Bobby Jindal’s Troubles at Home in Louisiana

Jindal at Jerry Falwell's Liberty University

Bobby Jindal, Governor of Louisiana, Hindu by descent and panderer to Christofascist is on the road for a 2016 presidential run telling a one sided version of his track record in his home state.  Indeed, the man is little better than a snake oil merchant when one looks at the whole story in Louisiana which in some ways mirrors the conservative disaster in Kansas under the misrule of Sam Brownback and a GOP dominated legislature.  A piece in Politico Magazine looks at the fiasco Jindal's reign has been for Louisiana.  America truly does NOT need Jindal's toxic, voodoo economics at the national level.  Here are article excerpts:

Gov. Bobby Jindal has a plan: Do for the country what he’s done for Louisiana. Cut taxes and cut the government workforce and the economy will bloom, he promises. It’s a message he’s peddling as he lays the groundwork for a presidential run. Indeed, as Jindal is quick to say, private-sector job growth and the economy in Louisiana have outpaced the national average during his tenure as governor. “I’m a fiscal conservative,” he told the influential Conservative Political Action Conference last year, in explaining these successes.

But here’s what Jindal doesn’t say: Louisiana’s budget is hemorrhaging red ink, and it’s getting worse. He inherited a $900 million surplus when he became governor seven years ago, and his administration’s own budget documents now show the state is facing deficits of more than $1 billion for as far as the eye can see. There are no easy solutions today because Jindal has increasingly balanced the budget by resorting to one-time fixes, depleting the state’s reserve funds and taking money meant for other purposes.

“There are all kinds of tricks in the budget,” said Greg Albrecht, the state legislature’s chief economist, a nonpartisan position. Meanwhile, the state’s unemployment rate has risen from 3.8 percent when Jindal took office, a point below the national average then, to 6.7 percent today—nearly a full point higher than today’s national average. Jindal omits these inconvenient facts when he bashes President Barack Obama and Washington for “bankrupting” the federal government and mismanaging the national economy.

[O]ne topic thus far has garnered little national attention: His economic record in the Bayou State.  

Democrats in the state are quick to point to the budget problems. But what’s striking are the harsh critiques from fellow Republicans, who say Jindal’s presidential ambitions and frequent campaign trips outside of Louisiana have taken precedence over managing his home state’s economic affairs. “I’m hoping he will multitask and spend some of his time with us,” said state Treasurer John Kennedy, a Republican. “I’m a numbers guy. We have serious, serious problems with our budget. For seven years, we have spent more than we’ve taken in.”

Republican state legislators are particularly scathing in saying Jindal no longer exercises leadership, but they don’t want to go on the record for fear of losing their choice committee assignments or having the governor kill their pet projects. 

Jindal blamed the state’s budget woes on factors beyond his control. “The oil price drop has been good for consumers, but it’s had a big impact on our revenue,” Jindal told me.

But that’s not how Republican elected officials and independent budget experts see it. They say that the plunge in oil prices and the subsequent loss of revenue for the state treasury has exacerbated—but did not create—the budget issues. The real cause, according to these sources: Jindal’s aversion to tackling politically tough issues and his tendency to resort to ploys to paper over the problems. And then, of course, there is The Pledge.

In 2003, as a private citizen running for governor (he narrowly lost), Jindal promised to “oppose and veto all efforts to increase taxes.” This was part of the bargain he agreed to when he took the pledge—the shorthand description of the Tax Protection Pledge hawked by Americans for Tax Reform, the group headed by anti-tax zealot Grover Norquist. As governor, he has taken the “no tax” commitment to such lengths that in 2011 he vetoed legislation supported by dozens of Republicans that sought renewal of a 4-cent portion of the state’s 36-cent-per-pack cigarette tax, the country’s third lowest.

Why 104 Kansas Republicans Endorsed a Democrat for Governor

I've noted several times how Sam Brownback, GOP governor of Kansas, forced through that state's legislature a dream package of GOP policies: massive tax cuts for the rich, slashing education and safety net spending, amid promises of economic growth.  In short, the same GOP pablum that we here incessantly.  The trouble is that this GOP dream package has reaped havoc on Kansas which is now cash strapped (despite previously having a budget surplus)  and has realized fewer economic gains than the rest of America.  All thanks to Brownback and his voodoo GOP economics.  Now, Kansas Republicans are jumping ship.  Vox looks at the rats fleeing the sinking GOP ship. Here are excerpts:

On Tuesday, a group of 104 Kansas Republicans announced that they would endorse Democrat Paul Davis for governor, rather than incumbent Republican Sam Brownback. 

The group, Republicans for Kansas Values, released a list of 10 reasons they were endorsing Davis, most of which focused on Brownback's tax and budget policies. "Brownback's reckless tax 'experiment' resulted in (1) deficit spending, (2) increased debt, and (3) reduced credit rating," the release reads. The group is mainly made up of former elected officials. It contains two former lieutenant governors, the current state insurance commissioner, and many former members of the state legislature.

The unusual mass endorsement comes after years of acrimony between Brownback and his state's moderate Republican faction, which resisted the governor's enormous tax cuts. In early 2012, Brownback moved against several moderate state senators, supporting primary challenges against them. Outside money from groups like Americans for Prosperity poured in. 

8 moderate Republican senators ended up losing their seats to conservatives. Now, 7 of them have endorsed Paul Davis. "There’s a lot of anger toward the governor, who has played real hardball politics," University of Kansas professor Burdett Loomis said in a recent interview.

It's only the latest bad news for Brownback, who has trailed Davis in several recent polls. Since Kansas passed Brownback's massive tax cut, revenues have plummeted, and the state's bond rating has been downgraded.

Keep you fingers crossed and maybe even contribute some money to Brownback's challenger.  It would be beyond sweet to see Brownback defeated, especially given his virulently anti-gay views. 
 

Charlatans, Cranks and Kansas

It seems that no matter what happens, the Republican "magic bullet" for everything is to slash tax rates and take the nation to war so that profiteers like Halliburton cane gouge the American public.  Among the GOP controlled red states is Kansas where the GOP controlled legislature pushed through massive tax cuts yet, contrary to Republican myth making, the economy did not wondrously improve.  Instead, the economy is depressed and the state is facing a massive budget debt.  A column in the New York Times looks at what Kansas ought to teach the rest of the country especially when we hear the same old gospel of tax cuts from Republicans in Congress.  Here are column highlights:

Two years ago Kansas embarked on a remarkable fiscal experiment: It sharply slashed income taxes without any clear idea of what would replace the lost revenue. Sam Brownback, the governor, proposed the legislation — in percentage terms, the largest tax cut in one year any state has ever enacted — in close consultation with the economist Arthur Laffer. And Mr. Brownback predicted that the cuts would jump-start an economic boom — “Look out, Texas,” he proclaimed.

But Kansas isn’t booming — in fact, its economy is lagging both neighboring states and America as a whole. Meanwhile, the state’s budget has plunged deep into deficit, provoking a Moody’s downgrade of its debt.

There’s an important lesson here — but it’s not what you think. Yes, the Kansas debacle shows that tax cuts don’t have magical powers, but we already knew that. The real lesson from Kansas is the enduring power of bad ideas, as long as those ideas serve the interests of the right people.

Why, after all, should anyone believe at this late date in supply-side economics, which claims that tax cuts boost the economy so much that they largely if not entirely pay for themselves? The doctrine crashed and burned two decades ago, when just about everyone on the right — after claiming, speciously, that the economy’s performance under Ronald Reagan validated their doctrine — went on to predict that Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the wealthy would cause a recession if not an outright depression. What actually happened was a spectacular economic expansion.

So how did the charlatans and cranks end up dictating policy in Kansas, and to a more limited extent in other states? Follow the money.

For the Brownback tax cuts didn’t emerge out of thin air. They closely followed a blueprint laid out by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, which has also supported a series of economic studies purporting to show that tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy will promote rapid economic growth. The studies are embarrassingly bad

And what is ALEC? It’s a secretive group, financed by major corporations, that drafts model legislation for conservative state-level politicians. Ed Pilkington of The Guardian, who acquired a number of leaked ALEC documents, describes it as “almost a dating service between politicians at the state level, local elected politicians, and many of America’s biggest companies.” And most of ALEC’s efforts are directed, not surprisingly, at privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy.

[I]ts agenda involves cutting taxes at the top while actually increasing taxes at the bottom, as well as cutting social services.

But how can you justify enriching the already wealthy while making life harder for those struggling to get by? The answer is, you need an economic theory claiming that such a policy is the key to prosperity for all. So supply-side economics fills a need backed by lots of money, and the fact that it keeps failing doesn’t matter. . . . . it’s about finding reasons to give powerful interests what they want.

 Sadly, the cretins of the GOP base just don't get it that they policies they support are the ones that are screwing them over. 

Virginia GOP Wrong on Tax Cuts and Attracting Entrepreneurs

Republicans in the Virginia General Assembly constantly blather that cutting taxes is the way to attract new businesses and entrepreneurs to Virginia.  Meanwhile, they seek to slash education spending, allow the Commonwealths infrastructure to crumble and maintain a societal atmosphere that enshrines Christofascist religious values into the civil laws, making Virginia look like it is governed by the Christian Taliban.  Based on a new study, the Virginia GOP has things ass backwards to put it mildly.  Quality of life, good schools and other factors are much more important in attracting entrepreneurs than low taxes.  But then again, today's Virginia GOP has most things ass backwards.  Here are highlights of a review of the study findings:

Cutting state taxes to attract entrepreneurs is likely futile at best and self-defeating at worst, a new survey of founders of some of the country’s fastest-growing companies suggests.  The study, which is consistent with other research, should be required reading for state policymakers — especially those in [Virginia,] Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, and Wisconsin who are pushing for large income tax cuts.

The 150 executives surveyed by Endeavor Insight, a research firm that examines how entrepreneurs contribute to job creation and long-term economic growth, said a skilled workforce and high quality of life were the main reasons why they founded their companies where they did; taxes weren’t a significant factor.  This suggests that states that cut taxes and then address the revenue loss by letting their schools, parks, roads, and public safety deteriorate will become less attractive to the kinds of people who found high-growth companies.

• “31% of founders cited access to talent as a factor in their decision on where to launch their company. . . .  A number of founders also highlighted the link between the ability to attract talented employees and a city’s quality of life.”
• “Only 5% of entrepreneurs cited low tax rates as a factor in deciding where to launch their company” and only 2% mentioned “business-friendly regulations” and other government policies.

Kansas, North Carolina, and Ohio have cut personal income taxes significantly in the last two years, and in each case the governor argued that it would give a big boost to creating or attracting new firms.  This new study provides more compelling evidence that that’s the wrong approach.  Let’s hope other states don’t start down the same dead-end path.

Richard Florida who coined the term the "creative class" has further observations in The Atlantic:

But what really attracts innovative entrepreneurs who create these economy-boosting companies?

The answers: talented workers, and the quality of life that the educated and ambitious have come to expect – not the low-tax, favorable-regulation approach that many state and local governments tout.

Endeavor identified two fundamental patterns.

For one, size matters. These top business-creators gravitated towards cities with at least a million residents in the metro area. This offered the scale and diverse array of offerings needed to attract talent.   

A city also needs to be able to appeal to the young and the restless. The entrepreneurs surveyed were a highly mobile bunch when they first started out. 


The top rated factor by far was access to talent. Nearly a third of those surveyed mentioned it as a key factor in their decisions for where to live and work (many specifically prized access to technically trained workers). Entrepreneurs explained that they proactively sought out the places that educated and ambitious workers want to be.

The study found that two other key factors in the location choices of entrepreneurs are major transportation networks (like airports and highways that can connect them to other cities) and proximity to customers and suppliers. This echoes MIT’s Eric von Hippel's claim that end-users and customers are key innovators.

Perhaps even more interesting from the perspective of urban policy are the location factors that did not make the cut – those that high-growth entrepreneurs found to be of little consequence in their location decisions. At the very bottom of the list were taxes and business-friendly policies, which are, unfortunately, exactly the sorts of things so many states and cities continue to promote as silver bullets. Just 5 percent of the respondents mentioned low taxes as being important, and a measly 2 percent named other business-friendly policies as a factor in their location decisions.

Here in Hampton Roads we meet the 1 million plus population factor, but thanks to years of neglect and GOP refusal to raise taxes our transportation system is inadequate.  Adding to the problem is the poor air service available at the regions two airports.  If Virginia wants areas like Hampton Roads to prosper, they need to (i) drastically improve the transportation infrastructure and quality of air travel service and (ii) cease trying to drag Virginia back into the 1950's.  For now, Washington, DC, and Northern Virginia alone meet this requirements and, as a result, they are booming while areas like Southwest Virginia atrophy and become increasingly unattractive to anyone other than religious fanactics and rednecks.

America's Crumbling Infrastructure: I-5 Bridge Collapse Should Be a Wake Up Call

Thankfully, it appears that no one died but the collapse of the Skagit River bridge on Interstate 5 in Washington State (I-5 links Seattle with Canada), but the event ought to be a wake up call nation wide that the GOP and Tea Party opposition to taxes is putting our lives at risk on a daily basis.  Highways, bridges and other critical infrastructure doesn't magically maintain or pay for itself.  Here are details from the Seattle Post:

The collapse of a freeway bridge into the Skagit River derailed a key part of the Northwest's transportation system, but amazingly failed to claim any lives..

Three people suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the dramatic collapse of the Interstate 5 bridge, which occurred around 7 p.m. Thursday. Traffic was snarled on the freeway and nearby roads, and will likely remain so; investigators and one of the survivors say an oversized truck may have been to blame.

A car, a truck and a travel trailer fell into the water in the collapse. All three people who went into the Skagit were rescued safely. 

The Washington Post adds more to the story:

[M]iraculously, authorities said it appeared nobody was killed in the bridge failure that raised the question about the safety of aging spans and cut off the main route between Seattle and Canada.


Traffic along the heavily travelled route could be affected for some time.  “The I-5 corridor is totally disrupted,” said Gov. Jay Inslee, who went to the scene Thursday night.  He said work has already started to design detours, but state Transportation Secretary Lynn Peterson asked people to avoid I-5 in the area for the next several days.

The National Transportation Safety Board was sending an investigative team.

“The bridge just went down, it crashed through the water,” he said. “It was really surreal.”  The bridge was about 50 feet above the water. Deyerin said it appeared that two vehicles - a car and the pickup with the travel trailer attached - fell into the river. He said the water depth was about 15 feet, and the vehicles half-visible in the water likely were resting on portions of the collapsed bridge.

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being “functionally obsolete” — a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department report, 42 of the county’s 108 bridges are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state’s bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington’s 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

On our drive to Alexandria, Virginia, today on I-64 and I-95 we will cross bridges that are equally old and I shudder to think what their state of repair might be.  The surface of the I-64 bridge entering Richmond is in horrible repair and I surely hope that the under structure is in better repair.  Naturally, GOP gubernatorial nominee/nutcase Ken Cuccinelli wants to cut Virginia taxes further - I guess he thinks God will miraculously repair Virginia's crumbling highways.

Ken Cuccinelli's Economic Voodoo for Virginia

Proving yet again that he apparently drinks gallons and gallons of Kool-Aid - or perhaps is as insane as I think he is - Ken Cuccinelli has unveiled his proposal on how he would energize Virginia's economy and, not surprisingly, its more of the same warmed over Republican Party voodoo economics.  Cuccinelli's magic catalyst?  Slash taxes for both individuals and corporations. Yes, as noted, it is the same old mantra. Slash taxes and supposedly the economy will take off.  Never mind the evidence of the last decade or more which shows it doesn't work.  Oh, and in the process the infrastructure crumbles.   The Washington Post trashes Cuccinelli in a main editorial  Here are excerpts:

LIKE MITT ROMNEY, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II wants to cut taxes — by a lot. Like Mr. Romney, Mr. Cuccinelli, the Republican candidate for governor, promises this would not reduce government revenues by a dime, since he would also eliminate significant tax loopholes and deductions. And like Mr. Romney, Mr. Cuccinelli adamantly refuses to identify these loopholes and deductions.

Why would Mr. Cuccinelli expect Virginians to fall for this?

Mr. Cuccinelli unveiled his plan at a yogurt shop, claiming it would help such businesses grow faster by cutting their taxes. More likely, it would starve the state of the resources it needs to fund public schools, state colleges and universities, public safety, mental health programs and state parks. 

Somehow, he would slash $1.4 billion in taxes — about 8 percent of the state’s annual tax collections — but hold revenue steady. It’s economics reduced to magic.

Already, Virginia’s tax code is highly regressive. The personal income tax, which accounts for about two-thirds of state revenue, is a flat 5.75 percent for everyone making more than $17,000 a year. For the sake of fairness, the wealthiest Virginians should be asked to do more. By cutting personal income taxes, Mr. Cuccinelli would ask them to do less.

His proposal assumes that Virginians are overtaxed and in need of relief. In fact, Virginia is one of the wealthiest and most frugal states in the country. Its median income ranks eighth nationally, but state outlays on a range of functions are average or below average. On public and higher education, for instance, Virginia’s per capita spending ranks 38th nationally. On health care, its per capita spending ranks 40th.

Unsurprisingly, leaders of some of the state’s largest jurisdictions saw Mr. Cuccinelli’s blueprint as a recipe for higher property taxes, which are imposed at the local level. How else would localities compensate for the loss in state revenue that directly supports public schools? 

The greed driven "godly Christians" who back Cuccinelli will, of course love Cuccinelli's proposal.  They never cease to look for ways to undermine the social safety net and to kick the poor and unfortunate to the curb.  All the while, naturally, patting themselves on their backs for the godliness and piety.

Why Obama Needs to Play Hard Ball with the House GOP

It's only two days since from election day and already the House Republicans are making noise that they are going to engage in the same old bullshit that we saw for the last four years rather than work with President Obama and the even more securely held Democrat Senate.  What to do?  First, there needs to be a concerted campaign to educate the public as to why the GOP still controls the House of Representatives.  One word describes it: gerrymandering.  The Virginia 2nd Congressional district is but one example where the district was revised by the GOP held Virginia General Assembly in a bizarre and contorted way to ensure hate group almost guarantee Christofascist Scott Rigell was reelected. The examples go on and on.  Second, as a Business Week piece describes, Obama has the leverage on his side this time around and he needs to play hard ball to the maximum and constantly use the pulpit of the presidency to lay blame for obstruction at the feet of the House GOP and let them bear the consequences in 2014.  Here are some article excerpts:

At first glance, the results of the 2012 election look like a return to the status quo: President Obama was reelected, Democrats retained the Senate, and Republicans held on to the House. But don’t be fooled. The political dynamic of the next four years will be almost exactly the opposite of the last four.

During Obama’s first term, and particularly in the last two years, the Republican Party had most of the leverage. The GOP’s willingness to reject stimulus, default on the debt, and sabotage the nation’s credit rating—threats that shook financial markets—often put the White House at the mercy of the opposition.

In Obama’s second term, leverage will shift to the Democrats on almost every issue of importance. And that shift has already begun.

From his efforts to end the Bush tax cuts for the rich, close the carried-interest deduction, and enact the Buffett Rule, Obama failed in every attempt to generate higher tax revenue to pay for new spending and reduce the deficit. Obama confronted a Republican party determined to starve government and convinced that its path back to power lay in engineering his failure. As Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said in 2010, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Republicans mostly held the line.

Now comes the payoff. The expiration of those cuts and the automatic reductions set to take effect at year’s end—the so-called fiscal cliff—mean that Obama and the Democrats can gain a huge source of new revenue by doing nothing at all. Republican priorities are the ones suddenly in peril. The combination of tax increases on the rich, higher capital-gains taxes, and sharp cuts in defense spending have congressional Republicans deeply worried. To mitigate these, they’ll have to bargain.

Despite their post-election tough talk, Republican leaders have dealt themselves a lousy hand. Obama can propose a “middle-class tax cut” for the 98 percent of American households earning less than $250,000 a year—while letting the Bush tax cuts expire for those earning more—and dare the Republicans to block it. If they do, everyone’s taxes will rise on Jan. 1. .  .  .  .  Democratic leaders in Congress believe the public furor would be too intense for Republicans to withstand for long.  Going over the cliff would also weaken the Republicans’ greatest point of leverage: renewing their threat to default on the national debt.

Right now, the Treasury expects to hit the debt ceiling in February. But if the cliff can’t be avoided, tax rates will rise and government coffers will swell, delaying the date of default—thus diminishing the Republicans’ advantage.

[L]everage has shifted from Republicans to Democrats. “The message of this election is twofold,” says Senator Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). “Americans want us to come together around a balanced compromise. And the major issue surrounding the fiscal cliff that was litigated in the election was revenues—voters clearly sided with us. The president made it a campaign issue, and he won.”

Where this tension could hurt Republicans most in Obama’s second term is on immigration, the other big issue sure to come to the fore in the next two years.  .  .  .  .  Obama could see coming, as any poll-watcher could, the demographic tidal wave that swamped Republicans on Nov. 6.

Republicans have become prisoners of demography, helpless to break free from the nativism of their activist base.  .  .  .  . Solving this problem and ending the party’s unconscionable voter suppression efforts stand as the Republicans’ two greatest challenges to broadening their appeal in the years ahead.  For Democrats, the picture is brighter. 

I sincerely hope that Obama and other Democrats hold tough and hold the feet of the GOP House to the fire.  Use a blow torch, in fact.

The Economist Endorses Obama - Math Does Still Matter

I continue to be amazed at the Republicans who keep saying the nation's budget deficit has exploded under Obama - obviously they have "romnesia" about the real budget busters: Chimperator George Bush and Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  Worse yet, the foam at the mouth about what will happen to the budget deficit if Obama is reelected.  Meanwhile, they have done nothing to check the impossible math of Mitt "I'm a Liar" Romney's proposals.  Between the promised tax cuts and huge increases in defense spending Romney has promised, the budget deficit would utterly explode.  One can only assume that they have imbibed far too much Kool-Aid laced with mind altering drugs or that they live in an alternate universe where simple math doesn't exist.  Well, the Economist HAS done the math and in large part because Romney would be a financial disaster deficit wise, the Economist has endorsed Barack Obama for reelection.  The entire endorsement is worth a read because it looks honestly - and critically - at Obama's record but nonetheless concludes that Romney/Ryan would be far worse.  Here are some excerpts:

[T]his choice turns on two questions: how good a president has Mr Obama been, especially on the main issues of the economy and foreign policy? And can America really trust the ever-changing Mitt Romney to do a better job? On that basis, the Democrat narrowly deserves to be re-elected.

Mr Obama’s first term has been patchy. On the economy, the most powerful argument in his favour is simply that he stopped it all being a lot worse. America was in a downward economic spiral when he took over, with its banks and carmakers in deep trouble and unemployment rising at the rate of 800,000 a month. His responses—an aggressive stimulus, bailing out General Motors and Chrysler, putting the banks through a sensible stress test and forcing them to raise capital (so that they are now in much better shape than their European peers)—helped avert a Depression. That is a hard message to sell on the doorstep when growth is sluggish and jobs scarce; but it will win Mr Obama some plaudits from history, and it does from us too.

Two other things count, on balance, in his favour. One is foreign policy, where he was also left with a daunting inheritance.  .  .  .  .  The other qualified achievement is health reform. Even to a newspaper with no love for big government, the fact that over 40m people had no health coverage in a country as rich as America was a scandal.

Mr Obama’s shortcomings have left ample room for a pragmatic Republican, especially one who could balance the books and overhaul government. Such a candidate briefly flickered across television screens in the first presidential debate. This newspaper would vote for that Mitt Romney, just as it would for the Romney who ran Democratic Massachusetts in a bipartisan way (even pioneering the blueprint for Obamacare). The problem is that there are a lot of Romneys and they have committed themselves to a lot of dangerous things.

Take foreign policy. In the debates Mr Romney stuck closely to the president on almost every issue. But elsewhere he has repeatedly taken a more bellicose line.   .  .  .  .  Mr Romney seems too ready to bomb Iran, too uncritically supportive of Israel and cruelly wrong in his belief in “the Palestinians not wanting to see peace”. The bellicosity could start on the first day of his presidency, when he has vowed to list China as a currency manipulator—a pointless provocation to its new leadership that could easily degenerate into a trade war.

[F]ar from being the voice of fiscal prudence, Mr Romney wants to start with huge tax cuts (which will disproportionately favour the wealthy), while dramatically increasing defence spending. Together those measures would add $7 trillion to the ten-year deficit. He would balance the books through eliminating loopholes (a good idea, but he will not specify which ones) and through savage cuts to programmes that help America’s poor (a bad idea, which will increase inequality still further). At least Mr Obama, although he distanced himself from Bowles-Simpson, has made it clear that any long-term solution has to involve both entitlement reform and tax rises. Mr Romney is still in the cloud-cuckoo-land of thinking you can do it entirely through spending cuts.

Mr Romney’s more sensible supporters explain his fiscal policies away as necessary rubbish, concocted to persuade the fanatics who vote in the Republican primaries . . . . However, even if you accept that Romneynomics may be more numerate in practice than it is in theory, it is far harder to imagine that he will reverse course entirely. . . . . Mr Romney, like Mr Hollande, will have his party at his back—and a long record of pandering to them.

Indeed, the extremism of his party is Mr Romney’s greatest handicap. The Democrats have their implacable fringe too: look at the teachers’ unions. But the Republicans have become a party of Torquemadas, forcing representatives to sign pledges never to raise taxes, to dump the chairman of the Federal Reserve and to embrace an ever more Southern-fried approach to social policy.

As a result, this election offers American voters an unedifying choice. Many of The Economist’s readers, especially those who run businesses in America, may well conclude that nothing could be worse than another four years of Mr Obama. We beg to differ. For all his businesslike intentions, Mr Romney has an economic plan that works only if you don’t believe most of what he says. That is not a convincing pitch for a chief executive. And for all his shortcomings, Mr Obama has dragged America’s economy back from the brink of disaster, and has made a decent fist of foreign policy. So this newspaper would stick with the devil it knows, and re-elect him.

Paul Ryan: Let's Reduce Poverty... By Slashing Poverty Programs

In one of his first policy speeches, Paul Ryan confirmed the reverse Robin Hood mindset that many have accused him of previously based on his GOP budget proposal.  Today Ryan said he and Mitt Romney would restore upward social mobility for the poor by dismantling anti-poverty programs.  They'd either pull themselves up by the bootstraps or perish.  Needless to say, the revenue savings resulting from leaving the poor and disadvantage to their own devices to either survive or die would likely go toward funding the large tax cuts for the wealthy that are so near and dear to Ryan's and Romney's ice cold hearts.  A piece in Huffington Post looks at Ryan's speech which ought to strike terror among those who are poor and disadvantaged and those who advocate on their behalf.   Here are some highlights:

In his first policy speech since becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee, Paul Ryan said he and Mitt Romney will restore upward mobility and fight poverty in part by limiting the federal government's commitment to safety net programs.

"Upward mobility is the central promise of life in America," Ryan said. "But right now, America’s engines of upward mobility aren't working the way they should. Mitt Romney and I are running because we believe that Americans are better off in a dynamic, free-enterprise-based economy that fosters economic growth, opportunity and upward mobility instead of a stagnant, government-directed economy that stifles job creation and fosters government dependency."

Ryan noted that Americans born into poor families are more likely to stay poor as adults than Americans born into wealthy families.

A Romney administration, Ryan said, would help restore mobility by turning the open-ended commitments of federal anti-poverty programs into "block grants" -- fixed chunks of money the federal government sends to states each year regardless of the amount of need. States, in turn, get more leeway to design their own programs.

As a congressman, Ryan has authored several proposals to slash spending on programs for poor people by turning them into block grants. According to an analysis by the centrist Urban Institute, Ryan's proposal to repeal health care reform and block grant Medicaid, which provides health insurance to people below near-poverty income levels, would reduce federal spending by $1.7 trillion and Medicaid enrollment by 50 percent, resulting in a loss of insurance for 35.7 million Americans.

Ryan also proposed dramatic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as food stamps, in place of looming cuts to defense spending. 

Ryan also said government spending discourages people from giving to charity. "Debt on this scale is destructive in so many ways, and one of them is that it crowds out civil society by drawing resources away from private giving."

Economists at the St. Louis Federal Reserve found in 2009 that increased government spending can have a limited negative effect on charitable donations, but also that growth in charitable giving had paralleled growth in government spending over the past 40 years (PDF).

About the only thing that Ryan hasn't proposed is bring back debtors ' prisons.  It is little wonder that even the generally morally bankrupt Catholic Bishops have condemned Ryan's proposals as the antithesis of the Church's social gospel teachings.   How anyone this cold and callous towards others can claim to be a devote Catholic or Christian is mind boggling.  But such is the sick status of today's GOP.

Romney Told 31 Myths In 41 Minutes During Tuesday's Debate

I've already vented about Mitt Romney's blatant dishonesty during the second presidential debate on Tuesday night, but it is important to focus on just how incredibly dishonest the man really is and how dangerous he is to the future of average Americans.  A piece at Think Progress looks at 31 different myths and untruths Romney told in the 41 minutes that he was speaking during the debate.  Romney makes the sleaziest used car salesman look honest.  It's frightening.  Here is a sampling of the lies that struck me the most (make sure you read the full piece): 

During the first presidential debate in Denver, Colorado Romney managed to tell 27 myths in his 38 minutes of speaking time. But at his second encounter with Obama in New York, the GOP presidential candidate — who has run a post-truth campaign from day one — outdid himself and crammed 31 myths in 41 minutes:

1) “I want to make sure we keep our Pell grant program growing. We’re also going to have our loan program, so that people are able to afford school.” Paul Ryan’s budget could cut Pell Grants for nearly 1 million college students and even Romney’s white paper on education, “A Chance for Every Child,” suggests that he “would reverse the growth in Pell Grant funding.” It says: “A Romney Administration will refocus Pell Grant dollars on the students that need them most and place the program on a responsible long-term path that avoids future funding cliffs and last-minute funding patches.”

2) “I put out a five-point plan that gets America 12 million new jobs in four years and rising take-home pay.” The Washington Post’s in-house fact checker tore Romney’s claim that he will create 12 million jobs to shreds. The Post wrote that the “‘new math’” in Romney’s plan “doesn’t add up.” In awarding the claim four Pinocchios — the most untrue possible rating, the Post expressed incredulity at the fact Romney would personally stand behind such a flawed, baseless claim.

10) “And I will not — I will not under any circumstances, reduce the share that’s being paid by the highest income taxpayers. And I will not, under any circumstances increase taxes on the middle-class.” As the Tax Policy Center concluded, Romney’s plan can’t both exempt middle class families from tax cuts and remain revenue neutral. “He’s promised all these things and he can’t do them all. In order for him to cover the cost of his tax cut without adding to the deficit, he’d have to find a way to raise taxes on middle income people or people making less than $200,000 a year,” the Center found.


11) “But your rate comes down and the burden also comes down on you for one more reason, and that is every middle-income taxpayer no longer will pay any tax on interest, dividends or capital gains. No tax on your savings. That makes life a lot easier.” This would actually help very few Americans. Nearly three-fourths of households that make $200,000 or less annually would get literally nothing from Romney’s tax cut, due to the simple fact that most of those households have no capital gains income. To be exact, 73.9 percent of the households upon which Romney “focused” his tax cut will see zero benefit from it.

17) “So when you say that I wanted to take the auto industry bankrupt, you actually did. And — and I think it’s important to know that that was a process that was necessary to get those companies back on their feet, so they could start hiring more people. That was precisely what I recommend and ultimately what happened.” This is false. As Buisnessweek explains: Romney “opposed any use of taxpayer dollars to bail out the automakers, advice that President George W. Bush and Obama ignored. GM and Chrysler went through managed bankruptcies after Bush, at the end of his presidency, and later Obama provided federal funds.” “Without federal funds, GM and Chyrsler would not have survived. As former Bush aide Tony Fratto explained, “It wasn’t just that there wasn’t credit available; a lot of private equity had cash, they just weren’t giving it away.”

18) “He said that by now middle-income families would have a reduction in their health insurance premiums by $2,500 a year. It’s gone up by $2,500 a year.” Premiums have increased, though at a lower rate than before. And while the Affordable Care Act’s most important cost contentment strategies have yet to be implemented, the law is already lowering costs. 16 million seniors have received preventive benefits without deductibles or co-pays and are saving at least $3.9 billion on prescription drugs. Millions of young adults now have insurance coverage and are staying on their parent’s health care plan, insurers that spend too many premium dollars on administrative spending have refunded consumers, and states have successfully rejected dramatic premium increases.


20) “The kids of those that came here illegally, those kids, I think, should have a pathway to become a permanent resident of the United States and military service, for instance, is one way they would have that kind of pathway to become a permanent resident.” But Romney has promised to end President Obama’s deferred action directive, which saves some young undocumented immigrants from deportation, though he would not take away visas from people who had already received them. He has also promised to veto the DREAM Act.

21) “Now, when the president ran for office, he said that he’d put in place, in his first year, a piece of legislation — he’d file a bill in his first year that would reform our — our immigration system… He didn’t do it. He had a Democrat House and Democrat Senate, supermajority in both houses.” Senate Republicans repeatedly prevented Obama’s immigration reform efforts. The GOP actually blocked the DREAM Act from securing 60 votes to pass cloture, denying hundreds of thousands of young undocumented immigrants a path to legal status if they enrolled in college or joined the military. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) even said on the Senate floor that young people lobbying his office had wasted their time.

22) “Any investments I have over the last eight years have been managed by a blind trust. And I understand they do include investments outside the United States, including in — in Chinese companies.” Romney’s blind trust is not very blind, and includes investments in a company owned by Romney’s son.

You get the drift:  if Mitt Romney's lips are moving, the safest assumption is to assume that he's lying.  I'd put the man right up there with Tony Perkins and most of the anti-gay professional Christian set who have lied so often that they no longer know how to tell the truth.

Mitt Romney Showed His Arrogance Last Night

It's no secret that I do not like Mitt Romney.  Frankly, in my view he's an arrogant prick: the spoiled little rich boy who thinks living an apartment while living off of trust funds while attending graduate school was a struggle.  And his equally bitchy and arrogant wife, Ann "Marie Antoinette" Romney is no better in my book.   Fortunately, some of Romney's arrogance and sense of extreme entitlement came through last night - along with his patent dishonesty mentioned in a prior post.  Also telling was Romney's failure to give any specifics on how he would grow and strengthen the U.S. economy.  He merely said that he would and that was supposed to be all the voters - who he views as peasants and would be serfs to GOP plutocrats - need to know.  Thus, the real issue becomes whether or not voters wake up to who the real Mitt Romney is over the next couple of weeks or not.  Are Americans as stupid as Romney believes them to be.  I for one hope not.  A column in the Washington Post looks at these issues further.  Here some highlights:

[T]he most electorally significant performance was Romney’s. Under pressure this time, the former Massachusetts governor displayed his least attractive sides. He engaged in pointless on-stage litigation of the debate rules. He repeatedly demonstrated his disrespect for both the president and Candy Crowley, the moderator. And Romney was just plain querulous when anyone dared question him about the gaping holes in his tax and budget plans.

Any high school debate coach would tell a student that declaring, “Believe me because I said so,” is not an argument. Yet Romney confused biography with specificity and boasting with answering a straightforward inquiry. “Well, of course, they add up,” Romney insisted of his budget numbers.

Romney’s stonewalling was so obvious that it opened the way for one of Obama’s most effective lines of the evening: “If somebody came to you, Governor, with a plan that said, here, I want to spend $7 or $8 trillion, and then we’re going to pay for it, but we can’t tell you until maybe after the election how we’re going to do it, you wouldn’t have taken such a sketchy deal. And neither should you, the American people, because the math doesn’t add up.”

The most instructive contrast between Debate I and Debate II was the extent to which Romney’s ideas crumbled at the slightest contact with challenge. Romney and Paul Ryan are erecting a Potemkin village designed to survive only until the polls close on Nov. 6. They cannot say directly that they really believe in slashing taxes on the rich and backing away from so much of what government does because they know that neither idea will sell. So they offer soothing language to the middle class, photo ops at homeless programs to convey compassion and a steady stream of attacks on Obama, aimed at shifting all the attention his way.

In the first debate, Obama let Romney back into the race by failing to shake his opponent’s self-presentation. But Romney also put himself into contention by pretending to be a moderate, shelving his plutocratic side and hiding his party’s long-term objectives.

In the second debate, the disguise fell. Romney revealed more of himself than he wanted to and asked voters to endorse a radical tax-cutting program without providing them the details that matter. Sketchy is one word for this. Deceptive is another.

Paul Hirschbiel Calls Out Scott Rigell for Being an Extremist

While our Hampton home has been redistricted out of the Virginia 2nd Congressional District I am closely following the contest there between Scott Rigell - who was endorsed by hate group founder Lou Sheldon - and Paul Hirschbiel who, unlike Rigell, understands that religious freedom applies to others besides the Christofascists.   Hirschbiel also, unlike Rigell, opposes a return to the failed economic policies of Chimperator George Bush and the disastrous foreign policy championed by Emperor Palpatine Cheney.  In their first debate, things go heated, especially when Hirschbiel challenged Rigell on his support of a "personhodd" bill entitled the Life At Conception Act.  I have the added perspective of having formerly lived in the same neighborhood as Rigell, so that I know just how extreme Rigell's views are on nearly everything - including his utter contempt for LGBT Virginians.   If one wants an example of the Christian Taliban mindset, look no further than Scott Rigell.  Here are some excerpts from the Virginian Pilot on the debate fireworks:

In their first debate this election season, the two men competing in Virginia's 2nd Congressional District pointed out their sharp differences Friday night on health care, abortion and handling the federal government's fiscal problems.

The most aggressive exchange in the one-hour forum that was broadcast live on WHRO-TV came when Democratic challenger Paul Hirschbiel criticized U.S. Rep. Scott Rigell's support for anti-abortion legislation.
Hirschbiel, who favors abortion rights, noted that Rigell supported the Life At Conception Act. The bill, cosponsored by Rigell and 120 other lawmakers, would affirm that human life begins at conception and, from conception on, would be guaranteed full constitutional rights.

Hirschbiel criticized Rigell's vote in favor of the GOP budget plan, drafted by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin - the party's vice presidential candidate - that would reduce spending on programs including Head Start, make changes to Medicare benefits for those under 55, and reduce taxes for upper-income America.

Hirschbiel said a key to job creation and economic revival are strong educational programs.  He said he wanted keep intact the so-called Bush tax cuts for everyone except those earning $1 million or more each year. The tax on the high-earners, he said, would generate hundreds of billions to ease deficit spending but still allow federal spending on education and health care.

Bloomberg Tears Apart the Romney/Ryan Tax Plan

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I've noted previously that the math behind the Mitt Romney/Paul Ryan tax plan simply does not add up.  Therefore, one can only assume that Romney and Ryan view the American electorate as so stupid that we cannot figure out that we are being sold a bunch oh snake oil or worse.  As for what they would actually elected, it is simple impossible to know whether they would back away on the tax reduction promise or move forward and make the nation's budget deficit explode even more.  A column on Bloomberg.com takes apart the "studies"  that Ryan and Romney claim support their smoke and mirrors tax proposal.  As you will note, some of these "studies" are in fact merely blog posts or opinion pieces.  True studies, these pieces are not.  Here are some column excerpts:

 

Mitt Romney's campaign says I'm full of it. I said Romney's tax plan is mathematically impossible: he can't simultaneously keep his pledges to cut tax rates 20 percent and repeal the estate tax and alternative minimum tax; broaden the tax base enough to avoid growing the deficit; and not raise taxes on the middle class. They say they have six independent studies -- six! -- that "have confirmed the soundness of the Governor’s tax plan," and so I should stop whining.  Let's take a tour of those studies and see how they measure up.

The Romney campaign sent over a list of the studies, but they are perhaps more accurately described as "analyses," since four of them are blog posts or op-eds. I'm not hating -- I blog for a living -- but I don't generally describe my posts as "studies."

None of the analyses do what Romney's campaign says: show that his tax plan is sound. I'm going to walk through them individually, but first I want to make a broad point.

The Tax Policy Center paper that sparked this discussion found that Romney's plan couldn't work because his tax rate cuts would provide $86 billion more in tax relief to people making over $200,000 than Romney could recoup by eliminating tax expenditures for that group. That means his plan is necessarily a tax cut for the rich, so if Romney keeps his promise not to grow the deficit, he'll have to raise taxes on the middle class.

The piece then goes on to debunk each of the "studies" cited by Romney/Ryan.   In closing, the piece makes the following points:

Finally, I would note one item that the Romney campaign does not cite in support of its tax plan: Any analysis actually prepared for the campaign in preparation for announcing the plan in February. You would expect that, in advance of announcing a tax plan, the campaign would commission an analysis to make sure that all of its planks can coexist. Releasing that analysis now would be to the campaign's advantage, helping them put down claims like mine that their math doesn't add up.

Why don't they release that analysis? My guess is because the analysis doesn't exist, and the 20 percent rate cut figure was plucked out of thin air for political reasons without regard to whether it was feasible.

What's so troubling is the fact that I know people who are planning to vote for Romney simply because they want to reduce what they pay in taxes.  Most of them, unfortunately, have no idea that the Romney/Ryan tax plan is a sham and that if the GOP ticket wins, either the tax cut proposals will not be implemented or, if they are, the budget deficit - which these people claim to be worried about - will explode.  The math simply does NOT add up.  What does that make Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan?  Liars.  Deliberate liars.

Mitt Romney's Tax Mythology Made Simple

Mitt Romney's not only telling opportunistic lies about his meeting with the lat Glen Doherty.  He is also lying when he talks about his fantasy land tax plan.  Simple math demonstrates that the numbers do not add up.  Even elementary school level math proves it easily if one adds it a 20% tax cut across the board and massive increases in military spending - spending at levels even the Pentagon has not requested.  A column in the Washington Post looks at Romney's dishonest approach to tax policy - his lies, if you will - that he repeated again during last week's debate.  The fact that most in the mainstream news media are not hammering Romney on this issue is akin to the same abandonment of journalistic responsibility that got the nation in the fool's errand known as the Iraq War.  Liars need to be exposed to protect the nation's well being.  Here are some column excerpts:

I’ve said this before, but Mitt Romney’s new formulation of his tax plan — one he used at the debate, and which he repeated to Wolf Blitzer yesterday — makes it absolutely clear that he’s lying about something. You don’t need complicated Tax Policy Center analysis, or for that matter anything beyond basic logic, to see why his pledge of revenue neutrality doesn’t jibe with what he’s saying. Here’s his quote to Blitzer:

“Well, I’ve made it pretty clear that my principles are, number one, simplify the code; number two, create incentives for small businesses and large businesses to grow; number three, don’t reduce the burden on high income taxpayers; and number four, remove the burden somewhat from middle income people.”

Now, in real life, we know that Romney’s actual specific pledges would yield a big tax cut for the rich. But even if you accept this version of Romney’s plan — even if you accept that Romney would cut the wealthy’s tax rates, and then offset that by taking away loopholes and deductions the rich enjoy — the overall math of his plan simply can’t work.

For some people, Romney says he’ll keep taxes the same. For everyone else, he’ll lower them.
I’ll repeat that just to make sure everyone gets it. Some have the same taxes; some have less. I’ll even put Romney’s pledge in equation form, for those mathematically inclined:

0 + (-X) = 0, where X > 0

That simply can’t work. Romney can’t do what he says and yet keep revenues the same. At least, not unless he’s using one of those spells that Hermione bothered learning while everyone else was hanging out on the Quidditch pitch.

There’s just no excuse for reporters to ignore this glaring, central impossibility. Hey, reporters! Next time you interview Mitt Romney and he repeats this formula about lower taxes for some and the same taxes for everyone else, ask him how that goes with his pledge that he won’t increase the deficit with his tax plan.

And while you’re at it, push him on the real key question: if it turned out that his fantasy math falls short and the experts are correct, what would he give up: the big cut in rates? Tax levels for the middle class? Or revenue neutrality? It has to be one of them. Because not even Dumbledore could make Romney’s basic “principles” work.