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…
Tag Archives: republicans
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….
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….
One more thing about jobs…
Well….I was going to append this one to the last one but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it deserved its own even though this one will be short…..does anyone else smell a rat with the precipitous drop in new private sector jobs last month? I think there was just too much good news coming out of the labor market, which would undoubtedly help Obama in the general election…so what do the friends of the repubs do that run most of the business in the US? They take one for the team and stop hiring to support the repub line that the economy still stinks and Obama should not be reelected. I normally don’t really support conspiracy theories, but the repubs are well known for rewarding businesses that give them money and support the party line (think Halliburton) and I would not put it past them that they are using all of the coercion and reward that they can to win the election…and those in business that will benefit the most from a repub president are all too happy to comply by hurting the economy and the middle class for their personal gain…geez…
A new twist on ACA…
Well….this is going to be a short one on some new study that was done by a repub who is a Medicare trustee saying that the ACA, or “Obamacare” will add 340 billion dollars to the deficit over 10 years…and I just love how the press has picked this nonsense up as “fact” when it is just another facet in the total war the repubs are waging on Obama…and they are hoping that throwing these huge, baseless numbers around will scare people into voting for the repubs in the fall…the only problem? The person who authored the study admits that he deviated from normal practices when doing his calculations…but he did say ‘trust me”, not the GAO or the CBO or any other agency that have run the numbers…but just trust me, my assumptions are correct and everyone else’s are wrong…an it is just a coincidence that my numbers are just what the rest of the repubs have been saying….how many times do we have to hear “trust us” from the repubs before we automatically know they are going to lie in the next breath….I’ve had enough, how about you? Geez….
Activist judges and the right…
Well…I find it funny how things flip and flop in the political arena, especially when it comes to “activist judges” that the right seems to decry until the judges are the conservative bloc on the supreme court. I don’t even know why the right calls themselves conservatives anymore…that used to mean a reverence for the institutions and traditions of the country including hundreds of years of legal precedence know as “stare decisis” that they now want ignored by the court to further their radical right wing agenda. That is not conservatism, it is radicalism cloaked in the robes of Scalia, Roberts, and the others that blatantly lied about their reverence for the traditional role of judges…to find the facts in relation to the law leaving politics outside of the courtroom….but these “justices” see their roles as co-equal legislatively to the congress and are ready to ignore the constitution to further the goals of the tea party whose rise has done more to coarsen the political discourse and ruin the art of compromise on which democracies function. I hope the Roberts court does throw out the ACA….then we can get to where we need to be in healthcare…poised to go to a single payer system whose purpose will be to provide affordable care for all Americans…not profit for a few…geez…
The republicans are just not serious…
Well…I have been struggling lately to come up with topics that really mean something and I think the problem may be that I have stopped reading the newspapers in the morning….but I have made a little cash lately so maybe I should resume going out…who knows? The one thing that I wanted to deal with today is the new budget proposal put forth by Paul Ryan in the last week or so and the fact that it is just more of the same nonsense that he proposed last year…more tax cuts for the rich, more safety net cuts for the middle class and the poor, and exploding the deficit that the repubs say they are concerned about but their actions say otherwise. This document just reeks of dishonesty with the most egregious lie or omission being how to pay for the tax cuts for the rich and corporations that he wants…saying “trust me” with some vague statement that waste and fraud can be eliminated to pay for them but does not say where that waste and fraud lies….and the cheers on the right for this piece of crap have been long and strong with the self congratulatory pats on the back and the attack line that the repubs produced a budget when the dems haven’t…but I think a bad budget proposal like this one is worse than not doing anything…but I do thank ole Paul for pulling the cover back on what American would look like if the repubs were in control….now, all we have to do is vote these idiots out of office…geez….