It was my senior year of high school and our basketball team was playing our rivals. As the team’s captain, I knew I had to carry the team on my shoulders if we had a chance to win. Despite my 25 points and 15 rebounds, we still lost to a team with superior talent. Following our defeat, our angry coach barreled into the locker room and slammed the chalkboard. He then launched into a tirade where he bellowed, “Everyone on this team played like faggots… except for Wayne.” Although I was not out of the closet yet, I thought, “Coach, if we would have played like fags, we would have won the game.” I tell this story to point out that sexual orientation and gender identity are about who a person is deep inside — not a result of the clothes they wear or the activities they participate in. I grew up playing basketball, football, and baseball. The entire time I was playing — and at times excelling — I knew I was gay. Unfortunately, anti-gay activists are exploiting a new controversy to portray gay and transgender people as confused heterosexuals who are different because their parents let them play with the wrong toys as children or dressed them in “non-gender-conforming” attire. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this hasn’t stopped the right wing from trying to further stereotypes and misconceptions in an effort to foster discrimination against LGBT people. The controversy in question occurred when the clothing store J. Crew published an ad this week that featured the company’s president, Jenna Lyons, painting the toenails of her son Beckett. The text read: “Saturday with Jenna — Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” Needless to say, the wingnuts went ballistic and attacked J. Crew for allegedly distorting gender roles — which presumably will turn kids gay or transgender. Erin Brown of the right-wing Media Research Center called the ad “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.” Not only is Ms. Brown pandering to outmoded stereotypes about gender roles, gender identity, and sexual orientation, but her implication is that only heteronormative children deserve to be celebrated. This is ridiculous — all children deserve to be celebrated, whatever color they choose to paint their toenails. Additionally, FOX commentator Dr. Keith Albow chimed in with this “brilliant” nugget of advice: “Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid — and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure.” Dr. Jack Drescher, a respected New York City psychiatrist, disputed claims that toenail painting will influence a child’s sexuality. He says that sexual orientation does not stem from superficial outside influences like toenail polish. “I can say with 100 percent certainty that a mother painting her children’s toe nails pink does not cause transgenderism or homosexuality or anything else that people who are social conservatives would worry about,” Dr. Drescher told ABC News. Clearly, anti-gay forces are gearing up to exploit this situation and sexualize this innocent ad for political gain. In their zeal to recreate their mythical version of 1950′s America, they will no doubt savage J. Crew and flood the company with e-mails demanding that they dump the ad. Let’s not let the voices of religious extremism and cultural rigidity be the only ones heard by J. Crew. Please sign Truth Wins Out’s petition today thanking J. Crew for the company’s willingness to publish this fine ad. Let this company know that their real customer base is not close-minded bigots, but forward-thinking progressives who don’t agree with self-righteous scolds like Dr. Keith Albow. In my view, J. Crew published a terrific ad that showed real family values — not the contrived kind put forth by social conservatives. While extremists are taking the opportunity to dress down this company, show your support by dressing up in J. Crew clothes. It is time to fight back and stand up to irrational homophobic attacks and “conservative correctness.”
Continue reading …It was my senior year of high school and our basketball team was playing our rivals. As the team’s captain, I knew I had to carry the team on my shoulders if we had a chance to win. Despite my 25 points and 15 rebounds, we still lost to a team with superior talent. Following our defeat, our angry coach barreled into the locker room and slammed the chalkboard. He then launched into a tirade where he bellowed, “Everyone on this team played like faggots… except for Wayne.” Although I was not out of the closet yet, I thought, “Coach, if we would have played like fags, we would have won the game.” I tell this story to point out that sexual orientation and gender identity are about who a person is deep inside — not a result of the clothes they wear or the activities they participate in. I grew up playing basketball, football, and baseball. The entire time I was playing — and at times excelling — I knew I was gay. Unfortunately, anti-gay activists are exploiting a new controversy to portray gay and transgender people as confused heterosexuals who are different because their parents let them play with the wrong toys as children or dressed them in “non-gender-conforming” attire. Nothing could be further from the truth, but this hasn’t stopped the right wing from trying to further stereotypes and misconceptions in an effort to foster discrimination against LGBT people. The controversy in question occurred when the clothing store J. Crew published an ad this week that featured the company’s president, Jenna Lyons, painting the toenails of her son Beckett. The text read: “Saturday with Jenna — Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon.” Needless to say, the wingnuts went ballistic and attacked J. Crew for allegedly distorting gender roles — which presumably will turn kids gay or transgender. Erin Brown of the right-wing Media Research Center called the ad “blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children.” Not only is Ms. Brown pandering to outmoded stereotypes about gender roles, gender identity, and sexual orientation, but her implication is that only heteronormative children deserve to be celebrated. This is ridiculous — all children deserve to be celebrated, whatever color they choose to paint their toenails. Additionally, FOX commentator Dr. Keith Albow chimed in with this “brilliant” nugget of advice: “Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid — and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your ‘innocent’ pleasure.” Dr. Jack Drescher, a respected New York City psychiatrist, disputed claims that toenail painting will influence a child’s sexuality. He says that sexual orientation does not stem from superficial outside influences like toenail polish. “I can say with 100 percent certainty that a mother painting her children’s toe nails pink does not cause transgenderism or homosexuality or anything else that people who are social conservatives would worry about,” Dr. Drescher told ABC News. Clearly, anti-gay forces are gearing up to exploit this situation and sexualize this innocent ad for political gain. In their zeal to recreate their mythical version of 1950′s America, they will no doubt savage J. Crew and flood the company with e-mails demanding that they dump the ad. Let’s not let the voices of religious extremism and cultural rigidity be the only ones heard by J. Crew. Please sign Truth Wins Out’s petition today thanking J. Crew for the company’s willingness to publish this fine ad. Let this company know that their real customer base is not close-minded bigots, but forward-thinking progressives who don’t agree with self-righteous scolds like Dr. Keith Albow. In my view, J. Crew published a terrific ad that showed real family values — not the contrived kind put forth by social conservatives. While extremists are taking the opportunity to dress down this company, show your support by dressing up in J. Crew clothes. It is time to fight back and stand up to irrational homophobic attacks and “conservative correctness.”
Continue reading …Tax Me Please, Says NY Times Columnist Kristof, While Calling for Defense Cuts as Libya Hawk
April 14, 2011 No CommentNew York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof joined the “tax me, please,” brigade in his Thursday column that is sure to win him new fans the day before tax day: “ Raise America’s Taxes .” President Obama in his speech on Wednesday confronted a topic that is harder to address seriously in public than sex or flatulence: America needs higher taxes. That ugly truth looms over today’s budget battles, but politicians have mostly preferred to run from reality. Mr. Obama’s speech was excellent not only for its content but also because he didn’t insult our intelligence. There is no single reason for today’s budget mess, but it’s worth remembering that the last time our budget was in the black was in the Clinton administration. That’s a broad hint that one sensible way to overcome our difficulties would be to revert to tax rates more or less as they were under President Clinton. That single step would solve three-quarters of the deficit for the next five years or so. So would cutting spending levels to the Clinton era, for that matter. Kudos to Mr. Obama for boldly stating that truth in his speech — even if he did focus only on taxes for the very wealthiest. I also thought he was right to say that we need spending cuts — including in our defense budget . Mr. Obama didn’t say so, but the United States accounts for almost as much military spending as the entire rest of the world put together. (A side note: Kristof wants cuts in defense spending while also being a hawk for bombing Libya, a country the U.S. has been at war with for 26 days. The late Times columnist R.W. Apple famously declared Afghanistan a quagmire on October 31, 2001, day 24 of our intervention there. On Monday, reporter David Sanger more mildly referred to the conflict in Libya as a “stalemate.”) Kristof concluded: Ever since Walter Mondale publicly committed hara-kiri in 1984 by telling voters that he would raise their taxes, politicians have run from fiscal reality. As baby boomers age and require Social Security and Medicare, escapism will no longer suffice. We need to have a frank national discussion of painful steps ahead, and since I’m not a politician, let me be perfectly clear: raise my taxes!
Continue reading …NYT Praises Obama’s Speech: ‘The Man America Elected President Has Re-emerged’
April 14, 2011 No Comment
The New York Times was very excited about President Obama's deficit reduction speech. The Gray Lady's editorial Thursday began, “The man America elected president has re-emerged”: For months, the original President Obama had disappeared behind mushy compromises and dimly seen principles. But on Wednesday, he used his budget speech to clearly distance himself from Republican plans to heap tax benefits on the rich while casting adrift the nation’s poor, elderly and unemployed. Instead of adapting the themes of the right to his own uses, he set out a very different vision of an America that keeps its promises to the weak and asks for sacrifice from the strong. Did he? Apart from saying that he wouldn't extend the Bush tax cuts beyond December 31, 2012, and that he wanted to reduce or eliminate itemized deductions for the top two percent of wage earners, exactly what did Obama propose Wednesday that would seriously reduce the deficit in the coming years? As Fox's Charles Krauthammer noted on “Special Report” Wednesday, “[Obama] threw out these numbers suspended in midair with nothing under them with all kinds of goals and guidelines and triggers which mean absolutely nothing.” Indeed. Quite contrary to Congressman Paul Ryan's (R-Wisc.) deficit reduction plan submitted last week, the President's was large on rhetoric and short on details: The first step in our approach is to keep annual domestic spending low by building on the savings that both parties agreed to last week. That step alone will save us about $750 billion over 12 years. We will make the tough cuts necessary to achieve these savings, including in programs that I care deeply about, but I will not sacrifice the core investments that we need to grow and create jobs. We will invest in medical research. We will invest in clean energy technology. We will invest in new roads and airports and broadband access. We will invest in education. We will invest in job training. We will do what we need to do to compete, and we will win the future. So, the President Wednesday proposed $750 billion of spending cuts to be named later while talking about the things he wants to invest in. But what's he going to cut? The President didn't say, and the Times didn't care. For instance, on defense spending: Over the last two years, Secretary Bob Gates has courageously taken on wasteful spending, saving $400 billion in current and future spending. I believe we can do that again. We need to not only eliminate waste and improve efficiency and effectiveness, but we're going to have to conduct a fundamental review of America's missions, capabilities, and our role in a changing world. I intend to work with Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs on this review, and I will make specific decisions about spending after it's complete. “I believe we can do that again…and I will make specific decisions about spending after” I talk to Secretary Gates and the Joint Chiefs. As such, this means nothing for the moment. But the Times didn't care. As for Medicare and spiraling healthcare costs, as far as the President was concerned, that's all been solved by ObamaCare. And Medicaid? No worries. “We will work with governors of both parties to demand more efficiency and accountability from Medicaid.” I guess the smartest President in history forgot what he said earlier in his speech: So because all this spending is popular with both Republicans and Democrats alike, and because nobody wants to pay higher taxes, politicians are often eager to feed the impression that solving the problem is just a matter of eliminating waste and abuse. You'll hear that phrase a lot. “We just need to eliminate waste and abuse.” The implication is that tackling the deficit issue won't require tough choices. This appears not to apply to Medicaid. But the Times didn't care about that, or this: Now, we believe the reforms we've proposed to strengthen Medicare and Medicaid will enable us to keep these commitments to our citizens while saving us $500 billion by 2023, and an additional $1 trillion in the decade after that. But if we're wrong, and Medicare costs rise faster than we expect, then this approach will give the independent commission the authority to make additional savings by further improving Medicare. Put another way, if his proposals for Medicare and Medicaid don't save $1.5 trillion by 2033, another commission will be appointed to create additional savings. Got that? How's that for specificity? In reality, as Krauthammer pointed out, there were no specifics given by the President Wednesday except for what he wouldn't do which was extend the Bush tax cuts beyond next year and: I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs. I will not tell families with children who have disabilities that they have to fend for themselves. We will reform these programs, but we will not abandon the fundamental commitment this country has kept for generations. A lot of “will nots” in this speech, but not many explanations for the “wills.” But the Times doesn't care because “Negotiations with an implacable opposition are about to get much tougher, but it was a relief to see Mr. Obama standing up for the values that got him to the table.” Yes, as long as standing up for values doesn't include any details as to how, which has been the media's problem analyzing anything this man says since he tossed his hat into the ring as a presidential candidate in February 2007. They all seem to get a thrill up their leg because of what they perceive as an eloquence in his delivery, but they don't care at all about the content. Politico's Roger Simon assured us earlier this month that this was going to stop and that “reporters are starting to concentrate more than ever on what he says rather than how he says it.” Simon apparently wasn't speaking for the Times editorial board, for they believe, “The man America elected president has re-emerged.” For those keeping score, that would be the man that can promise to cut $4 trillion from the budget in twelve years offering few details how and the Times will not only eat it up as the finest caviar on the planet but also publicly praise him for it on their editorial page. That's some powerful ether to still have these folks swooning after all these years.
Continue reading …Bachmann/Ryan Overdrive: A Mind-Expanding Mini-Vacation From Economic Reality
April 14, 2011 No CommentRemember all those mini-movies that summarized a broad topic in two minutes or less? Whether the subject was the Civil War, the magical things that happen when you multiply by ten, or the complete history of Western Civilization, these mini-films covered everything in one rapid-fire shot after another, giving you a whole lot of information – and a splitting headache – in a very short period of time. The first minute or two of this Michelle Bachmann Today show interview is like that. She runs through the entire litany of disproven conservative cliches about the economy in 100 seconds or less without even getting short of breath. If someone ever wants to make one of those two-minute movies and call it The Ideas That Crushed the American Dream , Rep. Bachmann’s written the script. Fire it up and watch her go! We’ll sound the bell every time she floats a discredited idea. Ready? Raising taxes for the wealthy shouldn’t be “on the table,” says Bachmann, because “tax rates are high enough (ding!), and history shows (ding!) that when we raise taxes, particularly on job creators (ding!) we actually bring in less revenue (ding! ding! ding!) rather than more.” Forget what I said about two-minute movies. Michelle Bachmann could cover Western Civilization in ten seconds . I was on a talk radio show from St. Louis yesterday with a guy from the Heritage Foundation who used the same “history shows us” line. What history actually shows is that we lost jobs after the Bush tax cuts, even before deregulation brought down the economy. History also shows us that our periods of greatest economic prosperity occurred when taxes were higher than they are now. And the history of the Great Depression shows that it took government investment to get people working and the economy growing. FDR listened to the Bachmannites of his time in the late 1930′s, and everything started falling apart again. That’s what history shows. And “job creators”? Oh, please. Wall Street financiers have regained their pre-crash parasitical economic stranglehold, seizing nearly 40% of corporate profits. They’re getting rich by not creating jobs – and sometimes by destroying them through destructive hedging. Somehow,with corporate profits at historic highs and taxes at historic lows, people in the real world are taking the world’s longest unemployment gut-punch. If these guys are “job creators,” where are the jobs ? “The question is,” continues Bachmann, “do we want more revenue or more taxes? Because the two don’t go together.” No she didn’t! Unh-unh! Oh no she didn’t! Did she just bring out the Laffer Curve ? Yes, she did. Mm-hmm. Michelle Bachmann just brought out the most discredited theory in modern economic history: the notion that people will stop making money if taxes are too high, so overall government income will fall and not rise. There’s only one thing that contradicts that theory: The economic history of every single nation on the planet. Economists like the name “Laffer curve” because this theory is always good for a laugh. “You could actually confiscate (ding!) all the wealth that people make at $200,000 or more,” says Bachmann, “and that would only yield about six or seven months of revenue to run the government.” Hey, that’s half the whole cost of government! She’s selling the idea pretty well! They love that word “confiscate.” And I love the way these conservatives say they’d lay down their lives for their country, but if you ask them to pay four pennies on the dollar on six-figure income,that’s dictatorship! Think of it: The highest tax bracket under Dwight D. Eisenhower was 91% percent. He must be the greatest dictator of all time! They love that song that talk about the people who died defending this country, takes their name in vain, and then says “I’d gladly stand up next to you and defend her still today.” Ah, you know the one … “There ain’t no doubt I love this land” – just not enough to pay for it. Not cash money, anyway. Here’s the theme song they should really be using. All that’s being proposed is a four-and-a-half percent increase on income over $250,000. And you know what’s funny? Bachmann and her colleagues are the same people people who think we can’t afford to pay thirty million per year to reduce the damage from coastal storms and floods. These floods cost more than $11 billion per year on average, every year – and they think we can’t spare the dinero . And yet they’ll give away hundreds of billions in tax revenue like it was peanut butter in a roomful of stoned billionaires. Bachmann goes on in this vein for what seems like forever, but which in reality only four minutes or so. (This seemingly paradoxical phenomenon is the product of what physicists call the “Time Dilation Effect,” in which time appears to be moving more slowly as the flow of bullsh*t approaches the speed of light.) For the Representative from Minnesota it’s “confiscate” this and “take 100 percent” of that … on and on and on … until all of the ridiculous rhetorical tricks that got us into this mess are on rapid-fire display. Well, almost all. She left out one. The only cliche she forgot to repeat was “If you could go back in time one day for every dollar the government spends, you’d be face to face with Jesus.” Since the GOP’s cutting $600 million for law enforcement, somebody’s going to get shot. Guess they’ll wind up face-to-face with Jesus too. “Already again,” she says later, “the top 1% of income earners pay about 40% of all taxes.” (That’s not the right number, but whatever.) But why do the top 1% pay a large share of taxes? Because the top 400 families in America are richer than the bottom fifty percent of the entire country! So of course they pay a big chunk of income tax, even after they’re coddled with tax breaks galore. She sure has a lot of talking points, but it’s a funny thing: When it comes to answering a question like Matt Lauer’s, about the CBO’s report on the devastating financial impact of their Medicare cuts on seniors, suddenly she “hasn’t had a chance to look at the study.” “But it’s important for us to understand,” says Bachmann, “that individualism (ding!) and personal responsibility (ding!) have always been a bedrock of this country.” When it comes to the whole “devastating financial impact” thing, I’ll take that as a “yes.” (And note: You can’t have “a” bedrock. There’s just bedrock .) There’s more, but you get the gist. Some people think she’s a little nuts, and they even get a little personal about it. (Her eyes do have an odd glint, a kind ofgrown-up Children of the Damned quality, but that could be anything.) Nuts or not, her ideas are definitely radical. Even so, as my friend and colleague Dave Johnson points out, Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget is even too extreme for her. That’s the state of play these days on the Right. Whenever the radicals start attacking each other, that means the movement is officially going crazy. Think Stalin vs. Trotsky. Or the Judean People’s Front vs. the People’s Front of Judaea. (“Splitters!”) It’s Bachmann/Ryan Overdrive time. This schism on the American Right means the whole movement has finally gone full-tilt crazy. Wait, you say. How can you be so sure? How do we know that they’ve gone over the edge? We know it because history has shown us.
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Nearly 3,000 documents in Whitman’s handwriting cast light on his experience as a government clerk A “huge trove” of documents written by Walt Whitman while the American poet worked for the government as a clerk has been unearthed by a scholar. Kenneth Price, a professor of American literature at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and co-director of the Whitman archive, uncovered the thousands of documents at the National Archives vault in Washington DC. “I can remember getting glazed as I went over page after page, seeing no handwriting that looked like Whitman’s,” said Price. “And then suddenly I turned a page and there it was: unmistakably Whitman’s handwriting.” The papers – almost 3,000 of them – have now been conclusively identified as Whitman’s for the first time. They were written while the author of Leaves of Grass was employed as a government clerk between 1865 and 1874. He worked mainly as a scribe and copyist, drafting correspondence, copying letters written by others and researching a variety of issues. Topics covered by the documents range from charges of treason to war crimes, the rise of the Ku Klux Clan and whether smallpox was used as a weapon during the civil war. Price believes the discovery of the letters will “shed most light” on Whitman’s work Democratic Vistas, published in 1871, in which the American author discusses the theory of democracy, criticising America for its “mighty, many-threaded wealth and industry”, which he felt hid a “dry and flat Sahara” of the soul. “The documents are in his handwriting so they passed through his mind, they passed through his fingertips,” said Price. “They bear somebody else’s signature but it’s in Whitman’s handwriting. Is Whitman responsible for zero percent of that intellectual content or was he working collaboratively with the person who is the supposed author of the document?” Price believes no serious biographer will be able to tackle the subject of Whitman in the future “without going through these documents and asking himself or herself what was the effect of all this material on Whitman’s thinking and outlook”. “This was an age of high hopes but also big problems, and Walt Whitman was there in the thick of it,” he said. “It was when Whitman came to Washington that he began to look for ways to earn a little bit of money, and eventually he got hired as a clerk in government offices. It’s in the records of the attorney general’s offices that I found this huge trove of Whitman documents – we’re close to 3,000 documents now.” Whitman took the clerking job at the attorney general’s office after he was fired from a similar position at the Indian Bureau of the Department of the Interior by new secretary of the interior James Harlan, who, keen to dismiss employees of questionable “moral character”, saw the working copy of Leaves of Grass which the poet kept in his desk and was “appalled”, according to the Whitman archive . Walt Whitman Poetry Alison Flood guardian.co.uk
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Biden Sleeps at Obama Deficit Speech Congressman Hensarling Gives His Response to President Obama’s Deficit Plan on CNN Paul Ryan Slams Obama Deficit Plan Obama Deficit Plan Wins The Approval Of The Bond Market NEW YORK (By Emily Flitter) – It lacked details, and quickly drew a crowd of critics across Capitol Hill, but President Barack Obama’s $4 trillion deficit cutting plan won over a notoriously skeptical bond market — at least for now. Obama's Deficit Plan May Mark Turning Point, Moody's Official Says President Barack Obama’s plan to cut $4 trillion in cumulative deficits within 12 years may be a “positive” for the nation’s credit quality and mark a reversal in the budget debate, according to Moody’s Investors Servic. Obama Deficit Plan A Mixed Bag For Democrats And A Sharp Contrast … The framework for deficit reduction President Obama will lay out Wednesday is a mixed bag for members of his party. It borrows heavily in some areas from the conservative-leaning Bowles-Simpson recommendation, but commits elsewhere. to … Obama's deficit plan begins tug-of-war with Republicans | McClatchy Offering up his own $4 trillion roadmap to tame America’s deficit and an admission that he doesn’t expect Congress to embrace it as-is, President Barack Obama on Wednesday began a concerted effort to pull together a bipartisan deal this … Yglesias » Barack Obama's Deficit Plan Barack Obama’s Deficit Plan . Brad DeLong’s summary of Barack Obama’s budget ideas is useful (though caveat emptor here, there’s rounding so the numbers don’t add up right): — Restore high-bracket tax rates to Clinton-era levels: $1T … asnowrose says: Obama Throws Down Gauntlet on Tax Hikes, Republicans Blast Deficit Plan – FoxNews.com http://t.co/Un5LLYg via @foxnewspolitics
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rigoutsos.mov Class Spotlight – Thomas Jefferson Kindergarten Peter G. Peterson speaks on America’s fiscal challenges at Jefferson birthday celebration THOMAS JEFFERSON | NEWSi7 THOMAS JEFFERSON : Whats brought up less frequently is Jeffersons character in disestablishing religion in Virginia. Get your preferred quote by the announcement of Independence and go it into an ornamental. Happy Birthday, Thomas Jefferson ! | The Right Sphere Today is Thomas Jefferson’s birthday. Jefferson may be my favorite founding father, but James Madison often gives him a run for his money. Jefferson served our great nation in many capacities. He, along with Madison, are credited with … Guess how old Thomas Jefferson was when he wrote the Declaration … Guess how old Thomas Jefferson was when he… thomas jefferson – April 13, 2011 | Submit Digital Thomas Jefferson is born, April 13, 1743 – Politico.com: 2011-04-13T08:37:18Z – On this day in 1743, Thomas Jefferson , who drafted the Declaration of Independence and served as the nation’s third president, was born as the third of 10 … Thomas Jefferson » Foxs News – Where Everything's News Viridity Energy said Tuesday that Thomas Jefferson University and Thomas Jefferson University Hospitals have signed a letter of the intent for it to develop a large-scale energy-storage system for them. The Conshohocken, Pa. … Conlives says: Happy Birthday to Thomas Jefferson , drafter of the Declaration of Independence and our nation's third president…. http://fb.me/WDDUEIxm
Continue reading …Lawrence O’Donnell: Americans Aren’t Rugged Individualists – They’re Socialists
April 13, 2011 No Comment
Last November, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell proudly declared himself a socialist on national television. On Wednesday, “The Last Word” host took this a huge step further saying the whole idea that Americans are rugged individualists is an illusion because they're all really socialists (video follows with transcript and commentary): (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: From our first days as a nation, we have put our faith in free markets and free enterprise as the engine of America's wealth and prosperity. More than citizens of any other country, we are rugged individualists, a self-reliant people, with a healthy skepticism of too much government. (END VIDEO CLIP) LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: This is an illusion, of course. We are not the rugged individualists we think we are. After getting an education paid for by the government, if we live long enough, we all get retirement income from the government and health care paid for by the government. That is a very healthy dose of good old-fashioned socialism, but we remain the country that pretends to hate socialism. Homeowners and the entire real estate industry float on a massive government subsidy written into the tax code called the mortgage deduction. The federal government gives millionaires and billionaires tens of thousands of dollars a year to pay, $50,000, to pay for their housing, a subsidy that none of them need, and yet our rugged individualist self-image continues. Honestly, this has more holes in it than Swiss cheese. First off, for the roughly 50 percent of the nation that pays taxes, nothing that we “receive” from the federal or state government is given to us. My parents paid federal, state, local, and property taxes that went for my public education, much as I've done for my children. As for the Social Security and Medicare benefits I may some day receive, I will have at that point paid into the system since I was 18-years-old, and, depending upon when I retire and eventually pass away, could very possibly have paid in more than I received not including a simple rate of growth applied to my contributions. For the percentage of our population that are much like myself in this regard, whatever they have and/or will receive from federal and state governments is a payback of what's been deducted from their income without their permission or – in some cases – approval. As for mortgage interest deductability being a subsidy, one really has to wonder what Lawrence learned at Harvard because tax deductions aren't subsidies. Even the liberal Wikipedia knows that: A subsidy (also known as a subvention) is a form of financial assistance paid to a business or economic sector. Most subsidies are made by the government to producers or distributors in an industry to prevent the decline of that industry (e.g., as a result of continuous unprofitable operations) or an increase in the prices of its products or simply to encourage it to hire more labor (as in the case of a wage subsidy). Examples are subsidies to encourage the sale of exports; subsidies on some foods to keep down the cost of living, especially in urban areas; and subsidies to encourage the expansion of farm production and achieve self-reliance in food production. A tax deduction is not a form of financial assistance paid to you by the government. Instead, it is a means by which you get to pay less taxes and therefore keep more of — are you listening, Lawrence? – your money. But this is a common mistake by liberals that are really socialists, for they don't understand that the government doesn't actually have any money except for what it takes from the citizenry, borrows or prints. What it taxes is ours, and any current or future statutes in the IRS code that allow us to keep more is neither a subsidy nor a gift. As it pertains to mortgage interest, if the Left wants to see this tepid recovery fall on its face quickly, they should eliminate this deductability and watch housing prices and the home construction industry collapse even further sending us right back into a recession. Maybe that's what a socialist like O'Donnell wants. Then there will be more folks trading in their rugged individualism for handouts from those that still believe in such a thing. Never let a good crisis go to waste, right?
Continue reading …Buyer Remorse: New Poll: House Republicans doing worse job than the Democrats did
April 13, 2011 No CommentThe new Republican House members that swept into office aren’t making a very good impression with the voters via a new poll by the PPP: PPP’s newest national poll finds that after a little more than 3 months in charge House Republicans have fallen so far out of favor with the American public that it’s entirely possible Democrats could take control of the House back next year. 43% of voters think that House Republicans are doing a worse job now than the Democrats did, compared to only 36% who think the GOP has brought an improvement. 19% think things are about the same. 62% of voters thinking that the Republicans have either made things worse or brought no improvement to an already unpopular Congress does not bode particularly well for the party. 46% of voters say that if there was an election for Congress today they would vote Democratic, compared to only 41% who would vote Republican. That five point advantage for Democrats is only a hair below the margin Republicans won by in the national popular vote last year. A victory of that magnitude for the Democrats next year would at the very least result in the party taking back a large number of the seats it lost last year, and it could be enough to take back the outright majority- hard to say at this point without knowing how good a number the GOP can do in redistricting… read on Americans are seeing what Republicans have been doing since they took office and America is not happy. And although they haven’t polled this yet, you can only guess how they feel about the new crop of GOP Governors that have been trying to destroy long standing traditions in their states. Polls done in WI and Ohio have shown that they would love a do over. Anyway, have a good day.
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