The day after the election, the pressure will be on the White House and Congress to cut a grand budget bargain. The Peterson Foundation has spent half a billion dollars to persuade opinion leaders and voters that austerity is the only road to recovery.
The latest face of the elite austerity lobby, nearly a hundred corporate CEO's working with the detritus of the Bowles-Simpson Commission (the fiscal zombie that just won't die), are spending another hundred million dollars in their campaign to press politicians to "Fix the Debt."
The economics of the proposition are insane. We can't depress our way to recovery. But the Obama Administration has drunken a lot of this Kool-Aid. Obama has pledged to cut the debt by $4 trillion over a decade. It was Obama who appointed the Bowles-Simpson Commission, which helped create this pressure.
Friendly Democratic leaders are already being advised that the administration will offer a grand bargain of tax increases, budget cuts, and hits to Social Security and Medicare to head off the "fiscal cliff" created by the Republican refusal to bargain over the budget. This grand scheme is the long commended recipe of the ultimate Wall Street austerity Democrat, Robert Rubin, whose protégés litter the Obama Treasury and White House.
Seemingly, Wall Street Conservatives and Austerity Conservatives are disdainful of Yahoo Conservatives. The former tend to be relatively liberal on, say, gay rights, reproductive choice, gun control, and they even support some higher taxes. Yet they are doing the bidding of Yahoo conservatives by weakening the Democrats as a party that might actually produce a recovery, and might actually speak for ordinary people devastated by the continuing slump -- which will only deepen if Austerity conservatism prevails.
If Obama wins and he strikes a grand budget bargain with the Republicans, it will paralyze the government's ability to respond to the worst continuing disaster since al-Qaeda's attacks of 9/11.
Obama intends to begin to unravel the safety net (Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid) to convince the Republicans to enter into this Faustian Grand Bargain.
...
The safety net is so popular with the American people because it consists of superb programs that constantly put the lie to Republican memes that the government is incapable of success.
(The programs work efficiently and effectively! - z)
There is no need to allow Social Security to "go bankrupt." The necessary expenditures can easily be made by the Treasury.
There is a need to contain the rise in medical costs, but we know how to do that without harming health outcomes.
Most advanced nations attain the same health outcomes at half the expense (relative to GDP) of the U.S. Obama's opposition to the "public mandate" was a grave mistake that needs to be reversed.
(And Michael Bennet's strategic lies at the behest of our president. - z)
Because unraveling the safety net is unnecessary, harmful, and politically insane for a Democrat and politically suicidal for Republicans, the proponents of these terrible policies have long failed in their efforts. Republicans, however, have now found a fifth column within the Democratic Party who they hope will open the door to attacking the safety net. This would provide the political cover that Republicans could use to unravel fully the safety net.
And the true desire of politicians to claim they are bipartisan?
The Republican Party's approach to convincing Obama to commit the Great Betrayal cleverly exploits three human weaknesses. First, Obama wants to be considered a "centrist."
Second, Obama yearns to be considered "bipartisan."
These first two weaknesses are forms of vanity.
(And both Michael Bennet and Mark Udall are victims of this same vanity. Do we think Udall doesn't like to be praised on TV by right-wing hucksters like Lawrence Kudlow? - z)
The siren song is "do this and you will become known as the President who acted as a statesman to cut across Party and ideological divides and make the hard choices essential to allowing America to continue to be a great nation -- while 'saving' the safety net."
Jeez, can we get someone to actually adhere to facts and logic in determining the best way to reduce the debt? And can we get someone to recognize 1) we were on track to pay of the debt just 10 short years ago, and; 2) 2 wars and giant tax cuts for the wealthy cost alot, but those costs can be easily reversed by reversing the policies.
Republican arguments have been wordsmithed by Frank Luntz - can you say "job creators"? I knew you could.
Their assumptions and arguments are meant to obscure the truth and skew the conversation from word one.
How'd Joe win?
He appealed to viewers' common-sense, all-American, apple pie instincts and ignored the loaded Republican rhetoric that Paul Ryan was programmed to emit.
Time for Udall and Bennet to give it a shot - if they dare.
Bain Capital flies Chinese flag over comapany they are in process of outsourcing
(Zappatero)
Besides training their replacements the Sensata employees had to fly a Chinese flag over their factory as it is in the middle of being outsourced to "our good friend" in Asia.
Welch seemed to insinuate that the Labor Department may have manipulated the September jobs report, which showed a surprising drop in the unemployment rate to 7.8%, in order to benefit the re-election campaign of President Obama.
Traders were quick to feast on the irony in this accusation. After all, GE under Welch was notorious for "managing" earnings in order to please Wall Street.
MawiLoca: Jack Welch, the guy who convinced everyone that $GE stock was worth 60 bucks, is calling shenanigans?
Wait. GE isn't worth $60? Well, it is nearly 60% off its all-time high from 2000.
Proving once again you can be rich and still be an idiot. And you can blame Obama for hating business when business is doing quite well under Obama.
Speaking before a group of Tea Party supporters in Waterford, Conn. on April 20, however, McMahon said she would consider making major changes to Social Security, from raising the retirement age to means-testing benefits.
She also proposed introducing a "sunset provision" - the legislative term for putting an expiration date on a law unless it is renewed.
I think Mark should propose it now - during the Lame Duck session he's a key constituent of.....
Republican S. Carolina Governor: A lazy leech on society?
(Zappatero)
Can't afford summer camp on a Governor's salary? No high-falutin' private school in session? Just askin':
I never understand how the Republicans can so often criticize government and government workers yet so easily provide jobs for their family inside government. Dick Cheney was no stranger to it, having his daughter Mary run his re-election campaign, and now the Tea Party and Sarah Palin hero, Nikki Haley, is doing the same.
The unemployment rate in South Carolina remains above the national average, so why is the governor giving a job to her daughter when so many others need work?
Gov. Nikki Haley's 14-year-old daughter having a summer job at the State House gift shop is a tad more unusual than some may have thought.
Haley's daughter was, in fact, the only 14-year-old to hold a state job as of July 2012. And no 14-year-olds were employed by the state in either July 2011 or July 2010, according to data from the State Budget and Control Board.
Fox News contributor Liz Cheney on Sunday blasted President Barack Obama with the false claim that he had apologized to enemies of the United States and had abandoned Czechoslovakia.
The average compensation at Goldman (GS) is likely to fall by nearly $100,000 by the end of next year as new regulations, fewer deals and legal payouts hurt the firm's profitability. That's the conclusion of a recent report from a European division of rival JPMorgan Chase (JPM).
As recently as two years ago, Goldman's annual pay, which includes everyone from the people who work in the firm's IT department to CEO Lloyd Blankfein, had averaged $412,000. That salary put employees of the elite investment bank solidly in the top 1% of all earners in the United States. Last year, the cut off for the 1% was $368,000.
But by the end of next year, though, analysts expect compensation at Goldman to average just $314,000.
Linda McMahon is running for Senate in CT. She's the wife of Wrestling Magnate Vince McMahon and is worth around $46-140 Million, bless her heart:
Connecticut voters deserve to know the real Linda McMahon.
McMahon laid off 10 percent of her employees - even workers in Connecticut.
And didn't pay Medicare, Social Security and unemployment for her wrestlers.
But Linda McMahon took home $46 million a year. Now, as a Senate candidate, she's proposing to give herself an up to $7 million tax cut. Linda McMahon takes care of herself, no matter who pays the price.
After 482 people responded with proof and almost 90 percent of the suspected non-citizens were verified through a federal database, Gessler planned to challenge 141 names still in question, but does not have enough time to handle the hearings before Election Day.
Instead, he is handing over the names to county clerks who may challenge them at the polls or when they receive absentee ballots. So far, one person has voluntarily come forward as a non-citizen in Larimer County. The county clerk explained:
It was a guy with a work visa. He didn't even know he was registered to vote. Somehow we think it was a clerical mistake at the Department of Motor Vehicles when he got his driver's license.
These remaining 141 people comprise .004 percent of Colorado voters.
