Republicans Want MORE Unemployment, Not Less

Like I explained yesterday, Obama's speech, rather than a bold New Deal kind of clarion call to real action, was a mishmash of mostly Republican ideas that could possibly create a little momentum around the edges of the economic chasm the corporate politicians of both parties have created for the country. But, predictably, the Republicans won't even get behind this! As Obama headed out to Richmond-- a small sliver of which is in Cantor's predominantly suburban/exurban district-- the Republican House Majority Leader said the GOP could get behind a few of the ideas-- slicing up "entitlement" programs and cutting corporate taxes-- while rejecting the whole package.

"I certainly would like to see us be able to peel off some of these ideas, put them on the floor, vote them across the floor and get the senate to join with us so we can actually get something to the president and make some progress as quickly as possible."

The last thing in the world Cantor and his right-wing cronies want is for Obama to go to the people with the plan and start a fight. No doubt Cantor was focused on how the local media in his district would be covering Obama's visit to Richmond when he said "This is my objection to the message that was delivered tonight. The message was: either accept my package as it is, or I will take it to the American people. I would say that that’s the wrong approach. What we’re here to do is try to transcend differences, not let them get in the way in the areas we can make progress on."

Even after Cantor's politically inept shrieking about holding up hurricane and earthquake relief funds-- in the wake of an earthquake and hurricane in his own district-- he is unlikely to be defeated in a virtually all-white district specifically gerrymandered to safely elect Republicans. Bush won with 61% there both times and even McCain managed to win with 53%. Cantor was reelected in 2008 with 63% and last year with 59%. But what he could lose is the House majority-- and his job as Majority Leader. If Obama can persuade enough swing voters and disappointed Democrats that he wants to fix the economy and the Republicans are blocking him-- as they are-- it is likely that even if the GOP wins the Senate-- almost a foregone conclusion-- they'll lose the House.

Obama's package could only be seen as in any way controversial for conservatives if they are only focused on narrow partisan goals rather than on the needs of the country. As much as progressives are, once again, disappointed in Obama's half-assed attempts to get the job situation fixed, these are, after all almost ALL Republican ideas. And they are geared to create almost 2 million new jobs and grown the economy by 2%. With 14 million people unemployed that's a step in the right direction-- for America... but a step in the wrong direction for Republican politicians focused solely on power and on defeating Obama next year at the polls. They don't want any jobs created. They want their fascist ideology shoved down America's throat. Period.

A completely deranged teabagger, Bob Turner, could be the vehicle for Democrats in a Brooklyn-Queens district-- the one I, as well as Chuck Schumer and Bernie Sanders grew up in-- that they're fed up with Obama. NY-9 hasn't elected a Republican since one termer Andrew Petersen... in 1921. But the special election to replace Anthony Weiner Tuesday is now favoring Turner by 6% (according to a new Siena poll). Obama's approval rating there-- where he won an anemic 55% in 2008-- is only 43%. A Turner victory Tuesday would certainly bolster Cantor's and Republicans' resolve to go for broke.

Eric Cantor Stepped In It-- And Can't Wipe It Off

What a shame Eric Cantor has a carefully gerrymandered district that excludes demographically weaves in and out of neighborhoods to carefully exclude likely Democrats or even independents. Virginia's 7th CD was designed to give Republicans-- particularly Eric Cantor-- a guarantee of at least a 60% margin of victory. Bush took 61% both times and even McCain managed to scrape by with 53% in 2008. Cantor won his first race (in 2000) with 67% and last year was the first time he ever went below 60%, beating Rick Waugh 59-34%, Cantor's worst showing ever, but one that most incumbents would exult over. Waugh beat him in Caroline County and in the sliver of Richmond that the district encompasses. Cantor won in the 11 other counties-- with 70% in Spotsylvania Co., 73% in Page Co. and 67% in giant Hanover Co. Safe? Forever? Prominent Richmond attorney Wayne Powell doesn't think so. He's running against Cantor next year.



If Cantor is vulnerable, it's not because of his startlingly reactionary role in national politics per se. It's because how that could impact his constituents. As Paul Krugman put it yesterday, "Remember, Cantor isn’t denying something called “the government” the right to do something it wants to do. He’s denying disaster relief to people hard hit by a hurricane. That is, he’s holding suffering Americans hostage to his goal of smaller government. And the whole point of his offsetting spending cuts thing-- his invention of a nonsense principle-- is to obscure the ruthlessness of the blackmail involved." And Cantor is getting nervous that people in his district are getting fed up with his game-playing.

He told the Richmond Times-Dispatch, that relief funds would not get bogged down in the sort of protracted budget fight that has dominated Congressional politics all year. His spokesman Brad Dayspring, in a statement to several reporters, echoed this. "People and families affected by these disasters will certainly get what they need from their federal government," he said. "The goal should be to find ways to pay for what is needed or to find offsets whenever possible, that is the responsible thing to do. Clearly when disasters and emergencies happen, people expect their government to treat them as national priorities and respond properly. People also expect their government to spend their dollars wisely, and to make efforts to prioritize and save when possible."



That will come as welcome news to victims and FEMA alike, if it turns out that they need Congress to pass emergency legislation in the aftermath of Hurricane Irene.



Mark Merritt, a former senior FEMA official in the Clinton administration said these kinds of budget impasses can be a big drag in a disaster management situation.



"It happened when we were there," Merritt told TPM in an interview Tuesday. "They've addressed offsets before, and unfortunately offsets were from [Housing and Urban Development] money--community development block grants--which are a good tool for recovering from disaster.... Is anybody vehemently opposed to offsets? No. But they need to make sure that if they do them that, one, it happens quickly and, two, it doesn't come from programs that help recovery."

It was starting to sound like when he old crony Denny Hastert declared after Katrina that New Orleans should just be bulldozed and left to rot, pleasant enough red-meat Republican rhetoric when someone is talking about a place filled with minorities, but not what white conservatives expect to hear about their own neighborhoods... from their own congressman!



This is frightening quite a few congressional Republicans who are worrying that people will notice and associate them with an increasingly toxic Eric Cantor. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, some of whose state is underwater, probably wanted to strangle Cantor but settled for the same kind of solid rebuke that Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell gave him instead.

Yesterday, the leading Republican in Cantor’s own state, Gov. Bob McDonnell, rebuked him and said disaster aid should not be held hostage for budget cuts. Now, Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) is joining this chorus of Republican dissent, saying that aid should be delivered first and that possible cuts should be decided on later. “Our people are suffering now, and they need support now,” said Christie:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie reacted angrily to a fight brewing in Washington over whether Hurricane Irene disaster aid may need to be offset by federal spending cuts. “Our people are suffering now, and they need support now. And they [Congress] can all go down there and get back to work and figure out budget cuts later,” the Republican governor told a crowd in the flood-ravaged North Jersey town of Lincoln Park.

Back in the district Democrat Wayne Powell hasn't let this go by unnoticed either. From his blog:

Eric Cantor is doing every thing he can to block disaster relief from reaching the American people in a timely fashion. Cantor has said time and time again that money paid to help Americans affected by disasters must be offset by cuts in other areas of the government. Cantor refuses to consider finding new sources of revenue or even eliminating abusive tax loopholes. Cantor has instructed his GOP loyalists in the Congress to seek cuts from agencies like FEMA, the EPA, and the FDA.



Is that a logical response? Cutting disaster response funding in the face of a wave of disasters makes no sense. Was Eric Cantor disappointed by the amount of misery caused by Hurricane Irene? What about cutting funding to prevent pollution or tainted food? Does Eric Cantor support increasing the amount of pollution and tainted food?



Eric Cantor is leading the charge to make America a third world country, where the wealthiest control all capital and governmental duties are outsourced to corporations for profit. His proposals to eliminate programs that keep Americans safe make no sense.

Bernie Sanders pointed me to an editorial in the Scranton Times-Tribune worth closing with:

British oppression has effaced the boundaries of the several colonies; the distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American."



So declared Patrick Henry in 1774. In doing so, he established the principle that, on certain issues, the clear national interest is more important than any other.



A latter-day Virginian, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, seems to lack that sense of nationhood. His stance that federal disaster relief for the states can come only with budget cuts of equal size not only is remarkably callous, it is, as Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders put it, an affront to the very idea of being a nation.



That is not simply speculative rhetoric. As the Federal Emergency Management Agency responds to devastated communities in Vermont, other parts of New England and New York's North Country, it is suspending funds for major work in Joplin, Mo., and other parts of the lower Midwest that were crushed by a record number of tornadoes this spring.



The prospect of a political fight, akin to the needless and damaging political meltdown over raising the debt ceiling, is galling. The notion that the government of the United States of America can't afford to respond to national disasters is ludicrous and should be rejected by all Americans.



Even more preposterous is the notion that disaster relief, as an element of the national debt, must be funded by budget cuts alone. If President Obama were to suggest that disaster relief, as an element of the national debt, had to be funded through repeal of the Bush-era tax cuts alone, one could only imagine the reaction.



National disasters like tornadoes and Hurricane Irene are unavoidable. Man-made catastrophic governance, like that advocated by Mr. Cantor, is inexcusable.

Obama And Poker-- We Lose

I first met Barack Obama when he was a lowly, cigarette-puffing state legislator with a reputation for being a convivial poker player with his Republican colleagues in Springfield, Illinois. In retrospect I realize that they liked him so much because they were probably taking him to the cleaners every day. Even Obama's most dogged defenders admit he's the world's worst poker player-- even if some of them disguise that as civic republicanism (small r)-- and keeps giving away the store to the economic terrorists and predators in his opening hand.

Obama believes in civic virtue, and in the idea that in a democracy it’s the duty of responsible leaders to reason together on behalf of something they all agree to call the common good. The fancy name for this theory of government in political-philosophy circles is civic republicanism: the “civic” part refers to action taken in the public sphere, while “republican” (a small-r republican and a big-R Republican are very different animals) signals a concern with tyrannical majorities and a faith that reasoned debate will produce a balanced result.

But is he dealing with "responsible leaders?" He understood how to deal with the "leaders" of al-Qaeda and Libya but what about with the Republicans who have publicly declared that their only real priority is to fuck up America so badly that he loses his reelection bid? Are those "responsible leaders" he thinks he can reason with?



Virginia sociopath Eric Cantor has dug in his heals and declared that he doesn't care if people die on the streets, there'll be no relief funding for Hurricane Irene victims unless the GOP gets to cut some programs that benefit working families. He may want to come across as less extreme and bizarre than Ron Paul (not to mention Michele Bachmann), but they're cut from the same anti-government cloth, a cloth that idealizes a Law of the Jungle/Caveat Emptor right-wing dogma, where the least powerful in the society have no protection and no peaceful recourse from the predatory instincts of corporations-- who are decidedly NOT people, having no souls, not even a teensy weensy shriveled Republican soul.



Is Obama going to sit down and reason with House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) who is pushing a tax reform package with the Ryan plan rates, the ultimate goal of which is to further cut taxes on the wealthy and on corporations by approximately 30%, while raising them on already strapped middle class families. Obama's instinct will not be to offer to raise taxes on the wealthy by 50% and negotiate from there. Of course not. It will be to offer marginally smaller tax decreases for the rich and then "settle" by giving the Republicans even more than they were asking for. That's how he rolls. That's how he always rolls. That's why it's tragic that not a single Democrat has the guts to challenge him in a primary battle.

The GOP Will Run On A Kill Medicare/Austerity Platform After All

Here's a reason for this!

Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousands words and the one above, should get across the point we're making this morning. Wednesday night, Sioban Hughes, writing for the Down Jones Newswires, hit the transom with these points from an interview Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor did in that day's Wall Street Journal, the parent company:

--Cantor: Government promises 'aren't going to be kept for many'

--Cantor: Younger Americans will have to adjust

--Cantor: Americans will see current cutbacks as paring back government waste

Republicans will continue a push to overhaul programs such as Medicare, saying in an interview that "promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many" and that younger Americans will have to adjust.

"What we have to be, I think, focused on is truth in budgeting here," Cantor told the Wall Street Journal's Opinion Journal. He said "the better way" for Americans is to "get the fiscal house in order" and "come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many."

His comments suggest that Republicans are committed to overhauling entitlement programs such as Medicare even after President Barack Obama signed into law a debt package under which Medicare recipients weren't hit with direct cuts. Congress left Medicare recipients untouched directly in order to win enough Democratic votes for the debt package to become law.

But Republicans could make a new push to cut back on Medicare as the debt-reduction deal is implemented. The law initially provides for $917 billion in spending cuts over a decade, but a bipartisan committee of lawmakers must come up with a proposal by Nov. 23 to find an additional $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction. The panel's members--half of whom will be Republican lawmakers-- could try again to change Medicare.

"When we came out with our budget, we said, look, let's at least put people on notice, but preserve those who are 55 and older," Cantor said, referring to a Republican-written budget plan that would turn Medicare, now a fee-for-service program, into a program that subsidizes private health insurance. "The rest of us have got ample time to try and plan our lives so that we can adjust to reality here when you look at the numbers. Again the math doesn't lie."

So... voters completely rejected Paul Ryan's plan to kill Medicare-- you'll recall the election of Democrat Kathy Hochul in New York's mostly deeply red district (a district where Obama only managed to win 46%, his worst showing in the state)-- but the Ryan model is still what the GOP wants to hang its hat on going forward.

Or do they? Boehner and Cantor do. Ryan does. But their troops in the field? Tuesday Wisconsin state Senator Alberta Darling, not just a firm ally of Scott Walker's and the author of some of his most notorious anti-family legislation but a loud advocate for the Ryan budget, will be facing the voters in her recall election. She was considered a shoo-in... before she adopted Ryan's kill Medicare talking points. Wednesday she seemed to back away. Questioned by journalists in Milwaukee, Darling, whose polling has been trending down, said she now doesn't know enough of the details of Ryan's plan to endorse it-- though she already did-- but that she supports his "fiscal goals."

This is going to be the great debate that rages between now and 2012. Since Obama is totally conflicted and tied in knots, congressional Democrats have to make their own case that they are NOT the party of right-wing Austerity. Democrats are doing it quite well in Wisconsin. Tuesday will tell us a lot about how the rest of this election cycle plays out.

Breaking News: "Obama, Boehner Come to Agreement That Cantor Is Douche" (The Borowitz Report)

Hot, hot, hot. Not a fun weekend weather-wise, especially for those of us who participated in the New York Transit Museum's Coney Island Nostalgia Tour on Saturday (traveling on authentic restored 1930s IND cars), and then came back today to venture a Municipal Art Society tour with star tour leader Francis Morrone to the posh Manhattan East Side enclaves of Beekman Place and Sutton Place. So I think I'll just pass on this breaking report from the Borowitz Report. -- Ken

JULY 24, 2011

Obama, Boehner Come to Agreement That Cantor Is Douche

Could Be First Step Toward Debt Deal



WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) – In what members of both parties are hailing as an important first step on the road to a deal on raising the debt ceiling, President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner today came to an agreement that Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) is a douche.



Mr. Obama and Rep. Boehner made the dramatic announcement in the East Room of the White House late Sunday afternoon.



“Speaker Boehner and I have come to an agreement that Eric Cantor is a douche,” the President said. “We’ll see if we can build on that.”



The breakthrough reportedly came Sunday morning, but both sides spent several hours hammering out the language before agreeing on the word “douche.”



“Boehner had been pushing hard for ‘dickwad,’” said a source familiar with the discussions. “He was concerned that using a like ‘douche’ could be alienating to his base because it’s French.”



While skeptics cautioned that agreeing about the douchiness of Eric Cantor is still a long way from agreeing on raising the debt ceiling, a new poll shows that Messrs. Obama and Boehner have broad public support for their position on the congressman from Virginia.



According to a new poll of likely voters, 56 percent agreed that Mr. Cantor is a “douche,” 32 percent agreed that he is a “asshat” and the remainder characterized him as a “dickhead,” “cocksucker” or “motherfucker.”



“With all the partisan bickering in Washington, the American people should rest assured that we all agree on one thing,” said Rep. Boehner. “And that is, Eric Cantor is one irritating mofo.”

One theory: Eric Cantor's career has been secretly concocted and promoted by sinister deep-pocketed forces who want to build him up to help foment a resurgence of cutting-edge anti-Semitism in America.





UPDATE: Eric Cantor the shonda fur die goyim



In the comments, Michael Takiff shares a link to a Salon piece, "Eric Cantor: A debt ceiling shonda," in which he asks, "Am I the only Jew in America who finds the House majority leader deeply embarrassing to our people? Am I the only tribe member who considers this smarmy yutz today’s numero-uno shonda fur die goyim?"



No, Michael, I assure you you're not.

When a Jew is publicly bad -- especially publicly really bad -- large numbers of the rest of us Jews cringe. That Jew becomes a shonda fur die goyim -- a disgrace for the non-Jews, an example for the gentiles to latch onto as evidence that every one of us is out to control their banks, run their newspapers, and make matzoh from the blood of their children.

Yes! As I wrote in reply:

It hadn't even occurred to me that Cantor is Jewish until my friend Peter asked. Peter's father, I might note, was a refugee from Nazi Germany who read the New York Times religiously every day of his American life and was wont to ask, anytime a Jew committed what he considered a public embarrassment, whether this was "good for the Jews."

#

In Rupert Murdoch's world, you should always expect the unexpected (not to mention ulterior motives)

To most everyone's amazement, ownership has responded to the News of the World scandal at Britain's best-selling Sunday newspaper by shutting it down.



by Ken



I'm sure you've heard about the incredible story in the U.K., where it was discovered that a reporter for the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid News of the World hacked into the cell phone of a kidnapped girl and tampered with messages, and then it was learned that quite a lot more of such hacking may have gone on.



Well, trust that in MurdochWorld you can expect the unexpected. Word just in:

WRAPUP 3-Hack job! Murdoch axes paper to save deal



Thu Jul 7, 2011 4:40pm EDT



* After scandal, media mogul says News of the World to close



* Phone hacking allegations had alienated readers, lost advertisers



* Politicians across board critical, but have ties to media group



* Government denies delaying approval of BSkyB takeover bid (Adds details)



By Kate Holton and Georgina Prodhan



LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - In an astonishing response to a scandal engulfing his media empire, Rupert Murdoch shut down the News of the World on Thursday, Britain's biggest selling Sunday newspaper.



As allegations multiplied that its journalists hacked the voicemails of thousands of people, from child murder victims to the families of Britain's war dead, the tabloid haemorrhaged advertising, alienated millions of readers and posed a growing threat to Murdoch's hopes of buying broadcaster BSkyB .



Yet no one, least of all the paper's 200 staff, was prepared for the drama of a single sentence that will surely go down as one of the most startling turns in the 80-year-old Australian-born press baron's long and controversial career.



"News International today announces that this Sunday, 10 July 2011, will be the last issue of the News of the World," read the preamble to a statement from Murdoch's son James, who chairs the British newspaper arm of News Corp .



Staff gasped and some sobbed as they were told of the planned closure of the 168-year-old title, the profits of whose final edition will go to charity.



"No one had any inkling at all that this was going to happen," said Jules Stenson, features editor of News of the World, outside the News International offices.



It seemed a bold gamble, sacrificing a historic title that is suffering from the long-term decline of print newspapers to stave off a threat to plans to expand in television: "Talk about a nuclear option," said a "gobsmacked" Steven Barnett, professor of communications at Westminster University. . . .

MEANWHILE BACK HOME, AT THE PRESIDENT'S

TWITTER "TOWN HALL," EVERYONE LOOKS BAD



This is one of those stories where everyone comes out looking pretty squalid. It starts with the president for engineering the silly stunt of his Twitter "town hall," and it comes back to him for apparently not having anything useful to say in response to the question, however it came to be asked.



But mostly it shines a light on the swamp critters manning the barricades for American business and those of the Republican Party leadership. Really now, is there anyone who cares less about the fate of small business than the plutocrats who now pull the strings of the thugs and dingbats of the Right? Does anyone believe that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gives the tiniest damn beyond what he can extract for political gain? Or, for that matter, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Do small businessman not understand how much contempt Chamber CEO and President Tom Donohue has for them?



Al Kamen posted this item this afternoon washingtonpost.com's "44" blog:

Did Obama Twitter townhall lure small business owners?



By Al Kamen



Did Republicans succeed in steering the first presidential Twitter townhall to questions that would put President Obama on the spot?



There are reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Hill Republicans tried, apparently with little success, to do just that.



But at one point, Twitter co-founder and moderator Jack Dorsey said this:



“Speaking of startups, there’s a ton of questions about small businesses and how they affect job creation. This one comes from Neal: ‘Small biz create jobs. What incentives are you willing to support to improve small business growth?’



Obama finessed the question. But “tons of questions?” Do the hard-working small-business owners, the drivers of the economy, folks such as the boutique trial lawyers , the personal-injury lawyers, the doctors, the accountants, the dentists and the bodega owners, really afford to waste time in midday tweeting questions to Obama?



Then we recalled an e-mail we got at the beginning of the townhall from Brian Patrick, communications director for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), citing a Wall Street Journal blast at Obama’s efforts for small businesses and with a subject line: “#AskObama: What about small business?”



We e-mailed but the modest Patrick said he couldn’t claim credit for Neal’s question.



Still. . .

#

Eric Cantor Backs The GOP Paymasters Who Made Him Majority Leader-- Plays Russian Roulette With America's Financial Future

Eric Cantor has taken more legalistic bribes from the finance sector-- $5,046,285-- than any other currently serving Member of Congress. This year, as he championed Wall Street over Main Street again and again and again, the Richmond-area Republican overtook two other stunningly crooked congressmen, Charlie Rangel and Spencer Bachus, as Wall Street's #1 favorite. Last night Cantor showed once again why Wall Street invests so heavily in his career; he walked out on the deficit reduction talks Vice President Biden was holding. Cantor wants tax hikes on the rich off the table, which would force cutbacks in basic services like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, infrastructure, etc. onto the chopping block. (Senate obstructionist Jon Kyl walked out of the talks with Cantor.) And Democrats have mentioned that corrupt anti-tax fanatic Grover Norquist, whose entire life is financed by anti-tax billionaires, is the inspiration for Cantor's irresponsible behavior.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a participant in the debt talks being led by Vice President Biden, said he was “disappointed” Cantor left the talks and accused GOP leaders of being more interested in pleasing Norquist than they are balancing budgets.

“The reality here is that, until our Republican colleagues are more concerned about the need to reduce the deficit than they're worried about what Grover Norquist will say, we're going to have a really difficult time reducing the deficit,” Van Hollen told reporters during a press conference in the Capitol.

...Van Hollen remained largely silent on the specific tax hikes the Democrats have pushed for during the negotiations, making only a passing reference to “a menu of eliminating different kinds of special interest tax breaks and dealing with tax exemptions for the very wealthy.”

“Yes, we have put proposals on the table to say for folks at the very high end we believe there's a responsible way to phase out some of those deductions,” Van Hollen said.

“Even now I'm not going to get into the details,” he added.

Later, however, Van Hollen mentioned agriculture subsidies as one area Democrats are eying seriously.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) suggested Cantor overreacted by quitting the talks as both sides were claiming progress toward a deal.

“Yes, we do want to reduce tax subsidies for Big Oil [and] we want to remove tax breaks for corporations that send jobs overseas-- that list goes on,” Pelosi said. “I don't know that that's a reason to walk away from the table.”

Van Hollen noted that even many conservative economists are calling for tax hikes to be a part of any effort to rein in soaring deficits and balance the budget.

“The framework that's been put out by different bipartisan groups say that you need to ask for shared sacrifice,” Van Hollen said.

He said the negotiations “had been proceeding well,” but he was quick to concede that the two sides had a long ways to go to reach a deal.

“There is no doubt that there were some very difficult issues that needed to be decided,” Van Hollen said.

Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), the vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus, slammed Cantor for walking away from the table.

“Instead of making the hard choices to find a responsible way to reduce the deficit, Republicans are running away from the mess they created,” Becerra said in a statement. “Is this the adult moment they promised the American people in November?”

Kabuki dance or real? Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who IS for real, warned Obama not to use the GOP walkout as an excuse for giving in... again.

“The Republican walkout should not result in the president and vice president capitulating to Republican demands. Poll after poll shows that the American people do not agree with the Republican approach, which suggests that the wealthiest people in the country and the largest corporations should be exempt from participating in deficit reduction.
 
“The American people do not believe, as the Republicans do, that the budget should be solely balanced on the backs of the middle class, the elderly, the sick, the children and the poor.  The American people want shared sacrifice and President Obama must not yield one inch from that principle.”

Yesterday Gingrich, who, it turns out didn't just have the $500,000 revolving credit line at Tiffany's but a second line for a million dollars, attacked Obama as "the best food stamp president in American history." Have any of these guys ever read Jesus... ever? How do the Republicans have the unmitigated gall to call themselves Christians when all they stand for is boosting the wealthy at the expense of the needy? Do you think Gingrich and his pals are counting on strings of diamonds to get them through the eye of a needle before camels? Do they suppose kicking the poor will give them extra credit? Or do they just laugh at the poor suckers who believe-- in religion and in them?

Rummaging around among the disclosure forms of the House GOP plutocrats and debthounds

Is Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan going to teach us all how to marry a mining heiress?

Frederick Deligne, in Le Pèlerin (France)

by Ken



Wednesday, you may have noticed, was Disclosure Day, when congressmembers' annual financial disclosure forms were made public, listing income, assets, liabilities, and other data. The Washington Post's David A. Fahrenthold and Karen Yourish focused on "the firebrand class of Republican freshmen" and found heavy concentrations of Richie Riches and debthounds. They found "at least 24 new millionaires," joining "a Congress that already had plenty." At the other end of the spectrum, however, they found:

Among the 87 new GOP members of Congress, the documents show, at least 30 had liabilities totaling $50,000 or more in 2010.



Those debts included large mortgages on investment properties, as well as student loans and credit card balances. At least seven freshmen had credit card debt exceeding $15,000.

As the WaPo reporters note,

The newcomers have helped press a simple GOP message about the public debt: The country has too much and must reduce its burden immediately.

"Among those with credit card debt," Fahrenthold and Yourish report, "was Rep. Blake Farenthold (Tex.) [presumably no relation to reporter Fahrenthold], who has pressed for major action to control the national debt."

Earlier this year, Farenthold issued a statement rejecting any increase in the debt limit without major spending cuts.



“Like the rest of America,” the statement said, ‘the government needs to tighten its belt and work within its means.”



Farenthold’s 2010 disclosure forms show credit card debt of $45,000 to $150,000. A spokeswoman for the congressman said she could not comment, because she had not located his accountant to discuss the filing.

SPEAKING OF THOSE CONGRESSIONAL MILLIONAIRES . . .



Meanwhile reporter Fahrenthold teamed with Paul Kane to look at the House plutocrats, starting with the ones who run the place: "House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and House Majority Eric I. Cantor (R-Va.) , the GOP leaders who rode to power on the grassroots wave of tea-party activists, are multi-millionaires with financial investments in some of the nation’s largest corporations."

OF COURSE HOUSE DEMS AS A CLASS

AREN'T EXACTLY POVERTY-STRICKEN EITHER



As Howie has been pointing at DWT here for years, this has been a cornerstone of the caucus's electoral strategy dating back at least to the reign of Master Rahm Emanuel at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, whose practice was to look wherever possible for "self-funding" candidates, whose personal wealth, and willingness to spend it to get elected, constituted a gift that would keep on giving: not just providing a campaign war chest, but offering strong assurance that in the event of success the newly minted incumbent would faithfully uphold and defend the interests of the plutocrats. Win-win is the technical term, I believe. As the old saying goes, "Money talks, everybody else f**k off."

And then there's the extra-special case of the Man Who Would Be America's Economic Mastermind, at least if the rising-star class of Republicans have their way. (Remember the "Young Guns"?)

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), the House Budget Committee chairman whose 2012 budget has dominated the congressional agenda recently, has practiced what he preaches in his personal finances in terms of shrinking the mounting federal debt. The 41-year-old is worth at least $1 million, much of it from his wife’s family holdings in an Oklahoma mining company and an Oklahoma gravel company. Ryan’s own investments include holdings in Apple (at least $1,000), Berkshire Hathaway ($1,000), Google ($1,000), McDonald’s ($1,000) and Phillip Morris ($1,000). [Emphasis added.]

Now as we've been pointing out ever since Paul "How to Marry a Millionaire" Ryan emerged from whatever rock he crawled out from under, the man is an economic ignoramus -- and that's not a slur, just a simple statement of fact. His tiny brain is apparently so muddled that it's impossible to distinguish the point at which the ignorance and delusion give way to plain old lies. HIs economic "insights" come from the burblings of Ayn Rand, a writer so stupid and ill-informed that she would have had to be smartened up by an order of magnitude to qualify as a moron.



I don't think "ironic" is quite the word to describe the situation where the man anointed as the great economic thinker who has been charged -- by himself, anyways -- with restructuring the U.S. economy is a total tool of . . . well, why don't we just say a total tool? I suppose it's touching to learn that the Ryans, concerned parents, "have already invested more than $150,000 in college savings plans" for their three young children. What a tender tribute to their parental caring! But we need to bear in mind that this is the economic perspective of the man charged with carving up a new version of the American economic pie, whose idea of "equality of opportunity" is heavily weighted toward the children of men who marry into mining fortunes.



Do we need to ask him specifically how he feels about that "second Bill of Rights" President Franklin Roosevelt enumerated in his 1944 State of the Union address? (The last of the rights he enumerated as having already "become accepted as self-evident," by the way, was "the right to a good education.") I doubt it. After all, it's people like him who have been denouncing FDR and the New Deal since it was being formulated, and now see its dismantling within their greedy grasp.

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