Tag Archives: WSJ

Sequester week: for accuracy call it the #Teaquester or the #Boehnerquester

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The Republican-led House voted itself a vacation this week without one Democrat voting for it. House members will not return to work until Monday, February 25, which gives them exactly four days to work on a solution to the sequester.

Speaker John Boehner writes in the Wall Street Journal that the deep automatic spending cuts set for the end of the month were President Obama’s idea. But a July 2011 PowerPoint obtained by John Avlon shows the opposite may be true. “It’s a PowerPoint presentation that Boehner’s office developed with the Republican Policy Committee and sent out to the Capitol Hill GOP on July 31, 2011… It’s essentially an internal sales document from the old dealmaker Boehner to his unruly and often unreasonable Tea Party cohort. But it’s clear as day in the presentation that ‘sequestration’ was considered a cudgel to guarantee a reduction in federal spending–the conservatives’ necessary condition for not having America default on its obligations.” — Political Wire

At this point, it’d be a mistake to suggest the bipartisan talks have stalled, since there [are] no talks — Democrats have unveiled a sequester alternative, and Republicans have not; Democrats have said they’re open to compromise, and Republican have said they aren’t. The probably of avoiding next week’s mess is quickly approaching zero. With this in mind, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has a 900-word op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the subject, devoted almost entirely to a desperate attempt to avoid blame. In the larger context, it’s only mildly annoying that Boehner invests more energy in pointing fingers than working on a solution, but it’s far worse that the Speaker peddles blatant falsehoods, lacking enough respect for the public and the political world to be honest with them… — Steve Benen

As the deadline nears, many Republicans are not only unwilling to look for bipartisan solutions to stop the sequester – they are gleefully looking forward to its impact on American families:

  • “It’s pretty clear to me that the sequester is going to go into effect…Read my lips: I’m not interested in an 11th-hour negotiation.” – Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
  • “Sequestration will take place…I am excited. It will be the first time since I’ve been in Congress that we really have significant cuts.” – Republican Congresswoman Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
  • “Sequestration needs to happen…Bottom line, it needs to happen and that’s the deal we struck to raise the debt limit.” – Republican Congressman Scott DesJarlais (R-TN)
  • “I think sequester’s going to happen…I think people want it to happen.” – Republican Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK)
  • “We’re willing to let it go through till they (Democrats) respond to us.” – Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland (R-GA)

“That’s the biggest problem with the Republicans. They think spending is the most important thing. It’s not.” [Former Virginia governor and conservative Republican Jim Gilmore] says he has urged GOP leaders to back down and compromise to prevent the so-called sequester spending cuts from going through – “I keep telling them, you’re going to lose this” – and he has strong words for congressional leaders’ focus on deficit reduction as their primary economy goal. “Above all things,” he says, “they shouldn’t be talking about debt and deficits. Because the left’s got an answer for them.” That answer would be, raise taxes, which Gilmore says is the opposite of what the economy needs right now – and he’s quite critical of Democrats for pushing tax increases. But spending cuts won’t help the economy either, he says. — Wonkblog

President Barack Obama lashed out against Republicans, saying they are unwilling to raise taxes to reduce deficits and warning that the jobs of essential government workers, from teachers to emergency responders, are on the line. [...] Obama cautioned that if the $85 billion in immediate cuts — known as the sequester — occur, the full range of government would feel the effects. Among those he listed: furloughed FBI agents, reductions in spending for communities to pay police and fire personnel and teachers, and decreased ability to respond to threats around the world. [...] ”People will lose their jobs,” he said. “The unemployment rate might tick up again. So far at least, the ideas that the Republicans have proposed ask nothing of the wealthiest Americans or the biggest corporations,” Obama said. “So the burden is all on the first responders, or seniors or middle class families.”

The most likely scenario, according to officials on both sides of Pennsylvania Ave, is that Congress will kick the can on the sequester until the government’s budget authority runs out on March 27. Congress will have to pass a continuing resolution by that date, or the government will be shut down. Indeed the shutdown is a more acute, if routine, threat — with nearly all of the government ceasing to operate immediately instead of broad-based spending reductions.

Next month, our government will be subject to devastating across-the-board spending cuts, fed furloughs, and / or a government shutdown — all of which will be a disaster for most Americans, the economy, national security, future growth, and reducing unemployment. The entire country is now at the mercy of the two sides of the GOP: all the conservative extremists who were parked in Congress by tea party ‘patriots’ and Jebus freaks who live in deep red gerrymandered districts, and the Republican Establishment whose only allegiance is to the wealthy elite. As of now, the majority of us are just hostages.

Ten WSJ op-ed writers are Mitt Romney advisers — all failed to disclose that information

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Raw Story: “The Wall Street Journal has been criticised by senior US journalists for failing to disclose that 10 of its op-ed writers are Mitt Romney advisers.

“According to an inquiry by Media Matters, 23 pieces in the WSJ’s op-ed pages attacked President Obama or praised Romney without the writers acknowledging their political connections to Romney.

“Max Frankel, a former New York Times executive editor, called the lack of disclosure “shameless.” He added: “They ought to put a banner saying Romney has approved of this page… It looks like the Wall Street Journal editorial and op ed pages have enlisted in the campaign. They should be disclosing that.”

“Not disclosing is inexcusable,” declared Stephen Henderson, editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press.

“It is important to disclose that so that the reader can evaluate the argument intelligently,” said Nicholas Goldberg, Los Angeles Times editorial page editor, adding that transparency is “absolutely essential.”

“John Diaz, editorial page editor for the San Francisco Chronicle, said the prominence of the writers should have raised a red flag that they could be Romney advisers.

“Harold Jackson of the Philadelphia Inquirer, said: “I don’t know why it would be harmful for them to disclose those kinds of connections. I think readers would expect it.”

“A review by Media Matters on September 19 named the 10 WSJ writers with strong Romney links as John Bolton; Max Boot; Lee Casey; Paula Dobriansky; Mary Ann Glendon; Glenn Hubbard; Paul Peterson; David Rivkin Jr; Martin West; and Michael Mukasey.”

The Wall Street Journal was acquired in 2007 by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which also includes Fox “news.”

Inside the mind of a rightwing nutjob: James Taranto

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John Cole posted the following and, rightly, tells James Taranto to go fuck himself:

“James Taranto, the WSJ rightwing nutjob whose job is the Best of the Web feature, which invariably means reposting whatever Glenn Reynolds or the halfwits at NRO write every day:

“He is, of course, referring to the reports that a number of men used their bodies to shield their loved ones during the Aurora massacre. Most of us thought of this as a noble and amazing sacrifice… You know who got to make the decision whether their lives were worth it, Taranto? The three heroes who ate bullets saving their loved ones, not some fat scumbag neocon filth sitting comfortably with a glass of bourbon while wanking on twitter from the comfort of a wingback chair in Manhattan.”

What John Cole said. And when Cole tells Taranto to go fuck himself, I think we can all understand that’s probably an accurate description of Taranto’s entire relationship history. The Wall Street Journal must be very proud to have this guy on board.

Graph: tax burden by income

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Exactly who’s supposed to be freeloading off the system in this country again?

According to the WSJ, “U.S. companies are booking higher profits than ever… [while] corporate tax receipts as a share of profits are at their lowest level in at least 40 years. Total corporate federal taxes paid fell to 12.1% of profits earned from activities within the U.S. in fiscal 2011, which ended Sept. 30, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That’s the lowest level since at least 1972.”  And take a look at this:

Soaking the Poor, State by State

You have heard, perhaps, that rich people in America are egregiously overtaxed. And the poor? They’re the lucky duckies! Why, 47 percent of Americans pay no taxes at all!

(This is not true, of course. Many poor and elderly Americans pay no federal income tax, but they pay plenty of other taxes.)

Still and all, it’s true that the federal income tax is indeed progressive. Conservatives are right about that—though it’s not as progressive as it used to be, back before top marginal rates were lowered and capital gains taxes were slashed in half. But conservatives are a little less excited to talk about other kinds of taxes. Payroll taxes aren’t progressive, for example. In fact, they’re actively regressive, with the poor and middle classes paying higher rates than the rich.

And then there are state taxes. Those include state income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, and fees of various kinds. How progressive are state taxes?

Answer: They aren’t. 

According to this tax rate data, in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent.

See the rest of the chart here.

No wonder Mitt Romney isn’t concerned about the ‘very rich’ — but why isn’t he concerned about the ‘very poor’ or this bottom to top income redistribution scheme, which is currently known as our tax system?

Misleading information on federal employment from the Wall Street Journal

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Jeffrey Sachs takes on the editorial board of Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, because the WSJ, he says,

…has a simple game. They want to cut taxes for the rich and government services for the rest, and end regulations of banks and the environment. They support taxpayer-financed bailouts of Wall Street when needed. They will twist any facts in the service of these goals.

[...]

The Journal endlessly tries to portray the “growth of government” as a social welfare system run amok. The editorial implies that President Obama is repeating LBJ’s Great Society by building up giant welfare and regulatory programs reflected in the “boom” of federal employment. But where did this so-called “boom” (actually a tiny boomlet) actually appear? In Great Society programs? In entitlements?

No, the increase in employment is mainly in national-security-related employment: the military, homeland security, and justice (including prisons, FBI, drug enforcement, and the like). Welfare and entitlements programs [have] little to do with [it]. If we parse the increase of 225,000 federal jobs between 2008 and 2011, three-fourths came in the Defense Department (+84,000), Homeland Security (+28,000), Justice (+13,000), and Veteran’s Affairs (+45,000).

[...]

The actual fact of relevance is that the federal government has been declining as a share of national non-farm employment, from 2.3 percent in 1981 to 1.6 percent in 2011. (I show this in Figure 3 below). Partly this is because services that government should be providing have instead been outsourced to political cronies (especially among defense and security contractors). Partly its because of the true shrinkage, not expansion, of the federal government’s programs relative to GDP in non-security activities such as the environment, job training, community development — the matters that benefit poor and working class households, who don’t, incidentally, read the Wall Street Journal.

The big lie of our time is that the federal government is expanding out of control. Yes, there is undoubted waste, especially in military outlays and in outlays for over-priced private health services. The Journal is a promoter of that variety of waste, the kind that benefits the 1 percent represented by powerful lobbyists, and that hurts the rest of society. For government services that count for the 99 percent, the federal government is shrinking, alas, no matter which phony figures the Wall Street Journal throws our way.

Read it all…

 

400 Rabbis protest Glenn Beck’s use of Holocaust imagery

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400 Rabbis protest Fox host’s use of Holocaust imagery

(Reuters) – Four hundred rabbis will publish a letter on Thursday calling on Fox News to sanction host Glenn Beck for repeated use of Nazi and Holocaust imagery and for airing attacks on World War Two survivor George Soros.

In an open letter to Rupert Murdoch, the chairman of News Corp, which owns Fox, the rabbis also demand an apology from Fox News chief Roger Ailes for characterizing Beck’s Jewish critics as nothing more than “left-wing rabbis.”

The letter will appear today in the Wall Street Journal. Guess what the response is from Fox News (GOP/Teaparty network):

“We haven’t seen the ad,” said Joel Cheatwood, Fox News senior vice president of development, “but this group is a George Soros backed left-wing political organization that has been trying to engage Glenn Beck primarily for publicity purposes.”

Anyone with a functioning brain can see that Cheatwood has that backwards — Beck and Fox News have been “engaging” Jews and liberals for publicity purposes for quite some time.

BTW, today is  International Holocaust Remembrance Day, an observance established by the United Nations in 2005.

Related: Glenn Beck recently named nine people as enemies of America and humanity. EIGHT of them are Jews.

Graph: How conservative interests are buying elections

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NY Times vs. Wall Street Journal on campaign spending

“…the SEIU…has been targeted as taking “tainted money.” The funds the unions are using come from American workers. “Anyone who wants to know where SEIU political dollars come from can go on the Internet and check out the detailed public reports all unions and their political action committees are required to file with the Federal Election Commission and the U.S. Labor Department.”

That’s absolutely not the case for the groups on the right. They funnel much of their spending through non-profit, tax-exempt groups that aren’t required to disclose donors. Hence the focus on the Chamber and whether they’re mixing money from foreign corporations into the fund that is paying for their attack ads. And they do it in collusion with one another, with the Koch brothers and the Chamber and Glenn Beck and major industry heads all com[ing] together. And in combination, this spending dwarfs what labor spends.

Here’s the chart from the NY Times referenced above that puts this in some perspective.”

[click image for larger]

chamber spending graph

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How moronic are the working-class tea party “patriots”?

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“Koch’s… true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations.”

Via Think Progress [emphasis added]:

MEMO: Health Insurance, Banking, Oil Industries Met With Koch, Chamber, Glenn Beck To Plot 2010 Election

In 2006, Koch Industries owner Charles Koch revealed to the Wall Street Journal’s Stephen Moore that he coordinates the funding of the conservative infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks, media outlets and other anti-government efforts through a twice annual meeting of wealthy right-wing donors. He also confided to Moore, who is funded through several of Koch’s ventures, that his true goal is to strengthen the “culture of prosperity” by eliminating “90%” of all laws and government regulations. Although it is difficult to quantify the exact amount Koch alone has funneled to right-wing fronts, some studies have pointed toward $50 million he has given alone to anti-environmental groups. Recently, fronts funded by Charles and his brother David have received scrutiny because they have played a pivotal role in the organizing of the anti-Obama Tea Parties and the promotion of virulent far right lawmakers like Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC). (David Koch praised DeMint and gave him a “Washington Award” shortly after the senator promised to “break” Obama by making health reform his “Waterloo.”)

…ThinkProgress has obtained a memo outlining the details of the last Koch gathering held in June of this year. The memo, along with an attendee list of about 210 people, shows the titans of industry — from health insurance companies, oil executives, Wall Street investors, and real estate tycoons — working together with conservative journalists and Republican operatives to plan the 2010 election, as well as ongoing conservative efforts through 2012. According to the memo, David Chavern, the number two at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Fox News hate-talker Glenn Beck also met with these representatives of the corporate elite. In an election season with the most undisclosed secret corporate giving since the Watergate-era, the memo sheds light on the symbiotic relationship between extremely profitable, multi-billion dollar corporations and much of the conservative infrastructure. The memo describes the prospective corporate donors as “investors,” and it makes clear that many of the Republican operatives managing shadowy, undisclosed fronts running attack ads against Democrats were involved in the Koch’s election-planning event…

[...] After ThinkProgess published its exclusive investigation of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce revealing that the Chamber has been actively fundraising from foreign corporations for its 501(c)(6) account used to run a $75 million attack ad campaign, Chamber lobbyists found common cause with Beck and many of the conservative talking heads. Shortly after our investigation, Beck hosted an on-air fundraiser, asking his audience to give to the Chamber. Casual observers might have been surprised by the Chamber’s swift alliance with Beck (Chamber executives appeared on the Beck radio program and sung Beck’s praises on the Chamber blog), who has compared Obama to Adolf Hitler and called the President a “racist” who has a “deep-seated hatred for white people.” By telling his listeners to give money to the Chamber, Beck, who owns a media company worth more than $32 million dollars and an experimental Mercedes Benz, essentially told his working class viewers to give their wages back to their employers. However, Beck never disclosed his long working history of discussing political strategy with America’s largest corporations. The Koch memo clearly shows that Beck has been collaborating with the Chamber, as well as other titans of industry, for years…

Read the full story

UPDATE ******

BREAKING: Shortly after secret meeting with Koch network, Beck cited Charles Koch on-air



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Sorry, WSJ: the Tea Party is not “populist”

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Eric Boehlert: The WSJ gets it wrong: The Tea Party is not “populist”

[emphasis added]

And I also don’t follow the larger “populist” claim. Keep in mind the Tea Party sprang to life one year ago literally staging angry rallies on behalf of the insurance industry. Tea Party candidates campaign on the promise to repeal health care reform, even though this week we learn that an all-time high number of Americans (50 million) don’t have health insurance. Tea Party activists cheered when Republicans opposed extending benefits for the unemployed. And Tea Party media leaders defended BP from attempts to hold the oil company responsible for the Gulf disaster.

On what political planet does that qualify Tea Partiers as “populist” sticking up for the common man against elite forces? As I’ve noted previously, Tea Party leaders have made it clear that the movement is built around two guiding principles: Hating Obama and praying to big business.

Populism is not part of the equation.

Here’s a definition of populism, which really doesn’t fit the values we’ve come to understand as “teafriendly.” But here’s the definition of elitism — now that actually matches what teabaggers seem to be cheering.

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Circulate, post, tweet, email, share

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Bob Cesca:

The Wall Street Journal compares the 2011 income tax burden with and without the Bush tax cuts.

NA-BH188_TAXES_NS_20100725185218.gif

It turns out that allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire will only hurt people earning more than $300,000 per year. And it appears as if keeping the Bush tax cuts in place would force people earning $60-150,000 to pay slightly more.

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