The much-vaunted Republican pledge not to raise any taxes is crumbling. Today 34 Senate Republicans voted to end the special tax breaks for ethanol. According to no-tax-increase purists like Grover Norquist, this is tantamount to a tax increase. The truth is, Republicans are divided between those who want to bring down the budget deficit and those who want to shrink government. Ending a special tax subsidy helps reduce the deficit but doesn’t necessarily shrink government. That’s why Norquist and his followers have insisted any such tax increase — including even the closing of tax loopholes — be directly linked to a corresponding tax cut. In order to save face on today’s vote, Norquist says renegade Republicans will still be considered to have adhered to the pledge if they vote in favor of an amendment offered by Senator Jim DeMint to eliminate the estate tax. Talk about grasping at straws. DeMint’s amendment isn’t even up for a vote. In short, the no-tax pledge is evaporating in the fresh air of reality. What are anti-tax Republicans to do now? For one, continue to distort the arguments of those who believe corporations and the rich should pay more taxes. For example, in the lead op-ed piece in today’s Wall Street Journal, Cato Institute fellow Alan Reynolds claims a higher marginal tax on the super rich will bring in less revenue. Reynolds uses my tax proposal from last February as his red herring. “Memo to Robert Reich,” he declares, “The income tax brought in less revenue when the highest rate was 70 percent to 91 percent [between 1950 and 1980] than it did when the highest rate was 28 percent.” Reynolds bends the facts to make his case, picking and choosing among years. In truth, the most important variable explaining the rise and fall of tax revenues as percent of GDP has been the business cycle, not the effective tax rate. In periods when the economy is growing briskly, tax revenues have risen as a percent of GDP, regardless of effective rates; in downturns, revenues have fallen. Reynolds also distorts my proposal, implying that the bracket on which I call for a 70 percent tax is the same as in today’s tax code. Wrong. My proposed 70 percent rate would apply only to incomes over $15 million. $15 million, Alan! Under my proposal, incomes between $5 million and $15 million would be subjected to a 60 percent rate, and incomes between $500,000 and $5 million to a 50 percent rate. Importantly, my proposal calls for a substantial rate reduction for families with incomes under $100,000. (Conveniently, Reynolds fails to mention this.) Reynolds entirely ignores my central argument, which is that rather than depress economic growth, higher taxes on the rich correlate with higher growth. During almost three decades spanning 1951 to 1980, when the top rate was between 70 percent and 91 percent, average annual growth in the American economy was 3.7 percent. Between 1983 and the start of the Great Recession, when the top rate dropped to between 35 percent and 39 percent, average growth was 3 percent. How to explain this? Easy. Since the early 1980s, a larger and larger share of total income has gone to the top (the richest 1 percent of Americans got 10 percent of total income in 1980, and get over 20 percent now). That’s left the vast middle class with insufficient purchasing power to boost the economy – without going deep into debt. Lower tax rates on the rich — including lower capital gains rates — have exacerbated this regressive trend. Finally, having misread the facts, distorted my proposal, and ignored my argument, Reynolds fails to rebut my conclusion that raising middle class purchasing power by lowering their tax rates while raising the rates at the top will help spur growth, to the benefit of all. Top earners will do better with a smaller share of a more rapidly-growing economy a larger share of a slower-growing one. If I were a cynic, I’d say the Republican right is showing signs of desperation. Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America’s Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org.
Continue reading …Executives Complain To Obama’s Chief of Staff That Regulations Stifle Growth
June 17, 2011 No CommentI don’t know what to think about this . Businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, and still they bitch? Executives are taking the lion’s share of profit while their workers make even less than they did 30 years ago — and they’re mad because environmental and trade laws means they can’t have it all?` It was supposed to be the White House’s latest make-nice session with corporate America — a visit by Chief of Staff William M. Daley to a meeting with hundreds of manufacturing executives in town to press lawmakers for looser regulations. But the outreach soon turned into a rare public dressing down of the president’s policies with his highest-ranking aide. One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals . And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss. At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government “throws sand into the gears of progress.” Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”
Continue reading …Executives Complain To Obama’s Chief of Staff That Regulations Stifle Growth
June 17, 2011 No CommentI don’t know what to think about this . Businesses are sitting on record amounts of cash, and still they bitch? Executives are taking the lion’s share of profit while their workers make even less than they did 30 years ago — and they’re mad because environmental and trade laws means they can’t have it all?` It was supposed to be the White House’s latest make-nice session with corporate America — a visit by Chief of Staff William M. Daley to a meeting with hundreds of manufacturing executives in town to press lawmakers for looser regulations. But the outreach soon turned into a rare public dressing down of the president’s policies with his highest-ranking aide. One by one, exasperated executives stood to air their grievances on environmental regulations and stalled free-trade deals . And Daley, the former banker tasked with building ties with industry, found himself looking for the right balance between empathy and defending his boss. At one point, the room erupted in applause when Massachusetts utility executive Doug Starrett, his voice shaking with emotion, accused the administration of blocking construction on one of his facilities to protect fish, saying government “throws sand into the gears of progress.” Daley said he did not have many good answers, appearing to throw up his hands in frustration at what he called “bureaucratic stuff that’s hard to defend.”
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enlarge So yeah, David Vitter is a scumbag. Not because he slapped on a diaper to play Baby Huey with a bunch of hookers, but because he voted yes on the GOP plan to kill Medicare. In the wake of the Weiner fiasco, wounded outraged liberals have stormed the Internet to demand their own eight inches of flesh: What about Vitter!? #VitterMustGo! But there is a reason some wise person named Mahatma once said: An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. Blind serves the GOP as they goose step about demolishing Planned Parenthood and unions, plundering jobs and any hopes for the survivability of an American middle class. The more they can saturate the airwaves with noise about penises and diapers, the easier it is for them to murder everything liberals hold dear. Why do you think Fox News deliberately slings nonsense after nonsense—Ground Zero Mosque, Don’t Touch My Junk, terror babies, socialists, Mau Mau, birth certificates, NPR, some guy named Common, Death Panels, Weiner, Weiner, neener-neener Weiner? Because every time the media takes a breath to spotlight what the GOP is actually doing—i.e. killing Medicare—the public wises up and smacks them with a huge defeat like last month in NY-26. enlarge Yelling Vitter Vitter Vitter instead of Boehner Where Are The Jobs, instead of End Big Oil Tax Giveaways, instead of Quit Your War On Uteri, instead of The GOP Killed Medicare, actually abets Fox and the corporate Koch machine. Sure demanding a scalp in return for Weiner’s feels good. Maybe it is even just. But so what? Weiner was pushed out by his own reckless lies, an irresponsible tabloid media and the political calculations of his own party. You’re angry about that. Fine. But don’t retaliate by aiding the side Weiner vehemently railed against. Don’t help the GOP generate more obfuscations for their devious schemes. Weiner is gone. And maybe a better response would be for us to take up his work ourselves: the brash and relentless calling out of each and every policy cruelty of Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann and the rest of the GOP. Vitter’s constituents voted him back into office last year. And no matter how much you spit his hypocritical name on Twitter, a jobless America is not going to vote on hookers & diapers in 2012 unless it is their own hookers but more likely diapers that they can no longer afford. They will vote, however, against a party that killed Medicare. IMHO.
Continue reading …Texas Tea Party leader, Rebecca Forrester says there are too many Hispanics in legislature to crack down on illegal immigration
June 17, 2011 No Comment
In January, Jeb Bush urged the GOP that they should reach out to the Latino community if they want to stay relevant. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is calling on conservatives to step up their outreach to Hispanic voters if they want to remain politically relevant. Former President George Bush in a speech said that the Tea Party suffers from nativism which drew the ire of Laura Ingraham. And other mainstream Republicans also began to make the same argument including Newt Gingrich: ‘Moderate’ Republicans try to do outreach with Latinos. Lots of luck with that. Newt Gingrich, a potential presidential candidate and a thought leader inside the party, talks about creating a zone between amnesty and mass deportation. It appears that that message has fallen on deaf ears. KTRH: Tea Party Leader Makes “Racist” Remarks, Says Texas Has Too Many Hispanic Lawmakers Rebecca Forrester the co-founder of “Women on the Wall” said that “part of the problem” behind the inability of the Texas legislature to pass a crack down on illegal immigrants is “because Texas has… 36 Hispanics in the legislature.” Too many, she suggests, to pass a meaningful reform bill as the matter is “too close to them.” It’s a remark that Luis Vera, the National General Counsel for LULAC says crosses the line.”There was no reason for that comment, we can disagree on being Democrat or Republican but she’s drawing it straight down racial lines and nothing else,” says Vera. The comments are also sparking condemnation from Hispanics in the legislature like State Representative Armando Walle. “We are proud Americans and many of us were born in this country and have generations and generations in this country and that type of mentality doesn’t deserve a response,” says Walle . Meanwhile Felicia Cravens with the Houston Tea Party says the comments made don’t reflect the Tea Party movement as a whole, as “Women on the Wall” is a fringe group. “When people start slapping a Tea Party label on things it causes confusion and it makes the message less clear,” she said. You can always count on Republicans to claim that the racists in their midst are fringers. If the Tea Party or the GOP was trying to engage on an honest level with the Hispanic community they would have willing partners in the Democratic Party to get a deal done, but FOX News and AM hate talk radio will never allow that to happen. Limbaugh and his pals torpedoed Bush’s push for immigration reform in 2007 . And Rebecca Forrester clearly is the wrong woman to help bridge the gap.The base of the GOP will never allow a meaningful dialogue on immigration reform and it’s too bad because America would benefit greatly along with millions of Latinos. Click here to view this media George Bush has infuriated the Tea Party faction of the GOP when he spoke out January 24 at Southern Methodist University in Dallas against what he perceives is a historic shift back to the olden days of isolationism, protectionism and its demon-seed hellspawn, Nativism. Laura Ingraham filled in for O’Reilly and was furious at the president she once held so dear to her heart. Ingraham: Last November President Bush remarked that the Tea Party is good for the country. But why did he attack a key priority for many Tea Partiers, namely, getting our borders under control and preventing mass amnesty for illegal immigrants? Bush: What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some ‘isms’ that occasionally pop up — pop up. One is isolationism and its evil twin protectionism and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the ’20s, for example, there was — there was an American first policy that said who cares what happens in Europe?…And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we had too many Jews and too many Italians; therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is that we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism and Nativism. I’m a little concerned that we may be going through the same period. ” Ingraham: Now as someone who was at the forefront in opposing the 2006 Bush immigration reform effort, I was saddened, but not all that surprised by the President’s insulting characterization…. To say that it’s all about hostility to foreigners is ludicrous. To back up her position she uses a Dallas Tea Party poll which showed over 95% in favor of Arizona’s hateful SB1070 law. I guess that’s irrefutable proof that Conservative opposition towards immigration reform is anything but Nativism, right? Ingraham uses the phony Conservative claim that this is all about “the rule of law” as a crutch to back up her Nativist position on immigration. Jeb Bush also got under her skin when he spoke out against Republicans and called their opposition “wrong and stupid.” Laura wasn’t happy being tag teamed by the Bush Brothers. Ingraham: Now that’s an interesting way to court future GOP voters given their overwhelming opposition to amnesty, Gov. Bush. maybe President Bush was right. We are suffering from an outbreak of ism’s. Elitism comes to mind. Calling George and Jeb Bush ‘elitists’ are fightin’ words , young lady, since that’s the exact opposite of how she viewed them when they were in office. Oh, how times have changed — because here I am, writing about something that I agree with George Bush on, and here Laura Ingraham is, attacking the president she once defended to the hilt. That’s how far right the GOP has moved. Click here to read more on the Limbaugh/Bush immigration fight.
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enlarge The next time some finger-waver at the Washington Post op-ed page calls for austerity, someone should point him to, you know, reality. Because reality right now is telling us that austerity is not only painful but wholly counterproductive. Here’s an excellent report from the Wall Street Journal on the wide social unrest that austerity has caused in Greece: Greece shook global markets, intensifying fears of a default, as tens of thousands of demonstrators protested a new round of budget-cutting plans and its prime minister offered to step down to try to preserve them. Protests across the capital sometimes turned violent as Prime Minister George Papandreou sought an agreement with opposition parties on austerity measures demanded as the price of a new bailout by euro-zone nations and the International Monetary Fund. The report also notes that austerity has actually exacerbated the sovereign debt crisis and hasn’t made bond holders any more willing to buy Greek bonds at lower interest rates: Yields on Greek government bonds leapt to new highs, with two-year paper yielding 29%. Bond yields on other troubled euro-zone economies like Portugal and Ireland also moved higher, and stock markets in the U.S. and Europe sank as fears of contagion picked up. The euro plunged 1.9% against the dollar. Needless to say, it’s not only the wacky anarchist college kids who are pissed off about all this. Mama and Papa Greece are none too pleased either: John Petru, 41 years old, said he had come to block parliamentarians from arriving to debate the budget cuts. “We do not trust them,” he said of the politicians. The recession has eaten badly into his cleaning-service business. “Business is down, and prices are up, and we are not sure about anything,” he said. Greeks have already suffered multiple rounds of budget cuts since last year, but they have failed to build confidence in the economy. The budget deficit has turned out to be wider than projected then, with the government failing to cut spending or raise revenues as much as promised. But the biggest gap in its finances has opened up because private investors have refused to buy new Greek government bonds at interest rates the government can afford. Many protesters said they had gone along with previous budget cuts and wage reductions on the belief that those sacrifices would be enough to right Greece’s fortunes. “They have asked us to reduce our wages, to live another standard of life,” said Angeliki Kachrimani, a 42-year-old worker for Greece’s postal service. She accepted a 15% wage cut; her husband, a history teacher, is unemployed. And look, this is all pretty simple to understand: Greece is in this mess right now both because its government lied for years about its budget deficits (with an assist from everyone’s favorite investment bank Goldman Sachs ) and because its monetary policy options are limited by the European Central Bank. In other words, investors know Greece can’t print its own money and thus will never be able to pay them back. The problem is exacerbated by the austerity measures that result in cuts to government jobs, cuts to wages and a drop in overall demand. These things aren’t exactly making investors feel good about Greece’s future economic prospects either. “Why should I give a damn about this?” you ask. Well, it’s pretty obvious that America’s own austerity backers, led by Paul Ryan, have similar plans for us as well. And it would behoove us to point to the examples of Greece and Ireland and the U.K. and shout at the top of our lungs, “AUSTERITY DOESN’T WORK, YOU TOOLS!!!!!” Because frankly, I’m not looking forward to widespread social unrest. God forbid the streets of America come to resemble third-world hellhole streets like those of Vancouver .
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For years America's media have been enthralled by anything that supports the theory that carbon dioxide is warming the planet leading to an imminent cataclysm if governments don't regulate this partially man-made gas. By contrast, reports that might undermine CO2's importance in global warming, like the following released Tuesday by the AAS Solar Physics Division in Las Cruces, New Mexico, predicting a sharp decrease in solar activity in coming years, typically get either little attention or are downplayed: A missing jet stream, fading spots, and slower activity near the poles say that our Sun is heading for a rest period even as it is acting up for the first time in years, according to scientists at the National Solar Observatory (NSO) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). As the current sunspot cycle, Cycle 24, begins to ramp up toward maximum, independent studies of the solar interior, visible surface, and the corona indicate that the next 11-year solar sunspot cycle, Cycle 25, will be greatly reduced or may not happen at all. The results were announced at the annual meeting of the Solar Physics Division of the American Astronomical Society, which is being held this week at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces: http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/SPD2011/ “This is highly unusual and unexpected,” Dr. Frank Hill, associate director of the NSO’s Solar Synoptic Network, said of the results. “But the fact that three completely different views of the Sun point in the same direction is a powerful indicator that the sunspot cycle may be going into hibernation.” Sounds pretty serious, right? Not according to America's global warming-loving media as LexisNexis identified that with the exception of the Fox News Channel and the Fox Business Network, only CBS News bothered reporting this, albeit during its “Morning News” program broadcast at 4AM Wednesday when most of the country was fast asleep: BETTY NGUYEN: Now a bit farther away, ninety-three million miles farther exactly, the scientists say giant flares like this one will be a lot less common in coming years. They say the sun is headed into an extended hibernation period with fewer flares and sun spots. And that, as they say, was that. Apart from FNC and FBN, a total of two sentences were given to this solar activity report on American television. LexisNexis identified nothing from ABC, CNN, MSNBC, NBC, or PBS. Nada, zilch, zippo! By contrast, FBN offered the following for its viewers Thursday with detailed commentary by Weatherbell.com's Joe Bastardi: Nice report. You can understand why the global warming-loving television media wouldn't want their viewers to see that. Neither did most major newspapers, as I could identify nothing concerning this matter in the print editions of the New York Times, USA Today, or the Washington Post. Meanwhile, the Associated Press's Al Gore-loving Seth Borenstein did report the news, but downplayed its significance: The sun is heading into an unusual and extended hibernation, scientists predict. Around 2020, sunspots may disappear for years, maybe decades. But scientists say it is nothing to worry about. Solar storm activity has little to do with life-giving light and warmth from the sun. The effects from a calmer sun are mostly good. There'd be fewer disruptions of satellites and power systems. And it might mean a little less increase in global warming. The effects from a calmer sun are mostly good? Yeah, he really said that. Quite a departure from Bastardi's view that we could be heading back to the cool temperatures we saw in the '70s when press outlets like Time magazine were fretting about a new ice age: If this were to reoccur, Americans would be spending far more on energy to heat their homes, which at today's rates would have a substantially more deleterious impact on the economy than rising temperatures. As Bastardi noted, it's easier to grow vegetables and grains when it's warm. With food costs on the rise, a cooling planet could further exacerbate the problem. But don't worry. Most of the media think this is either unimportant or nothing to get excited about. Nothing to see here. Move along.
Continue reading …The Blatant Liberalism of Norah O’Donnell, CBS’s New Chief WH Correspondent
June 17, 2011 No Comment
“If Time-magaziner-turned-White House-press-sec Jay Carney ever tires of defending President Obama,” wrote NB's Mark Finkelstein earlier this year, “Norah O'Donnell clearly seems ready to step in.” News broke Thursday that O'Donnell will, in fact, be moving to the White House briefing room, but she'll staying on the same side of the podium as CBS's Chief White House Correspondent . But that doesn't mean her relentless cheerleaeding for the Obama administration and its party will relent. O'Donnell is one of television news's more blatantly liberal non-prime time personalities. In light of the move, let's review just a few of her “greatest hits.” O'Donnell is of course quick to see racism in criticism of President Obama. When Newt Gingrich jibed Obama for wasting time playing basketball, she saw racism . The comment “suggests that the President is an athlete and some people may suggest, you know, because all black people are good athletes.” Fellow guests on Morning Joe laughed at the claim. Though not as frequent as the racism charge, Islamophobia is a popular one among liberal media types. O'Donnell is no exception. In the midst of the debate over the “Ground Zero mosque,” for instance, O'Donnell claimed that the project's opponents were “act[ing] like the people who attacked America and killed 3,000 people.” Other conservative protests have also earned O'Donnell's scorn. She was of course part of the MSNBC chorus that attempted to link the Tea Party movement to so-called “birthed” movement. So as one might expect, the Tea Party's primary target earned O'Donnell's effusive praise – often in spite of the facts. Reporting on the so-called health care “summit” last year, O'Donnell embarked on a misguided attempt at “truth-squadding.” She heaped praise on President Obama for laying out the facts behind his reform proposal, such as the fact, by her telling, that insurance premiums would decline by 10 to 13 percent under Obamacare. In fact, the CBO score at the time showed premiums for individuals would rise by 10 to 13 percent. Giving O'Donnell the benefit of the doubt, she played defense for the president without bothering to check the facts. As for Republican efforts to block Obamacare's passage, well, let's just say O'Donnell was not a fan. “Are you the Grinch that stole Christmas?” she asked GOP Sen. Judd Gregg in December 2009. For all of O'Donnell's fondness for Obama, she really does not like Sarah Palin. Norah appeared at a Palin book signing – crib notes in hand – last year to grill a teen Palin fan, but threw softballs to a pro-Obamacare child weeks later. O'Donnell's lame defense of Obama's decision to wear a tacky faux-military leather jacket to an address to troops in Afghanistan was a childish “Sarah Palin wears a leather jacket too!” Norah also harped on the Palin “hand note” non-story perhaps longer than any other television personality. Filmmaker John Ziegler even called on NBC to fire O'Donnell for her vehement hatred of everything Palin. The firing never came, but now O'Donnell has left for another network where, no doubt, the Palin hatred and the rest of the liberal quips will continue.
Continue reading …Dan Choi Rips Up Obama Flyer: ‘I Won’t Vote For Obama If He Doesn’t Endorse Marriage Equality’
June 17, 2011 No Comment
Lt. Dan Choi ripped up an Obama For America (OFA) flyer this afternoon during a panel at Netroots Nation when he was confronted by an Obama volunteer who attempted to explain away the President’s opposition to same-sex marriage: NICK (Obama volunteer): I can’t say I’m for marriage equality, but as a bisexual man, I would Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Think Progress Discovery Date : 17/06/2011 01:28 Number of articles : 5
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On Wednesday's All Things Considered, NPR's Ari Shapiro let The Daily Show's John Oliver and The Washington Post's Dana Milbank cast aspersions on some of the declared 2012 Republican presidential candidates and their surrogates. Oliver mocked the talking points of a Ron Paul spokesman as ” pointless ” and ” meaningless ,” while Milbank derided the candidacy of Herman Cain. Host Melissa Block introduced Shapiro's report about the White House correspondent's first visit to a post-presidential debate spin room, and gave a hint of its overall mocking tone: ” The spin room might be a good name for an amusement park ride or part of a fun house . That makes it a perfect fit for a presidential campaign, which can get a bit wacky even in these early days.” Shapiro picked up where Block left off: “The idea of a spin room somehow seems at odds with journalism. After all, spin is basically propaganda, distortion. A whole room devoted to the art suggests a place where reality is what you make of it.” He then cited as his first example a statement from Newt Gingrich's daughter/adviser Kathy Lubbers:
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