Well…with the job numbers that came out this morning, it is clear that the assertion out of the repubs that tax cuts for corporations would spur hiring was just a lie. But, we in the fact based world knew that….instead of the 300K plus job adds that were forecast, the economy only added 105K….and it has been 5 months since the tax cuts passed and that should be plenty of time for the billions and billions of dollars in cuts to have taken effect. What about wage growth, the other effect that the repubs crowed about when passing the bill? Isn’t happening anywhere…..and the CEO’s who were asked the question said they have no plans to raise wages…just to take the tax cut money and line their pockets with it. Now, I know you’re probably tired of hearing me talk about this, but this has to be kept in the spotlight at least until the election…and the fact that 90% of the country won’t see a dime in their pockets from the tax cut needs to be tattooed on every repubs forehead until them. Geez….
Tag Archives: jobs
More Walmart extortion….
Well…another day goes by, and we have another case of Walmart trying to extort another city into not raising it’s minimum wage. the city of Desert Hot springs California is considering raising the city’s minimum wage to $10.20 an hour with a dollar an hour increase for the next two years and then indexing it to inflation…not an unreasonable way to ensure that people make enough to eat and pay their rent. But, that’s just too much for Walmart who owns land in the city and has told the city council that if they pass the wage changes, the store will not be built…going so far at to take out a full page ad opposing the council saying that their 300 jobs would not happen if the ordinance is passed. Other than the fact that this is corporate thuggery at it’s worst…I’d say to them “good, keep your damn 300 jobs”….especially in light of the studies that have been done that find that every time a Walmart is built and opened it leads to a net loss of jobs in the community…and this has been shown all across the country…..and this goes along with other economic studies that peg the cost of each Walmart to the taxpayers of a million dollars a year….since they don’t pay enough for people to live on, most of their employees are on food stamps and Medicaid…so, I’d say to Walmart from any city across this country…keep your damn, poor paying jobs and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out….geez…
Tax cuts don’t create jobs…again….
Well….as the bidding goes on and states keep falling all over themselves to see how much money they can give to corporations to “create jobs”….there have been a couple of new studies that have come out that say that it doesn’t work…two repub budget directors from here in Michigan have weighed in on the Snyder tax cuts for business that were supposed to create jobs…or that ole Snyder is lying about saying they did…there have been no jobs found that can be attributed to those tax cuts…the only thing they have done is bust the budget and ensure that the roads won’t be fixed…there was also another study that I would think would be the final nail in the tax cut coffin….in New York state, they doled out over 30 million dollars to the “job creators” and guess what was the result? 76 jobs…yep, 76 jobs for 30 million dollars of taxpayers money…..when is this idiocy going to stop? geez,,,,,
Keystone XL…again…
Well…with the votes that are going on in the congress this week on trying to force Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline, I find it just delicious that the head of the Canadian company that wants to build the pipeline to bring dirty, dirty tar sands oil to the US has exploded the biggest repub argument for it….if you have listened to any of these morons on the right, you will have heard that the pipeline will bring anywhere from 5,000 to 50,000 permanent jobs to the US…but, there is one little problem, the person that really knows has said just today that there will be a maximum of 50 permanent jobs from the pipeline…yep, all that pollution, all the price increases that will hit the midwest (estimated to be upwards to 50 cents a gallon for gasoline) is all for 50 jobs…now if you’ll let me do a little bit of crude math with some assumptions in it…say a billion gallons of gas times a 50 cent per gallon increase is 500 million dollars that you and I will be paying out of our pockets to buy these 50 jobs….a cost of 10 million dollars per job…in anyone’s book, that is just stupid…I don’t mind paying more for gas if it fixes the roads here, but to just raise costs so the Koch brothers can make billions more is just frickin crazy…I hope Obama vetoes this ugly bill and gets back to the environmentalism he espoused on the campaign trail…we just don’t need this pipeline and the pollution that will come from it…geez…
Haven’t been doing much thinking lately…
Well…it’s been tough lately to think about anything of any importance and I’m not sure why my brain has shut down….I seem to have lost my sense of outrage or maybe it is that I have finally resigned myself to the crazy state of this country where we have a tiny minority of crazies who are ruining it for everyone…bridges falling down, potholes as big as my Miata, and children going hungry seem to be acceptable now. When the hell did this happen? I think it’s the result of the “I’ve got mine” attitude of the repubs here in the US and the fact that they don’t believe there should be any government..or that the purpose of government is to be subservient to business and do what will make more and more profit for the 1%. Yeah, maybe that’s it…when we have millions of people out of work, millions of college grads flipping burgers, and million of people like me that can’t find work of any kind…and no one seems to give a damn…maybe that’s why I don’t anymore….who knows?
Can’t work up any outrage….
Well…it’s the start of the month and I have been trying all morning to work up some outrage about some topic but I’m just not having any luck….the repubs are just being themselves…and I wonder why they always have to play the blame game instead of doing their jobs? Like ole Boehner this morning going on and on about the jobs numbers and it being Obama’s fault that the economy is not growing faster and creating more jobs. But, what does he offer? Where are the concrete proposals, based in fact, that would get the economy growing faster? Where is the action on Obama’s job bill that economists agree would create millions of jobs? Nowhere. The only thing the repubs have to offer is more spending cuts and more tax cuts…neither of which will do anything to make the economy grow and, in fact, are the exact opposite of what should be done. I guess all I have left to say to Boehner and the rest of the repubs is “get to work making the economy better”….but they’re not listening…they never do…geez…
Let’s talk jobs…
Well…have the car torn down and I’m waiting for the new radiator to arrive (it’s on a truck somewhere here in GR) so I thought I’d do a short one on the subject of jobs that the repubs think is going to be a winning issue for them…and again, these numbers point to the boiling pot of hypocrisy that is the modern repub party. Today, Think Progress came out with a neat little comparison of the jobs added to this point in both ole GW’s first term and those added under Obama…and it is not a pretty picture for GW…at this time in his first term, there were almost 1.2 million jobs lost…yep, that’s right, lost…while in Obama’s first term there has been a net gain of almost 800,000 jobs….a 2 million job difference that is all the more amazing considering that there were 2 million jobs lost in the first month of Obama’s term. So, the next time you hear that the repubs are “job creators”, remember these numbers and shake your head…just more of the lies, lies, lies that ooze from the modern repubs…geez…
Mitt is just an idiot…
Well…I laughed my butt off today when I saw the latest pivot from ole Mitt…since his meme that his business experience makes him qualified to be president has been widely discredited by the Obama campaign’s attacks on his years at Bain, we now have ole Mitt changing his focus to his time as governor and the supposed great things he did then. One of the lines that he used in a recent speech is that “he created more jobs than Obama has”…I guess no one in the repub party reminded him of their talking point that government can’t create jobs…what is it, Mitt? Does government help create jobs or not? This just exposes the lie that ole Mitt bought into and shows that he has flip-flopped again. One other point that he made in the same speech was that while he was governor, housing prices went up…of course they did, moron, they went up everywhere until the crash of 2008…now he’s taking credit for it? I am just exasperated that this guy is still in the race…the only way he was ever successful was when he started ahead of everyone else…in money, name recognition, and connections…we all should be so lucky…geez…
Just some musings…
Well…it has been a nice day so far with having a surprise lunch with T…but that’s not what I wanted to talk about…what do I want to talk about? Oh…are Americans getting more stupid every day or have they always been this way? that little question was spurred by an article that I just read saying that the percentage of people that believe in global warming here in the US has jumped by almost 20% since the weather has gone screwy this year…no, I’m not sure if any of these events is a harbinger of climate change; some of it may be but it strikes me that this is like the naysayers who point to blizzards as say “where’s your global warming now?”. Hmmm….oh, I want to deal with the conspiracy theory that says that business won’t hire until Obama is defeated and that is what is driving the poor employment numbers. You may remember that I proposed the same theory a while back (somewhat tongue in cheek), but it was supposed to be taken as comedy….but now, it appears that the idea is getting some traction in the media…I hope not, since it is demand, demand, demand….that drives hiring and until demand increases, or the forecast of demand increases, you would be an idiot to hire anyone…so, let’s keep to the science of economics, not to wild speculation…even if wild speculation is much more fun….
A few things I find funny..
Well…have been thinking about a few things this morning and there are a few of them that I find funny…the funniest one was the bus tour that Mitt Romney did here in Michigan over the past few days where he touted the “jobs, jobs, jobs” that would come from his administration….but not once in the time here did he mention unions and his hatred of them and the fact that policies that he supports would destroy most of them…and along with them, the ability of people get a good job that would pay a living wage…I wonder what “jobs” he was talking about?
Another thing I find funny is the fact the businesses here in Michigan, and across the country have stopped hiring even after the huge tax cut they were given by the repubs that was supposed to work it’s “magic” and create “jobs, jobs, jobs”….but, no one is paying attention here…have never seen this fact mentioned in any newspaper (and I read almost a dozen of them everyday) or by any other media outlet…when did the lies of the repubs stop being news?
I think I’m getting fatigued by all of the political nonsense that is going on…oh, I do have one more thing I find funny…that the repubs are declaring “victory” in Wisconsin since Walker retained the governor’s chair…but they never mention that they lost the senate to the dems…let’s see him try to get any of the radical right crap passed now…and this idiot is now being considered as a VP candidate…geez…