Tag Archives: job creation

GOP House votes to recess until Feb 25, leaving FOUR DAYS to deal with the Sequester

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THE HILL (Feb 15): The House and Senate each voted Friday to recess for the Presidents Day week, which means lawmakers will have just four days — once they return — to deal with the $85 billion sequester due to take effect March 1… House Democrats have spent the week arguing that the House should not recess for the week, so that it can work on a sequester replacement plan. But the House voted 222-190 on Friday morning to recess next week — every Democrat voted against it, along with just four Republicans… both the House and Senate will return at 2 p.m. Feb. 25.

When they return on Feb. 25…

WASHINGTON POST / Senate Democrats propose cuts, tax hikes on rich to avoid sequester: The proposal would raise $110 billion to replace the sequester through Jan. 2, 2014, when across-the-board cuts adopted during the 2011 debt-limit showdown would kick back in for the rest of the decade. Half the new savings would come from spending cuts, including an end to direct federal payments to farmers and deeper cuts to the Pentagon after 2015. The other half would come from tax hikes, primarily on millionaires. Households earning more than $2 million a year would have to pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes.

WASHINGTON POST / There are now four big plans to stop the sequester: 1) The new plan from Senate Democrats: Replace one year of the sequester with defense cuts, domestic cuts and tax hikes. 2) The old House GOP plan: Eliminate other government programs to replace the sequester cuts. 3) The House Democratic plan: Fend off the sequester for one year by raising taxes and cutting farm subsidies. 4) President Obama’s plan to fend off the sequester for a short while with a smaller package of cuts and tax reforms.

NATIONAL JOURNAL (Feb 11): Sequestration is now the most likely scenario, according to 78 percent of National Journal‘s National Security Insiders, who are not optimistic that Congress and the White House will reach a deal to reduce the deficit by the March 1 deadline. [...]  ”If Republicans cannot get a new deal involving entitlement cuts but no added tax revenue, they prefer accepting sequestration cuts to defense programs as the price of getting some cuts to civil programs. If Democrats cannot get a deal involving more tax revenue but without entitlement cuts, they prefer accepting sequestration cuts to civil programs as the price of getting some defense cuts,” one Insider said. “And neither side thinks it can get a new deal that is acceptable to it.”

THINK PROGRESS: House Republicans have yet to roll out a new plan of their own to replace the sequester, instead pointing to a sequester replacement bill that they passed in the last Congress (that they have no plans to vote on again). The Congressional Progressive Caucus has also proposed a replacement for the sequester. Here’s a comparison of the three plans:

House Republican Plan Senate Democratic plan Congressional Progressive Caucus Plan
Replaces the sequester with only domestic spending cuts. Replaces the sequester with $110 billion in deficit reduction, equally split between spending cuts and revenue. Replaces the sequester with $960 billion in new revenue, $278 billion in defense cuts, and invests in new job creation measures.
Includes no new revenue. Denies the Child Tax Credit to parents who are undocumented immigrants. Includes $55 billion in revenue, split between: a 30 percent minimum tax on millionaires (the Buffett rule), repealing subsidies for oil companies, and eliminating the ability of corporations to deduct the cost of moving jobs overseas. Reinstates the Making Work Pay tax credit. Ends the carried interest loophole that benefits wealthy money managers, closes tax loopholes that encourage corporations to send profits to offshore tax havens, cuts oil subsidies, closes loopholes that benefit buyers of private jets and yachts, and closes loopholes in the estate tax.
Voids defense cuts. Includes $27.5 billion in cuts to defense spending. Includes $278 billion in cuts to defense spending.
Cuts domestic spending via: cutting food stamps, Medicaid, and the social services block grant (which, among other things, funds Meals on Wheels). Cuts domestic spending via ending direct agriculture subsidies, “which are currently provided regardless of yields, prices, or farm income.” Invests $160 billion in infrastructure.

…The sequester itself, meanwhile, would devastate several important programs that have already been hurt by budget cuts. Already, the deficit reduction achieved since 2010 (which is hampering economic growth and hurting job creation) has been primarily achieved through spending cuts. In fact, just one-quarter of it has come through new revenue… Only the CPC’s plan would result in deficit reduction having been achieved through equal parts spending cuts and new revenue. The CPC plan is also the only one acknowledging that job creation, not the deficit, is the country’s most pressing problem.

Low wage, part time jobs are key to Romney’s claims of job creation “success”

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Low-wage, part-time Staples jobs are Romney’s go-to example of job creation ‘success’

Mitt Romney often champions the success of retail chain Staples as one of his main qualifications for the presidency. Here are some facts about the nearly 90,000 jobs Romney likes to say he helped create at Staples:

  • 41 percent are part-time jobs.
  • Hourly wages for sales associates are less than $9 an hour.
  • Retail salespeople make about $20,670 a year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which is lower than the federal poverty line for a family of four.
  • Staples describes its own workforce this way: “Many of our associates, particularly in retail stores, are in entry-level or part-time positions with historically high rates of turnover.”
  • Staples has been listed by the National Employment Law Project as one of the 50 largest low-wage employers in the country.
  • In 1987, a year after Staples was founded, there were 13,347 office supply stores across the country. Ten years later that number was cut in half, to just 6,178 office supply stores.
  • When Staples was founded in 1986, the market share of small and medium-sized sellers of office supplies was 20 percent. By 1998, it had plunged to just four percent.
  • The market share of large superstores, meanwhile, shot up from less than one percent to 20 percent during that same period.

Read more about Romney’s job creation record at Staples — including our interview with Staples founder Tom Stemberg — on our website.

Mitt Romney wants you to have the freedom to work 3 or 4 of these jobs all at once. He’s fightin’ for the middle-class! 

And remember: unions are the problem, with all their fighting and negotiating for living wages and benefits for the working class… right, GOP base zombies?

President Obama DNC2012: will you reward companies that create jobs here at home, or overseas?

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“After a decade of decline, this country created over half a million manufacturing jobs in the last two and a half years.  And now you have a choice:  we can give more tax breaks to corporations that ship jobs overseas, or we can start rewarding companies that open new plants and train new workers and create new jobs here, in the United States of America.  We can help big factories and small businesses double their exports, and if we choose this path, we can create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years.  You can make that happen.  You can choose that future.”

— President Obama, DNC2012

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Think Progress: 

Did you know that you’re actually paying to ship American jobs overseas? [...Just two months ago, Senate Republicans] voted almost unanimously to protect these outrageous giveaways to corporations that ship American jobs overseas. The Bring Jobs Home Act got a 56-vote majority, but Republicans used a filibuster to kill it. The bill would have:

    • Abolished tax breaks for companies that ship American jobs overseas
    • Created new tax incentives that reward companies for that bring jobs home to America

[...W]hy would Republicans do this? Two words: Grover Norquist. Almost every single Senate Republican has promised this Washington lobbyist that they will never, ever raise taxes or end a single giveaway to special interests. And not only has Mitt Romney signed this same pledge to a lobbyist, he wants to give companies even more incentives to create jobs in other countries instead of here in America. [This] vote shows you just how far Republicans will go to protect tax giveaways to the wealthy and special interests. It also shows why we need to fix our tax code so it helps build an economy that works for everyone, not just the privileged few and their lobbyists.

Vote in a President and a Congress who vote for the American people instead of politicians who vote for the global elite and their multinational interests. 

Register to vote | Volunteer | Contribute

Willard Romney would return to policies that created this debacle in the first place

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Charles P. Pierce discusses job creation and the slow and steady pace of President Obama vs. the radical fiction of a Willard Romney / George W. Bush II presidency:

The new job numbers should have the White House stowing away the oxygen tanks for a month or so, at any rate. The economy added 163,000 new jobs, and Americans are building and selling more stuff, and all this is what you want to hear if you’re a president who wants to be president again, and particularly if you’re running against a fella whose entire tax plan just now was left by various independent experts as little more than a pile of smoking meat by the side of the road. When you’re reduced to trying to cast the Tax Policy Center — which is so wonkish that it makes the National Science Foundation look like the back rows at a Pantera concert — as a passel of wild-eyed Alinskyite radicals, you’re pretty much admitting that you’ve lost the argument.

Unemployment ticked up a little, but remains below 9 percent, and, yes, it’s damn tragic that we celebrate that as though it were, well, something to celebrate. Nevertheless, this is the best week the president’s had on the numbers in a very long time.

Is this a mixed blessing for the president? Of course, it is. That’s the only kind of blessing that’s left, given what was done to the economy, and his own dilatory caution in addressing the magnitude of the crisis out in the country. And the status quo, in terms of the human cost of what is increasingly looking like the new normal, is both unsustainable and indefensible. But the numbers are moving, and the president is committed, for good or ill, to creating measured progress back from a precipitous crisis. His is the slow and steady pace…

[...] It’s Willard Romney who is the get-rich-quick huckster now. He is making the fundamentally radical proposal — a radicalism limned precisely by the analysis of his tax plan — that we return to the policies that created the debacle in the first place, that we abandon patience for the quick-fix nostrums of supply-side theory and for the even more profound poisons being peddled by Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny-starver from the state of Wisconsin, that we abandon the ant for the grasshopper. Rommey is the candidate of the unlimited credit card, of the magic asterisk, of the underpants gnome. He’s the candidate of crazy risk and unlikely reward. You want to look at a radical, don’t look at the Tax Policy Center. Look at the guy with the dancing horse.


via: questionall

Related: Romney’s “Plan for a Stronger Middle-Class” wouldn’t create ANY American jobs

Morning Bunker Report: Sunday 6.3.2012

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WHAT ROMNEY / REPUBLICANS STAND FOR———————————————

Romney (of all people! see above) quickly blames President Obama for slow job creation, higher unemployment and the nation’s recovery —  “Today’s weak jobs report is devastating news for American workers and American families,” Romney said in a statement. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee added: “It is now clear to everyone that President Obama’s policies have failed to achieve their goals and that the Obama economy is crushing America’s middle class.” — Boston.com

The blame game — At a certain level, this is almost amusing. Matt Yglesias noted this morning how “impressed” he is by conservatives’ ability to “pretend to believe Obama is 100% responsible” for all economic developments a year and a half into divided government. He added, “You can’t fake that kind of bulls**t, it takes real conviction.” But we can go further with this. The same Republicans who are blaming monthly job totals on the White House have argued – last year and this year – that GOP measures have improved the economy, and that credit for recent improvements should go to them, not the president. The logic is incoherent: for Republicans, when there’s discouraging economic news, Obama deserves all the blame. When there’s good economic news, Obama deserves none of the credit. Job losses in 2010 were Obama’s fault; job gains in early 2011 and 2012 have nothing do to with Obama; and tepid growth in the spring of 2012 are back to being Obama’s fault again. — Steve Benen

Austerity hurts the country: the GOP continues to push for it, while the media attacks Obama – Economic experts agree that spending cuts in a weak economy hurt the creation of jobs and economic growth. Though Republicans in Congress spent much of 2011 demanding spending cuts, the media are amplifying their attacks on President Obama’s economic record. – MMFA

  • Why the jobs deficit is more important than the budget deficit – [W]e can’t possibly achieve the growth needed to reduce the budget deficit as a proportion of the total economy unless far more people are employed. Workers are consumers, and consumer spending is 70 percent of economic activity. And cutting the budget means fewer workers, directly (as government continues to shed workers) and indirectly (as government contractors have to lay off workers) and therefore fewer consumers. Yet deficit hawks continue to circle. – Robert Reich
  • If it weren’t for this destructive fiscal austerity, our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was … during the Reagan era. — But one significant factor in our continuing economic weakness is the fact that government in America is doing exactly what both theory and history say it shouldn’t: slashing spending in the face of a depressed economy. In fact, if it weren’t for this destructive fiscal austerity, our unemployment rate would almost certainly be lower now than it was at a comparable stage of the “Morning in America” recovery during the Reagan era. – Paul Krugman

MORE austerity for the rest of us: FIRE SEASON – Congressional budget cuts of over $500m could leave crews scrambling for resources in an already overactive fire season Fire experts are warning that $512m in congressional budget cuts could leave communities dangerously exposed in an early and active fire season. “A person has to wonder. Is this going to be the new norm – frequent record-setting fires, while the number of federal firefighters and air tankers continue to shrink?” wrote Bill Gabbert, a former fire management officer in the Black Hills of South Dakota. – Raw Story

  • That’s great news when combined with this news: drought expands throughout USA – Only two states — Ohio and Alaska — are entirely free of abnormally dry or drought conditions, according to the Drought Monitor. The drought is expanding into some areas where dryness is rare, such as New England. – USA Today

The USA hasn’t been this dry in five years.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

The road NOT taken: The American Jobs Act – It seems like ages ago, but it was just last September when the president delivered an address to a joint session of Congress, laying out a detailed plan to boost job creation. It’s easy to forget, but it was a credible, serious plan — the AJA would have prevented thousands of layoffs for teachers, cops, and firefighters; invested heavily in infrastructure; and cut taxes intended to spur hiring. [...] Despite public clamoring for action on jobs, congressional Republicans reflexively killed the American Jobs Act, saying it was unnecessary. The House wouldn’t bring it up for a vote, and a Republican filibuster killed it in the Senate. For GOP policymakers, this was a time when Washington should stop investing in job creation and start focusing on austerity — lower the deficit, take capital out of the economy, and everything would work out fine. As panic sets in after this morning’s brutal jobs report, take a moment to consider a hypothetical: what would the economy look like today if Congress had followed Obama’s lead, responded to public-opinion polls, and passed the American Jobs Act? In 2012, do you think the nation could use those 1.3 million jobs or not? — Maddow Blog 

  • Steve Benen: The Republican Party’s passive disinterest to the jobs crisis — This is, after all, a Republican-led Congress that has plenty of time to fight a culture war — I’ve lost count of the anti-abortion bills that have reached the House floor, including one yesterday — but has shown passive disinterest to the jobs crisis. Follow this pattern of events:
  1. With the job market struggling, Obama unveils the American Jobs Act, a State of the Union agenda filled with economic measures, and an economic “to-do list.”
  2. Republican lawmakers ignore the proposals, and the job market deteriorates.
  3. The GOP then blames Obama for the failure his policies, which Congress didn’t pass.

Weekly Address: It’s Time for Congress to Get to Work — President Obama speaks to the American people from a Honeywell manufacturing facility in Minnesota about his proposal to make it easier for companies to hire our returning service members for jobs that utilize their skills and help grow our economy. – The White House

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The insane scenario unfolding before our eyes — Under a Republican president, the United States endured eight years of disastrous economic stewardship—arguably the worst of the post-war era—that nearly led to a second Great Depression. In response, voters elected a Democratic president and gave him huge majorities in both chambers of Congress. Rather than work with the new president, Republicans ran to the right and promised to defeat this president by any means necessary. They abused institutional rules to block nominees, and imposed a de-facto super-majority requirement on all legislation. Republicans rejected stimulus, the automobile rescue, a climate bill built from their ideas, a health care bill built from their ideas, and a reform bill designed to keep the Great Recession from happening again. This was an amazingly successful strategy. It destroyed Democratic standing with the public, energized the right-wing fringe, and led to a historic victory in the House of Representatives. Once in command of the House, Republicans pushed hugely draconian budgets, risked a government shutdown, and nearly caused a second economic collapse by threatening to default on the nation’s debt. This reckless behavior depressed the economy, prolonged the recovery, and destroyed trust in the nation’s political institutions. The Speaker of the House has even promised to do this again, if Democrats don’t bow to his demands for greater spending cuts. Now, those same Republicans—and their enablers—are running to replace President Obama by blaming him for the entirety of our economic situation. – Jamelle Bouie

Gosh, I wonder why the economy is underperforming? Remember all the talk a few years back about how we wouldn’t repeat the mistakes of 1937, when FDR pulled back too soon on support for the economy? Here, from FRED, [...] using rates of growth: Government current expenditures – GDP deflator (the right measure of inflation) – Growth in civilian noninstitutional population [...] So we haven’t seen spending cuts like this since the demobilization that followed the Korean War. — Paul Krugman

Federal Spending, Taxes, and Deficits Are Lower Today Than When Obama Took Office — This is an inconvenient truth. It is inconvenient for Mitt Romney that spending, taxes, and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office. It is inconvenient for liberals (not to mention, really inconvenient for the unemployed) that we’ve been overly aggressive in paring down our deficits even with high unemployment and huge cuts to state and local government. –  The Atlantic


Morning Bunker Report: Saturday 6.2.2012

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WHAT ROMNEY / REPUBLICANS STAND FOR———————————————

Is Mormonism Different Than Other Religions? – I also don’t think Romney’s religion should be ruled entirely out of bounds for discussion. He is running in a party that explicitly states there is no solid separation of religion and politics. And the current president was pummeled mercilessly for the more radical teachings of his church in Chicago. And Obama was just a member of the congregation – not a former official in the church, like Romney, whose entire identity is bound up with a very particular religion. Mormonism, in other words, should not be tackled differently than any other faith; but neither can it be completely exempted from examination in this election. When a future president puts on white robes and enters a secret Temple on a Sunday, it will be as big a cultural shift as having a black man in the Oval Office. I think Romney should pre-empt bigoted attacks with his own account of how his faith affects his life and politics. Just as candidate Obama did. – Andrew Sullivan

Romney’s ENTIRE platform: If you vote out Obama, you’ll feel better – “This may be the most explicit version we’ve seen of the Romney camp’s intended message: if you’re angry or frustrated by your current circumstances, or about how things are going, vote the guy in charge out, and it will make you feel better. The game plan: to get swing voters to cast their vote almost entirely as an expression of frustration and disillusionment with the economic status quo, and by extension with Obama himself, without thinking too hard about the true nature of the alternative Romney is offering.” — Greg Sargent

The dog that caught the car: What if the Supreme Court actually overturns Obamacare? — In other words, Republicans are offering voters an implausibly rosy proposition: Enjoy the popular pieces of the Affordable Care Act but don’t worry about the unpopular components. […]As a short-term political posture, it has served them well. But now that the Supreme Court might give them what they want, they’re forced to deal with the reality of what it would mean. And that’s a huge wake-up call for the party, especially one without a clear leader to herd the cats as they figure out their next move. — TPM

Romney’s refusal to take on Trump a sign of his “strength” — Anonymous Romney advisers tell Buzzfeed how strategically clever and how tough they’ve been in taking the fight to Obama in an effort to appeal to red meat conservatives, with one example being the refusal to disavow Donald Trump.  As I noted here the other day, the story Team Romney is now telling is that standing up to Trump’s birtherism would represent surrender (a la John McCain) to the liberal media, and not doing so is actually a sign of his strength. —  Greg Sargent

More proof that Rep. Allen West (R-FL) is a complete and certifiable wackadoodle.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT / DEMOCRATS STAND FOR ————————————

Obama Wants to Break Republican “Fever” — “I believe that if we’re successful in this election — when we’re successful in this election — that the fever may break,” Obama said at a fundraiser in Minnesota. “Because there’s a tradition in the Republican Party of more common sense than that.” Republicans may be more helpful on issues such as jobs, debt reduction and clean energy because they won’t be so concerned about defeating him at the polls, the president said. “My hope, my expectation, is that after the election — now that it turns out that the goal of beating Obama doesn’t make much sense because I’m not running again — that we can start getting some cooperation again,” Obama said. [...] “2008 was a significant election, obviously. But John McCain believed in climate change. John believed in campaign-finance reform. He believed in immigration reform. There were some areas where you saw some overlap,” Obama said. “In this election, the Republican Party has moved in a fundamentally different direction.” – USA Today 

CHART: Bush Vs. Obama On Private And Public Sector Job Creation — Even with today’s disappointing and troubling jobs report, private sector job creation under President Obama has far exceeded private sector job creation under President Bush. 40 months into his presidential term, there are currently more private sector jobs in the economy than when Obama came into office. At the same point in President Bush’s term, the total number of private sector jobs was still down 1.7 percent from where it began. […] But there is one area of job creation where President Bush clearly outshines President Obama: the public sector. Public sector employment is now down 608,000 workers since January 2009, a 2.7 percent decline. At the same point in President Bush’s term, public sector employment was up 3.7 percent. – Think Progress

Because ONLY the rightwing media heard an endorsement an the adjective Bill Clinton used – President Barack Obama’s presidential campaign released a statement noting that Bill Clinton’s praise for Romney’s “sterling business record” did not constitute an endorsement of the Republican nominee. – Team Romney (Buzzfeed)

Clinton says his remarks on Romney were ‘twisted’ — Clinton used an appearance at a rally in Paterson, New Jersery to perform a bit of damage control. “I said, you know, Governor Romney had a good career in business and he was a governor, so he crosses the qualification threshold for him being president,” Clinton told the crowd. “But he shouldn’t be elected, because he is wrong on the economy and all these other issues.” “So today,” Clinton continued, “because I didn’t attack him personally and bash him, I wake up to read all these stories taking it out of context as if I had virtually endorsed him, which means the tea party has already won their first great victory: ‘We are supposed to hate each to disagree.’ That is wrong.” — Raw Story

Bill Clinton Slams Walker For ‘Divide And Conquer’ and ‘constant conflict’ In Wisconsin — “And now they look at Wisconsin, and they see America’s battleground between people who want to work together to solve problems, and people who want to divide and conquer — people who know that creative cooperation is working in America, and people who want constant conflict. And here’s what I want to tell you…I think I know a little bit about what would bring America back, what would bring economic recovery, what would enable us to have broadly shared prosperity. And I’ll tell you, if you go anywhere in America today, believe it or not, there are a lot of places that are already back. And they all have one thing in common. They’re dramatically different, but they all have one thing in common: They are involved in creative cooperation, not constant conflict.” — TPM

Romney Economics: Mitt Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts promising more jobs, decreased debt, and smaller government. By the time Romney left office, state debt had increased, the size of government had grown, and Massachusetts had fallen behind almost every other state in job creation.  Other Republicans agree: Romney economics didn’t work then, and it won’t work now.

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Morning Bunker Report: Sunday 5.6.2012

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

BRYAN FISCHER of the American Family Association loudly and gleefully mocks Mitt Romney’s questionable masculinity — Fischer spearheaded the charge to oust openly-gay adviser Richard Grenell from the Romney campaign. Fischer: “Let me ask you this question, people have raised this question, if Mitt Romney can be pushed around, intimidated, coerced, coopted by a conservative radio talk show host in Middle America, then how is he going to stand up to the Chinese? How is he going to stand up to Putin? How is he going to stand up to North Korea if he can be pushed around by a yokel like me? I don’t think Romney is realizing the doubts that this begins to raise about his leadership. I don’t think for one minute that Mitt Romney did not want this guy gone; he wanted this guy gone because there was not one word of defense, not a peep, from the Romney camp to defend him. They just went absolutely stone cold silent, they put a bag over Grenell’s head, they even asked him to organize this phone conference and they didn’t even let him speak at the conference that he organized.” – Bob Cesca

  • PANDER-MODE: The resignation of Richard Grenell, the recently appointed and openly gay foreign policy spokesman for Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, was as sudden as it was shocking. It was also yet another disturbing sign that the Romney campaign is still in pander mode when it comes to the anti-gay right. Which is exactly the wrong direction for the presumptive GOP nominee to be moving in. Because according to a wide variety of poll data, Republican voters, unlike most of the politicians vying for their support, largely support gay rights. – David Lampo

WEALTHY PEOPLE FACTOID: The Bluegrass Boondoggle gives a special tax break to millionaire horse owners, costing the government $126 million over 10 years. Though McConnell now decries wasteful spending, he publicly touted the millionaire-only earmark in 2008, and the GOP has done everything it can to preserve the tax break since. The House GOP budget, which gives massive tax breaks to the rich that Republicans say will be paid for by closing tax loopholes, doesn’t touch the Bluegrass Boondoggle. – On Derby Day, How Republicans Help Millionaire Horse Owners Pay Less In Taxes

MITT ROMNEY promises to create eleventeen million jobs (and everyone will have servants) – Incidentally, since Romney is proposing a complete return to Bush economic policies, it might be interesting to note the average rate of job creation during Bush’s first 7 years in the White House — that is, his record even if you ignore the catastrophe at the end. And that average monthly rate, from the BLS, was … drum roll … 66,000. – Paul Krugman

FAMILY VALUES and one Republican’s magic sperm — Back in 2010, conservative politician Bill Johnson (R-Ala.) was focused on running for the governor. Two years later, his wife claims he is moving to the other side of the world to fancy a different lifestyle. In a Sunday interview with the New Zealand Herald, Kathy Johnson told the newspaper that her husband has returned to the southwestern Pacific island where he made headlines in December 2011 for allegedly donating sperm to lesbian couples. “He is obsessed with this,” the former Miss America finalist told the Herald. “He doesn’t want to stop.” [...] In Sunday’s New Zealand Herald interview, Kathy told the paper that Bill had donated sperm to women wanting children at least 50 times over a handful of months. Former Alabama Gubernatorial Candidate ‘Obsessed’ With Sperm Donation

PAT ROBERTSON describes how God directed him to build the Christian Broadcasting Network (Unfortunately ’God’ is what Robertson calls the next door neighbor’s evil dog, who talks to him whenever he’s in the backyard) – Pat Robertson delivered a speech as part of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Week of Prayer” where he described how God directed him to create CBN during a gathering of people at Cape Henry, where Christopher Newport’s ships made landfall in 1607. – rightwingwatch.org

THE LIBERAL MEDIA Sunday Show lineup: Five shows and only one woman was invited to represent over half of humanity, and CBS’ Face the Nation wisely chose Michele Bachmann for that job. And ABC This Week has a very special guest, one who very rarely makes tv appearances, so get your Tivo ready: John McCain! – TPM

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

CAMPAIGN KICKOFF: It’s still about hope, it’s still about change – “Over and over again, they’ll tell you that American’s down now, and they’ll tell you who to blame, and ask if you’re better off that you were before the worst crisis in our lifetime,” Obama said. “We’ve seen that play before, but you know what, the real question. The question that will actually make a difference in your life and in the lives of your children is not just about how we’re doing today, but how we’ll be doing tomorrow.” Obama also drew a sharp contrast with Mitt Romney, arguing that he is a stooge of Republicans in Congress, bent on cutting taxes for the rich and cutting spending on everyone else. “Republicans in Congress have found a nominee who is willing to rubber stamp this agenda,” Obama said, trying to tie Romney to the most unpopular institution in America. Mocking Romney’s declaration that corporations are people last year, Obama said, “I don’t care how many different ways you try to explain it, corporations aren’t people. People are people!” — Buzzfeed

  • OBAMA SAID Romney called it “tragic” to end the war in Iraq and doesn’t want a timeline to end the war in Afghanistan. “After a decade of war that’s cost us thousands of lives and over a trillion dollars, the nation we need to build is our own,” Obama said. On Medicare, Obama said he would “never” allow it to become a voucher program, and defended his health care overhaul. And he explicitly made the election in part a referendum on the rights of women — from health insurance to birth control. “We don’t need another political fight about ending a woman’s right to choose or getting rid of Planned Parenthood or taking away affordable access to birth control,” he said. “I want my daughters to have the same opportunities as your sons…We are not turning back the clock…We are moving forward!” – Obama Kicks Off Campaign With a Roar

JOE BIDEN endorses same-sex marriage – Biden made his remarks during an appearance on Meet the Press, telling host David Gregory that he is “absolute comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying women.” He added, however, that “the President sets the policy.” Biden has backed equal rights for the LGBT community throughout his career, but this is the first time he has publicly acknowledged his support of full marriage rights. – ThinkProgress

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BILL CLINTON robo-calls in opposition to NC Amendment One –

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image: Daily Kos

“Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation…”

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“Somehow, firing people with jobs became the Republican strategy for job creation. People who taught our children; policed our streets; picked up our garbage; put out our fires; built and maintained our parks, libraries, and roads for a living wage became the scapegoat for the impoverishment the private sector imposed on workers. Instead of organizing to win back their own living wages and lost benefits, people were convinced that taking away those of government workers would somehow make them better off. Divide and conquer politics. The politics of fear, hate, greed, envy and spite. The race to the bottom. Orchestrated by plutocrats, executed by conservatives, allowed by Democrats.” – John Atcheson

via: christopherstreet

Sunday morning’s 6 disputably interesting things

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1) Good Call: In 2008, Biden Said Bin Laden Was Hiding In Pakistan - In the 2008 Vice Presidential debate between then Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin, Biden said Osama Bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. He was right.

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2) Catholics intensify campaign against same sex marriage - LONDON — The Roman Catholic Church stepped up its campaign against civil gay marriage, with a letter from two senior archbishops being read out at services in 2,500 churches on Sunday. The letter from Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the leader of the Catholic Church in England and Wales, and Archbishop Peter Smith, the Archbishop of Southwark, said it was their “duty” to defend the institution of marriage. “Changing the legal definition of marriage would be a profoundly radical step. Its consequences should be taken seriously now,” Nichols and Smith said in the letter, which was being read out at parish churches in England and Wales. “We have a duty to married people today, and to those who come after us, to do all we can to ensure that the true meaning of marriage is not lost for future generations.”

3) Santorum Easily Wins Caucuses in Kansas - Mr. Santorum captured 51 percent of the vote, easily eclipsing his rivals Mitt Romney, who had 21 percent; Newt Gingrich with 14 percent; and Ron Paul with 13 percent. Mr. Santorum was projected by The Associated Press to win at least 32 of the 40 delegates in play, raising the stakes for the Alabama and Mississippi primaries on Tuesday, which polls showed to be wide open. “We’ve had a very, very good day,” Mr. Santorum said in Missouri, retracing the ups and downs of a campaign in which he said many had questioned why he persisted. [image: thatslayerchick]

  • Watching Willard Romney have to reinvent himself as a barbarian is going to be the best show in town - And, also, this is the casual slander that passes for political thought among the people with whom Romney cannot be nominated for president. In his appearance in Topeka, Santorum lashed out at Romney, saying that the former Massachusetts governor “can’t wait” for the primary season to be over so that he can “get back in his comfort zone.” He added, “We already have one president who doesn’t tell the truth to the American people. We don’t need another nominated by our party to do the same. Gov. Romney reinvents himself for whatever the political occasion calls for.”  It is now permissable in the Republican party to say anything you want about the incumbent president of the United States. I’m going to open comments for someone to prove to me that a Democratic candidate in, say, 2004 came that close to calling George W. Bush a liar. The general election campaign is going to be the most savage and truthless exercise that money can buy, and the money involved is going to be able to buy a lot. The GOP is one small step from having one of its politicians drop an N-bomb on TV.

4) Romney struggles with improved economy - The first is that Romney’s refusal to even acknowledge the new job numbers suggests he has a problem. Romney has already said, more than once, that he believes the economy has improved since President Obama took office, and whether the Republican candidate ignores reporters’ questions or not, the facts are hard to dispute. Second, Romney likes to throw around that claim about “he would keep unemployment below 8 percent,” but it’s just not true. Repeating a lie does not make it more accurate. And third, if we’re really going to have a conversation about who “has failed” at job creation, we should probably talk less about the guy who prevented an economic collapse, and more about the governor whose record on job creation was something of a fiasco — during Romney’s tenure, Massachusetts’ job creation was “one of the worst in the country,” ranking 47th out of 50 states in job growth. [image: liberalsarecool]

5) James Wolcott | Julianne Moore’s Sarah-dipity - The chief reason to see Game Change (HBO, Saturday March 10th) is that it’s fun. It has nothing new or profound to say about the runaway train of a presidential campaign, it doesn’t paint any rainy moments of a candidate’s somber reflection on the toll of his soul as the an aide prattles on the latest polls, it doesn’t peel any of the crab shell off of John McCain for a look under the psychological hood, or show us a side of Sarah Palin that will send us to the rewrite pages of history. It doesn’t drip oil from the ceiling like Ides of March, implicating everyone including the audience in collusion and corruption. It’s a slow-burn comedy of exasperation, finally blossoming into cursing frustration when Palin, the rock-star treatment from her rabid fans pumping her up into believing that she’s bigger than the campaign, wants to make her own concession speech the night of the losing election…

  • The relevant comments come from these two: Other aides who worked on the campaign – campaign manager Steven Schmidt and top aide Nicolle Wallace – have said the film is a generally accurate portrayal of Sen. John McCain’s selection of Palin, whom they allege was emotionally and intellectually not up for the job. Let’s be clear: Palin is absolutely right. The film doesn’t matter.
  • ‘Game Change’ and the realities of political decisions - What matters is that John McCain picked someone so totally and completely unfit for the position of vice president. That disastrous decision disqualifies McCain for the position of “senior wise man” that he so loves to play. But what this choice tells us, reinforced by his behavior during the September 2008 financial meltdown, is that McCain’s instincts are abysmal and his judgment is worse. Why anyone would continue to take McCain seriously from a political standpoint is unanswerable. He’s never going to live down this choice. And the reason he’s so dismissive of the movie and the book is for all the right reasons: the chatter may be all about Palin, but the implications are all about McCain. In fact, that’s actually what happened in 2008, in case anyone has forgotten.

Your average rightwing talk-radio fan.

6) 98 Major Advertisers Dump Rush Limbaugh, Other Right-Wing Hosts - This helps explain why, on Rush Limbaugh’s flagship station WABC, almost of the commercial breaks were filled with unpaid pubic service announcements. You can check out the list of the 50 advertisers who were known to have dropped Limbaugh before this report here. But it’s not just Limbaugh that these advertisers want to disassociate with, but other big names in right-wing radio too. As the Daily Beast’s John Avalon notes, this is unprecedented in the 20-plus years that Limbaugh and his imitators have been on the air and could spell real trouble for an industry that’s already suffering demographically. Women ages 24–55 are the prize advertising demographic, but Limbaugh and other conservative hosts have steadily alienated these listeners over the years, so the sexist attacks on Sandra Fluke were “a perfect storm.”

  • (VIDEO) SNL’s Rush Limbaugh and his “new, better” sponsors:
  • The Young Turks: A Challenge to Rush: Prove Your Ratings - So, Rush is in big trouble now as more and more advertisers peel off. He’s in a tail spin. Why else would you triple down on the “slut” comments from Wednesday to Friday and then issue an apology on Saturday? He has over-reached (in his offensive comments) and undelivered (in his ratings). That’s a lethal combo. But Rush can easily prove me wrong. So, I’m issuing a challenge to him – show us your ratings. He won’t do it because he’s embarrassed by them. He has never produced evidence of his ratings and he certainly won’t do it now. In fact, I’ll make a Mitt Romney like wager. I’ll give him $10,000 if he can show us his 20 million listeners. Rush’s audience is a myth. He is a paper tiger. Do some people listen to him? Of course. Is it anywhere near the hype? Not remotely. Talk radio is a dying business. I wouldn’t be surprised if his daily listeners didn’t even reach a million.

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.

#OccupyWallStreet: Republican rhetoric vs. actual data: small business and job creation

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Tax hikes and jobs: The whole story

It’s a ubiquitous Republican talking point: Congress must keep the top two rates at 33% and 35% — instead of 36% and 39.6% as President Obama wants.

The argument: Many small businesses file taxes under the individual tax code.

But while that argument makes for a good bumper sticker, it’s a misleading simplification of a complex policy issue.

“The Republican claim that this is a tax increase on a large fraction of employers is just not true,” said Howard Gleckman, a resident fellow at the Urban Institute.

In sharp contrast to the rhetoric, current data suggest:

1) small businesses don’t create an outsized number of jobs,
2) very few small business owners fall into the top two tax brackets, and
3) tax cuts for small businesses are ineffective stimulus measures.

(via: ryking)

If you honestly think the Republican party and the wealthiest Americans are concerned about most “small business owners” or “job creation” for the peasantry when they refuse to raise the tax rate on the 1%, then you have NOT been paying attention.

(Photo) A couple of policemen can’t help but contemplate #OccupyWallStreet

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source: speciousplans via: divineirony

Sign: The NYPD is a layoff away from joining us!

Irony: the police are protecting the 1% from the 99% they and their families and friends are a part of. FOR NOW.

#OccupyWallStreet & #ClassWarfare: Poverty is not the Enemy…

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image: armchairpatriots

“We have this fantasy that our interests and the interests of the super rich are the same. Like somehow the rich will eventually get so full that they’ll explode. And the candy will rain down on the rest of us. Like there’s some kind of piñata of benevolence. But here’s the thing about a piñata: it doesn’t open on it’s own. You have to beat it with a stick.” — Bill Maher

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FIVE FACTS from Tax Policy Center — #1: 100,000 millionaires pay lower taxes than YOU …if you’re an average American. From the Center for American Progress:

  1. More than 100,000 millionaires pay lower taxes than the average American.
  2. Forty percent of millionaires pay a lower tax rate than 3.4 million Americans who earn between $40,000 and $50,000.
  3. One hundred thousand millionaires pay a lower tax rate than 2.8 million Americans who earn only $10,000 to $20,000.
  4. Forty-six million Americans who earn less than $50,000 annually pay a higher tax rate than 43,000 millionaires.
  5. More than 43 million Americans who earn less than $100,000 pay a higher tax rate than 100,000 millionaires.

Read it all…

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Struggles over taxes always pit business and the rich against the middle-income earners and the poor. Each side seeks to shift the tax burden off of itself and on to the other side. “Class war” in that sense is nothing new. Accusing only one side of waging that war is ignorant at best and dishonest at worst. No one should be fooled. Today, business and the rich are waging class war yet again to avoid even a small, modest reverse in the huge tax cuts they won in that war over the last half-century. — The Truth About “Class War” in America

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The job creators are working and middle class Americans who have a paycheck and the income to spend on things they want. No good pay, no job, no demand for products or services. Wealthy people and corporations who hoard their tax cuts, offshore what were formerly U.S. jobs, and / or increase their CEO bonuses year after year? That would be the OPPOSITE of job creators. — John Boehner talked about jobs. Yawn.