Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

Neo-Nazi Conservative Site The Daily Caller Opinion Page An Embarrassing Spectacle Of Conspiracy Theories

The Associated Press and CNN recently debunked an op-ed featured at The Daily Caller that suggested a recent ammunition purchase by the Social Security Administration evidenced an Obama plot to kill American citizens en masse. The bizarre theory is hardly the first conspiratorial idea to be promoted on the opinion page of The Daily Caller.
The AP And CNN Eviscerate Op-Ed Suggesting Obama's Mass Murder Plot

Regular Contributor Jerry Curry: Each Round Of Ammo Procured By SSA "Represents A Dead American." From an August 17 op-ed published by The Daily Caller discussing the procurement of 174,000 rounds of ammunition by the Society Security Administration for its law enforcement arm:

    What would be the target of these 174,000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can't simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don't just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body's organs. Death often follows.

    Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? Or is the purpose to kill 174,000 of the nation's military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution? [The Daily Caller, 8/17/12]

Associated Press: SSA Conspiracy Theory "Illustrates What Can Happen When A Seemingly Salacious Tidbit Gets Amplified And Embellished On The Internet." From a September 4 article by AP reporter Stephen Ohlemacher:

    It didn't take long for the Internet to start buzzing with conspiracy theories after the Social Security Administration posted a notice that it was purchasing 174,000 hollow-point bullets.

    Why is the agency that provides benefits to retirees, disabled workers, widows and children stockpiling ammunition? Whom are they going to use it on?

    "It's not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest," the website Infowars.com said.

    Another website, The Daily Caller, said the bullets must be for use against American citizens, "since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens."

    The clamor became such a distraction for the agency that it dedicated a website to explaining the purchase. The explanation, it turns out, isn't as tantalizing as an arms buildup to defend against unruly senior citizens.

    The bullets are for Social Security's office of inspector general, which has about 295 agents who investigate Social Security fraud and other crimes, said Jonathan L. Lasher, the agency's assistant IG for external relations.

    [...]

    The episode illustrates what can happen when a seemingly salacious tidbit gets amplified and embellished on the Internet. [Associated Press via Huffington Post, 9/4/12]

Conservatives have such an unhinged hatred of government - when there is a Democratic president anyway - that their heads becomes so infused with hatred and paranoia they cannot even think of a conspiracy theory that is marginally plausible.

The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan

The Romney-Ryan Economic Plan

Shades of Todd Akin(R-MO) 2012 Romney - Ryan Republican Platform To Advocate Abortion Ban Without Rape Exception

Shades of Todd Akin(R-MO) 2012 Romney - Ryan Republican Platform To Advocate Abortion Ban Without Rape Exception

Republican politicians have been falling over themselves to condemn from Rep. Todd Akin, the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri, who said Sunday that women who have experienced “legitimate rape” don’t get pregnant because “the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” The Romney-Ryan campaign called Akin’s comments “insulting, inexcusable and frankly wrong,” in spite of Ryan’s close working relationship with Akin on a number of radical anti-abortion and contraception bills. A Romney spokesperson added that the “Romney-Ryan administration would not oppose abortion in instances of rape.”

But embracing a rape exception for abortion rights would put the campaign at odds with the Republican Party’s longstanding platform, the newest iteration of which will be officially unveiled at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. In spite of the massive public outcry from the right over Akin’s comments, the official GOP platform committee drafted a provision Monday supporting a “human life amendment” that would outlaw abortion without specifying exemptions for rape or incest. The platform reads:

    Faithful to the ‘self-evident’ truths enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, we assert the sanctity of human life and affirm that the unborn child has a fundamental individual right to life which cannot be infringed. We support a human life amendment to the Constitution and endorse legislation to make clear that the Fourteenth Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.

Heading the committee is Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA), best known for his “mandatory ultrasound” law requiring any woman getting an abortion to undergo an unnecessary ultrasound. McDonnell also revealed his regressive position on women’s rights in his college thesis, which slandered working women, contraception, and “fornicators.” It’s no surprise, then, that under his guidance, the Republican Party will reaffirm its support for a constitutional amendment that would outlaw abortion and likely many forms of contraception.

In saying they would not oppose a rape exception, Romney and Ryan are both changing their tune. Romney said in 2007 he would be “delighted” to sign a bill banning all abortions, and Ryan has been staunchly anti-abortion in all cases, even attempting to restrict abortion access to victims of “forcible rape” only.

The human life amendment has been a tenet of the Republican Party platform since the dawn of the Reagan era in 1980. It has survived for 32 years and nine presidential elections, even after former presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) pushed hard in 2000 for an explicit exception for rape and incest. McCain ceded the language to party officials during his own run in 2008.

One of the most backwards and Orwellian terms of our times is the conservative claim to being "pro-life". Is that supposed to be some kind of joke. They say they care about a bunch of cells in a woman's uterus, but once born they'll do more to see a golf course gets watered than to see that child has a good education, a job and medical care.

The Creators of the Financial Crisis Are Trying To Rewrite History

The record here is crystal clear: AIG and Hank Greenberg were charged by the New York Attorney General's Office—while I was attorney general—with fraud and deceptive accounting practices. The company settled for $1.64 billion, at the time the largest payment in history. Let me quote from the New York Times’ reporting of the settlement: "Under the settlement reached with the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Attorney General's office, and the New York State Insurance Department, AIG acknowledged it had deceived the investing public and regulators." Further from the New York Times: "Mr. Greenberg, who was removed by AIG's board last march, remains under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice department and faces a lawsuit by the New York Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer."

After invoking his Fifth Amendment right to avoid testifying, Greenberg settled with the SEC for $15 million. And a federal judge, in a written opinion, found evidence that the conspiracy to deceive investors originated with Greenberg. Even CNBC covered Greenberg's settlement by saying "Ex-AIG CEO Greenberg settles fraud charges with SEC."

So Mr. Langone, despite your effort to talk about everything other than the facts of these cases, facts matter. These cases were absolutely correct, important, and went to the heart of the type of corporate fraud and defalcation that very nearly destroyed our economy.

Conservatives learned nothing from the financial collapse of 2007/2008. We need better regulation and fair enforcement. No exaggeration - check out most of the conservative web sites - they all claim it was caused by some vast conspiracy between Fannie May, Barney Frank and working class Americans. Because of course everyone on Wall Street is an angel who never does wrong.

The Depravity of Rep. Todd Akin(R-MO) Is Shared By Paul Ryan (R-WI) And Other Conservatives

It Isn’t Just Medicare: Don’t Forget Paul Ryan’s Vision for Medicaid

Someone needs to put Romney in a time machine and have his parents teach me what real values are. He just keeps lying about Obama and welfare reform. If he can only become president based on a blatant falsehood what does that say about his character, New Romney Welfare Ad Cites Newspaper That Says Its Welfare Reform Claims Have ‘Been Debunked’

Paul Ryan Believes in Big Government Authoritarianism For Women, A Little Freedom For the Poor and No Restraints on The Behavior of The Elite

Paul Ryan (R-WI) Believes in Big Government Authoritarianism For Women, A Little Freedom For the Poor and No Restraints on The Behavior of The Elite

He believes ending a pregnancy should be illegal even when it results from rape or incest, or endangers a woman’s health. He was a cosponsor of the Sanctity of Human Life Act, a federal bill defining fertilized eggs as human beings, which, if passed, would criminalize some forms of birth control and in vitro fertilization.

....To him, a woman’s claim to bodily autonomy or self-determination doesn’t merit even cursory consideration. Here’s his analogy: “The car which I exercised my freedom of choice to purchase…does not ‘qualify’ for protection of human rights. I can drive it, lend it, kick it, sell it, or junk it, at will. On the other hand, the widow who lives next door does ‘qualify’ as a person, and the government must secure her human rights, which cannot be abandoned to anyone’s arbitrary will.”

    Ryan said he has never specifically advocated jailing women who have abortions, but according to a newspaper article, he said, “If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.”

This disregard for the exigencies of women’s lives—the dismissal of their choices as amoral exercises of “arbitrary will”—was thrown into high relief during his 1998 run for congress against Democrat Lydia Spottswood. Both candidates backed a ban on so-called partial-birth abortion, but Spottswood believed there should be exceptions in cases where a woman’s life or health is endangered. “Ryan said he opposes abortion, period,” reported the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “He said any exceptions to a ‘partial-birth’ abortion ban would make that ban meaningless.”

During that campaign, Ryan also expressed his willingness to let states criminally prosecute women who have abortions. According to another Journal Sentinel article, he “would let states decide what criminal penalties would be attached to abortions. Ryan said he has never specifically advocated jailing women who have abortions or doctors who perform them, but added, ‘If it’s illegal, it’s illegal.’”

Since one way or another women have been getting abortions for thousands of years, whether it was legal or not, Ryan would create a whole new criminal industry to arrest, prosecute and build jails for. That would be great for conservatives who also push for more private prisons - one of America's growth industries. Rather than America that hands out justice we're headed toward an America where anyone who violates the political or religious beliefs of conservative Republicans is jailed.

George Orwell just rolled over in his grave, talk about doublepseak: Romney and Ryan both have plans to gut Medicare and Social Security, Romney Claims Obama ‘Robbed Medicare’ To Distract From GOP Plan To End Medicare


Fox Covers Up Romney's Support For Conservative Paul Ryan's Let's Kill Grandpa and Grandma Medicare Plan

Despite Having a Democrat in the White House We Already have a Mitt Romney Economy

Despite Having a Democrat in the White House We Already have a Mitt Romney Economy

What should be done about the economy? Republicans claim to have the answer: slash spending and cut taxes. What they hope voters won’t notice is that that’s precisely the policy we’ve been following the past couple of years. Never mind the Democrat in the White House; for all practical purposes, this is already the economic policy of Republican dreams.

So the Republican electoral strategy is, in effect, a gigantic con game: it depends on convincing voters that the bad economy is the result of big-spending policies that President Obama hasn’t followed (in large part because the G.O.P. wouldn’t let him), and that our woes can be cured by pursuing more of the same policies that have already failed.

For some reason, however, neither the press nor Mr. Obama’s political team has done a very good job of exposing the con.

"... for all practical purposes this is already a Republican economy."

What do I mean by saying that this is already a Republican economy? Look first at total government spending — federal, state and local. Adjusted for population growth and inflation, such spending has recently been falling at a rate not seen since the demobilization that followed the Korean War.

How is that possible? Isn’t Mr. Obama a big spender? Actually, no; there was a brief burst of spending in late 2009 and early 2010 as the stimulus kicked in, but that boost is long behind us. Since then it has been all downhill. Cash-strapped state and local governments have laid off teachers, firefighters and police officers; meanwhile, unemployment benefits have been trailing off even though unemployment remains extremely high.

Over all, the picture for America in 2012 bears a stunning resemblance to the great mistake of 1937, when F.D.R. prematurely slashed spending, sending the U.S. economy — which had actually been recovering fairly fast until that point — into the second leg of the Great Depression. In F.D.R.’s case, however, this was an unforced error, since he had a solidly Democratic Congress. In President Obama’s case, much though not all of the responsibility for the policy wrong turn lies with a completely obstructionist Republican majority in the House.

That same obstructionist House majority effectively blackmailed the president into continuing all the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, so that federal taxes as a share of G.D.P. are near historic lows — much lower, in particular, than at any point during Ronald Reagan’s presidency.

As I said, for all practical purposes this is already a Republican economy.

As an aside, I think it’s worth pointing out that although the economy’s performance has been disappointing, to say the least, none of the disasters Republicans predicted have come to pass. Remember all those assertions that budget deficits would lead to soaring interest rates? Well, U.S. borrowing costs have just hit a record low. And remember those dire warnings about inflation and the “debasement” of the dollar? Well, inflation remains low, and the dollar has been stronger than it was in the Bush years.

Put it this way: Republicans have been warning that we were about to turn into Greece because President Obama was doing too much to boost the economy; Keynesian economists like myself warned that we were, on the contrary, at risk of turning into Japan because he was doing too little. And Japanification it is, except with a level of misery the Japanese never had to endure.

So why don’t voters know any of this?

Part of the answer is that far too much economic reporting is still of the he-said, she-said variety, with dueling quotes from hired guns on either side. But it’s also true that the Obama team has consistently failed to highlight Republican obstruction, perhaps out of a fear of seeming weak. Instead, the president’s advisers keep turning to happy talk, seizing on a few months’ good economic news as proof that their policies are working — and then ending up looking foolish when the numbers turn down again. Remarkably, they’ve made this mistake three times in a row: in 2010, 2011 and now once again.

At this point, however, Mr. Obama and his political team don’t seem to have much choice. They can point with pride to some big economic achievements, above all the successful rescue of the auto industry, which is responsible for a large part of whatever job growth we are managing to get. But they’re not going to be able to sell a narrative of overall economic success. Their best bet, surely, is to do a Harry Truman, to run against the “do-nothing” Republican Congress that has, in reality, blocked proposals — for tax cuts as well as more spending — that would have made 2012 a much better year than it’s turning out to be.

For that, in the end, is the best argument against Republicans’ claims that they can fix the economy. The fact is that we have already seen the Republican economic future — and it doesn’t work.

by Paul Krugman. Reprinted for educational purposes.

There is no economic historical record that links unemployment with deficits. It is more conservative voodoo economics to say that deficits cost jobs - especially when the economy for working class Americans is practically at a stand still. Could Obama have done more. Even though conservatives hold a minority in the Senate ( they are the majority in the House) conservatives threaten to filibuster every jobs bill - they have killed at least four. Romney's answer to the problem is to make the middle-class and blue collar workers pay more taxes and have lower safety net benefits  - which will crate more poverty - as he cuts taxes for the wealthy. If low taxes created jobs we'd be at 1% unemployment.

5 Facts About The Massachusetts Economy Under Mitt Romney. If you threw a pebble into a crowd it would likely hit someone who is a better job creator than Romney.

Chart Shows President Obama Has Controlled Spending, Lowered Taxes and Deficit

Chart Shows President Obama Has Controlled Spending, Lowered Taxes and Deficit

Federal spending is lower now than it was when President Obama took office. I’ll pause to let you absorb the news.

In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.

Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.

One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.

The fact is that Obama inherited a disaster of a federal budget. Eight years prior, when President George W. Bush took the oath of office, there was a $281 billion surplus. By the time Obama was sworn in, he was facing a $1.2 trillion deficit. Inconvenient though it may be for conservatives (especially those who are running for president), the truth is that spending, taxes and the deficit are all lower today than when President Obama took office.

Conservative Republicans, those people who claim to have values, have spun a whole new reality when it comes to the nation's finances. They can't stick with the facts because the facts show that conservatives always sabotage America's future.

Why is Big Oil trying to defeat President Obama?

Mitt Romney Debt Speech Ignores Key Facts Romney plan would increase deficit by $5 trillion over ten years. Includes even more tax cuts for billionaires.

All Institutions Are Prone to Corruption and Conservative Republicans Like It That Way

Rupert Murdoch's Fox 'News' Uses Misleading Numbers To Attack Obama Economic Progress

Rupert Murdoch's Fox 'News' Uses Misleading Numbers To Attack Obama Economic Progress

But Fox Misleads On All Four Attacks
CLAIM: "The Debt Was $10 Trillion, Now It's $15.6 Trillion."
WHY IT'S MISLEADING: The Debt And Deficit Increase Under Obama Is Largely Due To Bush-Era Policies (see chart above)

Ezra Klein: Bush Policies Responsible For Vast Majority Of Debt Increase Under Obama Administration. In a January 31 Washington Post column, Ezra Klein estimated that Obama's policies are responsible for $983 billion of the nearly $5 trillion increase in public debt over the course of his administration, while the remainder of the debt increase is attributable to Bush-era policies. From The Washington Post:

    [I]f you're a deficit-obsessed voter, the clock doesn't answer the key question: How much has Obama added to the debt, anyway?

    There are two answers: more than $4 trillion, or about $983 billion. The first answer is simple and wrong. The second answer is more complicated but a lot closer to being right.

    When Obama took office, the national debt was about $10.5 trillion. Today, it's about $15.2 trillion. Simple subtraction gets you the answer preferred by most of Obama's opponents: $4.7 trillion.

    But ask yourself: Which of Obama's policies added $4.7 trillion to the debt? The stimulus? That was just a bit more than $800 billion. TARP? That passed under George W. Bush, and most of it has been repaid.

    There is a way to tally the effects Obama has had on the deficit. Look at every piece of legislation he has signed into law. Every time Congress passes a bill, either the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation estimates the effect it will have on the budget over the next 10 years. And then they continue to estimate changes to those bills. If you know how to read their numbers, you can come up with an estimate that zeros in on the laws Obama has had a hand in.


CLAIM: "The Jobless Rate Is Now Up To 8.2 [Percent]" But "Was 7.8 [Percent]" When Obama Took Over
WHY IT'S MISLEADING: After Continuing The Upward Trend From The Bush Administration, Unemployment Has Dropped Under Obama

CBPP: "The Pace Of Monthly Job Losses Slowed Dramatically Soon After President Obama And Congress Enacted The Recovery Act." As CBPP noted in an April 27 report, the trend of job losses at the end of the Bush administration "slowed dramatically soon after President Obama and Congress enacted the Recovery Act in 2009." The report included a chart showing that unemployment continued its upward trend immediately after Obama took office, then began dropping.

When are conservatives going to take responsibility for the economic ditch they drove the USA into. Never. That is because conservatives would actually have to have some traditional American values that include integrity and responsibility. Conservatism is just a way to go through life without taking responsibility for any errors in judgement or malicious behavior. Conservatism is the ball and chain on American progress, keeping us from living up to our ideals.

Sen. Scott Brown  thinks everyone in Massachusetts is an dumb as he is, Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) Brushes Off Charges Of Hypocrisy By Misrepresenting His Health Care Plan . Credit where due, brown has mastered the art of conservative doublespeak.

Anti-American Zealot Sean Hannity owes America an Apology For Lying About Women Who Face Insurance Discrimination In The Absence Of Health Care Reform

                                                                                                               
                 Anti-American Zealot Sean Hannity owes America an Apology For Lying About Women Who Face Insurance Discrimination In The Absence Of Health Care Reform

This week, Fox News host Sean Hannity scoffed at the idea that women face discriminatory practices from the health insurance industry, arguing that it is "disinformation" to claim that repeal of the health care reform law, which bans such practices, will again subject women to unfair and discriminatory treatment by insurers. In fact, the law bans insurance companies from its current practice of charging women higher premiums for the same coverage as men, and forbids insurers from listing pregnancy as a pre-existing condition, which was often used by some providers as an excuse to deny coverage.

DNC's Wasserman Schultz: Affordable Care Act Bans Discriminatory Health Insurance Practices Against Women

Rep. Wasserman Schultz: Mitt Romney Favors Going Back To "A Time When Insurance Companies Could Drop Us Or Deny Us Coverage Simply Because Of Our Gender." On MSNBC, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz stated:

    WASSERMAN SCHULTZ: It's clear that Mitt Romney is dramatically out of touch with women on the issues and the priorities that matter to us. You know, wanting to take us back to a time when insurance companies could drop us or deny us coverage simply because of our gender being considered a pre-existing condition, charging us up to 50 percent more simply because we're women, focusing on not making sure that we can have access to affordable birth control and taking us back to a time when we had to worry about that.

    Those are things -- I have never been more concerned, Martin, in my life. In my generation of women has never been more concerned where my rights that I have accepted and taken for granted for far too long are in jeopardy if Mitt Romney becomes president of the United States -- as a woman.. [MNSBC, Martin Bashir, 4/23/12]

Fox Accuses Wasserman Schultz Of "Disinformation," "Demagoguery"

Hannity: Rep. Wasserman Schultz Spreading "Disinformation" On Health Care. After playing a clip of Rep. Wasserman Schultz's comments, Hannity said that "all this disinformation [is] an attempt to sway the opinions of the American people. But guess what, congresswoman? They're smart enough to figure this out." [Fox News, Hannity, 4/25/12]

Malkin Accused Wasserman Schultz Of "Demagoguery" And Of Being A Part Of "The Unreality-Based Community." Reacting to Wasserman Schultz's statement on health care, Fox News contributor Michelle Malkin said: "I have to give Debbie Wasserman Schultz credit, she's the Energizer Bunny of Democratic demagoguery, and I think a card-carrying member of the unreality-based community." [Fox News, Hannity, 4/25/12]
In Fact, Women Routinely Face "Unfair And Discriminatory Practices" In Health Insurance Market

Congressional Investigation Found Major Health Insurance Companies Routinely Denied Coverage To Expectant Mothers. From an October 2010 House Energy and Commerce Committee memo on maternity coverage in the individual health insurance market:

    Women who are pregnant, expectant fathers, and families attempting to adopt children are generally unable to obtain health insurance in the individual market. The four largest for-profit health insurance companies, Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint, have each listed pregnancy as a medical condition that would result in an automatic denial of individual health insurance coverage. Health insurance companies also sometimes exclude from coverage expectant fathers, candidates for surrogacy whether they are the surrogate or recipient, and those in the process of adoption.

    [...]

    Women who are pregnant cannot obtain individual health insurance from the four largest for-profit health insurance companies, Aetna, Humana, UnitedHealth Group, and WellPoint. All four insurance companies refuse to provide coverage to applicants who have "pre-existing conditions." Each of the health insurance companies considers pregnancy to be a pre-existing condition that results in an automatic denial of health insurance coverage. [House Energy and Commerce Committee, 10/12/10, emphasis in original]

PolitiFact: Pregnancy Was Considered A "Pre-Existing Condition" In Individual Insurance Market In 39 States. In an August 18, 2009, article titled, "Pregnancy a 'pre-existing condition'? Yes, for some," PolitiFact wrote:

    In 39 states, listed here, insurers can turn down anyone for virtually any reason. It can be because you have a pre-existing condition, like cancer or diabetes. And pregnancy almost always counts too, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents the state government officials who regulate insurance sold within their borders. So if you're pregnant and living in one of these 39 states, you're very likely out of luck in securing individual health coverage. You'll have to pay for your care out of your own pocket or seek out charitable assistance.

    And the coverage isn't much better in the remaining 11 states. These states have "guaranteed issue" laws that say insurers cannot turn applicants down based on their health or risk status. But there's a caveat: Even if an insurer must offer you a plan, it can place exclusions on what the plan covers. Typically, the NAIC says, these exclusions last from six to 12 months, which rules out most or all maternity coverage. (After the exclusion expires, the insurer does have to cover those conditions, meaning that a subsequent pregnancy could be covered.)

    [...]

    Health care reform legislation under consideration in Congress would, if enacted, improve the situation for pregnant women seeking health insurance by prohibiting restrictions based on pre-existing conditions. But for now ... pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and prevents many women from getting coverage if they seek insurance on the individual market. [PolitiFact, 8/19/09]

National Women's Law Center: Women Still Face "Unfair And Discriminatory Practices" In Individual Health Insurance Market. In its March 2012 report "Turning to Fairness: Insurance discrimination against women today and the Affordable Care Act," the National Women's Law Center found that women "continue to face unfair and discriminatory practices when obtaining health insurance in the individual market -- as well as in the group health insurance market. Women are charged more for health coverage simply because they are women, and individual market health plans often exclude coverage for services that only women need, like maternity care. Furthermore, insurance companies -- despite being aware of these discriminatory practices -- have not voluntarily taken steps to eliminate the inequities." The report showed:

    Gender rating, the practice of charging women different premiums than men, results in significantly higher rates charged to women throughout the country. In states that have not banned the practice, the vast majority, 92%, of best-selling plans gender rate, for example, charging 40-year-old women more than 40-year-old men for coverage. Only 3% of these plans cover maternity services.

 Hannity, Malkin and millions of other conservatives are typical cowardly conservatives. If they cannot win the argument based on reality, they make up a fairy tale. They possess all the rhetorical and ideological hallmarks of every anti-freedom authoritarian movement in modern history. They are the shrill voice of tyranny. You can wrap conservatism in all the red, white and blue they like it is still fundamentally an anti-American movement trying to pass itself off as patriotic. What a sad joke.

Romney bashes Obama for "making us like Europe." But he's the one pushing failed European austerity measures

Florida Criminal in Chief Governor Rick Scott Vetos $1.5 Million For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Florida Criminal in Chief Governor Rick Scott(R) Vetos $1.5 Million For Rape Crisis Centers During Sexual Assault Awareness Month

Florida Governor Rick Scott (R) is commemorating Sexual Assault Awareness Month by vetoing a budget line item of $1.5 million passed by the legislature to fund 30 rape crisis centers around the state.

Scott spokesman Lane Wright told The Huffington Post that the governor vetoed the item because funding already exists for statewide sexual violence programs. As evidence, Wright pointed towards the state’s $6.5 million budget for rape prevention and sexual assault services and an additional $29 million allocated for domestic violence programs.

But according to the Florida Council Against Sexual Violence, much of the available funding that currently exists is spent on education and prevention, and not for the funding of crisis centers and the victims they serve. The group’s Executive Director Jennifer Dritt disputed Governor Scott’s claim that he was never given specific reasons why the additional funding was required:

    We gave them information about the number of new survivors we have and we showed them that these rape crisis centers have waiting lists. Survivors are having to wait weeks, sometimes six weeks, in some programs three months to be seen. We included quotes from the programs about the waiting lists and what services they weren’t able to offer because of a lack of money. There is clearly an unmet need.

Florida’s rape crisis centers are tied to a trust fund that is fed into by fines levied against perpetrators of sexual assault. But when the fund was created by the legislature in 2003, lawmakers determined that it would not generate significant revenues for several years, instead requiring offsets by state funding. Scott’s decision to veto the funding could result in cuts of as much as $100,000 at some of the crisis centers, Dritt says.

Since Rick Scott(R-FL) is a criminal it makes sense that he would hate victims and sympathize with criminals. Conservatism is just another name for criminal sleaze bags. Conservatives think if you wear a tie while you steal billions that means its OK.

America is Little Less Free Now Than 2009 Thanks To Conservative Republican Attacks On Liberty

America is Little Less Free Now Than 2009 Thanks To Conservative Attacks On Liberty

For its first 200 years the American Republic slowly, sometimes infuriatingly slowly and at horrific human cost (e.g. the Civil War) expanded the franchise.

In 1870 the 15th Amendment gave blacks the right to vote. In 1920, the 19th Amendment extended the franchise to women. In 1924 Congress granted Native Americans citizenship and thus the right to vote. In 1961 the 23rd Amendment gave the residents of the District of Columbia the right to vote for President. In 1971 the 26th Amendment gave l8 year olds the vote. In 1986 Congress gave military personnel and other US citizens living abroad the right to use a federal write-in absentee ballot for voting for federal offices.

The right to vote, however, did not ensure that one could vote. Beginning at the end of the 19th century, states began passing legislation directed at restricting minority voting with often dramatic effect, especially in the South where turnout fell from 64.2 percent in 1888 to 29.0 percent in 1904.

For 100 years after the Civil War the Supreme Court ruled that even where state voting rules were discriminatory, the federal government had no right to intervene. Then in 1965 Congress finally gave blacks and other minorities the effective vote by passing the Voting Rights Act, eliminating most voting qualifications beyond citizenship for state and federal elections, including literacy tests and poll taxes. In 1966 the Supreme Court affirmed that law.

Since 1970 federal and state voting reforms have all moved in one direction: facilitating access. In 1993 the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) offered citizens the opportunity to register or re-register to vote at many public facilities, including Motor Vehicle offices and post offices.

Between 1973 and 2009 nine states enacted Election Day registration laws. States made provisions for early voting and eased the rules on absentee voting. Some allowed voting by mail. Between 1997 and 2010 twenty-three states either restored voting rights or eased the restoration process of voting rights for those convicted of felonies.

Virtually all these laws were passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and signed into law by Republican and Democrat Governors alike.

The Tide Turns

And then came November 2010. An unprecedented politically tsunami swept the country. Conservative Republicans won a remarkable 675 seats in state legislatures, gaining control of both houses in 27 states and control of both houses and the governor office in 23.

Once in control Republicans once again exposed a fundamental difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals focus on process. Republicans focus on outcomes.

The Republicans first priority after gaining power was to ensure continued power by reducing the turnout of demographic groups like students, blacks, Hispanics that traditionally vote Democrat.

The groundwork had been laid by a 2008 Supreme Court decision. In 2006 Indiana became the first state to require a government issued photo ID for voting. The Supreme Court upheld that law. Justice John Paul Stevens, writing the main opinion opined that the requirement “is amply justified by the valid interest in protecting the integrity and reliability of the electoral process.”

Amply justified? An Amicus Brief filed by the Brennan Center for Justice found no justification at all. After exhaustively examining the briefs to the Supreme Court, Justin Levitt of the Brennan Center for Justice concluded, “not one of the sources cited shows proof of a vote that Indiana’s law could prevent. That is, not one of the citations offered by Indiana or its allies refers to a proven example of a single vote cast at the polls in someone else’s name that could be stopped by a poll site photo ID rule.” The Center described the fraud targeted by Indiana’s law “more rare than death by lightning.”

But the lack of a shred of documented evidence of voter fraud was irrelevant to the Court. The Court decided that Indiana did not have to demonstrate that a photo ID was needed to prevent fraud. The burden of proof was on petitioners to prove not only that a photo ID would be burdensome, but that it would be extremely burdensome.

With the Court ruling in 2008 conservative Republicans attacked. In 2011 at least thirty-four states introduced bills to require photo ID to vote. Seven enacted them into law.

In 2011 at least twelve states introduced bills to require proof of citizenship to register or vote. Three states enacted these into law. Five states restricted early voting. Two states reversed executive actions that had made it easier for citizens with past felony convictions to restore their voting rights.

The 2011 Florida law is perhaps the purest distillation of the Republican effort to making voting more difficult. Indeed, during Florida’s legislative debate, State Senator Michael Bennett, the Chamber’s President Pro-Tempore insisted that voting “is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for. Why should we make it easier?”

In 2008 Obama won Florida by just 2.5 percent. Two factors accounted for his victory. First, Florida opened the polls two weeks early. Even so, long lines across the state prompted the governor to issue an emergency order extending the hours for early voting. That enabled waves of new voters, often minorities and students to vote. Early voting also included voting the Sunday before election day. Obama’s “souls to the polls” drives successfully brought tens of thousands of blacks and Latinos to vote after church. According to the Palm Beach Post “[m]ore than half of the black voters in the [November 2008] election voted before Election Day and many of them went on [the] final Sunday.”

The second factor was the success of voter registration drives. In 2008, more than a million new voters were added to Florida’s rolls, 233,000 of them from voter registration drives. Hispanic and African-American voters are approximately twice as likely to register through a voter registration drive as white voters.

The 2011 law reduced early voting from two weeks to one week. Voting on the Sunday before Election Day was eliminated. Florida eliminated the longstanding right of voters who moved before an election to update their new address at the polls on Election Day. The law now requires a photo ID. As many as 25% of African-American voters do not possess a current and valid form of government issued photo ID, compared to 11% of voters of all races.

The 2011 required those who register new voters to turn in completed forms within 48 hours or risk fines. The New York Times recently reported this has led the League of Women Voters to abandon its efforts this year. A national organization that encourages young people to vote, Rock the Vote, recently began to register high school students around the nation. But not in Florida, because of fears that teachers could face fines.

Prior to 2007, nearly one million Floridians who were convicted of a felony were permanently disenfranchised in the state; almost a quarter of them were African-American. In 2007, Republican Governor Charlie Crist simplified and streamlined the process for individuals with non-violent convictions to regain their voting rights, affecting some 150,000 Floridians. In 2011 Governor Rick Scott returned Florida to its pre 2007 policy. Some 87,000 persons who were in the “backlog” of cases waiting for restoration will not have their voting rights restored.

That the Republicans objective in changing the voting rules is to consolidate power is incontestable. Consider Texas’s new voter ID law. It doesn’t allow voters to use student ID’s but does permit them to use concealed weapon licenses. A few weeks ago the US Department of Justice rejected the new law as a violation of the Voting Rights Act. Texas is appealing.

Because of their convincing victories in 2010 Republicans might argue their actions are simply manifesting the people’s will. But it is difficult to imagine people voted in 2010 to make it more difficult for them to vote in the future. Some empirical evidence supports that view. In 2011 a Republican legislature and Governor in Maine eliminated that state’s 38-year old Election Day registration. Last November Maine’s citizens went to the ballot box and re-instated the previous law with a convincing 59 percent majority.

Unfortunately this November few if any states will let voters directly decide whether they want to reverse a 150-year-old trajectory and make voting more burdensome. The voters must express their will more indirectly, by electing legislators who believe voting should be more rather than less accessible. The new rules make this much more difficult. But that would only make a victory for democracy that much sweeter.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License

David Morris is Vice President and director of the New Rules Project at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, which is based in Minneapolis and Washington, D.C. focusing on local economic and social development.

Conservatism is a dangerous scam that hides behind cheap talk about patriotism. Until the majority of Americans learn that, our democratic republic become slip a little more toward tyranny every year.

Repealing Health Care Reform (ACA) Would Increase Government Debt

Repealing Health Care Reform (ACA) Would Increase Government Debt

A new report by an independent government auditor concludes that implementing President Obama’s health care law as intended will make a significant dent in the long-term debt forecast.

The report comes as Supreme Court justices weigh striking some of “Obamacare’s” central provisions — and perhaps the law in its entirety — and as the Republican Party remains committed to repealing the law if it seizes control of government in November.

“[I]f the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is implemented as intended it would have a major effect on the [fiscal] gap but would not eliminate it,” the Government Accountability Office wrote in a Monday report — a conclusion in line with its own past research and similar research conducted by other government and non-government analysts.

GAO doesn’t isolate PPACA’s stand-alone contribution to long-term budget consolidation. But it does conclude that if key cost-control measures in the law, and other automatic cuts to Medicare spending baked into current law, are ignored, or overridden by Congress, the implications for the national debt are vast.

If “Obamacare” is implemented as intended, and other measures, such as automatic payment cuts to Medicare physicians, take effect, “spending on Medicare and Medicaid grows from 5 percent of GDP in 2010 to over 7 percent by 2030.”

By contrast, if Congress overrides those provisions, “[s]pending on health care grows much more rapidly under this more pessimistic set of assumptions,” according to the report.

 It is not as though conservatives really care about the deficit. It exploded partly because of the Bush tax cuts and failure to rise revenue for two wars. The first time in modern US history a president and his party did not attempt to pay for its foreign policy decisions. 

Ann Coulter Typifies Modern Conservatism in Her Hatred of America and the Truth

Ann Coulter Typifies Modern Conservatism in Her Hatred of America and the Truth

It's been more than two years since the Affordable Care Act became law, and Ann Coulter is still misinforming Fox News viewers about how it passed through Congress.

As the Supreme Court has considered the suits brought against the law, Fox News has been throwing falsehood after falsehood at the legislation. Some of them even made their way into a justice's questioning during oral arguments.

On Fox & Friends Saturday, Coulter repeated yet another falsehood about the law:

    COULTER: Overwhelmingly since Obamacare passed, before it passed, a majority of Americans have opposed Obamacare. And that's why the Democrats had to sneak it through on a party-line vote, and remember that sleazy little maneuver, "deem as passed"? They didn't even -- the two houses didn't even vote on the same bill.

Fox News has made this false claim before. It was widely reported on March 20, 2010, several days before the House passed the Senate's version of the bill, that the Democrats "dropped a controversial plan that would have 'deemed' Senate-approved health care legislation passed as part of a resolution setting rules of debate but would not have required House members to vote directly on the legislation." Even Fox News itself reported that the Democrats "decided against" using that legislative tactic.

Coulter holds many of the same beliefs as communist Josef Stalin and Iranian fundamentalist - the government has a right to lie spy on you, the government has a right to deny you due process, the government has the right to use lies to send you family off to die in a unnecessary war ( as long as a conservative is doing the lying), the government has the right to take your home, but the government cannot set up an insurance exchange with corporate insurance companies so that 30 million more Americans can have health insurance. Th irony, or at least one irony, is that Coulter makes millions never doing a day of honest work in the USA, the country she hates.

The Horrors of an Ayn Rand World: Why We Must Fight for America's Soul - An Objectivist America would be a dark age of unhindered free enterprise, far more primitive and Darwinian than anything seen before.

How Conservatism, Lobbyist and Money Are Destroying Democracy

How Conservatism, Lobbyist and Money Are Destroying Democracy

Florida’s now-infamous Stand Your Ground law, which lets you shoot someone you consider threatening without facing arrest, let alone prosecution, sounds crazy — and it is. And it’s tempting to dismiss this law as the work of ignorant yahoos. But similar laws have been pushed across the nation, not by ignorant yahoos but by big corporations.

Specifically, language virtually identical to Florida’s law is featured in a template supplied to legislators in other states by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence (only recently, thanks to yeoman work by the Center for Media and Democracy, has a clear picture of ALEC’s activities emerged). And if there is any silver lining to Trayvon Martin’s killing, it is that it might finally place a spotlight on what ALEC is doing to our society — and our democracy.

What is ALEC? Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators. In Virginia, for example, more than 50 ALEC-written bills have been introduced, many almost word for word. And these bills often become law.

Many ALEC-drafted bills pursue standard conservative goals: union-busting, undermining environmental protection, tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy. ALEC seems, however, to have a special interest in privatization — that is, on turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations. And some of the most prominent beneficiaries of privatization, such as the online education company K12 Inc. and the prison operator Corrections Corporation of America, are, not surprisingly, very much involved with the organization.

What this tells us, in turn, is that ALEC’s claim to stand for limited government and free markets is deeply misleading. To a large extent the organization seeks not limited government but privatized government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars, dollars steered their way by friendly politicians. In short, ALEC isn’t so much about promoting free markets as it is about expanding crony capitalism.

And in case you were wondering, no, the kind of privatization ALEC promotes isn’t in the public interest; instead of success stories, what we’re getting is a series of scandals. Private charter schools, for example, appear to deliver a lot of profits but little in the way of educational achievement.

But where does the encouragement of vigilante (in)justice fit into this picture? In part it’s the same old story — the long-standing exploitation of public fears, especially those associated with racial tension, to promote a pro-corporate, pro-wealthy agenda. It’s neither an accident nor a surprise that the National Rifle Association and ALEC have been close allies all along.

And ALEC, even more than other movement-conservative organizations, is clearly playing a long game. Its legislative templates aren’t just about generating immediate benefits to the organization’s corporate sponsors; they’re about creating a political climate that will favor even more corporation-friendly legislation in the future.

Did I mention that ALEC has played a key role in promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote?

Yet that’s not all; you have to think about the interests of the penal-industrial complex — prison operators, bail-bond companies and more. (The American Bail Coalition has publicly described ALEC as its “life preserver.”) This complex has a financial stake in anything that sends more people into the courts and the prisons, whether it’s exaggerated fear of racial minorities or Arizona’s draconian immigration law, a law that followed an ALEC template almost verbatim.

Think about that: we seem to be turning into a country where crony capitalism doesn’t just waste taxpayer money but warps criminal justice, in which growing incarceration reflects not the need to protect law-abiding citizens but the profits corporations can reap from a larger prison population.

Now, ALEC isn’t single-handedly responsible for the corporatization of our political life; its influence is as much a symptom as a cause. But shining a light on ALEC and its supporters — a roster that includes many companies, from AT&T and Coca-Cola to UPS, that have so far managed to avoid being publicly associated with the hard-right agenda — is one good way to highlight what’s going on. And that kind of knowledge is what we need to start taking our country back.

Conservatives say they believe in individual rights. That's just so much propaganda - Mao would be proud of the way conservatives twist less liberty into more freedom. Conservatives and groups such as ALEC are turning the USA into a kind of corporate dystopia that is not hard to find in science fiction novels. People say it can't happen in the USA. It is happening. Not all at once. Just a little piece of crony corporatism here and a dash of conservative authoritarianism there. The Bush administration made unprecedented attacks on our freedoms and conservatives defended those attacks. That says a lot about the radical anti-American conservative agenda.

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

How Unfortunate That Paul Ryan(R-WI) is an Anti-American Serial Liar and Conman

“Promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual must be the central focus of all government.”

That’s what Congressman Paul Ryan wrote earlier this month in an exclusive commentary for Spotlight on Poverty and Opportunity. This week, he revealed exactly where his laser-like focus on dignity would lead this nation. He released his budget proposal, as clear a statement of one’s principles and priorities as there is in politics.

Here are the results, and they’re not pretty. Nation readers with young children should probably ask them to leave the room before reading onward.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means a cut in food stamps of $133 billion over ten years, even though 76 percent of participating households include a child, senior or disabled person, nearly half of all recipients are children and 40 percent of single mothers use food stamps to help feed their families.  A $13.4 billion cut in one year translates to as many as 8.2 billion meals lost for low-income people, more kids at risk of being underweight or developmentally delayed, worse educational outcomes and more stressed-out parents.

The congressman would also block-grant the program so it would no longer be able to respond to rising need during times like these—in 2010 alone food stamps kept 3.9 million people out of poverty. If you liked the cash assistance for poor families (TANF) block grant—which resulted in a free-fall from 68 of every 100 poor families receiving help to 27 of every 100—then you will absolutely love the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Feed You block grant.

All told, Ryan hands out about $4.4 trillion in tax cuts that primarily benefit the very best off, and pays for it with $4.15 trillion in spending cuts to programs that primarily benefit the poor and middle class.

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and attacking Medicaid with his block-granting light saber. The repeal results in at least 33 million people losing their healthcare, and the Don’t Worry Ryan Will Heal You block grant shifts costs of covering poor people to the states (because their budgets are in such great shape)—cutting federal funding by approximately 20 percent over the next decade and adding “tens of millions of Americans to the ranks of the uninsured and underinsured,” according the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP). Worth noting too is that two out of every three Medicaid dollars currently goes to care for people in nursing homes, victims of catastrophic accidents and disabled children, according to the Center for American Progress.

“The inherent dignity of all people is the foundational principle of Catholic social teaching because we’re all created in the image of God,” Father Thomas Kelly, a constituent of Representative Ryan’s, told me after a conference call with Half in Ten. “A budget that cuts nutrition programs for poor children and tells working families they must sacrifice even more so the wealthy can have bigger tax cuts offends bedrock Catholic values. It’s hard to square Representative Ryan’s moral rhetoric with the cruel reality of this budget.”

“A budget that diminishes what we provide for the one in six Americans who are struggling with hunger is not a budget befitting a moral country,” said Rabbi Steve Gutow, president of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. “A plan reflective of our national priorities should seek to lift up our neighbors in a time of high unemployment and poverty; instead, this demands the most from those with the least, and flies in the face of the common dignity of all Americans.”

Mr. Ryan’s focus on dignity… means that the man is in desperate need of LASIK surgery. Better hurry, before he’s forced to rely on his proposed Don’t Worry Ryan Will Give You A Voucher healthcare system for seniors.

Ryan is like most modern conservatives. If given their way, for all their dire warnings about America becoming socialist, Ryan's conservative America will look a lot like the poverty ridden, food deprived Soviet Union of the 1960s. We'll have mothers, children and the disabled looking through trash cans for food. All this while corporate America is already making per-recession level profits - if they are being taxed or regulated too much you sure cannot tell by the bottom line. If Ryan and his immoral elite conservative pals want to punish work and reward wealth there is a way for them to do that, they can move somewhere and start their own 16th century monarchy.

Reproductive Rights Are Civil Rights

Reproductive Rights Are Civil Rights

That requires that we look to history and the Constitution. I found myself doing that a few weeks back, sitting in the DC living room of Pamela Bridgewater, talking about slavery as the TV news followed the debate over whether the State of Virginia should force a woman to spread her legs and endure a plastic wand shoved into her vagina. Pamela has a lot of titles that, properly, ought to compel me to refer to her now as Professor Bridgewater—legal scholar, teacher at American University, reproductive rights activist, sex radical—but she is my friend and sister, and we were two women sitting around talking, so I shall alternate between the familiar and the formal.

“What a spectacle,” Pamela exclaimed, “Virginia, the birthplace of the slave breeding industry in America, is debating state-sanctioned rape. Imagine the woman who says No to this as a prerequisite for abortion. Will she be strapped down, her ankles shackled to stir-ups?”

“I suspect,” said I, “that partisans would say, ‘If she doesn’t agree, she is free to leave.’?”

“Right, which means she is coerced into childbearing or coerced into taking other measures to terminate her pregnancy, which may or may not be safe. Or she relents and says Yes, and that’s by coercion, too.”

“Scratch at modern life and there’s a little slave era just below the surface, so we’re right back to your argument.”

Pamela Bridgewater’s argument, expressed over the past several years in articles and forums, and at the heart of a book in final revision called Breeding a Nation: Reproductive Slavery and the Pursuit of Freedom, presents the most compelling conceptual and constitutional frame I know for considering women’s bodily integrity and defending it from the right.

More at the link. In the crazed minds of conservatives a clump of cells and corporations are people entitled to full rights as citizens, while women are not.

Mindless Conservative Puppet of the Week - Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) For Big Oil, But Against Government For and By the People

Mindless Conservative Puppet of the Week - Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) For Big Oil, But Against Government For and By the People

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) has launched a new ad asking Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) to end subsidies for big oil. Brown has received $152,100 in campaign contributions from the oil and gas industry, including $8,500 from Chevron, Conoco Phillips, and Exxon in the two weeks before his May 17 vote against S. 940, which would have killed some oil industry subsidies. The advertisement portrays a Brown-lookalike in his campaign gear of a Carhardt jacket, leaving oily marks as he wanders through Boston:

    Scott Brown said he’s one of us. But there’s a growing stain on his record. Senator Brown’s taken over one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from big oil. And while Americans have been struggling at the pump, Senator Brown voted to keep giving oil companies billions in special government handouts. Sticking us with the bill, and a really big mess. Tell Senator Brown to vote to end tax breaks for Big Oil.

A new Public Policy Polling survey, conducted on behalf of LCV, finds that that 71 percent of those polled in Massachusetts think that tax breaks for oil companies should be eliminated, with only 18 percent in support of maintaining them.

Funny how politics and government works. We the people try to think about our future. If we know we're going to run out of bread or milk we make plans to deal with that. brown is taking big oil money to make sure the USA does not plan ahead. Brown wants a weaker, dependent USA. A USA crippled by short term thinking. many Americans think government does not work or cannot solve problems. Well, corrupt cronies like little Scottie Brown are in Washington to make sure government does not work for the people.

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.