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Why Obama Must Meet The Republican Lies Directly
The White House apparently believes the best way to strengthen its hand in the upcoming “sequester” showdown with Republicans is to tell Americans how awful the spending cuts will be, and blame Republicans for them.
It won’t work. These tactical messages are getting in the way of the larger truth, which the President must hammer home: The Republicans’ austerity economics and trickle-down economics are dangerous, bald-faced lies.
Yes, the pending spending cuts will hurt. But even if some Americans begin to feel the pain when the cuts go into effect Friday, most won’t feel it for weeks or months, if ever.
Half are cuts in the military, which will have a huge impact on jobs (the military is America’s only major jobs program), but the cuts will be felt mainly in states with large numbers of military contractors, and then only as those contractors shed employees.
The other half are cuts in domestic discretionary spending, which will largely affect lower-income Americans. There will be sharp reductions in federal aid to poor schools, nutrition assistance, housing assistance, and the like. But here again, most Americans won’t see these cuts or feel them.
Moreover, the blame game can be played both ways, and Republicans are adept at slinging mud. When it comes to high-visibility consequences of the spending cuts — such as a sudden dearth of air-traffic controllers — Republicans will dodge blame by happily giving Obama authority to shift spending and find the cuts himself, thereby making the White House appear even more culpable.
Besides, there’s no end to this. After Friday’s sequester comes the showdown over continuing funding of the government beyond March 27. Then another fight over the debt ceiling.
The White House must directly rebut the two big lies that fuel the Republican assault – and that have fueled it since the showdown over the debt ceiling in the summer of 2011.
The first big lie is austerity economics – the claim that the budget deficit is the nation’s biggest economic problem now, responsible for the anemic recovery.
Wrong. The problem is too few jobs, lousy wages, and slow growth. Cutting the budget deficit anytime soon makes the problem worse because it reduces overall demand. As a result, the economy will slow or fall into recession – which enlarges the deficit in proportion. You want proof? Look at what austerity economics has done to Europe.
The second big lie is trickle-down economics – the claim that we get more jobs and growth if corporations and the rich have more money because they’re the job creators, and job growth would be hurt if their taxes were hiked.
Wrong. The real job creators are the broad middle class and everyone who aspires to join it. Their purchases keep economy going.
As inequality continues to widen, and income and wealth become ever more concentrated at the top, the rest don’t have the purchasing power they need to boost the economy. That’s the underlying reason why the recovery continues to be so anemic.
These two lies – austerity economics and trickle-down economics – are being told over and over by Republicans and their mouthpieces on Fox News, yell radio, and the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal. They are wrong and there are dangerous.
Yet unless they are rebutted clearly and forcefully, the nation will continue to careen from crisis to crisis, showdown to showdown.
And we will have almost no chance of reversing the larger challenge of widening inequality.
President Obama has the bully pulpit. Americans trust him more than they do congressional Republicans. But he is letting micro-tactics get in the way of the larger truth. And he’s blurring his message with other messages – about gun control, immigration, and the environment. All are important, to be sure. But none has half a chance unless Americans understand how they’re being duped on the really big story.
Source: Robert Reich
Supreme Court Rejects Virginia’s Appeal In Case Involving Death Row Inmate With Low IQ
The Supreme Court has rebuffed Virginia’s request to reinstate the death sentence of a convicted killer who claims he is too mentally disabled to be executed.
The justices on Monday did not comment in letting stand lower court rulings that threw out the sentence of death for Leon Winston, convicted in the shooting deaths of Anthony and Rhonda Robinson in 2002. Rhonda Robinson, who was pregnant, was shot to death in front of her 4- and 8-year-old daughters.
The lower court concluded that Winston’s lawyers did not try hard enough to show Winston was mentally disabled, and thus, ineligible to be executed under a 2002 Supreme Court ruling.
Source: Associated Press
Mitt And Ann Romney Set To Give First Post-Election Interview
Mitt and Ann Romney have lain low since Mr. Romney lost the 2012 presidential race by a landslide to President Barack Obama. Sore loser Mitt was photographed appearing unkempt and disheveled, and rumors have surfaced that suggest that Massachusetts Republicans are eyeing Ann Romney for a Senate seat. (because a major national leadership role in the most powerful nation in the world is the ideal entry-level job for someone whose work experience is “stay-at-home mom”)
But the Romneys are emerging from seclusion to grant their first post-election interview on Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace next week. Fox News spokeswoman Ashley Nerz reports that the interview will be taped this week in southern California and will be aired next Sunday on Fox News Sunday, with some portions being aired the following day. (Washington Post)
Wallace will ask Romney how he has handled the defeat, what his future plans are, and what he thinks about the president’s second-term agenda.
This will be good. I’m very curious about what the Romneys will have to say. Since the election, we’ve learned from Romney’s son Tagg that Mitt honestly never wanted to be president and had no desire to run, so it’s really a blessing that he didn’t win. It’s a demanding job, and you know what they say…if you don’t love your job, you won’t enjoy it or do well at it.
Romney will be joining another failed GOP hopeful – Sarah Palin – on the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in March. GOP strategy: who are our most high-profile losers? Get them. (Huffington Post)
BREAKING: ‘The Onion’ Blasted After Posting Sleazy Tweet About 9-Year-Old Oscar-Nominated Actress
If you watch the Oscars with your computer open to Twitter, it’s much like sitting in the gallery with a bunch of drunken sailors at a burlesque show. Or maybe a huddle of hooligans watching a soccer match. Whatever the analogy, it involves, presumably, copious amounts of alcohol, lots of shouting in colorful language, the throwing of things at the field (um, screen), with occasional flashes of wit and true comedy. Often of the most snarky kind.
With Seth MacFarlane hosting, there was a good dollop of very un-pc humor about gays, heavy women, shooting Lincoln, Jews, etc.; you know, all the usual suspects. Tweets that followed each tasteless joke registered offense from some, annoyance from others, a laugh or two, but, in general, the good-natured tone of MacFarlane’s delivery saved him from virtual tar-and-feathering. That was ultimately reserved for The Onion.
The Onion, which hyperbolically (and, hopefully, satirically,) describes itself as “America’s Finest News Source,” typically covers politics and current events, and is known for its tongue-in-cheek and obvious parodical take on pretty much everything they cover. But there are things that are off-limits, people who should be spared the worst of their tart tongue. One of those people would be a 9-year-old actress who was at the Oscar’s as the youngest nominee in film history, Quvenzhané Wallis, who starred in the indie film, Beasts of the Southern Wild, which was nominated as Best Picture. For some inane reason, after a night of tweeting a non-stop dose of snarky commentary on everything-Oscar, The Onion decided, just as the show was concluding, to tweet the following:
As you can imagine, the response was instant and incensed. Below are just a few of the tweets that immediately bombarded the Twitter feed.
So far The Onion has made no comment, offered no response, or, as of this writing, responded to any of the angry tweets. Clearly they struck a chord – and not a melodic one – that steps outside their usual “ribbing” and parody. As many people wrote, a 9-year-old girl is off-limits in terms of sleazy denigration. For some, the fact that she’s an African-American child set off a blast of outrage that the comment wasn’t just sleazy, it was racist; one tweeter positing that such a repulsive statement would not have been made had the actress been white.
Whether or not that’s true, what is undeniable is that the tweet was an inexcusable display of ignorance and bad taste. If The Onion comes out and makes any attempt to dismiss it as humor, satire, parody, or just “a little good-natured snark,” they should expect to see more of the backlash that’s brewing on social media. The only statement, truly the ONLY one, they should offer is a loud, public and very humble apology, to Quvenzhané Wallis, to their readers, and to every single person on Twitter who was a reluctant audience to their bottom-feeding.
And if a random staffer was on the Oscar beat and took it upon themselves to post that tweet, I’d suggest they either show that person the door or get them, quickly, into some hardcore sensitivity training.
Source: addictinginfo
Michelle Obama Announces Winner For Best Picture, Heads Explode (VIDEO)
Last night’s Oscar telecast held a few surprises – Jennifer Laurence winning for Best Actress, Ang Lee for Best Director. But perhaps the biggest surprise came at the end of the show. Presenting the Oscar for Best Picture was perennial front-row man Jack Nicholson, who mentioned that this award was usually read by just one person… then proceeded to announce the First Lady! Appearing via satellite, Mrs. Obama spoke about how film makes our lives better and encourages children to dream. I thought her speech was lovely:
“Welcome to the White House, everyone. I am so honored to help introduce this year’s nominees for Best Picture and to help celebrate the movies that lift our spirits and broaden our minds and transport us to people we have never imagined. This has been an exciting year for movies and I want to congratulate all nominees on their tremendous work. These nine movies took us back in time and all around the world. They made us laugh. They made us weep and made us grip our armrests just a little tighter. They taught us that love can endure against all odds and transform our minds in the most surprising ways. And they reminded us that we can overcome any obstacle if we dig deep enough and fight hard enough and find the courage to believe in ourselves. “These lessons apply to all of us – no matter who we are or what we look like or who we love, but they are especially important for our young people. Every day, through engagement in the arts, our children learn to open their imagination, to dream just a little bigger, and to strive every day to reach those dreams. And I want to thank all of you here tonight for being part of that vitally important work.” (SOURCE)
When the camera returned to Nicholson, he read the nominees then asked the First Lady if she had her envelope. What a rush it must have been for her to read the name of the winner, Argo (my prediction, BTW). She followed up the performance with a tweet:
It was a thrill to announce the #Oscars2013 best picture winner from the @WhiteHouse! Congratulations Argo! -mo
But it wasn’t a thrill for everyone. As quickly as 15 minutes after the broadcast comments like, “This was surreal. I love Michelle Obama but I really wish she hadn’t done this.” and “Not surprised…all about fame, money, status! Sad!” And those were from the Democrats’ Facebook page! As any of us could have predicted, heads on the right did explode. Some of the ugliness:
There are many more here, including folks like Michelle Malkin.
and “journalist” Steven Gregory tweeted:
“When Michelle Obama was introduced by Jack Nicholson most of the reporters in the media room groaned….loudly”
I groaned, too. Because I knew we’d see a spate of nasty, mean and horrible comments like these. You know what? I think they are all jealous. Of the First Lady, of Hollywood, of the “liberal elites” that they mock so as to cover up their envy. It may have been because this followed her send-up of mom dancing with Jimmy Fallon, too. Because if our FLOTUS is seen too often, being too human… well, gosh. It’s just so much harder for Limbaugh and his cronies to call her names. Let her enjoy herself and inspire kids in the process. Lay off her, already!
Here’s the Video:
The 1930s Recession Could Return as Soon as This Friday
Not yet anyway. But given that much of the cause of the decline can be attributed to cuts in government spending, I’m quite concerned that this news is but a harbinger of things to come after sequestration sets in beginning this coming Friday, March 1st.
We are, after all, facing another government-manufactured showdown on March 1st, as well as a probable government shut down near the end of March when the stopgap measure that has been financing the federal government expires.
GOP Dysfunction Scares Investors-Not Debt
Most knowledgeable economists, except Nobel Laureate Joe Scarborough (in his own teeny weeny mind of course), agree that the uncertainty brought about by the dysfunctional nature of obstructionism by the hard-right in Washington is having a negative effect on the economy. But what we don’t hear about is the direct effects that cuts in government spending have had on job growth. The overwhelming majority of Americans are not, for example, aware that one of the primary drivers of our doggedly high unemployment rate is the sharp decline in public sector employment-in basic terms, the massive layoffs of teachers, firefighters, police officers, and other public sector employees over the past two years.
Most Americans are equally clueless in recognizing that one of the main ways President Obama managed to stop the downward economic spiral at the start of his first term was through the funding of public sector jobs via the stimulus funds that were channeled to state and local governments. It was the cessation of that federal support, and the GOP-led House’s refusal to support the president’s modest request for additional federal dollars to support state and local governments in his jobs bill, that initiated the recent public sector decline.
So here we are at the beginning of President Obama’s second term and the U.S. economy is still in a very fragile state. What truly bewilders me is that so many Americans are incapable of seeing-or just simply refuse to acknowledge-the direct link between government spending and jobs. After all, it was undeniably the deep cuts in federal defense spending that helped push the economy into negative territory in the last quarter of 2012.
In the face of such economic realities, any other Congress would support the type of modest spending proposals President Obama put forward in the American Jobs Act. But rather than provide funding for the employment of teachers, firefighters, police officers, rather than put hard-pressed Americans to work rebuilding our dismal infrastructure (now rated 23rd in the world), Congress would rather engage in another endless round of bickering about the perils of deficit spending.
Once again, by not understanding the difference between beneficial deficit spending and the harmful breed-as practiced by Presidents Reagan, Bush I and Bush II-Americans will once again fall for the simplistic call of the deficit hawks; those genius oracles of doom who persist that without an immediate and massive reduction in the level of federal spending we face an imminent economic collapse.
By the way: Europe? UK? How’s that deficit hysteria working out for you? Don’t worry, soon enough, conservatives will get their way and we’ll have 25% unemployment too.
Yet Another Similarity to Pre-Great Depression
More eerily similar by the day, approximately three-quarters of a century ago President Roosevelt faced the exact same argument at the beginning of his second term.
Thanks to the stimulus spending of the New Deal, the U.S. economy had been growing at an average annual rate of over 11 percent. Fearing inflation, his more conservative economic advisors, like Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, urged the president to cut spending, balance the budget, and tighten the money supply. But the U.S. economy—which had seen the largest drop in the unemployment rate in history—was still fragile, and the result of the government spending cuts too soon was a disaster. Unemployment shot up, industrial production declined, and the country soon found itself in the midst of a double-dip recession which culminated in the Great Depression.
Although FDR realized quickly how bad his mistake was and reversed course back to Keynesian economic policies (counter-cyclical deficit spending) that he had begun at the start of his first presidential term—which quickly turned the U.S. economy around–the damage had already been done to the American people as well as to FDR’s political fortunes.
Millions of Americans needlessly lost their jobs, 25% unemployment became reality and the president took a pounding in the 1938 midterm elections, making his social and economic reform agenda much more difficult to achieve.
Hopefully, President Obama has studied what happened to FDR in 1937. At the very least he should not give up on his insistence that Congress provide a modest level of support for additional federal spending on behalf of state and local governments. He should also insist on further federal spending on infrastructure.
As FDR said, these measures do not represent wasteful spending; they represent an investment in the American people, an investment in what he liked to call “human capital.”
Human capital whose health and well being is not only critical for the present but also for the future.
source: hg
Drones – Web Press GRILLS Obama
“President Barack Obama touched on a slew of issues in his second Google Hangout, repeating the major points from Tuesday’s State of the Union speech but also directly addressing the viability of the penny, the Benghazi hearings, drone strikes on American citizens, his daughters’ math and science skills, and the GOP blocking a confirmation vote on Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense.”*
In a recent Google Hangout, President Obama took questions from a handful of bloggers. The questions were tough, and they grilled the president on his drone policy, much more than any mainstream press have ever. Why were these bloggers and The Daily Show the only ones to pose these critical questions? Cenk Uygur breaks it down. (From the Feb. 18 The Young Turks online show. Further discussion of Obama’s answers at this thread.)
*MSNBC.com: “Kill the Lincoln penny, and other ‘awesome’ news from Obama’s Google Hangout”
The man asking about drones at the ~2:30 is Lee Doren, who hosts the “HowTheWorldWorks” channel on YouTube with libertarian economic & political commentary and is a member of the Competitive Enterprise Institute.
Back in September, TYT also reported on a Cincinnati TV journalist who directly asked Obama about the drone program during a face-to-face interview. Yep, right in Obama’s face!
I think Cenk discussed this Google hangout story after mocking the media for being obsessed with Obama golfing with Tiger Woods. Cenk relegated that segment to the “TYTShows” channel reserved for miscellaneous other TYT productions, but I think that segment about golfing was before the Google hangout story in the TYT live stream:
Mich. GOP pushes on with electoral vote plan; Schostak re-elected
Republicans handed Bobby Schostak another two-year term as state chairman Saturday and overwhelmingly endorsed a plan to change Michigan presidential electoral vote rules in a way opponents charge is intended to distort election results in favor of GOP candidates.
By a 1,370-132 margin at the party convention in Lansing, GOP members approved a resolution backing a proposal from Rep. Pete Lund, R-Shelby Township, to divvy-up 14 of the state’s 16 electoral votes according to which candidate got the most votes in each congressional district. The other two would go to the state-wide vote total winner.
That switch from a winner-take-all formula that has been in effect 175 years could water down the dominance Democrats have had in Michigan in presidential elections for the last 24 years.
Critics say the plan would have given Mitt Romney nine of Michigan’s 16 electoral votes last year, although he lost by more than 500,00 votes to President Barack Obama state-wide. With the win, Obama captured all 16 Michigan electoral votes.
Source: Detroit News
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