders – has been growing at a snail's pace in the first half of this year -- far slower than analysts had predicted. Researchers at the Federal Reserve tell us that since 1947, about half of the times we've had six months of growth as weak as we've seen in 2011, the economy sank into recession in the following year. But many of those slow periods occurred in a different era; today, with Washington obsessed with cutting spending, the chances are certainly greater than 50/50.

We got into this recession when the American people lost not only jobs, but also $14 trillion in wealth during the crash, and pulled back on spending as a result. But we're stuck treading water, two years after the “recovery” officially began, in large part because of the age of austerity – due to cuts forced on us by this misguided and shortsighted view that large deficits are a cause, rather than an effect, of the downturn.

Last year, with the private sector economy continuing to slump, an analysis by Moody's Analytics found that almost one in five dollars in American consumers' wallets came from one government program or another. The public sector has already seen deep cuts, and that trend will only worsen with Washington's relentless focus on deficit reduction. Without those dollars, there will be fewer consumers demanding American companies' goods and services, and the private sector will continue to have little incentive to hire. That's our core economic problem at this time.

The American economy is heading into dark waters, but the coming "austerity recession" won't only be a result of the tireless efforts of a small band of conservative ideologues bent on dismantling the social safety net that emerged during the last century. It will also be a consequence of a crippling intellectual crisis among our elites.

Propaganda Trumps Research

For almost a century, the prevailing economic paradigm has held that when the private sector is in recession, and people aren't spending money, the public sector needs to step in and act as a “buyer of last resort,” running deficits to keep people working until the economy gets going again. While the fine details of “Keynesian” theory have been the subject of debate, in broad strokes, it remains the thinking shared by most economists across the political spectrum. But even as it remains the dominant economic paradigm, a network of deep-pocketed conservative donors has, to a large degree, successfully discredited that idea in the political realm, replacing it with the simplistic and ahistorical narrative that deficits "destroy jobs.”

As Think Progress reported, “Since the end of the Bush presidency, shadowy right-wing groups, many of them formed for this very purpose, have primed the public with a sophisticated public relations campaign to shift the national discourse to a focus on debt reduction.” That's resulted in what Washington Post blogger Greg Sargent describes as a “deficit feedback loop,” in which “the relentless bipartisan focus on the deficit convinces voters to be worried about it, which in turn leads lawmakers to spend still more time talking about it and less time talking about the economy.” Sargent highlighted a study released in May by the National Journal confirming his thesis. It found, “a dramatically shifting landscape of coverage over the past two years, as the debate over how to fix the federal deficit has risen to prominence and the question of how to handle still-high unemployment has faded from the media's consciousness.”

It's not just the corporate media that's embraced the dubious narrative that deficits are hurting rather than helping the moribund economy. In his deficit address, Barack Obama said, “The greatest long-term threat to America's national security is America's debt.” Many Democrats in Congress – and even a plurality of “progressive” pundits – agree. That's the environment in which lawmakers cut a debt limit deal that, while not as bad as it might have been, will nonetheless drag down this fragile “recovery.”

In a typical piece of he said/she said reporting, the Washington Post told readers that “liberals” say that “the weak gross domestic product figures showed that massive government cutbacks were unwise, while conservatives said that lowering the budget deficit should be the priority.” But as economist Jared Bernstein noted,“the evidence easily supports the contention that government spending cutbacks have been a large drag on growth in recent quarters and have led to sharp losses in state and local employment. And while you can surely find some economist to support the "lowering the budget deficit" priority, the vast majority will tell you that fiscal contraction now or in the near future would slow growth.” And, he added, “they’re not be any means all liberals. CBO says so. Business investors/economists say so too.”

He's right. JP Morgan economists warned that "Consumer spending growth [is] at recession-like levels," and Mohammed El-Erian, CEO of the bond investment firm Pimco, told ABC News that if the deal is passed, “unemployment will be higher than it would have been otherwise, growth will be lower than it would be otherwise, and inequality will be worse than it would be otherwise.” He explained, “We have a very weak economy, so withdrawing more spending at this stage will make it even weaker.”

The ultimate irony in this madness is that the obsession with cutting spending will not only result in a lot of pain, but it also may make our long-term fiscal picture worse. The leading cause of the deficit to date is not the Bush tax cuts or our grinding wars overseas but the recession itself, and the huge drop in tax revenues it triggered. We should be running high deficits and spending that money to get people back to work; it's the responsible way out of a deficit when the economy has a ton of excess capacity: idle workers, plants and equipment. As economist Paul Krugman put it:

On one side, interest rates on federal borrowing are currently very low, so spending cuts now will do little to reduce future interest costs. On the other side, making the economy weaker now will also hurt its long-run prospects, which will in turn reduce future revenue. So those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.

But while interest rates are low, the brinkmanship surrounding the debt ceiling appears to be pushing them higher. Budget guru Stan Collender noted that “the interest rate the U.S. government has to pay has already increased by as much as 40 basis points compared with what it otherwise would be. This means higher federal borrowing costs and deficits, and overall higher interest rates on everything from car loans to mortgages to credit cards.” Higher interest rates also depress growth and hurt the labor market.

The Debt Limit Deal

It is for these reasons that, according to economist John Irons, the debt ceiling deal passed on Monday will further depress growth and cost our ailing economy somewhere around 325,000 jobs next year. As Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute, put it to the Huffington Post, the "deal represents a consensus of policymakers to look the other way at America's persistent high unemployment.” Some analysts argue that it won't be too bad because the spending cuts are, for the most part, back-loaded to kick in after 2012 (among other reasons). That's largely true – the cuts next year will amount to around $30 billion in discretionary spending.

In 2013, far deeper cuts kick in, just as the last of the stimulus dollars evaporate and as extended unemployment benefits are expiring. The administration is betting that the economy will be robust at that point, a belief for which there is little basis.

What will those cuts – worth $2.4 trillion over the next decade -- look like? The president assures us that the deal “protects core investments from deep and economically damaging cuts.” But as economist Dean Baker explains, “the proposed cuts are a bit more than 5 percent of projected spending. However, large categories of the budget are protected. More than $27 trillion of projected spending goes to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and interest. If these areas escape largely untouched, the projected cuts would be around 13 percent of the remaining portion of the budget.” The “remaining portion of the budget” includes both spending on defense and on infrastructure and transport, scientific research, and training and education – the very “core investments” to which the president referred.

The New York Times describes the deal as a bipartisan agreement “to spend and invest less money in the American economy, a step that economists said risks the reversal of a faltering recovery, in the hope of improving the nation’s long-term prosperity.” There is precedent for that view. Just months after the UK launched a painful austerity program, GDP growth across the pond has ground to a halt. Shadow Economic Minister Ed Balls told the Guardian, "Families, pensioners and businesses can feel that tax rises and spending cuts which go too far and too fast are hurting, but it's increasingly clear that they aren't working."

While we worry about the credit ratings agencies' threats to downgrade the U.S. government's debt, the Guardian notes that “weak growth is fueling fears that Britain could lose its AAA credit rating unless the economy picks up sharply in the third quarter.” In other words, anemic growth also makes a country less credit-worthy.

Another Lost Decade?

The sum total of Washington's relentless focus on cutting spending during a crushing economic downturn is likely to result in a “lost decade” for working America. I should say another lost decade – median incomes were lower in 2007, before the crash, then they had been before the dot-com bubble burst in 2001.

The true tragedy is that economic historians will look back on this as an era in which policy-makers damaged Americans' welfare with ideologically driven, self-inflicted wounds. As Harvard economist Lawrence Katz put it, "Despite years and years of study by economic historians that we shouldn't repeat the mistakes of 1937, we seem to be doing it again.”

Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet.

Much of the public is convinced that unicorns are real or in this case deficits are the real problem or that taxes are the real problem. Deficits are not that bad as a percentage of GDP and taxes are the lowest they have been since 1950. Now that Conservative Republicans blackmailed the nation into drastic spending cuts there is no hope of spending to create the demand which in turn creates jobs. So the average American is crewed for another five to ten years. Republicans just sold the nation a lost decade of growth.

Republican Liar of the Week - Proto-Fascist Fanatic Michelle Malkin Falsely Suggests Dems Have Not Offered Debt Ceiling Plan

Republican Liar of the Week - Proto-Fascist Fanatic Michelle Malkin Falsely Suggests America's Democratic Party Have Not Offered Debt Ceiling Plan

On Fox & Friends, conservative columnist Michelle Malkin falsely suggested that Democrats have not offered a plan to resolve the debt ceiling crisis, saying that "conservatives ... have something to debate, which is something you can't say about the other side." In fact, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) has introduced a plan, which has been assessed by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) and been widely discussed by media outlets.

Malkin Falsely Suggests Dems Have No Debt Ceiling Plan

Malkin: Conservatives Are "The Ones Who Are Putting Forth Ideas ... Which Is Something You Can't Say About The Other Side." From the July 28 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends:

STEVE DOOCY (co-host): All right. Let's get moving. What do you think, Michelle?

MALKIN: Well, they sound like such programmed androids. They don't even believe their own rhetoric and spin anymore. I mean --

DOOCY: What do you mean by that?

MALKIN: It's been two years that they've been calling the tea party right-wing extremists who are out of touch with America and reality. OK. We get it. And, of course, the reality is that so many tea party grassroots activists are very unhappy with the compromise bill that Boehner is putting forward and as many conservatives on the Hill and outside the Hill believe is being forced down their throats.

I mean, there's been so much rancor on the right. I think it's a welcome and healthy thing. And the good news is, to look at the bright side for a moment, that despite all of the disagreement there is among conservatives, we're the ones who are putting forth the ideas, have the initiative, have the solutions. At least we have something to debate, which is something you can't say about the other side. [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 7/28/11]

But Reid Has Offered A Plan To Resolve Debt Ceiling Crisis

The Hill: "Reid Introduced His Own Budget Control Act, Which Aims To Cut $2.7 Trillion Over 10 Years" And "Increase The Debt Ceiling." The Hill reported on July 26:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) late Monday released dueling budget plans, and both took steps to move their competing plans ahead this week.

[...]

On the Senate side, Reid introduced his own Budget Control Act, which aims to cut $2.7 trillion over 10 years. In return, the bill would increase the debt ceiling by enough to get the U.S. past the 2012 elections. [The Hill, 7/26/11]

CBO: Reid's Plan Would "Increase The Debt Limit By $2.7 Trillion," "Establish Caps" On Spending. In a July 27 letter to Reid, the CBO "estimated the impact on the deficit of the Budget Control Act of 2011, as proposed in the Senate on July 25, 2011":

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has estimated the impact on the deficit of the Budget Control Act of 2011, as proposed in the Senate on July 25, 2011. The legislation would:

Establish caps on discretionary spending through 2021, including separate caps on new funding for war-related activities,
Allow for certain amounts of additional spending for "program integrity" initiatives aimed at reducing the amount of improper benefit payments and enhancing compliance with tax laws,
Extend and expand authority to auction licenses for parts of the electromagnetic spectrum,
Make changes to the Pell Grant and student loan programs,
Reduce certain payments to agricultural producers,
Increase the debt limit by $2.7 trillion,
Reinstate and modify certain budget process rules, and
Create a joint Congressional committee to propose further deficit reduction. [Congressional Budget Office, 7/27/11]

Moreover, Obama Outlined Specific Details Of Negotiations Made Before Boehner Walked Away From Talks

Obama: "We Had Offered Speaker Boehner ... Over A Trillion Dollars In Cuts To Discretionary Spending ... [And] An Additional $650 Billion In Cuts To Entitlement Programs." During his July 22 address on the default crisis, President Obama outlined several specific measures that he claimed he and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) had negotiated during their talks up to that point, including cuts to entitlement spending:

Good evening, everybody. I wanted to give you an update on the current situation around the debt ceiling. I just got a call about a half hour ago from Speaker Boehner who indicated that he was going to be walking away from the negotiations that we've been engaged in here at the White House for a big deficit reduction and debt reduction package. And I thought it would be useful for me to just give you some insight into where we were and why I think that we should have moved forward with a big deal.

Essentially what we had offered Speaker Boehner was over a trillion dollars in cuts to discretionary spending, both domestic and defense. We then offered an additional $650 billion in cuts to entitlement programs -- Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security. We believed that it was possible to shape those in a way that preserved the integrity of the system, made them available for the next generation, and did not affect current beneficiaries in an adverse way.

In addition, what we sought was revenues that were actually less than what the Gang of Six signed off on. So you had a bipartisan group of senators, including Republicans who are in leadership in the Senate, calling for what effectively was about $2 trillion above the Republican baseline that they've been working off of. What we said was give us $1.2 trillion in additional revenues, which could be accomplished without hiking taxes -- tax rates, but could simply be accomplished by eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions and engaging in a tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening the base.

So let me reiterate what we were offering. We were offering a deal that called for as much discretionary savings as the Gang of Six. We were calling for taxes that were less than what the Gang of Six had proposed. And we were calling for modifications to entitlement programs, would have saved just as much over the 10-year window. In other words, this was an extraordinarily fair deal. If it was unbalanced, it was unbalanced in the direction of not enough revenue. [White House, 7/22/11]

NYT Ran Graphic Showing Specific Offers Obama And Boehner Had Made Through July 22. In a graphic first published July 21 and updated several times since, The New York Times listed specific measures that both Obama and Boehner had reportedly offered in negotiations. According to the Times, both had agreed to $1.2 trillion in spending cuts, a $250 billion cut from Medicare, and an increase in federal tax revenue of somewhere between $36.2 and $36.7 trillion over a period of 10 years. From the Times:

NYT deal graphic - see chart at top.

Malkin has been trying for years to be taken seriously as a "journalist". One of the reasons no one takes her seriously except for right-wing freaks is that she can't seem to compose a sentence without twisting the truth or telling out right falsehoods. It is an historical fact that fanatics and extremists must distort and lie continually to sell their tyrannical agenda to the the public.

10 Year Old Understands More About Taxes and Deficit Than Republican Leader John Boehner

10 Year Old Understands More About Taxes and Deficit Than Republican Leader John Boehner

If Obama, Boehner, and Congress listened to the wisdom of 10-year-olds, and made the wealthy pay their fair share for this budget, kids like Maceo wouldn’t inherit such a large debt burden for them to pay back through their taxes. Photo by Karen Dolan.

Yesterday, 10-year-old Maceo Dolan-Sandrino was among the demonstrators. Maceo is from Maryland, just on the outskirts of Washington, the son of IPS Fellow Karen Dolan. He attended yesterday’s rally at the Capitol to oppose the cuts to our social safety net, services like healthcare and income assistance that many Americans rely upon through hard times. I thought it might be interesting to get a 10-year-old’s perspective on the day’s events. I asked Maceo what he thought about the protest.

At first, Maceo reported that he hadn’t really listened to anything, and that his feet had hurt. But when I asked him again, I got a different answer.

“The protest was about how John Boehner was going to take away social security and how he was going to – um, it was something about the taxes,” said Maceo. “Planned Parenthood was there and they had signs that said, ‘Don’t take away our birth control.’”

I asked Maceo if he realized that the United States was in debt, and that Obama, Boehner, and Congress were trying to decide whether to borrow more money. In return, Maceo offered a surprisingly searing analysis.

“It’s because the rich and wealthy people aren’t paying their fair share of taxes, and all of the big corporations are finding loopholes not to pay taxes, and then we don’t have enough money to pay our debts,” he said.

I found this comment to be incredibly astute. As IPS Fellow Chuck Collins wrote in an article for OtherWords, “Overseas tax havens enable companies to pretend their profits are earned in other countries like the Cayman Islands. Simply making that ruse illegal would bring home an estimated $100 billion a year.”

Making sure our government doesn’t tax the highest income brackets is another way the wealthy avoid paying their fair share of taxes. Since 1970, “the top marginal tax rate on our richest has been halved, from 70 to 35 percent, and our rich have become phenomenally richer,” wrote Peter Diamond and Emmanuel Saez in an article this month on toomuchonline.org. And you can bet that this tax rate plunge had a lot to do with campaign contributions to friendly elected officials. Money talks, Congress listens.

Unlike Obama, Boehner, or most members of Congress, Maceo intends to stick around for quite a while in order to help pay back the debt now being discussed in Washington. I asked Maceo about how he felt about our politicians leaving future generations to pick up the tab after the government has had its spending frenzy.

“I don’t feel good at all. No, I don’t think I’m going to have that money, because I know I’m going to have a family to take care of. So, I don’t feel good about that at all.”

Maceo is a sharp kid. If Obama, Boehner, and Congress listened to the wisdom of 10-year-olds, and made the wealthy pay their fair share for this budget, kids like Maceo wouldn’t inherit such a large debt burden for them to pay back through their taxes.

Infographic: Obama Bends Over Backwards for Conservatives on Debt Ceiling Side-by-Side Comparison of Plans Shows President Is Willing to Compromise

See Chart above: The infographic above shows that the president’s latest offer to House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is heavily titled toward spending cuts. In fact, the president’s offer contained about $1 trillion less revenue than the recent proposal from the so-called Gang of Six, a group that includes three Republican senators and three Democratic senators. It also represents significant movement from the president’s original debt reduction framework, which itself was already more conservative than the recommendations from the chairs of the debt commission (Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson) last December.

Unfortunately the Republican leadership still turned the president down despite his willingness to offer cuts to programs Democrats traditionally defend and to agree to much less revenue than all other bipartisan deals.

Is Big Government Spending Causing The Deficit

Radical conservatives just can't handle the truth: Tax cuts, war and the financial crisis created our huge deficits

How many outright errors of fact can you spot in the following paragraph from an op-ed by Mitt Romney published this Monday?

[Barack Obama's] approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history. With its failed stimulus package, its grandiose new social programs, its fervor for more taxes and government regulations, and its hostility toward business, the administration has made the debt problem worse, hindered economic recovery and needlessly cost American workers countless jobs.

Let's see. We're at war in Afghanistan, so "peacetime" is dubious. Obama has cut taxes -- income taxes, payroll taxes, taxes for small businesses. Private sector economic forecasters say the stimulus increased GDP growth and kept the unemployment rate from rising higher. We could even range into the subjective, and argue that from the left side of the political aisle, Obama has been anything but hostile to business and hasn't done nearly enough to regulate the financial sector. And we could note, just for fun, that Obama's "grandiose" social program is modeled explicitly after the healthcare reform enacted by none other than Mitt Romney in Massachusetts. (And this guy, most political analysts think, poses the biggest threat to Obama's reelection!)

But nothing is more ridiculous than the notion that Obama is a "binge" spender. Paul Krugman rightfully calls this scurrilous accusation a "zombie lie." No matter how many times you kill it, whether by decapitation, a spike through the heart or immolation -- it just keeps coming back. It's enough to make you despair -- particularly when you consider how many more times we're going to hear this nonsense from Romney and the rest of the Republican presidential candidates from now until the last precinct closes on Election Day 2012.

But as long as the undead keep coming, we have no choice but to fight hellspawn with our own holy fire. So let's review the facts.

The current budget deficit is predominantly an outgrowth of the Bush tax cuts, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Medicare Part D and the financial crisis.

Here's the first thing to understand. Before Obama took office, before he was able to spend a single dime as president, the Congressional Budget Office predicted that the 2009 deficit would be $1 trillion dollars. According to an analysis published by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities in June 2010, about half of that total -- $500 billion -- can be attributed to the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Another $400 billion was a direct result of the "changed economic outlook" -- the collapse of "tax revenues and swelling outlays for unemployment insurance, food stamps and other safety-net programs."

In the summer of 2009, the New York Times's David Leonhardt (recently awarded a Pulitzer prize for his economic coverage) conducted an indispensable analysis of the budget deficit for 2009. (By that point it was projected to hit $1.2 trillion; ultimately it reached $1.4 trillion -- in part because of stimulus spending and in part because the economy continued to get worse.) Leonhardt observed that since 2000, the year that Bill Clinton bequeathed George Bush with an $800 billion surplus, there had been a negative $2 trillion swing in the health of the government's finances. Crunching the numbers from a decade's worth of CBO reports, Leonhardt discovered:

The 2001 and 2007-2009 recessions accounted for 37 percent of the swing -- again, because of decreased tax revenue and automatically higher spending on social welfare. Legislation signed by George Bush accounted for another 33 percent -- the tax cuts and Medicare Part D.

"Mr. Obama's main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000. Such policies -- together with the Wall Street bailout, which was signed by Mr. Bush and supported by Mr. Obama -- account for 20 percent of the swing."

"About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February. And only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama's agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas."

The CBPP includes a neat little chart in its analysis that brings home the long-term consequences of the decisions made by Bush and Obama. Yes, the stimulus added to the budget deficit in the short term, but over the next 10 years, its contribution to the ongoing deficit -- along with TARP and the Fannie-Freddie rescue -- is minimal. The real drivers of the deficit will continue to be the Bush tax cuts and the wars -- if both continue. The tax cuts alone will account for some $7 trillion of the additional national debt over the next 10 years. And the interest payments on the debt accrued simply to pay for the automatic safety-net response to the Great Recession will also continue making a meaningful impact for years to come, long after a full recovery.

Fiscal Chart_ see above

Obama, of course, bears some responsibility for continuing the Bush tax cuts and the Bush wars -- but so do nearly every Republican legislator, and it's very difficult to imagine that Mitt Romney as president would have done anything differently. In fact, it's quite possible that the deficit would have gotten worse under Romney, because if he had decided to inject no stimulus at all into the economy, the downturn would likely have been worse, tax revenue would have declined even further, and social welfare spending would be even greater. And if any Republican president had attempted to slash spending in accordance with current party rhetoric, we'd be staring directly into the depths of Great Depression 2.0.

Also crucial to note: Obama's major new initiatives were either designed to be short term, such as the stimulus, or revenue neutral, such as healthcare reform. That's not something you can say about Bush's budget busters.

The budget deficits under Obama are big, there's no doubt about that. But the primary drivers of those deficits are a combination of decisions made by George W. Bush and the worst economic crisis in the United States in 80 years.

If we take away the wars Republicans who controlled Congress refused to pay for, the Medicare drug benefit Republicans passed but refused to pay for, two Wall St bail-out packages Republicans voted for and tax cuts for millionaires, plus the crashed economy Republican left for the next guy to handle - Obama has spent less than Bush. We have a revenue crisis not a spending crisis, and Republicans refuse once again to pay for the bills they put on the national credit card.

Tea Party Republicans Seem To Hope for Total Economic Collapse

Wall Street shudders as Republicans root for "chaos"

Cue the panic! The Dow is falling! The Dow is falling!

Next, start the blame game.

On the Laura Ingraham radio show Wednesday, House Speaker John Boehner acknowledged that "a lot" of Republican House members "believe that if we get past August the second and we have enough chaos, we could force the Senate and the White House to accept a balanced budget amendment."

Boehner then said that he disagreed with that theory. In his view, "the closer we get to August the second, frankly, the less leverage we have vis a vis our colleagues in the Senate and the White House." But the damage was done. As the news of his comments spread through social networks, the Dow Jones Industrial Average began to fall sharply. It closed down 198 points.

OK, we don't know for sure that traders finally got spooked at this latest proof that that House conservatives are actively looking forward to debtpocalypse. The steady drumbeat of negative economic data could just as easily be taking its overdue toll? Or maybe it's all the Democrats' fault. Reliable right-wing propagandist Larry Kudlow argued that Harry Reid's attack on the Boehner plan was the real culprit. Nyah nyah nyah.

We have no definitive way to decide the true driver for today's sell-off. But if Wall Street investors are paying close attention to the state of the debt ceiling tug-of-war, then they have good reason to be nervous. Here's why:

The normal way Congress works on a big, controversial piece of legislation is to patch together a last-second compromise after months of huffing and puffing. Reid and Boehner call each other nasty names, and then cut a deal. On the surface, the current deadlock is a perfect setup for just such a denouement. Let's outsource to political scientist Jonathan Bernstein.

The truth is that Boehner's plan is a totally legitimate, if many months late, opening offer. But if he's presenting it to his conference as a done deal -- if he's arguing that if only they vote for this, the Democrats are sure to fold and accept it -- then he's just not telling them the truth. I'm not sure I agree with those who say that Boehner's plan is very similar to Harry Reid's proposal, but I do agree that it's not hard at all to picture a compromise between them. However, it's just not true that the Senate will vote for Boehner; indeed, as of now it looks as if Boehner won't get a single Senate Democrat while losing four or more Senate Republicans. Reid might have 50 votes for his own plan, but probably doesn't have 60. So the two plans, after the votes are taken, are headed for another round of deal-making. Which, of course, is how this stuff is supposed to go.

Except -- what we've just witnessed in the last 48 hours is a conservative rebellion in the House that forced Boehner to rewrite his plan and seek deeper, quicker cuts. The new plan looks likely to pass in Thursday's vote, but anyone watching must appreciate that the Tea Party has just demonstrated its power to push Boehner to the right.

So what are the odds that these folks are going to be willing to suck it up and do the traditional thing and cut a compromise deal that moves to the left at the last minute?

Low. Very low. Abysmally low.

The obvious conclusion to draw from today's events is that the only thing capable of changing minds is chaos. At that point, the pressure on John Boehner to put together a coalition of Democrats and not-Tea Party Republicans who will vote for a compromise that can pass the Senate will be intense. But if he gives in to that pressure, he seems virtually certain to face a leadership challenge that could result in the end of his speakership.

So. The Dow dropped 200 points today, and the real tussle has hardly started. Fun!

Conservatives are acting like some cult that threatens economic apocalypse unless they get absolutely everything they want. That is not compromise. Democrats have agreed to give them 90% of what they want. The tea nut crazies still think that is a bad deal. In other words you cannot make a reasonable bargain with crazy and cynical people determined to send the economy into yet another recession. Republicans Play Deeply Cynical Politics With Debt Ceiling