Economy

While The GOP/Tea Party Was Blackmailing The Nation…

Posted by on August 3, 2011 at 10:16 am. 2 Comments :

For the past month our country has been embroiled in a contentious debate over whether to raise the debt ceiling, a routine congressional function that has been done without controversy dozens of times. The farthest right faction of the Republican Party was determined to hold the nation hostage in their yearning to dismantle the social safety net and protect the wealth of billionaires. While that carnival was in progress, Washington and the press missed something else that holds some importance to the American people and the economy:

Jobs vs Debt(Source for job loss data: private sector / public sector)

Despite the GOP’s promise to focus on jobs when they assumed the majority in the House of Representatives, they have not produced a single jobs bill. In fact, they have endeavored to kill legislation that would create new jobs. Just before they left for recess after passing the debt ceiling bill, they left unresolved a bill to fund the operations of the Federal Aviation Administration. As a result, over 90,000 workers will be sidelined until congress returns in September. Not to mention, the Treasury will lose $1.2 billion in fees that will go uncollected.

That’s the GOP’s commitment to working families and reducing the deficit. In other words, it’s a hoax. And the media is their accomplice. The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism reports that 52% of news stories last week were related to the debt ceiling debate. Notwithstanding the fact that polls show that the American people are more concerned about jobs than debt, the media virtually ignored the issue of job creation and unemployment.

Now that the debt ceiling debate is at least temporarily resolved, it will be interesting to see what issue dominates news coverage next week. Jobs or the Obama’s dining at a fast food restaurant?

Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party?

Posted by on July 31, 2011 at 8:39 am. 14 Comments :

What is so hard about this? Congress is struggling to fashion a compromise agreement on a bill to raise the debt ceiling. The Republicans are insisting on attaching unrelated provisions to the bill to satisfy the tantrums of Tea Party-affiliated members who are demanding deficit reduction that imposes severe spending cuts but permits no revenue raising through tax reform and the elimination of loopholes.

But who is being represented by the advocates of spending cuts, which include cuts to critical programs like Medicaid? Who is being represented by the opponents of increased revenues achieved by asking corporations and the rich to share in the sacrifice required to bring our nation back to economic health?

The truth is that no one but a few extremist right-wingers are represented by the positions to which the GOP has lashed itself. Here’s the proof:

Debt Solutions

It is almost unheard of to get 72% of Americans to agree on any politically contentious issue. Yet here we have 72% of the country agreeing that the rich are not presently paying their fair share, and that Medicaid should not be cut. And isn’t just a bunch of socialist lefties. This includes majorities of both Independents and Republicans. Let the significance of that sink in. It is not just a fair number of Republicans, it is a MAJORITY of Republicans.

So for whom is House Speaker Boehner fighting? For whom is Senate Minority Leader McConnell fighting? It obviously is not their GOP constituents. In fact, they are betraying their constituents and putting the whole nation at risk in order to pacify a cabal of small-minded, short-sighted, ill-informed, intransigent malcontents known as the Tea Party.

Of course, there is really no such thing as the Tea Party. There are no Tea Party candidates; no Tea Party policies; no registered Tea Party voters. It is nothing more than a radical faction of the GOP that has canonized the Founding Fathers and debased the Constitution with simplistic misinterpretations and ritual recital.

With poll results like those above, it is unfathomable that Republicans in congress give such a wide berth to their tea-besotted cousins. And the same goes for the media. When news networks placate TeaPublicans by employing them to provide commentary and analysis for that point of view, they are, in effect, giving ultra-conservative Republicans an additional voice that they do not provide to progressive Democrats.

It is clear that the Tea Baggers are wildly out of touch with the mainstream of America and they should not be afforded the special treatment they receive. They are merely an annoyingly squeaky wheel with no popular support. They degrade the debate with their stubborn attachment to dubious dogma. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial page declared that “Republicans are not looking like adults to whom voters can entrust the government.” Actually, they aren’t even looking like children:

Regardless of how the debt ceiling debate shakes out, the media, as well as our congressional representatives, need to recognize that the Tea Party is unworthy of the outsized consideration they receive. They haven’t earned it and they don’t deserve. And catering to their hysterics is counterproductive and worse, destructive. With the abundance of evidence that they are a poorly attended party that is located far beyond the boundaries of common sense, the question remains…..

Why Is Anyone Listening To The #@$%*#& Tea Party?

EXCLUSIVE: Photo Of Private Debt Ceiling Talks In John Boehner’s Office

Posted by on July 30, 2011 at 7:59 am. 2 Comments :

The political pugilism over the debt ceiling debate is raging on in Congress and the media as John Boehner’s rightwardly-revised legislation passed in the House on a party-line vote but failed in a more bipartisan fashion in the Senate. This leaves the nation right where it was before these votes took place – on the precipice of a fiscal calamity.

Many observers were perplexed that Boehner, upon failing to hold the GOP caucus in line, added a provision to the bill calling for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. That provision may have swayed a few intransigent House members, but it doomed the bill in the Senate.

In pursuit of some insight as to why the Speaker would deliberately make the bill less likely to ever become law, an intrepid reporter infiltrated the secret negotiations that took place in the Speaker’s chambers prior to the vote. Here is what was discovered:

John Boehner Tea Party

Amongst other things, this revealing photo is evidence that Speaker Boehner is not really in charge of House legislative activities. His leadership is subservient to the Tea Party faction of the Republican Party, or the TeaPublicans. This explains why, after admonishing his caucus to “Get your ass in line,” he was still unable to schedule a vote for fear that it would fail. It further explains why he was forced to make revisions that pushed the bill farther to the right and weakened it’s prospects for passage.

Now that we know who’s in charge of the GOP, perhaps Democrats will fashion a strategy to resolve these issues that takes this reality into account. The extreme right of the Republican Party is fixated on an agenda based on ignorance, faith, and Randian fiction. The only path to resolution is to ignore the TeaPublicans, shame any GOP members who still retain some measure of reason, and alert the public to the dilemma created by the delusional wing of the GOP and Fox’s phony version of “news.”

[Editor’s Note:] In view of recent incidents involving journalists acquiring scandalous information improperly, rest assured that no cell phones were hacked in the development of this story.

GOP Senators Loved Raising The Debt Ceiling Until…

Posted by on July 22, 2011 at 12:16 pm. 8 Comments :

Republicans in congress have been holding the American people hostage for weeks now. Despite the fact that nearly every credible analyst – economists, politicians, academics, etc. – agree that a default by the United States would bring about an economic calamity, the GOP is still threatening to submit the nation to that fate if Democrats do not capitulate to the Tea Party platform of austerity for average Americans and opulent prosperity for the richest one percent.

Make no mistake, the Republicans know exactly what their threat entails. They know that default would be catastrophic. We know because they’ve said so. And we know because we have their voting record to prove it. Between the years 2002 and 2008 Republicans voted repeatedly to raise the debt ceiling while George W. Bush was in the White House. So what changed?

GOP Debt Votes

Oh yeah — that.

The Republican’s are playing “Chicken” with our economy. They don’t care about the deficit. They don’t care about taxes. They certainly don’t care about the elderly or the poor or you or me. They only care about their wealthy benefactors, the billionaires and corporations who bankroll their campaigns. And, of course, their obsession with defeating President Obama next year. They know that a bad economy makes things more difficult for incumbents to get reelected, so they are endeavoring to produce such an outcome to achieve their political goals – at the expense of everyone else and multiple future generations.

Thanks GOP. And thanks Corporate Media for failing to report this in context.

Who Is Really Responsible For The National Debt?

Posted by on July 18, 2011 at 5:51 am. 38 Comments :

The debate over whether to increase the debt ceiling has included relentless assertions as to who is responsible for the nation’s debt having skyrocketed to its present state. The media has utterly failed in presenting the issue objectively. So here it is (pdf) from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office:

National Debt Chart

The Republicans have increased the national debt far more than Democrats in the last five administrations, including that of the sainted Ronald Reagan. If the Tea Party were to honestly observe the reality of the nation’s economic history they would all be voting Democratic. Unfortunately, the Tea Party is a wholly owned subsidiary of the the Republican Party and Americans for Prosperity and is unlikely to alter their support for the GOP. However, that shouldn’t stop the press from accurately reporting the truth about the debt.

Hypocrisy Watch: Casey Anthony Trial Preempts Debt Crisis On Fox News

Posted by on July 1, 2011 at 2:01 pm. 6 Comments :

Neil CavutoNeil Cavuto opened his program today by chastising the President and Congress for taking the holiday weekend off in the midst of a looming and unsolved debt crisis. He was appalled that these people could be so cavalier under such desperate circumstances. Then he interviewed some toady he found under a Tea Party toadstool who agreed with everything he had just said.

For the record, the Washington set was scheduled to be out of town for all of next week until President Obama shamed them into changing their plans. Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, declared that the Senate would be open for business Tuesday, and for the remainder of the week. It was on the President’s initiative that Congress was called back into service immediately after the Independence Day hiatus.

So Congress will not be taking their customary holiday to celebrate the Fourth of July. They will simply be off for the weekend and the fourth to be with their families and constituents, then right back to work on Tuesday. And this has gotten Cavuto’s knickers in a knot.

What came next made this already asinine whining ever more stupefying. Cavuto introduced the panel of business commentators that he would normally be hosting tomorrow morning on Saturday’s “The Cost of Freedom” program on Fox News. The reason he hosted this panel today is because the program is being preempted tomorrow to make way for special coverage of the Casey Anthony murder trial.

So Cavuto rails against the President for allegedly neglecting our nation’s economic emergency (even though Obama was responsible for pressuring everyone to come back to work early), while Cavuto and Fox News cast the crisis aside in favor of tabloid coverage of a trial that will have no effect whatsoever on the economy or anything else of national importance.

What a revealing demonstration of twisted priorities and hypocrisy. What a callous and insufferable clown.

An Alien Discovers Paul Ryan’s Republican Budget

Posted by on June 26, 2011 at 2:45 pm. 6 Comments :

Last week the Republicans walked out of the congressional deliberations regarding the debt ceiling. They continue to hold the nation’s economic survival hostage to their obsession for ever more benefits for the wealthy and cuts for the needy – the Republican Model of Shared Sacrifice. As usual, the press fails to put into context the core differences between the Democrats and Republicans. However, those differences are pretty easy to figure out and they have been itemized by economists at the Center On Budget and Policy Priorities.

“House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget plan would get nearly two-thirds of its $4.5 trillion in budget cuts over 10 years from programs that serve people of limited means.“

If an alien exploring the Earth were to draw conclusions about what the most pressing problems are for its inhabitants based on the Ryan budget, it would probably look something like this:


What it boils down to is that Republicans think that the current deficit problems should be resolved by cutting services to seniors, poor children, the disabled, and other low-income Americans. These freeloaders should bear the the burden of restoring our economy’s health, while the wealthy get more tax relief so that they can buy bigger boats and save for their luxury retirement.

Why anyone would think that working Americans and their families should suffer in order to repair problems caused by corporations and Wall Street bankers is unfathomable. But that’s what the GOP is proposing and they’re willing to send the nation into a disastrous default if they don’t get their way.

People Want Substance – Media Dishes Scandal

Posted by on June 15, 2011 at 3:26 pm. 3 Comments :

A report published by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press reveals the gaping divergence between the issues of interest to the American people and those covered by the media.

According to the survey, Americans were most interested in the economy (23%), but the press coverage of that issue amounted to less than half that (11%). Completely flipping those numbers around, only 13% of the country was interested in the Anthony Weiner story, but the press devoted 17% of their time to it – more than any other story.

When asked about the amount of coverage of various stories, 63% of respondents said that the Weiner story received too much coverage. Only 7% said that it received too little. Even a majority of Republicans (58%) said that there was too much press attention on Weiner. These numbers, by the way, were nearly identical to those regarding the Sarah Palin bus trip with 58% saying that it had been over covered, including 52% of Republicans.

If you ever wondered why the pressing problems of the day are not being resolved, or even seriously considered, it’s because the media so dependably ignores the issues about which the people are most concerned. And even when they do approach serious subjects they often trivialize them by focusing on tangents like Sarah Palin and the Tea Party, or distort them with partisan special interests like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Tea Party.

This is why the conventional media is losing ground daily to new media, where news consumers can seek out the information they want. And the folks at CNN, Fox, NBC, etc., can expect this trend to continue as long as they favor salacious trivialities over the issues that the American people regard as important.

Neil Cavuto Preaches Economic Apocalypse

Posted by on June 4, 2011 at 11:01 am. NO Comments :

Yesterday marked the end of a bad week on Wall Street. The market declined all of 2.3% for the week. So if you haven’t already escaped to your bunker in Idaho you may want to pack up the kids, the rations, and the gold coins, and hit the road.

As usual, the prophet of the financial End Times is Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. He is to business what Glenn Beck is to…well, everything else. Cavuto spent the opening minutes of his program on Fox News insisting that America was in a state of deep decline and that no recovery has occurred, or will occur. He later shuttled over to his program on Fox Business Network to announce that the economy had “flatlined.”

Does he mean this economy?


A truly fair and balanced analysis of the situation would recognize that there has been a substantial move to the upside since President Obama was inaugurated. Over the past two years there has been a 43% increase. Compare that to the two years prior, during the Bush administration, that saw a 36% falloff.

The primary argument Cavuto is making for the catastrophe he perceives is that the market has been negative for 5 straight weeks. Of course, knowledgeable analysts never draw conclusions from such short periods of time. The chart above demonstrates why that is not considered wise practice. What Cavuto is spinning as a catastrophe is really a mere 5% drop over a long trend of gains.

This is nothing new for Cavuto or Fox News. They consistently hammer on any negative market activity while ignoring the positive. If the market goes down it is because of the looming Obama depression. If it goes up Fox labels it a bear market rally. Fox is so determined to deny Obama credit for anything positive that they once went so far as to claim that the Tea Party was responsible for market a rally – and that was a rally that began weeks before the Tea Party existed.

Later in the program Cavuto engaged in what he regards as a debate, but is really just him interrupting his guest after every four words. Democratic congressman Chaka Fattah put up a valiant fight to present the facts about the employment statistics that show significant increases over the past couple of years despite recent weakness. But Cavuto would have none of it, cutting off Fattah repeatedly to spin the data as negatively as possible while treating his guest with overt rudeness. Seriously…no Democrat should ever go on that show or that network.

The Fox News financial reporting has been nothing but atrocious, They have been predicting disaster since January of 2009. Anyone who took their analysis seriously missed one of the strongest periods of growth in this nation’s history. I sure hope nobody is taking them seriously now.

Alan Grayson Exposes Greedy Media Leeches

Posted by on December 5, 2010 at 2:14 am. 32 Comments :

Ten years ago George W. Bush signed a bill to cut taxes that was so controversial at the time that it included a provision to expire in ten years. It was regarded by many as too costly and likely to produce massive deficits. Ten years later the worst fears of the critics were borne out and the nation is struggling under its largest debt burden in history.

Somehow Republicans are still defending those tax cuts and demanding that they be extended. Democrats have conceded to extend them for 98% of the American people excluding only income over $250,000. But that isn’t enough for the GOP. They are presently holding the cuts for the vast majority hostage on behalf of the wealthy 2%. It is an unconscionable and irresponsible position that reveals their inflexibility and greed.

Congressman Alan Grayson took to the floor of the House last week to address this issue and delivered a brilliant and damning critique that explains what’s behind the Republican obstructionism.

Grayson: [Y]ou have to wonder why they persist in this mania, this obsession of theirs that we need to have tax cuts for the rich when the economy is flat on its back and unemployment is almost 10%. I think I have the answer. The answer turns out to be very simple.

They want tax cuts for the rich because they want a tax cut for themselves. What do I mean by that? Let’s take a look at the people who are really in charge, the ones who actually run the Republican party.

With that Rep. Grayson ran through a list of wealthy right-wing media hogs who will benefit handsomely from the positions they are taking on taxes:

Greedy Bastard Annual Income Tax Benefit
Rush Limbaugh $58,700,000 $2,700,000
Glenn Beck $33,000,000 $1,500,000
Sean Hannity $22,000,000 $1,000,000
Bill O’Reilly $20,000,000 $914,000
Sarah Palin $14,000,000 $638,000
Newt Gingrich $5,000,000 $250,000
George W. Bush $4,200,000 $187,000

These are just some of the more prominent beneficiaries of the Republican plan to give $700 Billion to the richest people in America. The Republicans, who can’t bring themselves to extend unemployment benefits while the unemployment rate is nearing 10%, have no problem with helping those poor millionaires and billionaires to struggle through these tough times. And it is no coincidence that many of the rightist advocates of this millionaire giveaway are wealthy television and radio stars or politicians themselves.

This is one of those times when words like greedy, selfish, and even shameless, simply do not suffice. But Rep. Grayson has provided as good an explanation for what is happening this week in Congress as any I’ve heard.