Well…have been reading a few of the online papers this morning and a theme has emerged…one that I have taken on a couple of times before in regard to Michigan but this time it is on a national scale…and deals with the cluelessness of the rich in this country and of the Romney family in particular. As you know, one of my favorite sayings about the rich is that “they were born on third base but think they hit a triple to get there”…and that applies here to one of ole Mitt’s sons, Tagg, who has shown this same blindness to the advantages of being born rich in this country, and can’t figure out why everyone isn’t rich. The particular delusion of this young man centers on the establishment of a private equity fund that was started with one of Mitt’s primary fundraisers, and guess who one of the first “investors” was? His mom, of course, followed by over 60 of his father’s buddies and cronies who “invested” almost 250 million dollars in this fund…this, with Tagg having absolutely no experience in finance but, to hear ole Tagg explain it, it was because of his “excellent strategies” not because his father is Mitt and was planning on running for president in 2012. Delusions, delusions, delusions….and the crony capitalism we will see with a Romney presidency…look how well that worked out under ole GW. Haven’t we had enough of this nonsense? Haven’t we had enough of people getting a free ride in life because of their connections? I can pretty much bet that you and I couldn’t raise 250 million dollars from 60 or so of our friends….geez….
Category Archives: Politics
What are they thinking?
Well…just a short one about what is happening in Indiana with the repubs and the fact that the tea partiers are primarying Senator Dick Lugar and it looks like he is going to lose. The shame about this is that the TP is using one of his strengths, the fact that he will reach across the aisle and work with the dems, against him, and with the idiots that are the TP, they are going to throw one of the most accomplished senators out for a moron that has never accomplished anything. I probably shouldn’t be concerned about this since, if Lugar loses, the dem candidate will probably win what was a secure seat for the repubs. This just shows you the trajectory that the repub party is on…that unless you are just as unreasonable and stupid as the TP, you have no place there….that if you really want to make a better America, you have no place there….I can see the collapse of the repubs coming…and with the TP pulling the strings, it can’t come too soon…geez…
Just some nonsense…
Well…there really is nothing going on in politics that I want to comment on right now except the nonsense that is going on with the repubs…and I know what your question is going to be: “it’s all nonsense with the repubs so what is different now?”….on a scale of 1 to 10 this one would just be a three or so but here it is…the big deal that is going on is concerned with where the hotel rooms are for the Michigan delegation to the repub convention…since this delegation has been given a block of rooms that are near Romney’s, the speculation has arisen that our governor, Rick Snyder, is going to be the vice president pick. It’s as I told you, there is just not much going on in politics so the news outlets have to pick up on this stuff….but, they are wrong…Snyder is nowhere near conservative enough for the repub electorate to stomach…you read it here first…Snyder will not be the VP pick for the repubs….what a slow news day….geez….
One last thing…and something I have been talking about for a while….that because of the austerity measures that were forced on the country by the repubs, we have seen job growth come to a standstill with the report that is out today…Keynes is proven right again and if I were Obama, I’d be attacking the repubs on just this issue…and using Europe as the bad example not to follow while their jobs growth is even worse with the extreme austerity they have practiced…
Hold the victory laps here in Michigan….
Well…there has been a new theme that has surfaced in the repub talking points here in Michigan that is audacious to say the least, or just another incidence of the repubs taking credit for the recovery that they had no hand in. You decide. This latest theme or story, tries to tell the narrative that it is only the repub policies of cutting taxes for business, and raising them for everyone else that is responsible for the nascent recovery here in Michigan and that we should continue these policies or we will fall back into recession. I can’t even name how many ways this is wrong, but I’ll give a couple a try. First, it’s never been proven and it has never been documented that one job was ever created by tax cuts for business….especially in an environment where corporate cash on hand and profits are at the highest level in history…so, they won’t invest with a billion dollars on hand but they will if they have 1.25 billion on hand? the whole story is demand, demand, demand….and if middle class wages continue to fall, demand will fall along with it. Second, most of the job growth here in Michigan has been in and related to the recovery of the auto industry that the repubs vehemently opposed and still do….so now, they take credit that their policies resulted in this recovery? Just another instance where the repubs will do or say anything; counting on the electorate to have no memory at all of history or the truth. I guess it’s up to me to remind people….geez…
Some musings about Wisconsin…
Well….there have been some things happening in Wisconsin that I wanted to comment on today starting with the new polls that are out today showing that the likely challenger to ole Walker is leading in the polls…a small lead to be sure, but still in a lead in spite of the huge amount of outside money that has come into the race. Over the past couple of weeks ole Scott’s billionaire buddies, starting with the Koch brothers, have spent over 13 million dollars trying to keep this idiot in office and all it’s done is to make his approval ratings continue their downward slide. This is one thing that I find so repugnant about the big money that supports this guy and other repubs like him across the country…they will spend countless millions trying to influence the vote to install their radical right-wing agenda…but when it comes to paying their fair share of taxes to allow us to start to repair our infrastructure and educate our children, they are nowhere to be seen. So, this is one to watch over the next month, to see if we can start to take back democracy from the people who think that those who work for a living are just numbers on a balance sheet…not people that are just trying to live and raise their families in the face of this onslaught of the rich…geez….
The new do-nothing republicans…
Well….it has been an interesting time since the repubs took control of the House in 2010 and this congress is shaping up to be one of the most do-nothing congresses in the history of the country. Where are the jobs bills that will help put people back to work? Where are the infrastructure projects that will start to repair our crumbling country? Where are the forward thinking ideas that will help us compete in the future economy? The answer is nowhere…since it would go against the repubs stated goal of tearing down the government that is so “intrusive”…do they really believe that the private sector will take up the slack and build and repair the bridges, roads, and rural high speed internet that the country needs to prosper? This is the first time in my long life that I see this country going backward led by a party that, when you really take a long look, wants the country to fail for purely political gain and can’t see past party to do what’s right for all of us, not just their large donors. Maybe it’s a good thing that the House is not doing anything since the ideas they bring to the table are so far out of the mainstream that they would be laughable if the press would just say so….let’s remember that the repubs are the party of can’t do, who would like nothing better than to use policy to cement our status as an also-ran country while they profess to protect traditional values…the traditional values of the US are innovation, leadership, and inclusiveness…just the opposite of what the modern repub party stands for…geez….
Maybe the tide is turning….
Well…it has been a while since I really had something to say about politics and you might say I’ve never had anything to say about it but I have to disagree….there was an interesting article last week in the WAPO by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein that elaborated on what I have been saying for a couple of years now…that there is not any equivalence between the radicalism on the right and left…..even though the media, in some misguided paen to fairness, has been treating them as the same; that the dems are as responsible for the poisonous politics that now rule in Washington when it is just not true….in instance after instance, it has been the right who has held the country hostage to their radical, crazy worldview…I think one of my favorite passages in the article goes like this “the republicans are unmoved by the conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science…” sounds like willful ignorance to me, where faith trumps facts and political gain is placed above all else…even the good of the country. So, we may be seeing the first cracks in the wall of lies that the right has used to dupe the middle class into voting for them…my fear is that they have done such a good job demonizing “facts” that we may already be lost….geez….
Just a couple of things…
Well…I did have a couple of comments to make and wanted to make them before I forget so here goes…there was an interesting article in the WAPO today that makes the clear and evident point that the dysfunction in Washington today is the repubs fault and the false equivalence that the right tries to make that the left is just as responsible is laid to rest by a clear argument…one that I have made here more than a year ago…but it is nice when your ideas get confirmed by other writers….you should go there and read it…I think they even do a better job that I have…the next thing I wanted to say is about the dustup that Paul Ryan had with the Catholic bishops and others in the Catholic church when he claimed that his proposed draconian cuts to the social safety net fit with Catholic teachings…at least the way he sees it….but the bishops landed on him with two feet and in no uncertain terms told him he was dead wrong…that giving tax cuts to the rich and corporations and paying for them by cutting every program that doesn’t benefit the rich is not what the Bible teaches…but, as the overly self assure repubs do, ole Paul kept up his attacks saying that he was a better judge of the teachings of the church on social justice than the bishops are….what a huge load of hubris from this idiot….geez….
Eric Cantor’s math….
Well….read an interesting article in the post this morning about the small business tax cut that ole Eric is pushing as a way to create jobs and there is some math that I’d like to point out that makes the proposal just way too crazy to be taken seriously….the cost to the deficit of the cut would be almost 40 billion dollars a year…yep, that’s billion with a b….and it would create around 100K jobs in total…or even maybe up to 180K but I like to err on the low side….so, let’s divide the 40 billion by 100,000…and the math says that each one of these jobs would cost $400,000 dollars…so if each job costs $400K in avoided taxes, and the real cost to the small businesses is around $100K including pay and healthcare etc., that means that each business that adds even one job will make a profit of almost $300K per job added (and $300K into the owners pocket and another transfer of wealth to the 1%)….just another case of business welfare that the repubs are so fond of while tearing down the safety net for individuals. When are we, as a country, going to say enough of this nonsense? Geez…
I told you so….about Europe….
Well..in an eye opening set of events that have happened over the past quarter have proven Keynes and me right on the failure of the austerity programs in Europe to lead to economic growth. I do want to say “I told you so” just because Keynes predicted that cutting spending during a recession would lead to lower growth, but also because the repubs here in the US are advocating exactly the same policies here…which will lead to exactly the same results that we now see in Europe…that the economies like Spain and England, who have made some of the largest cuts, are falling back into the first double dip recession in 40 years. New predictions that I read somewhere today (it may have been in the Guardian or the Post) put the predictions of European growth with the austerity programs in place at -.3% to flat or no growth in comparison to the US’s predicted growth of 1.8 to 2.9%. This just shows the the general Keynesian rule of running deficits while in a recession or a slow growth period is absolutely necessary to jump start the economy and these can be paid for when the economy gets to sustainable growth. I just wish the repubs would open their econ 101 textbooks and read a little…if they can read, that is…geez….