Category Archives: Politics

The Republican Party’s governing philosophy

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Seriously, the Republicans in Congress don’t have one. What drives them is a pure lust for power, and money for their corporate backers. They have no actual ideas about how to grow the economy, how to raise wages, how to improve education, or about what to do for any other problem facing the country. They’ve got nothing. “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” — Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY)

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What has happened with jobs

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Austin Goolsbee takes to the White House White Board to explain job losses and gains every month for the past three years. Note the small drop off over this past summer, when the stimulus began to fade somewhat. It’s my own belief that if the stimulus had been stronger growth would be stronger now, but it’s just as clear that the stimulus did good for the economy, and provided many jobs, if not as many as we need. Also note in his explanation: the stimulus contained a lot of tax cuts. Taxes are lower now than when President Obama took … Continue reading →

“There will be time to rest on Nov. 3”

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Senator Michael Bennet speaks to campaign volunteers, encouraging everyone to step up their efforts to get out the vote. And he’s right: we don’t want to get up on Nov. 3 and find that Ken Buck with his extremist views on women’s rights is now our Senator.

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Tax Cut fight

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I like this very much. It’s the clearest presentation I’ve seen of what’s at stake in the fight over the Bush-era tax cuts. I wish the White House had put this out weeks ago. Maybe then I wouldn’t have heard so much misinformation in the discussions on this subject on the news channels.

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If you only had $4.33 a day for food…

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What would you eat? What would you do without? And how would you feel if that extravagant sum was suddenly decreased to only $3.75? That’s the amount food stamp recipients will receive if Congress lowers food stamp benefits. In order to boost state Medicaid and education funds Congress has proposed to cut $26 billion from food stamp programs, sort of taking from the poor and working class in order to help the poor and working class. It’s a very odd decision, to say the least. The New York Coalition Against Hunger has a post that illustrates how much food you … Continue reading →

Opposition to health care reform

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I was always puzzled when right-wing activists pointed out that a majority of the population was against the health care reform act, without noting that much of the opposition came from people who wanted HCR to go much further in a leftward way. When a poll shows that a majority is against something, you can’t simply assume that means they all agree with each other. And so it was with health care reform. So I was not surprised to read this Salon report on a new AP poll that showed that, by a two to one margin, people wanted health … Continue reading →

Disappointment in the Senate, again

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By now you’ve heard that the Senate refused to allow debate on the Defense Appropriation Bill in order to scuttle the repeal of “Don’t ask, don’t tell”. Once again Republicans, aided by a couple of ConservaDems, refused to even discuss a bill in the Senate. This has been their consistent pattern since the Democrats took control. Lawrence O’Donnell and Rachel Maddow had an excellent discussion of this dynamic in this segment from the Rachel Maddow show last night. Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Keep in mind that a majority of the American public … Continue reading →

More on income inequality

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Annie Lowrey at the Washington Independent points us to a report on income inequality from the Senate’s Joint Economic Committee. She highlights several graphs and conclusions that show the remarkable way that the wealthy have become even more so over the past decade, while middle class and working incomes have stagnated or declined. The charts are interesting in part because they break out income and tax rates according to the various modern-day Presidential administrations. Here is one example: Even under Clinton you can see that the wealthy increased their share of total income. And in fact, Lowrey notes that according … Continue reading →