The Price of GOP Extremism: Navy Cuts "Non-Essential" Personnel

The Republican Party and its Tea Party element are obsessed with making huge budget cuts and at the same time have been obstructing measures to turn the economy around in the hope that economic malaise will help they drive Barack Obama from office in November. While the feigned concern for budget deficits is disingenuous at best given the fact that every foolish spending measure brought forth by Chimperator Bush and his unfunded wars were quickly rubber stamped by the then GOP controlled Congress, nowhere along the way is the human toll ever considered by these ideologues. Now locally some in the Navy are finding out that blind allegiance to the GOP and mindlessly mouthing Rush Limbaugh talking points can carry a heavy price. For every budget cut, real people lose their jobs and real families are impacted - something those of the far right who like to wrap themselves in the cloak of religion fail to understand or, mostly likely, even give a damn about. The Virginian Pilot looks at the fate facing some 3,000 U.S. Navy personnel being forced out through no fault of their own. I'm sure the Kool-Aid drinkers will seek to blame Obama rather than take a good look in the mirror. Here are some story highlights:

The day that Amanda Humburg's husband found out he would be involuntarily discharged from the Navy, his command sent him home early to give him time to absorb the shock. He walked through the door of their house in Chesapeake with a blank expression on his face and a pile of papers in his arms that explained what came next - severance pay, six months of health coverage, free advice on how to write the first resume of his life.

Humburg's husband, who chose not to be interviewed for this story, is one of about 3,000 sailors who will lose their jobs in the coming months as part of an unprecedented and drastic effort to thin the Navy's ranks in overcrowded job fields. It marks the first time the service will lay off thousands of sailors who are in the middle of enlistment contracts, including hundreds in Hampton Roads. In the months since the move was announced, it has become widely unpopular and controversial.

Navy officials contend they had no other choice. Faced with record-high retention because of the economy, the service's usual mechanisms for keeping the ranks in balance have not done enough, said Rear Adm. Anthony Kurta, head of manpower plans for the chief of naval personnel. He said the decision to resort to breaking enlistment contracts was not made lightly, and the method the Navy used to determine who would stay and who would go - panels of senior enlisted sailors and officers dubbed an "enlisted retention board" - was the fairest way to do it. For those selected by the board for discharge, the Navy is doing everything in its power to help them find new employment and successfully transition to civilian life, Kurta said.

Still, he acknowledged several facts that affected sailors and their families say are making the layoffs especially hard to swallow: Many of those being forced out have been in the Navy for well over a decade, and many have good service records. In most cases, they were chosen for discharge based simply on their rank and job classification in order to meet set quotas.

While the Navy's ranks are slowly shrinking - the service now keeps 324,000 active-duty personnel, about 50,000 fewer than a decade ago - officials say the enlisted retention board layoffs are not simply about cutting, and they're not directly driven by larger efforts to reduce military spending. Rather, they are about rebalancing the force.

The Navy explains it this way: Because of the economy, far fewer sailors are leaving the service than in years past. As a result, 31 of the Navy's 85 enlisted fields have become badly overcrowded. For sailors in those job categories, such as aircraft maintenance, that has meant fewer opportunities for promotion, which has swelled the midcareer ranks. While the Navy can compensate to a degree by enlisting fewer new sailors into overmanned fields, it cannot stop altogether; for budgetary reasons and for longer-term force effectiveness, it needs to keep a particular number of sailors in each field and in each pay grade.

The Navy couldn't say exactly how many Hampton Roads-based sailors are being discharged through the enlisted retention board layoffs, but if 1 percent of the service's total force is affected, that amounts to roughly 700 personnel here. It's a number large enough that efforts have sprung up to fight the dismissals, including Facebook pages and a White House petition. At least one sailor is suing over his discharge, according to the publication Navy Times, and even among sailors who haven't been affected, the enlisted retention board has become a source of consternation and anger.

Ward Carroll, the editor of Military.com and a retired naval aviator, said the service's decision to break the enlistment contracts of so many sailors could have wider consequences for recruitment and morale.

I feel badly for those being discharged who have done nothing wrong. The military are now discovering the harsh reality faced by far too many in the private sector. I don't what the solution is, but I do wish that the extremists in the GOP and Tea Party would at least for a moment contemplate that their budget cutting obsession does harm real people and real families.

Ohio Vote Shows Obama Winning Back the Rust Belt

Tuesday's vote in Ohio to repeal the GOP's union busting legislation was a huge rebuke to anti-family, anti-worker Republicans who talk a good game - until one looks at the details, of course - about caring about average Americans but in truth are aimed at building a wealth disparity in the United States that might rival that seen in Tsarist Russia. Some speculate that the defeat of several GOP initiatives demonstrates that average votes and citizens are waking up to the fact that Republicans are not their friends. Indeed, with friends like Ohio Republicans, who truly needs an enemy. It continues to amaze me how simpletons continue to fall for the GOP "no tax" mantra when those being protected from tax increases are the wealthy and not regular folks. It's part of the refusal to accept objective reality that now seems to be a prerequisite to belonging to the GOP base. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the possible awakening of voters to the reality that the GOP is the party of class warfare and that it's average Americans (and non-religious extremists) who are the targets of this war. Here are some highlights:

Barack Obama is winning the Rust Belt back. The overwhelming repeal in Ohio of Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor bill from last year shows that the GOP has gone way, way too far—too far for Democrats, obviously, but also for independents. It shows the potential for something else, too: the populist message can stick. “Class warfare” can work. It can take hold even with the people who allegedly despise our Kenyan leader the most: the white working class. And if this turns out to be right, then the Washington conventional wisdom will be proven as wrong as it’s been since 1998, when the Cokie Roberts caucus convinced itself that the American people wanted to throw Bill Clinton out of the White House over Monica.

Ohio’s Question 2 lost 61 to 39 percent. I was on a press conference call yesterday with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and others, and pollster Guy Molyneaux ran through some numbers from polling that the union did. Fully 57 percent of independents backed the repeal. In 2010, 59 percent of independents voted for Kasich. So that’s a huge switch. The white working class, which Kasich won by 14 points in 2010, backed repeal by the very 61 percent that it took overall.

But the larger context in which this vote took place is important, too. And that context is Operation Wall Street, income inequality, Republicans in Congress killing the jobs bill piece by piece, Obama finally getting some blood flowing through those veins again instead of water. People have started to care about class issues, and it’s pretty clear what they think: The Republican Party isn’t representing them (unless they happen to live in a household with an income of at least $368,000 a year). In the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 76 percent agreed that “the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.”

What this means for next year is twofold. First, it suggests that Davids Plouffe and Axelrod should work the Rust Belt. Plouffe in particular has been signaling a strategy that would put more emphasis on Virginia and Colorado and North Carolina (where the convention is being held) at the expense of states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But the way Democrats and majorities of independents are acting in those Rust Belt states now, they’re looking more like states Obama can hold.

Which leads to the second possible consequence for next year. The conventional wisdom laid down by the geniuses who lay down the conventional wisdom is that Obama—any Democratic president, or any Democrat, really—can either play to the base or the middle but can’t possibly reach both. . . . . If the White House plays its cards right, 2012 could be about inequality. The Democrat can’t possibly lose an election about inequality.

A lot of this will depend on events, starting with the unemployment rate. But what the Ohio result shows is a way to unite liberals and moderates, Democrats and independents, behind one message that both want to hear. That hasn’t happened much in recent American history. The White House had best be alert to it.

Vatican Calls for Global Economic Authority and Condemns " Idolatry of the Market"

I will be the first to admit that I rarely agree with anything emanating from the bitter old queens in dresses at the Vatican who all too often turn Christ's Gospel message upside down in their quest for power, control, and most importantly money. But I guess once in a while even such people get something right. Hence the Vatican's condemnation of the cult of free market controls which often morphs into a struggle of the survival of the fittest (or most greedy) with the vast majority suffering in poverty and varying levels of neglect as the amoral and greedy waltz away with most of the profits and resources. The interesting thing to watch will be to see how this new Vatican announcement plays with the Christian Right adherents of the prosperity Gospel and the Tea Party crowd who would throw most citizens to the wolves as they hoard money and possessions for themselves. Candidly, nothing would please me more than to see a rift develop between conservative Catholics and the greedy hate merchants of the Christian Right and GOP. Reuters looks at this in some ways surprising development. Here are some highlights:

The Vatican called on Monday for the establishment of a “global public authority” and a “central world bank” to rule over financial institutions that have become outdated and often ineffective in dealing fairly with crises. The document from the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department should please the “Occupy Wall Street” demonstrators and similar movements around the world who have protested against the economic downturn.

“Towards Reforming the International Financial and Monetary Systems in the Context of a Global Public Authority,” was at times very specific, calling, for example, for taxation measures on financial transactions. “The economic and financial crisis which the world is going through calls everyone, individuals and peoples, to examine in depth the principles and the cultural and moral values at the basis of social coexistence,” it said.

It condemned what it called “the idolatry of the market” as well as a “neo-liberal thinking” that it said looked exclusively at technical solutions to economic problems. “In fact, the crisis has revealed behaviours like selfishness, collective greed and hoarding of goods on a great scale,” it said, adding that world economics needed an “ethic of solidarity” among rich and poor nations.

“If no solutions are found to the various forms of injustice, the negative effects that will follow on the social, political and economic level will be destined to create a climate of growing hostility and even violence, and ultimately undermine the very foundations of democratic institutions, even the ones considered most solid,” it said.

It called for the establishment of “a supranational authority” with worldwide scope and “universal jurisdiction” to guide economic policies and decisions.

Asked at a news conference if the document could become a manifesto for the movement of the “indignant ones”, who have criticised global economic policies, Cardinal Peter Turkson, head of the Vatican’s Justice and Peace department, said: “The people on Wall Street need to sit down and go through a process of discernment and see whether their role managing the finances of the world is actually serving the interests of humanity and the common good. “We are calling for all these bodies and organisations to sit down and do a little bit of re-thinking.”

S & P Downgrade Repeatedly Cites GOP Intransigence On Taxes

The GOP will be doing its best to spin the S & P downgrade of the USA's credit rating against Barack Obama - the always untethered Michele Bachmann (who was willing to let the USA default on its debts) has already claimed it's Obama's fault. As is typically the case with today's GOP, the truth is the exact opposite of whatever they are claiming. The same rule, of course, applies to their equally dishonest allies among the Kool-Aid drinking Christianist set. The real blame for the downgrade decision rests fully on the GOP as is made evident by the release from S & P that sought to explain the basis for the decision. Think Progress has a good summary of the S & P statement. Not surprisingly, the office of douche bag Virginia Congressman Eric Cantor declined to comment on the clear wording of the S & P statement. Here are highlights from Think Progress:

In explaining their decision Standard & Poor’s cites both the decision by Republicans in Congress to turn the debt ceiling into a political football and the Republicans intransigence on tax increases. Some excerpts from the release:

[...]The political brinksmanship of recent months highlights what we see as America’s governance and policymaking becoming less stable, less effective, and less predictable than what we previously believed. The statutory debt ceiling and the threat of default have become political bargaining chips in the debate over fiscal policy.

[...]It appears that for now, new revenues have dropped down on the menu of policy options.

[...]The act contains no measures to raise taxes or otherwise enhance revenues, though the committee could recommend them.

[...]Compared with previous projections, our revised base case scenario now assumes that the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts, due to expire by the end of 2012, remain in place. We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.

Standard & Poors indicates that they could improve their rating for the U.S. if “the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for high earners lapse from 2013 onwards, as the Administration is advocating.”

Did Big Business Send the GOP A Message?

Given the stunning turn around by the Republican Party leadership - well most of the leadership - yesterday on the nation's debt ceiling circus like debacle, many are assuming that belatedly the business community sent the GOP a message: stop playing games and get a resolution worked out NOW! The treat to the nation's economy and big business were the nation to go into default mode is huge and one can only imagine that large corporations poised to back political contenders suggested in blunt terms that the money spigot would be closed if the childish posturing and brinksmanship continued. Yes, the lunatics in the Tea Party will be pissed of, but they are not the ones with the big bucks. The Washington Post has a story that looks at the likely intervention that cause McConnell and Boehner to change their song and dance. Here are highlights:

*
A sprawling coalition of Wall Street and Main Street business leaders sent an unmistakable message to lawmakers Tuesday: Enough squabbling. Get the debt ceiling raised. The message, sent in a letter to President Obama and every member of Congress, puts pressure on GOP lawmakers, who have staked out an uncompromising stance against raising taxes in the partisan wrangling over the country’s borrowing limit.
*
Republicans rely heavily on corporations for political support and have regularly cited the opinions of these “job creators” in their opposition to new tax revenue. Many of the House GOP freshmen most opposed to a compromise were swept into office with the help of financial support from groups behind the letter.
*
But the business community, which has largely kept quiet on the issue until now, does not uniformly share the Republican orthodoxy on taxes, according to some lobbyists who helped craft the statement.
*
The letter, signed by hundreds of senior company executives and groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable, said that “it is critical that the U.S. government not default in any way” and urges lawmakers “to put aside partisan differences and act in the nation’s best interest.”
*
“The business community in large numbers is saying to our leaders in Washington, ‘Do your job,’ ” said Business Roundtable President John Engler, a former Republican governor of Michigan. “Failure to raise the debt ceiling would strike an immediate and serious blow to any economic recovery, and failure to make significant progress on long-term debt reduction will continue the uncertainty which is hampering our investment climate.”
*
Republican lawmakers had a muted response to the business groups’ warnings. . . . . The developments underscore the increasingly awkward marriage between corporate leaders and the ambitious House GOP freshman class, which has joined the business lobby in opposing Obama’s health-care law and financial regulations but has shown no sign of budging on the debt ceiling.
*
Lobbying groups for Wall Street — a sector that would take a direct and devastating hit if the debt ceiling is not raised — have largely avoided public statements on the issue. . . . . Wall Street lobbyists and other business groups preferred private meetings with GOP members to educate them on the consequences of a default.
*
In their letter, the business groups warned that even a “technical default” is “a risk our country must not take.” . . . Treasury securities influence the cost of financing not just for companies but more importantly for mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and student debt. A default would risk both disarray in those markets and a host of unintended consequences.”
*
The business community action definitely represents a bitch slap to sleaze bag weasels like Virginia's Congressman Eric Cantor. :)

Today's Conservatism Has Lost Touch with Reality

Fareed Zakaria has a piece in Time magazine that looks at today's conservative and analyzes how it has lost touch with reality. A situation that is in stark contrast to the old school type of conservatism that I grew up with and which used to pride itself on objective fact and reality. Personally, I attribute part of the decline in rationality to the rise of far right Christians within the GOP. Their entire "Biblical world view" is untethered from objective reality and scientific fact. Throw in the more ignorant elements of the Tea Party and the problem becomes exacerbated. The other factor, of course, is the fact that those in leadership positions in the GOP - who certainly knew or should have known better - chose short term expedience over what was best long term for the GOP and the nation. Now, ignorance and wild theories that sound almost drug induced are embraced and fact and reason are flushed down the toilet. Here are highlights from Zakaria's article:
*
Conservatism, he [George Will] explained, was rooted in reality. Unlike the abstract theories of Marxism and socialism, it started not from an imagined society but from the world as it actually exists. From Aristotle to Edmund Burke, the greatest conservative thinkers have said that to change societies, one must understand them, accept them as they are and help them evolve.
*
Watching this election campaign, one wonders what has happened to that tradition. Conservatives now espouse ideas drawn from abstract principles with little regard to the realities of America's present or past. This is a tragedy, because conservatism has an important role to play in modernizing the U.S.
*
The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.
*
[R]ight now any discussion of government involvement in the economy — even to build vital infrastructure — is impossible because it is a cardinal tenet of the new conservatism that such involvement is always and forever bad. Meanwhile, across the globe, the world's fastest-growing economy, China, has managed to use government involvement to create growth and jobs for three decades. From Singapore to South Korea to Germany to Canada, evidence abounds that some strategic actions by the government can act as catalysts for free-market growth.
*
Of course, American history suggests that as well. But that history has been forgotten. When considering health care, for example, Republicans confidently assert that their ideas will lower costs, when we simply do not have much evidence for this.
. . . . We need more market mechanisms to cut medical costs, but Republicans don't bother to study existing health care systems anywhere else in the world. They resemble the old Marxists, who refused to look around at actual experience.
*
Conservatives used to be the ones with heads firmly based in reality. Their reforms were powerful because they used the market, streamlined government and empowered individuals.
*
Today conservatives shy away from the sensible ideas of the Bowles-Simpson commission on deficit reduction because those ideas are too deeply rooted in, well, reality. Does anyone think we are really going to get federal spending to the level it was at under Calvin Coolidge, as Paul Ryan's plan assumes? Does anyone think we will deport 11 million people?
*
We need conservative ideas to modernize the U.S. economy and reform American government. But what we have instead are policies that don't reform but just cut and starve government — a strategy that pays little attention to history or best practices from around the world and is based instead on a theory. It turns out that conservatives are the woolly-headed professors after all.

Republican Governors Could help Obama in 2012

My continued dissatisfaction with Barack Obama's leadership - or more accurately the total lack thereof - is the topic for another post. That said, it is interesting how many of the GOP governors swept into office in 2010 may prove to be among the best campaign boosters for Obama in 2012. Their combination of arrogance, lack of concern for the poor and unemployed and efforts to benefit the most wealthy seem to be alienating moderates and energizing Democrats in ways that few campaigns can accomplish. Granted, much can change between now and November 2012, but somehow I don't see governors like Wisconsin's Scott Walker and Florida's Rick Scott allowing any checks on their hubris or extremism. All of which bodes well for Obama. A story in the Washington Post looks at the phenomenon and here are some highlights:

*
The sluggish economy and stubborn joblessness are being heralded — or lamented, depending on your perspective — as the chief reasons that President Obama will face a tough reelection campaign. The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll had Obama getting low marks on his handling of the economy . . .
*
But there is another indicator of Obama’s prospects, one that may boost his chances in the key swing states that will determine the 2012 electoral majority: the deep and growing unpopularity of the Republican governors and state legislatures.
*
Republican governors such as Kasich, Scott and Walker — usually with the avid support of GOP-dominated legislatures — have deployed combative policies and politics, promoting confrontation and eschewing compromise, cutting benefits for the poor and middle class while adding tax breaks for the rich, and in many cases trying to eliminate or at least cripple collective bargaining by public employees. Those tactics have energized the Democratic base, certainly, but even more significant, they have turned off independent voters.
*
Things are likely to get worse for Republican governors. Raising taxes is not an option, and the only areas left for meaningful budget reductions are education, Medicaid and prisons. At the national level, the Republican House is intent on further reducing states’ margin for error with dramatic cuts on the table for Medicaid, including its largest components: long-term care for the elderly and aid for the most seriously disabled. . . . . And many Republican governors who try to change their messages and policies will face the wrath of their tea party bases.
*
In swing states, any GOP presidential candidate will have to convince voters that he or she has the best plan to improve the economy. The only problem is that every Republican contender supports the same types of economic policies that have driven GOP governors into a ditch.
*
[I]f the economy continues to falter, Obama will have plenty to explain himself. . . . Nonetheless, the huge Republican victories in the states in 2010, along with the immense hubris they brought to the winning governors, has had a serious down side, there to be exploited to the hilt by Obama’s reelection campaign.*

The GOP's Medicare Nightmare

By the time polls close tonight in New York's 26th Congressional district we may have a better sense of just how badly House Republicans may have wounded the party by voting for Rep. Paul Ryan's budget which among other things savages Medicare and opened the door for allegations that the GOP was "throwing" grandma over the cliff." It's not as if the Congressional Republicans didn't have warnings as to the possible consequences of appeasing the Tea Party crowd and House freshman. They just chose - with typical GOP arrogance and a desire to claim a mandate where none existed - to ignore them and threw down a gauntlet which may now hopefully be used to beat them severely about the head and at the ballot box. Politico has a piece that looks at the many warnings that were available. The Washington Post has a column that looks at the GOP's self-inflicted wound in additional detail. First, this highlight from Politico:
*
It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare.
*
No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.
*
GOP pollsters, political consultants and House and NRCC staffers vividly reminded leadership that their members were being forced to walk the plank for a piece of quixotic legislation. They described for leadership the horrors that might be visited on the party during the next campaign, comparing it time and again with former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s decision to ram through a cap-and-trade bill despite the risks it posed to Democratic incumbents.
*
“The tea party itch has definitely not been scratched, so the voices who were saying, ‘Let’s do this in a way that’s politically survivable,’ got drowned out by a kind of panic,” a top GOP consultant involved in the debate said, on condition of anonymity.
*
In the Washington Post column, Eugene Robinson looks at the problems now flowing from the GOP's act of hubris. Here are highlights:
*
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the architect of his party’s radical plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program, gave a lesson Sunday in stating the obvious: “I don’t consult polls to tell me what my principles are or what our policies should be.” I’d suggest that Republicans with less disdain for public opinion might want to check out the height of the cliff from which Ryan would have them leap.
*
What concentrates the minds of GOP strategists and candidates — or ought to — is the spectacle unfolding in New York’s 26th Congressional District near Buffalo. It’s a solid Republican constituency, one that Chris Lee won last year with 74 percent of the vote. Alas, Lee resigned after a Web site published a bare-chested beefcake photo he had sent to a woman he met through Craigslist.
*
What should worry Republicans is that the biggest issue in the campaign — practically the only issue — is Ryan’s Medicare plan. Corwin supports it, Hochul opposes it, and the GOP may well lose a race that shouldn’t even be close.
*
Is the Medicare issue really that toxic? Newt Gingrich clearly thought it was, or else he’d never have called it “right-wing social engineering” and gotten himself in such trouble with his fellow Republicans. Even now, after a week of rhetorical beat-downs from GOP opinion-makers and busy signals from big-time donors, he’s still trying to find a way to support the Ryan plan while leaving some sure-to-be-needed wiggle room.
*
Many Republicans, sensibly, are eager to change the subject. This would be tough to do under any circumstances, given that the party has made the deficit its central issue. Moving along will be much harder with Democrats doing everything they can to keep the Ryan plan in the news — and with Ryan and other true believers still convinced that giving vouchers to senior citizens, putting them at the mercy of the private health insurance market, is a dandy idea that surely will catch on.
*
It won’t. Americans oppose Medicare cuts by overwhelming margins.
*
Obviously, I am hoping that the GOP's growing extremism will be its undoing. Making pacts with the Devil - e.g., the Tea Party and the Christian Taliban - needs to be made to carry a high cost.

Did Obama Help Launch the Nacent Manufacturing Turn Around?

Image from Creative Commons

In many ways the far right and the GOP seem Hell bent to destroy the USA - all, of course, in the name of saving it. Along the way, millions of Americans are being thrown under the economic bus. All done by those who give lip service to religious values, yet then utterly disregard the main Gospel message and instead cling to selective Bible passages to justify their widespread hatred of others. Paul Krugman has a column that looks at the efforts of the GOP and its lunatic base in contrast to what seems to be the small beginnings of a positive trend: new manufacturing jobs. And some of the positives trace to Obama and the efforts to stabilize the economy after the 8 years of the Chimperator's misrule. Here are highlights from Krugman's column in the New York Times:
*
Manufacturing is one of the bright spots of a generally disappointing recovery, and there are signs — preliminary, but hopeful, nonetheless — that a sustained comeback may be under way. And there’s something else you should know: If right-wing critics of efforts to rescue the economy had gotten their way, this comeback wouldn’t be happening.
*
Crucially, the manufacturing trade deficit seems to be coming down. At this point, it’s only about half as large as a share of G.D.P. as it was at the peak of the housing bubble, and further improvements are in the pipeline. The Boston Consulting Group, which is now predicting a U.S. “manufacturing renaissance,” points to major U.S. firms like Caterpillar that once shifted production abroad but are now moving it back. At the same time, companies from other countries, especially European firms, are moving production to America.
*
And one potential disaster has been avoided: the U.S. auto industry, which many people were writing off just two years ago, has weathered the storm. In particular, General Motors has now had five consecutive profitable quarters. America’s industrial heartland is now leading the economic recovery.
*
First, what’s driving the turnaround in our manufacturing trade? The main answer is that the U.S. dollar has fallen against other currencies, helping give U.S.-based manufacturing a cost advantage. A weaker dollar, it turns out, was just what U.S. industry needed.
*
Yet the Federal Reserve finds itself under intense pressure from the right to make the dollar stronger, not weaker. A few months ago, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee, berated Ben Bernanke for failing to tighten monetary policy, declaring: “There is nothing more insidious that a country can do to its citizens than debase its currency.” If Mr. Bernanke had given in to that kind of pressure, manufacturing would have continued its relentless decline.
*
And then there’s the matter of the auto industry, which probably would have imploded if President Obama hadn’t stepped in to rescue General Motors and Chrysler. For those companies would almost surely have gone into liquidation, closing all their factories. And this liquidation would have undermined the rest of America’s auto industry, as essential suppliers went under, too. Hundreds of thousands of jobs were at stake.
*
Yet Mr. Obama was fiercely denounced for taking action. One Republican congressman declared the auto rescue part of the administration’s “war on capitalism.” Another insisted that when government gets involved in a company, “the disaster that follows is predictable.” Not so much, it turns out.
*
So while we still have a deeply troubled economy, one piece of good news is that Americans are, once again, starting to actually make things. And we’re doing that thanks, in large part, to the fact that the Fed and the Obama administration ignored very bad advice from right-wingers — ideologues who still, in the face of all the evidence, claim to know something about creating prosperity.

Is the GOP Backing Away from Its Assault on Medicare?

The members of the Congressional GOP have been faced with fury and anger at numerous town hall meetings as constituents begin to realize just who is going to get thrown under the bus under the House GOP's deficit plan - and its not going to be the obscenely wealth or big business. Last night, there was a report in the Washington Post that the realization was hitting that the draconian proposal on Medicare was DOA in the Senate - and radioactive with voters - and that a Plan B needed to be developed. The Post reported as follows:

*
Senior Republicans conceded Wednesday that a deal is unlikely on a contentious plan to overhaul Medicare and offered to open budget talks with the White House by focusing on areas where both parties can agree, such as cutting farm subsidies.
*
On the eve of debt-reduction talks led by Vice President Biden, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (Va.) said Republicans remain convinced that reining in federal retirement programs is the key to stabilizing the nation’s finances over the long term. But he said Republicans recognize they may need to look elsewhere to achieve consensus after President Obama “excoriated us” for a proposal to privatize Medicare.
*
Frankly, Eric Cantor is an embarrassment to Virginia and the man doesn't care whether or not the elderly - or at least the non-wealthy elderly - go without needed medical care or if they end up living off of dry dog food in their sunset years. I also do not understand how Cantor who is Jewish aligns himself with the Christianists who in the final analysis are also anti-Semites. I guess in his hunger for power, Cantor will happily work with those who hate him. In any event, now, Huffington Post reports that Cantor is backing away from the position reported by the Washington Post - perhaps under pressure from the loons of the Tea Party and the Christian Right who have ripped out the message of caring for the sick and poor from their Bibles. Here are highlights from HuffPo:
*
WASHINGTON -- House Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) office sharply disputed on Wednesday night a report that GOP leaders are abandoning an attempt to dramatically overhaul Medicare as a part of budget negotiations.
*
On the eve of bipartisan, bicameral debt and deficit reduction talks with the White House, the Washington Post reported that Republican leadership is ready to give up on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) plan to gradually turn Medicare into a voucher program.
*
Not true, said Cantor’s chief spokesman, Brad Dayspring. “Eric made very clear that our position is the Ryan budget which -- as you know -- assumes a debt limit increase and includes Medicare, Medicaid and $715 billion in mandatory savings," Dayspring said. "Whether the Democrats will agree to the proposals we've outlined is yet to be seen, but that is our starting point so we don't continue to kick the can down the road and make real cuts and real reforms this year."
*
Asked whether that meant Republicans were sticking with Ryan’s version of Medicare reform once talks began at the Blair House with Vice President Joseph Biden on Thursday, Dayspring replied: "The starting point is the Ryan budget, period."
*
“Obviously Cantor is scared out of his mind by angry seniors at their town halls, but, there are no backsies in Congress. They already voted to end Medicare,” Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the new pro-reform outlets Know Your Care and Protect Your Care, emailed before the Post toned down its headline.

GOP Budget Plan: Ridiculous and Cruel

As many long time readers will recall, there once was a time I was an active member of the GOP. That was in the days before (1) the GOP became a sectarian party controlled by far right Christianist extremists and (2) when fiscal conservatism meant more than smoke and mirrors and targeting the most needy in society for heartless financial brutalization. It was also back before the myth that tax cuts pay for themselves was a matter of sacred creed within the GOP. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that calls out the GOP plan that will likely continue to be pressed after a week's reprieve of a government shutdown for what it really is. Of course the other aspect of the push for fiscal austerity is the fact that if the GOP gets the massive spending cuts it wants, it could kill the fragile and mediocre economic recovery - something that seems to be occurring in the UK. Here are highlights from Krugman's column:
*
[T]he G.O.P. plan turns out not to be serious at all. Instead, it’s simultaneously ridiculous and heartless. How ridiculous is it? Let me count the ways — or rather a few of the ways, because there are more howlers in the plan than I can cover in one column.
*
First, Republicans have once again gone all in for voodoo economics — the claim, refuted by experience, that tax cuts pay for themselves.
*
A more sober assessment from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office tells a different story. It finds that a large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts would go, not to reduce the deficit, but to pay for tax cuts. In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law.
*
It turns out that Mr. Ryan and his colleagues are assuming drastic cuts in nonhealth spending without explaining how that is supposed to happen. How drastic? . . . . less than we currently spend on defense alone; it’s not much bigger than federal spending when Calvin Coolidge was president, and the United States, among other things, had only a tiny military establishment. How could such a drastic shrinking of government take place without crippling essential public functions? The plan doesn’t say.
*
And then there’s the much-ballyhooed proposal to abolish Medicare and replace it with vouchers that can be used to buy private health insurance. The point here is that privatizing Medicare does nothing, in itself, to limit health-care costs. In fact, it almost surely raises them by adding a layer of middlemen. Yet the House plan assumes that we can cut health-care spending as a percentage of G.D.P. despite an aging population and rising health care costs. . . . the plan would deprive many and probably most seniors of adequate health care.
*
And that neither should nor will happen. Mr. Ryan and his colleagues can write down whatever numbers they like, but seniors vote. And when they find that their health-care vouchers are grossly inadequate, they’ll demand and get bigger vouchers — wiping out the plan’s supposed savings.
*
In short, this plan isn’t remotely serious; on the contrary, it’s ludicrous. And it’s also cruel.
*
In the past, Mr. Ryan has talked a good game about taking care of those in need. But as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, of the $4 trillion in spending cuts he proposes over the next decade, two-thirds involve cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans. And by repealing last year’s health reform, without any replacement, the plan would also deprive an estimated 34 million nonelderly Americans of health insurance.
*
The G.O.P. budget plan isn’t a good-faith effort to put America’s fiscal house in order; it’s voodoo economics, with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness. 
*
As always the party of supposed family values and which claims to honor Christian values utterly disregards the Gospel message of caring for the poor and the unfortunate. Instead, it's a case of lavishing tax cuts on the wealthy and allowing the poor to go hungry and without health care. What would Jesus think of this? Nothing positive I suspect. GOP = hypocrisy.

The Abandonment of the Unemployed

It's a sad commentary on the state of U.S. politics that there seems to have been a near complete abandoment of the unemployed. The most glaring disconnect is, of course, amongst Republicans and their Christianist allies who give great lip service to worshiping religion and the Bible, but who seem to have utterly forgotten the Gospel message of giving aid to the poor and unfortunate. Too me, it is yet another aspect of so-called conservative Christianity becoming an increasingly self-centered and hate based belief system where anyone outside the Christianist tent is deemed expendable - if not in need of eradication. Many are unemployed through no fault of their own - I have a friend who lost his job in the mortgage industry who spent months looking for work before securing a less than desirable job. Rather than deal with this serious problem, the GOP prefers to defend DOMA and push insane bills like that of Randy Forbes discussed in previous pot this morning. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks at this disturbing phenomenon. Here are some highlights:
*
More than three years after we entered the worst economic slump since the 1930s, a strange and disturbing thing has happened to our political discourse: Washington has lost interest in the unemployed.
*
Jobs do get mentioned now and then — and a few political figures, notably Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader in the House, are still trying to get some kind of action. But no jobs bills have been introduced in Congress, no job-creation plans have been advanced by the White House and all the policy focus seems to be on spending cuts.
*
So one-sixth of America’s workers — all those who can’t find any job or are stuck with part-time work when they want a full-time job — have, in effect, been abandoned.
*
[W]e’re well on the way to creating a permanent underclass of the jobless. Why doesn’t Washington care? Part of the answer may be that while those who are unemployed tend to stay unemployed, those who still have jobs are feeling more secure than they did a couple of years ago.
*
Yet polls indicate that voters still care much more about jobs than they do about the budget deficit. So it’s quite remarkable that inside the Beltway, it’s just the opposite. What makes this even more remarkable is the fact that the economic arguments used to justify the D.C. deficit obsession have been repeatedly refuted by experience.
*
I still don’t know why the Obama administration was so quick to accept defeat in the war of ideas, but the fact is that it surrendered very early in the game. In early 2009, John Boehner, now the speaker of the House, was widely and rightly mocked for declaring that since families were suffering, the government should tighten its own belt. That’s Herbert Hoover economics, and it’s as wrong now as it was in the 1930s. But, in the 2010 State of the Union address, President Obama adopted exactly the same metaphor and began using it incessantly.
*
So who pays the price for this unfortunate bipartisanship? The increasingly hopeless unemployed, of course. And the worst hit will be young workers — a point made in 2009 by Peter Orszag, then the White House budget director.
*
So the next time you hear some Republican declaring that he’s concerned about deficits because he cares about his children — or, for that matter, the next time you hear Mr. Obama talk about winning the future — you should remember that the clear and present danger to the prospects of young Americans isn’t the deficit. It’s the absence of jobs. But, as I said, these days Washington doesn’t seem to care about any of that.

Abandoning Children - Texas and GOP Style

I realize that at times I sound like a broken record, but the the manner in which the Republican Party's economic policies are 180 degrees opposite of the Gospel message GOP claims to honor is breath taking. The GOP controlled budget in Texas is in many ways a mini-version of what the Congressional GOP seeks to implement and it is an indictment of a political approach that trashes the weakest and most vulnerable members of society. Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that takes a good look at the "Christian" and "family" values of the GOP. It is beyond disturbing how little the GOP as a party cares about investing in the nation's real future - it's children. Here are some column highlights:

*

Republicans are demanding draconian spending cuts, but we don’t yet know how far they’re willing to go in a showdown with President Obama. At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming.

*

And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children. Now, politicians — and especially, in my experience, conservative politicians — always claim to be deeply concerned about the nation’s children. . . . In practice, however, when advocates of lower spending get a chance to put their ideas into practice, the burden always seems to fall disproportionately on those very children they claim to hold so dear.

*

Consider, as a case in point, what’s happening in Texas, which more and more seems to be where America’s political future happens first. . . . . While low spending may sound good in the abstract, what it amounts to in practice is low spending on children, who account directly or indirectly for a large part of government outlays at the state and local level.

*
And in low-tax, low-spending Texas, the kids are not all right. The high school graduation rate, at just 61.3 percent, puts Texas 43rd out of 50 in state rankings. Nationally, the state ranks fifth in child poverty; it leads in the percentage of children without health insurance. And only 78 percent of Texas children are in excellent or very good health, significantly below the national average. It*’s not a pretty picture; compassion aside, you have to wonder — and many business people in Texas do — how the state can prosper in the long run with a future work force blighted by childhood poverty, poor health and lack of education. But things are about to get much worse.
*

Given the already dire condition of Texas children, you might have expected the state’s leaders to focus the pain elsewhere. In particular, you might have expected high-income Texans, who pay much less in state and local taxes than the national average, to be asked to bear at least some of the burden. But you’d be wrong. Tax increases have been ruled out of consideration; the gap will be closed solely through spending cuts.

*

The really striking thing about all this isn’t the cruelty — at this point you expect that — but the shortsightedness. What’s supposed to happen when today’s neglected children become tomorrow’s work force? Anyway, the next time some self-proclaimed deficit hawk tells you how much he worries about the debt we’re leaving our children, remember what’s happening in Texas, a state whose slogan right now might as well be “Lose the future.”

GOP Budget Plan Would Cost 700,000 Jjobs

To me it's amazing how the GOP continues to dupe working class and middle class voters into supporting policies that are clearly against their own best interests. Indeed, many of the Tea Party crowd are working to support candidates who will quickly jettison them over the side of the economic ship once in office. A new independent study of the impact of the GOP budget plan reveals that the GOP plan would cost 700,000 jobs - yep, instead of creating jobs it would do the exact opposite. Yet the sheeple continue to listen to the disingenuous bullshit emanating from the GOP. Here are highlights from the Washington Post on the study findings:
*

A Republican plan to sharply cut federal spending this year would destroy 700,000 jobs through 2012, according to an independent economic analysis set for release Monday.

*

The report, by Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, offers fresh ammunition to Democrats seeking block the Republican plan, which would terminate dozens of programs and slash federal appropriations by $61 billion over the next seven months.

*
Zandi, an architect of the 2009 stimulus package who has advised both political parties, predicts that the GOP package would reduce economic growth by 0.5 percentage points this year, and by 0.2 percentage points in 2012, resulting in 700,000 fewer jobs by the end of next year.
*

"Significant government spending restraint is vital, but given the still halting economic recovery, it would be counterproductive for that restraint to begin until the economy is creating enough jobs to bring down the still very high unemployment rate," Zandi writes. "Shutting the government down for any length of time would also be taking a big chance with the recovery, not only because of the disruption to government services, but also due to the potential hit to the fragile collective psyche."

*
One would hope that rational thought and analysis would kick in, but with the GOP base and the Tea Party set, objective reality means little.

The GOP's Disingenuous Anti-Union Agenda

The GOP that I once knew - e.g., where one didn't need to be ignorant, bigoted and a religious extremist - fades away into the past more and more with each passing day. The current anti-union efforts in Wisconsin and elsewhere likewise show the lie of the self proclaimed party of "family values." While budget cutting is raised as the excuse for seeking to destroy public worker unions, the real agenda is to crush those who hold different political beliefs and to open the door for rapacious conduct by big business. It's no coincidence that the Koch brothers nasty finger prints can be found in what's happening in Wisconsin. Yes, the same Koch brothers whose enterprises are major polluters and who would reduce regulations that inhibit their destruction of the environment. If this GOP effort prevails, we can expect more and more of a return to the robber baron era where we will have the extremely rich and everyone else is struggling to survive. Not exactly the image of what the Gospel message preached. But then, the GOP uses God and the Bible merely to dupe the stupid and ignorant who fail to realize the agenda they support ultimately has them in the bull's eye as well. The New York Times has a editorial that looks at this increasingly distressing phenomenon. Here are some highlights:
*
Like a wind-whipped brush fire, the mass union protests that began in Madison, Wis., last week have spread to the capitals of Ohio and Indiana where Republican lawmakers also are trying to cripple the bargaining power of unions — and ultimately realize a cherished partisan dream of eradicating them. In each case, Republican talk of balancing budgets is cover for the real purpose of gutting the political force of middle-class state workers, who are steady supporters of Democrats and pose a threat to a growing conservative agenda.
*
Conservative leaders in most states with strong unions have in the past generally made accommodations with organized labor, often winning support on social issues in return. That changed this year after wealthy conservatives poured tens of millions of dollars into the election campaigns of hard-right candidates like Mr. Kasich and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.
*
As Eric Lipton reported in The Times on Tuesday, the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who have long been staunch union opponents, were among the biggest contributors to Mr. Walker. (Americans for Prosperity, the conservative group financed by the Kochs, will begin running anti-union broadcast ads in Wisconsin in the next few days.)
*
Some public sector unions have contracts and benefits that are too rich for these times, but even when they have made concessions, Republican officials have kept up the attack. The Republicans’ claim to be acting on behalf of taxpayers is not believable.
*
In Wisconsin, union leaders agreed to concessions requested by Mr. Walker: to pay nearly 6 percent of their wages for pension costs, up from nearly zero, and double payments for health insurance. At that point, most governors would declare victory and move on. Instead, Mr. Walker has rejected union concessions and won’t even negotiate. His true priority is stripping workers of collective-bargaining rights and reducing their unions to a shell. The unions would no longer be able to raise money to oppose him, as they did in last year’s election, easing the way for future Republicans as well.
*
Never mind that the union workers have families, children to raise and bills to pay. Nope, it's only the agenda of nasty individuals like the Koch brothers that matter to today's GOP regardless of the bullshit they dispense to the Kool-Aid drinkers of the Christian Right and the Tea Party. Hasn't anyone figured out that when the middle class is killed off, there's going to be a vastly reduced purchasing power to revive the economy?

The Dying American Dream

As the prior post indicated, the human toll of the continuing economic collapse is huge, yet the ruling class among Republicans and their delusional supporters among the Tea Party set and Christian Taliban seem to have no qualms whatsoever over ruined lives. The mentality is almost one of these losers deserve their misfortune. It's yet another example of the huge disconnect between the lip service of those who wrap themselves in religion and purported family values even as they push policies that are devastating real families or opposing the recognition of other families. I simply cannot understand the mindset - which perhaps a good thing, because If I did, it would be an indictment of my own morality. I truly believe that America is on the cusp of a huge decline and it's being fueled in large part by those who most claim to love their country. Bob Herbert has a column in the New York Times that looks at the human devastation that's occur and which seems to mean nothing to the GOP/Tea Party/Christianist crowd. Here are highlights:
*
Buried deep beneath the stories about executive bonuses, the stock market surge and the economy’s agonizingly slow road to recovery is the all-but-silent suffering of the many millions of Americans who, economically, are going down for the count.
*
The true extent of the economic devastation, and the enormous size of that portion of the population that is being left behind, has not yet been properly acknowledged. What is being allowed to happen to those being pushed out or left out of the American mainstream is the most important and potentially most dangerous issue facing the country.
*
“We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?”
*
One of the things I noticed reading through the letters was the pervasive sense of loss, not just of employment, but of faith in the soundness and possibilities of America. For centuries, Americans have been nothing if not optimistic. But now there is a terrible sense that so much that was taken for granted during the past six or seven decades is being dismantled or destroyed.
*
How bad have things become? According to the National Employment Law Project, a trend is growing among employers to not even consider the applications of the unemployed for jobs that become available. Among examples offered by the project were a phone manufacturer that posted a job announcement with the message: “No Unemployed Candidate Will Be Considered At All,” and a Texas electronics company that announced online that it would “not consider/review anyone NOT currently employed regardless of the reason.”
*
The great promise of the United States, its primary offering to its citizens and the world, is at grave risk. A couple facing foreclosure in Barre, Mass., wrote to Senator Sanders: “We are now at our wits end and in dire straits. Our parents have since left this world and with no place to go, what are we to do and where are we to go?” They pray to God, they said, that they will not end up living in their car in the cold.
*
GOP misrule under Chimperator Bush set the stage for this fiasco and now the GOP/Tea Party are hell bent to make it far worse.

GOP/Corporate Message to Workers

It's become pretty clear that creating jobs is nowhere to be found on the GOP's radar. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans want to cut spending with a sledge hammer and send more people to the unemployment lines. I hope those who voted for this lunacy are among the first to get their pink slips. Kicking working people to the curb isn't my idea of "family values" but it apparently passes as such among the hate filled Christianists.

David Stockman Blast the GOP and Tea Party Tax Cut Flim Flam

One thing that the nuttier elements of the GOP can be safely relied upon to do is to re-write history to fit their particular agendas and biases. Be it bogus arguments that the Bible defines marriage between one man and one woman - in a previous post, we saw that the true biblical model is polygamy - or rewriting history as recent as three decades ago concerning Ronald Reagan. Reagan had many faults - not the least of which was his refusal to address HIV/AIDS early on in the crisis - and would have likely admitted to many of them. Under the faux version of history now being flung about by Tea Party nutcases and disingenuous Republicans, one would think that Reagan was a demi-god and that his economic policy justify the current smoke and mirrors approach to the federal deficit. On of the architects of Reaganomics was David Stockman and he doesn't have many kind words for those who are peddling the GOP's latest fiscal snake oil. Here are highlights from a column at Mother Jones:
*
David Stockman, Reagan's first budget director in the 1980s and the godfather of the Gipper's supply-side tax cuts, was watching the proceedings [of new GOP members of Congress being sworn in] from his home in Colorado and shaking his head. Republicans like Price were, in Stockman's view, misreading history—even perverting the Reagan message. As he saw it, they were guiding the nation toward financial ruin by pushing for tax cuts without having the guts to seriously slash spending—and dishonestly justifying their "flimflam" by citing his work.
*
Beyond goosing caviar sales, Stockman says, the Republicans are not sincere about boosting the economy. (He also chastises Democrats, but his most trenchant criticism slams the GOP.) He contends that the party of Reagan has spent the last three decades compounding the errors that he had a hand in engineering in the early 1980s—and a reckoning looms.
*
"The honest-to-goodness fact," Stockman says, "is that in February 1981, there wasn't close to a Republican majority for tax cuts without any accompanying or coupled spending cuts. The idea of supply-side in its purest form"—that tax cuts fuel economic growth that yields increased tax revenues—"was only embraced by a handful of junior Republicans, plus Jack Kemp."
*
The Reagan administration hardly minded proposing massive cuts to both taxes and spending. But then things went haywire, Stockman notes. The tax cut ballooned from $500 billion over five years to $1 trillion after lobbyists added special-interest tax breaks for various industries. And on the spending side, the Reagan administration went hog-wild throwing money at the Pentagon. The inevitable happened: The deficit ballooned.
*
"I was horrified," Stockman recalls. In 1982, 1983, and 1984, Reagan signed a series of tax hikes (PDF) that, according to Stockman, recovered 40 percent of the original 1981 tax cut.
*
For GOPers to argue, as they do nowadays, that only permanent tax cuts spark economic activity is "totally inconsistent with what we used to argue in the 1980s," Stockman notes.
*
[H]e [Stickman] has a simple three-part prescription: First, cut military spending by $100 to $150 billion a year.
*
His second point is classic deficit-hawkery: Apply a means test to Medicare and Social Security.
*
His third: "Massively raise taxes." His favorite device: a Tobin tax, named after Nobel Prize-winning economist James Tobin, which would be levied on financial transactions.
*
Stockman counters that Republicans' taxes bad/tax cuts good mantra is disingenuous. "I don't think those kinds of propositions are appropriate, and you could call them a lie if you really wanted to use rhetoric," he says. "They can't say government is too big if they're saying hands off defense. It's not responsible to say government is the problem when you've embraced 95 percent of the dollars.
*
"It's very dismaying," he adds, "to see that 30-year descent into the kind of nihilism, know-nothingism that is represented by the Republican Party today." It's not the Gipper's GOP anymore.

The False Gospel of the GOP

For a political party that claims to be the champion of family values and intense supporter of Christianity - and therefore, one would assume of the Gospel message - the Republican Party has a strange and perverted version of the Gospel. Christ spoke of assisting the sick, the poor, the hungry, the homeless, and the less fortunate, yet these are the very people that Republicans hold in active contempt. Indeed, given their option, the Republicans would do away with all social programs that support those whom the Gospel directs be taken care of. And instead, the GOP aligns itself with those who are either immensely wealthy or who act as the Pharisees so roundly condemned by Christ. The disingenuousness and hypocrisy is absolutely shocking, yet too often the media fails to call out the falsely pious and make them explain their utterly perverted approach to the religion they claim to worship. A column in the Washington Post asks the question: In a time of economic turmoil and record poverty levels, are tax cuts for the wealthy moral? Obviously, the answer in my view is no, it's not moral. But it is fully in keeping with a religious tradition now largely known for its contempt - if not open hatred - of others rather than its love and acts of compassion. Here are some column highlights:
*
Some politicians argue that religious values should be reflected in the public square. Should this faith-based view of politics be applied to the economy? Jesus said, "Whatever you did for one of these least brothers of mine, you did for me."
*
Are tax cuts for the rich immoral? Not always. Certainly, when the government enjoys a big surplus, having captured more of taxpayers' dollars than it needs to pay its bills, an across-the-board tax cut to all Americans is one of the best, and most morally justifiable, public policy options.
*
When the country's facing a big deficit, however, as we are today, it's a different story. That's when difficult choices have to be made. And that's when one's faith, it seems to me, must come into play.
*
For Christians, especially, the message is clear. Read the New Testament. Jesus paid special attention to the poor and expected his followers to do the same - even to the point of shedding all their worldly possessions to help the poor. That same theme of helping the less fortunate permeates both the Old Testament and the Quran.
*
In light of that clear moral imperative, those who would burden our grandchildren with paying for tax cuts for today's millionaires - or demand tax cuts for the wealthiest of Americans as a price for helping the poor and unemployed - either ignore the teachings of their faith or are deliberately throwing faith and morality out the window.