Tariffs do not promote a strong economy. Sure, they are good for whatever industry is being protected, but at the cost of every other industry. For instance, if you put a tariff on steel imports to protect the steel industry you will most likely increase employment or at least save some jobs in the steel industry. But what about every company that uses steel? The tariff you put on steel will increase their cost and make them less competitive and you may well lose jobs in many other industries. Free trade lets everyone do whatever they do best. Comparative advantage.
I'm not saying tariffs alone are the answer, but total laissez faire only results in a race to the bottom.
How much more damaging can it get? Well, it's strong, but it's also intended to make a point. Frankly, I'm sick of this two-faced behavior from my conservative neighbors. To the one, would it be fair to say, "Don't trust him, he's a Republican"? To the other, well, it is something of a pattern: • Heritage Care — The apple of conservatives' eye in '93, and a shining example of private sector potential in Massachusetts, well, now they're not so big on their own idea. As near as anyone can tell, the difference is that a Democrat won the election. • Small Business Tax Cuts — Once a staple of Republican policy and demagoguery operations, the GOP now opposes certain small business tax cuts, even going so far as to denounce them as tax increases. As near as anyone can tell, the difference is that a Democrat won the election. • Small, Non-Intrusive Government — Always a fun talking point for Republicans, since it depends on what one means by "intrusive", Republicans at the state level have gone regulation-bananas in order to push an anti-abortion agenda. It just seems strange that oppressive bureaucracy is a tool Republicans have come to rely on since a Democrat won the election. • War Policy — We must bear in mind that for over seven years, President Bush conducted a war in Afghanistan that had staunch GOP support. This war was deliberately conducted with inadequate numbers to accomplish the task put before it. And let us be clear: Understaffing the Afghan Bush War was a deliberate and calculated decision. President Bush sent our troops to lose a war, and the GOP cheered him on. Add to that the proposition that general pacifism equals sympathy with terrorists (i.e., treasonous outlook), and questions of fact about our wartime disposition—WMD in Iraq? Saddam and 9/11? How many troops do we need for Iraq? How many troops did we send to Afghanistan?—were denounced as anti-American (i.e., treasonous outlook). Surge, surge, surge. Don't cut and run! Well, guess what? Sen. McCain, the 2008 GOP presidential nominee, coincidentally after losing an election to President Obama, seems to think cutting and running, such as the idea was denounced by Republicans, sounds like a fine idea worth considering. And why not? Republicans got what they were after, which was profit for the defense and petroleum industries. Now that they need a cudgel to swing at a Democratic president? Well, now it turns out they don't really like all that stuff they cheered on. And why should they? They sent our troops out to lose a war. How much more damage can they intend than to send our troops to lose a war? No, really. Inflame tensions around the world, create a more dangerous environment for Americans, and intend to lose on top of it all? And now, well, with a Democrat in office, our neighbor is "frankly sick of it". But here's the thing about that: In addition to the Republican habit to mysteriously disdain their own policies when a Democrat holds office, there is also a question of political posturing. Since 1992, the Democrats have accomplished what victories they have in swing and conservative locales by stealing planks from the GOP. Clinton stole Republican economic thunder. And now Obama has stolen Republican defense/national security thunder. The challenge of playing to the conservative and swing locales is that Democrats often have to outflank the conservatives to the right. As you're probably aware, this creates tremendous consternation among the Democratic Party's liberal factions, but that is for another discussion. But even when maneuvering in a more liberal part of the spectrum, Democrats seem happy to drift rightward. How else did Obama win North Carolina and Indiana? How did he win Florida? A Democrat does not win these states by running hard to the left. So, what, then? Our neighbor, as well as the senator from Arizona, have apparently come to see things much more like those of us to the left of the Democratic Party. I would, then, invite you to consider a particular aspect of that: Are Republicans really going to try to outflank Democrats, in both campaign and policy, on the left? Really. How dramatic would such a tack be? Thirty-two years after Reagan raised the spectre of the religious right, the Party moving further and further rightward in order to keep these folks in the fold, and with the Romney campaign banking on that hardline right wing in order to win the election in a battleground-state electoral college showdown, the GOP is suddenly going to try to run to the left of the Democratic Party? I mean, sure, it's possible. But in the question of parsimony and extraordinary propositions, I consider it much more likely that this is simply a desperate and cynical attempt to throw the proverbial kitchen sink at President Obama. So, no, it does not seem likely that this recent GOP enlightenment is actually genuine. And, in holding them to their own standard—you know, before they flipped on it because a Democrat won the election—they are now undermining our war effort in order to blindly swing after the president. By their own standard, the one they were for before they were against because a Democrat won an election, Sen. McCain and our neighbor are sympathizing with the enemy. They are treasonous according to their own standard. Is it a useless, hyperbolic standard? Well, yes. But therein lies the point. If Rep. McDermott earned the denigration "Baghdad Jim" for being factually correct and trying to spare the United States an extraneous war in Iraq that, as it turns out, was also deliberately understaffed according to the willful decision to not win, then, yes, our neighbor gets to be "Taliban Tony". If Republicans genuinely want to run to the left of Democrats, they can have my attention. If it turns out to be a cynical, useless political stunt, well, they are Republicans, so what, really, did I expect? They'll betray their own principles and policies. What reason do I have to take yet another coincidental moment of enlightenment seriously? It's not like they are going to hold that posture any longer than they think necessary to win the next election. Like I said: Isn't that how it always goes?
An ideology which is denies the history and nature of the country, and so seeks to do destructive things to it, you mean. The word for someone who believes such things is exactly "traitor." If there's a sense in which "traitor" is too strong, it's that it implies allegiance to some foreign power. But then the right has long been more than happy to call various other Americans "traitors" for less, so... The GOP has been totally open about their campaign to intentionally damage the country ever since Obama was elected. The ploy seems to be that if they can wreck everything people will somehow blame Obama for that and put them back in charge. You've got Limbaugh and his types openly, publicly disavowing any allegiance to the President of the United States, and pledging fealty to their party and movement instead. Right, he was a tool of traitors. Problem there is in the definition of "country." The object of his reverence and affection seems to exclude a lot of the actual country, its people and its history. This being why the ideology is so destructive.
Well, the efforts to crash the entire federal government and national economy would also have to rank pretty highly...
True enough. But .... Well, yeah. There's that. I still, though, draw a line of distinction 'twixt bad domestic policy and deliberately undermining a war. I'm not about to start trying people for being Republicans. And, frankly, if I could bring the Bush administration to account for its crimes in war, the question of why open Afghanistan with 3,500 troops comes somewhere ... uh ... down the list.
I tend to agree with this, but did not read your link. One point to be considered though needing some corrective "tariff like" offset is that if they produced more cheaply than US can is it due to slave labor Or health damaging conditions Or much higher CO2 release per unit produced Or pollution of waters, Or killing of endangered species, etc. (crimes against humanity and/or the future generations).
I can only agree in the case where such war consists of defending the United States proper from foreign invasion. Undermining an offensive war in a distant country costs us prestige and standing, but isn't a direct threat to the material life of the homeland in the way that, for example, the blocking of effective stimulus during economic crisis or hostage negotiations over the debt ceiling are.
Or currency manipulation. Or massive state subsidies abroad for the industry in question. Those both being things that the WTO can and will approve retaliatory trade sanctions (like tariffs) in response to (unlike child labor or bad workplace regulations or pollution).
A Note on Foreign Policy A Note on Foreign Policy While the Romney campaign has repeatedly dismissed foreign policy as a "distraction", the Republican nominee has managed to repeatedly distract himself by sticking his foot pornographically into his mouth. After botching an incident earlier this year involving Chinese dissident Chen Guancheng, and then buffing Vladimir Putin's ego by calling Russia the foremost enemy of the United States, Mitt Romney managed to make things worse by condemning the American foreign service, quite literally, while it was still under mortal attack on 9/11. And while it was hard to figure what Mitt Romney was thinking while shooting himself in the foot while trying to cram that foot down his own throat, it is actually our international neighbors who have driven the nail: Hundreds of protesters angry over last week's killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya stormed the compound of the Islamic extremist militia suspected in the attack, evicting militiamen and setting fire to their building Friday. In an unprecedented show of public anger at Libya's rampant militias, the crowd overwhelmed the compound of the Ansar Al-Shariah Brigade in the center of the eastern city of Benghazi. Ansar Al-Shariah fighters initially fired in the air to disperse the crowd, but eventually abandoned the site with their weapons and vehicles after it was overrun by waves of protesters shouting "No to militias." (Associated Press) Charles Mudede, of the Seattle weekly tabloid The Stranger, noted: This has caught the US and probably the Arab world by complete surprise. How do you spin this? Arabs protesting for democracy and America. I have never seen anything like it. Muslim radicals rejected by Muslims. Obama for the win. And while the issues here transcend by orders of magnitude the American election season, the implication is obvious: President Obama just scored an ineffably huge foreign policy victory. As Mudede titled his post for the newspaper's blog, "Benghazi Reelects Obama". In a broader context, this particular feather has significance. The allegedly radical leftist Obama has witnessed, on his watch, the stock market's return to its former glory; it's hard to criticize his domestic economic policies as anti-captialist. And now, we add to that a foreign policy moment. Apparently, with Obama having ordered the successful destruction of Osama bin Laden—you know, the guy who organized the destruction of the World Trade Center, a hit against the Pentagon, and a plane crash in Pennsylvania, the same guy that former President Bush wasn't interested in finding—aided the overthrow of Moammar Qadafi, and decapitated Al Qaeda through a program of brutal attacks in Pakistan, the president, in the Republican outlook, had a failed foreign policy outlook. Yesterday, the people of Benghazi, Libya, stood up not only for their own nation, but for the United States and an ambassador who apparently had an awesome factor that went through the roof. It is enough to admit that American electoral politics are cynical. But within such confines, there really isn't much for arguing on Romney's behalf. Even if we set aside his decision to mount a political attack against our foreign service while it was under armed, mortal attack abroad, the people of Benghazi have reiterated simple facts: Muslims are not our enemies; if we treat them with human dignity, so will they treat us. Mitt Romney needs to learn the lesson, and if the Obama election campaign has its wits about it in the morning, they won't take a victory lap. The avenging of His Excellency, Ambassador Chris Stevens, speaks volumes in itself. I do not think it excessive to say that today the United States of America thanks the people of Benghazi, Libya. The effort and resolve shown by our international neighbors deserves our eternal gratitude. We at home should simply take the note, and look forward to tomorrow. ____________________ Notes: Associated Press. "Libyans storm Ansar Al-Shariah compound in backlash after attack on US Consulate". September 21, 2012. FOXNews.com. September 22, 2012. http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/0...-compound-in-backlash-attack-on-us-consulate/ Mudede, Charles. "Benghazi Reelects Obama". Slog. September 22, 2012. Slog.TheStranger.com. September 21, 2012. http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2012/09/21/obama-is-relected
Dr. Jill: "I've seen Joe up close" Dr. Jill: "I've seen Joe up close" Once you cross that line, there's no going back. [video=youtube;IKfH_E-NsFQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKfH_E-NsFQ[/video] I have repeatedly suggested that the Democrats this year seem much more relaxed and comfortable in their campaign than Republicans. I thought this was evident in the conventions, and I do think it's become even more apparent since. And, you know, I think Dr. Biden's introduction of her husband is one of the best examples I've seen. Moments of genuine humanity and levity like this are the sort of things that make politics tolerable. For just a moment, everyone slipped out of campaign mode; the vice president, his wife, the entire assembled crowd. There was no going back, so ... you know ... everyone just rolled with it. And in the long run, when the campaigning is said and done, likability is not a factor that can be easily dismissed.
The Obama Phone I'd assume most of you have seen this video by now: [video=youtube;tpAOwJvTOio]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpAOwJvTOio&feature=player_embedded[/video] The lady comes across as a nutjob, surely Obama isn't giving out free cellphones for votes, is he? Well............. Here's a screen shot from: Obamaphone.net: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! To quote the page: “What exactly is the free Obama phone? The free Obama phone is a program that is meant to help the financially unstable who cannot afford access to a cell phone…” Now if you follow the link on the page to get your free Obama phone, it takes you to: FreeGovernmentCellPhones.net Which is a website devoted to the Lifeline Assistance program which was instituted under Bill Clinton and is funded by a "fee" we all pay on our phonebills (well, except for those of us who have the free Obamaphones). Via this program, people can actually get free cell phones if they qualify. So there was more truth to what the crazy Obamaphone lady said than I'd have thought.
Another Fake Scandal According to the FCC, the Lifeline program arose in 1984, under President Reagan. Elspeth Reeve, considering the question of whether this is another us-vs-them argument by conservatives seeking to inflame racial tensions, notes: Is this Obama Phone phone real? Sort of. The Federal Communications Commission has a program called Lifeline that provides low-cost or free phone service. The agency's website says this is because it and Congress "recognize that telephone service provides a vital link to emergency services, government services and surrounding communities." Who qualifies varies by state, but "in general," to qualify you must have an income that is no more than 135 percent of the federal poverty line, or be enrolled in assistance programs like Medicaid, public housing assistance, discounted school lunch, or yes, food stamps. (This Factcheck.org piece has a good overview of the issue.) Strictly speaking, it's not a government-funded program: the telephone companies make payments to a fund administered by a non-profit called the Universal Service Administrative Company, but anyone with a phone bill chips in through a surcharge on their service. Is the Obama Phone Obama's doing? No. The universal service requirement dates back at least to the Communications Act of 1934. The Lifeline program specifically was started in 1984 under President Reagan and was expanded in 1996 under President Clinton to allow qualifying households to choose to apply the benefit to either a landline or a cell phone. So no, it's not an Obama handout. Shockingly, despite the bipartisan origins of the service, the idea of an "Obama Phone" for the undeserving has existed for a long time. A couple email forwards, debunked by Snopes.com, were circulating in October 2009 and described poor people shamelessly showing off their free phones: Here's another Obama program that we taxpayers are footing the bill for. I had a former employee call me earlier today inquiring about a job, and at the end of the conversation he gave me his phone number. I asked the former employee if this was a new cell phone number and he told me yes this was his "Obama phone." I asked him what an "Obama phone" was and he went on to say that welfare recipients are now eligible to receive (1) a FREE new phone and (2) approx 70 minutes> of FREE minutes every month. I was a little skeptical so I Googled it and low and behold he was telling the truth. TAX PAYER MONEY IS BEING REDISTRIBUTED TO WELFARE RECIPIENTS FOR FREE CELL PHONES. This program was started earlier this year. Enough is enough, the ship is sinking and it's sinking fast. The very foundations that this country was built on are being shaken. The age old concepts of God, family, and hard work have flown out the window and are being replaced with "Hope and Change" and "Change we can believe in." And Snopes reported, in 2010: Also contrary to what is suggested in the example quoted above, LifeLine/Link-Up is not an "Obama program" (i.e., one that was initiated by or during the Obama administration). The LifeLine and Link-Up programs were established by the FCC in 1984 and 1987, respectively, during the administration of Ronald Reagan. The SafeLink Wireless service was launched by TracFone in Tennessee in August 2008 and in Florida in September 2008, months before the election that put Barack Obama in the White House. Reeve's analysis of the racism question is inconclusive, but the underlying question about the Obama Phone scandal is one of truth, and this scandal is a lie. Even FOX News knows it's not an "Obama Phone". Interestingly, when I click on your ObamaPhone.net link, I get a cheap blog run on a WordPress template with no contact information. As near as I can tell, the site is owned by Domains By Proxy, LLC. DBP is owned by a founder of GoDaddy, and directs WHOIS inquiries for a given website to DBP in order to hide the identities of website managers and create a wall between site administrators and people who wish to contact them. I'm not certain ObamaPhone.net is the best example for support of this latest right-wing fake scandal. ____________________ Notes: Federal Communications Commission. Excerpt of MR98 Document. (n.d.) Transition.FCC.gov. September 29, 2012. http://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/Common_Carrier/Reports/FCC-State_Link/Monitor/mr98-2.pdf Reeve, Elspeth. "Just How Racist Is the 'Obama Phone' Video?". The Atlantic Wire. September 27, 2012. TheAtlanticWire.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/just-how-racist-obama-phone-video/57353/ Mikkelson, Barbara, and David P. Mikkelson. "Phone Home". October 20, 2010. Snopes.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.snopes.com/politics/taxes/cellphone.asp Miller, Joshua Rhett. "Viral video touting free 'Obama phone' puts spotlight on federal program". FOX News. September 29, 2012. FOXNews.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/201...puts-spotlight-on-16-billion-federal-program/
No there is no truth to the Obamaphone. This is common right wing progaganda material. The Life Line Program was in place during the last Republican administration and congress and they didn't change it one iota. And not surprisingly, Obamaphone.net was registered through Godaddy.com to an address associated with the Romney campaign and other conservative causes in Arizona, and was created last year. 14747 N Northsight Blvd Suite 111, PMB 309 Scottsdale, Arizona 85260 United States This is more Republican deception, dirty politics and plays on racism. It has been carefully constructed and marketed by Republican/right wing plutocrats to appeal to the ignorant and thoughtless base in their party.
You're claiming that Romney or one of his supporters created a website that gave Obama credit for giving people free cell phones? Why in the hell would Romney do that? I don't think it's a scandal so much as just a weird story, but I would be interested in finding out who was actually behind the Obamaphone website (which was modified once the story broke).
Is it true that the deluxe version of Obamaphone does not have a ring tone - but a voice that says: "Fake birth certificate" instead?
An interesting question Depends on if you want possible answers or a real one. A possible answer isn't so much Romney himself, but maybe a campaigner or an unaffiliated affiliate. And that comes back to the question of xenophobia; see Reeve's analysis for some suggestions on that point. Why would someone on Romney's side do this? Misguided enthusiasm, or, if we want to be more sinister in our suggestions, willful exploitation. Reeve does consider the underlying xenophobic question explicitly: Is this video racist? Let's start by saying it's racial. The Obama Phone video belongs to a genre popular on conservative blogs in which poor people, usually black, confirm conservatives' worst 47-percent fears by saying they can get something for nothing because Obama's in office. The message is, "Here's what Obama's supporters really look like." The standout in the category is "Obama money": Back in October 2009, big lines formed formed for Detroit housing assistance applications after the city underestimated how many people would show up to apply. The scene was chaotic, and local TV reported there were rumors that $3,000 checks would be handed out. The meme on rightwing blogs became that it was an angry mob in search of "Obama money." A Detroit radio station interviewed people in line for "Obama money." One woman says, "I don't know where he got it from but he's giving it to us. ... O-BA-MA O-BA-MA!" Rush Limbaugh excerpted the audio, saying, "This is the model citizen in Barack Obama's vision." He continued: "These are the people who would be wealthy and rich today were it not for the fact that the achievers of this society since this country was founded stole everything they had. And so Obama looks at these people as victims of an unjust and immoral country, and by God, he's going to make sure that they think he's making it all good for them. And they all do. Dumb, uninformed, shockingly, saddeningly stupid, the model citizen for Barack Obama and the Democrat Party." Another possibility is to exploit the bogus counterargument that any criticism of Obama is denounced as racist. And it's true that these seem dubious suggestions, but this also the strangest year. Very little of what is going on with the Republican presidential effort makes any sense. As to the address Joe pointed to, DBP has provided a haven to all sorts of political hit sites, Democratic, Republican, and otherwise, that operate in the scandalmongering sector. It's almost as if that's what the company is set up for. I think the bottom line is that the "Obama Phone" is a non-story, and any attempt to make a story out of it will lead back to Reeve's analysis: The Obama Phone video belongs to a genre popular on conservative blogs in which poor people, usually black, confirm conservatives' worst 47-percent fears by saying they can get something for nothing because Obama's in office. The message is, "Here's what Obama's supporters really look like." Any factual discussion, at this point, would only hurt Romney. ____________________ Notes: Reeve, Elspeth. "Just How Racist Is the 'Obama Phone' Video?". The Atlantic Wire. September 27, 2012. TheAtlanticWire.com. September 29, 2012. http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2012/09/just-how-racist-obama-phone-video/57353/
Barack Obama: Worst Anti-Capitalist Extremist ... Ever? Barack Obama: Worst Anti-Capitalist Extremist ... Ever? One of the aspects of American politics during the Obama tenure has been the idea that the president is somehow anti-capitalist. The stock market has soared; the phrase "jobless recovery" saw heavy rotation in the public discourse; he has surrounded himself with Wall Street insiders, and oversaw the most part of a taxpayer-financed bailout of a financial ship sinking under the burdens of largesse and lack of responsible maintenance. Indeed, as Chrystia Freeland notes: The growing antagonism of the super-wealthy toward Obama can seem mystifying, since Obama has served the rich quite well. His Administration supported the seven-hundred-billion-dollar tarp rescue package for Wall Street, and resisted calls from the Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman, and others on the left, to nationalize the big banks in exchange for that largesse. At the end of September, the S. & P. 500, the benchmark U.S. stock index, had rebounded to just 6.9 per cent below its all-time pre-crisis high, on October 9, 2007. The economists Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty have found that ninety-three per cent of the gains during the 2009-10 recovery went to the top one per cent of earners. Those seated around the table at dinner with Al Gore had done even better: the top 0.01 per cent captured thirty-seven per cent of the total recovery pie, with a rebound in their incomes of more than twenty per cent, which amounted to an additional $4.2 million each. Notwithstanding Occupy Wall Street's focus on the "one per cent," or Obama's choice of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars as the level at which taxes on family income should rise, the salient dividing line between rich and not rich is much higher up the income-distribution scale. Hostility toward the President is particularly strident among the ultra-rich. This is the group that has benefitted most from the winner-take-all economy: the 0.1 per cent, whose share of the national income was 7.8 per cent in 2009, according to I.R.S. data. Moreover, even as the shifting tides of the global economy have rewarded the richest while squeezing the middle class, the U.S. tax system has favored the very top, as the tax returns of the Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, have illustrated. In 2011, Romney paid an effective tax rate of just 14.1 per cent, and his income of $13.7 million places him in the 0.01-per-cent group. But the point of contention between that fraction of a percent and the president might not resonate well with the larger public: Although he voted for McCain in 2008, Cooperman was not compelled to enter the political debate until June, 2011, when he saw the President appear on TV during the debt-ceiling battle. Obama urged America's "millionaires and billionaires" to pay their fair share, pointing out that they were doing well at a time when both the American middle class and the American federal treasury were under pressure. "If you are a wealthy C.E.O. or hedge-fund manager in America right now, your taxes are lower than they have ever been. They are lower than they have been since the nineteen-fifties," the President said. "You can still ride on your corporate jet. You're just going to have to pay a little more." Cooperman regarded the comments as a declaration of class warfare, and began to criticize Obama publicly. In September, at a CNBC conference in New York, he compared Hitler's rise to power with Obama's ascent to the Presidency, citing disaffected majorities in both countries who elected inexperienced leaders. A month before, Cooperman had written a mock, nine-point "Presidential platform," outlining his political convictions, which he distributed to his investors. In it, he called for a freeze on entitlements, a jump in the retirement age to seventy for everyone except "those that work at hard labor," and a temporary tax increase for the super-rich to help pay down the debt. He also called for significant spending cuts, so that the growth in government spending could be restricted to one per cent less than the increase in G.D.P. In November, he drafted the letter to the President. It was fifteen hundred words and took him two weeks to write. "I'm not a gifted writer," Cooperman recalled. "I spent a lot of time using a dictionary and a thesaurus. I wanted to sound intelligent." He got help from a friend, a former Omega employee. He also showed the letter to his wife, Toby .... .... Evident throughout the letter is a sense of victimization prevalent among so many of America's wealthiest people. In an extreme version of this, the rich feel that they have become the new, vilified underclass. T. J. Rodgers, a libertarian and a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, has taken to comparing Barack Obama's treatment of the rich to the oppression of ethnic minorities—an approach, he says, that the President, as an African-American, should be particularly sensitive to. Clifford S. Asness, the founding partner of the hedge fund AQR Capital Management, wrote an open letter to the President in 2009, after Obama blamed "a small group of speculators" for Chrysler's bankruptcy. Asness suggested that "hedge funds really need a community organizer," and accused the White House of "bullying" the financial sector. Dan Loeb, a hedge-fund manager who supported Obama in 2008, has compared his Wall Street peers who still support the President to "battered wives." "He really loves us and when he beats us, he doesn't mean it; he just gets a little angry," Loeb wrote in an e-mail in December, 2010, to a group of Wall Street financiers. Basically, the stock market is riding high; the administration has bent over backwards for the fraction. The idea that the parts of our economy that screwed everything up should have to contribute to the cleanup is class warfare? This is why the, "Job creators in America," according to Speaker Boehner, "are essentially on strike"? Republicans are holding down household spending, which reduces demand for private sector growth; many employers are trying to get more and more out of their employees instead of hire. Conservative demands for voodoo economics have cut states off from federal funds that could have helped keep public-sector employment stable, but the long trend is that the private sector recovery is hampered by public sector contraction. They opposed Obama's jobs bill, and complain that he doesn't have a jobs plan. They even killed a jobs bill for returning veterans of our wars. The payroll tax cut extension appears dead. Hell, the Republican-led House went home last month, scheduling no votes until after the election. And they forgot to fund the American mission in Iraq. (That, I suppose, is a separate issue.) And why? To appease this all-powerful fraction that feels betrayed and abused by the suggestion that they owe some share of responsibility for cleaning up the mess they caused? At a time when they are reaping huge benefits from that cleanup? This is why the job creators are essentially on strike? It's almost as if they really like Obama, and are pulling the GOP's strings in order to make sure the president is re-elected. More likely, it's simply absurd. ____________________ Notes: Freeland, Chrystia. "Super-Rich Irony". The New Yorker. October 8, 2012. NewYorker.com. October 2, 2012. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/08/121008fa_fact_freeland
A New Endorsement for Obama ... From a Republican A New Endorsement for Obama ... From a Republican Former Sen. Larry Pressler (R-SD): As a combat veteran of two tours in Vietnam with twenty-two years of service as a Republican member of the U.S. House and Senate, I endorse President Barack Obama for a second term as our Commander-in-Chief. Candidates publicly praise our service members, veterans and their families, but President Obama supports them in word and deed, anywhere and every time. As a Vietnam vet, one of the reasons I support President Obama is because he has consistently shown he understands that our commitment to our servicemen and women may begin when they put on their uniform, but that it must never end. This decision is not easy for any lifelong Republican. In 2008 I voted for Barack Obama, the first time I ever voted for a Democrat, because the Republican Party was drifting toward a dangerous path that put extreme party ideology above national interest. Mitt Romney heads a party remaining on that dangerous path, proving the emptiness of their praise as they abandon our service members, veterans and military families along the way. Pressler goes on to note that he is part of the 47% that isn't Romney's job to worry about; as a former officer in the foreign service, he is offended by Romney's handling of the embassy attacks last month: "Being Commander-in-Chief requires a resolve and steadiness that's immune to politics and fear mongering. Mitt Romney fails that test." He disdains the Republican focus on budget politics: "Strategy should drive our military priorities, not party purity." Much of it focuses on the state of the GOP and the Romney campaign, but not all: President Obama ended one war, is ending another and meeting our national security needs with support of our military leaders. He's laid out a clear plan that would reduce the deficit and prevent the mandatory military spending cuts that no one wants. But today's Republican Party, including Ryan who voted for the deal that would trigger the cuts, is willing to bring our country's defenses to the fiscal cliff -- just so a multimillionaire doesn't have to pay a single extra penny in taxes. And the real lack of leadership? Failing to own up to your role in racking up a record debt from two unpaid wars and two massive unpaid for tax cuts. Mitt Romney leads the party that fails this leadership test. And he has specific concerns about how a Romney administration would regard veterans: I'm disappointed that just as our troops are returning home after a decade of war, Romney and Ryan might gut by up to 20 percent investments in the Department of Veterans Affairs -- and even suggest privatizing the veterans' health care. Again, they would short change our national security and the education, health care and employment benefits our veterans have earned and deserve just to cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans. Let's be clear, Romney and Ryan would be disastrous for America's service members, veterans and military families. Public praise rings hollow when you fail to mention an ongoing war in accepting your party's nomination to be president, or veterans in a speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, a so-called jobs plan or in a budget that should be a blue print of our nation's values. By comparison, writes Pressler, "President Obama recognizes our sacred trust with those who serve starts when they take their oath and never ends." He notes business tax credits to help veterans find jobs, the "post-9/11 GI Bill, the largest investment in veterans education since the original GI Bill over sixty years ago", a proposed Veterans Jobs Corps that would get veterans working as first responders in civilian life, and the president's desire to use money that would otherwise be spent extending wars to create jobs while repairing physical infrastructure. That's the difference in this election. In word and deed anywhere and every time, President Obama never forgets that standing by those who serve is the heart, soul and core value of this country. As a life-long Republican, I stand by him as he stands by all of us, putting national allegiance ahead of party affiliation. I endorse President Obama for reelection in 2012. I don't know how significant this particular endorsement will be with voters, but it is striking to me. Pressler, the first Vietnam Veteran elected to the U.S. Senate, won three terms, holding the office from 1989-97. In truth, I don't think it's just Romney and the Republicans. If the Democratic Party of the twenty-first century was like the Democratic Party of the 1980s, it is at least possible that he would stand with the GOP despite his misgivings. If President Obama was more of an '80s Democrat, instead of a twenty-first century centrist, it seems well within possibility that Pressler would take the risk on Romney, who, despite all else, is simply a politician. The GOP might be following a more hardline outlook, but Romney is quite obviously a flexible politician who can tread middle ground when backed into a corner. Perhaps the GOP's role in Romney's apparent ineptitude is that, as the former Massachusetts governor dances back and forth between a centrist line and the right wing, the hardliners have him moving too quickly over too great a range. There is always a bit of a dance for presidential candidates between partisan and general appeals, and Romney, as we now know, was in his 47% moment tinkering with a hardline right-wing idea. That is, around the same time Romney uttered the infamous lines secretly recorded, the hard-right Republican candidate for Senate in Indiana, Richard Mourdock, was using the 47% argument and comparing those people to slave owners in the Confederacy. And that is the guy who Indiana Republicans preferred over Sen. Dick Lugar, one of the stalwart statesmen of the Republican caucus in the U.S. Senate. That gives an idea of the range Romney has to cover, and he's doing it very poorly. And, in sympathy to the GOP nominee, yeah, it's a quandary near to impossible to artfully reconcile. The problem, of course, is that while people know Romney is as flexible as pretzel dough and gutless as a mannequin, we should not be surprised if, having won election, he breaks either way. The risk is huge. To the one, Romney clearly can govern from a soulless political center. To the other, empowering the hardliners who have dominated the Republican discourse through this election cycle is extremely dangerous. Mr. Pressler has chosen a safer route, one in which he can have a certain degree of confidence in a sane effort to govern from slightly right of center. Sure, Obama is a Democrat, but compared to Pressler's colleagues during his tenure, the president might as well be a Republican. And if that is his underlying outlook, endorsing Obama becomes the obvious choice. ____________________ Notes: Pressler, Larry. "Republican Senator, Vietnam Veteran Endorses President Obama". The Huffington Post. October 8, 2012. HuffingtonPost.com. October 10, 2012. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larry-pressler/larry-pressler-obama_b_1948415.html
Obama Better Leader than Romney: University Poll http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/10/121019102616.htm
