Tag Archives: Republicans

May 4, 2011 · 9:28 pm

The Associated Press: Americans 45 and older are new voting-age majority

Uh, maybe the GOP should have read this before they went after Medicare…

But I’m glad they didn’t….

I’ve said it many times:  Demographic trends are against the Republicans in the longterm.  We just have to survive them in the short term….

From the AP:

For the first time, Americans 45 and older make up a majority of the voting-age population, giving older Americans wider influence in elections as the U.S. stands divided over curtailing Medicare and other benefits for seniors.

Along with the information about the growing influence of older adults, preliminary census estimates also show a decline in the number of married couples with children, slight growth in household size and a rapid rise in the number of Mexicans.

The findings, based on the latest publicly available government data, offer a preview of trends that will be detailed in the next round of 2010 census results being released this month that focus on age, household relationships and racial subgroups.

As a whole, the numbers point to a rapidly graying nation driven largely by the nation’s 78 million baby boomers, who are now between the ages of 46 and 65 and looking ahead to retirement.

“The center of American politics gets older,” said E. Mark Braden, a former chief counsel to the Republican National Committee who now advises elected officials and state legislatures. “Given the current fiscal concerns, it’s going to be a test case whether Republicans or Democrats can talk about entitlement reform without getting killed” politically.

via The Associated Press: Americans 45 and older are new voting-age majority.

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April 30, 2011 · 10:57 am

Your Pain, Their Gain: How High Gas Prices Impoverish The Many While Enriching The Few

Can someone.  Anyone.  Justify why the Republicans- and some Democrats- still vote for Government subsidies for Gas and Oil companies?

Talk about Socialism….

They are redistributing the wealth from everyday Americans to the Oil Companies and their rich stockholders and management teams….

The next time you’re gritting your teeth as you fill your tank with $4 gas, here’s something to consider: Your pain is their gain.

The last of the Big Five oil companies announced first-quarter earnings Friday, so the totals are in. Between the five of them, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips made $34 billion in profits in the first three months of 2011 — up 42 percent from a year ago.

That’s about $110 for every man, woman, and child in the United States — in just three months.

Exxon alone cleared a cool $10.7 billion profit from January through March, up 69 percent from 2010. That’s $82,175 a minute.

Why the staggering increase in earnings? Precisely because you’re paying $4 a gallon for gas.

via Your Pain, Their Gain: How High Gas Prices Impoverish The Many While Enriching The Few.

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April 29, 2011 · 6:47 pm

In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High

The party’s over…

About half of Americans, 47%, now have an unfavorable image of the Tea Party movement, the highest since it emerged on the national scene.

Gallup began tracking Americans’ views of the Tea Party in March 2010, when 37% had a favorable and 40% an unfavorable view. Those views stayed roughly the same through January of this year, but have now turned somewhat more negative. The April 20-23 USA Today/Gallup poll finds favorable opinions of the Tea Party movement dropping to 33%, from 39% in January, and unfavorable opinions rising to 47% from 42%. Twenty percent of Americans say they haven’t heard of the Tea Party or have no opinion of it.

via In U.S., Negative Views of the Tea Party Rise to New High.

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April 28, 2011 · 9:19 pm

A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair

Fair is Fair….

If he’s going to challenge President Obama’s legitimacy as an American Citizen, this seems to be the least he can do….

If Trump intends to declare his candidacy for the presidency, as he has so often threatened, the issue of his comb-over could become a constitutional matter. In the interest of putting this controversy to rest, Vanity Fair demands that Trump release a notarized certificate from a barber proving the veracity of his hair. In the event that significant members of the Balder community question the validity of the notarized certificate, we insist that Trump submit to air, wind, and Dutch rub tests to be administered by an independent board-certified hair-care expert that will debunk, once and for all, these corrosive conspiracy theories.

via A Vanity Fair Challenge to Donald Trump to Prove the Authenticity of His Hair | Politics | Vanity Fair.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:43 pm

The shocking truth about the birthplace of Obama’s policies – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post

Great article from Ezra Klein in The Washington Post…

He points out that the positions President Obama and the Democrats are taking are the same positions the Republicans once had…

Shows how far to the Right everything in Washington has moved over the last couple of years…

If you put aside the emergency measures required by the financial crisis, three major policy ideas have dominated American politics in recent years: a health-care plan that uses an individual mandate and tax subsidies to achieve near-universal coverage; a cap-and-trade plan that attempts to raise the prices of environmental pollutants to better account for their costs; and bringing tax rates up from their Bush-era lows as part of a bid to reduce the deficit. In each case, the position that Obama and the Democrats have staked out is the very position that moderate Republicans staked out in the early ’90s — and often, well into the 2000s.

via The shocking truth about the birthplace of Obama’s policies – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:36 pm

Cagey Obama Sets an Election Trap for Paul Ryan and the Koch Bros. | | AlterNet

Very smart Politics….

From Alternet.com:

By baiting Ryan to present his budget plan before the administration unveiled its own, Obama deftly played Ryan’s own star-pupil, parent-pleasing nature against the eager Wisconsinite. When the president unveiled his own budget plan at a televised speech two weeks ago in Washington, he invited Ryan as his guest, and then issued a broadside against Ryan’s plan, saying it was “less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.”

“There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires,” Obama continued, as Ryan looked helpless on. “And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill. That’s not a vision of the America I know.”

The Republican was clearly taken aback. “When the president reached out to ask us to attend his speech, we were expecting an olive branch,” Ryan told McClatchy Newspapers. “Instead, his speech was excessively partisan, dramatically inaccurate, and hopelessly inadequate to address our fiscal crisis. What we heard today was not fiscal leadership from our commander-in-chief; we heard a political broadside from our campaigner-in-chief.”

Since then, Obama has continued to hammer away at Ryan. On the campaign trail in California, Obama used the words “fairly radical” to describe the Ryan plan.  “I wouldn’t call it particularly courageous,” Obama said.

via Cagey Obama Sets an Election Trap for Paul Ryan and the Koch Bros. | | AlterNet.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:28 pm

GOP Reps Ryan, Webster face furious voters at town halls | Raw Replay

Yep, Political Suicide….

I’ve said before that over-confidence and over-reach would do them in…

I just hope this builds….

In the words of MSNBC host Rachel Madddow, House Republicans are in the midst of a “collective freakout” over the public’s reaction to Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan, which cleared the House right before Congress went on vacation.

Among other items, Ryan’s budget would significantly cut Medicare spending, eventually phasing it out in exchange for a coupon program that would only cover a small percentage of seniors’ medical bills.

Four Republicans voted against it, and not a single Democrat voted for it.

Now, Republicans are starting to catch the anger that Democrats caught in 2009 in the midst of their push for President Obama’s health care reforms. In two of the most recent examples, Reps. Ryan and Webster (R-FL) were confronted by angry crowds demanding to know why they had voted to cut Medicare.

A recent Gallup poll found that the majority of Republicans do not want Medicare to be cut.

via GOP Reps Ryan, Webster face furious voters at town halls | Raw Replay.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:24 pm

Paul Ryan’s plan puts 2012 elderly vote in play – Glenn Thrush and Abby Phillip – POLITICO.com

Like I said, I think the GOP may have just committed Political Suicide….

From Politico.com:

Obama’s 2008 campaign was fueled by youthful enthusiasm and billed as a generational upheaval. But older voters, especially white working-class conservatives, were not a natural hope-and-change crowd, and he lost among seniors by nine points to John McCain. Many of them simply stayed home.

That skepticism, bordering on hostility, has carried over to his presidency.

Over-65 voters have given Obama the lowest marks of any age cohort in every weekly Gallup presidential approval survey taken since Obama took office. Last week, only 36 percent of seniors approved of his performance, seven points less than Obama’s overall approval rating and 12 points lower than his positive rating among 18-to-24 year-olds.

But Ryan’s plan, embraced by most Republicans, gives Obama a big opportunity in 2012 to regain lost ground in key battleground states and narrow the generation gap. “It finally gives us an argument to make with seniors… It’s a godsend,” said a Democratic operative allied with Obama who sees the issue as a way to make up lost ground with seniors in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa and Florida.

via Paul Ryan’s plan puts 2012 elderly vote in play – Glenn Thrush and Abby Phillip – POLITICO.com.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:12 pm

Debt proposals: The Courageous Progressive Caucus Budget | The Economist

I’m glad to see this proposal finally getting some attention….

This is the one that makes real sense and has the right priorities….

And this is from “The Economist” which is not exactly a left-wing publication…

Mr Miller’s column notes that “the  Congressional Progressive Caucus plan wins the fiscal responsibility derby thus far; it reaches balance by 2021 largely through assorted tax hikes and defense cuts.” Which is pretty interesting. Have you ever heard of the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget plan? Neither had I. The caucus’s co-chairs, Raul Grijalva of Arizona and Keith Ellison of Minnesota, released it on April 6th. The budget savings come from defence cuts, including immediately withdrawing from Afghanistan and Iraq, which saves $1.6 trillion over the CBO baseline from 2012-2021. The tax hikes include restoring the estate tax, ending the Bush tax cuts, and adding new tax brackets for the extremely rich, running from 45% on income over a million a year to 49% on income over a billion a year.

Mr Ryan’s plan adds (by its own claims) $6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, but promises to balance the budget by sometime in the 2030s by cutting programmes for the poor and the elderly. The Progressive Caucus’s plan would (by its own claims) balance the budget by 2021 by cutting defence spending and raising taxes, mainly on rich people. Mr Ryan has been fulsomely praised for his courage. The Progressive Caucus has not.

I’m not really sure what “courage” is supposed to mean here, but this seems precisely backwards. For 30 years, certainly since Walter Mondale got creamed by Ronald Reagan, the most dangerous thing a politician can do has been to call for tax hikes. Politicians who call for higher taxes are punished, which is why they don’t do it. I’m curious to see what adjectives people would apply to the Progressive Congressional Caucus’s budget proposal. But it’s hard for me to imagine the media calling a proposal to raise taxes “courageous” and “honest”. And my sense is that the disparate treatment here is a structural bias rooted in class.

via Debt proposals: The courageous Progressive Caucus budget | The Economist.

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April 27, 2011 · 8:18 am

House Republicans Under Attack on Medicare Overhaul – NYTimes.com

Hopefully, the GOP has just committed Political suicide….

It’s starting to sound like it….

In central Florida, a Congressional town meeting erupted into near chaos on Tuesday as attendees accused a Republican lawmaker of trying to dismantle Medicare while providing tax cuts to corporations and affluent Americans.

At roughly the same time in Wisconsin, Representative Paul D. Ryan, the architect of the Republican budget proposal, faced a packed town meeting, occasional boos and a skeptical audience as he tried to lay out his party’s rationale for overhauling the health insurance program for retirees.

In a church theater here on Tuesday evening, a meeting between Representative Allen B. West and some of his constituents began on a chaotic note, with audience members quickly on their feet, some heckling him and others loudly defending him. “You’re not going to intimidate me,” Mr. West said.

After 10 days of trying to sell constituents on their plan to overhaul Medicare, House Republicans in multiple districts appear to be increasingly on the defensive, facing worried and angry questions from voters and a barrage of new attacks from Democrats and their allies.

The proposed new approach to Medicare — a centerpiece of a budget that Republican leaders have hailed as a courageous effort to address the nation’s long-term fiscal problems — has been a constant topic at town-hall-style sessions and other public gatherings during a two-week Congressional recess that provided the first chance for lawmakers to gauge reaction to the plan.

via House Republicans Under Attack on Medicare Overhaul – NYTimes.com.

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