Tag: GOP

GOP Reaps No Outrage

jonathan-cunningham:

Let me see if I have this straight: in the last few days members of the GOP have savagely screwed the unemployed, protected the bankstas, trashed Thurgood Marshall, implied rape and incest is part of God’s plan, defended BP, threatened to either end social security or screw over 20 million plus people who have paid into the system for at least 20 years by making them wait until age 70 to see their benefits, and screwed homeless veterans with children. That about it, or is there more?

You can rest assured that there’s more, it’s just not what you may have been expecting. The real outrage? That The Democrat has made an issue of no part of any of this. Not even slightly. Instead, they’ve acceded to the demands of the minority. Over and over and on every issue listed there. And, in so doing, directly contribute to the seeds of their own electoral destruction.

Oh how we’ve all grown tired of hearing the same rhyming statements that defenestrate the GOP on any one of these issues every time a microphone has been switched on. Right? Oh how we’ve grown tired of the GOP repeatedly being forced to vote against jobs, or bank reform, or Wall Street reform, or BP reform, or the notion that rape isn’t part of God’s plans, or any of the rest of it. Right?

This is why we fail. Every time.

GOP Reaps No Outrage

Won’t Somebody Think of the Fatcats?

FinReg Conference Committee headed back to the table:

In an extraordinary move aimed at winning over reluctant Republican senators, the top Democratic negotiators on the Wall Street reform bill will reopen the conference committee Tuesday to swap out a controversial $19 billion tax on big banks, according to House and Senate aides.

Yes, you read that right. Fresh off nearly destroying the global economy, fresh off being bailed out to the tune of trillions of dollars, fresh off the entire affair being compared to “an ant” by Boehner, the GOP is again moving the goalposts (and being allowed to do so by Democrat asshat enablers, which on this occasion includes Russ Feingold (D-Wis.); thanks a lot, and I hope you enjoy your years in the minority).
The banksters just can’t be held accountable for any amount money, no matter how small, no matter how justified, no matter how directly related to their own future operations. Not even a relatively paltry $19 billion that’s intended to bail their sorry asses out in the not-too-distant future. Nope. That’s also coming out of your ass, American Taxpayer. Hope you enjoy it. The GOP got it just for you. Because you’re special. See you in 2010.

southpol:

The Third Depression:

We are now, I fear, in the early stages of a third depression. It will probably look more like the Long Depression than the much more severe Great Depression. But the cost — to the world economy and, above all, to the millions of lives blighted by the absence of jobs — will nonetheless be immense.

And this third depression will be primarily a failure of policy. Around the world — most recently at last weekend’s deeply discouraging G-20 meeting — governments are obsessing about inflation when the real threat is deflation, preaching the need for belt-tightening when the real problem is inadequate spending.

I’d agree with all that Krugman says above (and in the editorial), but take small issue with this part:

In the face of this grim picture, you might have expected policy makers to realize that they haven’t yet done enough to promote recovery.

I think the GOP leadership realizes all too well that not enough has been done. They have chosen to use the crisis for short-term political gain. There is no other explanation for the withdrawal of unemployment benefits. None. They just want to maximize pain to the citizens out there that may be inclined to vote come 2010 and, more urgently from the GOP perspective, in the 2012 follow-on when they could well be poised to take power in both branches.

Then, of course, they’ll fix it all with a rigorous program of tax cuts for the wealthy. Which is touched on in the closer:

And who will pay the price for this triumph of orthodoxy? The answer is, tens of millions of unemployed workers, many of whom will go jobless for years, and some of whom will never work again.

Yep.

…now that the enviros have embraced a GHG tax or its cap-and-trade equivalent as the way to deal with global warming, conservative support is nowhere in sight. They’re all too afraid of Grover Norquist.
Remember this the next time a conservative explains how we ought to voucherize public education. The minute that happens, the conservatives will come back and decide that we need to means-test the vouchers. That done, they’ll attack the remaining program as “welfare.”
This is not a group of people it’s possible to do business with.

Mark Kleiman on the ever-moving goalposts that “sensible people” must forever be chasing after.

People who have swimming pools don’t need state parks. If you buy your books at Borders you don’t need libraries. If your kids are in private school, you don’t need K-12.

Unidentified Arizona government employee (as quoted here)

Haw…haw?

The GOP is using taxpayer money to get idears on a totally new platform they’re promising. It will be of interest to us all. Wonder how that’s working out for them?

They set up a website to solicit ideas, only to see liberals flood it with distinctly un-Republican suggestions. When Republicans invited the public to rank proposals online, critics lampooned the effort for small-bore notions such as ending a federal program for “historic whaling partners.”

[…]

Last week, the top five entries in the “Liberty and Freedom” category were: ban handguns, “drop the idea that we’re a ‘Christian’ country,” declare abortion “none of the government’s business,” allow gays to serve openly in the military and legalize marijuana.

Great ideas all. So, I’m sure the GOP is dutifully crafting reasoned, actionable legislative agendas for each of these exciting new priorities and running off about a million little seemingly hand-made and gramaticully inorrect signs for people to wave around? Not so much:

Brendan Buck, spokesman for “America Speaking Out,” said Republicans “are plucking out ideas” worthy of consideration and consistent with GOP principles. “It’s not a ‘top vote gets in’” deal, he said.

Ah, so you’re wasting taxpayer money so that you can just keep exactly what you had before. It’s a good thing we can count on The Democrat not to make a point of any of this. That would be shrill.

UI issues

thebroadermarket:

by Jordan Eizenga


…research by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank has found that the current link between high UI benefits and poor job search efforts is weak. Researchers found that unemployed workers who qualify for UI benefits have been unemployed for only 1.6 weeks longer than those who do not qualify for such benefits. This suggests that the persistently high level of unemployment is not so much a function of labor supply, but rather labor demand. In other words, workers are willing to work, but employers are not very interested in hiring them.

Read More

Yep, yep, yep, a thousand times: YEP. While it’s always convenient and even mildly masturbatory to blame the victim, the fact is people want to work. And, like the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, the Welfare Queen with Her Cadillac is was and always will have been a figment of Reagan and the right wing’s id-maginations.

Sorry, but it’s true.

Invest in energy research and development. […] Find a way for utilities to make money from the CO2 produced by their coal plants.

Lamar Alexander, fucktard. Why didn’t The Democrat think of this years ago. Think of all the lost revenue on that CO2 we’ve just been tossing out into the atmosphere. Unforgivable.