Dirty Money Pays for Indiana Gov Mitch Daniels to Tell Anti-American Lies About American Workers

Dirty Money Pays for Indiana Gov Mitch Daniels to Tell Anti-American Lies About American Workers

Indiana Republicans aren't just pushing an anti-union law through the state legislature at warp speed, they're running an ad campaign featuring Gov. Mitch Daniels to try to persuade the public that this is the right move.

    The ads are funded by a shadowy group that calls itself the Indiana Opportunity Fund. Public records show the group has spent $600,000 on the “right to work” for less propaganda. But, the group—founded by Republican party activist Jim Bopp—is not required to divulge the source of the cash and Daniels has ignored requests from Hoosier working families, the media and others to disclose whose deep pockets he is dipping into for the advertisements.

It's not just the source of the funding that's a mystery. In the ads, Daniels makes the unsubstantiated claim that "The good is when Indiana gets a chance to compete for new jobs, we're winning two-thirds of the time. But we get cut out of a third of all deals because we don't provide workers the protection known as right to work." Where does that one third figure come from? No one knows, and Daniels isn't telling. One Indiana newspaper editorializes:

    Mr. Daniels, you've mentioned that one-third figure several times. And Mr. Bosma, that same logic made right-to-work legislation the Indiana House GOP's top agenda item - one that promises to consume just about every ounce of political capital available at the Statehouse this session.

    We ask: What businesses ignored us because Indiana isn't a right-to-work state? And where did those businesses land during this recession? We'd like to get them to tell Hoosiers their side.

    Right now, the arguments for right to work are held up as if on clouds. Have faith, Hoosiers; Indiana will be better off as a right-to-work state.

This is the foundational claim of Republican attempts to sell RTW as good for workers, yet they have offered absolutely no evidence to back it up. They've offered tortured, misleading statistics suggesting that RTW states do better economically, but they can't even gin up that level of false evidence about a third of companies not wanting to move to Indiana because of its labor laws. But $600,000 of advertising is a nice big platform for a lie.

We've all heard the same conservative propaganda before. Some how, through magic or wishful thinking, America will be better off if corporations have all the power they want and employees have no rights. American workers should be quiet little wage slaves and be thankful to their corporate masters for being nice enough to let them work. Where do corporate profits come from? The work done by American workers who make the products and provide the services that make the corporate elite wealthy. Conservatism tries to convince everyone that only the corporate lite creates capital - one of the biggest lies ever told about how economics works..

Remember when Mitt Romney attacked 'free enterprise'? Why do conservative have so much contempt for America that they tell the most obvious lies and create such a bizarre version of reality. They truly believe America is a nation of idiots.

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.

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Erick Erickson Is Proud to Be a Serial Lying Unamerican Pundit

Suzy Khimm points us to redstate.org leader and right-wing establishment figure @ewerickson declares he is "one of the 53%": part of this generation's "silent majority" who are upset at #occupywallstreet and its attacks on the top 1%:

What Erick says:

    I work three jobs.

    I have a house I can't sell.

    My family insurance costs are outrageous.

    But I don't blame Wall Street.

    Suck it up you whiners.

    I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.

Erick should blame not Wall Street but the health-insurance industry for the fact that his family insurance costs are outrageous--but at least come 2014 the Obama-Romney Affordable Care Act will give him the bargaining power that those of us who work for large organizations have in the health insurance marketplace and lower his insurance costs to more reasonable levels.

Erick should blame Wall Street for the fact that he can't sell his house: had Wall Street not broken mortgage finance, and had the breaking of mortgage finance not led to the general credit crunch that launched our Lesser Depression, then Erick would be able to sell his house.

And it is not clear to me what Erick's three jobs are: his internet biographies mention (i) right-wing internet community organizer, (ii) CNN commentator, and (iii) radio host. Are these his "three jobs"? Most of us would say that those are three aspects of one occupation--not three jobs. People who work three jobs are people who teach elementary school in the morning and early afternoon, take a shift at the car wash around dinnertime, and work a pre-dawn shift at a 24-hour 7-11. That does not sound like Erick, Son of Erick to me.

Wall Street stole $17 trillion of the nations wealth. The protesters just want a job that pays a living wage ( currently there are about 6 applicants for every job opening). So welfare queen Erik looks at these facts and declares the protesters are bad and the Wall Street vampires are good. Erik, like the vast majority of right-wing conservatives has some deeply corrupt values. He and his friends would fit right in with the crony economic system of Russia. If they hate America so much and think our traditional American values are so awful Erik and his 53% are welcome to pack up and leave.

Republican Liar of the Week Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) - DeMint Claims Government Revenues They’re At A ‘Record’ High

Republican Liar of the Week Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) - DeMint Claims Government Revenues They’re At A ‘Record’ High

It’s an often-repeated talking point among Republicans as Washington debates taxes and spending: “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” It’s recycled, like much of today’s Republican thinking, from President Reagan, but
stretched the argument to its breaking point on MSNBC this morning when he said that government revenues are currently at “record” highs:

DEMINT: Four of the last five years, we’ve had record levels of revenue. And next year we have projected the highest revenue levels in history. We don’t have a revenue problem.

Watch it:

The GOP talking point on spending vs. revenue fundamentally un-serious, as both are flip sides of the same balance sheet. But even so, DeMint is just wrong.

DeMint appears to be using nominal dollars to measure revenues, instead of revenue as a percentage of GDP, which is used by all official arbiters on revenue matters, including the Congressional Budget Office. And as a percentage of GDP, government revenue is nowhere near a “record” high. In 2010, it was at its lowest level in more than 60 years, according to data from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), at just at 14.9 percent.

Next year, revenues will still be at just 16.6 percent of GDP, several points below the average rates under every president since Franklin Roosevelt, including Reagan. The record high was 20.6 percent in 2000, which coincided with a balanced budget.

This makes sense — on top of lost revenue from the massive Bush tax cuts, the recession devastated economic output and thus the American tax base.

And DeMint seems to know this, choosing to qualify his statements about revenue with the odd time frame of five years to completely mislead viewers. He’s right that revenues in terms of dollars were at an all time high at one point in the last five years — 2007 — but he seems to intentionally ignore the fact that revenues fell of a cliff in 2009. In terms of actual dollars, in 2010, the government brought in $2.16 trillion dollars — down from $2.56 trillion in 2007.

Jim DeMint has always been part of that fifth column of Republicans who hate America, hate the poor, hate the middle-class. They hate the whole concept of democracy, a government by and for the people where we are all concerned with the common good.