Click here to view this media Another Republican debate is over, and we still have no more answers than we did the day before. Okay, we know what they don’t want and don’t like: Anything to do with Barack Obama’s health care plan, financial regulation, no matter how mild, and taxing the rich. We get that. But what is it they do want to do to deal with this jobs crisis? Michele Bachmann has a nearly-unintelligible jobs plan that she just “unveiled” on her website. Here’s her summary: “My solutions are simple. We need to cut government spending, legalize America’s God-given natural resources, and stop taxing investment and productivity,” Bachmann said. “In other words, we need to do what growing economies do.” I’ll leave it to you, dear readers, to parse certain phrases like “legalize…God-given natural resources”. Whatever. After all, this is the woman who told a guy with no teeth, or at least, very few teeth, that he should rely on charity for his dental care . At some point in Tuesday night’s debate, there was an attempt on the part of the moderators to pin Mitt Romney down on the looming crisis in the Eurozone; specifically, Greece, and get him to articulate what his plan would be for what is happening there. It’s an important question, and one every single one of these so-called candidates ought to answer. The clip is at the top. Here’s a piece of the transcript : GOLDMAN: Thank you. Governor Romney, it’s 2013, and the European debt crisis has worsened. Countries are defaulting. Europe’s largest banks are on the verge of bankruptcy. Contagion has spread to the U.S. And the global financial system is on the brink. What would you do differently than what President Bush, Henry Paulson, and Ben Bernanke did in 2008? ROMNEY: Well, you’re talking about a scenario that’s obviously very difficult to imagine. And — GOLDMAN: But it’s not a hypothetical, because more than half — ROMNEY: It is. I’m afraid it is a hypothetical. GOLDMAN: Governor, it’s not — ROMNEY: Do you want to explain why it’s not a hypothetical? GOLDMAN: Yes. ROMNEY: OK. GOLDMAN: Because more than half the country believes that a financial meltdown is likely in the next several years, and the U.S. banks have at least $700 billion in exposure to Europe. So it’s a very real threat, and voters want to know what you would do differently. ROMNEY: It’s still a hypothetical as to what’s going to precisely happen in the future. I’m not very good at being omniscient, but I can tell you this, that I am not going to have to call up Timothy Geithner and say, how does the economy work? Because I spent my life in the economy. Click here to view this media Of course, he didn’t answer the question, which led the Bloomberg panel to gnaw on their frustration that they asked a real-life question and got a bunch of “hypothetical” bluster in return. Here’s a rough transcript of that exchange: You know, one of the things that I really believe this debate showed — you really got a glimpse into a number of candidates — how they articulate their economic policies. I thought it was particularly interesting with governor rick perry. He kept coming back to energy policy. Energy is the way to create jobs. One thing it did not seem like any of them could really necessarily address is how to create jobs immediately. That was one of the reasons we had to come back at the end and ask them to address exactly what is going to happen now that the president was a jobs bill has been stalled. We begin the debate by talking about dysfunction. Where does that leave us? We are still in gridlock. > > The only thing I saw was this or hypothetical. I believe that one point he said the word hypothetical four times. What was it like to have a hypothetical moments with governor mitt romney? > > I don’t think it was a hypothetical moment. That is how he posed the question to him. We know we talked about this issue every hour of every day on bloomberg television. The stress of contagion from europe is very real. It is something that any of these presidential candidates, should they win, is going to have to deal with. All of that leads me to the questions I wish they’d ask these candidates, but never do. Here’s a partial list of mine. Given that they have the benefit of hindsight and can certainly point and sneer at what President Obama did (or didn’t) do, they should have to be quite specific about what they would have done at that time, with the constraints they had . Not broad, sweeping declarations, but very, very specific steps. What specific steps would you have taken in early 2009 to stop jobs from bleeding away and keep the economy from collapsing into a full-blown depression? If you were President today, dealing with a shaky economy, a divided Congress, and people in the streets protesting the lack of jobs, stability or hope, what would you do to jump-start job creation? Remember the part about the divided Congress, please. You must guide your legislation through two houses of Congress, each controlled by different parties. If you were President in early 2009 and were faced with the collapse of the auto industry in this country following massive bank failures when you allowed them to fail and the markets to sort themselves out, what would you have done to prevent the economy from toppling altogether? Be specific, including how you would handle the hundreds of thousands of job losses and failures of small businesses which rely upon the auto industry, including dealerships, parts dealers, parts manufacturers and other related industries. It’s 2011, and the national debt has tripled in the last ten years, partly due to the economy and partly due to the failure of banks, the auto industry, and related manufacturing businesses tied to that industry. You’re facing a crucial debt ceiling vote which is being opposed by the far right wing of your own party , which also controls the House of Representatives. What would you have done to placate those members who opposed raising the debt ceiling at all, and how would you have negotiated a deal to get US debt under control in the future, while dealing with an unemployment rate of 17% due to all of the bank failures and related business failures mentioned before. Those are a start. I can think of dozens more, like whether they really believe people should rely on charity when they’ve lost their job, their retirements and their homes. Whether they really believe college students should come out of school with debt the size of a mortgage. Lots more. But I’ll start with these. And I want specifics. How about you?
Continue reading …The Family Research Center conducted their own straw poll, which is made up of the James Dobson faction of the religious right – and lo and behold the winner was Ron Paul. That should be a significant victory for Paul, but Tony Perkins, their new leader and Value Voters organizer dismissed Paul’s victory as an outlier and in essence denounced his own voters and the legitimacy of his own poll. The “Values Voter” summit was held in Washington this past weekend. The event was sponsored by The Family Research Council, a social conservative group. The weekend got off to a rousing start Friday night when Robert Jeffress, a prominent Texas pastor, criticized Mitt Romney and his faith, calling Mormonism a “cult.” And in the Values Voter straw poll, Rep. Ron Paul came out on top with 37 percent of the vote. This morning on American Morning, CNN’s Carol Costello talks with Tony Perkins, the president of the Family Research Council, about Jeffress’ controversial remarks and why he believes Ron Paul’s straw poll win is insignificant. He was so ridiculous that the TeaNN host just laughed at his rationale for dissing Paul’s win. Costello: So Ron Paul probably means nothing and Herman Cain does. Perkins Well, this is…the majority of the people came there for a summit to hear all of the candidates. They didn’t come there to support a particular candidate. They came to listen to the candidate and express their preference. Ron Paul bused in over six hundred people on Saturday morning not to attend a conference, but to just to hear his speech and vote. There was early news made at this summit when Pastor Jeffress openly attacked Mitt Romney’s Mormon faith by calling it a “cult.” The results of the straw poll show a couple of other bad signs for Romney, the Republican Villagers choice for the nomination. First, the type of evangelical that is attracted to the FRC does indeed not trust Romney’s religion at all and secondly, he finishes behind everyone one of the remaining GOP candidates outside of Gingrich, who align themselves with religion. Well, they all pander there, but still. Not good, Mittens. Paul 37% Cain; 23% Santorum: 16% Perry: 8% Bachmann: 8% Romney: 4% Gingrich: 3% Cain’s strong showing is also indicative of the dissatisfaction the right-wing base has with its field and with Romney in general. Perry’s immigration stand has eroded his support entirely in the Christian community and put his bid in terrible jeopardy for the nomination. So, they are trying to show America that they aren’t racists this early in the process and are flocking to Cain, even though he has no chance of winning.
Continue reading …Timothy Noah gets through this entire post , noting that even the tea partiers mostly agree with tax hikes, and is still wondering why Republican officials are so out of step with most Republican voters — without mentioning the famous pledge to Pope Grover. Nobody likes a primary challenge, Tim! This has been said before but it cannot be said enough. Republican presidential candidates and Republican members of Congress are out of touch with Republican voters on the necessity of raising taxes to reduce the budget deficit. A Washington Post -Bloomberg News poll conducted Oct. 6-9 found that 68 percent of all voters and 54 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning voters favored raising taxes on incomes above $250,000 (i.e., the Obama plan) to tackle the deficit. On the question of whether to reduce Social Security or Medicare benefits to reduce the deficit, 83 and 82 percent, respectively, of all voters opposed. For Republicans and Republican-leaners, these proportions were only slightly lower: 79 and 77 percent , respectively. Entitlement spending will have to be cut, of course, to reduce the deficit, because entitlement spending represents a majority of all federal spending. (Only one-fifth of federal spending resides in the “non-defense discretionary” category currently being whittled to the bone.) But that option is pretty unpopular with just about everyone and it is therefore politically unwise for Republican politicians to try to balance the budget through spending cuts alone. It’s also economically insane to contemplate hacking away at government spending at this particular moment, when unemployment is stuck above 9 percent and the median income is dropping like a stone . As my grade-school friend Daniel Alpert, managing partner of Westwood Capital, writes in a new report for the New America Foundation coauthored by Robert Hockett of Cornell Law School and New York University economist Nouriel Robini:”Under existing conditions of weak global demand, austerity would simply lead to a vicious circle of yet weaker demand, weaker investment, more unemployment, and still weaker demand, ad infinitum – the familiar “downward spiral” of all “great” depressions wrought by the “paradox of thrift.” This is especially true if austerity is pursued simultaneously in Europe and the United States, as now is in real danger of happening owing to European measures that are just as wrong-headed as now-voguish American ones. And if the emerging economies in Asia and elsewhere begin to experience slower growth rates, as is now being projected, U.S. austerity will do yet more damage.” Have a nice day!
Continue reading …Mitt Romney gave his first big foreign policy speech of the campaign today, going strong on American exceptionalism. Full text here . Some parts being highlighted by the Washington Post and Boston Globe : “This century must be an American century. In an American century, America leads the free world and the…
Continue reading …Two graduate students say they think they’ve solved a public health riddle that has stumped researchers over the years–why Hispanic people in America tend to live longer their white neighbors, even though they are, on average, poorer and less educated. Income and education are directly correlated to longevity, so this exception has had scientists scratching
Continue reading …The media said there was “good” but “not great” news on the unemployment front in September with 103,000 jobs added, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The unemployment rate remained 9.1 percent. But even with that growth, Obama's jobs promises have fallen far short . His economic policies were supposed to create 4 million jobs by the end of 2010. Now, ten months later the economy is still dealing with net job losses of 2,229,000 since February 2009. Adding to that the 4 million promised jobs and Obama's administration is 10 months late and 6,229,000 jobs shy of meeting its job creation claims. With slightly over a year left in his term, America would have to average about 390,000 new jobs every month for Obama to see that many jobs created. Tom Blumer of BizzyBlog noticed that even with the uptick in job growth in September, when seasonally adjusted, jobs are trending downward . Unemployment is a huge concern for Americans right now. In September, Gallup found that it overtook “the economy” as “the most important problem facing this country today.” The president has been campaigning to spend another $447 billion to fix the jobs problem, after his first $787 billion stimulus failed to solve the unemployment crisis. In September, the 9.1 percent unemployment rate was rarely mentioned in 'jobs' stories on the network news. The Business & Media Institute analyzed 79 stories on the broadcast evening news programs that mentioned “job” or “jobs” between Sept. 1 and Sept. 26 and found only 18 ( 23 percent ) of them actually mentioned the 9.1 percent rate or said that unemployment was above 9 percent. Stories about “job” approval, people doing their “job” and other non-economic references were not counted. Just as the networks have downplayed the high unemployment and looked for hopeful signs on jobs during much of the Obama presidency, reporters continued to find “good news” about unemployment to talk about last month. CBS “Evening News” anchor Scott Pelley shared ” a little bit of good news on jobs ” on Sept. 7, 2011. He led into a report about Obama's proposed jobs plan by optimistically reporting that in July there were 3.2 million job openings posted by employers. “That's the most in nearly three years,” Pelley said without noting the huge shortfall between available jobs and the roughly 14 million who were unemployed in August.
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Click here to view this media Did you know that Erin Burnett has her own show on CNN? I saw Digby’s post about it and I got nauseous. I do remember Matthews has a creepy crush on the ex-CNBCer and her telling us that we should be happy China puts lead in their toys and poisons the food we eat back in 2007: CNBC’s Erin Burnett: We Need China’s Toxic Food And Lead Coated Toys To Keep Economy Strong Burnett: A lot of people like to say, uh, scaremonger about China, right? A lot of politicians, and I know you talk about that issue all the time. I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. Ya know, if China were to revalue it’s currency or China is to start making say, toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So, I would say China is our greatest friend right now, they’re keeping prices low and they’re keeping the prices for mortgages low, too.” Yes, she worked for CNBC, the network that Jon Stewart chewed up and spit out for their negligent reporting of the financial markets leading up to the great collapse. He made Jim Cramer cry a few days later. (Click the links to see the videos) Well here comes Erin Burnett. She wants to see what all the fuss if so she goes down to Occupy Wall Street to get to the bottom of this new populist uprising in her shiny new show on CNN. She loves Wall Street since it’s been her beat for a long time and by the way, guess who her new hubby is going to be ? Anyway, she thinks she’s entertaining by taking a glib, mocking approach to the protesters because she doesn’t see the point in it. Hey, monies got paid back to TARP, shouldn’t you be protesting GM? She asks a protester. Yea, people are really happy that they are out of work in a horrible economy, with good educations since she was interviewing an out of work software designer while the bankers hoard their profits and Wall Street pays out record bonuses to themselves after collapsing the global economy without having to pay a penalty for their crimes. Don’t worry, she’s keeping track of the numbers. CNN just added another smug mouthed pundit, who lives a gainfully employed life because she’s shilled for Wall Street her entire career and has the audacity to use a cheery smile on camera to try to make fools of the pain America feels. She then mocks Michael Moore because he found her segment childish. How does she mock him? By putting on some weird glasses trying to imitate some protesters who were wearing costumes in occupy New York and asks Moore to not be so serious, I think. Here’s the transcript. I have more video afterwards. MICHAEL MOORE, FILMMAKER: I just don’t understand that piece, you know, that new show. These companies, these banks, Goldman Sachs up here, they took billions and billions of dollars of citizens’ money, and they ask us to pay for their crime and we’re supposed to be OK because some of them have paid some of it back with interest. I mean, it just boggles the mind. (END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: So, Moore was upset, specifically because of this exchange between me and software developer, Dan, who when I asked him why he was there, said because taxpayers lost money on the bank bailout called TARP. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: What do you do for a living? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I’m a software developer. BURNETT: Software developer? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes. BURNETT: Currently employed or unemployed? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unemployed, we like to call it. BURNETT: Unemployed. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It’s called “Occupy Wall Street.” BURNETT: So, do you know taxpayers actually made money on the Wall Street bailout? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was unaware of that. BURNETT: Not on G.M. But they did on the Wall Street part of bailout. Does that make you feel any differently? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I would have to do more research about it. BURNETT: If I were right, it might? UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, sure. (END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: OK. Sure, that was sort of funny. But as I said last night, Dan was an earnest person and he wanted facts. And the best we can do all is have accurate information and then have serious conversations, like right now maybe you take me seriously, but now, not so much. So, Michael Moore, come on, please, come OUTFRONT. Let’s have some fun.. What the hell is she talking about? This isn’t a game. People are suffering. Not her or her fiance or her bankster friends of course. If they don’t understand the markets like Burnnett says she does, that’s not the point. Wall Street had their debts wiped clean after bilking the public with their corrupt mortgage scandal, which included all sectors including the rating agencies while millions of Americans houses were foreclosed on and forced out of work.
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Steve Jobs of Apple talks about how he’s tried to live his life, and how health concerns got him thinking about death. His words were part of a commencement address at Stanford University in 2005. Jobs died on Wednesday. He was 56. (Oct. 6)
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Much like Walt Disney, the legacy of America’s great entrepreneur, Steve Jobs, is strong. But is it powerful enough to keep Apple moving ahead with as much force as it has over the past decade? Robert Ray reports from Chicago. (Oct. 6)
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enlarge Take that pitchfork down to Wall Street, man! Good news, my fellow Americans: You don’t have enjoy drum circles or want to free Mumia to support Occupy Wall Street! And there’s a simple reason for this: Our political and economic elites have screwed all of us, not just out-of-work twenty-somethings. How have they done this, you ask? Let us count the ways: First, our political and business leaders have cheered on the decimation of America’s manufacturing industries through trade pacts that open up American workers to competition from countries where workers have no rights and are paid something like negative-five billion cents per year. This has not only led to the destruction of millions of middle-class jobs but has given America an absurd current-account deficit where we basically import cheap crap from China and don’t make much of anything ourselves anymore. See this graph: enlarge At the same time our politicians and business leaders pursued policies that benefited the super rich at the expense of everyone else. Think income tax cuts, capital gains tax cuts, the repeal of Glass-Stegall , the deregulation of derivatives and the creation of a billion-zillion-katrillion loopholes in the tax code that let the super rich get away with paying fewer and fewer taxes. The result has, quite predictably, been a rise in income inequality See this graph: enlarge To cover up the stink of good jobs disappearing and real wages stagnating, our politicians and business leaders assured us not to worry since we had access to all kinds of cheap crap and, even better, we could exponentially expand our credit through the miracles of modern finance! So even if you go deeper and deeper into debt to maintain your lifestyles and to pay for college and medical expenses, don’t sweat it! You can always take out a home equity line of credit to pay the bills since home prices always, always, always go upupup and you can just sell your house for a higher price if all else fails! See this graph: enlarge Except… ooops. Housing prices are plummeting… enlarge …and now you’re stuck with a paying a mortgage on a house that is worth far, far less than it was just last year. (Note to my conservative friends: This isn’t just a subprime problem for shifty inner-city layabouts. One-third of all prime mortgage loan borrowers are underwater as well.) And this, then, is more or less the face of America in 2011: We’re basically a nation of former factory workers who now work as Walmart greeters. As if that weren’t bad enough, we are getting tossed out of our homes and are living in fear of coming down with any sort of illness because our crappy part-time job doesn’t provide us with health insurance. And the reason we got ourselves into this mess in the first place is because we followed the advice of our best and brightest business and political leaders. I mean, if you can’t get pissed off about that you can’t get pissed off about anything.
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