Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's Wife Ginni Is a Anti-American Conservative Radical and No One Seems To Care

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's Wife Ginni Is a Anti-American Conservative Radical and No One Seems To Care

Virginia "Ginni" Thomas is no ordinary Supreme Court spouse. Unlike Maureen Scalia, mother of nine, or the late Martin Ginsburg, mild-mannered tax law professor who was good in the kitchen, Thomas came from the world of bare-knuckled partisan politics. Over the years, she has enmeshed herself ever more deeply in the world of political advocacy—all the while creating a heap of conflict of interest concerns surrounding her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Her role in Groundswell [1], the coalition of conservatives waging a "30 front war" against progressives and the GOP establishment that was revealed by Mother Jones on Thursday, revives questions about the propriety of Thomas' activism on issues that have or could become the subject of Supreme Court cases.

Conflict of interest issues were first aired during Clarence Thomas' confirmation hearings in 1991 [2], when critics argued that Ginni Thomas' political work might compromise her husband's objectivity. At that time, her political resume included stints as a Capitol Hill aide to a Republican congressman; a staffer at the US Chamber of Commerce, where she fought the Family and Medical Leave Act; and as a political appointee at the Labor Department during the first Bush administration. Thomas didn't leave politics after her husband was confirmed. "I did not give up my First Amendment rights when my husband became a justice of the Supreme Court," she has said in the past. She would later return to the Hill as a staffer to House majority leader Rep. Dick Armey (R-Texas) and work for the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank. But in those jobs, Thomas kept a relatively low profile.

That changed around the same time that the tea party exploded in American politics, and Thomas became an outspoken member of the movement. In late 2009, Thomas founded the political advocacy group Liberty Central, which would later become a fierce player in the opposition to health care form. Detractors pointed out that Liberty Central was a potential vehicle for people with interests before the Supreme Court to make anonymous donations that might influence her husband.

The group was formed with a $500,000 anonymous donation that came as the Supreme Court was considering Citizens United, a case that ultimately resulted in loosening the restrictions on corporate giving to political campaigns. The anonymous donor was later revealed to be Harlan Crow, the Texas real estate developer. Crow was also a friend of Clarence Thomas', and he was later linked to a scandal involving the justice's failure to publicly disclose gifts from t [3]he developer and trips aboard his private jet. (It didn't help that Justice Thomas had also failed to include his wife's $150,000 [4] annual salary from Liberty Central on his financial disclosure forms, which he later had to amend.)

Good old fashioned pay for legal results from the nation's highest court. The kind of deep and unapologetic moral corruption and depraved form of patriotism that has come to define the radical conservative movement. No will do anything about removing the sleazy Justice Thomas from the court because the whining from the radical far Right conservatives will cause ear aches from coast to coast. Conservatives have taken playing poor little victim to new heights in melodrama.

Transferring The Wealth From Workers To Conservative Plutocrats- What Anti-American Grover Norquist Tax Pledge Actually Means

Transferring The Wealth From Workers To Conservative Plutocrats- What Anti-American Grover Norquist Tax Pledge Actually Means

This week, Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia did what amazingly few elected Republicans do: He said that he cared more about his country than some “twenty year old pledge.”

He means the Americans For Tax Reform Taxpayer Pledge, which is advocated for and enforced by the most powerful American who has never won an election — Grover Norquist.

Chambliss now joins Senator Tom Coburn as one of the few outspoken Republican critics of a position that has infected nearly all of the GOP. It’s not an empty stand; he now risks a primary challenge funded by Norquist’s allies like the Club for Growth.

For two decades, by implicitly threatening every elected Republican with a career-ending injury, Grover Norquist has dominated the right-wing discourse with his strict belief that taxes should only be cut.

He’s been so successful that we’re having a fierce debate that’s only about raising taxes on income over $250,000 by a mere 3% — even though tax rates in general are at a 30-year low and the richest are paying some of the lowest taxes rates in 80 years.

This is the discussion that we are stuck with after Bush’s failed experiment which resulted in the richest 1% now having a greater collective net worth than the bottom 90%.

Everyone agrees we should leave Bush Tax Cuts for the middle class intact which is understandable considering that we are still in a jobs crisis. But, in exchange for keeping that $2,000 a year, what will middle class families give up? Is it worth working two more years before you get your Social Security or reforming Social Security so that it won’t keep up with inflation? Is it worth cutting education or health care for the most vulnerable?

Call Norquist’s pledge what it is: it’s a pledge to cut Medicare. A pledge to cut Social Security, Medicaid for seniors and the disabled, college loans, food stamps… And, it’s a pledge to raise taxes on your kids. Most of all, Norquist’s pledge is a promise to transfer wealth to the richest.

It is a fascinating sociological phenomenon to watch as conservatives who makes at or below the median household income - currently about $52,000 a year - vote for Republicans who promise them lower taxes, but take more of their income and safety net benefits like Medicare, and redistribute that income to the Mitt Romneys, Koch brothers, Exxon and Bank of America.

Fox Attacks Unions for Bargaining for Better Pay and Benefits for Their Members-Another day on Fox, another day of divide and conquer and attack workers as being overpaid, or unreasonable for wanting to earn a living wage and maybe retire with some dignity before they drop dead.

Proselytizer of the Elite and Welfare for The Wealthy, Mitt Romney Reigned Over a Tide of Corrupt Pork Barrel Spending For Friends

Proselytizer of the Elite and Welfare for The Wealthy, Mitt Romney Reigned Over a Tide of Corrupt Pork Barrel Spending For Friends

The Romney campaign will run television ads during the games touting the candidate's experience as CEO of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, where he was widely credited with turning around the scandal-plagued organizing effort.

What Romney doesn't talk about is how he succeeded in Utah with government help—lots of it—and how millions in assistance that he pried out of the feds ended up bankrolling subsidies, sweetheart deals, and giveaways for land developers and other well-connected Utahns.

As Romney chastises the president for pointing out that successful business ventures benefit from a larger social compact and accuses critics of pining for "free stuff," Romney is simultaneously touting an Olympic effort that, more than any other in American history, succeeded thanks to public investment—some of it sunk into questionable projects of marginal value to the Salt Lake games. "The $1.5 billion in taxpayer dollars that Congress is pouring into Utah is 1.5 times the amount spent by lawmakers to support all seven Olympic Games held in the U.S. since 1904—combined," Donald Barlett and James Steele reported for Sports Illustrated in 2001. Those numbers were adjusted for inflation.

How the Salt Lake Games came to receive more money than any games in American history isn't much of a mystery. The organizers, including Romney, asked for it. In his 2004 book, Turnaround, Romney acknowledges the central role of the federal government in making the Olympics possible. "No matter how well we did cutting costs and raising revenue, we couldn't have Games without the support of the federal government," he wrote.

Romney emphasized cost-cutting at every step of the process, moving the Salt Lake Organizing Committee's DC office from a swank building next door to the White House, to a cheaper, comparatively Spartan flat next to a burrito shop. But the flow of federal cash continued unabated.

In 2000, with the opening ceremonies still more than a year away, Arizona Sen. John McCain called the Salt Lake price tag "a disgrace,"  and partnered with Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) to demand a Government Accountability Office investigation into how the games could cost so much. Romney's response was muted. As he explained in a letter to the GAO: "Recognizing that our government spends billions of dollars to maintain wartime capability, it is entirely appropriate to invest several hundred millions to promote peace."

In Turnaround, Romney explained that the Salt Lake Olympics would cost more in large part because winter Olympics tend to cost more, by virtue of the fact that they mostly take place on mountains. "We had to construct access roads, widen highways and overpasses, and build a network of massive park-and-ride lots," he wrote. Besides, he explained, Atlanta had already upgraded its infrastructure prior to receiving the Olympic bid; Salt Lake City, on the other hand, was still in the process of improving its roads and transit.

But even some of the more maligned projects, like a new light rail system to be built in Salt Lake City, received Romney's endorsement. Although Romney spends several pages in Turnaround blasting the $326 million project as unnecessary and an example of wasteful "truth stretching" from local governing bodies, he eventually signed on to the Mayor of Salt Lake City's letter to Congress asking for money to build it.

The most damning aspect of the Salt Lake tab wasn't the final amount, but how it was being spent. In their exhaustively researched Sports Illustrated accounting, Barlett and Steele explain how many Olympics projects amounted to little more than slush funds for wealthy donors to the games. Wealthy Utahns used the games as an excuse to receive exemptions for projects that would otherwise never meet environmental standards, or to receive generous subsidies for improvements of questionable value to the games—but with serious value to future real estate developments. In one example, a wealthy developer received $3 million to build a three-mile stretch of road through his resort. Where'd he get the money? Federal funds that had been deposited in the Utah Permanent Community Impact Fund. Per the piece:

    The U.S. Treasury collects royalties from mining and petroleum companies that prospect and drill on federal lands, and from individuals and businesses that buy and sell the related leases. The Treasury returns half the payments to the states where the lands are located. States generally distribute the money as grants or loans to those communities that have been socially or economically affected by prospecting or drilling. In Utah this money traditionally has gone to struggling counties to help with public needs, like purchasing a fire truck.

    Now the state was going to give $2 million in federal royalties to Summit County—by far the state's richest county, and one in which a majority of the mines closed years ago—and the money would be in the form of an outright grant rather than a loan, even though the fund's rules state that grants can be made "only when the other financing mechanisms cannot be utilized, where no reasonable method of repayment can be identified, or in emergency situations regarding public health and/or safety." On top of that the grant was earmarked for construction of a road that would benefit a private developer.

The $3 million resort road wasn't unique. Snowbasin, the site of the downhill skiing championships in 2002, was one of the more notorious examples of a well-connected Utahn getting a sweetheart deal in the name of the Olympics. Earl Holding, a billionaire oil baron, pressured the Forest Service into giving him title to valuable land in Park Valley in exchange for land of "approximate equal value" elsewhere in the state. But Holding drove a hard bargain; he got Congress to foot the bill for a new—and arguably unnecessary—access road (cost: $15 million), and received more than 10 times the 100 acres that were necessary for the Games. That would allow him to turn what was once protected federal land into a massive, and lucrative, mountain resort.

The government was so instrumental in making the Olympic games happen that Romney created a special award, the "Order of Excellence," to honor public servants who had helped them pull it off. Among the recipients: John Hoagland, the US Forest Service official responsible for the land transfer of the Snowbasin downhill skiing site.

The government largesse, however, has done little to deter Romney from using the 2002 Olympics as an example of cost-cutting purity. "While I was fighting to save the Olympics, you were fighting to save the Bridge to Nowhere," Romney told Rick Santorum at a debate in February.

Maybe they weren't so different after all.

Let's pretend for a moment there really was something called magic. And that someone cast a spell on conservative Republicans that forbid them from actively engaging in hypocrisy, saying things that were hypocritical or spreading the propaganda of hypocritical conservationism. Most, if not all conservatives could never leave the house or speak or write. Conservatism is and always has been the antithesis of integrity, the enemy of freedom, the gutter of political ideals. Mitt Romney is just another puppet for the plutocracy - government by and for the one percent. Like the radical philosophy of conservatism, his hypocrisy and lies and committed daily and without the shame a moral person would have.

When Romney Sold His Honor I wonder How Much He Got For It, Mitt Romney's Meth Labs of Democracy

Who Knew That Pure Evil Could Sign a Check, Republican Wackos Launches National Ad Campaign Seeking To Disqualify Obama From Reelection. Maybe in the same place Romney keeps his tax returns?

Wall Street Journal Lets America Hating Republican Karl Rove ( of the Bush administration)  Publish Distortions That Benefit His Financial Interest. What liberal media?

What Americans Would Have Lost If The Supreme Court Had Ruled Against Health Care Reform (ObamaCare)

What Americans Would Have Lost If The Supreme Court Had Ruled Against Health Care Reform (ObamaCare)

1) Access to health insurance for 30 million Americans and lower premiums. More than 30 million uninsured Americans will find coverage under the law. Middle-class families who buy health care coverage through the exchanges will be eligible for refundable and advanceable premium credits and cost-sharing subsidies to ensure that the coverage they have is affordable.

    2) The ability of businesses and individuals to purchase comprehensive coverage from a regulated marketplace. The law creates new marketplaces for individuals and small businesses to compare and purchase comprehensive coverage. Insurers will have to meet quality measures to ensure that Americans can access comprehensive coverage when they need it.

    3) Insurers’ inability to discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions. Beginning in 2014, insurers can no longer deny insurance to families or individuals with pre-existing conditions. Insurers are also prohibited from placing lifetime limits on the dollar value of coverage and rescinding insurers except in cases of fraud. Insurers are already prohibited from discriminating against children with pre-existing conditions.

    4) Tax credits for small businesses that offer insurance. Small employers that purchase health insurance for employees are already receiving tax credits to encourage them to continue providing coverage.

    5) Assistance for businesses that provide health benefits to early retirees.The law created a temporary reinsurance program for employers providing health insurance coverage to retirees over age 55 who are not eligible for Medicare, reimbursing employers or insurers for 80% of retiree claims. The program has offered at least $4.73 billion in reinsurance payments to more than 2,800 employers and other sponsors of retiree plans, with an average cumulative reimbursement per plan sponsor of approximately $189,700.

    6) Affordable health care for lower-income Americans. Obamacare extends Medicaid to individuals with incomes up to 138% of the federal poverty line, guaranteeing that the nation’ most vulnerable population has access to affordable, comprehensive coverage.

    7) Investments in women’s health. Obamacare prohibits insurers from charging women substantially more than men and requires insurers to offer preventive services — including contraception — at no additional cost.

    8) Young adults’ ability to stay on their parents’ health care plans. More than 3.1 million young people have already benefited from dependent coverage, which allows children up to age 26 to remain insured on their parents’ plans.

    9) Discounts for seniors on brand-name drugs. Pharmaceutical manufacturers are required to provide a 50% discount on prescriptions filled in the Medicare Part D coverage gap. Seniors have already saved $3.5 billion on prescription drug costs thanks to the Affordable Care Act provision.

    10) Temporary coverage for the sickest Americans. The law established temporary national high-risk pools that are providing health coverage to individuals with pre-existing medical conditions who cannot find insurance on the individual market. In 2014, they will be able to enroll in insurance through the exchanges. 67,482 individuals have already benefited from the program.

One of the crazy aspects to the opposition to the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) is that it was based on a conservative Republican plan from the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation and was implemented in Massachusetts by Mitt Romney. According to polls the only reason that the wacky right-wing conservatives do not like health care reform is because it has Obama's name on it. One could say shame on conservatives for their petty spitefulness, but you have to have a moral conscience to fell shame.

Mitt Romney outsourced jobs when he was at Bain. At which according to him he was a job creator. If by that he means he created jobs in Asia, he's right. Serial liar and king of conservatism and drug addict Rush Limbaugh Fabricates Wash. Post Fact Check To Cast Doubt On Romney's Outsourcing. Honor is apparently not a Republican value.


Traitors among us, Mississippi Republican Tea Party Chairman Calls For Open Rebellion Against Federal Government After Obamacare Ruling

Free markets run the world? 'Monopoly': Calling the Global Financial Sector What It Is

Free markets run the world? 'Monopoly': Calling the Global Financial Sector What It Is

New York Times columnists Protess and Scott report that Barclays Bank is paying some US$450 million to regulators in the US and UK to “resolve accusations” surrounding its manipulation of a key interest rate, the London Inter-Bank Offer Rate (Libor), during the first years of the ongoing global financial crisis.  According to the article, the Libor rate is used as a benchmark rate to price some US$350 trillion in financial products worldwide each year, from credit cards to derivatives and student loans.

The Financial Times reports that the investigation now spans 12 regulators—from the US to Europe and Japan—and 20 banks, including the multinational giants JP Morgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS and Deutsche Bank. The general idea is that the big banks—so far only Barclays has admitted wrongdoing—misreported the rates at which they borrowed from other banks, influencing the LIBOR rate so as to profit the banks. Barclays has also admitted to allowing consultations between various bank departments, and between itself and other banks, before reporting its rates to Libor, an illicit practice.

In most accounts, blame for such unsavory practices are spread around from bank managers and employees seeking higher profits and lower losses, to regulators who were asleep at the wheel, to the secretive and opaque process by which the Libor rate is set.  Yet, behind the regulators and the greedy bankers, lies the ‘m’ word that no one dares utter in the business presses—monopoly. The global financial system is increasingly run by a few big firms operating in a highly uncompetitive market place and wielding enormous power, often behind a veil of secrecy, (intentional) regulatory blindness, and technical complexity.

As any introductory economic textbook shows, imperfectly competitive marketplaces (e.g. monopoly, monopsony, oligopoly and oligopsony) are defined by the ability of a few firms, or only one firm, to manipulate prices and other exchange terms.  As markets concentrate, and free competition is replaced by collusion and superprofits, firms gain the market power to influence market rules and prices in their own interest.  Indeed, any college freshman in an traditional economics department could foresee that growing concentration in global credit markets would result in price distortions, to the detriment of consumers and other less powerful actors.  And, some might also be able to cite a few examples of the manner in which market power confers political power, another dangerous dimension of monopolistic market structures frequently noted in the Marxist tradition, among others (think, say, of Goldman Sach’s ability to staff the US Treasury and Federal Reserve).

Reintroducing the concept of monopoly into public discourse is critical for seeing patterns of injustice in the global economy, continuities that are otherwise obscured by national, geographic, partisan and sectoral distinctions. And not just in the financial context.  The word “monopoly” helps to understand why it is that Greek citizens suffer austerity even as financial institutions get rescue packages, just as it helps us to understand how it is that Starbucks could rake in record profits from its coffee sales even as world prices fell to record lows during 1998-2002.  The word “monopoly” helps us to see why our pigs and cattle are raised in confinement with antibiotics and without any trace of humanity, just as it helps us to see why small farmers in India are killing themselves by the tens of thousands.  The word “monopoly” untangles the Mexican tortilla crisis, just as it unravels the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala and Mossadeq in Iran.  The word “monopoly” helps us to understand why it is that Presidents Bush and Obama have such a similar economic agenda, despite their playing for two different political teams.  And, just today, the word “monopoly” helped me to understand how it is that it is illegal for me to collect rainwater in my backyard here in Denver.

Justice demands that we call things what they are—indeed, we must name the system to change it.  In this context, the “m” word allows clarity of thought and analysis in the face of often overwhelming economic complexity. The “m” word allows us to strip the economy of its competitive veil, allows us to de-robe the trusts and combines of the 21st century. The “m” word prevents us from lapsing into the view that all of these injustices—from antibiotic resistance to farmer suicide to coup d’etat—must be treated separately by different movements and different peoples.  The “m” word allows us to see the architecture of the global economy for what it is—a playground for the new robber barons, a collection of corporate fiefdoms, an integrated system of monopolies, with all of the typical injustices that such arrangements usher forth.

Sasha Breger Bush is a Lecturer at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver.  Her new book, Derivatives and Development: A Political Economy of Global Finance, Farming and Poverty, is due out this month from Palgrave Macmillan.

It is laughable to hear conservative Republican twits say the U.S. is becoming Marxist. there is a kind of socialism at work, some would call it corporate socialism. Big banks and corporations have all the power and workers have less and less. Which is mostly what Republican finger pointing is about. They demonize the critics of our bloated plutocracy so they can prevent change to a worker centered and humane competitive capitalism. Mitt Romney is their champion because he promises to shift the balance even more towards billionaires being our modern lords and masters, a conservative Republican dream come true.

Will Fox Report On Fortune Bombshell That Fast And Furious Didn't Involve Gunwalking? Call or e-mail your congressional rep and ask them to censure Darrell Issa (R-Ca) for using his political power to drum up a phony scandal that has cost the tax payers millions.

Suck it conservatives: BREAKING: Supreme Court Upholds Individual Mandate As A Tax

Nah We Don't Need Regulations - $29.5 Billion in Overdraft Fees? How the Big Banks Are Still Screwing Over America

Nah We Don't Need Regulations - $29.5 Billion in Overdraft Fees? How the Big Banks Are Still Screwing Over America

Remember when America’s big banks destroyed our economy, and then got bailed out by the government to the tune of trillions of dollars? And remember how, in the wake of that disaster, the government passed some important but relatively modest regulations to keep the banks from fleecing consumers – the very people whose taxpayer dollars saved the banks from ruin – quite as badly as they had been in the past? Well, it turns out that after all of that, banks are still doing wrong by Americans by quietly ratcheting up fees and not being forthright about their policies.

A new report from the Pew Charitable Trusts’ Safe Checking in the Electronic Age Project finds that, despite new rules meant to keep banks from increasing fees on consumers, banks that offer consumer checking accounts have increased fees in some cases, engaged in hidden-fee trickery and pushed high-cost, low-benefit services on customers.

The nerve.

The report looked at the 12 biggest banks in the country based on deposits, as well as the biggest credit unions, and found their practices and transparency to be lacking. One of the biggest ongoing problems is overdraft fees, those pesky $35-ish charges you get when you accidentally take out more cash than you have in your account. Pretty much everyone, even the most diligent of checkbook balancers, has had at least one overdraft fee experience. In the worst cases, it’s possible to rack up hundreds of dollars in overdraft fees without realizing it, even if you checked your account balance before you left the house, turning a morning of running small errands into one hell of an expensive shopping trip. (That $1.99 roll of toilet paper you bought? Suddenly it costs $36.99.) As with many of these penalties, it is often the people who have little or no wiggle room in their budgets who are hit hardest with the fees.

Consumer advocates have long targeted overdraft fees as an unfair practice, and new rules passed over the last few years were meant to keep banks from imposing quite so many overdraft fees on so many customers. Under guidelines passed in 2010, banks must give customers the right to opt in to so-called "overdraft protection" programs, meaning that unless you give your bank explicit permission, the bank must deny debit card purchases you try to make that exceed the amount of money you have in your account. The mild embarrassment of being rejected at the cash register in exchange for knowing you won’t accidentally spend more money than you'd planned, seemed, and seems, like a good deal.

Unfortunately, the banks found sneaky ways to keep increasing fees while technically adhering to these rules. For instance, although the opt-in programs are in place and the median overdraft fee has remained the same ($35), related fees, like the median charge imposed for automatically transferring money from another account in case of an overdraft, have increased (from $10 to $12). Likewise, the median fee for an “extended overdraft,” one that isn’t rectified within a certain number of days, went up, from $25 to $33.

About those “extended overdraft” fees: consumer advocates have noted that they are not unlike shady payday loans that charge consumers a tremendous amount of interest to get some needed cash in the short term. The Consumer Federation of America recently compared the two practices, and came up with some disturbing findings:

    As it has before, the Consumer Federation reported the cost at each bank of a $100 overdraft repaid two weeks later as if it were a short-term loan. It said the best deal, at Citibank, was equivalent to a loan with an annual percentage rate of 884 percent. Some banks, including PNC and RBS Citizens, charge more than 2,000 percent.

Another thing: the banks examined in the Pew report have continued to reserve the right to process withdrawals by dollar amount, rather than chronologically. This practice “maximizes the number of times an account goes negative, thus increasing overdraft fees” – and the banks can choose to reorder transactions whenever they want, without telling their customers.

You know when we will no longer need good regulation and rigorous enforcement? The day corporations start having a sense of morality. Did someone tell bank executives that when they die they get to take all their ill gotten loot with them. They act as though that were true. They seem to figure that one should live this live as greedy bastards so they'll be rewarded in the next. Just like radical conservative Republicans in Congress, presidential candidate Mitt Romney promises to fight regulation and its enforcement as much as possible. Because like most conservatives he thinks being evil is the new morality.

‘Joe the Plumber’ links Holocaust with gun control. Conservatives continue to have a stunningly moronic and deeply insulting understanding of history.

The new face of “Democrats are the real racists!” - The National Review's lame attempt at revisionist political history. This is why the political labels should really be the Right-wing Conservative Party and The Moderate or Liberal Party. back in the 1950s and 1960s there used to be conservatives and liberals in the Republican Party and The Democratic Party. As political realignments took place all the racists, homophobes, weirdos, freaks, Bible thumbing hypocrites and misogynists moved into the Republican Party and all the reasonable adults became Democrats.

Mitt Romney Blames Others For His Dismal Jobs Record, Doubles Down With Some Unashamed Hypocrisy

Mitt Romney Blames Others For His Dismal Jobs Record, Doubles Down With Some Unashamed Hypocrisy

If there’s one thing Mitt Romney cannot stand, it’s when President Obama blames the economic situation he inherited from former president George W. Bush for the country’s current gloomy challenges.

“What he’s very good at is finding other people to blame,” Mr. Romney said at a fund-raiser in San Diego recently. At an event in Michigan, he mocked Mr. Obama for trying to evade responsibility for the economy by blaming “his predecessor, the Congress, the one  percent, oil companies, and A.T.M.s.”

So it was interesting to hear Mr. Romney’s own aides over the weekend try to explain some of the less flattering statistics from Mr. Romney’s time as governor of Massachusetts.

“He inherited a $3-billion projected deficit,” Ed Gillespie, a senior adviser to Mr. Romney, explained on Fox News Sunday.

[  ]...Mr. Obama’s team was incredulous. On a conference call with reporters, David Axelrod, a senior adviser to the president’s campaign, accused Mr. Romney’s campaign of “breathtaking hypocrisy” for using the same excuse that their candidate has been hammering the president for.

“Their answer to all of this was. ‘Well you really can’t include his first year because you know he inherited a really tough economic situation,’ ” Mr. Axelrod said. “They’ve painted themselves into a corner here. And now that double standard is clear and they’re going to have to explain it to the American people.”

In fact, the most serious attacks from Mr. Romney involve exactly the kind of focus on Mr. Obama’s first year in office that the Republican advisers were trying to avoid.

Mr. Romney frequently says that Mr. Obama has presided over an economy that has lost hundreds of thousands of jobs. In a recent news release, the Republican campaign said,  “Under President Obama, the nation has lost 552,000 jobs.”

But that statistic includes Mr. Obama’s first year in office, and especially the months of February, March and April, when monthly job losses from the economic collapse were at 700,000 or higher.

Just ignoring February of 2009, before any of Mr. Obama’s policies — including the economic stimulus — had been put into place, would wipe away all 552,000 lost jobs, giving the president a record of creating 172,000 jobs.

If Mr. Romney’s team were to ignore Mr. Obama’s first year in office — as Mr. Gillespie suggested should be done for Mr. Romney’s first year as governor — then the president would have added about 3.7 million jobs to the economy.

Of course, Mr. Romney’s campaign is unlikely to change its rhetoric or strategy. His bid for the White House depends on the idea that Mr. Obama has made the economy worse. Because the country has been adding jobs for nearly two years, Mr. Romney’s argument depends on the steep job losses in Mr. Obama’s first year in office.

But the campaign does need to find a way to defend Mr. Romney’s record as governor against the criticism that the state lagged behind the rest of the country in job creation while he was in office.

Also ironic is that Mittens predecessors were conservatives as well. So Conservative Republicans - in charge for 16 years could not create a sustainable base of jobs. Conservatives suck at creating jobs. 

How Bank of America Execs Hid Their Losses- emails show execs knowingly deceived shareholders


Criminal Gov Scott Walker(R) managed to get his friends to buy him an election, but the Wisconsin state senate seems to have been turned over to a Democratic majority.

Conservative Republicans Long To Create a Dytopian Pottersville With Wealthy Elite as Rulers

Proto fascist Dan and how it discusses women's health issues

Conservative Republicans Long To Create a Dytopian Pottersville With Wealthy Elite as Rulers

Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for dec­ades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

So, no: there’s little debate over the basic fact of widening inequality. The debate is over its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit, so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.

From the left, meanwhile, the widening inequality often elicits an appeal for simple justice: why should so few have so much when so many have so little? It’s not hard to see why, in a market-driven age where justice itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, some would dismiss that argument as the stuff of pious sentiment.

Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.

Let me run through a few reasons why.
The Consumption Problem

When one interest group holds too much power, it succeeds in getting policies that help itself in the short term rather than help society as a whole over the long term. This is what has happened in America when it comes to tax policy, regulatory policy, and public investment. The consequence of channeling gains in income and wealth in one direction only is easy to see when it comes to ordinary household spending, which is one of the engines of the American economy.

It is no accident that the periods in which the broadest cross sections of Americans have reported higher net incomes—when inequality has been reduced, partly as a result of progressive taxation—have been the periods in which the U.S. economy has grown the fastest. It is likewise no accident that the current recession, like the Great Depression, was preceded by large increases in inequality. When too much money is concentrated at the top of society, spending by the average American is necessarily reduced—or at least it will be in the absence of some artificial prop. Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher-income individuals consume, as a fraction of their income, less than lower-income individuals do.

In our imaginations, it doesn’t always seem as if this is the case, because spending by the wealthy is so conspicuous. Just look at the color photographs in the back pages of the weekend Wall Street Journal of houses for sale. But the phenomenon makes sense when you do the math. Consider someone like Mitt Romney, whose income in 2010 was $21.7 million. Even if Romney chose to live a much more indulgent lifestyle, he would spend only a fraction of that sum in a typical year to support himself and his wife in their several homes. But take the same amount of money and divide it among 500 people—say, in the form of jobs paying $43,400 apiece—and you’ll find that almost all of the money gets spent.

The relationship is straightforward and ironclad: as more money becomes concentrated at the top, aggregate demand goes into a decline.

This is part of economist Joseph Stiglitz new book The Price of Inequality to be published in June. There is more at the link. In short growing equality - where millions do the real work - and the top one to ten percent reaps most of the rewards - is killing the American dream.

The government Contraception rule is legal, fair and respects religious freedom.

Why are conservative Republicans set on weakening America's national security? Soaked With Oil Cash, Republicans Block Military’s Push To Use Clean Energy

America's Conservative Republican Sex Hypocrites

America's Conservative Republican Sex Hypocrites

1. Jimmy Swaggart

Pentecostal televangelist Jimmy Swaggart, who is a cousin of rock-and-roll pioneer Jerry Lee Lewis and country singer Mickey Gilley, was preaching fire-and-brimstone Christian fundamentalism before the 1980s; his television program started in 1975. But it was during the 1980s that Swaggart rose to prominence in right-wing politics and, along with Rev. Jerry Falwell, Rev. James Robison and Rev. Pat Robertson, greatly influenced the Christian Right’s influence on the GOP. Swaggart’s sermons are as political as they are religious, and he has never been shy about describing feminists, liberals, Democrats and rock musicians as agents of Satan who promote immorality at every turn. But in 1988, it was revealed that the adulterous Swaggart had been cheating on his wife with a New Orleans prostitute named Debra Murphree. And his association with prostitutes did not end after his famous “I have sinned” speech of 1988. In 1991, Swaggart was with prostitute Rosemary Garcia when he was pulled over by the California Highway Patrol; Garcia said Swaggart had asked her for sex. On top of all that, Swaggart has admitted to having a long history of porn consumption (even though he has often called for tougher enforcement of obscenity laws). And he appears to have dabbled in something else Christian fundamentalists condemn: BDSM. In a 1989 Penthouse interview, a woman named Catherine Campen said that when she was having an affair with Swaggart, he asked her to beat him with a riding crop.

2. Laura Schlessinger

Although America’s Religious Right has been dominated by Protestant fundamentalists, not all far-right culture warriors are Pentecostals or Southern Baptists. For example, talk radio host Laura Schlessinger, a.k.a. Dr. Laura, was a convert to Orthodox Judaism (before renouncing it in 2003), and she has made a career out of railing against sex education, abortion, premarital sex, porn, feminism and homosexuality (the gay-bashing Schlessinger once said that “a huge portion of the male homosexual populace is predatory on young boys”). But for all her moralizing, Schlessinger hasn’t always acted like a Puritan; in the late 1990s, some nude and topless photos she had posed for in the mid-1970s were published on the Internet. The photos were taken by the late radio shock-jock Bill Balance, who sold them to an adult Web site. Schlessinger filed a lawsuit for invasion of privacy and copyright infringement, but a court ruled that the photos were not her intellectual property. Schlessinger’s “queen of family values” routine is also laughable considering that when her mother died in 2002, it was widely reported that Dr. Laura hadn’t spoken to her since 1986.

3. Newt Gingrich

In 1998, President Bill Clinton was lambasted by a long list of Republicans when it was revealed that he had cheated on his wife, Hillary Clinton, with intern Monica Lewinsky. One of his loudest critics was House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich (who asserted that Clinton showed “a level of disrespect and decadence that should appall every American”). But while Gingrich was lambasting Clinton for committing adultery and trying to get him impeached, he was also cheating on his second wife, Marianne Ginther, with a woman (Callista Bisek, who became his third wife) who was 20 years younger. And that wasn’t the first time Gingrich committed adultery. In the early 1980s, Gingrich cheated on his first wife, Jackie Battley, with Ginther—and when Battley was in the hospital recovering from cancer surgery, Gingrich insisted on discussing the terms of their divorce. After that, Mr. Family Values refused to pay Battley either alimony or child support (a local church took up a collection to help her out financially). Despite his history of serial adultery, Gingrich had no problem playing the “family values” card during his recent bid for the GOP presidential nomination.

4. David Vitter

Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana is infamous for his extreme social conservatism and for pandering to the Christian Right. Vitter has supported a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage nationwide (although he claims to support “states rights,” Vitter makes an exception when it comes to gay marriage), promoted abstinence-only sex education, called for school board meetings in Louisiana to open with prayers, and repeatedly preached against abortion. Vitter loves to play the red state/blue state card, saying that he represents socially conservative “Louisiana values” rather than secular “Massachusetts values.” But in 2007, it was revealed that Vitter had been a client of the Washington, DC escort service operated by Deborah Jeane Palfrey, a.k.a. the DC Madam; Vitter admitted he had cheated on his wife with a prostitute, but no criminal charges were filed because of the statute of limitations. Despite his blatant hypocrisy, Vitter was re-elected to the Senate in 2010.

5. Rush Limbaugh

“The Rush Limbaugh Show” has always been full of sexual contradictions. On one hand, the far-right talk radio host has a long history of supporting the Christian Right and telling his audience that the Republican Party is the true voice of morality in the United States. On the other hand, the twice-divorced Limbaugh is quite fond of off-color humor (“PMSNBC” is his name for MSNBC) and sexual innuendos. Limbaugh will use sex to boost ratings at the same time he’s preaching God, family values and morality to the GOP base. Limbaugh’s schizophrenic relationship with sex was recently exemplified by his heavily publicized attack on Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke, whom he denounced as a “slut” and a “prostitute” for saying that health insurance plans should cover female contraception. Limbaugh said that if other people were going to pay for Fluke to have sex, she should film the sexual act for his viewing pleasure. In other words, he was asking Fluke to make a porn video, which is ironic in light of how much time Republicans have spent railing against the adult entertainment industry. Limbaugh’s hypocrisy doesn’t end there; previous Limbaugh scandals have ranged from his well-documented addiction to painkillers in 2003 to being detained for three hours at the Palm Beach Airport in 2006 for possessing a bottle of Viagra that wasn’t in his name.

6. Larry Craig

During the many years he spent in Congress (18 years in the Senate preceded by 10 years in the House of Representatives), Republican Larry Craig of Idaho was a strident social conservative with a very anti-gay record. Craig opposed gay men serving in the U.S. military, and he favored adding an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have outlawed same-sex marriage nationwide. The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBT advocacy group that rates politicians’ voting records on gay issues, gave Craig a rating of 0 in 2004. But in June 2007, the married Craig was arrested for lewd conduct in a men’s room stall at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport; an undercover police officer said that Craig’s behavior indicated he was seeking a sexual encounter (Craig pled guilty to a lesser charge of disorderly conduct). And in December 2007, no less than eight gay men alleged to the Idaho Statesman that they had either had sexual affairs with Craig or that he had made sexual advances to them.

7. Ted Haggard

Evangelical minister Ted Haggard has never been known for embracing a moderate approach to Protestant Christianity. Very much a fundamentalist, Haggard was a strong supporter of George W. Bush’s presidency and did a lot to rally GOP “values voters” in 2004. Haggard has been quite the culture warrior, loudly preaching against abortion, premarital sex, adultery and gay marriage. But in 2006, a male escort named Mike Jones revealed that the married Haggard had been a client; in addition to paying for sex and committing adultery, Jones said, Haggard was fond of using crystal meth. Admitting to his followers that he was guilty of “sexual immorality,” Jones resigned from his position with the National Association of Evangelicals.

8. Henry Hyde

Those who live in glass houses should not throw stones, but the late Illinois Republican Henry Hyde (who spent 32 years in the House of Representatives and died in 2007) threw plenty of stones (figuratively speaking) during the impeachment proceedings against Bill Clinton. Clinton, Hyde insisted, had disgraced the presidency by committing adultery and lying about it under oath. But it turned out that Hyde had his own history of adultery. In the 1960s, Hyde was married with four sons when he had an affair with a woman named Cherie Snodgrass, who had three children with Fred Snodgrass, her husband at the time. In a 1998 interview with Salon.com, Fred Snodgrass denounced Hyde as a “hypocrite who broke up my family.” Hyde described his affair with Cherie as a “youthful indiscretion,” although he was 41 when the affair started.

9. Jim Bakker

Jimmy Swaggart was not the first right-wing Pentecostal televangelist to be involved in a major sex scandal. In 1987, Jim Bakker (who co-hosted “The PTL Club” with his wife, Tammy Faye Bakker) was disgraced when it came out that he had cheated on his wife with church secretary Jessica Hahn and paid her $265,000 to keep quiet. In 1989, Bakker was convicted of fraud and racketeering charges in a federal court and sentenced to 45 years in prison and a $500,000 fine, but he was granted parole in 1994. Swaggart, ironically, was vehemently critical of Bakker in 1987, calling him “a cancer on the body of Christ” because of his affair with Hahn—and all the while, Swaggart was every bit the adulterer himself.

10. James West

The late Republican James West, who died in 2006, was a champion of anti-gay causes during his years in Washington State politics (first in the Washington State senate, then as mayor of Spokane). West promoted, among other things, a blatantly discriminatory bill that would have prohibited gay men and women from working for schools, daycare centers and certain state agencies. But in 2004, West was caught in a sex scandal when the Spokane Spokesman-Review conducted a sting operation and alleged that West, in a gay online chat room, offered a possible City Hall internship to someone he thought was an 18-year-old man (in reality, the “18-year-old” was a private investigator hired by the Spokesman-Review). The Spokane County Republican Party called for West’s resignation, and in 2005, he lost his position as mayor when voters opted to recall him.

Certainly we should all be able to agree that some consensual adult behavior should be kept behind closed doors. Conservative do not agree. They think the public and big government should patrol your bedroom. All of this as year after year there is yet another conservative Republican scandal. Sure there is a Democratic scandal once in a while, but generally Democrats are not self-righteous hypocrites that think the police and FBI are the best judges of what adult Americans should be able to do in private. Oh, that's right, conservatives do not believe in privacy. So they need to get big government involved in people's personal lives to make sure you do not have any privacy.


Mitt Romney is the Deadbeat Dad of Obamacare. Mittens gave birth to Obamacare, along with the far Right conservative Heritage Foundation. Now they both pretend they are not the daddies.

Jonah Goldberg Admits His New Book is Right-Wing Hackery on NPR. Goldberg can't tell the difference between an historical fact and a straw man.

Latest Attempt To Deny Obama Credit For Bin Laden Raid Falls Flat

Spending on the poor isn’t breaking the nation’s bank. If all spending on the poor were stopped, it would hardly make a dent in the deficit.

Conservative Misogynist Donald Trump Hosts Birthday Fundraiser For Ann Romney

Conservative Misogynist Donald Trump Hosts Birthday Fundraiser For Ann Romney

Last week, Ann Romney became her husband’s point-person on the so-called “war on women” when she accused Democrats of not valuing the work of stay-at-home moms and went after CNN contributor Hilary Rosen (who is not an Obama adviser, but is a CAPAF board member) for saying that she hadn’t worked outside of the domestic sphere. The campaign went into overdrive trying to paint all Democrats as insensitive to women who choose to raise their children, only to admit hours later that Mrs. Romney saw the barb as a political “gift” she could exploit in order to help Mr. Romney close his widening gap among women voters.

This afternoon, just five days after the “controversy,” the Romneys will be participating in a special birthday fundraiser at the home of top campaign surrogate Donald Trump, further eroding their credibility in the “war on women.” Trump, after all, has a long history of misogynistic rhetoric and behavior that is far more offensive than even the least generous interpretations of Rosen’s comments. Below are Trump’s most sexist comments:

    1. “I think [Attorney] Gloria [Allred] would be very very impressed with [my penis].” [2012]

    2. “[Rosie O'Donnell is] not a smart person,” “a stone cold loser,” “a bully” “a slob,” “disgusting,” “an animal” and a “very unattractive woman both inside and out.” [ 2007]

    3. “[Angelina Jolie's] been with so many guys she makes me look like a baby, OK, with the other side. And, I just don’t even find her attractive.” [2006]

    4. “You know, it doesn’t really matter what [the media] write as long as you’ve got a young and beautiful piece of [expletive].” [1991]

    5. “Well, you know ‘The National Enquirer’ did a story they said, ‘Who’s had more supermodels than any man ever in history?’ ‘Let’s name ‘em, let’s each of us name ‘em’ ‘I’ve had a lot of them, I’ll tell you that.” [2011]

    6. “All of the women on ‘The Apprentice’ flirted with me- consciously or unconsciously. That’s to be expected.” [ 2011 ]

    7. “I think the only difference between me and the other candidates is that I’m more honest and my women are more beautiful.” [ 2000]

The birthday luncheon has already netted over $600,000 for the Romney campaign, a Trump spokesman tells CBS News, and the campaign has asked the businessman to “host a similar fundraiser when Romney secures the Republican presidential nomination.” “[T]ickets to that event would sell for $50,000 and 50 donors have already expressed interest in attending.”

Conservatives have been so successful on dumping down what makes a good or smart citizen that we have Donald Trump on TV. Seemingly everyday day pontificating on whatever. If Donald had started out in life as a poor child in a poor family he would never had had the intelligence to rise by way of actual merit. In other words, like Mitt and Ann Romney, he is a perfect conservative.

Potential VP Candidate South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley (R) Can Darn Well Mangle The Truth As Well as Anyone

Hannity Dredges Up Fabricated Link Between Former Education Department Official Kevin Jennings And NAMBLA. Hannity is always ready to give us examples of conservative values - values that only a cockroach could embrace.

Obama Energy Policy Created 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output

Obama Energy Policy Created 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output

The Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colorado, issued a study on Friday estimating the economic impact of investments that received federal support through the Treasury Department’s 1603 grant program.

The Section 1603 program was created under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to support the deployment of renewable energy resources. The 1603 program offered project developers the option to select a one-time cash payment in lieu of taking the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) or the Production Tax Credit (PTC), for which they would have otherwise been eligible.  
The NREL study makes clear that projects receiving payments from the 1603 program have supported tens of thousands of jobs while also diversifying our energy economy. In fact, the program’s primary goal was to jumpstart private financing for renewable energy projects. From both perspectives, the program has been a huge success.

NREL’s analysis estimates that up to 75,000 direct and indirect jobs and up to $44 billion in total economic output were supported by the design, manufacturing, construction, and installation of solar photovoltaic (PV) and wind projects funded by the 1603 Treasury grant program. In addition, the study estimates that the operation and maintenance of these solar and wind facilities will continue to sustain up to $1.8 billion per year in economic output over the lifetime of the facilities (20 – 30 years). 

When it comes to expanding domestic energy production, the 23,000 PV and large wind projects funded by the program between 2009 and late 2011 that the NREL study examined added 13.5 gigawatts of renewable energy to America’s electricity generation capacity – enough to power 3.4 million U.S. homes – and attracted more than $20 billion in direct investment from private, regional, and state sources, in addition to the approximately $9 billion in federal funds under the 1603 program. NREL’s analysis also estimated that economy-wide, these projects supported up to $44 billion in total economic output.

In fact, the 1603 program has played a central role in meeting President Obama’s goal of doubling domestic energy production from renewable sources like wind and solar in his first term – which we are well on track to achieve. Furthermore, it has played a critical role in building the infrastructure that America will need to continue to compete globally in clean energy for years to come, ensuring we do not cede the industries or the jobs of the 21st century to countries like China. And it has supported tens of thousands of jobs across the country. That is why President Obama has called on Congress to extend the highly successful 1603 program.

There is a nice graphic table at the link.

Neo-Fascist Gov.Scott Walker(R-WI) Quietly Signs Controversial Anti-Abortion, Abstinence Measures On Eve Of Holiday. Why Walker hates freedom, women and America is anyone's guess. Improper upbringing perhaps.

Decent Moral Americans Just Say No To Sen. Scott Brown a Serial Liar Without Honor

Decent Moral Americans Just Say No To Sen. Scott Brown a Serial Liar Without Honor

A major theme in Republican complaints about the $862 billion stimulus program is that it didn't deliver enough jobs. Republican Sen. Scott Brown of Massachusetts took that view to an extreme, claiming that it didn't create any new jobs. Here's what he said during a Feb. 4, 2010, news conference, shortly after he was sworn in.

“The last stimulus bill didn’t create one new job, and in some states the money that was actually released hasn’t even been used yet,” Brown said.

ABC's Jonathan Karl immediately followed up. “It didn’t create one new job?” Karl asked.

“That’s correct. We lost another 85,000 jobs again, give or take, last month,” Brown responded.  “And in Massachusetts, it hasn’t created one new job and throughout the country as well. It may have retained some, but it hasn’t created any new jobs."

There are two ways to analyze this question -- looking at jobs created directly by the stimulus, and looking at jobs created in the broader economy since the stimulus bill took effect.

We'll look first at jobs funded directly by the stimulus.

According to Recovery.gov -- the Obama administration's Web site that tracks the stimulus effort -- the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act created or saved 634,042 jobs between Feb. 17, 2009, and Sept. 30, 2009, and it funded 595,263 jobs between Oct. 1, 2009, and Dec. 31, 2009. The data come from reports filed by the primary recipient of stimulus funds such as state and local governments and private-sector companies.

These numbers aren't perfect. They meld bits and pieces of part-time jobs into "full-time equivalent" jobs, and the two periods use different criteria for job counting, due to a change dictated by the Office of Management and Budget in December 2009. (For the earlier of the two periods cited above, the number refers to jobs created or saved; for the later of the two periods, it refers to the number of jobs funded by the stimulus without reference to whether that funding created or saved a job.) Also, the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, concluded in November 2009 that "there are a range of significant reporting and quality issues that need to be addressed" in this reporting system.

So these statistics may overstate the actual number of jobs created. But not by enough to make Brown's zero-jobs claim accurate.

So there's strong evidence that the stimulus has created lots of jobs directly through federal spending. What about the economy as a whole?

Economists have been estimating the impact of the stimulus on jobs by comparing two numbers: current employment statistics and an estimate of what those employment numbers would have looked like had there been no stimulus.

In a report released on Jan. 13, 2010, the president's Council of Economic Advisers estimated that between 1.77 million jobs and 2.07 million jobs were created or saved by the stimulus through the fourth quarter of 2009.

Separately, the council's report cited four independent analyses of the same question. These estimates were by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, as well by three private-sector economic-analysis firms. Here's what those groups found:

• CBO: Between 800,000 jobs (low estimate) and 2.4 million jobs (high estimate) saved or created.

• IHS/Global Insight: 1.25 million jobs saved or created.

• Macroeconomic Advisers: 1.06 million jobs saved or created.

• Moody's economy.com: 1.59 million jobs saved or created.

A couple of caveats: These estimates are based on economic models that vary somewhat from study to study, and not everyone buys the idea that it's possible to measure how the economy would have fared in the absence of a stimulus.

Indeed, some economists, including many conservatives, believe that the multiplier effect from the stimulus is small or nonexistent. "Every dollar Congress injects into the economy must first be taxed or borrowed out of the economy," writes economist Brian Riedl of the conservative Heritage Foundation. "No new purchasing power is created; it is merely transferred from one part of the economy to another. ... Removing water from one end of a swimming pool and pouring it in the other end will not raise the overall water level -- no matter how large the bucket. Similarly, borrowing money from one part of the economy and redistributing to another part of the economy will not create new growth -- no matter how big the stimulus bill."

We acknowledge that there's some dispute on this question. Still, the independent estimates we've seen have credibility, and they all agree that at least 1 million jobs have been created or saved. That, in combination with the hundreds of thousands of jobs cited on recovery.gov as being funded directly by the stimulus, contradicts Brown's assertion that the bill "didn’t create one new job."

But if Brown had chosen his words more carefully, he could have scored better on the Truth-O-Meter.

He's right that the economy as a whole has been losing jobs almost every single month since January 2008. According to a chart prepared by the Obama White House, there has been positive job growth in only one month during that period -- November 2009. (In his news conference comment, Brown actually underestimated the net job losses in December 2009, which was the most recent month for which data was available before he spoke; it was about 150,000, rather than 85,000.)

So if Brown had said that the national economy hasn't seen any net gain in jobs since the stimulus bill was passed, he would have earned himself a True.

But that's not what Brown said. He said the stimulus bill "didn’t create one new job" and, when asked to clarify, he said it "hasn’t created any new jobs." It's perfectly reasonable to question whether the $862 billion was well spent and whether it is good economic policy. But that money has clearly resulted in tens of thousands of jobs that wouldn't exist otherwise. It's preposterous to claim that no new jobs came out of it. We find his claim Pants on Fire!

The stimulus both created and saved jobs. Brown and his fellow conservatives with their anti-regulation and do not enforce regulation policies caused the economy to crash. Now like many conservative cowards he is trying to shift blame. The worse one can say about Obama and Democrats is they are not repairing the house conservatives burned down fast enough. Why does brown lie so often. because he has no character or honor. he cannot win talking facts. So like his hero George Bush he simply lies all the time about everything. Brown is an empty suit. he has no ideas and no leadership skills. he has never accomplished anything. never come up with a great idea. he is incapable of inspiring or living up to our Jeffersonian ideals. Brown is a cynical opportunist who only cares about one thing - Scott Brown and how much money and power he can get by way of public office. Want government to work better/ Want government for the people instead of special interests like Brown's friends the Ant-American Koch brothers. Than get rid of brown in 2012.

Conservatives hemorrhaged jobs and President Obama brought us back from the brink, but little Scotty brown doesn't have the integrity or maturity to admit that.

Immorality on the March - This is How Conservatives Define Capitalism. Those Who Disagree are Socialists

Immorality on the March - This is How Conservatives Define Capitalism. Those Who Disagree are Socialists, Goldman Sachs Insider Resigns, Reveals ‘Toxic’ Culture In Which Managers Called Clients ‘Muppets’

Last year, Goldman Sachs faced a significant amount of heat when internal emails — in which, bankers described a financial product they sold to clients as a “shitty deal” — became public. Goldman trader Fabrice “Fabulous Fab” Tourre became the face of a bank that cared more about its own internal trading profits than serving the needs of its clients, as shown by an email of his stating that he didn’t even understand the “monstrosities” he was peddling.

In today’s New York Times, Goldman Sachs executive director Greg Smith confirmed this characterization of the bank, writing that he resigned from Goldman due to its “toxic and destructive” environment which included managing directors referring to their own clients as “muppets”:

    Today is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

    To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money…It makes me ill how callously people talk about ripping their clients off. Over the last 12 months I have seen five different managing directors refer to their own clients as “muppets,” sometimes over internal e-mail….These days, the most common question I get from junior analysts about derivatives is, “How much money did we make off the client?”

As Charles Elson, a professor of corporate governance at the University of Delaware, explained, “You make a much bigger buck on a transaction than on the long-term relationship…You have profiteers as opposed to advisers.” Goldman Sachs, of course, disputes Smith’s characterization of the bank, saying, “We disagree with the views expressed. … We will only be successful if our clients are successful.”

Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has previously said that his firm is “doing God’s work.” However, it seems that the bank’s actual modus operandi is more akin to the description used by a former JP Morgan banker who lost faith in his industry: “I don’t say this lightly, but the consumer is simply an income stream and exploiting that is the purpose of the banking organization.”

Yet when moderate patriotic Americans attempt to fix the immoral shenanigans of Wall Street, the deeply and irrevocably immoral leaders of the Anti-American conservative movement do everything they can to stop reasonable regulation.

Pennsylvania Conservatives Prop Up Big Business With Crony Corporate Welfare and Give Average Citizens The Shaft

Pennsylvania Conservatives Prop Up Big Business With Crony Corporate Welfare and Give Average Citizens The Shaft

Pennsylvania, where the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution were signed and where the U.S. coal, oil and nuclear industries began, has adopted what may be the most anti-democratic, anti-environmental law in the country, giving gas companies the right to drill anywhere, overturn local zoning laws, seize private property and muzzle physicians from disclosing specific health impacts from drilling fluids on patients.
The draconian new law, known as Act 13, revises the state’s oil and gas statutes, to allow oil companies to drill for natural gas using the controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing or fracking, where large volumes of water and toxic chemicals are pumped into vertical wells with lateral bores to shatter the rock and release the hydrocarbons. The law strips rights from communities and individuals while imposing new statewide drilling rules.

“It’s absolutely crushing of local self-government,” said Ben Price, project director for the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund, which has helped a handful of local communities—including the city of Pittsburgh—adopt community rights ordinances that elevate the rights of nature and people to block the drilling. “The state has surrendered over 2,000 municipalities to the industry. It’s a complete capitulation of the rights of the people and their right to self-government. They are handing it over to the industry to let them govern us. It is the corporate state. That is how we look at it.”

“Now I know what it feels like to live in Nigeria,” said recently retired Pittsburgh City Council President Doug Shields. “You’re basically a resource colony for multi-national corporations to take your natural resources, take them back to wherever they are at, add value to them, and then sell them back to you.”

Needless to say, Pennsylvania’s top political leadership—Republican Gov. Tom Corbett and Republican-controlled legislature—see Act 13 as a pro-business, clean-energy bill creating jobs, revenue and improving environmental laws surrounding drilling. That the 174-page bill was essentially rammed through the legislature over objections from local officials, environmentalists and a handful of legislators who said it not only turned “300 years of local zoning upside down,” but exposed the state to liability from wells, was irrelevant.

Every day conservatives have a choice between what is best for America and what puts more money in their pockets. They always pick greed over morality. Every day conservatives deprive future generations of freedom, energy and good health. Conservatives call this evil process freedom and patriotism.. Conservatism is in no way about what is good for the nation, it is about the accumulation of money and power, conservatism is the Anti-American freedom and responsibility movement, the movement of drooling hypocrites.