Is Obama Finally Starting to Get It? “Doing fine” gaffe result of push back on public layoffs
June 11, 2012
Probably the biggest fake news last week was President Obama’s feux pas saying “the private sector is doing fine”. When you watch the full response in which the comment was made, it was clear (to me anyway) that he was saying, “In comparison to the 14 straight months of job losses in the Public sector”, the 27 straight months of 4.3million jobs created in the private sector shows the private sector already has the tools necessary to create jobs, and it’s time to focus on the public sector. I’ve been ranting on here for months now that “public sector layoffs are undermining our recovery”. For every public job we eliminate, that’s one more person unnecessarily competing for a private sector job. So while Republicans scream about the need to “cut government spending”, when Obama does shrink the size of government, it cuts into the “total number of jobs created” figure, and stymies the Unemployment Rate (ticking UP last month for the first time since June of last year. And… as I pointed out weeks ago… those same Republicans demanding Obama cut the size of government have been hiring government workers like crazy to get their own state unemployment figures down so they can say: “Look at MY state! I know how to get things done!” So the sub-story underlying President Obama’s “gaffe” is, “Is he finally starting to get it?” If you want unemployment down in time for the election, STOP FIRING PUBLIC WORKERS.
I posted this graph a couple of times already, and I’m likely to post it a few times more:
Notice above that the government stops laying off people right around the mid-1982 mark. After Reagan entered office in January of 1981, unemployment continued to climb like a monkey in a tree well into his second year, peaking at 10.8% unemployment in both Nov/Dec of 1982. Also notice that the graph is eight years of government hiring. But look where it was by the start of 1984. Public sector hiring really didn’t budge too much since mid-’82. The Reagan Administration hadn’t actually begun to DO much government hiring by that point, they just stopped firing public workers.
Now here’s a graph you probably haven’t seen:
See what happened to unemployment right around the same time (late-1982)? Then look where it was by January of 1984. Translation: You don’t need massive government hiring just to bring down unemployment. YOU JUST NEED TO STOP LAYING PEOPLE OFF!
Compare Reagan’s 10.8% peak unemployment 23 months into his presidency vs President Obama’s peak of 10.0% just nine months into his FIRST year, peaking in October… the same month Bush’s last budget ended (all numbers via The Bureau of Labor Statistics). St. Ronnie didn’t institute any “Massive Jobs Program” or any other major policy initiative in late 1982 to account for the sudden/dramatic dip in unemployment… unless you count RAISING TAXES. Yes, Reagan’s first big tax hike came in 1982 to stem the rapidly rising National Debt. But most importantly, he stopped gutting public sector jobs.
Reagan came into office promising to “cut government”… which he did… at the cost of the unemployment rate. When unemployment broke 9.5% (two points higher than when he took office) in mid-1982, the government stopped firing people. It took a few months for the economic inertia to stop rising unemployment figures, but once those paychecks started making their way into the economy, you only need to look at that second graph to see its effect on unemployment.
And the Right declared Reagan a “hero” for “saving the economy”, handily winning re-election in what still stands today as one of the most lopsided election victories in American history. Reagan’s “morning in America” ad pointed out how much better the economy now was (in time for the election) as compared to where it was when he took over… unemployment was 7.5% in January 1981, compared to 7.2% by November 1984. Everyone quickly forgot that just two years earlier, it had hit 10.8%.
And now peering through the fog of President Obama’s “gaffe cloud”, do my ears deceive me or was his gaffe the result of frustration as he finally starts to recognize the crippling effect public sector layoffs have had on our recovery? Maybe last month’s 1/10th of a point tick upward in the unemployment rate was just the kick in the pants he needed to finally get that it’s time he stop handicapping his own recovery? I’m angry it would take anyone so long to figure out that when you’re trying to bring down unemployment, the last thing you should be doing is FIRING people!
Let’s hope so, because if that’s true, I envision a “Great Awakening” in Obama’s second term as he learns to stop listening to people that wake up every morning thinking up ways to make him look bad.
ADDENDUM: In case you missed it, right after I posted this… my fourth rant on Public Sector job losses and Republican hypocrisy on the subject… the always excellent Rachel Maddow Show made the subject the opening topic on Monday nights show, and included the following graph:
I’m glad to see the Mainstream media finally catching up.
(Editor’s Note: If you missed it, I added a new page to the Rap Sheet: “Reasons to NOT vote for Obama” according to the Right, each Talking Point linking to pages debunking those claims. As with our Romney Page, I will do my best to continually update it throughout the year.)
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June 11, 2012
· 
Admin Mugsy · 
No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, Jobs, Politics
The Reason I’m Not Buying the Wisconsin Recall Results
June 6, 2012
Just a brief note on last night’s recall election in Wisconsin.
Why I don’t trust the results and you shouldn’t either:
I planned on staying up late last night watching the returns of the Wisconsin Recall Election of Gov. Scott Walker go on into the night. So you can imagine my shock when the first returns immediately showed… not just Gov. Walker, but ALL SIX recall races showing Republicans with HUGE leads over their Democratic challengers, with Walker enjoying a HUGE 20-point lead right away. Within the hour, with barely more than 20% of the votes in, Walker was already being declared “the Winner”. If you’re as distrusting of Republicans as I am in the age of Karl Rove and Florida-2000, “surprise” results of this magnitude should ALWAYS be looked at suspiciously.
For days before the election, all polling was predicting a “down-to-the-wire” close race, with many suspecting that we might not know the results “for days/weeks to come”. As soon as the polls closed, the New York Times released it’s “Exit Polls” showing the race split “50/50” and with 8percent more of them preferring President Obama in November.
Then, as soon as the polls close at 7pm CST, the first results start coming in. “Brad Blog”… a blog devoted to election irregularities… noted that WI votes almost entirely using paper “scantron” ballots (pencil in the bubble), making a recount possible, but extremely unlikely because recounts ONLY take place in “close” races, and even then, only when “ordered by a judge”. Don’t expect that here.
The first results to come in the moment the polls closed were the electronic votes (electronic ballots and Early Voting Scantrons already counted), instantly showing Gov. Walker with a HUGE lead over Mayor Barrett. By the time the first 20% of votes were in less than an hour later, Walker already had an insurmountable 20% lead and declared the winner with Barrett finding himself in a deep hole early on that he’d have to spend the rest of the night digging out of.
As the night went on, Walker’s lead shrank as the PAPER ballots were counted. By the time the counting was “over”, Walker’s lead had shrunk to just 7percent as hand-counts showed Barrett gaining on Walker all night long.
The down-ballot races, though not as high profile, were just as important. The WI Senate is currently split 50/50 between 16 Republicans and 16 Democrats, with control going to the Party that holds the governorship. All Democrats had to do was win ONE of those races to regain control of the WI Senate, a hedge that even if Walker won, a Democratically controlled Senate could at least put the brakes on Walker’s partisan power-grab. While early poll results showed all four Republican Senators winning by significant margins, it wasn’t until all the counting was over did the closest race between Former Democratic state Sen. John Lehman and incumbent Sen. Van Wanggaard show the Democrat winning with 36,255 votes to Wanggaard’s 35,476 votes, “according to unofficial results with all precincts reporting”. Once again, it took all night and checking ALL the ballots for the Democrat to overcome an early deep deficit.
So, to summarize: We are to believe that people in Wisconsin turned out en masse, standing in long lines, with many counties reportedly “running out of ballots”, all to vote for the Status Quo? The WI-GOP was so concerned they might lose that they themselves… not just some pranksters but THE OFFICIAL WISCONSIN GOP, was robocalling Democrats, telling them that if they signed a recall petition, they don’t have to bother coming in to vote because they’ve already been counted. It certainly “looks like” the electronic voting gave Walker a huge head start that Barrett and the others would spend the rest of the night attempting to overcome. A lead SO huge that even if Barrett did REALLY well, would be lucky to break even with Walker as the original exit polls predicted. And, as the night continues, that gap narrowed as Barrett out polled Walker again & again. And in the end, we are to believe that a state that leans Democratic (the same people that voted en masse for Walker also broke for Obama by 8percent) also came out big for the only Republican governor in the country with a criminal defense fund, that unwittingly admitted that he considered “sending troublemakers” into anti-Walker protest rallies, described his anti-union measures as “divide & conquer” in an attempt to “permanently turn the state red”, admitted that his union fight had NOTHING to do with balancing the states’ budget (ibid last Monday’s post for all links), and most recently the “John Doe investigation” that could lead to Federal criminal prosecution of Walker, received the enthusiastic support of the majority of WI voters?
Is it just me, or am I just so distrusting of Republicans that I’m seeing anomalies where there are none? Tell me in the comments that there’s NO reason to be suspicious.
June 6, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · 7 Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, Rants
Some rants: JobsJobsJobs, Oil, Hypocrisy and My Integrity (UPDATED)
June 4, 2012
There was so much going on last week, that I couldn’t pick a single topic to focus on. First off was (of course) the dismal jobs report for May released last week. Republicans were quick to pounce on the disappointing figures, pointing to it was “PROOF!” that President Obama’s economic policies are a failure. Also, it came as little relief last week when the price of oil fell below $90/barrel for the first time since last October (when I think about how oil used to be below $30/barrel for decades, and gas never broke $2/gallon before President Bush invaded Iraq, I get nauseous). And Mitt Romney gave a “top secret” presser in front of “Solyndra”… “top secret” because he claimed fearing “Obama-campaign inference” had it of been publicly announced… at the same time the Romney campaign sent its OWN campaign goon-squad to heckle Obama-spokesman David Axelrod during a campaign event of his own, once again demonstrating my long-held belief that “if Republicans accuse you of doing something, it’s either because they ARE doing it themselves or WOULD do it if they were in a position to do so (ie: “projection”). And lastly, my big report last week questioning the disturbing appearance of cronyism by Romney while governor of Massachusetts, was criticized and contested… calling my own integrity into question… by picking at the fringes while never addressing the core issue. Let’s take these one at a time:
First off, that dismal “jobs report”. Am I the only person wondering just how Republicans… who were swept into office in 2010 promising “jobs, jobs, jobs”… can get away with laying all the blame for the bad jobs numbers at the feet of President Obama? Really now, Conservatives. You ran to the polls and voted en masse for Republicans promising “a laser-like focus on jobs”, and this is what you got (actually, THIS is what you got). And now you want to blame President Obama solely for the poor economy? Do you get it yet? This is a Party willing to unemploy hundreds of thousands of people just to put one man out of work. You doubt me? This is the same Party that threatened to throw this nation into default just to score some cheap political points during last years Debt Ceiling debacle (a move that cost us our Triple-A bond rating.) And now they are threatening to do it again. I urge you to take a good long look at the infamous “bikini graph” once more:
(click to enlarge)
Note that yellow line. That’s job creation under a DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS before Republicans decided to make spending a campaign issue, and started blocking everything in sight. Now you want to reward these same obstructionists on the grounds that President Obama failed to get anything done? When you have the Senate Minority Leader saying his Party’s “#1 political goal is to make President Obama a one-term president“, or when the Indiana GOP nominee for Senate says that “bipartisanship is when Democrats give in to Republicans”, you’re only rewarding bad behavior that puts partisan-politics ahead of the good of the country. And don’t be surprised if Democrats then turn around and use the exact same techniques against Republicans if Romney wins in November. (Of course, Republicans would do a FAR better job of vilifying the Democrats for doing it if they did.) Why do we allow the obstructionists to criticize Obama’s “lack of progress”, and get away with it?
Political junkies like you and me who probably watched all the Sunday shows yesterday… did you ONCE hear anyone ask these Republicans, “You came in promising jobs, jobs, jobs. And here we are. Don’t you think YOU deserve a share of the blame for these poor jobs numbers?” If anyone asked that question yesterday, I sure missed it. Sorry Republicans, but you can’t claim all the credit when things look good, and assume none of the blame when things look bad. That’s called “taking personal responsibility.” Ah, but look who I’m talking to! You know all about “personal responsibility”. It’s your catch-phrase… or it least it used to be when you proposed “insurance mandates” before “ObamaCare” took them up.
A blog posting I wrote back in January entitled “Why the economy is so bad. And why Obama should be trusted to fix it” started picking up a number of fresh hits last week. I encourage you to go back and give it a second read.
Several factors played into the poor jobs numbers for May. Continued Republican insistence on “austerity” being high on that list. Once again, while the number of jobs created was low, the unnecessary loss of 13,000 Public Sector jobs made it worse. That’s another 13,000 people competing for the same jobs as millions of longterm unemployed. You now have to create another 13,000 jobs just to get the number of unemployed back the to where it was before the layoffs. Can we all just finally agree that this insane adherence to “austerity” demanded by Republicans is killing our recovery (by design?) As I pointed out three weeks ago, while Democrats and President Obama are stupidly cutting public employment, Republican governors have been on a hiring binge to make their unemployment numbers look good.
Another factor: oil & gas prices… while coming down… are sucking the lifeblood out of our economy. While the price of oil fell below $90/barrel for the first time since last October, the National Average price for a gallon of gas is 17cents higher today than it was back then, once again demonstrating the lack of a connection between falling oil prices and a decline in gas prices (while the opposite is imminently true). I just want to shout from the rooftops (and metaphorically speaking, that’s what this blog is): “It’s the dependence on oil, Stupid!” (apologies to Clinton’s 1992 campaign catch-phrase). While I heard multiple Talking Heads on TV yesterday excoriate President Obama’s obstruction of “the keystone XL pipeline” (read my rant on that subject here), I heard NO ONE suggest that maybe we should focus on using LESS oil rather than continuing our dependence upon it (and the Middle East)… not to mention inviting certain environmental disaster, all for short-term gain that won’t have an impact on the market for at least three years. I actually heard Romney’s campaign manager on “Meet the Press” ridicule obstruction of the KXL, calling it “a project that would create thousands of jobs immediately.” Thousands? Thousands? We need 110,000 jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. What happened to the “million” jobs they were boasting of just a few months ago? (ibid my KXL rant) Are we (read: “they”) really so stupid that we’d pass a construction project two-to-three times as massive as the Alaskan Pipeline just to create a few thousand low-paying construction jobs in an industry that doesn’t need government help to make money? I can think of A DOZEN other ways to create TENS of thousands of green energy jobs… long-term, high-paying, high-tech GREEN jobs with a future… in less time for a fraction of the cost. Roughly 8 percent of our electricity is still generated using oil-powered turbines. Replace them with Wind, Solar, tidal or geothermal plants. That would have a MASSIVE and direct impact on this nation’s oil consumption, and a direct impact on global oil prices. One might easily jump to the conclusion that this would be the equivalent of removing 8% of all the cars off America’s roads, but in fact, it would be MUCH more. Keep in mind these massive plants run 24 hours a day 7 days a week, using FAR more oil than the equivalent of “8% of all U.S. cars on the road”. Yank that demand off the world market and watch oil prices PLUNGE. Gas prices would fall in conjunction (though not at the same rate) providing a huge economic boost to the country. Plus all the new jobs building/running these new plants, not to mention the benefit to the environment. And it could all be paid for by rescinding those asinine $6Billion/year oil subsidies the GOP fought to keep. I certainly wouldn’t stop there. There are still some 600 coal fired powerplants in the U.S. that need to be phased out… though “coal” is a MUCH more touchy subject since the “fuel” for these plants comes from mining jobs here in the U.S..
Of course, convincing this parsimonious Congress to agree to spend even one dime on something that might create jobs and help the president’s reelection chances in November is about as unlikely as our Milky Way galaxy colliding with another galaxy. Both are likely to happen in about four-Billion years time.
Next issue: Romney’s “top secret” press conference in front of the closed Solyndra plant. This was a joke from start-to-finish. First off, the Big Show the Romney campaign made about having to having to keep the location of his speech secret (bringing the Press along but not telling them where) under the claim that it was done that way to thwart Obama-Campaign saboteurs. At the same time on the other side of the country the Romney campaign organized hecklers via Twitter to disrupt a speech by Obama advisor David Axelrod… once again proving my contention that “if a Republican accuses you of doing something, it is only because they are either doing it themselves or would do it if they were in your shoes.” I’ve seen it at least once a week for the past 12 years (starting with the 2000 Florida fight when Republicans accused Democrats of trying to steal the election.)
Okay. If you’re one of those people that thinks political campaigns should operate with all the maturity of a Redneck kindergarten class, then score one for Romney. Unless of course, facts matter to you and not just showmanship. Romney actually claimed that President Obama had engaged in illegal activity, claiming that “the Inspector General found” that President Obama steered the Solyndra contract to “friends and family.” That’s a flatout lie. The truth is… at Right-wing prompting… the Inspector General looked into the possibility and found “no evidence” of cronyism. In truth, the contract approval process began under President Bush, and I can assure you they weren’t looking to do him any favors.
To compound the issue, it turns out Romney has TWO THREE FOUR numerous failed high-tech firms (many, many belonging to Romney supporters or run by Bain Capital) in his own closet that received millions from the Romney Administration while he was governor of Massachusetts. Two biotech firms called “Acusphere” and “Spherics Inc” received/lost a combined $2.1 million in loans and Two solar energy companies. Company number three was a solar energy company called “Konarka Technologies”, which filed for Chapter-7 bankruptcy the day after Romney’s speech before solar energy company Solyndra, After Konarka received $1.5 Million in state funds, Romney himself praised the deal, claiming it would act as “an economic springboard”. Number four I learned about only after posting today’s blog entry. “Evergreen Solar” went belly up just last year after receiving $2.5 Million from the Romney Administration. Just one more example of Republicans attacking Democrats for things they themselves do or did. This goes beyond hypocrisy, wading into the realm of “mental disorder”.
A brief aside on these failed high-tech firms: The REAL scandal here isn’t the allegations of cronyism, or the viability of green energy, or even the economic downturn (started under Bush) that put them out of business. No, the REAL scandal here is HOW they were put out of business. THEY COULDN’T COMPETE AGAINST CHEAP CHINESE TECHNOLOGIES SUBSIDIZED BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT. This absurd Conservative belief that “tariffs would create a trade war” rather than make our products competitive enough to create jobs here at home, is burying America in a hole it might never dig its way out of. Ross Perot was right about that “giant sucking sound” of jobs leaving the country if we massively expanded (so-called) “Free Trade”.
Another bug up my butt this week: all of last month, I railed about how “public sector job losses” were dragging down the recovery, and the hypocrisy of Republicans… who have a LONG history of using government-jobs to bring down unemployment… turn a blind-eye to Republican governors CURRENTLY doing that very thing, at the same time they are attacking President Obama on “spending” and “weak jobs numbers”.
So imagine my surprise last week to see my beloved ThinkProgress link to a story Friday on how “public sector job creation soared under President Bush” while it has plunged under President Obama. Glad to see them FINALLY come to the Party, but I emailed them my own coverage of the topic nearly a month ago. A “hat-tip” would of been nice (not that I do this for the attaboys).
Also of note, Tuesday will be the Recall election of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker. It is almost unimaginable that someone who: publicly (and unwittingly) confessed to considering “planting troublemakers within anti-Walker protest rallies”, admitted that his plan to break up public unions had nothing to do with balancing the states’ budget, and even admitted (again unwittingly) on camera that his strategy to “permanently turn the state red” was “divide & conquer” (pitting the people against unions until the unions were destroyed), and carries the distinction of being “the only governor in the nation with a criminal defense fund“… could be leading the polls by as many as 7-points the weekend before the election. But then again, thanks to the “Citizens United” ruling, a flood of money from some very rich special interests from outside the state that would also like to see the unions destroyed, have flooded money into the Walker campaign at a more than 10-to-1 cash advantage, to the point where even some union members are supporting him (that’s a link to the “Union Members for Walker” Facebook page.) All I can ask is: “Are you out of your freakin’ minds?” I pray that the polls are wildly off because they don’t poll the most motivated anti-Walker voters: young people with cell phones.
Republicans, I have to ask: Do you believe in Class Action Lawsuits? That’s when a group of people harmed by the same corporation join forces to sue as a group because no single person could go up against a Billion dollar company and not get squashed like a bug. THAT’S what a UNION is. It levels the playing field between corporations with all the money and employees with limited resources. Destroy the unions and you better pray you never have to go up against them in court. As the bumper sticker says:
Another topic on my mind this week, I want to rant for a moment about My Integrity… or more precisely, Republicans who call it into question.
Last weeks column was on a very complex subject deserving (as I noted repeatedly) deeper investigation by people with more time & resources than myself. While examining Governor Romney’s “job creation” record, I came away with more questions than I started, namely, why a close friend of Mitt’s came to him with a “jobs program” in which all of the risk fell on himself and asked nothing of the state? Then, when I found two criminal indictments before the Massachusetts state court connected to the same bank at the same time as their deal with the governor, it certainly got my Spidey-sense tingling.
But I made a small error in my report (which I updated to note), saying that Romney had recently cost the state “4,000 jobs” by allowing a merger to go through that he had to power to stop but didn’t (and thus in need of a lifeline.) But, as was pointed out to me in the comments, the “4,000 figure” was the “total number of jobs affected by the merger” (the entire company workforce), not “lost”. My integrity was also called into question for not pointing out that the same sweetheart deal offered Romney was also going on in Pennsylvania by the same bank. (Note: If it matters, the same bank was being sued in Pennsylvania for “copyright infringement” at the same time.)
Note, I don’t blog for a living. As you’ve noticed, there are no adds on this site, nor requests for donations. It’s a hobby. It’s my “rooftop” to shout from that I pay for out of pocket. I tried ads once, but when they started showing ads for people/causes that I don’t support, I dumped them. And while mistakes are bound to be made, I take great pains not to flub The Big Stuff. Hopefully you’ve noticed that I attempt to provide a link to EVERY assertion I make to back me up. And like my “4,000” flub, if I make a mistake, let me know and I’ll correct it. I find it almost comical that anyone would accuse me of “hiding” something that they only know BECAUSE I LINKED TO IT.
But that’s what Conservatives do. When presented with something they can’t refute, they’ll pick it apart for the tiniest flaw, then go after that tiny flaw like a dog that hasn’t eaten in a week, believing that if they can destroy that one thing, they’ve destroyed your entire argument. “How can you trust anything he says when he got this one simple thing wrong?” Once again, if I’m not certain about something, I’ll say so, and recommend further investigation. Do NOT question my integrity you little Brownshirt crotch-lice.
Note to Republicans: Just because you tell me you “hate Mitt Romney” DOESN’T MEAN YOU’RE NOT A REPUBLICAN. Only in GOP-land does a 100% adherence to each and every thing your Party says or does make you “a Republican”, and if you disagree on anything, that makes you “an Independent”. No children, I disagree with my Party… even President Obama… frequently. But I still call myself a Democrat. That’s because I’m an adult. I believe in an “ideal”, not an “ideology”.
Whew! Glad to get all that off my chest.
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June 4, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · 4 Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, Energy Independence, Environment, Jobs, Money, Politics, Rants, Taxes
Romney HAS a post-Bain record. Let’s look at it. (Possible Criminal Quid Pro Quo?)
May 28, 2012
Mitt Romney likes talking about his “private sector record at Bain Capital” as a “job creator”, saying that that experience makes him better suited to be president than Barack Obama. He doesn’t like talking about his time as governor of Massachusetts (2003-2007) with lousy economic record and pushing through a state-wide health insurance mandate that gives Tea Party members fits of indigestion. But no one ever seems to point out the obvious: that he was governor AFTER leaving Bain Capital in 1999. So we don’t have to guess what his business experience would bring to public office. Just go back and look. But before that, Romney was brought in to head the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympic Games. How did THAT go as well?
So, what exactly did Mitt Romney do at Bain Capital do that would prepare him for the job of leading a state or entire nation?
First off, it is vitally important to understand that “Bain Capital” is only the “financial services division” of a management consulting firm Romney worked for called “Bain & Company”. Mr. Bain himself appointed Romney to his new financial services division, “Bain Capital”, in 1984 (unverified via Wiki), managing their investments, providing venture capital, and purchasing distressed businesses for their assets (see the movie “When Mitt Romney Came To Town” for more on this. Not every company they tanked was failing):
“Bain Capital’s” job was to make the parent company money. Period. So instead of rescuing distressed companies, Bain Capital did things like buying up companies with lots of assets but otherwise in need of money to return to profitability, then liquidate those assets. Bain also dabbled in “venture capital”, making startup loans to people with promising business ideas. Sometimes those investments paid off, like “Staples”… an office supply chain that got its startup money from Bain in 1986. But most times, it was FAR more profitable to simply buy a distressed company, drive it into the ground to extract every last bit of production value, raid the employees pension fund (dumping the obligation off on the U.S. taxpayer), fire everyone, sell off the company’s assets and close it down. But making money off venture capital investments can take years vs being a Corporate raider. So that’s typically what Mitt Romney did. He didn’t start “Staples” or “Sports Authority”. Other entrepreneurs actually did the heavy lifting of developing a business plan, seeking suppliers and running the day-to-day operations (though Romney DID sit on the Board of Directors for Staples for ten years… which is common among major investors in a startup.)
Romney left Bain in 1999 to become president of the “Salt Lake Organizing Committee” for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games following a “bribery scandal” that tarnished the reputation of Salt Lake City. Romney was the third person elected to head the SLC Olympic Committee in 18 months after the first two left amid scandal. Romney was appointed just 48 hours after the previous president was forced to resign amidst bribery charges. So why Mitt Romney? All this unethical behavior was a huge black-eye for the state of Utah. So basically, it was a PR move because Salt Lake City is the headquarters of the Mormon church and Romney… with “deep Utah roots”… was among the richest high-profile Mormon’s in the country.
As head of the Olympic organizing committee, Romney lobbied Congress for earmarks totaling $1.3Billion dollars to help pay for the Olympic Games (understandable for the first post 9/11 Olympics). During the 2008 GOP Primaries, Senator McCain called Romney’s Olympic largess “a National Disgrace”. So in 2008 when the auto industry needed $80Billion to save an entire industry, Romney says they should of “looked to the private sector” for funding, but when the corrupt SLC Olympic Committee needed a mere $1.3B to stay afloat, Romney went hat-in-hand to Congress to ask for a bailout. Bailouts for me but not for thee. Is this an example of Romney’s financial management skills acquired in the “private sector” at Bain Capital that he would bring to the job of President?
After the 2002 Olympic Games, Romney ran for governor of Massachusetts (home of Bain) touting his “managerial experience” via both his time at Bain and The Olympics. (ABC News recently uncovered video of Romney in 2002 bragging of his prowess of going to Washington and getting money for the Olympics as an asset to be governor) Romney won, serving one four-year term (2003-2007). The year before Romney’s election, Massachusetts fell from 14th place in job creation to 50th. Why? I’m not really sure. Some mention online of the plunge in the stock market at the start of Bush’s first year in office, but as for a specific cause, I couldn’t say (if you know, please Comment). So in the midst of this mess, Romney won the governorship promising “jobs” and “economic growth”.
Some stories from the intervening years:
November 2003: Romney fights to keep gay-marriage illegal. (I found that after his 1994 assertion that he would be “better on gay rights than Ted Kennedy”, Romney seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to live down his “gay-friendly” image, focusing more on keeping “gay marriage” illegal than he did focusing on “job creation”.)
In the 2004 state-wide races, Romney campaigned heavily to get more Republicans elected to state office (and was defeated soundly).
This is where things get VERY interesting…
(I probably could of have made this section a post unto itself if not for the limited resources available to me.)
February 2005: Governor Romney unveiled his “jobs program” jointly with “Citizens Financial Group”… a Massachusetts bank… to provide small business loans to people who promise to create “one job for every $25,000 borrowed.” CFG approached Romney with the idea to offer super low-interest business loans, agreeing to assume all risk on loans of just 2.5% APR (well below the then national average of 5.5%). I found no reports of the contract being put up for a bid. Low-rate business loans with no risk to the state? Naturally, the Romney Administration jumped at the proposal. This all strikes me as very odd. Why would any bank lobby for the chance to assume all risk on low-return loans? Yes, they were given a monopoly, but at just 2.5% APR, they could of have cornered the market on their own. So I’m a bit stumped. Was this a Sweetheart Deal? CFG was run by Romney friend, “Staples” founder Tom Stemberg. Note: a month later, CFG was charged with fraud in an unrelated matter (“unethical or dishonest conduct” for “systematically targeting senior citizens” for sales of uninsured high risk/penalty variable-annuities.) Was this a case of Quid Pro Quo? Aiding Romney in exchange for leniency in their fraud case? After searching news archives from February of 2005 to January of 2009, I could find NO information regarding the outcome of the case nor if the case itself was even brought before a judge at all. This could suggest someone got the case dismissed, OR simply, the info is beyond the resources available to me online.
This “jobs program” was introduced by Romney following a corporate merger he was roundly criticized for not preventing (ibid “jobs program” link above) between “Proctor & Gamble” and “Gillette” that cost the state some 4,000 (edit: “4,000” appears to be the total job pool. More info needed) jobs. Interesting. A corporate buyout that led to the shedding of jobs for the profit of just one organization… does THAT sound like a skill Romney picked up from his years at Bain that he was able to apply to the role of Governor? It certainly appears as though Stemberg threw his friend Romney a lifeline (the cheap business loan program) when he needed it most.
This 2005 Bulletin from the SEC reveals that four employees of “Global Time Capital Management” were charged with “insider trading” that netted them over three-quarters of a million dollars during the 2004 “Citizens Financial Group” (CFG) merger with “Charter One Bank”. Among the people charged, two former CFG employees: hedge-fund manager Michael Tom and Shengnan Wang, as well as Tom’s brother David and Shengnan’s husband Hai Liu. The merged bank, “Citizens Bank” is the one that approached the Romney Administration with the idea for the low-rate small business loan “jobs program”. Wang, 29, received a tip from “a friend” still working at CFG about the pending merger, which she then shared with Tom and her husband Hai Liu. All of them were eventually convicted of insider trading, but not until 2009. Romney left office in 2007. I found no reports of Tom’s brother David ever being convicted. Liu also shared the tip with his brother “Zheng”, who was not charged (David Tom made $39K off his tip. Zheng Liu, less than $3K.)
March 2005: Romney ran radio ads attacking the State Senates’ decision to allow fetal stem cell research. Note, 2005 was NOT an election year. This makes Romney perfect for Right-wingers that think “bipartisanship” is a dirty word.
June 2005: Romney backed measures to ban gay-marriage AND civil unions. Again, Romney obsessing on “teh gays”.
November 2006: Romney fights to get gay-marriage on the 2008 ballot. This was the popular Right-Wing trick in 2004 to draw disillusioned Conservatives to the polls to help defeat John Kerry and retain a Republican Congress. Clearly, Romney was already greasing the skids for his own presidential run in 2008, hoping for lightning to strike twice.
Romney’s “jobs” record as governor:
As John McCain pointed out on “Fox news Sunday” yesterday, when Romney took office as governor of Massachusetts in January of 2003, the state’s unemployment rate was 5.6% (all figures via BLS.gov) and only 4.7% when he left office four years later. McCain surmised what this might have meant if only Romney had been elected president in 2008 instead of Obama (gee John, might YOU of have had something to do with that?). A great record. Who could argue with a “4.7% unemployment rate”? Until, of course, we compare this to the National numbers at the time. When Romney took office as governor, the National unemployment rate was 5.8 percent… two points higher than the MA rate. So he had a slight “head start” to begin with. Four years later, the National unemployment rate was just 4.4%… three points below Romney’s 4.7%. So in the four years Romney was governor, he did slightly worse than President Bush in that same four year timespan. While the nation saw a 1.4% drop in unemployment between 2003 and 2007, Massachusetts saw just a 0.9% decrease over that same period. Color me not impressed.
And… as I illustrated in detail two weeks ago… like most Republicans screaming about “spending” and “growth in the size of government”, Governor Romney was no different (if not worse than most), greatly increasing the size of the MA state government by 40,700 jobs (and if taken from his December, 2003 low after unemployment rose to 6.0%, Romney added 85,400 government jobs.)
Massachusetts (2003-2006)
By the end of Romney’s term four years later, the rate of private sector job growth (ie: “new jobs”) hardly budged. Massachusetts “rose” just three places nationally from 50th to 47th place. The state likely would of retained the title of “Worst state in the Nation for job creation” had it not of been for the collapse of the auto industry in Ohio & Michigan, and Hurricane Katrina devastating Louisiana. Again I ask: Is this another example of what Romney’s “private sector experience” brings to the job of president?
(Note: When Romney’s term ended, he left Massachusetts with a 34 percent approval rating.)
(Postscript: On an unrelated issue, I noticed something stunning at the end of Friday night’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” on NBC. Guest celebrity Rob Lowe learned that his earliest American relative was actually a Hessian (German) soldier fighting for the British against the American Colonists. The story had a happy ending though when Lowe received a letter from the D.A.R. (“Daughters of the American Revolution”) that confirmed that after deciding to stay in America, Lowe’s relative was deemed “a patriot” because records show his ancestor PAID HIS TAXES to help fund the Revolution:
200 years ago, paying your taxes made you a PATRIOT
(click to enlarge)What a concept.
Post-Postscript: A thought just occurred to me. Am I the only one that remembers during Bush’s first term, run-of-the-mill Republicans claiming that “the *previous* president is to blame” for all the problems of their successor because “all the policies they passed don’t take effect until *after* they’re out of office!” Ergo, Clinton’s success was all George HW Bush’s doing, and Bush-II’s failure was all Clinton’s fault. Or was that just MY brother-in-law and RW classmates?
Commenting open to all. Your feedback is appreciated.
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May 28, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · 8 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, Economy, Election, Jobs, Money, Politics
Not Your Father’s GOP (video)
May 21, 2012
After all the work I put into last weeks blog entry (digging through years of employment statistics for every state in the nation going back to the start of 2009), I decided to treat myself to something fun. I’ve had the idea for this video sitting on my desktop for nearly a year. Now seemed as good a time as any to finally bring it to life. Enjoy!
Also note: Now that Ron Paul has finally conceded the race to Romney, I moved the remaining “List” to it’s own page (see “Reasons to NOT vote for Romney” on the toolbar above.)
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May 21, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, General, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity
States most likely to REJECT austerity to lower unemployment are Republican
May 13, 2012
Rope-A-Dope: a boxing term coined by heavyweight prize-fighter George Foreman in his 1974 “Rumble-in-the-Jungle” with Muhammad Ali. Foreman… clearly winning… repeatedly pinned a battered Ali against the ropes, landing dozens of punches on the weary ex-champ. But the joke was on Foreman. While exhausting himself by pounding away at his opponent, Ali was “resting up” against the ropes, catching his second-wind to come back and defeat the worn-out George Foreman. “Rope-a-Dope” has since come to mean anyone that foolishly does exactly what their opponent wants, tricking them into hurting themselves, leading to their eventual defeat. Republicans wail about the need for “austerity”… the need to drastically cut government spending… as the ONLY path to economic recovery. It’s the heart of “The Ryan Plan” Republicans are so in-love with (as someone else noted, for all the Republican hatred of all things European, why copy THIS from them?). And any Democrat that dare proclaim a need for government “Stimulus” is branded a borderline Communist, that Conservative voters are then whipped into a frenzy to push out of office. But in fact, following a thorough examination of state employment figures of just the past four years, I found that the states most likely to expand the public workforce in order to cut unemployment are Republican. Meanwhile, Democrats are bullied into cutting spending in fear of being called “tax & spend Liberals” in an election year. Rope-a-Dope.
Last week, I included the following graph of the increase in Public Sector job growth under President Reagan after unemployment broke 10%:
President Obama himself pointed out this fact in a speech at SUNY (State University, New York), Albany last week (video):
“And it’s worth noting, by the way — this is just a little aside — after there was a recession under Ronald Reagan, government employment went way up. It went up after the recessions under the first George Bush and the second George Bush. So each time there was a recession with a Republican President, compensated — we compensated by making sure that government didn’t see a drastic reduction in employment.”
Once again, IOKIYAR to use the Public Sector to make your unemployment figures look good. But when a DEMOCRAT is president, “the government spends too much!” and “we must reduce the size of government” to the point where even threatening to DEFAULT on the National Debt is promoted as a serious option.
In fact, a LOT of people over the past week have questioned the wisdom of Conservative “austerity” as the solution to fixing the global economic crisis. And not just here in the U.S.. In France, they dumped Conservative, Bush-loving, austerity-advocating President Sarkozy, electing their first Socialist president since 1995. In Greece, a split-decision has left their elections in chaos with the “New Democrats” winning the largest proportion of votes (18.9%) and more than a third of the seats in Parliament, almost assuredly leading to a second election two months from now. One thing’s for sure, the big loser in the Greek elections was “austerity”. Austerity doesn’t work, a point economist Paul Krugman has been making for years. WSJ columnist Justin Lahart reported last week that if it weren’t for government layoffs, the unemployment rate would be closer to “7.1%”. And as I reported on May 5th, over 600,000 government jobs have been cut since President Obama took office… jobs that existed when George W. Bush was in the White House, yet you didn’t hear Republicans threatening to shut down the government over the (then) exploding Deficit, did’ya?
Austerity is a giant wet blanket on the economy. When people aren’t spending, businesses go broke, laying off more people who then don’t have money to spend. It’s a vicious cycle. We need government to be the “customer of last resort” to give companies a reason to hire/expand again. Giving enormous tax breaks to companies isn’t going to motivate them to hire more employees when they can already meet demand with their existing workforce. And $500 “Stimulus checks” like President Bush handed out twice were huge failures because in a bad economy, people don’t spend their windfall, they pay off things they ALREADY bought. The rest they put in the bank out of fear for what the future holds. This is why Republicans suck as growing the economy WHILE simultaneously exploding the Debt with tax cuts.
So while Republicans embrace “The Paul Ryan Budget” and scream at Democrats for their unwillingness to embrace austerity to fix our economy, I naturally just assumed that Republicans at the State & Local level were slashing government jobs in the name of “austerity”, hurting (deliberately?) the monthly Federal Unemployment figures. (And you know what happens when you assume.)
Most graphs of the number of State & Local employees since Barack Obama took office all look a lot like this:
…peaking during the Bush Administration, plunging in Obama’s first year, and slowly climbing back towards Bush-era levels. In fact, state employment in 49 of 50 states is back within 3 percent of where it was before Obama took office (the lone outlier: Nevada, where state employment under Republican Governor Sandoval is only 93% of where it was four years ago, and by no coincidence, has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 12.0%.)
(ref: Unemployment rate by state)
Of the 16 states with Public Sector employment at or above where they were four years ago, TWELVE are Republican:
| State (Gov) | Growth of Public Workforce since 2008 |
Unemployment Rate |
| Alaska (R) | 103% | 7.0% |
| Indiana (R) | 100.4% | 8.2% |
| Kentucky (D) | 101% | 8.6% |
| Louisiana (R) | 101% | 7.1% |
| Massachusetts (D) | 101% | 6.5% |
| Michigan (R) | 101% | 8.5% |
| North Dakota (R) | 112% | 3.0% |
| New York (D) | 101% | 8.5% |
| Oklahoma (R) | 100% | 5.4% |
| Pennsylvania (R) | 101% | 7.5% |
| Tennessee (R) | 100% | 7.9% |
| Texas (R) | 102% | 7.0% |
| Utah (R) | 100.5% | 5.8% |
| Vermont (D) | 100% | 4.8% |
| Virgina (R) | 100.3% | 5.6% |
| West Virgina (R) | 100.7% | 6.9% |
You read that right. The states with the most Public Sector hiring are 3 times more likely to be Republican (map of Party control by governor). And take a look at North Dakota! The state with the greatest increase in Public Sector jobs also has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation at a paltry 3.0%. Shocker, Republicans are big freakin’ hypocrites. Of course, I should of known this already following my debunking of Rick Perry’s “Texas Miracle” nearly a year ago. Wanna see what a “Texas Miracle” looks like in terms of government jobs?
A few states dramatically buck the standard “Arizona” model (see graph near the beginning of this Op/Ed) for Public Sector job growth. Here are a few notable exceptions:
Alaska dramatically increased the size of government (lowest point around day Palin resigns: July, 2009):
Indiana, home of Governor Mitch Daniels who recently said we need to “Slash government even if it costs jobs”:
Louisiana public job growth spikes right around the time the BP oil-spill cleanup begins (April, 2010):
New York (a blue state) which suffered greatly following the collapse of Wall Street, was unusual in that it didn’t see much bang for its buck (8.5% unemployment):
How did North Dakota achieve that 3.0% unemployment rate? Maybe this will help:
Just about every state started to reverse public sector layoffs in early 2010, but none more dramatically than Virgina:
It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. All I can hope for is that Democrats will look as these numbers and call “Bullshit!” the next time a Right-Winger demands “Austerity!” from Democrats as the way to fix our struggling economy. It’s like a huge joke where Republicans have been playing Democrats for suckers. Rope-a-Dope.
(Note: Commenting has been fixed so that it’s no longer limited to “Registered” members only. – Mugsy)
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May 13, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Jobs, Money, myth busting, Politics, Taxes
GOP “Austerity” is Crippling Economic Recovery. And more IOKIYAR. (UPDATED)
May 7, 2012
Okay, this is going to be another brief but “numbers-heavy” debunking session, so let’s wrap this thing up for all you NeoCons douchebags out there who stumbled across this page in a Google search for the “Numbers-porn” that masquerades as “facts” on the Fox News website. As I surmised Friday night, this insane Republican adherence to “austerity” is crippling the economic recovery. But when Republicans are in charge, “austerity” and “deficits” be damned. They do the exact opposite then “brag” about the results. (And I wasn’t the only one to notice. Rachel Maddow noted the EXACT same thing Friday, of how Republicans increased PUBLIC sector jobs at a rate greater than the PRIVATE Sector, while Democrats do just the opposite, creating FAR more jobs in the private sector while slashing public sector jobs… only to then be called “Socialists” by the Right.)
last three Republican Administrations
Private vs Public Sector Hiring under the
last three Democratic Administrations
(Not sure why they labeled the chart according to “GDP”. I believe they are charting jobs by way of spending on employment.)
As I noted earlier, when unemployment hit 10.8% in November & December of Ronald Reagan’s SECOND year in office (you need to enter the range by hand), my suspicion was that Reagan’s “solution” to the high unemployment numbers was to stop the deliberate cuts in public sector jobs (following his pledge to slash the size of government) and start hiring. As it turns out, Nobel-Prize winning economist Paul Krugmann “confirmed” my suspicion in an Op/Ed he wrote last March. Though he lacked links (which I rely on heavily to back-up my claims), Krugmann does note that “government employment [rose] 3.1 percent” under Reagan, whereas under Obama, government employment has shrunk “2.7 percent”. That’s a swing of nearly 6%.
Checking The Bureau of Labor Statistics (select “Government Employment” for data) for the number of public sector jobs created per month during Ronald Reagan’s presidency (1981-1988), we see government layoffs were put on ice right around the time unemployment breaks the 10 percent mark in mid 1982, followed by a public sector hiring binge coinciding with the start of the 1984 election year:
Meanwhile, under President Obama, public sector hiring is falling through the floor (with the exception of 411,000 temporary Census workers added in mid-2010):
(Now that I have access to individual state employment data, I will attempt to prove my hypothesis that Red States are disproportionately laying off public employees and thus dragging down President Obama’s job creation numbers. It will take some time to analyze all 50 states, so I hope to post my results in an update later this week. Please bear with me.)
Right-Wing CNS News credited Reagan’s government “hiring freeze” in ’81 for his economic success (which, as I’ve shown above, is complete nonsense) while criticizing President Obama’s “government expansion” for the decline in the economy (ibid). Do these people even do the most cursory of fact checking? It’s infuriating what they get away with. As I noted last week (and the NYTimes confirms), we’ve seen a record decline in the number of government jobs under President Obama. Republicans kick & scream about “the size of the Federal government”, then when the Obama Administration slashes government jobs, they run to the microphones to decry the weak jobs numbers as PROOF the presidents economic policies aren’t working. This is what George Foreman called “Rope-a-Dope”.
One idiot over at the Right-wing rag “NewsBusters” called Bill Maher “an idiot or a liar” last February for claiming “Public Sector employment lost 500,000 jobs” when in fact “the FEDERAL government grew” not shrank. Perhaps the columnists over at “NewsBusters” should crack open a dictionary sometime to discover that “public sector” includes not just the “federal” government, but “state & local” government too. We’re surrounded by idiots.
On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney criticized the April jobs report, saying that “the economy should be creating 500,000 jobs a month” and that “the unemployment rate should be just 4 percent”. Columnist Henry Blodget over on the “Business Insider” website takes Romney to task for such an asinine suggestion, pointing out that under the last Republican Administration whose policies Romney wants us to return to (Bush), the economy created an average of just 20,000 jobs a month. “Ah!”, I hear the neocons saying, “What if you exclude the 2008 economic collapse under the Democrats?” Then Bush’s monthly job creation numbers climb to a paltry 65,000 jobs per month. Number of months under Bush where the economy created that magic 500,000 jobs number Romney says we should be creating? ZERO. Never even came close. The last time we saw unemployment at or below 4.0% (ibid the BLS) was December of 2000 (the last year of the Clinton Administration), when Clinton supposedly “handed Bush a recession”.
President Obama, you’ve already echoed President Reagan on The Buffet Rule and tax fairness for the Middle-Class. One more area where I suggest you follow The Gipper’s lead: government employment. Employing people when the private sector will not boosts the economy, builds our infrastructure, and helps keep job skills fresh, all while bringing down the unemployment rate.
UPDATE 5/9: A bit of a surprise. After checking the number of Public Sector Jobs added/eliminated since the Bush Administration, I found something surprising. Public Sector hiring pretty much fell off the map in ALL 50 STATES regardless of Party. As suspected, State & Local “Austerity” is dragging down the National employment figures. But it turns out, the states practicing Austerity are more likely to be BLUE than Red. Even more shocking (or maybe not), Republican governors are almost 20% more likely to be big freaking hypocrites by using Public Sector hiring to bring down their unemployment rate (worst offender: Rick “Texas Miracle” Perry). I found the results so fascinating, I changed the title of this post from “Red State Austerity…” to “GOP Austerity…” and decided my analysis deserves its own post, which I hope to have for you next Monday.
BREAKING NEWS – France & Greece have told their Pro-Austerity anti-tax-the-rich Conservative presidents to take a hike in huge election upsets. I remind you that in 2007, then candidate Sarokzy of France visited frequently with President Bush, going on boat rides and even once saying he hoped to model his presidency after him. I noted in a video-upload last week that the Greeks were declaring that “Austerity was making things worse”, and it appears now they weren’t bluffing. It will be interesting to see what comes of these dramatic election results where angry middle-class voters have rejected the “common knowledge” of the moneyed elites in favor of economic solutions that call for increased government spending funded by taxing the wealthy.
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May 7, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Infrastructure, Jobs, Money, myth busting, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity
BULLETIN: Public sector job cuts continue to cripple recovery
May 5, 2012
SPECIAL BULLETIN:
The employment figures for April were released today, reporting that the economy barely broke even, creating just 115.000 new jobs… or so the story goes. When broken down between private and public sector job creation, once again, the NET number of new jobs created is dragged down by cuts in the PUBLIC sector (aka: “government jobs”.) Private companies added 130,000 workers in April, while government spending cuts shrank public sector employment by 15,000. As you can see from the graphic to the left, while the Public Sector has created over 4 million jobs under President Obama, the PUBLIC sector (Federal, State & Local) has CUT over 600,000 jobs. That’s 600,000 fewer paychecks being pumped back into the economy. The worst three years on record for Public Sector layoffs. It seems unlikely to me that the Obama Administration would knowingly slit its own throat like this month after month, so I am presently investigating a theory that I hope to report on very soon. I suspect I will find that Conservative/”Red” states with “austerity-crazy” Republican governors are behind the bulk of the public-sector layoffs, hurting our economic recovery (and by no coincidence, the Obama Administration.)
Two weeks ago, I reported “Just the Facts” on the economic success/failure of the past five presidents. I mentioned that Ronald Reagan was only able to finally reverse the economic slide from a peak unemployment rate of 10.8% by the end of his second year in office through massive public-sector hiring. I still need to provide links confirming this assertion. It’s a loose end and I hate loose ends. But from my own memory, I know this to be true, and believe we are presently seeing that effect in reverse, with the GOP’s insane adherence to this “austerity ideology” that is killing our economy.
Also, starting in March, we saw gas prices leap as talk of military action against Iran was pushed to a near fever pitch by Right-Wing Warhawks eager to start another war now that our military involvement in Iraq is essentially over. The sudden steep rise in gas prices slammed the breaks on an otherwise recovering economy. Oil prices have finally sunk back below $100/barrel due in part to the recent lull in saber-rattling against Iran, coupled with fears of economic contraction from Friday’s jobs report. Lower prices at the pump will (pun intended) “pump” billions back into the economy, and we should start to see improved job growth once again come June.
A few Blog notes: The Commenting system should be fixed now, so ANYONE should be able to post comments to this blog, not just Registered Members. I’m sure this drove plenty of people nuts, as it nearly drove me nuts for over a year hunting down the problem. This should (hopefully) encourage more people to join in the discussions on each topic.
Also of note, I updated many of the side links and encourage you to check them out. Following Arrianna Huffington’s insane criticism of President Obama (yes, irony, the story link is on HuffPo) for using the capture of bin Laden in a campaign video, I have replaced the Blogroll link to the Huffington Post with “Stonekettle Station”… another popular “hobby-blog” and favorite of mine similar to M.R.S. that also exists to point out the hypocrisy and general insanity of the Right.
Check back on Monday for our regular weekly update. – Mugsy
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May 5, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Jobs, Politics, Right-Wing Insanity
Spiking the Football: Republicans Criticize Obama for Criticizing Romney on OBL Anniversary
April 30, 2012
Tuesday will be the first anniversary of the day President Obama got Osama bin Laden. And it is driving Republicans nuts. The fact that President Obama would DARE use “a moment of national unity” for political gain (see: “9/11”)… well, that’s just plain offensive to them. How DARE he “spike the football”… referring to President Obama’s comment last year explaining why they would not be releasing the photos of the dead bin Laden, which would only serve to inflame our enemies in the Middle East. President Obama called the assassination “a moment of national unity”.. a point Republicans are now quick to ridicule the president for using in a campaign video. They are actually accusing the president of “showboating”. (I guess he should of just landed on an aircraft carrier instead.)
“Unity”? Really??? The Right is complaining that the president is “dividing the nation” on what should be “a moment of unity??? GIVE ME A BREAK!!!
Right after the president announced that bin Laden was dead, the Right REFUSED… absolutely flat out refused… to give him credit (a theme we saw repeated after we got Gaddafy). And many still do to this day. I still hear from young Brown-Shirts claiming, “All he did was say ‘Go!'” And that the ONLY reason President Obama was able to get bin Laden was “because of the groundwork laid by President Bush”… the guy whom just SIX MONTHS after 9/11 said he “truly was not concerned about him”, and then closed down the bin Laden desk at the CIA in 2006.
Try to imagine for a moment what might of happened if OBL hadn’t been there in that compound (either because he was never there, or had been tipped off in advance). Pakistan would of had a conniption, outraged by American military action taking place INSIDE Pakistan to get somebody they had assured us was never there to begin with. Clearly, “we don’t trust them” they’d say, order us out of the Waziristan border region and refuse any further cooperation with the U.S…. doing enormous damage to the war in Afghanistan. The Right would of had a field day criticizing the “young and inexperienced president” as a “total failure” fighting “the War on Terror™”… something that “NEVER would of happened if we had elected war hero John McCain!” We’d never of heard the end of it. The raid could of gone horribly wrong (and in fact one helicopter DID crash) or bin Laden could of been ready for them with Seal Team 6 falling into a trap. The number of ways this raid could of gone terribly wrong are manifold. To trivialize the decision of President Obama to go in after him as ‘No big deal’ is beyond offensive.
The gaggle over on Fox “news” Sunday took issue with an Obama campaign ad touting the decision to get bin Laden, contrasting with Mitt Romney for saying in 2007 that “it’s not worth spending billions of dollars and moving heaven & Earth just to get one man”:
They argued that when read “in context” (ah, the mating call of the wounded Neocon), Romney was actually correct. But… as you’d expect… the troupe over at Fox conveniently forgot to include Romney’s criticism of then Senator Obama for saying that “even if bin Laden were found to be in Pakistan” he would [still] “go in and get him”. So whether or not Romney would have gotten bin Laden had he of been elected in 2008 IS a valid question. Former head of the GOP and now Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespi said the ad was turning the killing of bin Laden into “a divisive partisan political attack”.
Is raising whether or not your opponent “would protect the country” as a campaign issue, “offensive”? I ask you: “More offensive than THIS?
In 2006, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos pointed out the fact President Bush was “TRYING to scare voters” by using the threat of terrorism to motivate people to vote Republican and avoid the massive Democratic sweep they knew was coming:
It’s like they just started paying attention on January 20th, 2009.
To them, everything was going just great until Obama was elected. Unemployment was “only 7.8%” and gas was “just $1.89 a gallon” they cry (I debunked this nonsense last week). And now, suddenly, using “security” as a campaign issue is “the Obama campaign [using] an event that unified our country to once again divide us,” according to Romney. News flash Republicans: YOU INVENTED “using national security as a campaign strategy to divide the nation”. Suck it up. You’re either with us or against us.
(Note: Commenting should be fixed now so ANYONE can post, not just “Registered” members. – Mugsy.)
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April 30, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Election, Middle East, myth busting, Politics, Terrorism
“Just the facts, Ma’am.” Important numbers for the Water Cooler Wars.
April 23, 2012
Now that this election year is in full swing, we keep hearing a lot of “pseudo-facts” being tossed about “like Godzilla with a railroad car” (h/t to TV’s Dan Castinella for the metaphor.) Bush’s former economic adviser Mitch Daniels had the gall to (falsely) claim “Ronald Reagan inherited a bigger economic mess than President Obama did” and yet turned things around faster (bull), Sarah Palin tried to blame President Obama for last weeks’ Secret Service and GSA debacles while WaPo columnist EJ Dione pointed out on “Meet the Press” that similar misconduct by the Secret Service was reported back in 2002 under President Bush, and walking-conspiracy-theory Michele Bachmann showed immense “choot-spa” in an interview last Thursday claiming that the President never accepts blame for anything, “It’s always everyone else’s fault.” This from a Party that… when it controlled all three Houses from 2001 thru 2006, blamed everything on 9/11 and Bill Clinton until Democrats retook control in 2007, at which point they blamed the Democrats for everything (even blaming Clinton for the Wall Street meltdown… yes, I know the link is Australian). Republicans were swept into office in 2010 promising “jobs, jobs, jobs”, yet today, they are blaming President Obama for anemic job growth without a hint of responsibility. How does one simultaneously make the case that the poor economy is all the president’s fault while accepting none of the blame yourself, AND THEN accuse the president of not accepting responsibility for anything? Sometimes, all it takes are a few hard numbers to put things in perspective:
Deficits:
$347 Billion: The annual Federal Deficit when President Clinton took office in 1992.
$18 Billion: The annual Federal SURPLUS just months before President Clinton left office in 2001.
$421 Billion: The annual Federal Deficit just two years later after The Bush Tax Cuts. (Yes, that’s a 23x reversal/increase.)
$1 Trillion: ($1,017,071) The annual Federal Deficit Bush’s final full year in office (2008). a Deficit 55 TIMES the Surplus he inherited from Clinton.
$1.9 Trillion: ($1,885,104) The annual Federal Deficit by the end of Bush’s last budget, October 2009.
$1.65 Trillion: Obama’s first budget deficit (2010).
$1.23 Trillion: The budget deficit last year (2011).
(UPDATE: Deficit by Oct. 2015: $435 billion.)
Unemployment:
Carter…
5.9%: Unemployment at the time of the Iranian Hostage crisis (Nov, 1979)
7.2%: Unemployment by the end of Carter’s term in office, a 1.2% increase his final year (and still lower than when he entered office: 7.4%).
Reagan…
8.5%: Unemployment by the end of Reagan’s first year in office (1981)
10.8%: Unemployment by the end of Reagan’s second year in office (Nov & Dec, 1982). Was still over 9.2% nine months later (following massive Federal hiring).
7.4%: Unemployment the month before the 1984 November election (falling to 5.3% when he left office.)
(skipping ahead to the Clinton presidency…)
7.4%: Unemployment When George HW Bush left office in 1993.
3.9%: Unemployment when Clinton left office in 2001. (Republicans credit GOP Congress for this.)
George W. Bush…
6.3%: Unemployment by June, 2003. (SAME GOP Congress.)
4.9%: Unemployment in February of 2008 (after Democrats retake control in Jan 2007.)
7.8%: Unemployment just 11 months later (Jan, 2009). (a 2.9% increase in just 11 months following Wall Street crisis.)
Obama…
10.0%: Unemployment peaks with end of last Bush budget in Oct, 2009.
8.2%: Unemployment today (March 2012).
(UPDATE: Nov. 2015, unemployment falls to 5.0%.)
Oil:
$14.87: Price per barrel (PPB) Reagan’s final year in office (1988).
$19.25: PPB George HW Bush’s final year in office (1992).
$27.39: PPB during the 2000 energy crisis (when Candidate Bush said he’d tell the Saudi’s to “open up the spigots.”)
$27.36: PPB AFTER 9/11 (Sept 30, 2001).
$36: PPB the day of the Iraq invasion (March 19, 2003).
$64.21: PPB the day Democrats retook control of Congress (an increase of nearly 200% in three years.)
$147: Record price of oil set in July 2008.
$53.48: PPB following the economic collapse on Wall Street (Sept, 2008).
(Note: Republicans blame Democrats for oil hitting $147 in July, but don’t “credit” them for gas falling to $1.84/gal six months later. Odd.)
$81: PPB the last month Democrats are in charge of Congress (Dec, 2010).
$108: PPB peak March 2012.
(UPDATE: $45.80, Nov. 2015)
Gas:
$1.42: Average Price Per Gallon (APG) when Clinton takes office in 1993.
$1.34: APG by 1999.
$1.70: APG during the 2000 campaign.
$1.61: APG after Bush’s first year in office.
$1.52: APG after 9/11 (Sept 13, 2001)
$1.69: APG the year of the Iraq invasion (2003).
$1.94: APG 2004 (gas breaks the $2/gal mark in some states for the first time in history.)
$3.07: APG September, 2005 (more than a year before Democrats retake control of Congress), breaking the $3 barrier for the first time.
$4.11: APG record peak after oil hits record high of $147 in July 2008.
$1.84: APG the day President Obama took office (56% decline in just six months following global economic collapse. Slightly more than the plunge in oil prices during that same period.)
(Oil & Gas resume their climb as economy recovers…)
$2.95: APG the last month Democrats control Congress (Dec, 2010)
$3.90: APG one month ago (March, 2012). Price of oil that same week: $108. Price of oil the last time gas hit $3.90/gal: $128.85 in May, 2008).
$2.50/gal: The price Newt Gingrich said he’d get gas prices down to if elected.)
(UPDATE: $2.15, Nov. 2015)
As you can see from these numbers: The Deficit, unemployment, oil prices and gas prices, all surged more under GOP control than they did under Democratic control. And once key barriers were broken (like the $2/$3/$4 thresholds for gasoline), oil did not have to reach the same meteoric heights to get back up there again, lending credence to the theory that “Speculation” has more to do with gas prices than “supply”. Despite what Indiana governor Mitch Daniels would have us believe, President Obama had a MUCH steeper hole to climb out of (dug in part by Daniels himself as Bush’s first Budget Director) than Reagan did after succeeding Carter (and it took Reagan FAR LONGER as well.)
These are the facts, Ma’am. Spin away, but they don’t change for anyone. Especially not The GOP.
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April 23, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · 2 Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Election, Jobs, Money, myth busting, Politics
Paying Your Taxes used to be Patriotic
April 16, 2012
It’s Tax Day, America! Listening to Republicans today, you’d be forgiven for thinking that making ANYONE pay taxes… especially wealthy people… was borderline Communism. “You can’t tax ‘the job creators’!” we’re told. During the 2000 presidential campaign, Republican candidate George W Bush was telling everyone across the country that the fact the government was running a surplus and paying off its Debt for the first time in 50 years was proof that people were being taxed too much and therefore deserved a “tax cut”. Then when the economy started to tank, the “solution” yet again was to cut taxes. Tax cuts are the GOP’s answer in both good times and in bad. One has to wonder if they think ANYONE should EVER pay taxes? But it wasn’t always this way. Paying taxes… ESPECIALLY IN TIMES OF WAR… was not only considered necessary, but PATRIOTIC.
As Rachel Maddow has pointed out in her best selling book “Drift”, most people in this country don’t even realize we are a nation at war, and have been so for almost a decade. Yet, actually expecting people to PAY for that war has become UN-patriotic in the eyes of most Republicans. “Taxing the job creators makes the economy weaker“, and anyone that wants to weaken America is a Communist/Marxist/Socialist/Nazi.
During World War II, Hollywood was enlisted to remind people that “paying your taxes was your patriotic duty”. At the behest of Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, famous composer Irving Berlin was asked to write a patriotic song reminding everyone of the importance of paying their taxes and how that money was helping to pay to fight the war that was securing their freedom. The song… sung by The Singing Cowboy Gene Autry… “I Paid My Income Tax Today” includes the line: “See those bombers in the sky? Rockefeller helped to build ’em, so did I.”
Disney was brought in to explain how paying your taxes in a time of war was the patriotic thing to do:
As has been pointed out lately, GOP patron saint Ronald Reagan was saying THE EXACT SAME THING AS PRESIDENT OBAMA TODAY about the illogic of the extremely wealthy paying less in taxes than the Middle-Class:
…and on what has come to be known as “The Buffet Rule”:
Reagan tells a crowd about a letter he received from a wealthy man that wrote to tell him he pays less in taxes than his secretary, offering to come to DC and testify “why that is wrong”:
You see Republicans, on this tax day, it is important to remember that asking wealthy people to pay their taxes to help support the country that made their success possible was not only NOT considered a burden, but the PATRIOTIC thing to do!
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April 16, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Economy, Money, Politics, Taxes
100 years later, Titanic would of been okay because icebergs that far South are now extremely rare
April 14, 2012
This Sunday will be the 100th Anniversary of the sinking of the RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic on April 15th, 1912. The tragic story of the sinking of the world most luxurious ocean liner is so well known that the story of its demise is now “common knowledge”… how a ship that was declared “unsinkable” struck an iceberg on its maiden voyage and sank, taking with it the lives of over 1,500 passengers. I’ve always found the story of the Titanic fascinating. As a kid in 1982, I purchased a book detailing the “lost” vessel entitled “Titanic: End of a Dream”. Just three years later, they found the long lost ship more than 12,600 feet (2.4miles) beneath the ocean surface, roughly 1,000 miles east of the Massachusetts coast (2/3rds of the way into its trip from South Hampton, England). Thinking about this upcoming 100th anniversary, a thought crossed my mind: “Thanks to Global Warming, how common are icebergs in the vicinity of the crash that could of sunk the Titanic if it sailed today?” I decided to investigate.
Most people DON’T know that the year after the disaster, the U.S. & Canadian marine services joined forces to track icebergs floating in the North Atlantic to warn ships of the potential danger and prevent another deadly collision. The American agency is known as “The International Ice Patrol” (IIP), while its Canadian counterpart is called “The Canadian Ice Service”. Since 1913, The North American Ice Service (NAIS) has mapped & recorded every iceberg floating in the open waters off the North American coast. In the early days, the information was published in book form. Today, daily updates are uploaded to GPS satellites and tracked in real time.
The Titanic sank “in the icy waters of the North Atlantic” after it was unable to avoid a collision with an ice flow that ripped a hole in the bow, flooding one more compartment than the vessel was built to withstand. If you want details of the actual wreck, I suggest you rent the movie (definitely NOT the above Disney-spoof from a 1998 episode of Saturday Night Live) or any of the nearly one-hundred documentaries on the subject. That’s not why we’re here.
So I went sniffing around the IIP website to see if icebergs can still be found in that same area today where the Titanic had its fatal encounter 100 years ago (Google Earth: 49° 56′ 49″ W, 41° 43′ 32″ N)… roughly around the 41st parallel. Fortunately, the Coast Guard keeps these records online. Unfortunately, the IIP only hosts records dating back to 1998. I looked at every map available. Oddly, in 2005, mapping duties were handed over to Canada whose archives are not available online (only daily maps/reports). For the years I was able to check… 1998 thru 2004… I found only THREE appearances of icebergs that far South (details below).
Not wanting to draw any hasty conclusions, I pondered: “Is it possible icebergs often float further South and I just missed it?” Icebergs don’t stay in one place. They move (around 2mph), pushed by deep ocean currents. So I contacted the IIP and asked about icebergs appearing in the vicinity of the Titanic collision today. Happily, I received a quick response:
We do not have the daily iceberg maps earlier than 1998 on our web site, but our annual reports contain twice-per-month maps.
Archive.org has a (nearly) complete set of Ice Patrol’s annual reports, which go back to 1913 [sic: 1922].
It is a little difficult to get around the site because reports are listed by volume number rather than year, and they are not in order.
I can’t give you an exact count, but several times there have been icebergs near the Titanic site. It is not common, but it does happen. For example, look at Volume 81 (1995 season). If you go to page 26 (the 15 May 1995 map), you’ll see there were icebergs near the Titanic site on that date.
Yes, currently, our daily product shows that there are no known icebergs south of 45N. Most of this year’s icebergs seem to be close to the island of Newfoundland.
Regards,
Don Murphy
United States Coast Guard
Long story short, I thought it best to compare the number of icebergs that far south years ago compared to the number of icebergs in that region today. (Editors Note: While extensive, this research is by no mean “exhaustive”… limited greatly by the records available to me online… and should not be used as “definitive proof” in any climate study. – Mugsy)
The oldest available online record is 1922-1925 (PDF), in which all ice formations (bergs, flows and floating ice) were recorded only as coordinates in journal format, making them incredibly difficult to research.
(highlighting & date is mine – Click to Enlarge)
While modern reported sightings are visually mapped:
(Click to Enlarge)
In that first journal (1922-1925), I was able to find four distinct instances of icebergs as far south as 40° N (100 miles South of the Titanic crash site) and seven icebergs as far south as 39° N (200 miles South of the Titanic crash site) between 1922 and 1925.
But between the years of 1988 thru 2004 (the most recent years for which we have maps), I found only eight sightings in seventeen years (only the last date is exact):
- Apr 30, 1990 – 40′
- May 15, 1990 – 40′
- May 30, 1990 – 39′
- Jun 30, 1993 – 40′
- May 15, 1995 – 40′
- Mar 31, 2002 – 40′
- Jun 30, 2002 – 40′
- May 21, 2003 – 39′
Over that same period, I found 10 reported sightings of icebergs close to the 41st parallel (the latitude along which the Titanic sunk). And while I do not have maps since 2005, the Canadian Ice Service does record “Total Accumulated Ice Coverage” every year since 1971, showing a marked decline since 1996.
Almost 100 years to the day of the Titanic’s fatal brush with an iceberg near the 41st parallel, you will not find any icebergs South of 46° N… more than 500 miles North of the crash site. I highly encourage someone with more resources than what’s available to me for free over the Internet to record/demonstrate on the dramatic decline in the number of icebergs in just the past 25 years.
And in a related story: Climate Change is linked to March’s record-breaking weather…
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April 14, 2012
· Admin Mugsy · No Comments - Add
Posted in: Environment, General, Global Warming
![](http://mugsysrapsheet.com/4blog/gop_death_cult.jpg")
