Much of the World, Including The U.S., Does Does Practice Capitalism, They Practice Greed

Much of the World, Including The U.S., Does Does Practice Capitalism, They Practice Greed

For those looking for signs of how globalization has woven the world into a web of unexpected vulnerability, 2011 offered a bumper crop.

An earthquake in Japan sent the global auto manufacturing industry into a conniption.

A flood in Thailand drastically reduced supplies of computer hard drives, forcing even a titan like Intel to swiftly reduce revenue forecasts.

State-subsidized solar panel production in China crushed a U.S.-subsidized solar start-up, thereby igniting a Washington political scandal.

It is child’s play to find further examples. The underlying reality is that unexpected consequences make everyone nervous. Sensibilities are on hair trigger. Just two weeks ago, the New York Times captured the new jitteriness in a single quote. In a story reporting how U.S. stock traders were increasingly setting their alarm clocks for the middle of the night, in order to absorb the latest news from Europe as soon as it started to break, one stock analyst, Michael Mayo, complains in a tone of bemused wonder: “Who would have thought we would have to be looking at Italian sovereign debt yields to figure out what Morgan Stanley’s stock will do?”
For those who haven’t been living and dying on every twist and turn of the European financial crisis, some unpacking of that sentence may be in order. Most modern governments routinely auction some form of state-backed bonds or other securities in order to raise cash. If the bond investors aren’t excited about the opportunity — let’s suppose, just for argument’s sake, that they’re afraid the Italian economy is about to collapse — then Italy must offer a higher interest rate, or yield, on those bonds to attract buyers. The higher the yield, the more negative the bond market’s judgment is assumed to be.

But for most of November and December, the health of Italy’s debt sales became not merely a judgment on Italy’s economic health and fiscal stability, but a swiftly translated proxy for investor sentiment about the state of all Europe. If Italy ran into real trouble, so the theory went, France and Germany would soon be swept into the vortex. And a European recession would obviously be bad news for the rest of the world. So one unsuccessful auction in Rome becomes immediate cause for bearish sentiment in New York and Tokyo and Shanghai.

And no one wants to be caught more than one nanosecond out of the loop. If the orders go out to sell or buy, you want to get there first. Since now, more than ever, bad news travels fast, everyone’s got to be quick on the trigger.

It doesn’t seem healthy, but we’re going to have to get used to it. Volatility and vulnerability are built into the infrastructure of our modern world. The jury may still out on the chaos theory question of whether a single butterfly flapping its wings in Botswana can cause a typhoon in the Philippines, but we now know without a shadow of a doubt that the relative success or failure of a troubled European government’s attempt to raise cash can send instant shock waves across financial markets across the globe.

And we know, intimately, that it doesn’t take much to set off a cascade of trouble — after the great global crash of 2008, traders everywhere are in a state of permanent PTSD. Beyond the obvious surface connections between markets — that European recession slowing U.S. economic growth — there are abundant linkages beneath the scenes that are obscure and hard to unravel, interconnections woven by complex derivatives and hedging strategies and computer-driven high-speed trading algorithms that instantly translate woe in one market to panic in another.

The inescapable conclusion: Our modern high-tech markets, in which more money than ever before swirls around the globe in a blink of an eye, are better at transmitting panic and fear than anything heretofore created by humans. If civilization is supposed to imply progress, then something has gone very awry: In the second decade of the 21st century, our infrastructure is increasingly fragile, increasingly prone to disruption. The sword of Damocles hangs above everyone’s head, and the thread that keeps it from falling is fraying perilously thin.

What is perhaps most fascinating about this state of affairs is how it has arisen as a consequence of global capital’s relentless quest for lower operating costs and greater efficiency and flexibility. The better we get at extending supply and production chains across the globe, the more vulnerable those chains become to a disruption at any given point. The faster we enable the transmission of information around the world and through the financial markets, the more volatile those markets become, as every new headline sends a different trading signal.

 If you want to fix this, guess what, according to right-wing conservatives, you're a socialist. If you want a capitalist system, a free market system that does regularly crush the middle and blue collar class, you're a stinking commie. In America we just do not have adult conversations about how to make things better because any talk of making things better, more fair, less catastrophic gets you labeled a communist. Do you hope your kids will live in a fair enlighetned societyand does not have to go through the economic insecurity you have to live with? Forget it. The powers that be have decided that greed is good. The powers that be have decided any attempt to bring back regulations like Glass–Steagall Act to protect average Americans is Marxism on wheels.

Conservative Republican ALEC-Linked Group Revealed As Attacking Average American's Most Fundamental Rights

Conservative Republican ALEC-Linked Group Revealed As Attacking Average American's Most Fundamental Rights

Last month, Maine voters delivered a major rebuke to Gov. Paul LePage (R) and the Republican-held legislature when they approved a referendum restoring election day voting registration rights in the state. Earlier this year, state legislators passed a bill repealing the state’s 38 year-old law allowing citizens to register at the polls on election day.

Tens of thousands of Mainers responded by petitioning for the matter come to a referendum. Issue 1 was one of the most-anticipated votes on election day this year, with pundits watching closely to see how citizens would react to the Republican-led war on voting, which ramped up in states across the country this year.

Recognizing the referendum’s importance, voting rights opponents poured money into the campaign to repeal election day registration. In fact, just two days after the state’s campaign finance reporting deadline, a secret conservative donor funneled $250,000 into the race, allowing the No On 1 campaign to make significant TV ad buys in an inexpensive media market.

Per state law, however, the identity of donors must be revealed within 45 days after the election. In fact, the entire $250,000 worth of late money came from a single source: the American Justice Partnership.

The AJP is a conservative legal organization based not in Maine, but in Michigan. On their website, the group states they are fighting against “the scheming George Soros money machine” which is “trying to sabotage your right to vote,” a claim apparently made without a hint of irony. Though the AJP doesn’t disclose where its funding comes from, the Bangor Daily News notes that it has partnered with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the past, a group that has been instrumental in the proliferation of voter ID laws across the country.

The AJP’s secret $250,000 contribution ultimately accounted for over 78 percent of all the money raised by the No On 1 campaign. In other words, over three-quarters of the funding for opponents of election day registration in Maine came from Michigan. (This money was then used to run ads decrying “outsiders from other states” who were influencing the Maine election.) With Mainers of all stripes explaining to ThinkProgress why they cherish having the option to register at the polls on election day, it’s not altogether surprising that the predominance of financial support for No On 1 came from out of state.

Though AJP’s website correctly warns that “Your right to vote is at stake”, it’s groups like AJB and ALEC that are threatening that right in the first place. Maine voters stood up to the influence of voting rights opponents in November, however, passing Issue 1 by an overwhelming 61-39 margin and restoring election day registration in the Pine Tree State.

Conservatives Keep Mangling American History - Maybe That is Why Their Agenda is Anti-American

Conservatives Keep Mangling American History - Maybe That is Why Their Agenda is Anti-American

The mortgage crisis began in 2006 and it’s all President Obama’s fault—at least according to Fox News host Sean Hannity. Hannity recently blamed [1] Obama—“his policies, his economic plan, his fault”—for the mortgage crisis, ignoring who was actually president (that would be George W. Bush) as the housing market slipped [2].

Hannity’s is just one example of the selective memory and historical revision frequently on display in the conservative movement. Right-wing pundits, politicians and pseudo-historians are nibbling away at objective historical truths to rewrite history for present-day purposes, and hardly any topic is off-limits: glorifying the “Reagan Revolution” to children, sugarcoating the Jim Crow South and revising textbooks to offer a favorable view on Phyllis Schlafly—among many others.

Below, read about eight ways in which conservatives try to rewrite, sugarcoat or ignore aspects of American history.

1. Michele Bachmann on the founding fathers and slavery. Propelled to the front of the Republican field after her victory in the Iowa straw poll, Minnesota Representative Michele Bachmann’s historical views are notoriously error-prone. In one her infamous gaffes, she said [3] the founding fathers “work[ed] tirelessly to end slavery” (in fact, George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson owned slaves) and that John Quincy Adams [4] was a founding father—he was born in 1767.

Bachmann was a research assistant to John Eidsmoe for his 1987 book Christianity and the Constitution: The Faith of our Founding Fathers, in which Eidsmoe wrote, “The church and the state have separate spheres of authority, but both derive authority from God. In that sense America, like [Old Testament] Israel, is a theocracy.”

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2. Secession was fine, dandy and legal. Texas Governor and Republican presidential hopeful Rick Perry is fond of pro-secession comments [7]; in 2009, he joked [8] that “we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again.”

In his dreams. In fact, these attempts at humor sidestep what secession actually leads to: a nullification crisis, a Civil War, hundreds of thousands of casualties and the federal government as the victor anyway. And secession is illegal. In 1866 the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White [9] that Texas’s ordinance of secession was “absolutely null.”

...3. Forgetting September 11? Conservatives have an uncanny ability to misremember when the September 11 attacks occurred. In July, Fox News [12] host Eric Bolling said “we were certainly safe between 2000 and 2008?—?I don’t remember any terrorist attacks on American soil during that period of time.” (In his “apology [13],” he accepted no blame: “Yesterday, I misspoke when saying that there were no US terror attacks during the Bush years. Obviously, I meant in the aftermath of 9/11, but that is when the radical liberal left pounced on us…. thank you liberals for reminding me how petty you can be.”)

A surprising slip came from ex–New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani. In January 2010 he claimed [14] that “we had no domestic attacks under Bush.”

.....4. Mike Huckabee’s “Learn Our History.” Mike Huckabee’s cartoon history series is whitewashing American history. While claiming to engage children in an easy-to-digest format without “misrepresentations…historical inaccuracies, personal biases and political correctness,” personal biases somehow make an appearance [17]. Each video is produced with consultation from Learn Our History’s “Council of Masters;” one “Master,” Larry Schweikart, is the author of 48 Liberal Lies About American History, including “Lie #45: LBJ’s Great Society Had a Positive Impact on the Poor.”

In a DVD [18] on the “Reagan Revolution,” viewers are invited to “journey to a time when America suffered from financial, international and moral crisis:” Washington, DC, 1977. A knife-wielding African-American man demands “gimme yo’ money!” Ronald Reagan’s arrival—against triumphant music playing and a caption reading “one man transformed the nation…and the world”—changed all that for the better, the DVD suggests.

5. The New Deal did harm. Anti–New Deal views have long reverberated among Republicans. Bachmann [19] blamed FDR for turning a recession into a depression by passing “Hoot-Smalley Tariff” (never mind that it’s Smoot-Hawley and it was passed three years prior to Roosevelt’s inauguration). And a barrage of recent books, including FDR’s Folly, by Jim Powell of the Cato Institute, and Amity Shlaes’s The Forgotten Man, blame FDR and the New Deal for prolonging the Depression. Newt Gingrich has praised [20] The Forgotten Man, with its anti-stimulus message, as a blueprint for a return to “Whig-style free-market liberalism.”

6. David Barton. An amateur-turned-“historian,” Barton is the founder of WallBuilders, a pseudo-historical organization “with an emphasis on the moral, religious, and constitutional foundation on which America was built,” says its website. One of his revisions [21] insists that John Adams claimed that government cannot exist without the Holy Ghost. In his presentations of the subject, Barton misunderstands Adams’s mocking statement about fervent believers in the Holy Ghost as historical truth, omitting succeeding sentences wherein Adams describes those beliefs to be “Artifice and Cunning.”

Barton’s claims about the religious roots of the country have been debunked from academics, even from Christian colleges. John Fea, chair of the history department at Messiah College, wrote [22], “Barton claims to be a historian. He is not. He has just enough historical knowledge, and just enough charisma, to be very dangerous.”

7. Texas Textbook Revisions. Last year the Texas Board of Education revised public school textbooks, expanding [23]discussion of Ronald Reagan at the expense of public figures like Justice Sonia Sotomayor, omitting reference to Thomas Jefferson as an Enlightenment thinker in favor of Protestant leader John Calvin, and offering favorable views [24] on Senator Joseph McCarthy, women’s rights opponent Phyllis Schlafly and the Heritage Foundation.

Many historians opposed [25] the changes—but the board voted along party lines [26] to approve of the revisions. Nearly 5 million Texas students live with the result.

8. Jim Crow wasn’t that bad. Last December, Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi sugarcoated Jim Crow–era Mississippi, saying [27] of his native Yazoo County, “I just don’t remember it as being that bad,” and, “You heard of the Citizens Councils? Up north they think it was like the KKK. Where I come from it was an organization of town leaders.”

In reality, 1960s Mississippi was 42 percent black, of which only 2 percent were registered to vote, according to the nonprofit African-American Registry [28]. Civil rights activists were murdered [29] and students rioted [30] against integration. “Not bad” indeed! 

The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution were both based on Liberal political theory. Democracy itself is a liberal concept. As is small-r republicanism. The latter is tricky, trying to find the balance between individual rights and the other extreme where everyone, citing their individual rights, does anything they please. Conservatives plainly do not believe in balance. They believe the financial elite should have all the power and run the country instead of the people.

Anti-American Fox News Spreads Smears About American Workers and Unions

Anti-American Fox News Spreads Smears About American Workers and Unions

This was a banner year in the right-wing media's campaign to belittle working Americans. In the early part of the year, media conservatives promoted anti-union laws in Wisconsin and Ohio, transitioned to attacking the National Labor Relations Board, and spent the entirety of the year demonizing union workers, low-income Americans, and the unemployed.

Right-Wing Media React To WI Protests Over Collective Bargaining: Insults, False Attacks, Misinformation

Media Conservatives Set Sights On National Labor Relations Board: "Just Get Rid Of The Thing"

Right-Wing Media Viciously Denigrate Union Workers, The Poor, And The Unemployed
Right-Wing Media React To WI Protests Over Collective Bargaining: Insults, False Attacks, Misinformation
Fox & Friends Falsely Claimed "Violent" WI Protesters "Attack[ed]" Grothman

Kilmeade: Protesters Got "Restless And, Dare I Say, Violent." On the March 3 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, co-host Brian Kilmeade introduced a segment on a Republican Wisconsin lawmaker, Sen. Glenn Grothman, being heckled by a chanting crowd of protesters by falsely claiming the protesters were "getting restless and, dare I say, violent."  Co-host Steve Doocy claimed that, "If you put yourself in [Grothman's] shoes...it's absolutely scary." Doocy later claimed, "When you look at that and all the incivility there, you realize that to these people, elections have no consequence, mean nothing." During the segment, the on-screen graphics repeatedly referred to the "angry" protesters as "violent" or "attack[ing]" Grothman. From Fox & Friends:

Kilmeade: "A Mob Of Protesters Ambush A Republican State Senator In Wisconsin." Teasing an upcoming segment with Grothman, Kilmeade claimed "a mob of protesters ambush[ed]" Grothman "who wants to go to work." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/3/11, via Media Matters]

Kilmeade Again Claims Grothman Was "Ambushed By A Mob Of Protesters." Later in the show, Kilmeade again teased Grothman's segment by claiming he was "ambushed by a mob of protesters." [Fox News, Fox & Friends, 3/3/11, via Media Matters]

In Fact, There Was No Evidence Of Violence On The Video

Twelve-Minute Long Video Shows No Violence Occurred.  The video, which was shot by Wisconsin area photographer Phil Ejercito, show that Grothman was heckled by protesters, but no violence occurred. In fact, at one point during the video, a protester can be heard to shout "don't touch him" and at another, the protesters chanted "peace" and "peaceful." [YouTube, 03/01/11]

Grothman Himself Claimed "He Didn't Think He Was Ever In Any Real Danger." The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that,  Grothman "told the [Cap Times] he didn't think he was ever in any real danger." From the Journal Sentinel:

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Photographer Slammed Fox's Coverage As "Establish[ing] A Fictional Narrative"

Photographer Phil Ejercito: I condemn the use of my work to distort the truth about the spirited but non-violent protests here in Madison. In a statement to Media Matters, Phil Ejercito, the local photographer who shot the footage of Sen. Grothman being heckled by the crowd, said he "condemn[ed] the use of my work to distort the truth about the spirited but non-violent protests here in Madison," calling it a "a genuinely dangerous narrative that Fox News is helping to create."

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Fox Suggests CEO Of Multinational Company Represents "Small Businesses." Fox hosted Gary Reynolds, CEO of GMR Marketing to criticize protesters for "attacking small businesses who supported and support Governor Scott Walker," in the words of Fox co-host Brian Kilmeade. However, GMR Marketing says it has 24 offices in 12 countries and that it is "the world's largest engagement marketing agency." The company lists Sony, Microsoft, Bank of America and Visa among its clients. [Media Matters, 3/1/11]

Fox News Forced To Air "Fox Lies" Protests

Protesters Shout "Fox Lies" During Live Report From WI Capitol. On the February 18 edition of Your World, protesters chanted "Fox lies" during correspondent Jeff Flock's live report on the labor protests from the Wisconsin Capitol building. During the segment, guest host Chris Cotter stated, "Well, I'll tell you, Jeff, those folks protesting Fox -- I'm wondering if they would prefer a state-run television network providing all the coverage." [Fox News, Your World, 2/18/11]

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Fox Used Dubious Rasmussen Poll To Claim Public Backs Walker, Not Unions

Hannity: "The People Support The Governor." Citing the Rasmussen poll during the February 22 broadcast of his Fox News program, Sean Hannity revealed the results of a show poll on whether his viewers supported Walker or the unions

Blumenthal: "Rasmussen's Results Raise More Questions Than They Answer." Pollster Mark Blumenthal's analysis of Rasmussen's poll similarly argued that the order in which the questions were asked of respondents could have biased the response. He further argued: "The more typical approach would involve asking a more general version of question one ('how closely have you been following the dispute between the Governor of Wisconsin and the public employee unions in Wisconsin?') and then go immediately to something like question four." [The Huffington Post, 2/21/11]
Other Polls Showed Widespread Support For Collective Bargaining Rights

NYT/CBS Poll Shows Overwhelming Support For Public Worker Bargaining Rights. In the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll, results show that "Americans oppose weakening the bargaining rights of public employee unions by a margin of nearly two to one: 60 percent to 33 percent. While a slim majority of Republicans favored taking away some bargaining rights, they were outnumbered by large majorities of Democrats and independents who said they opposed weakening them." [The New York Times, 2/28/11]

USA Today/Gallup Poll Shows Majority Support For Union Workers. In a USA Today/Gallup Poll from February 22, results show that while Republicans supported limiting the rights of union workers by a 54 percent to 41 percent margin, 79 percent of Democrats and 61 percent of independents polled were against the limitation of union bargaining rights, representing the majority of total persons polled. As USA Today reported, overall, "[t]he poll found 61% would oppose a law in their state similar to such a proposal in Wisconsin, compared with 33% who would favor such a law." [USA Today, 2/22/11]

Why do all the talking heads at Fox, most of whom get paid well into hundreds of thousands a dollars a year ( O'Reilly is said to make several million) trash talk working class Americans? Mostly because they represent far Right conservative radicalism parading itself as "patriotism".  They think America should be run on the old plantation model, with coporate bosses at the top and powerless workers who should just shut-up and do as they're told. Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio workers and unions dared to get uppity. In conservative right-wing America you don't have the right to get uppity - even though those workers pay taxes and buy the products that make the anti-American talking heads at Fox very wealthy.

The Millionaires Who Act Like Scrooge and Those Who Act Like Patriots

The Millionaires Who Act Like Scrooge and Those Who Act Like Patriots

It's holiday season, and mean-spirited misers abound. GOP legislators have Dickensian plans for the 99 percent, aiming at shredding our social safety nets, undermining our healthcare, and making us pay for the financial crisis created by reckless financiers. Naturally, they decry even a modest income tax surcharge on millionaires, channeling Scrooge-worthy logic to justify their worship of Big Money at the expense of everyone else.

Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase honcho Jamie Dimon, the highest paid executive among the six biggest and most dangerous banks, whines that he doesn't deserve our ire: "Acting like everyone who's been successful is bad and because you're rich you're bad, I don't understand it," said Dimon, whose 2010 take totaled $23 million.

Let us help you understand it. We don't hate you because you're rich, Mr. Dimon. Americans actually tend to admire people who make lots of money and, say, contribute useful things to society and promote the public good. Witness the recent outpouring of love for Steve Jobs. No, we itch for our pitchforks because you are greedy. You want to horde everything at the top and you refuse to acknowledge that you have any responsibility toward your fellow Americans. In fact, the way you make your money makes you look like a public menace. You dealt in risky derivatives and mortgage schemes that helped tank the global economy. You defrauded your investors. Your bank has even had the gall to foreclose on military families. Back in October, thousands of us stood outside your swank apartment on Park Avenue holding signs and telling you in plain English why your statements that bank regulations are "un-American" and such are both stupid and harmful. But apparently the message didn't get through. I guess we'll have to keep coming back until you do get it.

There are plenty of 1 percenters who support Dimon's view of the world, in which crushing ordinary people in the name of greed is something to be applauded.

But not all. And, like Warren Buffett, whose op-ed "Stop Coddling the Super-Rich" sent shockwaves through the country back in August, they are becoming more and more vocal. Philadelphia lawyer and philanthropist Dan Berger, a member of the Patriotic Millionaires for Fiscal Strength, has been hitting the airwaves and writing for months explaining why current tax policy unfairly favors the rich -- and why that's dangerous for everyone. Berger is concerned about the social pathologies and dysfunction created by the concentration of wealth at the top, and worries that we have unlearned the lessons of the Great Depression -- the last time such concentration devastated the country. "We are in a golden age of the cult of wealth," he warns. "Economic, social, and political life by, of, and for the one percent is an old story in the history of world civilization--one which inevitably ends badly."

Over the last decade, incomes for the richest 1 percent of Americans grew faster than that of any other group. CEO pay has soared 300 percent since 1990, while that of the average worker has risen a paltry 4 percent. If 1 percenters can't be convinced that such disparities are morally wrong, Berger suggests they conjure up some "enlightened self interest" in order to grasp what might happen if society becomes further unbalanced. He sees the Occupy Wall Street movement as the mere "tip of the iceberg."

Billionaire hedge fund manager Jim Chanos has also gone public expressing his support for Occupy Wall Street and his objection to tax policies weighted toward the 1 percent: "I have a problem with private capital asking for lower tax rates on certain forms of income that I believe are income, not returns on capital, than say teachers, soldiers, fireman and policeman.” Chanos explained to AlterNet why 1 percenters who can't see why Americans are angry are seriously out of touch: "They say we live in an 'aspirational society,' but many of those in the 1 percent accuse the Occupy Wall Street movement of class warfare and bemoan the fact that the president dubs them millionaires and billionaires. Well, I'm pretty sure most of the 99 percent would still aspire to be called the same thing!"

The aspirational dreams encoded in our American DNA have been increasingly crushed by policies and practices that channel money toward the top and leave students saddled with debt, workers struggling to support their families and elderly people unable to live in dignity.

We do live in a society that redistributes wealth. Every worker in America makes their contribution towards producing the GDP or Gross National Product. At the end of the day the pie (GDP) is divided up. The top one percent get most of the pie and the crumbs trickle down to everyone else. Conservative Republicans want you to believe that the top deserves it because they produce most of the work. Yep, hard to believe anyone would believe that mountain of BS, but many Americans do, just listen to Anti-American Fox News. They will be glad to tell you that supply-side trickle down economics is good and raising taxes just a little on the top is pure communism.

Happy New Year From Anti-American Fox News Who Dreams of the Day All Americans Hate Each Other

Happy New Year From Anti-American Fox News Who Dreams of the Day All Americans Hate Each Other - Fox's History Of Mainstreaming Hate

Fox & Friends recently hosted Andrea Lafferty, president of the Traditional Values Coalition (TVC), an organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has labeled an anti-gay "hate group." Lafferty, who has described SPLC's designation of her group as a "badge of honor," is the latest member of an organization that SPLC has designated as a hate group or otherwise criticized for propagating hateful rhetoric to be invited to speak on Fox News.

...Southern Poverty Law Center: TVC Is An Anti-Gay "Hate Group"

SPLC Labels TVC An Anti-Gay "Hate Group." According to the SPLC, TVC will be listed as an anti-gay hate group as of 2011. SPLC elevates anti-gay groups to hate group status "based on their propagation of known falsehoods -- claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities -- and repeated, groundless name-calling." From SPLC:

    The group has at times enjoyed remarkable access to the halls of power -- during the George W. Bush Administration, Sheldon and Lafferty visited the White House a combined 69 times, meeting personally with Bush in eight of the visits. But that does not mean that it has not long had a record of extreme gay-bashing.

    In 1985, [TVC founder Lou] Sheldon suggested forcing AIDS victims into "cities of refuge." In 1992, columnist Jimmy Breslin said that Sheldon told him that "homosexuals are dangerous. They proselytize. They come to the door, and if your son answers and nobody is there to stop it, they grab the son and run off with him. They steal him. They take him away and turn him into a homosexual." Sheldon later denied that he made the comments, but his website today includes strikingly similar language..

...TVC Is Just The Latest Hate Group Or Individual Criticized For Hateful Rhetoric To Be Mainstreamed By Fox

Fox & Friends Hosted President Of FAIR, Which SPLC Designated An Anti-Immigrant Hate Group. On the March 30 edition of Fox News' Fox & Friends, Carlson hosted Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) President Dan Stein to attack immigrants. According to SPLC, FAIR is an anti-immigrant hate group. SPLC noted:

    Although FAIR maintains a veneer of legitimacy that has allowed its principals to testify in Congress and lobby the federal government, this veneer hides much ugliness. FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR's founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group's main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a "mistake." [Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed 3/30/11; Media Matters, 3/30/11]

Beck Hosted Author Who Was Member Of League Of The South Hate Group. On the June 8, 2010, edition of Fox News' Glenn Beck, Beck hosted author Thomas Woods, who has been a member of League of the South, which SPLC describes as:

    [A] neo-Confederate group that advocates for a second Southern secession and a society dominated by "European Americans." The league believes the "godly" nation it wants to form should be run by an "Anglo-Celtic" (read: white) elite that would establish a Christian theocratic state and politically dominate blacks and other minorities. Originally founded by a group that included many Southern university professors, the group lost its Ph.D.s as it became more explicitly racist. The league denounces the federal government and northern and coastal states as part of "the Empire," a materialist and anti-religious society. [SPLC, accessed 8/4/11; Media Matters, 6/8/10]

Beck Promoted Book By "One Man Hate Group" Eustace Mullins. On the September 22, 2010, edition of his Fox News show, Beck attacked 20th century diplomat Edward House by promoting a book by Eustace Mullins called Secrets of the Federal Reserve. Mullins was described as a "nationally known white supremacist and anti-Semite" in his obituary and was "described in 2000 by the SPLC as a one-man organization of hate." From the Daily News Leader in his hometown of Staunton, VA:

...Fox Has Repeatedly Hosted Pam Geller, Subject Of SPLC "Hatewatch" Post. Fox News has repeatedly hosted anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller, even after she was the subject of an August 25, 2010, "Hatewatch" post by SPLC titled, "White Supremacists Find Common Cause With Pam Geller's Anti-Islam Campaign." From the SPLC's description of Geller:

    Pamela Geller is the anti-Muslim movement's most visible and flamboyant figurehead. She's relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam and makes preposterous claims, such as that President Obama is the "love child" of Malcolm X. She makes no pretense of being learned in Islamic studies, leaving the argumentative heavy lifting to her Stop Islamization of America partner Robert Spencer. Geller has mingled comfortably with European racists and fascists, spoken favorably of South African racists, defended Serbian war criminal Radovan Karadzic and denied the existence of Serbian concentration camps. She has taken a strong pro-Israel stance to the point of being sharply critical of Jewish liberals. [SPLC, 8/25/10; SPLC, accessed 8/5/11; Media Matters, 7/25/11]

Fox Hosted Head Of Anti-Gay Hate Group Family Research Council To Attack Gender Diversity Education. On the May 26 edition of Fox News' America's Newsroom, co-host Martha MacCallum hosted Family Research Council president Tony Perkins to attack a school in California that was teaching a gender diversity class. The Family Research Council has been labeled by the SPLC as an anti-gay hate group.  

Rupert Murdoch's Fox news and other right-wing media want Americans to be intolerant, hateful and suspicious of each other because they and their organizations make millions of dollars doing so. It also gets conservatives with radical anti-American agendas elected to office. One might call the whole operation a kind of pyramid scheme of hate. As long as it pays, they'll keep telling the lies, dispensing distorted information and stirring up division among the American people.

The Desperate Mitt Romney Tells Lies About President Obama Instead of Attacking His Sleazy Opponent Newt Gingrich. No Wonder Mitt is Falling in The Polls

The Desperate Mitt Romney Tells Lies About President Obama Instead of Attacking His Sleazy Opponent Newt Gingrich. No Wonder Mitt is Falling in The Polls

Here's something Mitt Romney is being firm and consistent on: lying about the Obama administration's record on regulations. Monday in New Hampshire, Romney said:

    The level of regulation in America, every the regulators, the government, come up with new regulations. And they send them out. The rate of regulatory burden has increased four-fold since Obama has become president. Four times the amount of regulation coming out per year as in the past. And so businesses say, ‘gosh, I’m not sure I want to invest in America.’

Of course, both the claim about the increase in regulation under Obama and the claim about the resulting effect on business are false, but it's not the first time Romney has gone there. Think Progress takes us through the sorry history:

    When Romney made the same claim during an interview with NPR in September, NPR asked the Romney campaign for verification, at which point the campaign was forced to admit that “the Governor misspoke.”

    Instead, the Romney camp told NPR that new regulations under Obama are twice what they were under President George W. Bush. Trouble is, that’s not true either, as Bloomberg News pointed out:

        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.

    Later on during the event, Romney claimed that, according to an official government report, regulations costs the U.S. economy $1.7 trillion annually.

You guessed it: That's not true either. Just a fraction of a percent of layoffs have been attributed to regulation under Obama, and more than one study, including an OMB estimate, have found that the economic benefits of major regulations outweigh their costs, sometimes by a large margin. Never mind that regulations keep us safe on the job and give us clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. But while the specific numbers Romney spews on this will probably change, I think we can count on him to be unwavering and neither flip nor flop in his basic commitment to falsehood.

I'm not sure how simply repeating the word regulation over and over again became an attack tool by elitist conservatives. You have rules for your kids so they do not misbehave. Regulations are just rules for business so they don't misbehave or they at least do so less often. Mining regulations save miners' lives - when mining companies adhere to them. You think driving on our highways is dangerous now, try scraping the regulations and see how safe it is simply to get from point A to Point B. Conservatives continue to deal with problems with childish and simplistic answers to complex problems. Not one of them should be reelected until the conservatives movement grows up and becomes responsible adults.

Where Does Romney Stand On Iraq - Depends on Which Way The Wind is Blowing

Where Does Romney Stand On Iraq - Depends on Which Way The Wind is Blowing

When President Obama announced in October that he was ordering all U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, Mitt Romney’s campaign issued a statement assailing the president, calling his decision an “astonishing failure”:

    “President Obama’s astonishing failure to secure an orderly transition in Iraq has unnecessarily put at risk the victories that were won through the blood and sacrifice of thousands of American men and women. The unavoidable question is whether this decision is the result of a naked political calculation or simply sheer ineptitude in negotiations with the Iraqi government. The American people deserve to hear the recommendations that were made by our military commanders in Iraq.”

Yet today during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Romney backtracked. Immediately after criticizing Obama for not keeping up to 30,000 troops in Iraq, the former Massachusetts governor said the withdrawal is the right move:

    ROMNEY: With regards to Iraq, of course we’re following the Bush timeline with one exception and that is the [blank space] President Bush and I believe others anticipated that we would have an ongoing force, somewhere between 10 and 20 and 30,000 there to help with the transition. President Obama’s own Secretary of Defense suggested that would be the case and they were unable to negotiate a status of forces agreement to allow the 10 to 20 to 30,000 troops to remain which I think was a failure on the part of the administration. But is the wind down in Iraq appropriate? Yes.


It seems like Romney and Newt Gingrich are in stiff competition for this year’s top GOP flip-flopper. Gingrich’s recent Iraq reversal clocked in at an impressive 13 seconds. Perhaps Romney is trying to reclaim the mantle.

It is either sad or ironic that Romney is the smartest of the Republican presidential candidates and probably the most compassionate. Those could be the two things that sink his campaign with a right-wing conservative base that has more in common politically with the Italian fascists of the 1940s than Abe Lincoln.

Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum: ‘Science Should Get Out Of Politics’

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Like Other Members of the Cult of Conservatism Couldn't Create a Job if His Life Depended On It

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Like Other Members of the Cult of Conservatism Couldn't Create a Job if His Life Depended On It

Gov. Scott Walker has repeatedly assured Wisconsinites that his assaults on local democracy, public services, public education and collective bargaining rights would create jobs and prosperity.

In contrast, the governor has argued, the decision of Illinois officials to tackle budget challenges with fair tax policies, respect for public employees and efforts to maintain services would cause doom and gloom for that state.

The Illinois comparison has been a constant in Walker’s speeches, media appearances and press releases since January. The governor has been unrelenting in his claim that the best measure of Wisconsin’s progress when it comes to job creation is against Illinois.

“They didn’t fix the problems,” Walker ranted in May with regard to Illinois officials. “In contrast, we’ve done that. And I believe that’s going to help us attract not only businesses coming in from Illinois (but) reassure employers here in the state of Wisconsin that this is the place, now is the time, to grow.”

This has been Walker’s steady mantra, repeated as recently as this month when he traveled to Chicago.

Unfortunately for Walker — and for the state that suffers under his misdirection — the measure has been made.

And the governor has been proven wrong. Way wrong.

The October jobs figures for the United States were just released. Illinois led the nation in job creation, adding 30,000 new jobs.

And what about Wisconsin?

Under Walker, Wisconsin now leads the nation in job losses.

In fact, of the states that the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics described as experiencing “statistically significant unemployment changes” in October, only one actually lost jobs: Wisconsin.

Wisconsin lost 9,700 jobs in October, almost all of them in the private sector.

But that is not the worst news. The worst news is that the job losses are part of a pattern that began around the time that Walker’s “reforms” took hold.

Wisconsin did not just lose jobs in October.

Wisconsin lost jobs in September.

Wisconsin lost jobs in August.

Wisconsin lost jobs in July.

Back in May, when Walker was bragging about how he had “fixed” Wisconsin, the latest figures put the state’s unemployment rate at 7.3 percent.

Now, the latest figures put the rate at 7.7 percent.

How does that compare with the national average? During the same period when unemployment went down one-tenth of a percentage point nationally, it rose four-tenths of a percent under Scott Walker.

Walker and conservatives on the national stage have not attacked unions because they are bad for the economy or America, Walker and his fellow cult members have attacked unions because the last thing conservatives want is individual Americans to be empowered to have more say over their lives. The less power individual Americans have and the more power government and corporations have the happier conservatives are.

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

OMG, Supercommittee Republican Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) Admits Bush Tax Cuts Didn’t Create Jobs, Can’t Explain Why

Republicans this week filibustered a Democratic plan to extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, objecting to the fact that the extension was paid for by implementing a small surtax on income in excess of $1 million. To justify their objection to taxing the wealthy, Republicans have revived their false claim that taxing the rich amounts to taxing small business owners and job creators.

Bloomberg’s Al Hunt asked Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) — who represented the GOP on the fiscal supercommittee that failed to craft a deficit reduction package — to explain this viewpoint, considering that more jobs were created under the Clinton administration and its higher taxes on the rich than were created following the Bush tax cuts. Upton admitted that “I don’t know specifically the answer to that question,” nonsensically pointing to Friday’s jobs report instead of trying to argue the premise of Hunt’s question:

    HUNT: Why under those pre-Bush tax cut tax rates did the economy do so well in the ‘90s? And why under the Bush tax rates, less for the wealthy, to do so poorly in this decade?

    UPTON: Well, a couple things. One, spending went up, Al, the wars. I mean, that’s trillions of dollars. And also there was no change in the entitlements. And we also know -

    HUNT: But that shouldn’t hurt the economy. That shouldn’t hurt economic growth.

    UPTON: Yeah, but that impacts the debt and the deficit.

    HUNT: But I’m asking, why did the economy grow a lot? Why were more jobs created in the previous decade under higher taxes than in this decade under lower taxes?

    UPTON: I don’t know specifically the answer to that question. I can – I can maybe merit a guess. But, I mean, in large part is because our job – we lost jobs. I mean, look at the jobs report that came out this last week, three-hundred- some-thousand people actually stopped looking for jobs.



As Center for American Progress Director of Tax and Budget Policy Michael Linden found, “in the past 60 years, job growth has actually been greater in years when the top income tax rate was much higher than it is now.” In fact, “if you ranked each year since 1950 by overall job growth, the top five years would all boast marginal tax rates at 70 percent or higher.” The GOP, as Upton displays, simply has no explanation for these facts.

In a Bloomberg op-ed, wealthy investor Nick Hanauer also blew a hole in the GOP’s line of thinking, writing, “I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate. That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs.” The GOP would do well to take note.

This is not particularly breaking news in the sense we know that conservatives practice economics the way cults practice their beliefs. Conservatives pay no attention to evidence, they just irrationally believe in what they believe, no matter how many millions of decent hard working Americans they hurt.

America Haters at Fox News Hosts Pollster Who is Paid To Make Up Smears About Health Care Reform

America Haters at Fox News Hosts Pollster Who is Paid To Make Up Smears About Health Care Reform

You may recall GOP pollster Frank Luntz's recently released a 28-page memo, "The Language of Healthcare 2009: The 10 Rules for Stopping the 'Washington Takeover' of Healthcare," which is intended to help conservatives defeat President Obama and congressional Democrats' health-care reform initiatives.  As we've noted over the past two weeks, Fox News has provided a forum for the Luntz talking points while Politico hyped his memo and downplayed a progressive pollster’s pro-health care reform memo.

Well, now it seems Luntz doesn't want anyone asking who paid for his "10 rules" memo.  Via Huffington Post's Sam Stein:

    Conservative communications guru Frank Luntz has written the playbook for GOP opposition to the Obama administration's health care proposal. His plan, which is heavy on framing the president's proposal as a government "takeover," is already popping up in statements from top congressional Republicans and on Fox News, despite the fact that no Democratic legislation has been proposed.

    But when it comes to discussing who funded his messaging, the wordsmith Luntz is notably devoid of words. Asked about his funder in an interview with the New York Times Magazine to be published on Sunday, Luntz was close-lipped:

    Q Who paid you to write the health care memo?

    A It's not relevant.

    Q A pharmaceutical company?

    A No pharmaceutical company was involved.

Riiiiiiight, it's not relevant who paid for the memo – a memo with talking points now being parroted by Fox News and other conservative media outlets and figures.  I know it may be a bit of a stretch to expect Luntz to understand that this is an issue about his credibility as a pollster – if he has any left – but it's the right thing to do.

 Luntz was one of the so-called experts used by the anti-American conservative movement to spread the falsehood about health care reform being socialism. That was found to be one of Poltifacts lies of the year. Unfortunately or fortunately depending on your point of view, health care reform or the ACA was a free market solution.

Freedom is Only For the Elite - Welcome to Republican America Which is Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax

Freedom is Only For the Elite - Welcome to Republican America Which is Willing To Raise Payroll Taxes On 113 Million Households To Spare 345,000 Millionaires From Tiny Surtax

Senate Democrats yesterday introduced legislation — as they’ve been promising to — that would extend a soon-to-expire payroll tax cut, and pay for it by implementing a surtax on income above $1 million. Republicans, of course, are opposing the plan, reviving their false claims that taxing the very wealthiest Americans will hit small businesses and job creators.

In essence, the GOP is saying that it’s willing to allow higher taxes on middle- and lower-income Americans in order to prevent tax increases on the very wealthy. According to an analysis by Citizens for Tax Justice, provided to the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, the surtax would affect exceedingly few taxpayers, while a payroll tax cut expiration would wallop more than 100 million households:

    The surtax would impact around 345,000 taxpayers, roughly 0.2 percent of taxpayers, or one in 500 of them. Those people would pay on average an additional 2.1 percent of their overall income, or just over 1/50th of that overall income, in taxes.

    In a majority of states, only one-tenth of one percent, or one in 1,000 taxpayers, would pay this surtax.

    And how many people would benefit from the payroll tax cut? According to the group, around 113 million tax filing units — either single workers or families that include more than one worker — would see their payroll tax cut extended. That’s a lot of people — well over 113 million workers, in fact.

Allowing the payroll tax cut to expire at the end of the year would hit middle-class families with a $1,000 tax increase, providing a substantial drag on the economy. In fact, according to Macroeconomic Advisers, allowing the payroll tax cut to lapse “would reduce GDP growth by 0.5 percent and cost the economy 400,000 jobs.” Other estimates are even worse, with Barclays’s estimating that a payroll tax increase could say 1.5 percent off of GDP growth.

The GOP has, time and again, blocked any legislation that would increase taxes by the slightest amount on the ultra-wealthy, even with tax revenue at a 60 year low, taxes on the rich the lowest they’ve been in a generation, and income inequality out of control. Instead, Republicans would prefer to raise taxes on the middle-class, knocking the economy where it can least afford it.

Be sure and vote conservative Republican in 2012 so the United States of America can look and operate more like 16th century France. When will conservatives start wearing flowing velvet robes and silk brocaded vests so we can all better distinguish the elite from the common folk.

Rupert Murdoch The Anti-American International Business Mogul and His Fox News:: Student Indoctrination Is OK, But Only If The Teacher's a Proto-Fascist Conservative

Anti-American Senate candidate Josh Mandel (R) Wants To Destroy National Forest for His Special Interests Friends

Anti-American Senate candidate Josh Mandel (R) Wants To Destroy National Forest for His Special Interests Friends

Ohio’s transparency-allergic treasurer and U.S. senate candidate Josh Mandel (R) is finally stepping out on stage by offering a certain type of policy positions: wildly unpopular. Mandel endorsed Gov. John Kasich’s (R) anti-labor law early this summer, insisting that Senate Bill 5 — a bill that was resoundingly defeated by police and firefighters — “is about respecting police and firefighters.” Now, Mandel is demanding that Ohio officials open up a national forest in Ohio to fracking — a policy 70 percent of Ohioans oppose. And he wants it done immediately.

Ohio’s Wayne National Forest is host to oil and gas wells, but none as deep and dangerous as those created by fracking, a method of deep natural gas drilling. The plan to lease 3,302 acres during a Dec. 7 public auction “inspired new fears” in Athens, OH about the possible pollution of the area water supply. These concerned prompted Wayne National Forest supervisor Anne Carey to withdraw the auction and begin an evaluation process that could take up to six months. Mandel slammed Carey for her concern, insisting that places like Mahoning Valley (which is about 150 miles away from the park) “will greatly benefit from fracking“:

    “The Mahoning Valley is one of the areas that will greatly benefit from fracking,” said Mandel, who called The Vindicator on Thursday to discuss the issue as well as criticize a decision by a national forest supervisor in the Athens area for postponing a plan to lease more than 3,000 acres for oil and gas drilling.[...]

    Mandel said the gas-and-oil business is booming and “a delay in drilling is a delay in job creation for the state of Ohio.”

    The business can “rejuvenate parts of Ohio,” including the Valley, he said.

Once again, Mandel’s idea of “benefit” is questionable. Fracking has a long history of groundwater pollution, leaving entire towns with highly-contaminated water supplies. Indeed, some contaminated wells have been found to contain extremely high levels leukemia-causing benzene while others left people filling dizzy and caused horses and pets to lose their hair.

I'm not sure what the United States of America has done to senate candidate Josh Mandel (R) for him to hate it so much. Maybe he should take some of that corporate cash he is getting and buy a plane ticket to some right-wing banana republic. He'll feel right at home.

Is Mitt Romney Morally Fit to Be President - He refused to help decorated Iraq war veteran become a cop

Is Mitt Romney Morally Fit to Be President - He refused to help decorated Iraq war veteran become a cop

In an article documenting Mitt Romney's decade-long campaign for the presidency comes this extraordinary profile in political and moral cowardice:

    As Steve LeBlanc of The Associated Press documented in 2007, Romney issued no pardons or commutations while serving as governor, despite some seemingly benign pleas.

    In one of them, Anthony Circosta, a decorated Iraq war veteran, requested a pardon so he could pursue a career as a police officer.

    His background was marred because, as a 13 year old, he was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun.

    The shot that did not break the other child’s skin.

    Nonetheless, Circosta’s plea was among the 100 requests for commutations and 172 requests for pardons that all were denied during Romney’s four years in office.

Apparently, Mitt Romney didn't want to risk having a Mike Dukakis-style Willie Horton issue appear on the campaign trail. Of course, even though Circosta "worked his way through college, joined the Army National Guard, and led a platoon of 20 soldiers in Iraq’s deadly Sunni triangle," Romney refused to help.

When it came to addressing George W. Bush's commutation of Scooter Libby's sentence, Romney defended it, however. So why the sudden shift from Romney? Simple: He was running for office, for Pete's sake. Republican office.

In case you do not remember Scooter Libby lied to protect V.P. Cheney from being prosecuting for exposing the identity f a CIA NOC agent who specilized in Middle-East WMD intelligence. Romney has the same priotites as every wing-nut conservative - party first, America and decency last.

OWS Comes to the Aid of Right-wing Reporter From Daily Caller.

The Conservative Redistribution of Income is Grand Theft for Plutocrats

Here(chart), from the CBO report, are the changes, in percentage points, of the shares of income going to three groups. The top quintile excluding the top 1 percent – which is basically the abode of the well-educated who aren’t among the very lucky few – has only kept pace with the overall growth in incomes. Just about all of the redistribution has taken place from the bottom 80 to the top 1 (and we know that most of that has actually gone to the top 0.1).

 Oligarchy, American Style

Inequality is back in the news, largely thanks to Occupy Wall Street, but with an assist from the Congressional Budget Office. And you know what that means: It’s time to roll out the obfuscators! [Here, from the CBO report, are the changes, in percentage points, of the shares of income going to three groups. The top quintile excluding the top 1 percent – which is basically the abode of the well-educated who aren’t among the very lucky few – has only kept pace with the overall growth in incomes. Just about all of the redistribution has taken place from the bottom 80 to the top 1 (and we know that most of that has actually gone to the top 0.1).]

Anyone who has tracked this issue over time knows what I mean. Whenever growing income disparities threaten to come into focus, a reliable set of defenders tries to bring back the blur. Think tanks put out reports claiming that inequality isn’t really rising, or that it doesn’t matter. Pundits try to put a more benign face on the phenomenon, claiming that it’s not really the wealthy few versus the rest, it’s the educated versus the less educated.

So what you need to know is that all of these claims are basically attempts to obscure the stark reality: We have a society in which money is increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few people, and in which that concentration of income and wealth threatens to make us a democracy in name only.

The budget office laid out some of that stark reality in a recent report, which documented a sharp decline in the share of total income going to lower- and middle-income Americans. We still like to think of ourselves as a middle-class country. But with the bottom 80 percent of households now receiving less than half of total income, that’s a vision increasingly at odds with reality.

In response, the usual suspects have rolled out some familiar arguments: the data are flawed (they aren’t); the rich are an ever-changing group (not so); and so on. The most popular argument right now seems, however, to be the claim that we may not be a middle-class society, but we’re still an upper-middle-class society, in which a broad class of highly educated workers, who have the skills to compete in the modern world, is doing very well.

It’s a nice story, and a lot less disturbing than the picture of a nation in which a much smaller group of rich people is becoming increasingly dominant. But it’s not true.

Workers with college degrees have indeed, on average, done better than workers without, and the gap has generally widened over time. But highly educated Americans have by no means been immune to income stagnation and growing economic insecurity. Wage gains for most college-educated workers have been unimpressive (and nonexistent since 2000), while even the well-educated can no longer count on getting jobs with good benefits. In particular, these days workers with a college degree but no further degrees are less likely to get workplace health coverage than workers with only a high school degree were in 1979.

So who is getting the big gains? A very small, wealthy minority.

The budget office report tells us that essentially all of the upward redistribution of income away from the bottom 80 percent has gone to the highest-income 1 percent of Americans. That is, the protesters who portray themselves as representing the interests of the 99 percent have it basically right, and the pundits solemnly assuring them that it’s really about education, not the gains of a small elite, have it completely wrong.

If anything, the protesters are setting the cutoff too low. The recent budget office report doesn’t look inside the top 1 percent, but an earlier report, which only went up to 2005, found that almost two-thirds of the rising share of the top percentile in income actually went to the top 0.1 percent — the richest thousandth of Americans, who saw their real incomes rise more than 400 percent over the period from 1979 to 2005.

Who’s in that top 0.1 percent? Are they heroic entrepreneurs creating jobs? No, for the most part, they’re corporate executives.

 Republicans - who really should be called the Right-wing Elitist Party - tells us that to complain about this redistribution of income from the working class to millionaires is socialism. Don't fall for that old canard. America has become an economy that gives rich people money just for being rich not because they worked for it. They get that wealth from where all wealth starts, from average Americans producing goods and services. The 1% are the leeches and the 99% are the producers.

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.