Wacky Anti-America Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Crazy Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) Fight for Corporate Welfare and Corruption of the Army

Wacky Anti-America Senator Rob Portman (R-OH) and Crazy Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) Fight for Corporate Welfare and Corruption of the Army

Congress is forcing the Army to spend nearly half a billion dollars building tanks that Army officials insist they don’t want, with money they say could be better spent elsewhere, according to a new report from the AP.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) are the two members of congress at the helm of the effort to spend $436 million on upgrading the Abrams tank, “a weapon the experts explicitly say is not needed.” The reason? Both represent Ohio, home to the nation’s only tank manufacturing plant, which would profit from the money.

The move is contradictory for the two politicians; both are also vocal advocates for fiscal austerity, and have made careers insisting that the government cut what they see as wasteful spending. It would seem that pushing for tank production against the will of the Army — as Army Chief of Staff Gen. Ray Odierno put it, “If we had our choice, we would use that money in a different way” — is in direct contradiction to that aim.

Still, Rep. Jordan defended his request for the funding, saying, “The one area where we are supposed to spend taxpayer money is in defense of the country.” This is a common line among Republicans. The House GOP’s proposed budget also seeks to restore funding the military says it doesn’t need.

Indeed, Republicans have tried to maintain defense spending while pushing for cuts to mental health programs, cancer treatment, food safety inspectors, and preschool programs. They have repeatedly ignored or dismissed the assertion from military generals that President Obama’s budget, which would have made targeted cuts to military programs, was an acceptable path to spending reduction.

A cut to one specific program would by no means be a drastic setback for the military; between 2001 and 2011, military spending nearly doubled. American voters, much like the military’s generals, also support scaling back the military’s spending.

So plastic patriots Portman and Jordan want to waste tax dollars. They want to weaken our national defense. They want to go against the best judgment of military experts. yep, sounds like more conservatism in action. Isn't that what conservatism is all about, making America weaker and more corrupt, while wrapping it's dangerous agenda in the flag and fear.

Patriots Don't Lie About The Number of Americans Receiving Disability

Patriots Don't Lie About The Number of Americans Receiving Disability

Unpatriotic Conservative Media Hype NPR's Myth-Filled Disability Report

A misleading NPR report has become fodder for a right-wing media campaign to scapegoat federal disability benefits, despite the fact that the rise in disability claims can be attributed to the economic recession and demographic shifts, and that instances of fraud are minimal.

NPR reported that the rise in the number of federal disability beneficiaries was "startling" and claimed it was explained by unemployed workers with "squishy" claims of disability choosing to receive federal benefits rather than work. Right-wing media called the report "brilliant," and used it to further the myth that the increase in the number of individuals receiving disability benefits reveals fraud in the system.

Breitbart.com's Wynton Hall wrote that NPR's "eye-opening" piece uncovered a disability program "fraught with fraud." Fox Nation promoted the piece with the headline, "Every Month, 14 Million People Get a Disability Check from the Government..." The National Review Online's blog called the piece "brilliant," while the Washington Examiner's editorial offered it as evidence that disability benefits provide "a voluntary life sentence to idle poverty." The Drudge Report linked to the NPR story and to the Breitbart.com article:

But as Media Matters previously noted, these reports failed to include crucial facts that explain the rise in disability benefits. The recent financial crisis and the rising rate of child poverty have made more children eligible to receive benefits through the Supplemental Security program, while the growth in the number of adults receiving benefits through Social Security Disability Insurance since the 1970s is largely explained by increases in the number of women qualifying for benefits. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities explained, as women have joined the workforce in greater numbers over the past few decades, more women are eligible for disability benefits, resulting in higher numbers of beneficiaries.

Furthermore, in a report published in March 2012, the Government Accountability Office found that improper payments of disability benefits are not a widespread problem, and accounted for less than four percent of total improper payments made by federal agencies in fiscal year 2011.

Why would any intelligent American believe anything that Neo-Nazi sites like Brietbart have to say. They, Drudge and Fox want to transform the USA into an authoritarian cult run by plutocrats and religious fanatics who are similar to the Taliban. 

Cancer on America Paul Ryan(R-WI) Embraces Spending Cuts He Said Would Devastate The Country

Cancer on America Paul Ryan(R-WI) Embraces Spending Cuts He Said Would Devastate The Country

During an interview on Meet The Press on Sunday, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) predicted that the sequester cuts are “going to happen” and made no concrete proposals for how to avoid the reductions. The tone represents a sharp rhetorical and policy shift for the onetime GOP vice presidential nominee, who warned during the 2012 presidential campaign that the cuts would “devastate” the country and undermine job growth.

“I think the sequester is going to happen,” Ryan said, referring to the $1.2 trillion in automatic spending cuts to the Pentagon and other government agencies that will go into effect unless Congress approves offsets. He charged that Democrats rejected the GOP’s replacement legislation — the bill cut the food-stamp program, slashed Medicaid, undermined funding for the Affordable Care Act and disaster relief — and failed to produce their own alternatives...

many Americans look to Washington and wonder why government does work as well as it could. Look no further than lying hypocrites like Paul Ryan. What does he stand for? Just ask the billionaire Koch brothers - Ryan is the puppet and they pull the strings. When the Koch brothers cry about how hard life it, Ryan starts to cry. They believe in government by and for lazy plutocrats who make their wealth on the backs of working class Americans.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is a world class moron unfit to be in Congress - Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is a world class moron unfit to be in Congress - Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued..

Conservatives consider complete and utter incompetence a bonus rather than a disqualifying feature for public office.

President Obama handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

President Obama handled a tough situation fairly well; Romney offers no credible alternative

The question before presidential voters is simple: Who will better serve this country for the next four years, Mitt Romney or Barack Obama? When couched in straightforward terms, the answer is clear: President Obama should be re-elected.

Obama has done a reasonably good job handling an almost unprecedented economic mess – a situation that has proved far worse than anyone knew as it developed. Still, there is room for debate about the direction the country is headed.

Unfortunately, the Republican Party has offered no credible alternative. Its platform consists of little more than nostalgia for the 1950s, and its presidential candidate largely remains a mystery.

Romney has publicly demonstrated no core convictions beyond his obvious belief that he should be president. He apparently thinks that simply not being Obama is qualification enough.

It is not.

When Barack Obama took office, the country was mired in two wars, one pointless and neither properly funded. The economy was tanking and jobs were disappearing by the thousands. The automotive industry was on the verge of collapse – threatening to take with it the entire upper Midwest. And, while no one knew it at the time, the Middle East was about to explode into chaos and confusion.

On balance, Obama’s handling of all that has been good. U.S. forces have left Iraq and the end is in sight in Afghanistan. Muammar Gadhafi was ousted with no American troops involved. Democracy has a tenuous but real toehold in some Arab countries. And while the U.S. economy is recovering too slowly, it is recovering. As Vice President Joe Biden put it, Osama bin Laden is dead and GM is alive.

Amid all that, Obama kept a campaign promise and signed into law a sweeping health-care reform package.

All told, that is not a bad record. But in considering the way forward, Americans are always interested in alternative visions.

Mitt Romney, however, has not effectively offered one. Instead, this race has been presented as a referendum on the economy and the president’s personal style. Romney has failed to explain himself or his agenda, and the voters still do not really know who he is or how he would govern.

By all accounts, Romney’s Mormon faith is central to who he is. To listen to him campaign, however, one would never know that. His business acumen is touted as his core competence, but he will not release his tax records for more than a couple of years. He promises to cut taxes, increase defense spending, lower the deficit and make the seemingly impossible math work out by reforming the tax code. But he cannot, or will not, explain what those tax changes might be.

Romney rails against Obamacare, although it was modeled on the program he enacted as governor of Massachusetts. He governed that state as a moderate, but won the presidential nomination describing himself as “severely conservative.”

He has gone from supporting reproductive rights when running for the Senate in 1994 to saying in 2007 that he would gladly ban abortion in all cases. He now says he would allow exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother.

Romney has shown some consistency on other women’s health issues. He has repeatedly said he would strip Planned Parenthood of all funding and allow employers to exclude contraception from health-insurance coverage. He wants to talk about the economy but fails to understand that reproductive autonomy is an economic issue for women.

Barack Obama is an imperfect president, of course, and to what extent he can achieve his goals for the nation remains to be seen. But he has and can articulate a vision for a better, fairer, more successful America. His opponent offers nothing of the sort.

Vote to re-elect Barack Obama.

Romney has no real jobs plan. It is all smoke and mirrors. The only way he can make his very stretchy budget and tax plan work is to raise taxes on families making under $150k per year.

Mitt Romney Supporters Show Love For China, Hatred For American Workers

GOP congressman admits Paul Ryan, GOP will “end” Medicare

Immoral Mitt Romney is hoping for another 1979 Iranian Hostage Crisis,..." I will work to take advantage of the opportunity.” w/video

Inside Romney Bain's Chinese Sensata Factories, Where Workers Put in 12-Hour Days for $.99-$1.35 an Hour

Anti-American Congressional Republicans Propose Tax Plan That Raises Taxes On 10 Times As Many People As Democratic Proposal

Anti-American Congressional Republicans Propose Tax Plan That Raises Taxes On 10 Times As Many People As Democratic Proposal

Senate Republicans last week proposed a plan that would raise taxes on more than 20 million Americans, while maintaining the high-end Bush tax cuts. Letting those tax cuts on income in excess of $250,000 expire would affect just two million wealthy taxpayers, by comparison.

Now, House Republicans have adopted the same plan, and the effect is the same: roughly 24 million middle- and lower-class Americans will see their taxes raised so that roughly two million of the richest taxpayers can maintain a tax cut, as this chart from the Center for American Progress’ Seth Hanlon and Sarah Ayres illustrate:

Even worse, more than a third of families with children — a total of 18.6 million households, including 9.2 million single parents — would see a tax increase, according to Hanlon and Ayres’ analysis:

According to the analysis, roughly 11 million American families would lose some or all of the American Opportunity Tax Credit, which provides a tax break on college tuition payments, at an average cost of $1,100 each. About 12 million would lose part or all of the Child Tax Credit, costing them an average of $800, and about 6 million would lose all or part of the Earned Income Tax Credit, which saves each recipient an average of $500.

The Senate GOP plan failed last week, as the Senate instead adopted a Democratic proposal that would extend a tax cut on just the first $250,000 in income.

Yet conservatives are running ads telling small business and middle-class families to beware of Democrats and their tax plan. What they are relying on is that people will just accept what their deceptive ads say and don't do any fact checking.

Per the photo at top, Rep Steve King (R-IA) @SteveKing IA Defends Dog Fighting

Five Things Everyone Should Know About Anti-American Conservative Senate Candidate Ted Cruz

2) Ted Cruz Wants To Gut Social Security: In an interview with the Texas Tribune Cruz labeled Social Security a “ponzi scheme” and outlined a three-step plan to gut this essential program. Cruz would raise the Social Security retirement age, cut future benefits, and implement a George W. Bush-style plan to privatize much of the program. In other words, in addition to forcing them to work longer for fewer benefits, Cruz would place retirees at the mercy of a fickle stock market. Had Social Security been privatized during the career of a worker who retired near the end of the Bush Administration, that worker would have retired with less money in their privatized account than they would have if they’d simply kept their money between their mattress and box spring.

Mitt Romney Thinks Israel's Universal Health Care System Is Great, But Would Condemn 45,000 Americans To Death With Obamacare Repeal

Mitt Romney Thinks Israel's Universal Health Care System Is Great, But Would Condemn 45,000 Americans To Death With Obamacare Repeal

Throughout his presidential campaign, Mitt Romney has been running away from the individual insurance mandate in the Affordable Care Act — even though a mandate is a cornerstone of the former Massachusetts governor’s health care reform law. “If I’m President of the United States, we’re gonna get rid of Obamacare and return, under our constitution, the 10th Amendment, the responsibility and care of health care to the people in the states,” Romney said during a GOP presidential debate.

But during his trip to Israel, Romney inadvertently praised the individual requirement and universal health care. “[F]or an American abroad, you can’t get much closer to the ideals and convictions of my own country than you do in Israel,” he said. And according to The New York Times, Romney spoke favorably about the fact that health care makes up a much smaller amount of Israel’s gross domestic product compared to the United States:

    “Do you realize what health care spending is as a percentage of the G.D.P. in Israel? Eight percent,” he said. “You spend eight percent of G.D.P. on health care. You’re a pretty healthy nation. We spend 18 percent of our G.D.P. on health care, 10 percentage points more. That gap, that 10 percent cost, compare that with the size of our military — our military which is 4 percent, 4 percent. Our gap with Israel is 10 points of G.D.P. We have to find ways — not just to provide health care to more people, but to find ways to fund and manage our health care costs.”

Israel spends less on health care because of a universal health system that requires everyone to have insurance. Every Israeli citizen has the obligation to purchase health care services through one of the country’s four HMOs since government officials approved the National Health Insurance Law in 1995. People pay for 40 percent of their HMO’s costs through income-related contributions collected through the tax system, and the state pays the remaining 60 percent. And by many standards, Israelis are getting better health care than U.S. citizens. The infant mortality rate is much lower, and its mortality rate due to heart disease is half the U.S. rate.

Orly Manor, dean of the Hadassah-Hebrew University Braun School of Public Health, said U.S. officials could “learn a lot from the Israeli system. The quality is high, and the outcomes are good.” And it seems that, following his trip to Jerusalem, Romney would agree.

With all of Romney's money one would think he could afford a brain transplant or hire someone smart to think for him. If he succeeds in repealing the ACA (health care reform) he will condemn 45,000 Americans to death. After he hires the smart person he also needs to hire someone who is not morally corrupt to have a conscience for him.

How the U.S. Government Helped Mitt Romney Build His Fortune

 Bain produced stellar returns for its investors--yet the bulk of these came from just a small number of its investments. Ten deals produced more than 70% of the dollar gains.

    Some of those companies, too, later ran into trouble. Of the 10 businesses on which Bain investors scored their biggest gains, four later landed in bankruptcy court.

Put another way, Mitt Romney's investing was almost risk-free. He won when his portfolio companies won and often when they lost. Thanks in large part to the dangerous incentives unleashed by the U.S. tax code.

Which is why other countries like Denmark, the UK and Germany either don't offer--or are trying to limit--the "public subsidy" that William D. Cohan deemed "the mother's milk of a leveraged buyout". As Felix Salmon noted, the United States could lower the rate at which debt interest can deducted or cap the amount of debt to which it applies. (The Obama administration is considering those kinds of changes in its recently proposed "Framework for Business Tax Reform.") In its January 30, 2012 editorial, the Financial Times lamented:

    "The system could be made fairer and more efficient by taxing debt and equity at the same rate...Most of [Romney's] money was made at Bain Capital, which, like all private equity groups, benefits from a federal debt subsidy. It should be eliminated."

U.S. tax payer subsidized every penny that Romney "built".

President Obama Was Right About Business, When Will Romney Show Some Integrity and Apologize

President Obama Was Right About Business, When Will Romney  Show Some Integrity and Apologize

The Obama campaign pushed back against Mitt Romney’s ad that distorts the “you didn’t build that” line in a new web video featuring deputy campaign manager Stephanie Cutter. The Romney campaign took Obama’s comments about infrastructure out of context and have used it on the stump and now in a new ad to push the point that Obama doesn’t believe in small business owners.

In their new video, Cutter compares Romney and Obama’s plans to help small businesses. Cutter then brings up Romney’s history at Bain Capital, where he negotiated $10 million in debt forgiveness from the FDIC. “Ironically, Mitt Romney knows better than anyone that business can’t always do it alone,”

Myth Busters: The Republican Narrative About Taxes, Business and The Market is a Lie

When it comes to the economy, too many Americans continue to be numbed by the soothing sounds of conservative spin in the media. Here are three of their more inventive claims:

1. Higher taxes on the rich will hurt small businesses and discourage job creators

A recent Treasury analysis found that only 2.5% of small businesses would face higher taxes from the expiration of the Bush tax cuts.

As for job creation, it's not coming from the people with money. Over 90% of the assets owned by millionaires are held in a combination of low-risk investments (bonds and cash), the stock market, real estate, and personal business accounts. Angel investing (capital provided by affluent individuals for business start-ups) accounted for less than 1% of the investable assets of high net worth individuals in North America in 2011. The Mendelsohn Affluent Survey agreed that the very rich spend less than two percent of their money on new business startups.

The Wall Street Journal noted, in way of confirmation, that the extra wealth created by the Bush tax cuts led to the "worst track record for jobs in recorded history."

2. Individual initiative is all you need for success.

President Obama was criticized for a speech which included these words: "If you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own...when we succeed, we succeed because of our individual initiative, but also because we do things together."

'Together' is the word that winner-take-all conservatives seem to forget. Even the richest and arguably most successful American, Bill Gates, owes most of his good fortune to the thousands of software and hardware designers who shaped the technological industry over a half-century or more. A careful analysis of his rise shows that he had luck, networking skills, and a timely sense of opportunism, even to the point of taking the work of competitors and adapting it as his own.

Gates was preceded by numerous illustrious Americans who are considered individual innovators when in fact they used their skills to build upon the work of others. On the day that Alexander Graham Bell filed for a patent for his telephone, electrical engineer Elisha Gray was filing an intent to patent a similar device. Both had built upon the work of Antonio Meucci, who didn't have the fee to file for a patent. Thomas Edison's incandescent light bulb was the culmination of almost 40 years of work by other fellow light bulb developers. Samuel Morse, Eli Whitney, the Wright brothers, and even Thomas Edison had, as eloquently stated by Jared Diamond, "capable predecessors...and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product."

If anything, it's harder than ever today to ascend through the ranks on one's own. As summarized in the Pew research report "Pursuing the American Dream," only 4% of those starting out in the bottom quintile make it to the top quintile as adults, "confirming that the 'rags-to-riches' story is more often found in Hollywood than in reality."

3. A booming stock market is good for all of us

The news reports would have us believe that happy days are here again when the stock market goes up. But as the market rises, most Americans are getting a smaller slice of the pie.

In a recent Newsweek article, author Daniel Gross gushed that "The stock market has doubled since March 2009, while corporate profits and exports have surged to records."

But the richest 10% of Americans own over 80% of the stock market. What Mr. Gross referred to as the "democratization of the stock market" is actually, as demonstrated by economist Edward Wolff, a distribution of financial wealth among just the richest 5% of Americans, those earning an average of $500,000 per year.

Thanks in good part to a meager 15% capital gains tax, the richest 400 taxpayers DOUBLED their income and nearly HALVED their tax rates in just seven years (2001-2007). So dramatic is the effect that anyone making more than $34,500 a year in salary and wages is taxed at a higher rate than an individual with millions in capital gains.

There's yet more to the madness. The stock market has grown much faster than the GDP over the past century, which means that this special tax rate is being given to people who already own most of the unearned income that keeps expanding faster than the productiveness of real workers.

And one fading illusion: People in the highest class are people of high class.

Scientific American and Psychological Science have both reported that wealthier people are more focused on self, and have less empathy for people unlike themselves.

This sense of self-interest, according to a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and other sources, promotes wrongdoing and unethical behavior.

Can't help but think about bankers and hedge fund managers.

Its called voodoo economics for a reason. The relentless march of tyrannical conservatives have, over the last forty years, eroded the very things that created the middle-class during the New Deal. The future is bleak. One in which we have the rich living on the hill and half or more of Americans barely getting by. For those who can scrap together the money and get a highly specialized degree in medicine or engineering, the wealthy, who only know how to manipulate numbers on a spread sheet, need you to take care of them and create their products. The middle will be gone. Welcome to the land of dog-eat-dog economics.

Star of Romney ‘My Hands Didn’t Build This’ Ad Received Millions in Government Loans and Contracts

Romney Caught in Two More Lies - When He Left Bain and His Ownership of Medical Waste Company

Romney Caught in Two More Lies - When He Left Bain and His Ownership of Medical Waste Company

Earlier this year, Mitt Romney nearly landed in a politically perilous controversy when the Huffington Post reported that in 1999 the GOP presidential candidate had been part of an investment group that invested $75 million in Stericycle, a medical-waste disposal firm that has been attacked by anti-abortion groups for disposing aborted fetuses collected from family planning clinics. Coming during the heat of the GOP primaries, as Romney tried to sell South Carolina Republicans on his pro-life bona fides, the revelation had the potential to damage the candidate's reputation among values voters already suspicious of his shifting position on abortion.

But Bain Capital, the private equity firm Romney founded, tamped down the controversy. The company said Romney left the firm in February 1999 to run the troubled 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City and likely had nothing to with the deal. The matter never became a campaign issue. But documents filed by Bain and Stericycle with the Securities and Exchange Commission—and obtained by Mother Jones—list Romney as an active participant in the investment. And this deal helped Stericycle, a company with a poor safety record, grow, while yielding tens of millions of dollars in profits for Romney and his partners. The documents—one of which was signed by Romney—also contradict the official account of Romney's exit from Bain.

The Stericycle deal—the abortion connection aside—is relevant because of questions regarding the timing of Romney's departure from the private equity firm he founded. Responding to a recent Washington Post story reporting that Bain-acquired companies outsourced jobs, the Romney campaign insisted that Romney exited Bain in February 1999, a month or more before Bain took over two of the companies named in the Post's article. The SEC documents undercut that defense, indicating that Romney still played a role in Bain investments until at least the end of 1999.

All politicians hedge on the truth a bit. We all expect that. Mitt Romney - Mr Values Mr. Stand-up Guy - Mr Morals seems to think this election cycle is a contest to see how many and often he can tell big lies. If Romney is the moral standard of Republican conservatism that say a lot about how far down in the stinking gutter conservatism has sunk. Many American seem to have learned nothing from the Bush-Cheney years - that when conservatives say they stand for values - they mean deeply repugnant values.

Crazy Conservative Carly Fiorina — a Mitt Romney surrogate Falsely Claims That Obamacare Would Harm Breast Cancer Patients. Carly studied truth telling at the Soviet Politburo when she was growing up.


Is there some wealth redistribution going on in the USA. Yes there is. Corporate America is taking all the profits from worker productivity. Can we call it class war yet? Corporate profits are at an all time high; wages are at an all time low

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.

Media Bias - Is The Media Pushing For Mitt Romney

Media Bias - Is The Media Pushing For Mitt Romney

Not once in the past twelve months has President Obama logged a seven-day stretch where his positive press coverage outweighed the negative, according to Pew Research analysis. And based on recent media trends, that streak is in no danger of being broken as the Beltway press continues to pile on the Democratic president with routinely negative and increasingly misleading coverage, while at the same time giving his Republican rival a pass.

Whether it's in response to the right wing's incessant whining about unfair campaign coverage, or the product of the media's innate desire to create a close, competitive (and marketable) presidential contest to market, the resulting  storyline is clear:  Obama's faltering!

From a late-May Politico campaign analysis piece ("Obama Stumbles Out of the Gate") that read like it had been cribbed from a Karl Rove column the previous week ("Obama's Campaign Is Off to a Rocky Start"),  to the recent congestion of sound-alike refrains, the "liberal media's" narrative has become set in stone and conservatives must be pleased since it echoes their own anti-Obama message.

There's nothing wrong with chronicling the ups and downs of campaigns. And nobody's suggesting the Obama re-election run hasn't had stumbles. All of them do. (Although note, Obama's Gallup approval rating has remained constant in the high-40s for a few months now, and even climbed to 50 percent last week.) But the feverish, one-sided coverage in recent weeks signals that a clear, GOP-leaning script  has been adopted by the Beltway media.  And yes, it makes a mockery out of the tired chant of a left-wing newsroom bias.

No surprisingly, the current wave of coverage is cresting on some shoddy journalism. (See fabricated oral sex jokes and botched Bill Clinton reporting.) Just look at the remarkably lazy and dishonest handling of Obama's comment about private sector job growth being "fine." The coverage represents a sterling example of how the press has had its thumb on the scale this spring.

The Obama quote:

    The truth of the matter is that, as I've said, we've created 4.3 million jobs over the last 27 months, over 800,000 just this year alone. The private sector is doing fine. Where we're seeing weaknesses in our economy have to do with state and local government.

As Slates's David Weigel noted, "This isn't even particularly clumsy phrasing." That's why CNN media critic Howard Kurtz stressed there wasn't "a journalist in the country" who heard Obama's "fine" comment and didn't know exactly what he was talking about. That's because Obama explained exactly what he was talking about at the time; job growth.

Yet reporters rushed out ahead of Republicans and seized on the Obama phrase and announced that "fine"  (when ripped out of context) was going to be a problem for the White House and a "gift" for Romney. But since when are campaign reporters supposed to act as opposition research scouts for the GOP, tipping them off to potentially embarrassing comments by Democrats? Aren't they supposed to report on and fact-check GOP attacks, not initiate them?

One week removed from the kerfuffle and the press has stopped making even the slightest attempt to report the "fine" comment in the context it was used. Instead, the press now routinely uses the truncated version of the quote circulated by the Romney campaign. Here's the Wall Street Journal doing it, and here's the Washington Post doing it twice on two days. The examples are boundless. It's now a Beltway conventional wisdom that Obama announced unequivocally that the private sector is doing  "fine."

He did not.

Note that that same day, June 6, while responding to Obama's "fine" comment about public-sector job losses, Romney mocked the president, claiming "he wants to add more to government." Said Romney: "He says we need more firemen, more policemen, more teachers. Did he not get the message in Wisconsin? The American people did. It's time for us to cut back on government and help the American people."

A presidential candidate suggesting more first responders and schoolteachers are a bad thing? Doesn't that qualify as a buzz-worthy gaffe?

Apparently not.

Between June 8 and June 13, a search on TVeyes.com for on-air discussions that include the key words "Obama private sector" produced nearly 260 matches on the three all-news cable channels, plus ABC, CBS and NBC. A  search over that same time period for "Romney firefighters" produced less than half the mentions; 120. (Half of those references appeared on MSNBC.)

Obama saying private sector job growth is "fine" became a very, very big news story, in part because excited journalists announced it would become a very big news story once Republicans spun it. By contrast, Romney saying the country doesn't need more cops and firefighters and teachers was mostly greeted with a muted response on TV. 

Romney, who made his money by using complex leverage buyouts of corporations - where he paid his company a guaranteed profits regardless of how well he did( Romney is said to be worth over $225 million) - once joked that he related to average folks because he was "unemployed" too. He and his wife had the gull to claim what a rough start they had it life - if starting out half way up the ladder before everyone else is a rough start. Romney is so clueless and out of touch with the average American he cannot even fathom how out of touch he is.

Republicans, Immigration, Presidential Executive Orders and Hypocrisy


Someone might want to throw a net over Taliban Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Since when has America allowed criminals to run law enforcement agencies.

Dark Ages Redux: American Politics and the End of the Enlightenment. Conservatives are pushing America back to the Dark Age.

This Week's Assault on Freedom: Mitt Romney Has a Deep Sense of Morality - Like Letting His Friends Buy Him The Presidency

This Week's Assault on Freedom: Mitt Romney Has a Deep Sense of Morality - Like Letting His Friends Buy Him The Presidency

Though he has been one of Mitt Romney’s most visible supporters, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) took aim yesterday at both Romney’s Super PAC and one Romney’s most controversial talking points. In an interview on PBS’s NewsHour, McCain told Judy Woodruff that because casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson makes a huge portion of his profits from a casino in Macau, his massive spending in support of Mitt Romney and other right-wing candidates is a form of foreign money influencing American elections:

...Romney, of course, said in August that “corporations are people, my friend,” a claim that he and his campaign surrogates have vigorously defended since.

Adelson gave $10 million to the pro-Romney Restore Our Future Super PAC this week — after giving millions more to fund a pro-Newt Gingrich Super PAC’s attacks on Romney during the GOP primaries. According to Forbes, Adelson and his wife are willing to spend a “limitless” amount in order to defeat President Obama.

Though it is illegal for non-citizens to spend any money to influence U.S. selections directly, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United ruling left the door wide open for the American employees of American subsidiaries of foreign owned corporations — and even sovereign wealth funds — to spend millions or billions from their corporate treasuries on “independent” expenditures.

Adelson may spend as much as $100 million on buying the kind of sleazy attack ads, filled with falsehoods, that the conservative Republicans used with the scurrilous Swftboat ads against war hero John Kerry (D-MA). Adelson is not the only one - most of the money flowing into anti-American conservative Mitt Romney's campaign is from billionaires - Can 46 rich conservative proto-fascists buy an election? Conservative Republicans claim they have the best 'ideas' for running the country. So how odd that they cannot win based on their ideas. They have to rely on propaganda, lots of money and most of all on lies, to win. Get ready America for the fake patriots to ram unadulterated gutter swill down down your thraot for the next five months.

Conservatives cannot go back in time and win the Civil War for the traitorous Confederacy, but they can turn the USA into a nation of plantation wage slaves: The Exploitation of U.S. Worker Productivity

One of our worse presidents was George H.W. Bush or Bush 41 as he is commonly referred to on the web. Since his son may the worse or second worse president in U.S. history, H.W. does not seem that bad. Though the attempts by An ti-American conservatives to make him into a saint are just as ridiculous as everything else they stand for - The Three Word Legacy of George H.W. Bush. The senior Bush was just a less aggressive kind of cancer than some others.

 Star Parker hates America and Our Ideals, so what better place for her to find a sympathetic audience than the bedbugs at Fox News. If anyone has lies to tell about taxes, Fox would be happy to hear from you.

Though she purported to give the view of what the American people think about tax increases, her repeated invocation of "taxed enough already" were really a reference to the tea party; "tea" is the acronym for "taxed enough already." This came as no surprise considering Parker has tea party ties.

In reality, Americans support tax increases as part of debt reduction.  A CBS News/New York Times poll from April found that a majority of people believe upper-income Americans pay less than their fair share of taxes.

Federal income taxes are the lowest they have been since the 1950s. Perhaps Star and her friends should consider moving to China - they hate the truth, freedom and taxes.

Is The U.S.A. Becoming a Marxist Country. In a Way, and Conservative Republicans Are Helping

Is The U.S.A. Becoming a Marxist Country. In a Way, and Conservative Republicans Are Helping Weird

Statistics are boring, but it’s important to wrap your head around this latest one from the Federal Reserve as the definitive epitaph for the American dream. Wall Street’s financial shenanigans, the banking games that made some fat cats outrageously wealthy as they turned home mortgages into toxic securities, wiped out 20 years of growth in American families’ net worth.
“Americans saw wealth plummet 40% from 2007 to 2010, Federal Reserve says,” is how The Washington Post headlined the startling news that all of the economic gain of the past two decades had been destroyed by the banking meltdown. And with housing values—the bulk of middle-class savings—indefinitely moribund, the situation will not get better anytime soon.

“The recession caused the greatest upheaval among the middle class,” the Post noted. “... Their median net worth ... suffered the biggest drops. By contrast, the wealthiest families’ median net worth rose slightly.”

That outcome, disastrous to the American ideal of a nation of mostly middle-class stakeholders competing on a relatively equal economic playing field, was preordained. When tens of millions lost their jobs and homes as a result of financial swindles that the Federal Reserve failed to prevent, this ostensibly public agency, with strong bipartisan support in the White House and Congress, adroitly directed the flow of public funds to save the bankers while abandoning their victims.

On Tuesday Sen. Bernie Sanders, acting under authority of the Dodd-Frank financial regulations, released the conclusions of a Government Accountability Office report showing that “[d]uring the financial crisis, at least 18 former and current directors from Federal Reserve Banks worked in banks and corporations that collectively received over $4 trillion in low-interest loans from the Federal Reserve."

One of those Fed directors, Jamie Dimon, chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase, who has been on the New York Fed board since 2007, testified before Congress on Wednesday that he was sorry his company lost billions in risky trading even after all of the warnings concerning too-big-to-fail banks.

Dimon—whose company last year paid him $24 million, compared to the $45,800 median U.S. family income—testified that the bank could manage its own affairs. But that is hardly reassuring given that the Fed provided JPMorgan Chase $391 billion in total assistance as well as paying the bank to administer the government’s emergency lending program. It was the Fed that back in March of 2008 made $29 billion available to Dimon’s bank so it could acquire beleaguered Bear Stearns; the Fed also agreed to purchase Bear Stearns’ most toxic assets before the merger.

Conservative Republican Hank Paulson was Treasury Secretary when this banks started to fail. Moderate conservative Republican Ben Bernanke was and still is the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank.A majority of conservatives in both houses of Congress voted for the bank rescue known as TARP. It might well have been necessary to rescue the banks - Hoover did so in the 1920s - which FDR continued. Ronald Reagan seized the savings and loan industry in the 1980s, had the government reorganize them. Though what they could have done in 2007-2008 was seize the banks, isolate toxic assets and broken them up into smaller competitive banks that were no longer too big to fail. Instead conservative Republicans in the government used socialism for the wealthy. They made the public pay for the bank losses. They also made the public pay for the losses they suffered because of the banks, themselves ( Obama has set up a mortgage assistance program for average Americans, but it is not big enough). Now that the Great Recession has settled in for at least another three to five years, conservative Republicans are saying that the failures of conservative policy must continue to be paid for by the middle-class and low income workers by cuts in college loans, cuts in or gutting Medicare altogether. We have Marxism in America for the wealthy - who never have to pay for their loses or their risks. Those losses will be paid for the the proletariat - the workers. No wonder Republicans are always calling liberals socialists. It is to distract from their own very real crony corporate socialism for conservatives and their base, the wealthy and powerful elite.


Ex-loan officer claims Wells Fargo targeted black communities for shoddy loans


Contrary To Anti-American Conservative Broadcaster Limbaugh's Claims, Public-Sector Workers Do 
 Contribute To Economic Growth

How to buy an election. Because conservative Republicans cannot win an election based on their ideas, Billionaire Adelson Pledges Unlimited Campaign Contributions To Mitt Romney