Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker(R) is Neck Deep in a Scandal He Cannot Explain Away and He is Obstructing Legal Inquires

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker(R) is Neck Deep in a Scandal He Cannot Explain Away and He is Obstructing Legal Inquires

The two-year-old corruption investigation into Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker reached a major inflection point just days before his recall election next week when it came out that Walker had transferred $100,000 of campaign money to his legal defense fund and seemed to acknowledge that he is the center of the probe.

In the final debate last night, challenger Tom Barrett repeatedly slammed Walker for his legal woes and for stonewalling the public. “I have a police department that arrests felons,” the Democratic Milwaukee mayor said, “he has a practice of hiring them.” He added, “I’ve been in public life for 28 years. No one on my staff has been charged with a felony, and I’ve never had a criminal defense fund.”

So what is the “John Doe” investigation?

The term does not apply to a single anonymous person, in this case, but rather it refers to a secret evidence-gathering investigation, much like a grand jury. The investigation has been led by a DA and judge in Milwaukee, who has the authority to compel testimony, issue warrants and carry other law enforcement actions.

The probe reportedly started with a single staffer who had worked for Walker when he was Milwaukee’s county executive, but it has since grown much larger, touching almost everyone who has worked for Walker, and even the governor himself, and producing several arrests and convictions.

Documents made public last night show prosecutors requested the secret investigation after they found Walker’s office “unable or unwilling” to provide information. “It may be the county executive’s office is reluctant to provide information to investigators due to a fear of political embarrassment,” an assistant DA wrote to a judge in May 2010. Walker has maintained that he has cooperated with prosecutors all along, so the document casts doubt on his story of the proceedings. Asked about the stonewalling last night, he essentially called the report untrue.

Already, three aides who have worked for Walker have been charged, as have two of his appointees and a major donor. One aide pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts relating to work she did for Walker’s gubernatorial campaign on county taxpayers’ dime.

Two appointees were arrested for allegedly embezzling $60,000 from a fund that was intended to be used for veterans. They used the money instead for Caribbean cruises, wedding expenses, Walker campaign barbeques and other Walker campaign activities, prosecutors claim. They are awaiting trial.

The donor, Wisconsin and Southern Railroad Co. CEO William Gardner, was convicted of violating state elections law with excessive donations to Walker’s campaign. He was sentenced to two years probation last year.

There have also been FBI raids on the homes and offices of aides and the seizures of computers. At least 13 aides have been granted immunity in exchange for cooperating with the investigation.

Walker, thus far, has maintained that he is not the target of the investigation. But under Wisconsin law, politicians can only use their legal defense funds for themselves or their staffs, and Walker said this week that none of the money from the fund would go to his staff, suggesting it would be used only to defend himself. Democrats seized on the comment as an admission from Walker that he is personally a target.

Walker had already contributed $60,000 to the fund — which comes from campaign donors whom he refuses to name — before this week’s transfer, bringing his total legal war chest to $160,000. He claims the money is being used to help turn over documents to investigators, but some experts point out this amount of money suggests a more sophisticated legal defense representing hundreds of hours of attorney work. There are also email records suggesting that Walker was personally involved in trying to stem the bleeding when the first allegations came out.

Except for the body count Scott Walker is like the deeply corrupt mayor in the Showtime series Boss. Will the people of Wisconsin have the courage to put aside politics and clean house of one of the most corrupt, arrogant, anti-American thugs to ever serve as a state governor. Walker is like a throwback to the late 1800s when politicians were for sale like dry goods from the local store.

"Miss Me Yet?" Bush Economic Makeover Hinges On Collective Amnesia. Romney and conservatives have a major issue with President Obama. Conservatives Republicans trashed the economy, losing over $3 trillion dollars of the nation's wealth. Now they're trying to blame Obama for the mess they created or are mad because he is not cleaning up their disaster fast enough.

Conservative Republican editor: Young Americans ‘so frickin’ stupid’ they shouldn’t get to vote

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

Can Massachusetts Voters Guess How Many Faces Scott Brown(R-MA) Has?

Can Massachusetts Voters Guess How Many Faces Scott Brown(R-MA) Has?

Question: What happens when a politician wants to look tough on Wall Street, without actually doing anything to rein in the big banks' excesses?

Answer: Scott Brown's recent letter to JPMorgan Chase.

Scott Brown wrote to JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, supposedly "to express [his] concern with the surprising $2 billion trading loss" by the bank -- a total that has since climbed to $3 billion. But anyone who reads the letter carefully can see it for the transparent and disingenuous attempt by Brown that it is to look concerned about the havoc in the financial markets.

In that letter, Brown calls for only one thing: a clawback on the compensation of "the responsible parties in your company." The problem is that Dimon already said that was likely to happen.

How tough and independent -- telling a bank to do what it already said it would do!

What's more, the Dodd-Frank Act makes clawbacks mandatory in some cases. So what does Brown do? He tells Dimon that clawbacks are mandatory in some cases. What a maverick. Perhaps the bank should compensate Brown for the helpful legal advice (beyond the $50,000 that JPMorgan officials have already donated to Brown's campaign).

Lest his pointless letter seem too threatening to his scores of friends on Wall Street, Brown slips in some language that they would understand: "While regulations are necessary, it is also very important that when unprecedented mistakes do occur, banks will use the internal policies that they have set up to promote employee accountability."

Translation: When Wall Street screws up on an unprecedented scale and engages in risky behavior that undermines confidence in the market, they should treat it as an internal matter. No need for the government to get involved -- just move along, folks.

This, incidentally, is the same message as the one being spread by extreme conservatives like Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Of course, it was the lack of government involvement that allowed the financial crisis to happen in the first place.

Contrast the Scott Brown / Lamar Alexander approach with that of the Obama Administration, which has argued that the country still needs better regulations in the financial markets. Obama has pointed out that "JPMorgan is one of the best managed banks there is" and that Dimon "is one of the smartest bankers we've got, and they still lost $2 billion and counting...." In other words, even when a bank is well-run, there is the potential for catastrophe without proper regulation. There are few stronger pieces of evidence for this than JPMorgan's ability to quickly lose billions of dollars with some ill-advised keystrokes.

Brown tries to distinguish himself from Alexander and his ilk by pointing out that he voted for Dodd-Frank. What he neglects to mention, though, is that before he voted for it, he worked to weaken it by undermining the Volcker Rule.

All this, just days after he refuses to disclose who from JPMorgan might be serving on his finance committee, and after the Boston Globe revealed he has been raising more money from New York City than Boston and has set up a slush fund with the National Republican Senatorial Committee to help his campaign that is now flush with Wall Street cash.

This, by the way, is just the latest in Scott Brown's chameleon act.

When he stumps in Massachusetts, he tries to look like a moderate. But when he communicates with supporters outside the state, he morphs into a Republican in the mold of George W. Bush, recklessly calling for slashing government.

When he's on Main Street, he breaks out his pick-up truck and barn jacket. But when he's on Wall Street, he's right at home, pocketing millions of dollars from bankers who need him in the Senate.

Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren talks about reports that Scott Brown is using the Affordable Care Act for his own daughter while trying to repeal it for everyone else. Brown is like a spoiled brat. he believes in big government by and for special interests - one of which is himself. Time to clean the useless trash out of Washington and get rid of two-faced liars like Scott Brown.

Mitt Romney is an Anti-American Vulture, Not a Capitalist

Romney is an Anti-American Vulture, Not a Capitalist, Why Mitt Romney’s Time At Bain Capital Matters

As we discussed yesterday, Mitt Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital is once again back in the news — big time. As President Obama said, this is not a distraction, it’s central to the main question of this campaign: do we create an economy that works for everyone, not just the wealthy few, or, do we double down on an economy where the game is rigged for the rich at the expense of the middle class?

It’s also not a distraction because Mitt Romney himself has made his business experience the centerpiece of his campaign, saying just today that “of course” he welcomes a discussion of his record at Bain Capital.

Here’s the rundown on Mitt Romney’s time at Bain Capital — and why it still matters today.

Jobs

While running Bain Capital, whose investments he still profits from to this day, Mitt Romney amassed a quarter-billion dollar fortune by bankrupting companies, laying off thousands of American workers, closing factories and sending jobs overseas.  As experts on the private equity industry and even his own former Bain colleagues openly admit, Romney’s job was not to create jobs, it was to create wealth for himself and other investors.

Romney and his campaign have made a wide variety of claims regarding how many jobs he created while at Bain: thousands, tens of thousands, 100,000, and even “well in excess of 100,000.” Neither Romney nor Bain has offered any proof to substantiate any of these claims and multiple independent fact checkers have concluded that Romney’s claims on job creation at Bain are simply false.

The most important job for our next president is to create jobs and get the economy moving faster. When asked today to predict the unemployment rate under a Romney presidency, he predicted that it would be 6 percent at the end of his first term in 2016 — which is exactly where economists predict it will be anyway.

A Rigged Game

One of the reasons Romney has been able to amass such an immense fortune is because he’s been able to take advantage of a tax code that is rigged to favor the wealthy few. He pays a lower tax rate than millions of middle class workers because of a variety of loopholes and giveaways, including one major loophole available only to private equity and hedge fund managers like himself and his partners at Bain Capital.

The Safety Net

While at Bain Capital, Romney left thousands of workers without  jobs, health insurance, or the pensions they’d been promised.

In order to partially offset the cost of his giveaways to the very wealthy, Romney slashes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and vital programs that benefit the middle class every day and are the key to economic growth.  Earlier this year, Romney famously said that he’s “not concerned about the very poor,” which is reflected in his support for a budget that would throw 13 million people off food stamps and 1 million off Pell grants.

Jobs Here or Jobs Overseas?

Under Romney’s leadership, both Bain Capital and his administration in Massachusetts sent jobs overseas.  Now, Romney has signed a pledge to protect all tax giveaways, including those that reward companies who ship jobs overseas.

President Obama, by contrast, has put ending those tax giveaways in order to pay for rewarding companies who bring jobs back to the U.S. on the to-do list he recently submitted to Congress.

IN ONE SENTENCE: Mitt Romney’s past at Bain Capital was the prologue to a presidential campaign based on policies that will benefit the very wealthiest Americans at the expense of the middle class.

Do you believe in fairness? Do you believe that people should do work to earn their money? Do you believe that having great ideas like a cure for heart disease or a new energy saving refrigerator should be rewarded? Do you believe that is how capitalism should work. Then you cannot support Mitt Romney or the kind of back door crony vulture capitalism that Romney represents.Romney and like minded conservatives swoop down on the capital created by the work of others and exploits that for profit. For a short film on how the crony corrupt capitalism of Mitt Romney works see here -  How Did Mitt Romney Get So Obscenely Rich?

Liberals Stand For Freedom and Responsibility. In the Doublespeak World of Conservative Republicans 'Freedom' Is Just a Codeword For Tyranny

Liberals Stand For Freedom and Responsibility. In the Doublespeak World of Conservative Republicans 'Freedom' Is Just a Codeword For Tyranny. Fracked and Burned: The Tyranny of the Corporate Tea Party

From a letter to the editor of the Record Courier May 20, 2012, from Tom Zawistowski, Founder, President and Executive Director, Portage County TEA Party:

    "In short... conservatives, including those in the TEA Party movement, believe in common sense. That 2+2 always equals 4. That you live within your means. That you are responsible for your life and whether you succeed in life. That the only real rights you have are granted by your God, not by man. That you stay out of your neighbor's business and that they stay out of yours. That you take care of your family and friends when they need help. That our job is to be productive and government's job is to stay out of our way. That businesses are good because they produces jobs, economic growth and all tax revenue, and that government's job is to create a safe, business- friendly environment so that can happen.

    "That anyone who does not believe as we do does not understand what made America great, does not believe in the Constitution, and should not be involved in our government."

I had to read that last sentence several times: "...anyone who does not believe as we do ... should not be involved in our government."

In one register I can’t argue with that: Mr. Zawistowski certainly said it, and I believe he means what he says – that those who don’t share his conservative beliefs shouldn’t be allowed to vote or participate in our government.

At another level it is certainly a good description of the present political scene. Millions of dollars are being spent to promote legislation to keep segments of our population from voting or having a voice in their own government, or even participating in governance of their local communities. More millions go for legislation to protect the profits of the private sector.

In 2004 the Ohio legislature stripped the right to regulate oil and gas drilling from local community governments. Now residents of Kent and Shalersville are fighting to restore their right to regulate drilling and fracking in their communities. Gwen Fischer of Concerned Citizens Ohio said "We hope [everyone] will learn about the risks of this massive industrialization .... as human beings, we have the right to decide, as a community, whether or not we want our community turned into an industrial zone."

The Ohio Senate this month passed SB 315, a bill to regulate drilling and fracking, that contains the following provisions:

    (H)(1) If a medical professional, in order to assist in the diagnosis or treatment of an individual who was affected by an incident associated with the production operations of a well, requests the exact chemical composition of each product, fluid, or substance and of each chemical component in a product, fluid, or substance that is designated as a trade secret pursuant to division (I) of this section, the person claiming the trade secret protection pursuant to that division shall provide to the medical professional the exact chemical composition of the product, fluid, or substance and of the chemical component in a product, fluid, or substance that is requested.

    (2) A medical professional who receives information pursuant to division (H)(1) of this section shall keep the information confidential and shall not disclose the information for any purpose that is not related to the diagnosis or treatment of an individual who was affected by an incident associate with the production operations of a well.

Paragraph (2) is a gag order on medical professionals: If a patient has been affected by any aspect of the fracking process, while drillers must tell their trade secret chemicals to the physician, the physician is specifically forbidden to disclose the chemicals to the patient or public.

Public Utilities Committee chairman Rep. Peter Stautberg (R) said the House action this week clarified Senate language to make sure that doctors were not barred from performing their professional and ethical duties by sharing proprietary information about chemicals used in the hydraulic fracturing process.

Meanwhile, in Cuyahoga Falls, the Parks & Recreation Board refuses to offer family rates for its Natatorium swimming pool to a gay couple, Shane & Coty May, legally married in Washington DC. Coty is an injured Iraq war vet who benefits from water therapy.

The Mays are denied family rates not because of lost revenues, which are apparently negligible, but because three people on the Parks & Recreation board believe that (their) God doesn’t like gays – and that people who don’t believe as they do don’t deserve the rights of citizens.

The great dream of a nation with liberty, equality and justice for all – for all -- is already seriously compromised by the Citizens United decision giving moneyed corporations the rights and powers of citizens to be involved in our government.

And now we have the admission that the TEA Party intends to silence and disenfranchise anyone who doesn’t believe as they do. And we have a Republican- controlled legislature that will make sure that those who disagree with them will not be heard or allowed to participate in our democracy.

My confidence is unraveling that I live in a rational world of people with sentiments and values like mine, who share some basic assumptions about the way the world works. I don't want to live in a society in which common sense is parsed as belief in someone else's God, and someone else's interpretation of the Constitution is required for participation in the political process.


Caroline Arnold retired after 12 years on the Washington staff of US Senator John Glenn. She served three terms on the Kent (OH) Board of Education. In retirement she is active with Kent Environmental Council and sits on the board Family & Community Services of Portage County.

Who knows what the tea baggers stand for. They say one thing and push for the kind of government that would make Stalin grin with satisfaction. They say they stand for 'small' government yet are doing everything they can to increase authoritarian government powers and connect those powers with corporate America. 

Economic Downturn and Conservative Republican Policies Continue to Drive Large Projected Deficits

Florida conservative Republicans spent millions and told so many lies to get Rick Scott, a literal criminal elected governor, they set some kind of record in political immorality. Florida Telling Hundreds Of Eligible Citizens That They Are Ineligible To Vote.

Riddle: Why, how or in what fantasy do conservative Republicans think they have "values"? Breitbart Republican Blogger Dan Riehl  Launches Sexist Attack On Salon's Joan Walsh

If Anti-American Conservatives James Pethokoukis and Ann Coulter Used Their Math at NASA All Missions Would Crash and Burn

If Anti-American Conservatives James Pethokoukis and Ann Coulter Used Their Math at NASA All Missions Would Crash and Burn

I was late to the excellent MarketWatch story debunking the notion that President Obama’s been on a spending binge; I spent most of Tuesday traveling. But after my “Hardball” segment on it Wednesday, Ann Coulter tweeted: “Joan Walsh says that Marketwatch chart is ‘unbelievable’! Why yes it is, in the sense of being untrue.” That’s when I saw that there was shrill but lame GOP pushback on Rex Nutting’s excellent story, from both Coulter and the American Enterprise Institute’s James Pethokoukis. I don’t normally reply to Coulter’s right-wing delusions — I haven’t written a column about her in five years – but since I think Nutting’s findings are a crucial corrective to GOP lying, I wasted my Wednesday night trying to understand the GOP attempt to discredit him. You’re welcome.

Coulter admits she relies on Pethokoukis, so let’s go directly to the source. To recap, Nutting crunched Office of Management and Budget and Congressional Budget Office numbers to find that under Obama, spending has risen at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent, less than any president since Dwight Eisenhower. It jumped 8.1 percent in the last three years of the George W. Bush presidency, and in fiscal year 2009, for which Bush approved the budget, it jumped 17.9 percent. But Bush isn’t the most profligate Republican: Ronald Reagan increased spending an average of 8.7 percent in his first term.

Pethokoukis quarrels with Nutting’s assigning Bush’s budget to Bush, because “Obama chose not to reverse that elevated level of spending; thus he, along with congressional Democrats, are responsible for it.” Exactly how one president undoes the spending approved by another president under a different Congress goes unexplained. The AEI pundit also argues that we should look at federal spending as a percent of GDP, and he notes that’s gone up under Obama, attempting to prove that Nutting is mistaken – but that’s a useless metric during a recession, which by definition shrinks GDP.

Coulter goes even further (of course). “It turns out Rex Nutting, author of the phony Marketwatch chart, attributes all spending during Obama’s entire first year, up to Oct. 1, to President Bush.” (The italics are in the original; they’re where the good writing is supposed to be.) She continues: “That means, for example, the $825 billion stimulus bill, proposed, lobbied for, signed and spent by Obama, goes in … Bush’s column.”

Shockingly, Coulter is … wrong. First of all, only about $120 billion of the stimulus was spent in fiscal year 2009 – and Nutting counted it in Obama’s column.

 Why do conservatives lie so often and so blatantly without the slightest regard for values like integrity. because they cannot win arguments if they have to stick to the facts. Bush 43 started his presidency with a federal surplus. he ran up the largest spending spree in US history. Conservative Republicans who ran all three branches of government for 6 of those years made no attempt to pay for their spending. Then they crashed the economy (conservatives and Wall Street  crashed the economy, not Freddie Mac or Fannie May).

Anti-American web site The Weekly Standard, Cherry-Picks BLS Data To Attack Obama's Economic Record

Typical American Worker Would Need 244 Years To Match CEO’s Annual Salary

Today in Race Baiting Smears: Proto-fascist Conservative Lou Dobbs Suggests New Black Panthers Party Is Obama's "Base"

Today in Race Baiting Smears: Proto-fascist Conservative Lou Dobbs Suggests New Black Panthers Party Is Obama's "Base"

On his Fox Business show, Lou Dobbs suggested that the New Black Panther Party (NBPP), which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a hate group, constitutes Obama's base. Dobbs quoted criticisms of Obama by the NBPP and then said: "I mean, what is going on here? This president is starting to get, at the very least, friction, if not outright attacks coming from his base."

Fox News political analyst Juan Williams responded by noting that the NBPP is a "fringe-group."

During the segment, Dobbs also falsely claimed that "Holder says [the NBPP] can't be prosecuted for intimidating white voters," a reference to a phony scandal relentlessly hyped by Fox News.

In fact, it was the Bush administration, not the Obama administration, that decided not to prosecute the NBPP criminally for an incident in which an NBPP member carried a nightstick outside a Philadelphia polling place. The Bush administration chose to file a civil case in the matter instead.

The Obama Justice Department pursued the civil case against the defendant who carried the nighstick and obtained an injunction against him. Obama later decided to drop the civil case against the other defendants.

Furthermore, conservatives including to the Republican vice chair of the Civil Rights Commission investigating the case have agreed that the attacks against the Justice Department are meritless.

Moreover, the DOJ's ethics office found that senior career lawyers at the DOJ "did not commit professional misconduct or exercise poor judgment, but rather acted appropriately" in their handling of the NBPP case.

But such facts would get in the way of Dobbs' race baiting.

Conservatives generally hate the Southern Poverty Law Center because they have designated some conservative organizations as hate groups, yet they ignore the fact that the SPLC has designated the "new Black Panthers" as a hate group as well. What is wrong with Mr. Dobbs? he typifies the hateful radical ideology of conservatism. he wraps his wacky ideology in the flag and calls is patriotism. Dobbs is no way represents the freedom and egalitarian ideals spelled out in the liberal tenets of the Constitution.

Spending By Obama Administration At Slowest Pace in Decades

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.
The big surge in federal spending happened in fiscal 2009, before Obama took office. Since then, spending growth has been relatively flat.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

Facts seem to have a bias. A bias against the constant lies and distortions of the anti-American conservative Republican movement.