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…
Category Archives: Politics
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….
More Republican nonsense here in Michigan…
Well….I’ve started to feel a little better so I thought I’d get at one that I have been thinking about for a few days…since the takeover of our government by the repubs here, the preponderance of laws that have been enacted by the legislature have been for immediate effect, which takes a 2/3 majority in the House…but, the repubs that are running things aren’t even taking the votes, they are just assuming that they have the votes for immediate effect but they don’t…the counts done by many news organizations along with the dem minority show that, in over 90% of the cases, they didn’t have the votes but put the laws in effect anyway. Now, lawsuits filed by the dems are being considered by the appeals courts here and the repubs are howling that it is activist judges that are usurping their authority. Authority for what, to break the law? The Michigan Constitution is clear on this point and the repubs are violating the constitution….but, what do you expect? These guys wrap themselves in the constitution until it becomes inconvenient and puts a brake on their radical, right-wing agenda…what happened to true conservatives that put tradition and the rule of law ahead of party and personal gain? This is what we have to look forward to if the repubs take the White House….geez….
Here comes the Romney flip, flops, and spins…
Well…not sure if this is going to be short or not since I always do these off the top of my head…and no, it doesn’t hurt…not really….the thing I wanted to talk about his morning is the immediate spin that ole Mitt put on his immigration stands since he became the presumptive nominee for the repubs….during the primary campaign, ole Mitt was adamant that there would be no pathway to citizenship for any illegal immigrants in this country, going so far as to call all of them criminals and proposing they all be rounded up and sent back to Mexico…or wherever they come from….but now, he trots out Marco Rubio and says that he will consider a form of the dream act if he becomes president that would allow illegals to stay here if they meet some requirements for citizenship that he has not defined yet…can’t anyone else see this as just and egregious case of pandering to a group that he needs to get elected? I know…big surprise that a politician is pandering to any group…but, this is just the latest in ole Mitt’s compulsion to say anything to anybody to get votes…what the heck does he really believe? Good luck with this change Mitt…you may gain a little with Hispanics, but your base is going to run for the hills…and you deserve it…geez….
More Wisconsin shenanigans…or so I thought…
Well…I was all prepared to work up a bunch of outrage today after reading an article about the recall election in Wisconsin and how the repubs there are running ‘fake” Dems in the primary to try to confuse voters and dilute the vote….and this is something to be outraged about….but the rest of what is going on; the urging of repubs to vote for the weakest candidate in the open primary to give Walker the best chance to retain the governor’s chair is just normal politics that goes on every day…and for me to be outraged about something that I have participated in here in Michigan, would be the height of hypocrisy…something that you know I really hate. So, I’ll save the outrage for things that are egregious and nefarious….don’t you just love that word?
Mitt Romney is still an idiot…or still a liar…you choose….
Well…got back into reading the papers today before I go out on the bike and I think that may be a good combo since the quiet time on the bike gives me time to digest what I’ve read and partially write some of these…and there was an interesting article in the WAPO this morning about the Romney campaign taking Obama to task for what they say is the collapse of small business creation on his watch citing a report that came out in the past few days…the only catch is that the authors of the report came back to rebut the claims of the geniuses on ole Mitt’s staff saying that they used the numbers wrong and interpreted it wrong…but, that didn’t stop ole Mitt’s guys from trying to tell the authors that they were wrong…this coming from the same team of idiots that gave us the financial meltdown, deregulation, and almost drove us into a depression. In case you didn’t know, almost the entire GW Bush economic team has moved en masse over to run ole Mitt’s campaign…so, if you loved the meltdown, the continued concentration of wealth, and the gutting of the middle class, you’ll love these guys…because what they propose for Romney is just more of the same of that crap. So, that leaves us with the title…what ole Mitt does not seem to understand is how most small businesses are created…with personal credit, home equity, and borrowing from banks, family, and friends….all avenues that have disappeared with the meltdown…but, ole Mitt just doesn’t get that…he thinks that everyone can just go to their account in the Cayman’s and get the money to start a business…and when the supposed “CEO” of America doesn’t understand that, it calls into question whether he understands anything about the economy…or, he’s just being the cynical liar that he has been throughout the campaign…neither of which qualifies him to be president.
One last thing on the Romneys…
Well…with this whole flap about “working” women and the outpouring of support for women who are fortunate enough to be able to choose to stay home and raise their children and the sainthood that is being bestowed on Ann Romney by the right, let’s not get the annointing oil out just yet…..let’s remember that when she said it was so hard to raise 5 kids and it was so much work, her situation has absolutely no resemblance to what most normal folks go through raising their families. Most families don’t have cadres of nannies, maids, drivers, and assistants to do the grunt work that has to be done to run a normal family..I wonder when the last time was that either Ann or Mitt drove to the dry cleaners or coached their soccer games or stayed up all night with a sick child? This is just another instance where the rich can never understand what the rest of the world is like for real working people….and then they try to tell the rest of us how to run our lives when they can’t conceive what it is like to live in America without the connections and inheritances that have insulated them from the real world…why don’t you just go back to your gated communities and leave the rest of us alone…and stop trying to take what little is left of the safety net away…don’t you already have enough?
Rich people just don’t get it…
Well…I really don’t want to dump on all rich people in this one…I know a few of them and they seem like okay sorts and some of them do good works in our community and make it better than it would be without them….but, and this is a big but, to have people like Mitt and Ann Romney say that they understand what it is like to be just a normal working person in the US is just nonsense…and ole Mitt compounds this by using his wife as his “adviser” on working women’s issues….when she has never in her life worried about bouncing a check or getting laid off or losing her healthcare. I read an interesting article the other day about the “bubble” that surrounds these rich folks…and the assertion by ole Mitt that they know what is going on for the rest of us because he listens to people that come to his campaign functions…but the immediate question that comes to me is ‘who comes to those functions?”…and it is overwhelmingly people that think like him, so he gets the misguided idea that he is on the right track with his policy solutions….and it just reinforces the fact that the repubs never govern for everyone in the country…the only people that they give a damn about are those that give money to them and vote for them…the last I checked, there are other people that are citizens, too…what about us? I think we are in the same situation nationally that we have been here in Michigan when we have had billionaires try to tell us they know what it is like to work for a living when they ran for governor….it is just not true…these folks have not for one day in their lives had to worry every morning when they wake up is this the day that my health fails and I lose everything that I’ve worked for my entire life because I can’t afford health insurance? Their answer is to repeal ACA and tell those of us nearing 60 that can’t find work is to “work harder” and things will work out…it’s just not true.
Mitt Romney is still a liar…
Well….I guess it had to come to this..especially when the repubs have no new policies to help deal with a slow economy other than the tired “tax cuts for the rich” mantra they have been spouting for the past 10 plus years…so that leads ole Mitt to keep on lying to his base…starting with a speech to the NRA the other day where he claimed that Obama wants to “take away our guns” but couldn’t cite one instance where a new law was enacted under Obama that would even modify the current law of the land that is the second amendment…then he goes right in to the “explosion” in new “regulators” under Obama…citing the growth in federal government employment of almost 150K during the current administration…conveniently not mentioning that more than half of that growth was in the defense department as a consequence of the surge in Afghanistan…and another 40K of those jobs were in the veterans administration that directly go to the care of the soldiers that are coming back from 12 years of war. So, Mitt, you spout that you will do more to support the military and veterans and yet when Obama does it it is an “explosion” of regulators? You are just going to make this falls election too easy with your flip flopping and hard right turns….keep it up…the more you talk, the more people don’t want you around…geez…
The republican “war on women” continues in Wisconsin…
Well…are these repubs great liars or what? On the day that ole Mitt comes out and says that it is Obama and dem economic policies that are hurting women, we have our old buddy Scott Walker in Wisconsin signing the repeal of a law that made it easier for women there to hold employers accountable for wage discrimination. This was not a law that intruded on the “rights” of corporations to do whatever they want, but it was a law that tried to rectify an insidious result of discrimination against women that had been proven time and again…that women performing the same job with the same qualifications were usually paid from 20 to 30% less than the men doing the job…something that is just wrong no matter how the repubs try to explain it away in terms that further demean women…like “women leave the workforce to have babies so they have lesser skills than men” never mind that 40% plus of the women in the workforce never leave it to have children. Nonsense, all, but this is the type of policy that ole Mitt has said he supports when he says that he supports Walker and his agenda “completely”….just another example of what the US will look like if these idiots take control…geez…