Tag Archives: The Economy

Newt Gingrich: Obama Is So Bad, Black People Will Vote Republican

More delusional rhetoric from  the delusional Newt Gingrich and the delusional GOP.

Whatever happened to reality based Politics?  Politics used to be the ultimate game for realists, now it’s the province of liars, misfits, miscreants, the mal-adjusted and, as Cher sang, Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves- at least on the GOP side…

The Dems sometimes seem to be trying to catch up….

From TalkingPointsMemo:

 

Newt Gingrich fired up the crowd in this blue state with the promise that President Obama is so bad that he’s made it possible for the Republicans to win over the African American vote in 2012.

Gingrich stopped off at an airport Marriott near Baltimore Thursday to keynote the Maryland GOP’s annual Red, White & Blue banquet. Before the speech, he assured reporters that his campaign was still going strong. When he took the podium, he offered Republican donors a long, dense speech full of red meat and warnings about the state of the world around us.

He also said it was time for Republicans to tell African Americans how terrible Obama has been for them.

He broke out the “Obama is the food stamp president” line that got him in racial trouble earlier in the campaign.

But this time, he spun the line into a suggestion that the African American vote is ripe for the plucking.

Here’s how the line works: Obama is the food stamp president, Gingrich says, whereas he wants to be the paycheck president. The difference comes down to creating jobs or not, and Gingrich says he knows how to create them.

And that’s where the black vote comes in.

“No administration in modern times has failed younger blacks more than the Obama administration,” Gingrich said.

He explained that “in May, we had 41% unemployment among black teenagers in America.” That means if Republicans can put on a brave face, they might be able to turn the African American vote their way.

Think of the social catastrophe of 41% of a community not being able to find a job. But we have to have the courage to walk into that neighborhood, to talk to that preacher, to visit that small business, to talk to that mother. And we have to have a convincing case that we actually know how to create jobs.

“The morning they believe that, you’re going to see margins in percents you never dreamed of decide there’s a better future,” Gingrich said. “It takes courage, it takes hard work, it takes discipline and it’s doable.”

“I will bet you there is not a single precinct in this state in which the majority will pick for their children food stamps over paychecks,” he said.

Gingrich isn’t the only Republican on the trail talking up Obama’s failures when it comes to minority populations. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) told an audience of Republicans in New Orleans that Obama “has failed the African American community” on jobs. She said that he’s failed the Latino community — which is also suffering from record unemployment — as well.

Most of Gingrich’s speech wasn’t about wooing minority votes. He spent much of his time on stage talking about a coming “tsunami of violence” from terrorists and warning that Obama’s “vision of the American Constitution is a mortal threat to our freedoms.”

via Newt Gingrich: Obama Is So Bad, Black People Will Vote Republican | TPMDC.

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Back in the USSR?

Interesting article from AlterNet.com that compares U.S. expenditures to European expenditures.

The U.S. spending supports a vast military industrial complex with Military spending being by far the largest part of the budget.  European countries focus on spending money on health care, education, transportation and improving the quality of life for its citizens.

Remember, one of the reasons the USSR collapsed was pouring too large a portion of their budget into “defense” or military spending.  Are we back in the USSR?

I much prefer the European model.  Let’s spend our tax money making the U.S. the most modern country on earth with the highest quality of life for its citizens.

Russia still hasn’t recovered from the collapse of the USSR.

Have we in the USA learned anything from it?

 

For their tax dollars –or euros — they get universal health care, deeply subsidized education (including free university tuition in many countries), modern infrastructure, good mass transit and far less poverty than we have here at home. That may help explain why we have Tea Partiers screaming for cuts while Europe is ablaze with riots against its own “austerity” measures.

And while we outspend everyone on our military, among the 20 most developed countries in the world, the United States is now dead last in life expectancy at birth but leads the pack in infant mortality—40 percent higher than the runner-up. We also lead in the percentage of the population who will die before reaching age 60. Half of our kids need food stamps at some point during their childhoods. There’s certainly a modest difference in priorities dividing the Atlantic, but common sense suggests that we’re the ones who have it all wrong.

via Are We Giant Suckers? While the US Blows Money on the Military, Europe Spends Dough on Social Programs | | AlterNet.

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Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops

God forbid, a White Person pick a crop in Georgia!  That’s unheard of!  What were the Republicans in the Georgia Legislature thinking?

Oh, I should know by now not to use the words “thinking” and “Republican” in the same sentence…

Still, It’s really scary to see the results when the GOP actually gets to put their plans in action…

People really should realize by now that “Friends Don’t Let Friends Vote Republican.”

That is, if they want a job and a home tomorrow and don’t want to eat cat food in their old age…

Or now, if they want food in the Grocery Store….

From Megan McArdle in The Atlantic:

Jay Bookman provides some unsurprising news about Georgia’s illegal immigration crackdown: there are unintended, negative consequences.

After enacting House Bill 87, a law designed to drive illegal immigrants out of Georgia, state officials appear shocked to discover that HB 87 is, well, driving a lot of illegal immigrants out of Georgia…

Thanks to the resulting labor shortage, Georgia farmers have been forced to leave millions of dollars’ worth of blueberries, onions, melons and other crops unharvested and rotting in the fields. It has also put state officials into something of a panic at the damage they’ve done to Georgia’s largest industry….

The results of that investigation have now been released. According to survey of 230 Georgia farmers conducted by Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, farmers expect to need more than 11,000 workers at some point over the rest of the season, a number that probably underestimates the real need, since not every farmer in the state responded to the survey.

The economics here aren’t particularly complicated, and I’m sure they won’t be new to the sophisticated readers of the Atlantic, but they are useful to look at and consider explicitly when thinking about issues like this.

It goes like this. If you’re not going to let illegal immigrants do the jobs they are currently being hired to do, then farmers will have to raise wages to replace them. Since farmers are taking a risk in hiring immigrant workers, you can bet they were getting a significant deal on wage costs relative to “market wages”. I put market wages here in quotations, because it’s quite possible that the wages required to get workers to do the job are so high that it’s no longer profitable for farmers to plant the crops in the first place.

via Georgia’s Harsh Immigration Law Costs Millions in Unharvested Crops – Megan McArdle – Business – The Atlantic.

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CEO of Walmart Makes in One Hour What the Average Employee Makes In a Year

Lots of good articles up at Alternet.com today and this is one of them…

This just isn’t right….

Another reason for me to keep up my 12+ year boycott of Wal-Mart….

The crowd in DC seems to have forgotten you can’t have a healthy economy without a healthy middle class.  Try as they might, the Rich just can’t buy everything…

S. Robson “Rob” Walton, Walmart chairman, has a net worth of about $19.7 billion. And he’s only number 9 on the list of 2010’s top 20 richest Americans.

Walmart workers, meanwhile, make around $8.75 an hour—about $18,000 a year. They’d have to work over a million years to approach what the chairman of Walmart Stores is sitting on. Alice and Jim Walton each have about $20 billion, and Christy Walton has $24 billion.

Last year Jonathan Turley noted that the CEO of Walmart, Michael Duke, makes his average employee’s yearly salary every hour.

A new report by the Washington Post on “Breakaway Wealth” contains new research by economists Jon Bakija, Adam Cole and Bradley T. Heim, who analyzed tax returns from the top 0.1 percent of earners in the U.S. That top percentile takes home more than 20 percent of the personal income in the country, and their average income is $5.4 million. The average income of the bottom 90 percent, according to the Post, is just $31,244.

via CEO of Walmart Makes in One Hour What the Average Employee Makes In a Year: How Skyrocketing Inequality Is Hurting America | | AlterNet.

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PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality

It’s probably too late to talk any sense into the GOP Congress and the Democratic enablers, but this just might make a difference…

I’ve been saying all along, they are doing exactly the opposite of what needs to be done to drive an economic recovery.  You have to spend to create jobs, which will increase purchasing power to drive demand for consumer goods and increase tax revenues.

You worry about deficits once the economy has recovered. And the deficit will be a much smaller problem as increased revenues from taxes-income and sales- will ease the burden on state, local and federal governments.

Then you repeal the Bush tax cuts, end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, remove the cap on Social Security withholding taxes and it’s all fixed.

Why don’t they just listen to me?  And Paul Krugman. And now, Bill Gross…

From TalkingPointsMemo:

 

One of the most influential investors in the world of finance has a message for lawmakers — particularly conservative lawmakers — on Capitol Hill: rejoin the real world.

In a prospectus for clients, Bill Gross, a co-founder of investment management giant PIMCO, says members’ of Congress incessant focus on deficit — and in particular, the manner in which they obsess about deficits — is foolhardy, and a recipe for disaster. What the country needs, Gross said, is real stimulus now, and a measured return toward fiscal balance in the years ahead.

More:   PIMCO Founder To Deficit-Obsessed Congress: Get Back To Reality | TPMDC.

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Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into Talking Deficit Over Jobs

I could not agree more….

This says everything I’ve been thinking….

It’s always a pleasant surprise to see some DC Democrats talking a little sense…

God knows, the GOP never will….

From RawStory.com:

Urging the administration to enact new measures to lower the unemployment rate, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) said President Barack Obama got “snookered” by Republicans into prioritizing deficits over jobs.

“I am concerned about the Obama administration’s approach on this,” Harkin, the chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told The Hill in an interview published Friday. “It always has been about jobs. I think the administration kind of got snookered talking about the deficit and the debt after the last election.”

Amidst growing economic anxieties, Harkin joined Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) in calling for additional stimulus spending in the form of a major infrastructure package.

“The last election was about jobs and the economy, and now we’re in a position where we really do need some economic pump-priming by the federal government,” Harkin told the paper.

Job creation in May was the lowest since last September as the unemployment rate rose to 9.1 percent. The Obama administration has — under intense pressure from Republicans — shifted its focus from job creation to deficit reduction this year, against the vocal objections of progressive economics and polls that say the public is far more concerned about jobs than the debt.

via Key Dem Senator: Obama ‘snookered’ by GOP into talking deficit over jobs | The Raw Story.

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House Republicans Cut Food Assistance For Low-Income Families While Protecting Azaleas

I mean, I love azaleas, but really…..

From HuffingtonPost.com:

If you’re an azalea at the National Arboretum, you’re in luck — a Republican on the House Appropriations Committee is looking out for you. If you’re a woman, infant or child, however, you’re on your own.

Slipped into the FY 2012 agriculture appropriations bill that the House is expected to take up today is an unusual provision on page 13 requiring the National Arboretum to maintain a very specific portion of its azalea collection.

“The Committee directs the National Arboretum to maintain its National Boxwood Collection and the Glenn Dale Hillside portion of the Azalea Collection,” reads the bill. “The Committee encourages the National Arboretum to work collaboratively with supporters of the National Arboretum to raise additional funds to ensure the long-term viability of these and other important collections.”

While azaleas are being carefully tended to, the bill would cut $832 million from a program that provides food assistance to low-income mothers and children. The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities estimates that the reduction could result in as many as 475,000 people being turned away from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) if food prices continue to rise.

“Everyday people across the country leave their homes in search of work, only to return at the end of the day with more worries and less hope,” said Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.), the agriculture subcommittee’s ranking member. “At a time that people continue to struggle to make ends meet, Republicans want to cut funding to food programs that are helping put food on the tables of those most in need.”

“Governing is about choices. It is clear where the House majority’s priorities lie — and it is not with those of the American people,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), a strong WIC advocate, in a statement. “These cuts are unconscionable and will not only hurt families trying to survive, but also hurt our economy.”

“We understand that we have an obligation to get our fiscal house in order,” added Farr. “And Democrats are ready to work with our friends across the isle to make that happen, but not by discriminately targeting those most in need.”

Azalea upkeep isn’t the only unusual measure in the bill:

via House Republicans Cut Food Assistance For Low-Income Families While Protecting Azaleas.

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How to Sabotage a Recovery – The Great Recession – Salon.com

I think History will identify this as the key mistake of the Obama Presidency:  Letting the GOP set the debate on cost cutting during a time we needed the government to invest to grow jobs and the economy.  It’s the same mistake FDR initially made…not to mention Herbert Hoover.  But FDR recovered and I’m still hopeful Obama will, too.

I’ve also finally decided the Republicans are nothing short of evil and are certainly unpatriotic.  They are almost reaching the point of treason in their quest to destroy the Middle Class.

Their goal really is to sabotage the Economic Recovery in order to gain Political Power- then to use that power only to serve the Rich and the Corporate Elite.  The GOP certainly isn’t focused on what is good for the Country as a whole…

And I don’t know what President Obama is thinking to let them get away with this…

I think he should start by listening less to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and more to Nobel-Prize-Winning Economist Paul Krugman….

Or maybe do something novel, for Washington, like listen to the people.

Polls show the people want jobs, safe Social Security and Medicare and most don’t really give a damn about the deficits right now…

Only the GOP and the Tea Party are talking deficits…

From Salon.com:

Regarding the economy, Obama has let his opponents set the terms of debate, resulting in widespread public confusion. Consider, for example, the following two paragraphs from a recent Newsweek/Daily Beast article called “America the Angry”:

“By almost 4-to-1, Americans say our economy is not delivering the jobs we need, 81 percent to 12 percent.

“And Obama isn’t helping. Fifty percent of respondents think the president has no real plan to balance the budget; 40 percent say he does.”

Balance the budget during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? Should Obama repeat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s bad mistake of 1937, when “budget hawks” prevailed, very nearly stifling the New Deal?

That’s certainly what the GOP wants. Whether leading Republicans actually believe that returning to the economic practices of the 1920s would be good for the nation is hard to say. Some may be pretending.

The House’s freshman contingent appears sincerely misguided. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof asks sarcastically if what Tea Partyers want is a low-tax, limited government haven of conservative religious values like … Pakistan.

Not really. What most have in mind is something more like the Deep South of the 1950s — an imagined paradise with comfortable “aristocrats,” a timid middle class, and beaten-down peasants at each other’s throats.

Many of them probably saw “The Andy Griffith Show” as a documentary.

via How to sabotage a recovery – Great Recession | Economic Recession, Economic Crisis – Salon.com.

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Baby Boomers Can’t Retire and Millennials Can’t Start Careers

It’s the Economy, stupid…

Our generation- the Boomers- saw pensions disappear into 401K’s that have been hard hit by the economic troubles of the last few years.

And now the Republicans want to phase out Medicare and Social Security….

I guess we’ll all end up sitting at Drive-Through Windows saying ” Can I super size that for you?” until we fall over dead….

And block the younger folks from getting that job at the Drive-Through as that seems to be the only type of job the Economy is creating now…

We certainly can’t afford to leave our Corporate jobs until they put us out…

From the National Journal:

It’s hard to say this spring whether it’s more difficult for the class of 2011 to enter the labor force or for the class of 1967 to leave it.

Students now finishing their schooling—the class of 2011—are confronting a youth unemployment rate above 17 percent. The problem is compounding itself as those collecting high school or college degrees jostle for jobs with recent graduates still lacking steady work. “The biggest problem they face is, they are still competing with the class of 2010, 2009, and 2008,” says Matthew Segal, cofounder of Our Time, an advocacy group for young people.

At the other end, millions of graying baby boomers—the class of 1967—are working longer than they intended because the financial meltdown vaporized the value of their homes and 401(k) plans. For every member of the millennial generation frustrated that she can’t start a career, there may be a baby boomer frustrated that he can’t end one.

Cumulatively, these forces are inverting patterns that have characterized the economy since Social Security and the spread of corporate pensions transformed retirement.

via NationalJournal.com – Upside Down – Friday, June 10, 2011.

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Professor: Value Of College Extends Beyond Paychecks

As the product of and a firm believer in a Liberal Arts Education, this article really spoke to me.

My father and I fought constantly about my majors in College.  He wanted me to major in Business, which bored the hell out of me, and I wanted a Liberal Arts Degree in History.

I won.  And I’ve done just fine…

And I wouldn’t have given up the experience of being exposed to so many new and different things and learning to look at the world in through new lenses and filters.

I firmly believe the purpose of College is to learn new things, learn to be open to new thoughts and be exposed to different ways of seeing the world.  It’s about learning to question, learning to think critically and learning to make fact-based decisions.

It’s not about making money.  That will come if you know how to think, grow and plan…

From NPR:

Many American families are asking whether sending their children to college is worth it if they end up in jobs that pay less than the cost of tuition.

Mike Rose, a professor of education at UCLA, says it makes complete sense for people to be concerned about the economic benefits of college.

“We respond to the threat that’s most imminent, right?” Rose tells Weekend Edition Saturday host Scott Simon.

But, he says, there are many other reasons to get a college education.

Rose, the author of Why School? and other books, cites the idea of intellectual growth — “not just learning things to make a living, but also learning things to enable you to do things with your life, to enable you to find interests and pursuits that may in some way or another expand the way we see things.”

There are also social benefits, he says: learning to think together, learning to attack problems together, learning how to disagree.

“One of the great things about bringing so many people together in this common space,” he says, “is that you’re almost forced to have to deal with and encounter people who see the world in a very different way from your own, ways that you maybe never even thought of.”

Rose points to the Jeffersonian ideal that having a functioning democracy requires having an educated citizenry. The concept may be difficult to appreciate when one is working as a barista, he says, but that might be exactly the time when a person should be thinking about it.

“You know, to be able to think about our economic situation in some kind of an analytical and sophisticated way is not something that comes easy,” he says, “and I think it does come with study.”

Rose says that if we preach only the economic payoff of education, we affect what and how we teach.

“It ends up affecting the way we define what it means to be educated,” he says. “That’s pretty important stuff to be thinking about in a free society.”

via Professor: Value Of College Extends Beyond Paycheck : NPR.

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