Political Ruminations

Morning Quote: Andrew Sullivan on President Obama’s Job Performance

“On the economy, the facts are these. When Obama took office, the United States was losing around 750,000 jobs a month. The last quarter of 2008 saw an annualized drop in growth approaching 9 percent. This was the most serious downturn since the 1930s, there was a real chance of a systemic collapse of the entire global financial system, and unemployment and debt—lagging indicators—were about to soar even further. No fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the next 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment. Economies take time to shift course.

But Obama did several things at once: he continued the bank bailout begun by George W. Bush, he initiated a bailout of the auto industry, and he worked to pass a huge stimulus package of $787 billion.

 

All these decisions deserve scrutiny. And in retrospect, they were far more successful than anyone has yet fully given Obama the credit for. The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. Since then, the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration. In 2011 alone, 1.9 million private-sector jobs were created, while a net 280,000 government jobs were lost. Overall government employment has declined 2.6 percent over the past 3 years. (That compares with a drop of 2.2 percent during the early years of the Reagan administration.) To listen to current Republican rhetoric about Obama’s big-government socialist ways, you would imagine that the reverse was true. It isn’t.

 

The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

You’d think, listening to the Republican debates, that Obama has raised taxes. Again, this is not true. Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition. His spending record is also far better than his predecessor’s. Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms. Under Bush and the GOP, nondefense discretionary spending grew by twice as much as under Obama. Again: imagine Bush had been a Democrat and Obama a Republican. You could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor—except, of course, that Obama has had to govern under the worst recession since the 1930s, and Bush, after the 2001 downturn, governed in a period of moderate growth. It takes work to increase the debt in times of growth, as Bush did. It takes much more work to constrain the debt in the deep recession Bush bequeathed Obama.”

- Conservative-Independent, Andrew Sullivan, excerpted from a Newsweek cover story. The quoted portion of the article focuses on President Obama’s job performance in regards to the economy.

The Food Stamp President

Newt Gingrich just can’t stop using that old canard, the Southern dog whistle, that code for the term “welfare queens” (which don’t even exist in reality). Here’s Newt when asked what he would say to the NAACP if given the opportunity:

“More people are on food stamps today because of Obama's policies than ever in history. I would like to be the best paycheck president in American history. ... And so I'm prepared if the NAACP invites me, I'll go to their convention and talk about why the African-American community should demand paychecks and not be satisfied with food stamps.”

Really, Newt, really?

Give me a freaking break. Calling President Obama the “food stamp president” and insinuating that black people are all on food stamps, i.e., too lazy to get jobs thus live off food stamps, for Christ’s sake, is old, racist, and not based in truth. [Gingrich’s association with truth is always tenuous, but this is to the point of utterly ridiculous.]

Yes, enrollment in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program has increased during the Obama administration, but as experts continually point out, and which Gingrich continually ignores, this is because of the near depression caused by the policies of Bush and company, a deep, deep recession which continues today, necessitating assistance to many more people than would be the case during better times.

Watch Fox News amplify Gingrich’s message:

So did President George W. Bush preside over the highest number of food stamp recipients in history? Thus far, yes. 11 Alive in Atlanta [emphasis mine] fact-checked Gingrich:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition service tracks month-to-month figures dating back to January 2001. The numbers show that the total of food stamp recipients rose to 14.2 million during President Obama's administration.

   The highest in history so far is President George W. Bush. The number of food stamp recipients grew to nearly 14.7 million while he was in office. But, that's eight years in office, compared to President Obama who has not finished his first term.

 

It's possible that when the figures for January 2012 are available they will show that the gain under Obama has matched or exceeded the gain under Bush. But not if the short-term trend continues. The number getting food stamps declined by 43,528 in October. And the economy has improved since then.

   One out of seven Americans is currently getting food stamps, according to the Department of Agriculture.

   The figures also show the rise in food stamps began before Obama took office, and accelerated as the nation plunged into the worst economic recession since the Great Depression.

The economic downturn began in December 2007. In the 12 months before Obama was sworn in, 4.4 million were added to the rolls, triple the 1.4 million added in 2007.

   So, who gets food stamps?

   The most recent Department of Agriculture report on the general characteristics of the SNAP (food stamp) program's beneficiaries says that in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, 2010:

-- 47% of beneficiaries were children under age 18.

-- 8% were age 60 or older.

-- 41% lived in a household with earnings from a job - the so-called "working poor."

-- The average household received a monthly benefit of $287.

-- 36% were white (non-Hispanic), 22% were African American (non-Hispanic) and 10% were Hispanic.

Oh, and by the way, Newt and Fox liars, the state with the highest number of  Americans eligible for and receiving food stamps is Nevada. [Nevada, where if I had to venture a guess, I’d say that there might be maybe fifteen whole black people living in the entire state of Nevada.]

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-IN), a prominent supporter of the food stamp program:

“People now see that it’s necessary to have a strong food stamp program.”

 

 

Rick Santorum to Senate: Obstruction is Good

Rick Santorum tells a Rotary Club that he’d refuse to work (if he were still a senator)in response to Pres. Obama’s recess appointment of Richard Cordray to Director of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency:

“I’d go to the ramparts on this one,” Santorum said at a Rotary Club breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire. “I hope that the Senate has the backbone to say, ‘You will withdraw these nominations or we are doing nothing.”

This is a perfectly legal move  that was made in order to get around three years of GOP obstruction, for the protection of 99% of the American people, but I think we can infer from his comment that Rick Santorum thinks it’s far more important to continue obstructing the business of the American people.

Mitt Romney Denounces Cordray Appointment to Consumer Watchdog Agency, Stands With the 1%

Mitt Romney is of and by the 1%, and this is most easily seen when you realize that Romney is the ONLY candidate on either side whose top 5 largest contributors are Wall Street firms:

Goldman Sachs: $367,200
Credit Suisse Group: $203,750
Morgan Stanley: $199,800
HIG Capital: $186,500
Barclays: $157,750

It’s little wonder that Mitt Romney, the cofounder of private-equity firm Bain Capital, has banked more than $1.1 million from the financial-services industry for his presidential run. Romney still has strong ties to Wall Street, and each year his own bank account benefits to the tune of millions of dollars, per his retirement agreement with Bain.

On Wednesday, President Obama surmounted three years of  GOP obstruction by recess appointing a director to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau yesterday. The Hill:

Earlier in the day Obama announced he would circumvent the Senate and make a recess appointment to put Cordray in charge of the bureau. That decision comes in response to Republicans refusing to hold confirmation hearings for Cordray [just as they refused to do so for Elizabeth Warren for three years] until the White House modified the bureau so it has more oversight and is run by a small panel rather than one director.

In a statement issued by Romney, he and his fellow Republicans are all about the bullshit regarding recess appointments,  Romney calling  it “Chicago-style politics at its worst”:

“Instead of working with Congress to fix the flaws in this new bureaucracy, the president is declaring that he 'refuses to take no for an answer’ and circumventing Congress to appoint a new administrator,”  Romney said in a statement. “This action represents Chicago-style politics at its worst and is precisely what then-Sen. eleObama claimed would be ‘the wrong thing to do.’ Sadly, instead of focusing on economic growth, he is once again focusing on creating more regulation, more government and more Washington gridlock.”

The fact is that President Obama has tried for three years to get the obstructive 111th & 112th Congresses to confirm a director. They have refused to do so because they want the regulatory agency to die.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce the One Percent stands with Romney for the 1 percent, against the 99 percent, threatening a lawsuit against the Obama Administration.

Oh, and just so we’re clear, Republicans have no problem whatsoever with recess appointments when they are the party in power. Adam Serwer:

According to reports from the Congressional Research Service, during their time in office President Ronald Reagan made 240 recess appointments, President George H. W. Bush made 77 recess appointments, President Bill Clinton made 140 recess appointments, and George W. Bush made 171. Obama's first term has seen a paltry 28.

Sixteen Things You Should Know About Ron Paul

Let's start with this - he is absolutely not your benign Uncle Fester.

1. Ron Paul has financial ties to the white supremacist, Don Black, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and currently a Neo-Nazi leader whose website is the largest hate site on the internet. The image is of Ron Paul with Don Black, and Don Black’s son, Derek Black.
2. Ron Paul is absolutely a racist; there is no real room for doubt.
3. Ron Paul told Chris Matthews that he would not have voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He also stated that Jim Crow laws should not be illegal.
4. Ron Paul is an anti-Semite, and has a terrible record on Israel.
5. Ron Paul has been closely allied with the John Birch Society since the 1970’s. In fact, Ron Paul was the speaker at their 50th anniversary shindig.
6. Ron Paul believes that we should abolish FEMA. Should a natural disaster occur, you can only hope that your neighbors will help you, and that they have the money to help you.
7. Ron Paul opposed raising the U.S. debt ceiling, even if it meant that we would default on our obligations.
8. Ron Paul encouraged Wikileaks/Julian Assange to go after the Federal Reserve.
9. Ron Paul claims that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are unconstitutional and has even equated them with slavery. He has said that he would abolish these programs. (And yes, Ron Paul is himself on Medicare.)
10. Ron Paul believes that both our monetary system and our system of taxation are unconstitutional, and would like to abolish our centralized banking system (Federal Reserve), paper money, the IRS, and the income tax.
11. Ron Paul believes that abortion should be criminalized & “is the most important issue of our age”.
12. Ron Paul believes that the following departments of the Federal government are unconstitutional and would like to abolish all of them:  the Dept. of Education, the Dept. of Energy, the Dept. of Agriculture, the Dept. of Health and Human Services, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the Dept. of Commerce, and the Dept. of Labor.
13. Ron Paul would like to eliminate all federal involvement on multiple issues such as marriage, abortion, prayer in school, civil rights, education, and others. In a Ron Paul world, the Federal government would defer to the individual states on most  issues.........that is, providing that the Federal government first does things such as declare a fetus a “person”. 
14. Ron Paul is an isolationist. This is not the same thing as “anti-war” which seems to confuse some Liberals.
15. Ron Paul wants to eliminate the 14th amendment -- to end “birthright citizenship”, and has called for attacks on the benefits of undocumented workers.
16. Ron Paul would eliminate the student loan program, leaving students at the mercy of the banks, and despite the fact that the U.S. has fallen behind other developed nations in education.

Some Liberals say that Ron Paul holds “progressive views”. I think not.

Morning Quote: Sen. Tom Coburn on Newt Gingrich

“I am not inclined to be a supporter of Newt Gingrich having served under him for years and experienced personally his leadership. … because i found it lacking often times. … There are all types of leaders, leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk, leaders that have one standard for the people they are leading and a different standard for themselves. I just found his leadership lacking and I’m not going to go into greater detail on that and if you poll the group of people that came in congress in 1994, which he did a wonderful job in organizing that and he’s brilliant and has a lot of positives, but i still, I will have difficulty supporting him as President of the United States.”

- Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) on Fox News Sunday regarding the candidacy of Newt Gingrich.

Morning Quote: David Plouffe on Extending Payroll Tax Cuts

“It's a very clarifying vote. We can cut taxes for 160 million Americans, 98% of small businesses - giving them an incentive to hire long-term unemployed workers, and we can actually responsibly pay for that by asking roughly 300,000 people who make over a million dollars a year to pay their fair share. I can't think of a more clarifying vote - a clear vote - about where your priorities stand.”

- David Plouffe, White House senior advisor and campaign manager for the Obama 2008 campaign, on the then upcoming vote to extend the payroll tax cut, a vote during which Republicans chose to increase taxes on the middle class.

Morning Quote II: Newt Gingrich Endorses Execution for Drug Possession

“If you’re serious about the latter view, then we need to think through a strategy that makes it radically less likely that we’re going to have drugs in this country. Places like Singapore have been the most successful at doing that. They’ve been very draconian. And they have communicated with great intention that they intend to stop drugs from coming into their country.”

- Newt Gingrich endorses Singapore’s policy of executing people for possession of drugs.

Morning Quote: Newt Gingrich

“I think that we need to consider taking more explicit steps to make it expensive to be a drug user. It could be through testing before you get any kind of federal aid. Unemployment compensation, food stamps, you name it.

It has always struck me that if you’re serious about trying to stop drug use, then you need to find a way to have a fairly easy approach to it and you need to find a way to be pretty aggressive about insisting–I don’t think actually locking up users is a very good thing. I think finding ways to sanction them and to give them medical help and to get them to detox is a more logical long-term policy.”

- Newt Gingrich declares war on recipients of federal aid, says mandating drug tests should be the standard, and tries to paint his position as concern for drug users.

Bob Cesca responds:

The drug testing should include anyone who receives federal subsidies. Oil companies ($24 billion), defense contractors ($12 billion), the financial sector (trillions!) — all of them. Let’s drug test the entire management team of each company from the CEO to the board and all the way down the line. If anyone fails the test, take away their federal aid, just like Newt Gingrich says.

Morning Quote: John Kerry

“We Democrats put a $4 trillion dollar plan on the table. We had $1.3 trillion of cuts, and we had $1.3 trillion in revenue. Now, some of that revenue, we’re not asking that to happen tomorrow or the next day, it could happen in a year. This is a ten-year plan and longer. So we have the ability here to do something that’s fair for all Americans. But unfortunately, this thing about the Bush tax cuts and the pledge to Grover Norquist keeps coming up. Grover Norquist has been the 13th member of this committee without being there. I can’t tell you how many times we hear about ‘the pledge, the pledge.’”

- Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), Super Committee member, on Grover Norquist’s influence over the Republican party.

Morning Quote: John Boehner

“The top 1 percent pay 38 percent of the income taxes in America. You know, how much more do you want them to pay? ”

- Speaker of the House, John Boehner, to Christiane Amanpour on “This Week’ yesterday, employing the ubiquitous right wing meme, the "Poor Rich People Mantra" in defense of Republican policies.

Boehner also implied that the Occupy Wall Street protests were about class warfare, and yet, in 2010, the wealthiest 1% of U.S. citizens held 70% of all U.S. financial assets. 70%.  And still, the 1%  don’t pay a fair share of taxes, skating by through the use of a tax code which favors the rich.

Morning Quote: Vice President Joe Biden

Vice President Biden [substituting for the president re the weekly address - video after the jump]:

“Today we found out we’ve had the 20th month in a row where we’ve increased private sector jobs -- 104,000 this month, 104,000 private sector jobs.  And as all you know, that's not nearly enough.  We have to increase the pace.  We have to act now to do everything in our power to keep this economy moving and to grow jobs.

President Obama is on his way back from France where he just met with the leaders of the 20 largest economies in the world, where he urged our European friends to step up and stabilize their own economies because if they fail, it will affect the whole world.

Too many Americans are still struggling.  Too many college students here at the University of Pittsburgh and elsewhere are worrying about the rising cost of their tuition, and the increasing accumulation of debt.  And too many of their parents are in stagnant jobs or out of work, wondering if they're going to be able to send their child back to college next semester.

Morning Quote the Tax Policy Center on Cain’s 9-9-9 Plan

“A middle income household making between about $64,000 and $110,000 would get hit with an average tax increase of about $4,300, lowering its after-tax income by more than 6 percent and increasing its average federal tax rate (including income, payroll, estate and its share of the corporate income tax) from 18.8 percent to 23.7 percent. By contrast, a taxpayer in the top 0.1% (who makes more than $2.7 million) would enjoy an average tax cut of nearly$1.4 million, increasing his after-tax income by nearly 27 percent. His average effective tax rate would be cut almost in half to 17.9 percent. In Cain’s world, a typical household making more than $2.7 million would pay a smaller share of its income in federal taxes than one making less than $18,000. This would give Warren Buffet severe heartburn.”

- Howard Gleckman of the non-partisan Tax Policy Center, talking about the results of an analysis of Herman Cain’s ridiculous 9-9-9 plan.

Via Paul Krugman

Right Wing Propaganda: Rick Perry’s First Campaign Ad

Well. There is nothing I can say about this (piece of propaganda/crap) Rick Perry campaign ad that hasn’t already been said better by others, including Bob Cesca, who has a piece up on Huffington Post that’s just a must read for everyone.

Anyway, watch this video, and make a concerted effort not to yell “America, Fuck Yeah!” or “Liar, liar, pants on fire!”

Leaving aside all of the bullshit histrionics, and the false patriotism, the worst part of the video is Perry’s “Zero Jobs” Big Lie, a claim rated ‘Pants on Fire’ by the non-partisan Politifact.

Or maybe it’s throughout the vid with Perry ranting on about the greatness of AMERICA (Fuck Yeah!), when this is the very same guy who threatened to SECEDE from the United States of AMERICA (Fuck Yeah!) over the stimulus bill in 2009, and in 2010 used federal stimulus dollars to make up 97% of his budget shortfall.

Truly disgusting ad.

Jon Stewart’s “Angel Network” to Save the Millionaires

Watch:

(Via Bob Cesca)