The Associated Press fact checks the GOP’s apparent candidate and finds Mitt Romney is lying in his campaign speeches . Romney often repeats the Republican trope alleging President Obama has increased our debt more than all the previous presidents combined. Not true, in fact, “the debt has gone up by about half under Obama. Under Ronald Reagan, it tripled.” Romney claims he has… Continue reading
A while back, when I posted about domestic oil drilling being at a historic high under President Obama, my conservative friends complained that all the drilling was happening on private land. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as it turns out the reason there isn’t more drilling on federal land is big oil companies aren’t drilling on 2/3rds of federally permitted leases . As… Continue reading
If you need proof that privatizing Social Security and throwing senior citizens to the wolves of Wall Street would be a huge mistake, look no further than JP Morgan’s $2 billion loss disaster yesterday. JP Morgan was supposed to be the smart player. The responsible one who didn’t get caught in the 2008 meltdown and could be trusted to regulate itself.… Continue reading
I do not think the charge should ever be made lightly, but perhaps someone can tell me why this Rand Paul pitch featuring a rifle pointed at the head of the President of the United States should not be called treasonous? The target audience for this ad banner are people who collect so-called assault rifles and have been stockpiling ammo for the last three years because they wrongly believe the government is… Continue reading
I’ve had no internet access for the last three days, so I’m a bit out of the loop, but this is the quote of the week on what’s really ailing our economic recovery. No, it’s not that our workforce isn’t equipped to do the work and neither is it that our kids are taking the wrong classes in college.… Continue reading
Income inequality didn’t just start in the last decade. It’s been growing for the last 40 years. Worker productivity has steadily risen over that time frame, but workers wages have not risen at all. In other words, employers have squeezed more work out of their employees but haven’t shared the gains with them at all. Take a look at the chart. And recalling my earlier post on the Reagan revolution , we once again see… Continue reading
Not often I find myself agreeing with a Republican politician but good for Sen. Rick Jones for proposing a bill to have “retired legislators pay just as much for health insurance as other public employees.” More than 220 retired state legislators, 14 current representatives and 36 senators grandfathered into a closed retirement health insurance system would have to pay 20… Continue reading
Team Obama released a nice little informational graphic today plotting the many international homes of Mitt Romney’s money. [ Original larger version here }: If elected, Romney’s proposed tax plan would cut tax rates for the wealthy even further—cutting his own taxes and protecting loopholes that he benefits from. At the same time, he opposes the President’s Buffett Rule,… Continue reading
My conservative working class friends often speak with fondness about the Reagan era. I can only chalk it up to selective memory, because the roots of middle class destruction and the rise of income inequality are rooted in Reaganomics. In fact, as the author of this piece pointed out, if you chart any economic metric… Continue reading
The longish read for the weekend is this piece by Norman J. Ornstein of the conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute and Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institute, which mostly leans a bit right of center. Breaking from the usual jaundiced “both sides do it” narrative, they come right out and say Republicans have broken our government : We… Continue reading