The local paper in the town I grew up in covered the early days of the Tea Party there.
I recall the many quotes of folks were thrilled to be participating in politics for the first time in their lives. They had never spoken up for themselves and they were proud of themselves and I was proud of them too. Good for them, I thought, even though most of their issues were not my issues. They said over and over back then that the Tea Party had people from different parties and that anyone could join.
Well, of course the majority if not most of them were Republican or Republican-leaning and they ended up being more or less grabbed and incorporated into the Republican Party. That's what usually happens to anything like a successful third party group in America.
But once they got into the Republican politics, they wanted to make sure they weren't just along for the ride. They were very demanding.
They made the Republican Party move to the right on many issues and made many Republican Party politicians move significanty to the right too.
You can't blame the people who aren't conservative for being upset that the Tea Party has moved the whole country in a direction that most of us didn't want to go. I just saw last week someting about only about 1/2 the people now identify themselves as aligned with Tea Party as did last fall.
So with half the supporters we're still being pushed around by Tea Party? Hope that doesn't last much longer.
Proposals discussed in Robert Oak's blog 'What's the Deal On That Little Tax Break to Offshore Outsource your Job?' -- proposals from Geithner and the Obama administration -- were actually progressive for the most part, although probably an attempt to co-opt more progressive thinking from getting a start in the House. Robert Oak blogs reflect that fact.
The problem is that proposals (outlined in original 2009 Oak blog) do not equate to legislation! Also, cynical headlines do not accommodate dissemination of news. Oak blog later in 2009, 'Tax incentives to offshore outsource your job are great! So says the Obama administration' records that the Obama administration officially abandoned IRC reforms in October after supporting them back in May, although also promising to revisit the issues in 2010. Oak blog headlines, although not the text, fail to distinguish between the proposals in Congress in March/April/May and the abandonment of those proposals in October, 2010. More focus on congress and less on the White House, IMHO, would have been great, if published in time to make any difference. To record the failure of IRC reform, and summarily blame it on Obama, is a waste of energy in the absence of vigorous reporting throughout the spring and summer of 2010 directed against members of Congress responsible for bills dying in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Oak, in the October post, citing to HuffPost's Arthur Delaney, clearly shows that the original start in the House in the spring of 2009 was positive and tended toward progressive reform of infamous IRC loopholes. (Perhaps, Oak disrespects HuffPost for good reason, but I cannot believe that extends to disrespect of Delaney, whose specialty is the unemployment crisis and who is hardly an apologist for the corporatist agenda!
Here's EP's quote of Delaney (EP, October, 2009):
The Obama administration has shelved the proposal in the face of intense pressure from business. A key part of the tax plan, and a key beef of industry, was a proposal to reform the part of the tax code that allows companies to defer paying taxes on profits earned from overseas investments.
Have there been any reforms of IRC by either the 111th or 112th Congress?
Of course, there was the first-time homebuyer tax credit, essentially an emergency provision. Also, there was the payroll tax holiday. And, there was some doodling about handling of unemployment income. All emergency measures, no longer in effect.
111th Congress. Other than emergency legislation, the only amendment of IRC of 1986 that I can find enacted by the 111th Congress is PL 111-196, (124 STAT. 1353), which is a brief thing titled and concerning ‘‘Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010", which can also be considered emergency in nature.
HR 135 -- which, I believe, was an attempt to reform the notorious limited partnership system of tax evasion (or avoidance) -- died in committee in the 111th, as did (I believe) HR 1613 ("Made in America Act of 2009"). Please correct me if I am inaccurate here.
The one positive thing that happened in the 111th was actually negative in nature, namely, preventing the elimination of the $600 threshold for 1099s by small businesses. Whew! That was a close call! I'll give the Republican devils their due on that one!
112th Congress. What? -- reform of loopholes favoring MNCs and MNIs?
The Tea Party is the creation of right wing lobbying groups like FreedomWorks. They make no sense calling for cutting any and all taxes at a time when revenues are desperately needed. Their rhetorical style, pure hysteria, makes their ignorance all the more pronounced. They are anathema to reason and good governance, as they are the tools of billionaires who use them to make more money.
We need to remove two groups from governance. First, this Congess must go, every single one of the irresponsible male hysterics who voted for this budget. Out now. Second, Wall Street needs to be sent packing. They do nothing for the economy except through manipulation. They are non productive and paracitic in the extreme. Move them to Dubai, persona non grata.
Is nothing compared to a key role in creating and ending the housing bubble and getting indicted for fraud. They're a shady bunch, S&P. It's New England, maybe their neighbors will shun them.
All WTO or GATT supporters, if sane, have lamented that barriers to the flow of labor have not been eliminated along with other trade 'barriers'. This 'defect' has been, from Day One, noted as something to be attacked within the WTO world system as a non-conforming aspect of the economic system promoted by GATT and the WTO world system. I saw this up close, in corporate offices, as far back as the 1960s. It's been conscious and deliberate from the first. The entire 'globalism' movement has its roots in labor arbitrage. It's puzzling to me how here at EP and elsewhere we assume that we can separate out the two issues -- labor arbitrage (migration issues) and corporate 'globalism'. The two are joined at the hip.
"What were they ever really but a group of concerned citizens ... "
Originally, the modern Tea Party was a group of concerned citizens promoting protectionism. Then they were co-opted by the RNC to become a group of Republican ditto-heads who oppose everything about Obama except his 'free' trade agreements.
What are they now? A group of corrupted internationalist anti-American Republican politicians in Washington, D.C.!
When I read Senate Judiciary Committee, I think Senator Leahy. So, I have checked his press releases for August 4 and August 5.
Leahy is a big supporter of the EB-5 thing, whereby investors can enter the U.S. and claim citizenship in return for a paltry investment, maybe $15.000 or so. This is a farce. They come here and "create" jobs for themselves and their friends and family, not jobs for working Americans who are now jobless. How much of an investment is required? I think something like $15,000, yet we have always prided ourselves on that U.S. citizenship is not for sale at any price. I think Canada allows investors in too, but for something like ten times that the U.S. requires. Finally, the idea that this will generate capital inflow into the U.S. is ridiculous. Obviously, these immigrants will be shipping their profits offshore from the day they arrive. Very sad to see Leahy participating in this farce.
The other legislation that Leahy supports is okay, but it fails to address any economic problems.
“In 2004, Congress enacted the Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act, which I fought for years to pass. That law bars from the United States those who have committed torture, extrajudicial killing or serious violations of religious freedom. Today’s announcement expands that authority to a wider array of human rights violations, building on the foundation of the Anti-Atrocity law and solidifying the United States’ commitment to prevent those abuses from occurring.”
Okay. We are actually going to draw the line at letting torturers and terrorists into the country, even if they are willing to buy distressed U.S. businesses for pennies on the dollar. How noble of us!
When people were railing on the bank bail outs as well as ineffectual stimulus that didn't have Hire America, buy American clauses, that was fine..
but I'm sorry, we'll bash any group that cannot add. The Tea party is just another version of the same agenda to destroy social safety nets and frankly, is an agenda pushed by the Banks as well as the Koch brothers.
Bottom line, they cannot add and differentiate between deficit spending that is actually useful and stimulate and waste or corporate welfare.
This site has bashed pretty much any policy or agenda that's economic fiction to date. No one and no group is exempt.
Good grief! I never said that high number of food stamp households was caused primarily by other than unemployment and low family income. I merely pointed out a statistical contaminate. What's the big deal? Are we interested in contributing or hidden variables, or not? What kind of statistical inference or analysis is this? What's this thing about "pure economic, job losses" anyway? Great Scot, man, we're talking about statistical 'reality' -- no "purity" to it! Did you really think that I was arguing that EP's estimates of national unemployment or poverty are exaggerated? Are you seriously impugning my source webpage (titled "Food Stamps") because it cites State of Connecticut regulations? Have we not stipulated that this SNAP thing varies from state to state, is implemented by the states?
Instead of useless attempt to impugn my sources, why don't we go for this: the underlying causes of increase in food stamp households correlates (a) with the Democrats' congress and administration resulting from November 2008, (b) with the recession of 2008-20??, and, (c) with liberalization of the politico-administrative environment responding to human needs associated with the recession? How's that? Forget causation. That's hard to show and maybe meaningless in the context. We're talking correlation.
(And if you want to pretend that the 112th Congress has been a great improvement over the 111th, fine with me. It's all in the dustbin of history now anyway.)
BTW: I don't have stats for this, but I know for sure that acceptable houses and apartments (even without rent control or HUD subsidy) go for $500/month (including new renters in 2011) in many parts of the country, although probably not in habitable parts of big cities.
Guess the name calling over the Tea Party can be found here too.
But what were they ever really, except a group of American citizens concerned that our government was plunging us head first into national insolvency, and taking more and more money from the pockets of the people in the process.
What were they ever really but a group of concerned citizens who noted that reckless money printing has brought down many nations, and that we have an unconstitutional cabal of private bankers recklessly printing the American people's money.
That's all they ever were. And in the truest spirit of what this country is all about they have a right to state their case, and to support candidates and get involved in our political system.
Their is no craziness in what they seek. And they have every right to participate in our process.
I'm pretty sure one cannot have income about $14k annual and if you realize it, that amount isn't enough to rent a cardboard box in most areas of the country.
I don't think it's a law change that has 15% of the population on food stamps. I think it's pure economic, job losses and when one gets a job, it's probably part time, no benefits and that would put someone below the poverty rate, very easily.
The median income in the U.S., where half of working people reporting income is, ...$26k.
That's astounding, all of America is dirt poor and frankly if someone is making $26k a year, they probably also need some food stamps in most areas of the country.
The fact that politicians cannot add, and literally I was watching Senate Judiciary Committee members on CSPAN, literally could not add the number of guest worker Visas they were putting into a bill, never mind the effect that would have on U.S. workers....just random, arbitrary numbers, seemingly dictated by some corporate lobbyist standing in the wings handing them notes...
That is just outright embarrassing. Macro economics, large economies, especially international economics is really super complex enough and to have these jack asses completely ignore every stupid statistic, number, fact and theory per their corporate lobbyist master demands and insane philosophies and impractical agendas.....
well, it's no surprise to me the chicken would come home to roost.
You even have economists spinning facts and numbers to reach some conclusion they desire these days. It's obscene! A complete violation of Academia, Scientific methods.
This site was founded so regular people, just us working stiffs, could crank the numbers, look at the statistics, the actual bills, talk about cause, effect and push up some common sense, fact based reasons, as best we could....
because nobody was doing it! You go to the "right" sites and they write miles and miles of economic fiction. Go to the "left" sites and they too have economic fiction.
It's like all of America who is busy throwing their power and weight around can't do 4th grade math.
Frankly, I wish S&P had called out the Tea Party crazies by name and point out the many methods, namely reduce health care costs like every other industrialized nation does and additional called out this insane bad trade policy, the lack of an industrial policy, the absurd corporate tax code which enables tax havens, offshore outsourcing, and not hiring Americans...
The attack on SS makes no sense to me, beyond corporate lobbyists and this privatization demand....Al Gore was right, it's a promise and should never been touched...
but Medicare/Medicaid, absolutely, it's a mammoth expense coming at us and this is why single payer universal health care should have been on the table. It's plain cheaper. But even the Swiss, they have private health care and their system does address costs extensively and why they pay way less and their system works.
I don't think anyone should spin S&P's comments on the state of Washington D.C. to blame Obama or one party, beyond the Tea party. I think, like most Americans think...
these people refuse to have any common sense and literally will put the entire nation at risk all for a few political points.
I have no faith that either President Obama or any of the Republican contenders for the 2012 Presidential election can lead us away from the mess that we made -- in other words, stop us from doing the stupid things we're doing -- much less take us in a new direction.
I ask myself often these day how on earth, with no computers and limited communications, did we manage to produce the armaments and organize and direct the civilian and military forces that won WWII? The more I think what was done then, with much less technical and communication resourcse, and what we are unable to do for ourselves today, I am both humbled by what the Greatest Generation managed to do and overwhelmed with distress and a sense of my own inadequacy as well as the general inadequacy of Americans today.
We are a nation of hard workers with a history of success on many fronts. That makes our current inability to tackle and succeed at solving our problems that much more puzzling and awful. I feel grateful that I am old enough to remember when everybody thought that America was a great nation with a great future. I also remember when the differences between many Republicans and Democrats were small and that each party had liberals, moderates and conservatives.
I believe it were tapped and directed that we have the strength and ability to pull ourselves out of this tailspin. But when I think of the current state of political paralysis that has taken over the electorate, as well as the lack of leadership that puts the interests of the American people as a whole first -- not campaign contributors, not multinational businesses, not special interest groups -- I don't know what will happen to us.
It is hard for me to imagine anything besides further stagnation in the form of continued diminishment of the lower 95% and continued enrichment of the upper 5%.
Beginning July 1, 2009, income limit for most households is 185% of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL), with no net income or asset limit. Households with an elderly (ages 60+) or disabled member do not have to meet a gross income limit. Instead, shelter, medical, and other qualifying expenses are deducted from gross income. If the gross income of an elderly/disabled household is below 185% FPL, there is no asset test and there is no net income test.
Although legislation enacted in the First Hundred Days of the 111th (Democrat) Congress was far from ideal, if I could at this point turn the clock back and extend the 100 days to over 1,000 days, I'd do it in a New York minute! I know that you would object to whatever they were cooking up in the way of immigration "reform" (some version of the Dream Act) as insustainable and riddled with loop holes, but it'd still be better than the mess we have today!
Just giving the devils their due.
BTW: Thanks for catching me up on the latest acronym! Yes, it's no longer 'food stamps' -- it's 'SNAP'. "Isn't that special?"
From Tea party crazies to Obama, they bold face, promote policies, bills that will lose more jobs. It's disgusting. From bad trade deals to corporate squeeze the little guy out patent changes to deficit reduction to even infrastructure plans, they refuse to actually craft policy that would create jobs and most of the time will lose jobs.
Also, from the 11 million jobs to 19 million jobs needed, there are many ways to calculate out how many jobs are needed and different assumptions, so I hopefully show the reasoning behind each number and give some examples as to how these figures are derived.
Anyway you look at it, even if jobs were through the stratosphere, it's going to take years to get back to full employment.
Before the people's uprising in Egypt, Indonesian forms were bringing in Indonesian workers and using them in the Egyptian textile industry. The head of one of the Indonesian firms was asked why they did this and responded that the Egyptian police wouldn't come in and club recalcitrant workers (those in independent unions) so they just brought in their own workers.
I'm seeing other sites imply that the survey reference week was before the great Debt ceiling charade and this is why the unemployment report isn't as bad as expected.
Honestly, seeing jobs decline over that insanity, it might affect the overall trend, but I'll assume more we're looking at revisions and even possibly the seasonal adjustment algorithm needing to be re-adapted.
Also, the pay roll numbers are almost in the margin of error. < 100k jobs is a small amount by the total. If anyone wants an overview of error margins and diffusion indexes I can do dig into that.
The local paper in the town I grew up in covered the early days of the Tea Party there.
I recall the many quotes of folks were thrilled to be participating in politics for the first time in their lives. They had never spoken up for themselves and they were proud of themselves and I was proud of them too. Good for them, I thought, even though most of their issues were not my issues. They said over and over back then that the Tea Party had people from different parties and that anyone could join.
Well, of course the majority if not most of them were Republican or Republican-leaning and they ended up being more or less grabbed and incorporated into the Republican Party. That's what usually happens to anything like a successful third party group in America.
But once they got into the Republican politics, they wanted to make sure they weren't just along for the ride. They were very demanding.
They made the Republican Party move to the right on many issues and made many Republican Party politicians move significanty to the right too.
You can't blame the people who aren't conservative for being upset that the Tea Party has moved the whole country in a direction that most of us didn't want to go. I just saw last week someting about only about 1/2 the people now identify themselves as aligned with Tea Party as did last fall.
So with half the supporters we're still being pushed around by Tea Party? Hope that doesn't last much longer.
Proposals discussed in Robert Oak's blog 'What's the Deal On That Little Tax Break to Offshore Outsource your Job?' -- proposals from Geithner and the Obama administration -- were actually progressive for the most part, although probably an attempt to co-opt more progressive thinking from getting a start in the House. Robert Oak blogs reflect that fact.
The problem is that proposals (outlined in original 2009 Oak blog) do not equate to legislation! Also, cynical headlines do not accommodate dissemination of news. Oak blog later in 2009, 'Tax incentives to offshore outsource your job are great! So says the Obama administration' records that the Obama administration officially abandoned IRC reforms in October after supporting them back in May, although also promising to revisit the issues in 2010. Oak blog headlines, although not the text, fail to distinguish between the proposals in Congress in March/April/May and the abandonment of those proposals in October, 2010. More focus on congress and less on the White House, IMHO, would have been great, if published in time to make any difference. To record the failure of IRC reform, and summarily blame it on Obama, is a waste of energy in the absence of vigorous reporting throughout the spring and summer of 2010 directed against members of Congress responsible for bills dying in the House Ways and Means Committee.
Oak, in the October post, citing to HuffPost's Arthur Delaney, clearly shows that the original start in the House in the spring of 2009 was positive and tended toward progressive reform of infamous IRC loopholes. (Perhaps, Oak disrespects HuffPost for good reason, but I cannot believe that extends to disrespect of Delaney, whose specialty is the unemployment crisis and who is hardly an apologist for the corporatist agenda!
Here's EP's quote of Delaney (EP, October, 2009):
Have there been any reforms of IRC by either the 111th or 112th Congress?
Of course, there was the first-time homebuyer tax credit, essentially an emergency provision. Also, there was the payroll tax holiday. And, there was some doodling about handling of unemployment income. All emergency measures, no longer in effect.
111th Congress. Other than emergency legislation, the only amendment of IRC of 1986 that I can find enacted by the 111th Congress is PL 111-196, (124 STAT. 1353), which is a brief thing titled and concerning ‘‘Airport and Airway Extension Act of 2010", which can also be considered emergency in nature.
HR 135 -- which, I believe, was an attempt to reform the notorious limited partnership system of tax evasion (or avoidance) -- died in committee in the 111th, as did (I believe) HR 1613 ("Made in America Act of 2009"). Please correct me if I am inaccurate here.
The one positive thing that happened in the 111th was actually negative in nature, namely, preventing the elimination of the $600 threshold for 1099s by small businesses. Whew! That was a close call! I'll give the Republican devils their due on that one!
112th Congress. What? -- reform of loopholes favoring MNCs and MNIs?
Yeah, right
Very funny
That's what the 'Tea Party' is all about
The Tea Party is the creation of right wing lobbying groups like FreedomWorks. They make no sense calling for cutting any and all taxes at a time when revenues are desperately needed. Their rhetorical style, pure hysteria, makes their ignorance all the more pronounced. They are anathema to reason and good governance, as they are the tools of billionaires who use them to make more money.
We need to remove two groups from governance. First, this Congess must go, every single one of the irresponsible male hysterics who voted for this budget. Out now. Second, Wall Street needs to be sent packing. They do nothing for the economy except through manipulation. They are non productive and paracitic in the extreme. Move them to Dubai, persona non grata.
Is nothing compared to a key role in creating and ending the housing bubble and getting indicted for fraud. They're a shady bunch, S&P. It's New England, maybe their neighbors will shun them.
All WTO or GATT supporters, if sane, have lamented that barriers to the flow of labor have not been eliminated along with other trade 'barriers'. This 'defect' has been, from Day One, noted as something to be attacked within the WTO world system as a non-conforming aspect of the economic system promoted by GATT and the WTO world system. I saw this up close, in corporate offices, as far back as the 1960s. It's been conscious and deliberate from the first. The entire 'globalism' movement has its roots in labor arbitrage. It's puzzling to me how here at EP and elsewhere we assume that we can separate out the two issues -- labor arbitrage (migration issues) and corporate 'globalism'. The two are joined at the hip.
"What were they ever really but a group of concerned citizens ... "
Originally, the modern Tea Party was a group of concerned citizens promoting protectionism. Then they were co-opted by the RNC to become a group of Republican ditto-heads who oppose everything about Obama except his 'free' trade agreements.
What are they now? A group of corrupted internationalist anti-American Republican politicians in Washington, D.C.!
When I read Senate Judiciary Committee, I think Senator Leahy. So, I have checked his press releases for August 4 and August 5.
Leahy is a big supporter of the EB-5 thing, whereby investors can enter the U.S. and claim citizenship in return for a paltry investment, maybe $15.000 or so. This is a farce. They come here and "create" jobs for themselves and their friends and family, not jobs for working Americans who are now jobless. How much of an investment is required? I think something like $15,000, yet we have always prided ourselves on that U.S. citizenship is not for sale at any price. I think Canada allows investors in too, but for something like ten times that the U.S. requires. Finally, the idea that this will generate capital inflow into the U.S. is ridiculous. Obviously, these immigrants will be shipping their profits offshore from the day they arrive. Very sad to see Leahy participating in this farce.
The other legislation that Leahy supports is okay, but it fails to address any economic problems.
“In 2004, Congress enacted the Anti-Atrocity Alien Deportation Act, which I fought for years to pass. That law bars from the United States those who have committed torture, extrajudicial killing or serious violations of religious freedom. Today’s announcement expands that authority to a wider array of human rights violations, building on the foundation of the Anti-Atrocity law and solidifying the United States’ commitment to prevent those abuses from occurring.”
Okay. We are actually going to draw the line at letting torturers and terrorists into the country, even if they are willing to buy distressed U.S. businesses for pennies on the dollar. How noble of us!
Sen. Leahy's comments
When people were railing on the bank bail outs as well as ineffectual stimulus that didn't have Hire America, buy American clauses, that was fine..
but I'm sorry, we'll bash any group that cannot add. The Tea party is just another version of the same agenda to destroy social safety nets and frankly, is an agenda pushed by the Banks as well as the Koch brothers.
Bottom line, they cannot add and differentiate between deficit spending that is actually useful and stimulate and waste or corporate welfare.
This site has bashed pretty much any policy or agenda that's economic fiction to date. No one and no group is exempt.
Hell, that's just a rounding error as far as our debt, courtesy of Bush and the Duopoly, is concerned.
Good grief! I never said that high number of food stamp households was caused primarily by other than unemployment and low family income. I merely pointed out a statistical contaminate. What's the big deal? Are we interested in contributing or hidden variables, or not? What kind of statistical inference or analysis is this? What's this thing about "pure economic, job losses" anyway? Great Scot, man, we're talking about statistical 'reality' -- no "purity" to it! Did you really think that I was arguing that EP's estimates of national unemployment or poverty are exaggerated? Are you seriously impugning my source webpage (titled "Food Stamps") because it cites State of Connecticut regulations? Have we not stipulated that this SNAP thing varies from state to state, is implemented by the states?
Instead of useless attempt to impugn my sources, why don't we go for this: the underlying causes of increase in food stamp households correlates (a) with the Democrats' congress and administration resulting from November 2008, (b) with the recession of 2008-20??, and, (c) with liberalization of the politico-administrative environment responding to human needs associated with the recession? How's that? Forget causation. That's hard to show and maybe meaningless in the context. We're talking correlation.
(And if you want to pretend that the 112th Congress has been a great improvement over the 111th, fine with me. It's all in the dustbin of history now anyway.)
BTW: I don't have stats for this, but I know for sure that acceptable houses and apartments (even without rent control or HUD subsidy) go for $500/month (including new renters in 2011) in many parts of the country, although probably not in habitable parts of big cities.
Guess the name calling over the Tea Party can be found here too.
But what were they ever really, except a group of American citizens concerned that our government was plunging us head first into national insolvency, and taking more and more money from the pockets of the people in the process.
What were they ever really but a group of concerned citizens who noted that reckless money printing has brought down many nations, and that we have an unconstitutional cabal of private bankers recklessly printing the American people's money.
That's all they ever were. And in the truest spirit of what this country is all about they have a right to state their case, and to support candidates and get involved in our political system.
Their is no craziness in what they seek. And they have every right to participate in our process.
I'm pretty sure one cannot have income about $14k annual and if you realize it, that amount isn't enough to rent a cardboard box in most areas of the country.
I don't think it's a law change that has 15% of the population on food stamps. I think it's pure economic, job losses and when one gets a job, it's probably part time, no benefits and that would put someone below the poverty rate, very easily.
The median income in the U.S., where half of working people reporting income is, ...$26k.
That's astounding, all of America is dirt poor and frankly if someone is making $26k a year, they probably also need some food stamps in most areas of the country.
The fact that politicians cannot add, and literally I was watching Senate Judiciary Committee members on CSPAN, literally could not add the number of guest worker Visas they were putting into a bill, never mind the effect that would have on U.S. workers....just random, arbitrary numbers, seemingly dictated by some corporate lobbyist standing in the wings handing them notes...
That is just outright embarrassing. Macro economics, large economies, especially international economics is really super complex enough and to have these jack asses completely ignore every stupid statistic, number, fact and theory per their corporate lobbyist master demands and insane philosophies and impractical agendas.....
well, it's no surprise to me the chicken would come home to roost.
You even have economists spinning facts and numbers to reach some conclusion they desire these days. It's obscene! A complete violation of Academia, Scientific methods.
This site was founded so regular people, just us working stiffs, could crank the numbers, look at the statistics, the actual bills, talk about cause, effect and push up some common sense, fact based reasons, as best we could....
because nobody was doing it! You go to the "right" sites and they write miles and miles of economic fiction. Go to the "left" sites and they too have economic fiction.
It's like all of America who is busy throwing their power and weight around can't do 4th grade math.
Frankly, I wish S&P had called out the Tea Party crazies by name and point out the many methods, namely reduce health care costs like every other industrialized nation does and additional called out this insane bad trade policy, the lack of an industrial policy, the absurd corporate tax code which enables tax havens, offshore outsourcing, and not hiring Americans...
The attack on SS makes no sense to me, beyond corporate lobbyists and this privatization demand....Al Gore was right, it's a promise and should never been touched...
but Medicare/Medicaid, absolutely, it's a mammoth expense coming at us and this is why single payer universal health care should have been on the table. It's plain cheaper. But even the Swiss, they have private health care and their system does address costs extensively and why they pay way less and their system works.
I don't think anyone should spin S&P's comments on the state of Washington D.C. to blame Obama or one party, beyond the Tea party. I think, like most Americans think...
these people refuse to have any common sense and literally will put the entire nation at risk all for a few political points.
Things are taking on a nightmarish quality.
I have no faith that either President Obama or any of the Republican contenders for the 2012 Presidential election can lead us away from the mess that we made -- in other words, stop us from doing the stupid things we're doing -- much less take us in a new direction.
I ask myself often these day how on earth, with no computers and limited communications, did we manage to produce the armaments and organize and direct the civilian and military forces that won WWII? The more I think what was done then, with much less technical and communication resourcse, and what we are unable to do for ourselves today, I am both humbled by what the Greatest Generation managed to do and overwhelmed with distress and a sense of my own inadequacy as well as the general inadequacy of Americans today.
We are a nation of hard workers with a history of success on many fronts. That makes our current inability to tackle and succeed at solving our problems that much more puzzling and awful. I feel grateful that I am old enough to remember when everybody thought that America was a great nation with a great future. I also remember when the differences between many Republicans and Democrats were small and that each party had liberals, moderates and conservatives.
I believe it were tapped and directed that we have the strength and ability to pull ourselves out of this tailspin. But when I think of the current state of political paralysis that has taken over the electorate, as well as the lack of leadership that puts the interests of the American people as a whole first -- not campaign contributors, not multinational businesses, not special interest groups -- I don't know what will happen to us.
It is hard for me to imagine anything besides further stagnation in the form of continued diminishment of the lower 95% and continued enrichment of the upper 5%.
"If you can research out and find a citation, source, I'll take a look."
According to United Way of Connecticut's infoline.org --
Although legislation enacted in the First Hundred Days of the 111th (Democrat) Congress was far from ideal, if I could at this point turn the clock back and extend the 100 days to over 1,000 days, I'd do it in a New York minute! I know that you would object to whatever they were cooking up in the way of immigration "reform" (some version of the Dream Act) as insustainable and riddled with loop holes, but it'd still be better than the mess we have today!
Just giving the devils their due.
BTW: Thanks for catching me up on the latest acronym! Yes, it's no longer 'food stamps' -- it's 'SNAP'. "Isn't that special?"
From Tea party crazies to Obama, they bold face, promote policies, bills that will lose more jobs. It's disgusting. From bad trade deals to corporate squeeze the little guy out patent changes to deficit reduction to even infrastructure plans, they refuse to actually craft policy that would create jobs and most of the time will lose jobs.
Also, from the 11 million jobs to 19 million jobs needed, there are many ways to calculate out how many jobs are needed and different assumptions, so I hopefully show the reasoning behind each number and give some examples as to how these figures are derived.
Anyway you look at it, even if jobs were through the stratosphere, it's going to take years to get back to full employment.
...just to keep up.
Why isn't this the #1 issue we're facing.
To borrow a famous saying, "Oh, the people have no jobs, let them party with President Obama."
Before the people's uprising in Egypt, Indonesian forms were bringing in Indonesian workers and using them in the Egyptian textile industry. The head of one of the Indonesian firms was asked why they did this and responded that the Egyptian police wouldn't come in and club recalcitrant workers (those in independent unions) so they just brought in their own workers.
What a crock. It's the death dance of greed.
I'm seeing other sites imply that the survey reference week was before the great Debt ceiling charade and this is why the unemployment report isn't as bad as expected.
Honestly, seeing jobs decline over that insanity, it might affect the overall trend, but I'll assume more we're looking at revisions and even possibly the seasonal adjustment algorithm needing to be re-adapted.
Also, the pay roll numbers are almost in the margin of error. < 100k jobs is a small amount by the total. If anyone wants an overview of error margins and diffusion indexes I can do dig into that.
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