Tag Archives: food stamps

Welfare Queen Business Model: Walmart is ‘the largest recipient of public aid in the country’

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No wonder the Walton family’s personal wealth is equal to the combined wealth of 40% of American families. Walmart is the anti-American dream… it’s the American nightmare. Why would any American shop at Walmart?

“Representative-elect Alan Grayson (D-FL) said Monday that he will put mega-retailer Walmart squarely in his sights during the next Congress for the company’s liberal use of public assistance programs to supplement their workers’ wages… Grayson called Walmart “the largest recipient of public aid in the country,” saying their low wages force workers to take food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid just to get by.

“The taxpayer pays for the earned income credit,” he said. “The taxpayer pays for Medicaid. The taxpayer pays for unemployment insurance when they cut hours down. And the taxpayer pays for other forms of public assistance like food stamps. I think the taxpayer is getting fed up of paying these things when, in fact, Walmart could give every employee its got, even the CEO, a 30 percent raise and still be profitable.”

He added that while the health care mandate in the Affordable Care Act will help, “that’s just the start. In state after state after state, Walmart employees represent the largest group of Medicaid recipients, the largest group of food stamp recipients, and taxpayers shouldn’t have to bear that burden,” Grayson said. “It should be Walmart. So, we’re going to take that burden and put it where it belongs: on Walmart.”

— Continue reading…

And this is a GREAT point: 

abaldwin360: It goes even further than this, those Walmart employees who make so little that they need to be on food stamps more than likely spend their food stamps at Walmart.

In fact, Walmart and other retailers make a killing off of food stamps.

Related: 

Class warfare, Romney-style

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David Corn says this is the most damning line of Romney’s remarks in the hidden camera video:

“I’ll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” 

“Here was Romney sharing his view that Americans who don’t make enough money to pay income taxes and his fellow citizens who rely on Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, or other government programs are lesser people than he and the millionaires before him. These people, Romney was saying, are not adults; they do not, and will not, fend for themselves or do what they must to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and care for themselves and their family members. It was an arrogant insult spoken with true detachment. This was 100-percent 1-percent.”

Sorry, Willard. You and your mega-rich friends don’t get to judge anyone.


image: destroythegop 

CNN’s Dana Loesch: racist illiterate? conservative pinhead?

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Dana Loesch of CNN and Breitbart.com fame is a pinhead. And conservative pinheads love to spew trash on Twitter:


Jesse Taylor: Pandagon – The actual statistics: “About 34 percent of food-stamp recipients are white, while 22 percent are African Americans and 16 percent Hispanic, with the rest being Asian, Native American or those who chose not to identify their race, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.”

@DLoesch / @jesseltaylor

Morning Bunker Report: Sunday 4.29.2012

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——————————WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

BIPARTISANSHIP WAS NEVER AN OPTION: GOP’s Anti-Obama Campaign Started Night Of Inauguration – As President Barack Obama was celebrating his inauguration at various balls, top Republican lawmakers and strategists were conjuring up ways to submarine his presidency at a private dinner in Washington. [...] The dinner lasted nearly four hours. They parted company almost giddily… Sam Stein

THE LATEST REPUBLICAN PLAN to reconcile the budget and preserve defense spending extracts even deeper cuts from programs to help the poor and Americans still reeling from the recession. Although spending levels for the budget were set in the Budget Control Act passed last summer in the deal to raise the nation’s debt limit, Republicans are pushing ahead with another plan that cuts more while trying to prevent the beginning of $600 billion in cuts over 10 years to the growth of the defense budget. – Food Stamps In Crosshairs Of Republicans’ Plan To Save Military

HOUSE REPUBLICANS this week said they would agree to keep student loan interest rates at their current level, but only if they’re allowed to gut spending on preventive health care to finance the costs. The White House balked, but the GOP didn’t care — today, the Republican bill passed, 215 to 195, largely along party lines. Several Democratic lawmakers noted the impact the GOP health care cuts would have on women’s health, and House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), who’s apparently grown a little sensitive to talk about the Republican “war on women,” threw a bit of a tantrum on the House floor during the legislative debate.  I can appreciate why Boehner doesn’t want to talk about the negative impact Republican policies are having on women, but I’d remind the Speaker that the quickest way to change the conversation is for Republicans to stop pursuing policies that have a negative impact on women. In this case, rather than simply helping students because it would be good for them and the economy, Boehner’s caucus decided to play a cheap little game — they’ll keep interest rates low only if they take funding from the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which has nothing to do with student loans. — Maddow Blog

BUT RAISING TAXES ON, SAY, THE OIL AND GAS INDUSTRIES or closing loopholes or subsidies would never be a Republican option to pay for anything – According to the White House: Eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund would have a devastating effect on women’s health and our work to prevent disease and illness. Eliminating the Prevention and Public Health Fund would mean:

  • Hundreds of thousands of women could lose access to vital cancer screenings. Prevention Fund resources are expected to help more than 300,000 women be screened for breast cancer in 2013 and more than 280,000 be screened for cervical cancer.
  • Programs that help to prevent congenital heart defects, prevent fetal alcohol syndrome, and promote early identification and intervention efforts for children with developmental delays and disabilities could be eliminated.
  • Tens of thousands children could lose access to immunizations.

MITT ROMNEY’S NEW “I’m rubber, you’re glue” campaign – “We will stop the unfairness of government workers getting better pay and benefits than the very taxpayers they serve,” the former Massachusetts governor said. “And we will stop the unfairness of one generation passing larger and larger debts on to the next.”  I doubt this will convince anyone other than true believers, but that’s not the point; the idea is to muddy the waters when it comes to coverage of Romney’s message. By attacking Obama on “fairness,” Romney can force the press to bring a horse race dynamic to the opposing claims—“Mr. Obama says that it’s unfair for multi-millionaires to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families, but Mr. Romney says that what’s really unfair is the burden of debt.” The issues aren’t actually sorted out, and Romney walks away with minimal scrutiny. As an aside, I will say that there is some truth to Romney’s claim. Tax cuts for the wealthy are a major driver of short-term debt, and if we keep rates low on high-income earners—as Romney proposes—we will pass a tremendous amount of debt to future taxpayers. Rather than use federal dollars for education, infrastructure, or research, we will give it to the wealthiest Americans, and leave the next generation to deal with the consequences of high debt and a deteriorating society. That’s unfair. — American Prospect

THE M-I-DOUBLE TIZZLE is still complaining about the president “slow jamming” the news with Jimmy Fallon. — CBS News

PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS————————————————————

REAL TIME WITH BILL MAHER New Rules: April 27, 2012  – Maher’s final ‘new rule’ starts out with discussing what the media chooses to report about such things as the Secret Service scandal (as opposed to why Obama was in Columbia), or John Edwards and why he has a favorability rating of just 3% — and it’s NOT because he’s been accused of a campaign finance violation (it’s because of the sex scandal). Maher says, “Thanks to the Supreme Court, last week Mitt Romney’s super PAC was able to get a $10 million anonymous donation. For all we know, it came from Vladmir Putin, or Mel Gibson, or Kim dot com. The Supreme Court did a lot more to corrupt campaign finance than John Edwards. Why do we punish sex so much more than everything else? Clinton lied about a blow job, got impeached. Bush lied about a war, didn’t…” Watch the rest:

…
YES WE CAN laugh at ourselves…   President Obama at the 2012 White House Correspondents’ Dinner 4.28.2012:
 
 
 
Source: sandandglass

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA told a group of women on Friday that he has been their fiercest advocate and warned that Mitt Romney’s positions on women’s issues represent a step back in time. “The choice between going backward or moving forward has never been so clear,” Obama told several hundred women at the National Issues Conference, a big-ticket annual fundraiser that’s been hosted by the Democratic National Committee for nearly two decades. And as long as I’m president, we are going to keep moving forward. You can count on that. You don’t have to take my word on it – you’ve got my signature on it,” he said, referring to the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, before adding a jab at the Romney campaign, which expressed uncertainty recently about whether the candidate supported the law. “Because something like standing up for the principle of equal pay for equal work isn’t something I’ve got to ‘get back to you on’ – it’s the first law I signed.” – POLITICO

  • AND A TYPICALLY ILLITERATE RESPONSE from the world’s dumbest wingnut blogger: The Gateway Pundit: Race war, war on the rich, war on women, now this…Barack Obama Declared War on the Catholic Church and US Christians today. In Obama’s world, free birth control is a natural human right and should be supplied by the state. But he’s not a socialist? — LGF

Morning Bunker Report: TGIF 4.20.2012

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————————————WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

MICHELE BACHMANN accuses President Obama of  ‘waving a tar baby in the air’ – ”This is just about waving a tar baby in the air and saying that something else is a problem,” Bachmann told Florida-based conservative news organization Shark Tank on Wednesday. “I have never seen a more irresponsible president who is infantile in the way that he continually blames everyone else for his failure to first diagnose the problem and second to address the problem. It’s always everyone else’s fault,” the Tea Party darling added. The term originates from the “Uncle Remus” stories, in which a doll made of tar and turpentine is used to snare Br’er Rabbit. While “tar baby” is defined in the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “something from which it is nearly impossible to extricate oneself,” it has long been recognized as a derogatory term for African Americans.

POOF! NRA Scrubs Nugent Video From Website, YouTube – There’s plenty of convention content available on the group’s web page and YouTube channel, but you won’t find any footage of the Sunday afternoon discussion with Nugent — an NRA board member — that led Mitt Romney to distance himself from Nugent and prompted the Secret Service to schedule a meeting with him. “If Barack Obama becomes the president in November, again, I will either be dead or in jail by this time next year,” Nugent told a crowd at the convention. That comment piqued the interest of the Secret Service, who’ll be meeting with Nugent Thursday. The White House did not immediately respond for a comment on whether it or the Secret Service played a role in the deletion of the videos. Nor did the NRA immediately respond to a request for comment. [image: morningamp]

  • BUT DID HE SHIT HIS PANTS AGAIN? Nugent says had solid meeting with Secret Service – ”Good, solid, professional meeting concluding that I have never made any threats of violence towards anyone. The meeting could not have gone better,” the 63-year-old singer and guitarist said. …”The Secret Service interview of Ted Nugent has been completed,” agency spokesman Brian Leary said. “The issue has been resolved. The Secret Service does not anticipate any further action.”

IN CASE YOU’RE NOT FAMILIAR WITH DRESSAGE, The Hill helps out: …Romney and his wife Ann co-own Rafalca, a highly regarded 15-year-old Oldenburg mare they have sponsored in numerous dressage competitions including this year’s World Cup Final, which takes place in the Netherlands. Dressage is a highly disciplined form of horsemanship that can appear to look like dancing… DressageDaily.com revealed in August 2010 Romney also picked music from the soundtrack of the film “The Mission” for Rafalca’s freestyle routine at the National Dressage championships. – Of course, I still have some strains of class resentment from my homeland, but a president who owns horses and whose wife’s horse performs in dressage competitions? That’s a royal family lifestyle. [...] And here is Rafalca in her dressage best: Not exactly great positioning for a candidate campaigning for more tax cuts for the wealthy and massive cuts in aid to the poor. The top hat is a great touch, no? [Andrew Sullivan]

ERIC CANTOR SUGGESTS RAISING TAXES ON THE POOR: ‘You’ve Got To Discuss That Issue’ – Today, response to a question by ABC’s Jon Karl, Cantor made it clear that Republicans are interested in raising taxes on the poor while lowering tax rates for everyone else as part of any comprehensive tax reform plan: CANTOR: We also know that over 45 percent of the people in this country don’t pay income taxes at all, and we have to question whether that’s fair. And should we broaden the base in a way that we can lower the rates for everybody that pays taxes. [...] ThinkProgress has repeatedly explained why many Americans don’t pay income taxes — most either don’t make enough money or are college students or seniors with no yearly incomes. And those Americans are subject to various other forms of taxation, including the federal payroll tax. The richest Americans, meanwhile, have seen their tax rates fall even as their incomes skyrocketed, contributing to rising inequality and exploding federal deficits. As Cantor made plain today, though, none of that matters. In addition to making the poor and middle class shoulder the burden of draconian budget cuts, Republicans want to raise their taxes too.

REP. PAUL RYAN dismisses Catholic bishops criticism of budget plan – “These are not all the Catholic bishops, and we just respectfully disagree,” he said on Fox News after being questioned about the bishops criticism of his budget plan. The USCCB later responded to Ryan’s comment, informing The Hill that they represented “all of the U.S. bishops on key issues at the national level.” Ryan has said that his Catholic faith helped shape his budget plan. But Catholics have questioned his admiration for the libertarian novelist Ayn Rand, who advocated the “virtue of selfishness” and called Christianity the “the best kindergarten of communism possible.” Ryan’s House-approved budget for 2013-2022 would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, by $133.5 billion over the next decade. Approximately 2 million individuals would be cut off from the program entirely, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Another 44 million would see their benefits cut.

  • JOHN BOEHNER, a Catholic, said at a press conference Wednesday the cuts were necessary, despite the impact they may have on the poor.

—————————————————————-PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

Women of all ages and ethnic groups are more likely to identify as Democrats than as Republicans or Independents. Forty-five per cent of women say they’re Democrats, versus thirty-two per cent of men, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. The reason women are more likely to vote Democratic has less to do with what we generally consider women’s issues than Democrats seem to think. But the real reason means that Republicans will find it difficult to close the gender gap: women tend to support big government. “For more than a decade, women have been more likely than men to favor an active role for government,” said a Pew Research Center report released in March. “And recent surveys show that higher percentages of women than men say that government should do more for the poor, children, and the elderly.” Women advocate strengthening government regulation, especially on health, the environment, and food and workplace safety, much more than men do. [The New Yorker]

WAR CRIMES: Former Congresswoman: Not too late to hold Bush and Cheney accountable –Former Rep. Elizabeth Holtzman (D-NY) told MSNBC’s Martin Bashir on Thursday… “As a former prosecutor and a former member of the House Judiciary Committee during Watergate, I spent a lot of time taking a look at the statues,” she explained. “It’s one thing to abuse power, and it’s one thing not to do the right thing, but it’s another thing to commit a crime.” Holtzman said Bush and Cheney appear to have “knowingly” violated at least three statues. She said Bush and Cheney likely committed conspiracy to defraud the United States, for the “deceptions” involved in going to war with Iraq. Secondly, she claimed they violated federal statues regarding the wiretapping of Americans without a court order. Thirdly, Holtzman said Bush and Cheney violated federal laws prohibiting torture. “What we can’t afford to do is allow a president to say he is above the law,” she remarked.

BUFFETT RULE: Democrats Vow To Keep Pushing Millionaire Tax Despite Expected Failure – Democrats found McConnell’s positions disingenuous, arguing that a GOP-waged filibuster would be the only reason for the Buffett Rule’s failure. “All of their arguments just don’t stand up because they’re so afraid of this issue,” [Chuck] Schumer said. “Are they for it or against it? They say, ‘Well, it won’t pass.’ It won’t pass because they are opposed to it,” he said, adding that Republicans are the ones guilty of chicanery. “The gimmick is when they block something and say, ‘Let’s not pay attention to it because we won’t let it pass,” Schumer said. “If they think fairness is a gimmick, if they think that having people pay their fair share is a gimmick, then they’re just completely out of touch with the American people.” [...] Schumer vowed to keep bringing the Buffett Rule back until Republicans give in, the way they did on the payroll tax cut fight. “We’ll keep pushing this issue all year long, and we think we’ll pick up more and more Republicans,” Schumer said. He added that the idea is not just to score campaign points, but to show people that Democrats are more in line with them on tax policy, and to ultimately pass the bill.

SEN. HARRY REID: Buffett Rule Is A Path Toward Economic Fairness

…

Morning Bunker Report: Thursday 4.19.2012

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————————————WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

MITT ROMNEY, Who Spent 212 Days Out Of State One Year, Attacks Obama For Vacationing – Presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney took up a common conservative refrain against the president today, attacking Obama for supposedly vacationing too much. “I would think you could kind of suck it up for four years particularly when the American people are out of work,” Romney said …As of August of last year, when Obama’s vacations briefly dominated the news cycle, George W. Bush had taken almost three times as many vacation days as Obama, and Ronald Reagan had taken almost double the days at similar points in their terms. But the tact is especially odd coming from Romney, who is no stranger to taking leaves while in office. In 2006, his last year as governor of Massachusetts, Romney spent 212 days out of state — more than four days each week, on average — preparing for a presidential run. […] This vacation hypocrisy is nothing new for Romney, though, who attacked Obama last year for going to tony Martha’s Vineyard — even though it turned out Romney would be on the island on the very same day. More importantly, in this day and age, no president is ever out of communication, no matter where in the world they go. So any discussion of Obama’s vacationing is mere distraction and a weak attempt to make a scandal out of nothing.

REPUBLICANS PICK AND CHOOSE THEIR “CHRISTIAN” CONVICTIONS: Boehner to Catholic bishops: Take ‘bigger look’ at Republican budget –Referencing Matthew 25, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called on Congress to put the poor first in budget priorities and rethink cuts to programs that benefited the least among us. But Boehner, a Catholic, said at a press conference Wednesday the cuts were necessary, despite the impact they may have on the poor.  [...] The House Agriculture Committee approved a measure on Wednesday that would cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps, by $133 billion over the next decade. Approximately 2 million individuals would be cut off from the program entirely, according to the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities. Another 44 million would see their benefits cut. In a letter to House Committee on Agriculture members, Bishop Stephen Blaire described the proposed cuts to the program as “unjustified and wrong.” “If savings need to be achieved, cuts to agricultural subsidies and direct payments should be considered before cutting anti-hunger programs that help feed poor and vulnerable people,” he continued.

After Demanding Offsets For Payroll Tax Cut, GOP Won’t Offset ‘Small Business’ Tax Cut For Millionaires – Despite calls from some conservative members of the party, GOP leadership won’t demand spending cuts to offset the “small business” tax cut that is being proposed by Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA), Politico reports: Several Republican leadership aides say they have no plans to offset the tax cut, which a centerpiece of their agenda during these next two weeks in session. The payroll tax cut, which Republicans did everything to block until it became politically impossible to continue, primarily benefited working class Americans and has real economic benefits. Cantor’s tax cut, on the other hand, is supposedly targeted at small businesses, but will largely aid millionaires like Oprah Winfrey and the owners of professional sports franchises. According to the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon, the bill gives millionaires an average tax cut of $45,000.

Cantor ‘Puzzled’ That Obama Would Threaten To Veto The Latest GOP Tax Cut For Millionaires – Due to its non-existent targeting to actual small businesses, the cut would benefit hedge fund managers, wealthy lawyers, professional sports teams, and Oprah’s production company. Despite all this, Cantor is still “puzzled” that President Obama would threaten to veto the bill, which he did yesterday. On CNBC this morning, Cantor accused Obama of not caring about small businesses due to his opposition to the tax giveaway: Well, listen, the President’s now issued a veto threat against the bill, which is kind of puzzling, because the President has continued to say he’s for small business, he’s for the middle class, and yet he’s now denying any help to small businesses, who frankly could use a 20 percent tax cut…

Republicans Give Up The Game: It Was Never About Deficits – The contrast is particularly stark this week: Senate Republicans blocked the Buffett Rule, dismissing its capacity to raise $47 billion over 10 years, while House Republicans are pushing a broad business tax cut that would add $46 billion to the deficit in just one year. On top of that, House committees are now looking for ways to override automatic cuts to defense spending they agreed to last August as a means of enforcing the controversial debt-limit deal. [...] Underlying this story is a broader GOP strategy of using deficits as a cudgel to attack Democrats when they come to power and use legislative leverage to force cuts to federal programs. Democrats yielded to the GOP for the first half of 2011. But small government isn’t synonymous with responsible budgeting, and when Democrats demanded that Republicans look to the other side of the federal ledger to reduce deficits, the GOP implicitly acknowledged that bringing the budget closer to balance wasn’t their real priority. Democrats say they’re still willing to address deficits with the GOP, but only under a more balanced approach. Republicans so far haven’t budged, and many would rather see wholesale changes to the rules of governing than make concessions to grapple seriously with the issue that they put on the national agenda.

RIP DICK CLARK — LET’S MAKE YOUR DEATH INTO A GOP TALKING POINT: GOP lawmaker: Dick Clark should be remembered as model of free enterprise – [House Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier (R-Calif.)] came to the House floor just a few hours after Clark’s death was reported, and said an ongoing Republican speech about the need to foster small businesses reminded him of the discussions he had with Clark over the years about taxes and free enterprise. “I just want to say that as I listen to your discussion, I was reminded of how he regularly said everyone should pay their fair share of taxes,” Dreier said of Clark. “He said that not too long ago to me. “I said I appreciate that, because he knew he was paying my salary,” Dreier said, adding that he had dinner with Clark just two weeks ago. “He was a believer in the free-enterprise system, he was a believer in encouraging individual initiative and opportunity on a regular basis,” Dreier said. “You guys are here talking about the need for tax fairness and the imperative to ensure that we encourage more people like Dick Clark. I think it’s important for us to remember the wonderful life that this man had.”

—————————————————————-PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

OBAMA TO GOP: Abide By Debt Limit Deal Or Else Face A Government Shutdown – In a major escalation of a slowly building fight over funding the government, the White House has warned House Republicans, in no uncertain terms, that the government will shut down in September if the GOP does not adhere to an agreement they cut with Democrats in August during the standoff over raising the nation’s debt limit. “Until the House of Representatives indicates that it will abide by last summer’s agreement, the President will not be able to sign any appropriations bills,” writes Jeffrey Zients, acting director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, in a letter addressed to congressional appropriators Wednesday. The message is simple: The government will shut down just ahead of the 2012 presidential election if Republicans break faith with the debt limit deal. [TPM]

BERNIE SANDERS: Congress spends day and night worrying about the wealthy – “This country faces enormous problems, the middle-class is declining, poverty is increasing, we’re worried about global warming, we’re worried about health care, we’re worried about education,” he said, “and the American people are looking to Washington and saying, ‘What’s going on? We have enormous problems, and you’re not addressing those problems.’” “One of the reasons that Congress is not addressing those problems is the power of big money in terms of campaign contributions and in terms of lobbying,” Sanders continued. “Working people are trying to keep their heads above water, and here on Capitol Hill all kinds of money is flooding into this institution so that Congress spends day and night worrying about the wealthy and powerful, and forgetting about the middle-class and working families.” He blasted the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which held that limiting corporate campaign spending violated the First Amendment. [...] Sen. Charles Schumer said at the summit that the Citizens United decision was the worst since Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld state laws enacting racial segregation. “Something like 17 people have given half the Republican super PACS half of their money,” he noted. “What is happening to America?”

I BLAME FOX NEWS: The latest Pew poll shows Mitt Romney leading President Obama by a full six points — 50% to 44% — among senior citizens. Ingrates. The president is saving Medicare recipients billions of dollars by closing the Medicare Part-D donut hole, and yet they’re leaning Romney. A new HHS report indicates that 3.6 million Medicare enrollees saved a total of $2.1 billion in 2011 thanks to these ACA provisions. And since the discounts are phased in slowly between 2010 and 2020, the savings will only increase in the future. Old people should be at the top of the pro-Obama roster because of this. After all, if Romney is elected, he’ll repeal the ACA and the donut hole will open up again, meaning senior citizens will have to pay for life-saving prescriptions out of their own fixed-income pockets for a period time every single year. [Bob Cesca]

Same Thing, Both Sides Do It, GOTCHA LIBTARDS! – So apparently, when Obama was a young boy, someone fed him dog meat in Indonesia. Which, according to wingnuts, is exactly the same thing as a grown man making the decision to strap his dog to the roof of the car and terrorize it on a cross country trip. SUCK ON THAT LIBERALS! And of course the WH press corpse is on the job mainstreaming this bullshit.

JOHN BOEHNER YESTERDAY: “This election is going to be a referendum on the president’s economic policies. They’ve not only not helped the economy, they’ve actually made it worse. When you look at his higher taxes, his refusal to deal with the debt, the regulatory regime here in Washington out of control, they’ve scared every businessperson and investor in America.” Speaker Boehner has an odd definition of “worse.” While Boehner talks about Obama’s “higher taxes,” Obama has actually cut taxes. While Boehner said Obama has refused to deal with the debt, Obama offered Boehner a $4 trillion debt-reduction plan that Republicans rejected. While Boehner frets over a “regulatory regime,” Obama has actually created fewer regulations than his Republican predecessor. And then there’s the notion that Obama made the economy “worse.”… [Time for Boehner to update his talking points]

Morning Bunker Report: Tuesday 4.17.2012

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————————————-WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

What is Mitt Romney’s real tax plan? Apparently we got a rare glimpse of this when reporters overheard a private conversation Sunday night with supporters at a fundraising party: “I’m going to probably eliminate for high income people the second home mortgage deduction,” Romney said, adding that he would also likely eliminate deductions for state income and property taxes as well. “By virtue of doing that, we’ll get the same tax revenue, but we’ll have lower rates.” Okey dokey. If Romney could actually get Congress to agree to this, I figure it would bring in roughly $100 billion in revenue. That’s assuming a complete elimination of the deduction for all state, local, and property taxes. In return, this would allow tax rates to go down across the board by about one percentage point. Maybe one and a half. Or, alternatively, it might allow tax rates on the rich to go down by five or ten points. I wonder which he has in mind? [Kevin Drum]

What’s Mitt Romney hiding? A lot, for someone asking for our votes – Mitt Romney has a secret plan to pay for tax cuts for the rich. Mitt Romney is filing for an extension on his taxes, a move that, not coincidentally, prevents him from having to release them. This all makes sense from a guy who thinks that the inequality from which he benefits so enormously should only be discussed in quiet rooms. But it’s not exactly the stuff with which he’s likely to convince a majority of voters that he can be trusted with the governance of their country. After all, Romney doesn’t even want to tell us what policies he’s running on, let alone how his personal conduct has measured up.


…

FROM ROMNEY’S BOOK: “Welfare without work erodes the spirit and the sense of self-worth of the recipient. And it conditions the children of nonworking parents to an indolent and unproductive life. Hardworking parents raise hardworking kids; we should recognize that the opposite is also true. The influence of the work habits of our parents and other adults around us as we grow up has lasting impact.” Does this mean Romney’s children became indolent and unproductive because their mother stayed at home and their father sat in a conference room and fired people for a living? I don’t know, but they do fit the equation Mitt Romney has laid out. Given what we now know of the Romneys, I believe a better title for Romney’s book would be — No Apology, The Case for Being a Privileged White Man. [Indolent and Unproductive | Bob Cesca]

Anti-Mormon pastor endorses Romney because Obama ‘opposes’ the Bible – Fox News host Clayton Morris noted that Jeffress was quoted in October as saying, “Evangelical Christians should not vote for Mitt Romney because he’s a Mormon, therefore not a real Christian.” “Critics would argue that President Obama is a real Christian,” Morris continued. “By that metric then, why wouldn’t you support Barack Obama?” “Well, again, I never said that quote that you attributed to me,” Jeffress argued. “There was a spurious article in one magazine that just completely fabricated that quote. I’ve never said don’t vote for Mitt Romney because he’s not a Christian. But in my book that you were so kind to reference, I said, given the choice between a Christian like Barack Obama who embraces non-biblical principles like abortion and a Mormon like Mitt Romney who embraces Bible principles, there’s every reason to support Mitt Romney in this election. I’ve been consistent in that.” Jeffress added that he expected evangelicals across the nation to put Romney in the White House because Obama “opposes biblical principles.” [image: mittfitts.com]

Dick Cheney, unapologetic war criminal and second in command to an administration which almost completely trashed this country, calls Obama an ‘unmitigated disaster’ — in a moment of unmitigated density and stunning lack of self-awareness: “He has been an unmitigated disaster to the country. I can’t think of a time when I felt it was more important for us to defeat an incumbent president today with respect to Barack Obama. I think he has been an unmitigated disaster to the country. I think to be in a position where he gets four more years in the White House to continue the policies he has, both with respect to the economy, and tax policy, and defense and some other areas would be a huge, huge disappointment.” – DICK Cheney, speaking at the Wyoming Republican Party state convention in Cheyenne, Wyoming on Saturday, about the President.

Republicans to slash food stamps – The White House deliberately increased monthly benefits in 2009 by about $20 per person as a way to pump stimulus dollars into the economy. And in this post welfare-reform crisis, hard-strapped governors have sought to maximize food stamp dollars as a cheap way to help families without tapping state funds. The higher costs and visibility—especially as more businesses advertise that they will honor the electronic benefit cards introduced in the 1980’s—are what’s driving the Republican push. The Recovery Act boost in benefits is already phasing out and will be gone entirely by November 2013. But the package now, to be taken up by the House Agriculture Committee Wednesday, would end this abruptly summer, impacting families Sept. 1, and saving about $5.9 billion in 2012 and 2013. [...] the severity of the proposed House cuts could be an over reach for two reasons. First they are all coming from the Agriculture panel in a context where rich farm subsidies continue to be protected at a time of record income for producers. Even in the commodity lobby, there is broad consensus that the current system of cash payments to growers at a time of high farm profits can no longer be politically defended. And by not striking more of a balance, the committee risks real damage to the coalition that has supported farm and food programs together for decades.

———————————————————–——PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

“Tonight, Senate Republicans voted to block the Buffett Rule, choosing once again to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest few Americans at the expense of the middle class. The Buffett Rule is common sense. At a time when we have significant deficits to close and serious investments to make to strengthen our economy, we simply cannot afford to keep spending money on tax cuts that the wealthiest Americans don’t need and didn’t ask for. But it’s also about basic fairness—it’s just plain wrong that millions of middle-class Americans pay a higher share of their income in taxes than some millionaires and billionaires. One of the fundamental challenges of our time is building an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same rules. And I will continue to push Congress to take steps to not only restore economic security for the middle class and those trying to reach the middle class, but also to create an economy that’s built to last.” – President Obama in a statement on Monday’s vote

Henry Paul Monaghan, a professor of constitutional law at Columbia Law School and prominent conservative legal scholar, urges the Supreme Court to uphold health care reform — “Moreover, the market for health care is distinctive (if not entirely unique) in several key respects. Virtually all of us will need and obtain health care at some point, but we often cannot predict when or in what ways we will need it. And for the vast majority of us, direct payment for the health care services we obtain would be prohibitively expensive. Yet not obtaining needed medical care can be the difference between life and death. These features help explain why, unlike many other markets, insurance is the overwhelmingly dominant means of payment in the health care market. They also explain why Congress has required that individuals be given emergency care without regard to their ability to pay. As a result, and again unlike other markets, uninsured individuals who are unable to pay directly for needed medical services necessarily shift the cost of those services to others — to health care providers, the government, individuals with insurance, and taxpayers. In that way, Congress is not creating a market which it then seeks to regulate. The insurance-based structure of the health care market is already firmly in place. That is why it was well within Congress’s discretion to design legislation to operate within, and to address problems posed by, this vast market.”

“The ESCHATON DECADE has been a pretty fucked up decade, a time when this country stopped even bothering to pretend to live up to many of its supposed ideals. We go to war and kill lots of people for no good reason, elites have eliminated any accountability for themselves for criminal wrongdoing, we’ve tortured and assassinated people, and the response to massive economic suffering and related criminal fraud has been to give lots of free money to the people who caused it all.” – Duncan Black

Morning Bunker Report: Wednesday 4.11.2012

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————————————-WHAT THE REPUBLICAN PARTY STANDS FOR TODAY

imageRick Santorum: thanks for the memories — “I don’t want to make black people’s lives better” with taxpayer money (which he of course qualified as “blah” people). - He said women aren’t capable of serving in combat because there would be “emotions that are involved.” - “I refer to global warming as not climate science, but political science.”  - He told a mother her gay son is engaging in unhealthy activity that the government should not “promote.” - Santorum is pro-income inequality.   -Santorum promised to significantly reduce federal funding for food stamps, arguing that the nation’s increasing obesity rates render the program unnecessary. - He called contraception a “license to do things” - Santorum found “it almost remarkable for a black man” to be pro-choice.  - He told a rape victim: “Make the best out of a bad situation” - In 1994, the candidate said single moms are just “breeding more criminals.” [ThinkProgress]

Idaho’s only black lawmaker gets KKK membership invite – On Saturday, Democratic state Rep. Cherie Buckner-Webb used her Facebook page to share photos of the KKK “application,” which asked for $35 and a proclamation that she was “a White Christian man or woman.”…“(It) was addressed by hand,” the lawmaker noted. “Something a little unsettling.” [...] “Initially, I wondered what was someone’s thought process in sending that to me. My first inclination was someone wants me to know the Klan is still around,” she explained. “I am really concerned about the climate of intolerance in a lot of different areas. I see a lot of intolerance toward gays, toward women,” the Boise Democrat said, recalling recent legislative battles over LGBT rights, abortion and contraception. “I would be a fool not to take note and govern myself accordingly,” she added. “It was a sign for me to remain vigilant, to remain careful and to remain thoughtful.”

George Zimmerman’s Attorneys Quit, Say Client ‘Disappeared’ – The attorneys claim that Zimmerman repeatedly rebuffed their legal advice, and that they have now lost contact with him. “On Monday we began fielding questions…’did we know anything about (this) website?’ And our initial response was, well that’s probably bogus, we don’t know anything about that. And we started making inquiries and frankly confirmed that he, through friends or family, had in fact set that site up and it was legitimate. We immediately began telling the media, disregard the earlier website we gave you that we had set up. Go for the one we now know that he set up.” “We were happy enough with that, but disturbed that he had not communicated with us,” Uhrig said. The attorneys said that Zimmerman repeatedly ignored their legal advice. “We learned that he had called Sean Hannity of Fox News directly — not through us,” Uhrig said. “We believe that he spoke directly with Sean off the record and [Hannity's] not even willing to tell us what our client told him.”

Because this wouldn’t be at all weird or basically insane –

Glenn Beck, once a shining star in the conservative universe, has seen his influence fade a bit since leaving Fox News to set out on his own. Now he’s built a replica of the oval office to give “Reagan-esque” speeches, so says the Glenn Beck TV Team. [tpmmedia]

———————————————————–——PRESIDENT OBAMA / DEMOCRATS

President Obama Makes the Case for the Buffett Rule – Instead of giving more than a trillion dollars in tax breaks to the very wealthiest Americans—those who make more than $250,000 a year—we need to be investing in the things like education and research and health care. These are the same investments we’ve been making for generations because they lead to strong, broad based economic growth that helps everyone, as the President explained: “What drags our entire economy down is when the benefits of economic growth and productivity go only to the few, which is what’s been happening for over a decade now, and gap between those at the very, very top and everybody else keeps growing wider and wider and wider and wider.” The fact is, the share of our national income going to the top 1 percent of earners is as high as it’s been since the 1920s. And those same people are paying taxes at one of the lowest rates in 50 years. To address this imbalance in our tax system, President Obama has proposed the Buffett Rule, based on the simple idea that people who make more than $1 million each year pay at least the same share of their income in taxes as middle-class families do…


…

Beyond a Buffett Rule, the Obama We’ve Been Waiting For – Later, in the speech, he sharpened his criticism of the Republican embrace of zombie-eyed granny-starving to a sharper point, daring the GOP to produce a list of things they would actually cut to make the pixie-dust math of the Ryan budget actually work. “They won’t do it,” he told the crowd, “because they know, if they do, they’ll lose.” This appeal to honesty and political courage likely will fall on deaf ears, alas. (How do I know this? Because of an interview that zombie-eyed granny-starver Paul Ryan gave to the Christian Broadcasting Network in which he spectacularly attempted to wedge zombie-eyed granny-starving into the Gospels: “A person’s faith is central to how they conduct themselves in public and in private,” Ryan said in an interview released on Tuesday by the Christian Broadcasting Network. “So to me, using my Catholic faith, we call it the social magisterium, which is how do you apply the doctrine of your teaching into your everyday life as a lay person.” First of all, he doesn’t know what in the hell he’s talking about. The social magisterium of the Church is a lot of things, but consonant with supply-side trickle-down economics is definitely not one of them, no matter how hard the crowd at First Things tries to make it so.

Elizabeth Warren Nabs Planned Parenthood Endorsement In Massachusetts Senate Race – The Planned Parenthood Action Fund said their decision to endorse Warren was partly due to Brown’s support of the Blunt Amendment, of which he was a co-sponsor. The amendment would have allowed employers and insurers the right to deny coverage for any procedure that contradicts their moral or religious beliefs. Warren opposed the failed amendment to the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s health care reform law. “Now more than ever, Massachusetts voters want and deserve to be represented in Congress by someone who puts smart policies ahead of political ideologies,” said Dianne Luby, president of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund in Massachusetts, in a statement.

Food Stamp Program Helping Reduce Poverty – A new study by the Agriculture Department has found that food stamps, one of the country’s largest social safety net programs, reduced the poverty rate substantially during the recent recession. The food stamp program, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, reduced the poverty rate by nearly 8 percent in 2009, the most recent year included in the study, a significant impact for a social program whose effects often go unnoticed by policy makers. The food stamp program is one of the largest antipoverty efforts in the country, serving more than 46 million people.

Sunday morning’s 9 barely interesting things

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image: alapoet

1) Romney Says Obama Has ‘Secular Agenda’ (or Wait a minute! Isn’t the US of Amurica SUPPOSED to be a secular nation?) - ”You expect the president of the United States to be sensitive to that freedom and protect it and, unfortunately, perhaps because of the people the president hangs around with, and their agenda, their secular agenda, they have fought against religion. I can assure you, as someone who has understood very personally the significance of religious tolerance and religious freedom and the right to one’s own conscience, I will make sure that we never again attack religious liberty in the United States of America.” || Note: I wonder if Santorum thinks Romney, as a Mormon, is a true “Christian”?

image: mcbrewster

2) Romney makes no apologies for his cars (warning: Washington Times article) - Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, criticized by some for his unprompted comments Friday on the number of cars his family owns, said Sunday he can’t please everyone on the campaign trail. “I can’t be perfect. If people think there’s something wrong with being successful, then they ought to vote for the other guy, because I’ve been extraordinarily successful,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” Mr. Romney, campaigning in Michigan on Friday ahead of Tuesday’s primary, told an audience that his wife, Ann, “drives a couple of Cadillacs.”

image: current

3) Santorum: Romney and Paul in ‘coordination’ against me (or the calculated alliance between Romney and Paul to vote Santorum off the island) - “I felt like, you know, messages were being slipped behind my chair,” he added. Santorum’s remarks, which came in response to a question from a member of the audience, reflect growing attention on a theory about an unlikely political partnership. “It is pretty remarkable in 20 debates that Ron Paul has never attacked Mitt Romney,” Santorum said. Calling him Romney’s “wingman,” Santorum said of Paul, “he is no conservative,” adding, “we don’t need the Ron Paul faction and the moderate establishment teamed up to attack the real conservative in this race.”

4) Michigan Tea Partiers Share Rick Santorum’s Fears Over Obama’s College Push (Teabaggers are equating college with Communism now) - But for the tea party crowd gathered here as part of an Americans For Prosperity rally, Santorum’s words about higher education were right on point. “President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college,” Santorum said. “What a snob!” Santorum started by saying some people don’t need to go to college: “Not all folks are gifted the same way. Some people have incredible gifts with their hands.” He then suggested there was an sinister motive behind Obama’s push to get more Americans in college classrooms. [...] So I set out into the crowded ballroom to find out just what the people the AFP crowd thought of Santorum’s attack line. Turns out they quite liked it…

Ayatollah Santorum’s Bluecollar Pandering Fail - Today at an Americans For Prosperity rally in Michigan, Rick Santorum called President Obama a “snob” for wanting to send more Americans to college. “There are good, decent men and women who work hard every day and put their skills to the test that aren’t taught by some liberal college professor,” Santorum declared. But back in his 2006 Senate re-election campaign, Santorum was touting his plan to send every Pennsylvanian to college. Evan McMorris-Santoro reports from Michigan.

image: ohgodwatwhy

Also at this rally: Santorum Again Relates Food Stamps to Minorities (except this time he didn’t say “BLAH people”) - Rick Santorum on Saturday resuscitated one of his more controversial remarks from the past few months of campaigning for president, connecting food stamps with “minority communities.” Speaking to a large crowd at the conservative Americans for Prosperity Presidential forum here, Santorum said he planned to “talk to minority communities, not about giving them food stamps and government dependency, but about creating jobs so that they can participate in the rise of this country.”

image: dailykos

5) America’s last hope: A strong labor movement - Instead of being fundamentally discredited, the oligarchs and plutocrats who crashed our economy are raking in record profits and acting even more aggressively to bury the American labor movement once and for all. Over the last year, several labor leaders have told me that they believe unions have only about five more years left if they don’t figure out some kind of breakthrough strategy. The complete collapse of unions would have devastating consequences. The labor movement has played a crucial role in advancing economic justice in the workplace and in politics. Union membership raises median weekly earnings and reduces race- and gender-based income gaps, and union workers are much more likely to receive health care and pension benefits than workers who are not members of a labor union. The decline of organized labor is directly linked to the rise in economic inequality over the last 40 years and the onset of a “Second Gilded Age.” The decline in union density coupled with the decline in the real value of the minimum wage explains one-third of the dramatic growth in wage inequality since the early 1970s.

image: divineirony

6) Practically Frothing For War - The redemption of Rick Santorum as Serious Foreign Policy Thinker(tm) comes courtesy of Michael Ledeen in the WSJ.  And so it goes. Clearly the Murdoch machine is hedging their bets when it comes to the very real possibility that the man who will carry the GOP’s standard into battle against President Obama is going to be a know-nothing fundamentalist dipstick. So like Bush 43 before him, the same “scholars” who told us that it didn’t really matter that the Republican candidate is a moron because he would be surrounded by a brain trust of great minds led by the necessary vision and will to “win” are hard at work constructing the exact same fantasy with Iran as their target.

image: liberalsarecool

7) Last week the Christianity police (Rick Santorum and Franklin Graham) came forward to discredit the president’s religious beliefs - According to a 2008 poll by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, more than half of American Christians believe there are many paths to heaven. The data say it best: No matter what exclusivist doctrines pastors preach from the pulpit, Americans are more open-minded. Last year, an evangelical pastor from Michigan named Rob Bell roused the ire of his colleagues by suggesting, in a book called “Love Wins,” that mostly everybody goes to heaven. It was a massive bestseller. America was founded by people who hoped that by allowing religious diversity to flourish, they might discourage extremism from growing. Counter to the claims of so many Christian conservatives, the intent of the First Amendment is not to protect any particular brand of Christianity from government encroachments, but to allow all kinds of believers to practice freely.

image: dceiver

8) What Happens At A Brokered Convention? - The last time Americans saw a full-on major party brawl was when Teddy Kennedy decided to push his liberal economic vision at the 1980 New York City Democratic convention. Kennedy attempted to overcome sitting president Jimmy Carter’s nomination by fighting a rule change that would compel delegates to vote on their first ballot for the candidates to whom they had pledged their votes during the primaries. He lost this challenge, along with the nomination, but fought hard to have his pro-workers’ rights views incorporated into the party platform. Kennedy’s impassioned speech to convention delegates led to 40 minutes of floor demonstration, proving once and for all the power of quivering, patrician timbre, and straight-up audacity. Jamelle Bouie believes that “Republican leaders would have a serious problem on their hands if they tried to buck the voters and install a candidate of their own.”

image: incorrectgopprimaryquotes

9) OPERATION HILARITY: How Serious Is The Democratic Crossover Vote Threat In Michigan? - Are clever Democratic activists really going to cost Mitt Romney his home state on Tuesday? Or is the grassroots plan to use Michigan’s open primary as a means to humiliate the candidate most see as the biggest threat to President Obama in the fall just a red herring? Romney’s allies aren’t worried. Democrats and Obama’s campaign aren’t getting involved. And yet, activists think they just might pull this thing off. Welcome to the Michigan primary sideshow that just might play a part in the main event.

Walmart costs taxpayers $1,557,000,000: the Conservative Circle of Life

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image: questionall

WAL-MART Costs Taxpayers $1,557,000,000,00 to Support its Employees

  • “The Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce estimates that one 200-person Wal-Mart store may result in a cost to federal taxpayers of $420,750 per year – about $2,103 per employee. Specifically, the low wages result in the following additional public costs being passed along to taxpayers:
    • $36,000 a year for free and reduced lunches for just 50 qualifying Wal-Mart families.
    • $42,000 a year for Section 8 housing assistance, assuming 3 percent of the store employees qualify for such assistance, at $6,700 per family.
    • $125,000 a year for federal tax credits and deductions for low-income families, assuming 50 employees are heads of household with a child and 50 are married with two children.
    • $100,000 a year for the additional Title I expenses, assuming 50 Wal-Mart families qualify with an average of 2 children.
    • $108,000 a year for the additional federal health care costs of moving into state children’s health insurance programs (S-CHIP), assuming 30 employees with an average of two children qualify.
    • $9,750 a year for the additional costs for low income energy assistance.”
  • The total figure is based on the average $420,750 per-store figure, multiplied by 3700 (the approximate number of stores currently in the United States).
  • Source: Rep. George Miller / Democratic Staff of the Committee on Education and the Workforce, “Everyday Low Wages: The Hidden Price We All Pay for Wal-Mart”, February 16, 2004.

Also, too: Rob Walton, Chairman, Walmart — How the 1% Exploits America:

…

When confronted with facts like these, how do you suppose the majority of Teabagistan would react? If you suppose that they’d defend Walmart’s cost to the American taxpayer as Freedom Loving Capitalism and Rob Walton’s wealth as rightfully earned through his own “hard work” and “God-fearing American Patriotism,” you’d probably be right. And it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to note that these self-loathing toads would also likely dismiss this information immediately by saying the need for health care reform is a Socialist / Fascist / Communist Kenyan Plot.

With the Republican Party and their presidential candidates at war with labor unions and working and middle class Americans, one day a job at Walmart is going to be the best any of us can hope for.

If the GOP wins, the difference will be that none of the benefits today’s Walmart employees have to rely on to simply live will be available for tomorrow’s Walmart employees. Still, when that day comes, Walmart and Rob Walton will have great tax rates and loopholes because of the Republican party — and they’ll be celebrated as job creators to boot. That’s called the Conservative Circle of Life.

State of the Union: facts, facts, FACTS

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Income inequality, job creation, unemployment, food stamps, security, the Affordable Care Act… here are numerous facts about our State of the Union:

• Since the last SOTU, the economy has created 1.9 million private sector jobs. [Source]

• The top 1 percent take home 24 percent of the nation’s income, up from about 9 percent in 1976. [Source]

• Private sector job creation under Obama in 2011 was larger than seven out of the eight years Bush was president. [Source]

• The top 1 percent of Americans own 40 percent of our country’s wealth while the bottom 80 percent owns only 7 percent. [Source]

• Thanks to the Affordable Care Act, 2.5 million young adults gained health insurance. [Source]

• For every one job opening, there are four people looking for work. [Source]

• Last year, China spent 9 percent of its GDP on infrastructure. The U.S. spent 2.5 percent. [Source]

• 2.65 million seniors saved an average of $569 on prescriptions last year thanks to the Affordable Care Act. [Source]

• “In 2011, the United States killed Al Qaeda’s most effective propagandist, Anwar al-Awlaki; its operating chief, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman; and of course its founder, chief executive and spiritual leader, Osama bin Laden.” [Source]

Read the rest…

This will be the President’s third SOTU before a joint session of Congress.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Florida

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Source: Nate Silver

Checking in on Florida’s family values (not much different than South Carolina’s, apparently):

Fact check: Gingrich’s faulty food-stamp claim: Newt Gingrich claims that “more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history.” He’s wrong. More were added under Bush than under Obama, according to the most recent figures.

(Note: So GWB was the food stamp president! Good to know.)

…

Mitt Romney to release one year of tax returns. That’s not enough: [Yesterday], Mitt Romney promised he’ll release his tax returns on Tuesday. “We just made a mistake in holding off as long as we did. It just was a distraction.” But he only plans to release his return for 2010 and an estimate of his returns for 2011. That might have been enough prior to the controversy. George W. Bush only released one year of his tax returns. But it won’t work now. As Buzzfeed’s Ben Smith tweeted, “Releasing the 2010 returns is just blood in the water. What about the previous 20 years?”

…

 The strange and scary candidacy of Ron Paul: In addition to his gold obsession, Paul also has promised to impose $1 trillion of austerity in his first year in office. The U.S. GDP in 2010 was $14.58 trillion. Cutting $1 trillion would push GDP downward by more than 6.5 percent without even counting any multiplier effects. By comparison, GDP shrank by 8.9 percent in the worst quarter of the recent recession. In a fragile economy like this one, Paul’s sudden austerity is sure to throw the country into another recession, causing an enormous number of job losses. Combined with his inflexible monetary policy, Paul’s austerity would be an absolute disaster for employment and production.

…

Conservatives United Moneybomb – C.U.M. for Santorum! He’s already up almost $2 million this morning and, am I dreaming?, if you donate $100 or more, you can get a sweater vest — rock the vest! Seriously.

…

Dog whistling past the facts (of food stamps)

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From Five Things You Probably Don’t Know About Food Stamps | Off The Charts Blog from CBPP.org:

  1. A large and growing share of SNAP households are working households (see chart). In 2010, more than three times as many SNAP households worked as relied solely on welfare benefits for their income.The share of SNAP households with earnings has continued growing in the past few years — albeit at a slower pace — despite the large increase in unemployment.One reason why SNAP is serving more working families is that, for a growing share of the nation’s workers, having a job has not been enough to keep them out of poverty.

SNAP Working Households Have Risen

Read all…

Recall that Rick Santorum said this on Jan. 2:

“I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money and provide for themselves and their families.”

Before he, very bravely, claimed to have said ‘blah’ people instead of ‘black’ people. THEN! came this gem from Professor Gingrich on Jan. 5:

Newt Gingrich said at a Plymouth, NH town hall that he plans to “go to the NAACP convention and tell the African-American community why they should demand paychecks instead of food stamps.”

Turns out, according to reality, more people are choosing BOTH to survive.  But facts and reality don’t play well in places like South Carolina.

And as far as telling blah people or the NAACP, specifically, that they should choose a paycheck over foods stamps? See the demographics of ‘food stamps’ after the cut:  Continue reading →

Newt is irritated that his racist comments were considered racist

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source: teapartyjesus

NEWT DIGS DEEPER — he’s now ‘irritated’ by the outrage over his comments on food stamps

“I didn’t say what you just said. Let me be very clear, because this is something that makes me, quite frankly, very irritated. … What I said was, there’s a real problem in America because you have a president who’s put more people on food stamps — people, I didn’t say any ethnic group, people — than any other president in history. … And I said I would be willing to go to the NAACP annual convention — which most Republicans are not willing to do — and I’d be willing to talk about the importance of food stamps versus paychecks.”

Maybe we’d believe Newt more if he wasn’t singling out the NAACP to talk about the importance of “food stamps over paychecks.”  We wonder why he didn’t offer to go talk to the audience at NASCAR too? As a matter of fact, ESPECIALLY the audience at NASCAR:

source

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