Tag Archives: Paul Krugman

Congressional Republicans return from their Sequestration Vacation

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Aviva Shen at Think Progress notices that while “Congressional Republicans are refusing to consider new tax revenue as part of a deal [while others are insisting] that the across-the-board sequester cuts should be allowed to kick in… some Republican governors [like Jan Brewer (Teaparty-AZ)] are bracing for the devastating impact these cuts will have on their states.” Shen reviews the facts of how we arrived here:

House Republicans’ refusal to consider tax increases echoes the 2011 debt ceiling fight that created the sequester deal in the first place. That fight led to a downgrade of US credit for the first time in history and billions of wasted taxpayer dollars. The sequester could have even farther reaching consequences; the $85 billion in cuts will slow economic growth and gut essential programs in areas including education, food safety, disaster relief, and law enforcement — while doing little to actually reduce the deficit. For truly balanced deficit reduction, a budget deal would need to be comprised mostly of tax revenue.

Ezra Klein reminds the media — and the GOP – of where the goalposts should be on this issue and WHO moved them:

… The sequester was a punt. The point was to give both sides a face-saving way to raise the debt ceiling even though the tax issue was stopping them from agreeing to a deficit deal. The hope was that sometime between the day the sequester was signed into law (Aug. 2, 2011) and the day it was set to go into effect (Jan. 1, 2013), something would…change.

There were two candidates to drive that change. The first and least likely was the supercommittee. If they came to a deal that both sides accepted, they could replace the sequester. They failed.

The second was the 2012 election. If Republicans won, then that would pretty much settle it: No tax increases. If President Obama won, then that, too, would pretty much settle it: The American people would’ve voted for the guy who wants to cut the deficit by increasing taxes.

The American people voted for the guy who wants to cut the deficit by increasing taxes.

In fact, they went even further than that. They also voted for a Senate that would cut the deficit by increasing taxes. And then they voted for a House that would cut the deficit by increasing taxes, though due to the quirks of congressional districts, they didn’t get one.

Here in DC, we can get a bit buried in Beltway minutia. The ongoing blame game over who concocted the sequester is an excellent example. But it’s worth remembering that the goalposts in American politics aren’t set in backroom deals between politicians. They’re set in elections. And in the 2012 election, the American people were very clear on where they wanted the goalposts moved to.

As President Obama explained in his weekly address: this disaster can be averted by closing loopholes, doing selective “smart” cutting and entitlement reform in a way that doesn’t stall the economic recovery and that boosts job creation:

“After all, as we learned in the 1990s, nothing shrinks the deficit faster than a growing economy that creates good, middle-class jobs. That has to be our driving focus. That has to be our North Star. Making America a magnet for good jobs.”

If Republicans really cared about deficit reduction (and if a Republican were president right now), they’d be taking a completely different approach to this discussion. They’d be talking about a balanced approach (Ronald Reagan raised taxes numerous times). They wouldn’t be trying to drown anything in a bathtub (GWB increased the federal workforce to offset slower private job growth) — nor would they even consider slowing a just-recovering economy with these drastic cuts. The simple fact of the matter is that the GOP doesn’t care about the deficit. It’s a political ploy they use to talk about what they always talk about when a Democrat is president: spending (programs they dislike), big government (drown it!), and taxes (they must not be raised! ever!).

Paul Krugman points out the obvious:

To say what should be obvious: Republicans don’t care about the deficit. They care about exploiting the deficit to pursue their goal of dismantling the social insurance system. They want a fiscal crisis; they need it; they’re enjoying it. I mean, how is “starve the beast” supposed to work? Precisely by creating a fiscal crisis, giving you an excuse to slash Social Security and Medicare.

Kevin Drum agrees:

Republicans haven’t cared about the deficit for decades. They got a bit worried about it when Ronald Reagan’s 1981 tax cut didn’t pay for itself the way he promised, and this prompted them to reluctantly pass Reagan’s 1982 tax increase. But they very quickly sent that 1982 bill down the memory hole, pretending to this day that Saint Ronnie never increased taxes. Since then, they’ve cared about deficits only when Democrats were in office.

As it happens, I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about this. Republicans don’t like Democratic spending priorities, and yelling about the deficit is a very effective way of objecting to all of them without having to waste time arguing about each one separately. [...] That said, it’s still worth keeping the truth in mind. What frustrates me isn’t so much that Republicans do this—that’s just politics—but that the press so routinely lets them get away with it.

I disagree with Drum. I think there’s a lot of things that could be considered “nefarious” about what tea party extremists in Congress would like to do to our country. Especially when it comes down to wanting millions to suffer for 1) politics and 2) to preserve the wealth of a few.

We are living in strange times

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“This is not a negotiation in the normal sense, in which each side makes proposals and they dicker over the details; instead, Republicans are demanding that Obama read their minds and produce a proposal they’ll like. And Obama won’t do that, for good reason: he knows that they’ll just pronounce themselves unsatisfied with whatever he comes up with, and are indeed very likely to campaign in 2014 attacking him for whatever cuts take place. But then, should we be surprised? Remember that all the Republican budget “plans” of recent years—very much including the Ryan plan—have been built largely out of magic asterisks…We are at a strange and dangerous place in American political life.”

— Paul Krugman 

If Republicans were serious about deficits, they’d consider policies that might actually work

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“…every other advanced country has much lower health costs than we do, and even within the US, the VHA and even Medicaid are much better at controlling costs than Medicare, and even more so relative to private insurance. The key is having a health insurance system that can say no — no, we won’t pay premium prices for drugs that are little if any better, we won’t pay for medical procedures that yield little or no benefit. But even as Republicans demand “entitlement reform”, they are dead set against anything like that. Bargaining over drug prices? Horrors! The Independent Payment Advisory Board? Death panels! They refuse to contemplate using approaches that have worked around the world; the only solution they will countenance is the solution that has never worked anywhere, namely, converting Medicare into an underfunded voucher system.”

— Paul Krugman

American business gets what it pays for

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“So what you really want to ask is why American businesses don’t feel that it’s worth their while to pay enough to attract the workers they say they need.” — Paul Krugman (via azspot)


image: questionall

They have no hesitation about paying themselves top wages though.

GOP’s closing argument, cont: Vote Republican or the economy gets it

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Andrew Sullivan: That’s Romney’s final pitch:

In what his campaign billed as his “closing argument,” Mitt Romney warned Americans that a second term for President Obama would have apocalyptic consequences for the economy in part because his own party would force a debt ceiling disaster. “Unless we change course, we may well be looking at another recession,” Romney told a crowd in West Allis, Wisconsin. Romney said that Obama “promised to be a post-partisan president, but he became the most partisan” and that his bitter relations with the House GOP could threaten the economy. 

Or as Dan Savage put it, “We are no longer a democracy. We’re a hostage situation.”

Ezra addressed this argument earlier in the week:

While it’s true that President Romney could expect more cooperation from congressional Republicans, in the long term, a vote against Obama on these grounds is a vote for more of this kind of gridlock. Politicians do what wins them elections. If this strategy wins Republicans the election, they’ll employ it next time they face a Democratic president, too, and congressional Democrats will use it against the next Republicans. Rewarding the minority for doing everything in their power to make the majority fail sets up disastrous incentives for the political system. 

 

Related: 

Paul Krugman: The Blackmail Caucus

Since their ideas and plans are unpopular, the GOP’s closing argument: Lies and Blackmail!

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Paul Krugman: The Blackmail Caucus

“If President Obama is re-elected, health care coverage will expand dramatically, taxes on the wealthy will go up and Wall Street will face tougher regulation. If Mitt Romney wins instead, health coverage will shrink substantially, taxes on the wealthy will fall to levels not seen in 80 years and financial regulation will be rolled back.

Given the starkness of this difference, you might have expected to see people from both sides of the political divide urging voters to cast their ballots based on the issues. Lately, however, I’ve seen a growing number of Romney supporters making a quite different argument. Vote for Mr. Romney, they say, because if he loses, Republicans will destroy the economy…”

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Don’t negotiate with the terrorists: VOTE!!

Romney’s business experience: redistribution from the middle-class to a minority at the top

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Paul Krugman sums up the reasons (the right reasons!) that the Obama campaign has decided to go after Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

“Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them.”

“…why does [Romney] want us to think he should be president? It’s not about ideology: Romney offers nothing but warmed-over right-wing platitudes, with an extra helping of fraudulent arithmetic, and it’s fairly obvious that even he himself doesn’t believe anything he’s saying.

“Instead, his thing is competence: supposedly, his record as a successful businessman should tell us that he knows how to create jobs. And this in turn means that we have every right to ask exactly what kind of a businessman he was.

“Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.”

“Now, the truth is even under the best of circumstances, the case for electing a businessman as president would be very weak. A country is not a company – does any company sell more than 80 percent of what it makes to its own workers, the way America does? — and competitive success in business bears no particular relationship to the principles of macroeconomic policy. So even if Romney were a true captain of industry, a latter-day Andrew Carnegie, this wouldn’t be a strong qualification.

“In any case, however, Romney wasn’t that kind of businessman. He didn’t build businesses, he bought and sold them – sometimes restructuring them in ways that added jobs, often in ways that preserved profits but destroyed jobs, and fairly often in ways that extracted money for Bain but killed the business in the process.

“And recently the Washington Post added a further piece of information: Bain invested in companies that specialized in helping other companies get rid of employees, either in the United States or overall, by outsourcing work to outside suppliers and offshoring work to other countries.

“[Romney was] a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits…by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society”

“The Romney camp went ballistic, accusing the Post of confusing outsourcing and offshoring, but this is a pretty pathetic defense. For one thing, there weren’t any actual errors in the article. For another, it’s simply not true, as the Romney people would have you believe, that domestic outsourcing is entirely innocuous. On the contrary, it’s often a way to replace well-paid employees who receive decent health and retirement benefits with low-wage, low-benefit employees at subcontracting firms. That is, it’s still about redistribution from middle-class Americans to a small minority at the top.

“Arguably, that’s just business – but it’s not the kind of business that makes you especially want to see Romney as president.

“Or put it a different way: Romney wasn’t so much a captain of industry as a captain of deindustrialization, making big profits for his firm (and himself) by helping to dismantle the implicit social contract that used to make America a middle-class society.”

Obstructionism: The GOP wants you to suffer while they’re not in the White House

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“Conservatives would have you believe that our disappointing economic performance has somehow been caused by excessive government spending, which crowds out private job creation. But the reality is that private-sector job growth has more or less matched the recoveries from the last two recessions; the big difference this time is an unprecedented fall in public employment, which is now about 1.4 million jobs less than it would be if it had grown as fast as it did under President George W. Bush. And, if we had those extra jobs, the unemployment rate would be much lower than it is — something like 7.3 percent instead of 8.2 percent. It sure looks as if cutting government when the economy is deeply depressed hurts rather than helps the American people.” – Paul Krugman (via azspot)

Bob Cesca: Former Romney adviser Rob Gray told Fox News Channel: “I am buying that they’re rooting against the economy somewhat, because they think that the short term pain of the next four months is much better than having an additional four years under Obama. If we have to suffer between now and November to get a president, they’re all for it.”

Related: Mitt Romney wants to ‘trickle down’ all over you and tell you it’s raining

“This is now a country run by the rich, for the rich.”

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In his review of Paul Krugman’s and Timothy Noah’s books, Felix Salmon reflects on what’s happening with the wealthy and the rest of us today:

“Rich people have more power than poor people, and they use that power to get what they want — which is, normally, more wealth and more power. Across America, politicians invariably reflect the views of their richest constituents. And the Federal Reserve, too, appears to have been captured by the rich: It seems much more worried about the specter of possible future inflation (which might be bad for the rich) than it is about the tragedy of present-day unemployment (which is calamitous for today’s jobless)…. This is now a country run by the rich, for the rich. And nothing in either of these books gives me reason to believe that there’s any hope of changing that.” 

Electing Mitt Romney would be that final nail in the coffin for those who aren’t wealthy.

Morning Bunker Report: Monday 6.11.2012

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

John McCain will be stuck in 2008 forever, his concession speech on an endless mental loop, with Princess Braindead by his side – [In 2005] as the Plame case unfolded, many Republicans now calling for administration heads accused Democrats of playing politics and conducting an unwarranted witch hunt. They urged at the time that Bush administration officials be given the benefit of doubt. “I do believe that every American has the right of presumption of innocence until proven guilty,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in 2005, when suspicions were focused on top Bush adviser Karl Rove. “Karl Rove has stated that he did not do anything wrong and break any law. I take him at his word.” [...] Now that a Democrat sits in the Oval Office, the GOP complainers are unwilling to hold off on predeterminations. The administration is “intentionally leaking information to enhance President Obama’s image as a tough guy for the elections,” McCain recently said. “That is unconscionable.” — HuffPo

Republicans vote to block transparency on political ads (you don’t need to know who wants to buy government) – The Republican opponents “of a new rule to post political ad information online have opened up another front in a long-running fight, inserting language into an appropriations bill that would bar the Federal Communications Commission from implementing the transparency measure,” ProPublica reports. – Political Wire

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels called for the elimination of public sector unions — Wallace… asked whether Daniels would like to see public-sector unions disappear entirely. ‘I think government works better without them, I really do,’ Daniels replied.” In 2005, Daniels signed an executive order that “eliminated collective bargaining rights for government workers.” As a result, workers in the state “receive lowers salaries and must pay higher health care costs.”  – HuffPo | Note: And there’s the common theme to every GOP argument about employment: lower salaries and less benefits for workers (ALL workers).  Lay people off so they’ll accept less just to be employed again. The job ‘creators’ take in more profit, bank more bonuses, continue killing the middle class.


image: WWJD

“This was a booming place. And Mitt Romney and Bain Capital turned it into a junkyard” – The ad features Donnie Box, who lost his job of 32 years at Kansas City’s GST Steel after Romney’s firm took it over. “Romney and Bain Capital shut this place down,” Box says in the commercial, standing outside a shuttered factory where he used to work. “They shut down entire livelihoods. They promised us healthcare package, they promised us [they'd] maintain our retirement program, and those were the first two things to disappear. This was a booming place. And Mitt Romney and Bain Capital turned it into a junkyard. Just making money and leaving.” – Maddow Blog


…

Dear Mr. Romney, please explain why America will be better off when more teachers, cops, and firefighters are unemployed – As a rule, gaffes tend to capture the political world’s attention, but in this case, we have something more significant than a soundbite — we have a policy position. Indeed, the Republican nominee for president seriously believes we can “help the American people” by laying off, not just public-sector workers in general, but specifically cops, firefighters, and teachers — and his background as a one-term governor makes clear he means it. This is so far from the mainstream that even Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) wouldn’t endorse Romney’s line… the Republican governor said, “I know in my state our reforms allowed us to protect firefighters, police officers and teachers. That’s not what I think of when I think of big government.”  [...] The differences between Obama and Romney on this have the potential to drive the presidential campaign: does it help or hurt America when hundreds of thousands of school teachers and first responders lose their jobs? For the first time in generations, the two major-party presidential candidates answer that question differently. — Steve Benen

Tea party activists say they’ll abstain from voting on Election Day – “I have heard from various folks in the tea party that they would rather stay home,” said Ana Puig, the state director of FreedomWorks, a conservative activist training group. “I’m hearing that from people all over the country and on Facebook.” The Romney rejection stems from the deeply held belief by many conservatives that the former Massachusetts governor is really a moderate wolf in conservative sheep’s clothing.  [...] “The same things were said about [2008 GOP nominee] John McCain,” Burkholder said. “When McCain won the nomination, we were for Romney because he was more conservative than McCain. You can see how far the conservative movement has come now that Romney isn’t conservative enough.” – PennLive.com

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

Obama to focus on Michigan recovery — Instead of just focusing on the turnaround of General Motors Co. and Chrysler Group LLC, which rebounded since the $85 billion federal auto bailout, the Obama campaign intends to shine a weeklong spotlight on other manufacturers, restaurants, tourist spots and firms that benefitted from the auto recovery… Sen. Carl Levin, D-Detroit, will kick off the Michigan Road to Recovery Tour on Monday with a press call. — Political Wire

Wake up and smell the coffee: What’s wrong with a third of union members and a third of government employees? A strong majority of union members support President Barack Obama, but about one-third back Mitt Romney, a new survey on Monday reveals. Indeed, 57 percent of union workers would vote for Obama, while 35 percent support Romney, according to a Gallup Poll. [...] Meanwhile, government workers — whether union members or not, continue to support Obama over Romney: the former 59 percent to 34 percent; the latter 48 percent to 44 percent. – POLITICO | Note: what exactly do you not understand about what Romney / the GOP would like to do with you if you belong to a union or have a job in the public sector? HINT: they don’t consider YOU a member of ‘the American people’ who deserve ‘help.’ 

What to expect from a Romney presidency, by his own actions in Massachusetts, in his own words today: less police, firefighters, and teachers — less employment, economic recovery, education, security, and services:

…

David Axelrod: Mitt Romney ‘Living On A Different Planet’ – “We’re not going to win, and our kids aren’t going to win, unless we invest in education,” Axelrod told host George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s “This Week.” [...] “So I would suggest he’s living on a different planet if he thinks that’s a prescription for a stronger economy.” “What was most interesting is how he reacted to the spirit of the thing, because his statement was, ‘We don’t need any more teachers, we don’t need any more firefighters or police,’” Axelrod said. [...] “I think the American people are smarter than that,” he said. “They understand the president called the press conference to say that because of the storm clouds that are rolling in from Europe and elsewhere, we need to undergird our economy.” – HuffPo

Van Jones slams Mike Huckabee: The average teacher doesn’t make $100,000 – “Look, first of all, maybe I [was] raised wrong, I never heard of this threat to American called ‘public employee,’” Jones said. “In my neighborhood, we called them teachers, we called them firefighters, we called them cops, we called them nurses. And we were told to look up at them and respect them. And to now be a punching bag, people like my father and my mother, who were public school teachers who did not make $100,000 and whatever you just said and nothing near it, for them to become a punching bag is wrong.” “Furthermore, I think we to need to take a big step back here. When you have the amount of pain in this country, the Republican Party has not only been missing in action, they won’t pass their own bills to help Americans right now. They won’t pass their own ideas to help small businesses right now. Why? Because their gain will come when America has more pain.” Jones added: “It’s like Obama is a lifeguard, trying to help people from drowning, and these guys are sitting back hoping more people will drown. That’s wrong, that’s morally wrong.” In Chicago, the average salary for a teacher is currently $50,577, including all benefits. – Raw Story | Note: what kind of an out of touch idiot (or bald-faced liar) would claim the average salary for a teacher is $100,000 a year? 

Krugman: Obama ‘screwed up’ the ‘private sector is fine’ line — The Nobel prized-winning economist explained how the president was technically correct in comparing the private sector numbers to its anemic public sector counterpart, but further added how Obama was clumsy with his words. “By this point in Obama’s presidency, if we had normal sector job growth, we’d have 800,000 more people: firefighters, schoolteachers, police officers. Instead, we’ve got 600,000 fewer,” Krugman said. “So right there, it’s like 1.4 million jobs that we should have had in the public sector. That’s what he was trying to get at and of course, he screwed up the line.” – Raw Story

Morning Bunker Report: Sunday 6.10.2012

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

Yes, Republicans are stepping on the economy for political gain — The Republican line is that, even in current conditions of mass unemployment, zero interest rates and low inflation, higher short-term deficits harm the economy rather than help it. Republicans embraced this unorthodox line of thinking suddenly, after maintaining the opposite when their party held the White House. I used to reject the accusation that Republicans reversed their thinking out of a conscious decision to sabotage the economy in order to regain power. [...] I was shaken of that belief not long ago, when Mitt Romney said off the cuff that cutting spending in his first year would retard the recovery… Conservatives mounted zero pushback whatsoever, suggesting that their newfound attachment to contractionary fiscal policy is a pure shift of expediency, to be discarded immediately if their party wins power and suddenly has an incentive to speed up rather than slow down the economy. — Jonathan Chait | image: phroyd 

Romney Energy Plan Includes Drilling ‘Virtually Every Part’ Of U.S., No Protections For National Parks — As the [Washington] Post reports: Asked whether any place would be off limits for oil drilling, campaign spokesman Andrea Saul said, “Governor Romney will permit drilling wherever it can be done safely, taking into account local concerns.” [...] Presumably, if there was oil and gas found there, Romney would allow drilling in places like the Grand Canyon, Arches National Park, Glacier National Park, Yellowstone, and Isle Royale National Park in the Great Lakes, regardless of its impacts on them. In essence, he would take lands that belong to all Americans and turn them over to oil companies. – Think Progress

  • THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS “AMERICAN” OIL — The oil or gas is drilled by corporations of various sizes ranging from wildcat, low-budget start up operations through Exxon/Mobil. [...] The thing is, the stuff that comes out of a successful well doesn’t belong to you and me. Or the state or federal government. It’s owned by the company that drilled for it, produced it, and shipped it to market. It’s not “America’s oil.” It’s Exxon’s. And BP’s. And Shell’s. And believe me: Exxon doesn’t think of it as “American oil.” They think of it as a commodity sold on a hyper-competitive global market. — PoliticalProf

Just to reiterate: Romney’s “jobs” plan is to fire government workers, he mocked President Obama for wanting to hire more teachers, firefighters and police officers  – Mitt Romney once again made it clear that his jobs plan is to fire government workers: “[the President] wants another stimulus, he wants to hire more government workers. He says we need more fireman, more policeman, more teachers. Did he not get the message of Wisconsin? The American people did. It’s time for us to cut back on government and help the American people.” — Greg Sargent

via: DailyKos 

Mitt Romney Thinks High Private Sector Growth and 4.3 Million New Jobs is a “Moral Failure of Tragic Proportions” – Mitt Romney today declared that the floundering economy under President Obama is not just a “failure of policy” but a “moral failure of tragic proportion,” though he offered few new details as to what he would do differently as president.  [...] “When you look around at America’s economy, three-and-a-half years into this presidency, it’s painfully obvious that this inexperienced president with no experience as a leader was simply not up to the task of solving a great economic crisis,” said Romney. “This is not just a failure of policy; it is a moral failure of tragic proportion. Our government has a moral commitment to help every American help himself. And that commitment has been broken.” – ABL

All employees: total private industries 

image: Bob Cesca

The private sector IS doing fine — According to the Wingnutosphere, yesterday was a day that will live in infamy. Why? Because President Obama said the private sector is “doing fine.” They are doing fine, actually. [...] Business Insider’s glorious collection of charts also covers the president’s words on the slump in public sector employment, but that’s not in dispute by the Republicans. They may even gloat about it. You know, because those aren’t real jobs. – Bob Cesca

Libertarians work through the five stages of grief over Rand Paul’s endorsement of Romney – The Libertarian Party issued a blistering statement through the party’s website, in which they called Rand a turncoat, a traitor to his father’s legacy and a sellout. “(N)o true libertarian, no true friend of liberty, and no true blue Tea Partier could possibly even consider, much less actually endorse or approve of, the Father of Obamacare, Big Government tax and spender, Republican Mitt Romney,” the statement said. [...] “WHY RAND WHY?!” wrote one angry Reddit poster, who included the climactic scene of George Lucas’s third “Star Wars” prequel, in which Anakin Skywalker is betrayed and abandoned by Obi Wan Kenobi. “He bowed to the neocons!!!” wrote another, “WELL LISTEN RAND!!! WE WON’T BOW!!! WE WILL CONTINUE TO FIGHT FOR FREEDOM AS YOU BOWED TO THE KILLER GLOBALISTS!!!” On Facebook, one Ron Paul supporter wrote, “Rand Paul you disgust me.” – Raw Story || Stage one: ALL CAPS

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


image: storiesbysharkbait

Tell Congress we can’t wait — The President’s jobs plan would put teachers, firefighters, police officers, and construction workers back to work right now. And it’s paid for by asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more, but Congress refuses to act. Tell Congress we can’t wait: JobsNow – YouTube

…

Sen. Sherrod Brown on JP Morgan’s trading mess: ‘These banks are not just too big to fail, they’re too big to manage‘ – Brown (D-OH) said that JP Morgan’s trading mess proves banks are not only too big to fail — meaning they are explicitly backed by the government and will be rescued if they blow themselves up — but simply “too big to manage”: [...] “Jamie Dimon’s smart, he’s articulate, he’s probably a good manager, he’s probably a good CEO. I don’t like his public persona in terms of what he’s done to weaken these regulations and to undercut them. They lost their fights in Congress, now they’re organizing to win them in the regulatory agencies. But I think, if he can’t manage a bank this size, it probably isn’t manageable. I think these banks will be stronger and healthier and probably more profitable if they’re smaller.” – Think Progress

Well played, Senator:

Kudos to Sen. Sherrod Brown for giving CNN contributor/Breitbart.com loon Dana Loesch exactly the amount of respect she deserved, when she popped up like a malevolent jack-in-the-box at the Netroots Nation conference. — LGF

Harry Reid said he will likely push for changes to filibuster rules if the Democrats retain control next year – “I’ll just bet you … if we maintain a majority, and I feel quite confident that we can do that, and the president is reelected, there is going to be some changes,” Reid said on the Senate floor. “We can no longer go through this, every bill, filibusters [even] on bills that they agree with. It’s just a waste of time to prevent us from getting things done.” It remains unclear, however, if Reid would have the votes to change the Senate’s rules, which would require a simple majority vote at the start of the new Congress. Should Democrats retain control of the Senate, they will likely have a razor-thin majority in 2013. Only one or two defections could lead to defeat of the motion, as all Republicans are united against such a change in rules. – The Hill

image: abaldwin360

Paul Krugman at Netroots Nation: solving this depression isn’t an economic problem, it’s a political problem – The Nobel Laureate said that the current state of the U.S. economy is “incredibly awful,” and dinged Romney’s exorbitant wealth, saying, “If you don’t know multiple people who are suffering, then you must be living in a very rarefied environment. You must be maybe a member of the Romney clan, or something.” Krugman underscored the fact that the current economic crisis has been created by deregulation and poor policy decisions. “None of this has to be happening,” he said, “We didn’t have a plague of locusts, we were not hit by a tsunami, there wasn’t some act of God that created this terrible situation. It was acts of man.” [...] “Solving this depression is not fundamentally an economic problem,” he said, “it’s a political problem.” – Raw Story

Things you never imagine Dick Cheney doing: Joe Biden had an epic waterfight with kids today – The Vice President invites the press and their families to his home at the Naval Observatory every year. — Buzzfeed (more photos at the link) 

Morning Bunker Report: Tuesday 6.5.2012

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

“Forgive me for noting that conservatives seem to believe that the rich will work harder if we give them more, and the poor will work harder if we give them less.” – E. J. Dionne


Making the superrich richer does not create jobs.

Romney’s tax plan would save him $5 million next year — To see where the presidential candidates stand on taxing the rich, just look at how they’d tax themselves. Under his own proposal, Mitt Romney would pay half what he would under President Barack Obama’s tax plan. For a man of Romney’s means, that could save almost $5 million a year. For Obama, not so loaded as Romney but still well-off, losing re-election could provide a tax windfall. He’d save as much as $90,000 a year if Romney’s plan were enacted rather than his own tax-the-rich vision. Two nonprofit research groups, the liberal-leaning Citizens for Tax Justice and conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, did the calculations, based on the most recent completed tax returns released by the candidates. Compared with what they owed in April, both men would be dinged in 2013 under Obama’s proposal, along with other wealthy taxpayers. They could expect savings under Romney, depending on which tax breaks the former Massachusetts governor decides to oppose. — NBC Politics / Raw Story

Massachusetts was 37th in job creation when Romney took office and 47th when he left — Senior Romney adviser Ed Gillespie had a similar exchange with “Fox News Sunday” host Chris Wallace. “When [Romney] took office it was No. 50 in job creation. Actually 51 if you count the District of Columbia,” Gillespie said. To his credit, Fox News’ Chris Wallace didn’t let Ed Gillespie get away with that claim either and corrected him that Massachusetts was 47th during the entire Romney governorship. Massachusetts ranked 37th when Mitt Romney took office. It ranked 47th when he left office. He actually made things worse. Not better. Massachusetts was never “30th in the nation.” Not when he took office or left office. – JM Ashby

Romney’s Solyndra slam at Obama backfires – A Lowell-based solar technology company that received $1.5 million in state loans when Mitt Romney was governor has filed for bankruptcy, opening the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to charges of hypocrisy. Konarka Technologies disclosed Friday that it had filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection and would fire its 80-member staff and liquidate its assets. Romney has chided President Obama for investing $535 million in a different solar company that failed, and has insisted governments should not pick winners and losers in the private sector.  – The Boston Globe

Romney Takes Conservative Fire For Top Aide Michael Leavitt’s Support Of Obamacare Exchanges – The Wall Street Journal reported last year that Leavitt “strenuously backed the core piece of President Barack Obama’s health-care law and urged the states to move forward together in adopting health insurance exchanges.” And his stance hasn’t changed: “We believe that the exchanges are the solution to small business insurance market and that’s gotten us sideways with some conservatives,” Leavitt’s top aide Rich McKeown told Politico. “We’re troubled by it,” Dean Clancy, who runs health care advocacy for the Dick Armey-led conservative group FreedomWorks, told TPM Monday via email. “We’re very concerned. The tea party grassroots have always feared that Gov. Romney would be a weak standard bearer because of RomneyCare. This choice only reinforces those doubts. Tapping a high-profile ObamaCare profiteer is disturbing, there’s no way around it. … The tea party has been fighting exchanges in state after state.” – TPM

The emerging “face” of California’s GOP — litigious “birther” Orly Taitz, a Russian Israeli emigre who has appeared on national television with her claims that Obama faked his birth certificate. – Political Wire

The trifecta of wingnuttery! Racist, petty, and thin-skinned: A judge has tossed out a lawsuit World Net Daily brought against Esquire for a story making fun of the publication’s birtherism.

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

KRUGMAN: THE IRONY OF REAGAN AND OBAMA:  Obama may be defeated because he’s been constrained to be less Keynesian than Reagan or Bush  – “If you actually look at the actual track record of government spending, government employment, Reagan is the Keynesian and Obama — mostly because of political constraints, although a little bit of lack of conviction on the part of his own people — has been the anti-Keynesian,” Krugman said. “He’s been the one who’s been doing what Republicans say is the right answer.” Just over three years into Reagan’s first term, government jobs grew by 3.1 percent; at the same time during Obama’s tenure, they’ve been cut by 2.7 percent. Hundreds of thousands of public sector jobs have been shed in recent years. Government jobs also grew under President George W. Bush, which helped keep unemployment down during most of his two terms. “After there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush,” Obama said last month on the campaign trail. “So each time there was a recession with a Republican president, compensated — we compensated by making sure that government didn’t see a drastic reduction in employment. The only time government employment has gone down during a recession has been under me.” [...] “We’re actually practicing government austerity on a scale that we haven’t seen in 60 years. It’s not the president’s policy,” he said Sunday. “In effect, we’ve already got the policies that Republicans say they will impose if they take the election, and yet, of course, it may lead to the defeat of this president.” – TPM


(Photo: Bill Luster, The Courier-Journal)

Bob McDonnell makes the case for Obama — Whether he knew it or not, Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell (R) made the case for the Obama Administration during an interview with CNN’s Candy Crowley. At 5.6 percent, Virginia’s unemployment rate is among the lowest in the country, well below the national average of 8.2 percent. And the state’s governor concedes that President Obama has helped.  “The only thing I can say is he had nearly a trillion dollars in stimulus, and that was one-time spending,” Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell told CNN’s Candy Crowley in response to a question about whether he believes Obama can take any credit for the strong economy in Virginia. “Did it help us in the short run with health care and education spending to balance the budget? Sure. Does it help us in the long term to really cut the unemployment rate? I’d say no.” – JM Ashby

Bill Clinton: a Romney presidency would be “calamitous” – Days after praising Mitt Romney’s “sterling” business career, ABC News reports Bill Clinton warned that a Romney presidency would be “calamitous for our country and the world.” Clinton, speaking at a fundraiser for President Obama in New York City, added that the incumbent has “the right economic policy and the right political approach,” while “the politics is wrong on the Republican side, the economics are crazy.” – ABC News

Eliot Spitzer: U.S. needs ‘big, old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus’ – Former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer said Monday that the United States needed to invest in the public sector, because the country’s current policies clearly were not revving up the economy. “One thing that could help is a big, old-fashioned Keynesian stimulus,” he said on his Current TV show Viewpoint. “First, realize we’ve tried the Republican approach,” Spitzer explained. “As Paul Krugman and others point out, taxes have been cut and government spending has fallen, once you adjust for population and inflation. In fact, it has not fallen this quickly since the demobilization after the Korean war. So it’s no surprise that public sector employment is way down.” He noted that now was a good time for the U.S. government to borrow more money, because of the extremely low interest rates. — Raw Story

Paycheck Fairness Act expected to fail today, but the GOP’s War on Women is still imaginary – Democrats will bring to the Senate floor on Tuesday the Paycheck Fairness Act, a bill that is supposed to help close the wage gap between men and women. […] The paycheck bill would bar companies from retaliating against workers who inquire about pay disparities and permit employees to sue for punitive damages if they find evidence of broad differences in compensation between male and female workers. Democrats say the measure would bolster reforms enacted with the 2009 Lilly Ledbetter pay law that expanded the statute of limitations for filing equal-pay lawsuits. […] Several business groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and associations representing bankers, construction firms and retailers, issued a statement opposing the legislation, saying it would result in “unprecedented government control over how employees are paid at even the nation’s smallest employers.” — The Washington Post

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Morning Bunker Report: Monday 6.4.2012

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

Paul Krugman again slams Ryan’s budget plan and Romney’s advisor Eric Fehrnstrom for supporting it — “The plan’s a fraud,” Krugman said. “The plan is a big bunch of tax cuts, some specified spending cuts, basically for poor people, and then a huge magic asterisk which is supposed to turn into a deficit reduction plan, but, in fact, if you look what’s actually in it, it’s a deficit-increasing plan.” “And so to say that, just tell the truth that there is really no plan there, neither from Ryan, nor from Governor Romney, is just the truth,” he said. “If that’s being harsh and partisan, gosh, then I guess the truth is anti-bipartisanship.” — Raw Story || image: phroyd

Austerity for the rest of us: Don’t look to Mitt Romney for help on underwater mortgages – Mitt Romney won’t offer “targeted relief for the 11.5 million American homeowners who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth,” Lanhee Chen, his campaign’s policy director, told Bloomberg’s Al Hunt. Chen described such policies as insufficient for stabilizing the housing market. – Think Progress


image: MoveOn.Org

Romney’s promises: we’ve heard it all before – 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. Romney economics didn’t work then, and it won’t work now — YouTube

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Romney adviser dismisses women’s issues as ‘shiny objects’ — Despite spending the GOP’s contested primary accusing President Obama for waging “an assault on religion,” flyering voters in Iowa with pamphlets that touted a “pro-life” agenda, and pledging to defund Planned Parenthood, Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom insisted that the general election should eschew social issues. Fehrnstrom also accused Democrats of using women’s reproductive health as “shiny objects” to avoid discussing the economy. “Mitt Romney is pro-life,” he told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on Sunday. “He’ll govern as a pro-life president, but you’re going to see the Democrats use all sorts of shiny objects to distract people’s attention from the Obama performance on the economy. This is not a social issue election.” – Think Progress

Louisiana paper runs ad suggesting Obama and Democrats want to murder Christians – The Daily Advertiser, a Gannett-owned paper serving central Louisiana, is standing by its decision to run an advertisement today in which a far-right extremist group suggests that President Obama and Democrats are conspiring to murder Catholics and Christians. […] As with most newspapers, The Daily Advertiser says it does screen advertisements to ensure that blatantly false, overly offensive or otherwise inappropriate content is kept out of the paper. – Think Progress

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

Romney advisor Eric Fehrnstrom asked Paul Krugman if he preferred Obama’s plan over the Ryan plan. “Oh, yeah. I mean, the president — at least it’s — you know, I don’t approve of everything, but there are no gigantic mystery numbers in his stuff. We do know what he’s talking about. His numbers are… you know, all economic forecasts are wrong, but his are not… are not insane. These are… these are just imaginary.”  – Crooks and Liars

Shrum: ‘There’s nothing wrong’ with Obama holding Romney accountable — “There is nothing wrong with the president holding Mitt Romney to his account for his record from private business and his record as a public official,” [Democratic strategist Bob] Shrum said. “Harry Truman did the same thing. Ronald Reagan in 1980, one of the most optimistic politicians in America, ran a pretty tough negative advertising campaign, against Jimmy Carter.” Shrum added: “If you did what the governor (Romney) is suggesting, and maybe he’s not, and you just let this be a referendum, I don’t think the president could win.” — Raw Story

Having it both ways: a tale of two standards – Romney has been running for president pretty much non-stop for six years. He and his aides have, in other words, had a very long time to come up with compelling explanations for all of the shortcomings in Romney’s record. With that in mind, Romney’s staffers had to know that when they appeared on the Sunday shows yesterday, they’d hear questions about Massachusetts being 47th out of 50 states in job creation during Romney’s tenure. And what was their explanation? Romney inherited a bad situation, and when he left, things were marginally better. Seriously, that’s their defense. [...] Look, this isn’t complicated. Romney is trying to create a standard for success that only he’s allowed to use.  [...] If Romney’s to be congratulated for inheriting an economy that was struggling but then turning things around a little, by that identical standard, he ought to be patting Obama on the back for a job well done. Indeed, the Romney campaign talking points practically sound like an Obama endorsement.– Steve Benen || image: obama2016

Walker recall election Tuesday: you can help! This is a race that will come down to turnout — The final Public Policy Polling count ahead of tomorrow’s recall election shows a slight Walker lead in a race that’s tightening up in the final hours. […] x If the folks who turn out on Tuesday actually matched the 2008 electorate, Barrett would be ahead of Walker by a 50-49 margin. It’s cliche but this is a race that really is going to completely come down to turnout. Needless to say, if you’d like to help out with turning out the vote, you can help out with phone banking here. Today’s the day we need you to help. It’s crunch time, and you can make calls from your own home. It’s easy and simple. This race is winnable, folks. Fire Walker with me. — Balloon Juice

Sarah Jessica Parker: “That Guy” — “Ok, the guy who ended the war in Iraq, the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want, and the guy who created 4 million new jobs, that guy: President Obama and Michelle are coming to my house for dinner on June 14, and I want you to be there too. But you have to go to JoinObama.com for your chance to win and the contest ends tomorrow night so go right here, right now. Because we need him and he needs us.” – YouTube


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Wall Street’s narcissism: they want all our money AND they want us to love them for taking it

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“If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.”  – Paul Krugman on the huge egos of Wall Street:

… let me take a moment to debunk a fairy tale that we’ve been hearing a lot from Wall Street and its reliable defenders — a tale in which the incredible damage runaway finance inflicted on the U.S. economy gets flushed down the memory hole, and financiers instead become the heroes who saved America.

Once upon a time, this fairy tale tells us, America was a land of lazy managers and slacker workers. Productivity languished, and American industry was fading away in the face of foreign competition.

Then square-jawed, tough-minded buyout kings like Mitt Romney and the fictional Gordon Gekko came to the rescue, imposing financial and work discipline. Sure, some people didn’t like it, and, sure, they made a lot of money for themselves along the way. But the result was a great economic revival, whose benefits trickled down to everyone.

You can see why Wall Street likes this story. But none of it — except the bit about the Gekkos and the Romneys making lots of money — is true.

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They took our money and want to fabricate the back-story so we’ll worship them for taking it.  Which is exactly why the banksters can’t stand Obama — not because his administration has been more difficult to work with than a Republican administration — it hasn’t, and not because they don’t deserve the country’s disapproval — they deserve that and so much more. However Wall Street ‘disdains’ Obama because he’s been ‘publicaly disrespectful’ to them. It’s all about their egos, again, and how they’re represented to the public at large:

“You have to understand, it is very personal. He raised money from us,” one executive at a top bank said. “Then he started calling us bad people. So forgive us for not wanting to buy him a drink after getting punched in the eye.”

Geisst and other observers see the animus differently. They see it as a product of Wall Street’s profound and persistent narcissistic disorder. Bankers with the disorder have an innate inability to handle even mild criticism coupled with an unshakable belief that whatever they do is the smartest and best possible thing.

But Geisst also suggested the shock and disdain is something of a pose, a feint to fight off greater re-regulation.

“Their best defense here has been incredulity,” he said. “Wall Street just pretends they don’t understand what all the fuss is about and can’t believe how they are being talked about and hope that their incredulity will translate into softer treatment, which is exactly what happened here.”

Christopher Whalen, investment banker, author and cofounder of Institutional Risk Analytics, said the distaste isn’t policy-related, it’s personal.

“Wall Street disdains Obama,” Whalen said. “Hate is too strong a term. Obama is publicly disrespectful, thus Wall Street complains.”

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It would be almost funny, if it weren’t for the fact that these narcissistic non-self-aware children actually control the entire world. They’re just mad they can’t control what we think  and especially that Obama isn’t as willing to read us the same bedtime stories as the GOP always is.