The Real JOB CREATORS

I’m Back!!
A friend of mine commented a few days ago that he hadn’t seen a new post here in a while and he even knew the date of my last post. I replied that I was discouraged the failures of my party to own any of the current debates. My pArty, and the supposedly liberal main stream media, are letting the idiots that dominate the Republican Party lie and lie and lie and even when they get corrected, the media doesn’t hold them to account for lying. This has been the dynamic in America’s politics since the election of Barack Obama. Lies about where he was born, lies about his faith and beliefs, lies about what he has said in his speeches, lies about the 2009 stimulus bill, lies about Obamacare, lies about whose policies created the huge deficits we face, lies about lies about global warming, lies about evolution, and then more lies. The list goes on and on.
One of their favorite lies goes something like, “We can’t raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans or on Corporations because they are the JOB CREATORS!!!!!”
God forbid that we do anything to inhibit Job Creation.
In 2010 Republicans across the country ran for election based on their attacks on the President for not fixing the economy and their promises to implement policies that would create jobs.
In other words they lied again.
They are pointing to the wrong people as the Job Creators! Major Corporations in this country are sitting on TRILLIONS of dollars on cash reserves and not hiring in this country. Small businesses have been given all sorts of tax incentives to hire and they are not hiring despite facing the lowest tax burden since the end of WWII. Why are the supposed JOB CREATORS not creating any jobs? Because they are not the JOB CREATORS!!!
You are
I am
Go to a mirror and look at yourself and tell yourself, “I am a JOB CREATOR!!”
Jobs don’t get created because we repeal regulations or lower taxes or worship at the feet of small businesses and big corporations, jobs get created when WE go out and create demand. When we start buying things, that will create demand and then the supposed JOB CREATORS will start hiring people to make or provide those things WE, the REAL JOB CREATORS, want.
Ever since the Bush Tax Cuts, we have been fawning over Corporations and Small Businesses as the JOB CREATORS and look at how well that has worked out for us. Even before the Great Recession, created by the greed of Big Corporations, job growth had been anemic, the middle class was getting it ass kicked, and the rich were just getting richer. And now it’s even worse.
So how do we create more JOBS. Let’s create more Demand!!!
Let’s put a couple of million American’s back to work doing thing that really need doing like fixing our Highways and Bridges and Tunnels and Water Systems and Sewer Systems. Let hire back the Teachers and Police Officers and Firefighters that we fired because we didn’t want to ask the already wealthy to pay something more in taxes.
So let us directly create 3 or 4 million jobs and watch those 3 or 4 million now working people start spending their paychecks and buying the things they want and creating jobs making those thing they want to buy. It really does feed on itself. So if we directly put 3 or 4 million people and the demand they create puts another million or two American’s back to work all those people are creating demand (and paying taxes, something they aren’t doing now).
Cutting Taxes and repealing regulations haven’t worked and won’t work to create jobs. Creating Demand will CREATE JOBS.
So that is what we need to do.
It starts with the President’s newest jobs bill, but that’s only a start.

Disdain

I am elated that our Congress under our President's leadership has finally passed a Health Care Reform package and it has been signed into law. The bill is not perfect (I am still an advocate for single payer), but its a great start.

I gained a very small amount of noteiriety in the last days of the debate be getting my picture taken at a Health Care Reform rally discussing the bill with an opponent of reform. The thing that struck me about the opposition was their almost complete lack of knowledge on the bill. They kept telling me that it was 2700 pages long and that nobody knew what was in it, despite the fact that it had been passed by the Senate 3 months earlier and was available online for anyone to read. They kept telling me it would take away their freedoms but not one of them could tell me which part of the bill would violate any of their freedoms or which part of the bill was contrary to the Constitution. I was told I was a Communist or a Socialist and the I was destroying the Constitution and that I was pig-headed (they were right about that) and that I didn't have any facts.

But, with one exception, none of them could or would even try to answer any of my questions. None of them could define Socialism even though they knew I was one (or maybe a Communist but they couldn't define that either).

One man didn't call me names and was actually interested in discussing issues. He was of the opinion that Health Insurance Companies were not subject to regulation under the Interstate Commerce Clause of the Constitution because the states currently do most of the regulation of Health Insurance Companies. I disagreed that Blue Cross/Blue Shield or Anthem or United Health Care companies were not engaged in Interstate Commerce, but atleast he had a coherent well articulated argument. He did want to tell me how the Public Option sections of the House passed Health Care Reform bill would have inevitably destroyed all Private Insurance companies but I didn't really discuss that much since the Public Option was not in the Senate Bill that was being voted on.

One man in a crowd of 40 or so opponents that could intelligently articulate real arguments against the proposed bill. The rest either ignored me or just followed me around shouting slogans at me or just told me I was a pigheaded Constitution hating Socialist/Communist who wanted to destroy our Freedoms and didn't have any facts. At least they got the pig headed thing right.

Then today I saw this poll and it all sort of became clear.

For the most part, Republicans no longer seem interested in facts.

A new Research 2000 poll of more than 2,000 Republicans, conducted for the liberal blog Daily Kos, has some eyebrow-raising findings:
-- 63% of them believe President Obama is a socialist
-- 53% believe Sarah Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama is
-- 39% believe he should be impeached
-- 36% believe he wasn't born in the United States
-- 31% believe the president hates white people
-- 24% believe the president wants the terrorists to win
-- 23% believe their state should secede from the union

36% believe that President Obama is not an American. I wonder if many of the 63% who consider him a Socialist can actually define the term. So many of the objections that were made against the bill were simply not true. But Republicans/Conservatives just didn't seem to care about facts or the truth.

24% of Republicans think the President wants the terrorists to win.

What have they been smoking?

Over the course of this debate I ahve become more and more dismissive of Republicans/Conservatives because of the things this poll exposes. Largely they seem uninterested in the facts, prefering to stick to their talking points and slogans.

There are some Republican's/Conservatives who understand these bills and have intelligent articulate objections to them. I just have trouble finding them.

We, as a nation, have serious problems and they deserve serious intelligent debate. But thats not what we have been getting. And with the debate on Cap and Trade coming up I have little confidence that Republicans/Conservatives will be interested in discussing those bills factually either. It would be great, but I am not holding my breath.

24% of Republicans believe their state should secede from the United States. And they say I am the one trying to destroy America.

The Good War?

The President has been involved in protracted deliberations over the strategy needed in Afghanistan. Amazingly, former Vice President Cheney has chosen to criticize the President for being deliberate in his decisions. Amazing criticism from a man who encouraged his President into making a huge string of strategic mistakes, from the conduct of the war in Afghanistan during the Bush Administration, to invading Iraq, to the general tenor of our foreign policy to idiotic and disastrous domestic policies to participating in the outing of a covert CIA officer.

That rant aside, the President has an incredibly tough decision to make.

Like much of what he inherited, President is faced with a range of shitty options, none of whom hold great promise.

Withdrawal on some sort of timetable and leaving the Afghanistani's to their own devices would be terribly difficult to sell politically even if he wasn't already in the middle of two other very important political debates.

Keep with the current force levels and strategy. Probably the one choice no one is advocating.

Bulk up our forces by 40,000 or more troops to expand the current strategy of take, hold, and build that was the concept behind his first troop increase in March. Basically doubling down on his earlier strategy.

Shift the focus from anti-insurgency and nation building implicit in take, hold, and build to a focused anti-terrorist strategy that utilizes special forces and targeted munitions to target Al Queda in Afghanistan and Pakistan and essentially withdraw from the Afghani civil war.

There may be other options, these are the ones I have heard of.

And they are all terrible options.

Any strategy that is focused on building the institutions and military structure of the Afghani government in Kabul runs headlong into the debilitating corruption of the Karzi government. And there is no real evidence that his opponent in the upcoming runoff will be any less corrupt. And this is why any strategy built on nation building in Afghanistan begins to look and feel more and more like Vietnam. And that image scares me.

I don't know how different a strategic picture we would be seeing in Afghanistan if the Bush Administration had not screwed the pooch so completely, but we may now be at the point where the Taliban cannot be defeated. They have used money and what almost looks like effective governance to establish a very strong position in much of the country. And they can easily present us as invaders and occupiers and history shows that Afghanistan is not kind to invaders and occupiers. And what passes for a central government in Kabul is riddled with corruption and ineptitude. How can we try to build a nation based on that central government? Though it would be easy to criticize President Bush for picking Karzai, I don't know of any other Afghani leader who could have been effective at creating a national government in a nation that has never really had one. If there is a leader who would not be corrupt himself and who could create a government largely free of corruption, I have not heard his name.

Take, hold, and build might possibly work if we could bring in enough troops and keep them there long enough, but the more troops we bring in, the more we look like occupiers. The longer we stay, the more we look like occupiers. The more we support a corrupt central government the more we look like occupiers.

I supported President Obama in the election and I supported his decision to increase our force level in Afghanistan early in his Presidency. Now I am not so sure.

Increasingly I believe it’s time for us to accept that we cannot enforce our will on Afghanistan. Maybe we never could have. Maybe even if the Bush Administration had focused on Afghanistan from the beginning it would still look the same, I don't know.

But I don't see any good outcome here. We will continue to lose good men and women fighting a war trying to build a stable nation in Afghanistan and I don't see any realistic way for us to succeed. Unlike Iraq, Afghanistan doesn't really have any history of central governance. It has always been a tribal society where people are far more faithful their faith and their tribe than to their nation. Can come together and stop fighting each other when the need to deal with invaders and occupiers, but they don't see themselves as a nation. Afghanistan is, after all, a nation created by western colonial powers drawing lines on a map that had little or nothing to do with reality on the ground.

We have screwed up here. We gleefully helped the Afghani people defeat the Soviets. The Soviets pulled out and the first Bush Administration patted itself on the back and walked away from a country we helped break. Maybe if we had stayed then, maybe if we had worked with the Pakistani's and the Afghani's to build civil structures and build infrastructure that would give people other options than growing poppies, maybe it might have worked then. My natural inclination is that since we broke it, we have to fix it. I just don't think we can.

We need to be finding a way out. Sooner rather than later.

The President Spoke

I just hope the people listened
And got past the constant din of lies told by Insurance Company lackeys, in Congress and out.

He laid out as clearly as he could what he wants and made it clear that he will not accept a plan the doesn't include some form of competition in the insurance market.

And he made it clear that he will call a lie a lie

It won't stop the lies, some Republican's can't seem to control themselves, but it will put clearly for those who will listen the truth about what is being proposed.

I loved it.

I love Bobby Jindall

I watched the President's address to Congress last night and then watched Governor Jindall's response.

I really hope that this man is the future of the Republican party. To say his speech, especially following the President's speech, was uninspiring is a vast understatement. And that's only style points.

Governor Jindall decided to remind the country of the Federal Governments horribly failed response to Hurricane Katrina.

He distorted the requirements attached to the Unemployment Insurance monies in the Stimulus Bill.

He chose to remind us of the incredible growth in spending under a Republican President and (for 6 of 8 years) a Republican congress and then claimed that Republicans have the solution to solving the financial crisis they largely created.

Being a Republican, he stated that the economic policies he and the Republican party support consist of cutting taxes. Completely deaf to the realization that President Bush's tax cuts didn't give us vibrant growth and literally doubled the national debt in 8 years. 8 years of tepid growth in GDP and 8 years where job growth didn't even keep up with population growth.

8 years of record deficits

And his solution - Cut Taxes

I love this guy!!!

He complains that the US Government is going to spend $300Million buying new more efficient vehicles which provides jobs to auto workers, reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and helps to reduce green house gas emissions.

I love this guy!!!

He complains about the Democrats spending money we do not have on things we do not need. Coming from a Republican after what they did the past 8 years, that is the very picture of irony. and he doesn't even see it!

He seems to thing that the Republican package of pure tax cuts wouldn't amount to spending money we don't have. He seems to think that cutting taxes won't ballon the debt. Clueless is the word I am looking for.

I love this guy!!!!

Then there was his disconnect on energy policy. Some of the programs Republicans have been complaining about (like buying fuel efficient vehicles and building high speed rail lines) are directly aimed reducing our dependence on foreign oil and cleaning up our environment. Then he goes on to say that we must increase use of alternative energy supplies and become more efficient. He does add increased domestic drilling and an expansion of nuclear power to the list of things that our President is already pushing for.

That's clearly going to be a winning strategy for the Republican Party.

On to Health Care.

He states that the goal of the Republican party is to ensure that no one has to worry about losing their health care. Then adds that Republicans don't want government bureaucrats interfering in the decisions made by doctors and their patients. He seems quite content to allow insurance companies interfere all they want. Problem is that President Obama hasn't advocated a government take over of health care. He advocates universal health care through access to private insurance or allowing Americans to join the same health plan used by members of Congress. Republicans love straw men and this is one of them. Obama has not proposed a government take over of health care, so Republicans find themselves warning against something the President isn't proposing.

If this really is the best the Republicans have, they are in more trouble than I thought!!

I love this guy!!!!

Keeping President Obama Honest

I encourage everyone to check out http://politifact.com/truth-o-meter/

It's a site that is tracking President Obama's performance against 510 promises that they have identified that he made since beginning his campaign for the Presidency.

The current count is:

Promises Kept: 9
Promises Broken: 2
Compromises: 3
Stalled:0
In the works:21
Not Started: 475

Whatever you think of our President, he asked to be held accountable to his promises and that is what this site does.

It also confirms or debunks many of the statements being made by people on both sides of the aisle.

If you hear some claims, good or bad, about the President and his efforts, this is a great place to check (along with Snopes.com and FactCheck.org) to find if the claims are true or not.

Enjoy

I screwed up

Can you believe it, a President who admits to mistakes, doesn't try to blame anybody else and commits to doing better next time!!

President Obama last night on NBC News

"I'm here on television saying I screwed up, and that's part of the era of responsibility. It's not never making mistakes; it's owning up to them and trying to make sure you never repeat them and that's what we intend to do."

Now that is a Change.

Wrong Again

I am wondering if Republicans ever tire of being wrong, seriously mind-numbingly wrong??

In 1993, President Bill Clinton inherited record Budget Deficits and a faltering economy. He pushed through an Economic Plan that included raising taxes. It got not a single vote in the House. Republicans predicted economic doom and disaster. What we got was the 8 years of strong economic growth, 21 million new jobs, and a Budget Surplus.

In 2001, President Bush inherits a Budget Surplus and a faltering economy. He pushed through massive tax cuts, only by limiting them to 10 years because of their huge cost, promising strong economic growth. Instead what we got was 8 years of anemic job growth, growing income disparities, a sputtering Stock Market and obscene deficits. By the time President Bush and the Republicans were through, we had an economic collapse to rival the Great Depression, Trillion Dollar Deficits, more than doubling of the National Debt, a banking system that won't lend, a diminished prestige in the world and two wars, one of which should never have been fought, the other should never have been ignored. Oh, and a ruined city.

Now its 2009, President Obama has inherited more challenges than perhaps any President in history with the possible exception of Abraham Lincoln. And now, a badly needed stimulus package has passed the House without a single Republican vote. Sound familiar.

Do they ever get tired of being wrong

About the Economy
About regulation
About Global Warming
About Invading Iraq
About the importance of Competence
About Torture

I almost looks like they like being wrong.

The Marginalization of the Republican Party

The house passed its version of President Obama's stimulus bill this week. Without a single Republican vote.

Republicans complained that it was too much spending and not enough tax cuts.

They even proposed an alternative program. It was composed completely of tax cuts.

There are a number of studies out there that show that direct spending on things like unemployment insurance extensions and infrastructure projects are far more effective at spurring economic growth and creating jobs than tax cuts.

There are also studies that show that tax cuts not accompanied by spending cuts do little to spur short term economic growth, never pay for themselves, and because of the impact of the long term debt they create, do not spur long term economic growth.

Yet the Republican Caucus, despite its constant complaints about Bi-Partisanship, proposed a bill composed entirely of tax cuts.

They have no ideas and little influence. All they have left is to be obstructionist, to try and get in the way of progress.

It is gratifying to me to see them implode like this. They are rapidly becoming a small regional party. Their famous Southern Strategy has come full circle.

Investigate, Prosecute, Convict

One of the issues that our new President has to face is the call to investigate and possibly prosecute members of the Administration of George W Bush for a myriad of crimes, most importantly torture.

President Obama has made it clear he would prefer not to go there. He understands, as most do, that prosecuting members of the previous administration would be a major distraction from what he is trying to accomplish, would damage his efforts to move forward on issues in a Bipartisan fashion, and might, in the end, only yield minor convictions of peripheral characters.

He should do it anyway.

I have no interest in seeing Congress doing the investigating. It would be immediately politicized, Congress would give immunity to people we should be investigating or even prosecuting, and they have more important things to do.

Attorney General Eric Holder should appoint a Special Prosecutor. Perhaps Patrick Fitzgerald after he is done with Blogovich. Or a career prosecutor that was hired by the Bush Justice Department, or another holdover US Attorney.

There is little doubt that employees of the United States Government tortured people held in their custody. The Convening Authority for the Military Tribunals has already dismissed all charges against one of the prisoners held at GITMO specifically that person had been tortured by military interrogators. President Bush admitted to and defended water boarding of prisoners. At the end of WWII we prosecuted Japanese Officers for Water boarding our prisoners. How can we argue that we are above the law, that its OK for us to torture?

The Bush Administration argued exactly that. They were wrong. Torture is immoral and illegal.

It is also clear that the Bush Administration monitored the phone calls, some of them purely domestic phone calls, without a warrant. A clear and unequivocal violation of the Constitution ever Military Officer and every President swears to protect.

One of the ways that we can and should recover our standing in the world is by showing that we don't' hold ourselves to be above our own laws, let alone international laws.

As an aside, were the tables reversed, I have no doubt that a Republican Administration, and/or a Republican controlled congress would pursue those investigations with vigor.

We must pursue the investigations, in as non-partisan and transparent was as possible to remind ourselves and prove to the rest of the world that we are a Nation of Laws.

Despite the cost, despite the distraction, its something we must do.

What happens next

69 days till the end of an error.

Our President Elect is undoubtedly getting advice from any and every corner.

Here's mine.

The day he is sworn in he can issue executive orders and accomplish much. And I think he should.

He needs to address the global economic crisis.

But what he needs to take on, boldly and immediately is Climate Change.

Nothing that the President Elect does will be as important, long term, for this country and for the entire planet, as addressing Climate Change.

In 2000, President Bush ran, among other things, on a pledge to institute carbon caps as President to address the dangers of Global Warming. One of his many lies to the American People.

John McCain supported a Cap and Trade ssytem of controlling and then reducing CO2 emissions in this campaign.

We have waited too long, wasted too much time, and the consequences of inaction are too great. We can not, should not, wait until we have fixed the economy. There is no credible dispute about humankinds contribution to the pace and eventual size of the increase in global surface temperatures. The only dispute is about how hot it going to get and how fast its going to get there.

Its clear that the predictions of the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change were, if anything, conservative. All the indicators seem to point to things moving faster than those predictions.

I just finished reading what may be the most important book I have read in a very long time, perhaps the most important book I have ever read. "Hot, Flat and Crowded" by Tom Friedman presents a clear and compelling prescription for radical action and for the huge economic opportunites that exist in creating the new industries that will emerge in alternative energies, conservation, more energy efficient transportation.

It requires bold and decisive leadership, the kind that a newly elected President with strong majorities in both houses can show.

I encourage anyone and everyone to read this book.

Starting with our new President.