History

It is funny to hear some Conservatives/Republicans talk longingly about times past in this country like the 1950's were some sort of Golden Age in America. They do so forgetting that the economy of the 50's was feeling the effect of a huge public works program called the Interstate Highway system, and that one of the drivers behind our expansion was the millions of WWII veterans who went to college paid for by the Federal Government, and that the highest marginal tax rate was 90%, and Blacks were not allowed to vote in much of this country, especially the South, and that women were still largely relegated to Teaching, Nursing and Secretary.

George Santayana, wrote, in his Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

It seems like Republicans/Conservatives are insisting on not remembering the past.

They try to claim that the Civil War was about anything OTHER than Slavery when the preservation of Slavery was the only reason for the secessionist movement in the Slave holding states.

They twist themselves into knots try to say that Hitler was a Liberal.

They lionize President Reagan while conveniently ignoring the number of times he raised taxes, ignoring his trading guns for our Hostages in Iran, ignoring the blatant illegality of Iran Contra, forgetting that he gave amnesty to 2 million illegal immigrants, forgetting that he, as Governor of California, advocated for and signed the most liberal abortion law in America at the time. They give Reagan and his tax cuts all the credit for the economic expansion of the 80's while blaming the Democrats for the deficits.

They ignore the impact that massive government spending has had on the economy with the building of the Interstate Highway System, the Space Program, the GI Bill and all the college graduates that it created, a trans-Continental railroad system, the Panama Canal, the Sacramento Delta water system that provides the water that irrigates California's Central Valley, which is one of the most productive agricultural regions in the world.

They ignore Rural Electrification and the Tennessee Valley Authority and Hoover Dam and the Golden Gate Bridge.

They live is a fantasy land where corporations will do great things by all of us if we just let them, ignoring all of American History with the Robber Barons and Henry Ford's goon squads beating on union organizers and all the damage that corporations have done to our environment in a monomaniacal quest for profit at any cost. They don't want to or are simply incapable of remembering that deregulation of the savings and loan industry led, almost inevitably, the the savings and loan bailout and the deregulation of the banking industry led, just as inevitably, to the Housing Bubble and our current economic doldrums.

They remember that President Kennedy cut the top marginal tax rate from 90% to 70% while forgetting that he also eliminated many many loopholes so that tax revenues actually increased.

They insist that the stimulus package didn't create even one job while ignoring every study of the topic that talks about the stimulus bill creating as many as 6 million jobs depending on which study you cite.

They forget that previous Republicans/Conservatives have a horrible track record when predicting the economic impact of taxes or regulations.

Conservatives/Republicans predicted that the Clinton Budget, especially its tax increases, would cripple the economy.

They predicted the the Environmental Protection Act would ruin the economy

They predicted the same sort of economic disaster for the Clean Water Act, and the Clean Air Act.

They predicted the Bush Tax cuts would spur years of robust economic growth.

And they were wrong every time.

Conservatives opposed the integration of the military and allowing women to vote.

Conservatives and Republicans have made dire predictions about the impact of gay marriage and allowing gays to serve openly in the military while no country that sanctions gay marriage has suffered as a result and the military's of Britain and Canada and Israel are all very respected and capable military's despite allowing gays to serve openly.

Conservatives/Republicans, as late as the 1970's, were still claiming the cigarettes were not addictive and didn't cause cancer and now they ignore the science again and deny that the earth is warming up or admit that its warming up but deny that human activity is the main cause or they accept that human activity is a driver of global warming but predict that addressing global warming will ruin our economy.

They need to actually study our history.
And learn from it

Any Rand and Medicare

Not that this is really a surprise, but Ayn Rand, the Patron Saint of Libertarianism, recieved both Social Security and Medicare under her married name Ayn O'Connor.

This from the woman who wrote in her book “The Virtue of Selfishness” that accepting any government controls is “delivering oneself into gradual enslavement.”

Not really a surprise, but I still find it funny as hell!!

Another Global Warming Data Point

According to the NOAA, 2010 was the warmest year on record.
Confirming one of the essential truths of Global Warming. The globe really is heating up.

And there is no theory that explains this warming better than a greenhouse effect resulting from increasing concentration of gases like Methane and Carbon Dioxide in the upper atmosphere resulting from human activity.

I know its cold outside today.
And its snowing in Atlanta.
None of which contradicts the science of Global Warming.

I understand why the petroleum and coal and natural gas industries don't want people to believe it. And I understand why Republicans and some Conservatives seen intent on doing the bidding of their corporate sponsors. What I don't understand is how they have convinced so many of America's citizens of the unbelievable.

But this all comes at a cost. There is no remaining doubt about what is happening. And while there is debate about how warm it will get and how fast it will warm up and how long it will take to bring temperatures down once we get green house gases under control, there is no scientific debate about the absolute necessity of doing so.

Why is it that people who so often love to wrap themselves in the flag are so willing to believe things that help to keep us dependent on foriegn oil, so willing to believe things that will make our world harder on our children. Quite rightly, our own Department of Defense sees Global Warming as a national security issue because the impacts of Global Warming on poor people around the globe will inevitably lead to instability in many nations, and that instability will likely result in increased threats to our security.

We need to act soon, act urgently, and act boldly. For our country, for our future, for our security.

Believing the Insane

In some of the earliest responses that I saw to the shooting of Rep. Giffords was a piece on a right wing website claiming that the shooter was a liberal because he referenced Hitler and Mein Kampf on some website.

The discussion about incendiary rhetoric aside, anyone who can look at the historical record and try to link Nazism and liberals is either insane or deliberately delusional. I tried to have a discussion with someone who was saying this and this argument was based on the presence of Socialist in the Nazi party name. They ignore the entire history of the Nazi party under Adolph Hitler and decide that Hitler was a liberal. After all, didn't you know that Hitler co-opted several German unions (before he destroyed the unions and put their leaders in the concentration camps). So if the party has Socialist in their name and co-opted some German unions, of course Hitler was a Liberal.

These are the same people who insist that the Southern Democrats who opposed (violently in many cases) had to be liberals because they were Democrats.

Its fascinating for me to have these discussions. I know that many on the right are not all that interested in facts, but this attempt to redefine Nazism as some sort of Liberalism and to pretend that the Southern Democrats doing everything in their power to enforce and protect segregation were Liberals is simply insane.

I have not figured out how they can make such ludicrous claims with a straight face, but they do.

Republicans and Jobs

The first order of business for the new Republican led House of Representatives is to repeal, in toto, the health care reform bill passed by the previous congress.

They gave their repeal measure a real catchy name "Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act." Cool name HUH??

The problem is that, along with most of what Republicans want us to believe about the economy, they are lying again. Every bipartisan evaluation of the impact of the health care refrom bill estimates a very small impact on employment and most predict that more jobs will be added in the health care industries than will be lost elsewhere.

In otherwords, the President's health care reform law will increase employment.

http://factcheck.org/2011/01/a-job-killing-law/

Republicans have also often referred to the Health Care reform bill as a budget buster despite the independent analysis that indicates that the Health Care Reform bill will actuall reduce the deficit.

Its like they just have to lie about stuff. Its not like these independent studies are not well publicized. They include the CBO study. But they don't seem to care about what is real, they only care about whether or not people will catch them in their lies.

Its like their claim that tax cuts create jobs. Not exactly a lie since tax cuts do create a few jobs. But they will never acknowledge that dollar for dollar tax cuts are far LESS effective at creating job than direct spending like infrastructure projects and extending unemployment benefits.

They clearly don't actually care about creating jobs.

They do like making political points though.

By saying things that aren't true, over and over again, even after what they are saying is shown to be untrue.

And isn't that the definition of a lie.

Republicans and Deficits

It would be funny if it wasn't so cynically dishonest.

Republicans have been complaining about the deficit and the debt since at least Reagan's campaign against Jimmy Carter in 1980. Yet since WWI, the Deficit has consistently been higher under Republican presidents than under Democratic Presidents. Let us not forget that President Obama inherited a $1.2T deficit in the FY2009 budget from President Bush who inherited a budget surplus from President Clinton.

When the Democratic took over in 2009 they passed a bill often called PayGo which required that any new programs that they wanted to pass, had to have funding mechanisms so that the new programs wouldn't increase the deficit and the debt. As a result the Health Care Reform bill had taxes and fees and moved some medicare money around to finance the bill and the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the bill would actually LOWER the slightly over the next 10 years. The new Food Safety overhaul bill had to get voted on twice because the funding mechanisms for that bill has originated in the Senate so it had to be reintroduced in the House to be constitutional. Not a lot of costs in that one, but the Democratic Controlled congress paid for the new programs.
Same for the 9-11 Responders Health Care bill. They closed a loophole in corporate taxes to pay for it.
Cap and Trade was designed to be self financing.

So the first bill that the House intends to vote on is their repeal, in its entirety, of the Health Care Reform bill. The CBO estimates that repealing the bill will COST the federal government $230B over 10 years. The Republicans, who whine and complain constantly about the deficit and the debt, want to add $230B to the National Debt. The have no intention of making any attempt to pay the cost of their proposal.

And it gets worse.

They want to replace PayGo with something they call CutGo. Its like PayGo except that it demands that any new spending be matched by spending cuts elsewhere. It doesn't allow using tax or fee increases to fund new spending. But the really stupid part is that they insist that ANY TAX CUTS DON'T HAVE TO BE PAID FOR!

They repeat the same idiocy that tax cuts stimulate the economy and that they pay for themselves over time. The first is barely true, the second is a complete LIE. Tax cuts are the single worst way to stimulate the economy. Its been tried and it hasn't worked. Study after study comes to the same conclusion. 1 dollar in tax cuts adds about $1.06 in additional economic activity. 1 dollar in direct spending (like infrastructure projects and unemployment benefits) add more than $1.50 in additional economic activity.

What do tax cuts really do.

THEY ADD TO THE DEFICIT. Look at the history. Reagan cut taxes, the deficit exploded. BushII cut taxes, the deficit went to new heights.

One of the bills passed in the lame duck congress was a compromise bill on extending the Bush tax cuts and extending employment benefits for the long term unemployed. Republicans insisted that the bill extend the tax cuts for the richest 2% of Americans, at a cost of almost $1T over 10 years and made not attempt to pay for it.

Every time they take an important action the Republicans demonstrate over and over again that they only want to complain about the deficit, not really do anything about it.

And other than the new Teabaggers, most of these people are not studid, they know they are lying and they just don't care.

Success or Failure

Like many Liberals I have been dissappointed in some of the things that this Administration and the Democratic Congress have done in the past two years.

There are clearly things that could have gone better, but the reality is that the President and Congress have been historically successful in enacting most of their agenda.

Start with Health Care Reform. It didn't go as far as I would have liked, it didn't even contain a public option, but its still an amazing advance for this country, something Democrats have been advocating for almost a century.

Reform of the student loan program that will result in more student loans and more Pell grants and simplier applications.

Extending unemployment benefits for long term unemployed until the end of 2011.

Repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell

Reform of the regulations that govern Wall Street and new customer protections in lending.

The largest stimulus package in history resulting in the creation of saving of as many as 4 million jobs.

One of the largest tax cuts in history.

And thats only the highlights.

All in all an amazing legislative record.

I wanted more. I still do. We need to address Global Warming with either Cap and Trade or a simple Carbon Tax. Immigration Reform is incredibly important. We need to finish our withdrawl from Iraq and remove ourselves as much as possible from Afghanistan. Close Gitmo.

I want more.

But they have accomplished a hell of a lot.

I call it a Success!!

We should be proud!