January 13, 2014

No, Congress, You Shouldn’t “Pay For” Extending Unemployment Insurance

The simple truth is, Democrats are still being outmaneuvered by Republicans on economic policy. They’re letting the GOP call the shots, rhetorically, even though Republicans lost two out of three seats of federal government (the Senate and White House). They even lost the total popular vote for the House of Representatives.


Here’s how Dems fumbled the economic debate. First, they seem to have accepted the Republicans’ insistence that there be no tax increases for corporations, which are reaping record profits, and the very wealthy, who are capturing a historically high percentage of our national income. Democrats have treated this as a fait accompli and barely even mention these tax hikes any more, even though they’re politically popular and urgently needed.

Then Democrats accepted the idea that any new initiatives, even those which address our ongoing economic crisis, must be “paid for.” Since new taxes on the wealthy are off the table, beleaguered poor and middle-class Americans are the only ones left to pick up the tab – either through reduced services or indirect tax hikes that leaves corporations and rich individuals alone.

- See more at: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/no-congress-you-shouldn-t-pay-extending#sthash.GEvzxSjs.dpuf

January 10, 2014

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declares a state of emergency after spill contaminates Elk River

A chemical spill into West Virginia's Elk River has led to a tap water ban for up to 300,000 people, shut down bars and restaurants and led to a run on bottled water in some stores as people looked to stock up.

The only safe use for the company's water is to flush down a toilet or put out a fire, Lawrence Messina, spokesman for the state Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety announced on Twitter Thursday evening.

West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared a state of emergency Thursday for nine counties and includes West Virginia American Water customers in Boone, Cabell, Clay, Jackson, Kanawha, Lincoln, Logan, Putnam, and Roane counties.

- See more at: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/300000-without-water-after-coal-industry#sthash.w6Jo288s.dpuf

January 10, 2014

Christie: Incompetent or vindictive ? (Liar)

Editorial Page New York Daily News:
[If you take him at his word] Christie stands as a hardball-playing governor who horribly misjudged or distorted the character of those around him and compounded the felony by trying to skate by their wrongdoing without full investigation. Take his denials of knowledge with skepticism, and the man is a monster.


http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/08/1268212/-GOP-Newspaper-Thug-Christie-is-Finished

January 9, 2014

Texas GOP chair attacks ‘Abortion Barbie’ Wendy Davis and ‘Hispanic’ running mate

The chairman of the Denton County Republican Party in Texas said this week that her New Year’s resolution was to defeat state Sen. Wendy Davis (D), who she referred to as “Abortion Barbie,” and also “Hispanic Sen Leticia Van De Putte as her running mate.” In her Jan. 7 newsletter,…

Read More

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/09/texas-gop-chair-attacks-abortion-barbie-wendy-davis-and-hispanic-running-mate/

January 9, 2014

War on Poverty taught women to stay single for handouts, says Fox’s John Stossel

Women have learned to remain single to receive benefits from the government, according to Fox Business host John Stossel, and they want handouts.

Stossel said on Fox News’ Fox & Friends that the “War on Poverty” only helped the nation’s poor for five years. After that, progress stopped because people — particularly women — learned to depend on government handouts, he explained.

“They taught women, ‘better not have a man in your house because you’ll get more money if there’s no guy there,’” Stossel remarked. “And so people adjusted their behavior. And now they want more handout — what didn’t work, the handouts — they want to do more of.”


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/09/war-on-poverty-taught-women-to-stay-single-for-handouts-says-foxs-john-stossel/

January 9, 2014

New report kills GOP’s radical agenda, Obamacare slows costs to healthcare?

The furthest-reaching political news of the week has nothing to do with who clogged the George Washington Bridge or what Robert Gates thinks of Barack Obama’s completely justifiable skepticism of David Petraeus and the war in Afghanistan.

It came in a seemingly boring actuarial report from a government agency most people probably have never of, showing that for the first time since the 1990s, total U.S. healthcare spending grew at a slower rate than the U.S. economy at the beginning of the current decade.



Snip........


I’ll get to the politics in a minute. But the boiled-down version of the debate is as follows. Healthcare inflation began slowing shortly before Obamacare became law, and has decelerated further since then. It’s certainly possible that this correlation is strictly coincidental — that the slowdown is entirely secular, or so overwhelmingly a symptom of the Great Recession that it will reverse itself when economic recovery is at hand.

But there’s a decent chance that Obamacare has contributed to the slowdown, and prominent health economists — including ones who don’t have dogs in the fight — are engaged in a lively effort to settle this very question. Opinion journalists and political partisans are engaged in a similar debate, although for very different reasons.


http://www.salon.com/2014/01/09/most_important_political_news_this_week_new_report_kills_gops_radical_agenda/

January 7, 2014

States Confirm Hundreds Of Water Contamination Cases From Fracking, Drilling

Hundreds of cases of water pollution from oil or gas drilling have been confirmed by several states, according to data obtained by the Associated Press. The pollution comes from both hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and conventional drilling methods to extract petroleum and natural gas. Pennsylvania alone confirmed 106 instances of pollution out of 5,000 new wells drilled since 2005. Ohio, Texas, and West Virginia also confirmed pollution in reports of varying detail:

Among the findings in the AP's review:

- See more at: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/states-confirm-hundreds-water#sthash.VFJj1QWZ.dpuf

January 4, 2014

Obama Win! Conservatives starting to cave and agree on jobs with Democrats

I bring good news this new year! Conservatives have a jobs agenda, one that isn’t built around merely cutting taxes and regulations and getting the government out of the way so the free market can strut its stuff.

The GOP’s ‘Jobs’ Hypocrisy
by Michael TomaskyJan 3, 2014 5:45 am EST
Conservatives are suddenly hot on measures that Democrats have been touting for years. So why can’t they can’t acknowledge their own party is the biggest obstacle?

No—this includes… are you ready?… infrastructure investment, and a monetary policy less obsessed with keeping inflation under 2 percent. It’s new, it’s exhilarating, it’s brilliant! And it’s the same stuff that Barack Obama and most liberal Democrats have favored for years.

When David Frum, whom I respect a great deal, tweets that a new article should be thought of as “a ‘95 theses’ moment for the reformist right,” he gets my attention. So I clicked immediately and read through “A Jobs Agenda for the Right,” by Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, from the new issue of National Affairs. I liked the essay and even agreed with a respectable percentage of what Strain had to say. But reading it was far more infuriating than reading something by a conservative and disagreeing with every syllable, because articles like Strain’s refuse to acknowledge, let alone try to grapple with, the central and indisputable fact that the contemporary Republican Party—his presumed vehicle for all this pro-jobs reform—has opposed many of these initiatives tooth and nail.

The first big measure Strain touts in his essay is infrastructure. “Anyone who has driven on a highway in Missouri or has taken an escalator in a Washington, D.C., Metro station knows that the United States could use some infrastructure investment,” he writes. He doesn’t lay out a specific program, but clearly he favors fairly broad public investment.


http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/01/03/the-gop-s-jobs-hypocrisy.html

January 4, 2014

Rachel Maddows will not back down from Koch Brothers attack machine

No matter how hard they try, Rachel Maddow is not going to read the Koch Brothers' script.

Here's how this whole thing started. In late December, Rachel did a segment on how the Kochs buy their economic studies reinforcing conservative ideas. They do this by donating huge sums to universities and demanding the right to hire faculty who think like they do. That report is here.

Apparently the Kochs didn't appreciate her reporting, because for some bizarre reason they don't mind throwing billions around the political universe but shy away from receiving credit for it. So they had their lawyers send Rachel a letter, and boy was it a doozy, as you'll see in the segment. It included a demand that she read a prepared script by the lawyers retracting her report and apologizing for it.

She did not apologize. I believe her exact words were "I will not renounce or retract reporting that is true, even if the subjects of that reporting don't like it." As for the script, she let them know she does "not read scripts provided to me by anyone else. I don't do requests."

She also reminded them that if they don't like it when the truth is brought to light, they should just stop doing those things that generate attention.

The only thing she forgot was the part where she informed her audience that the Kochs are a couple of libertarian thugs with big wallets and emptier heads. The only thing bigger than their own egos might be their bank accounts.

- See more at: http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/rachel-maddows-epic-koch-brothers#sthash.JzL5aO1n.dpuf

http://crooksandliars.com/2014/01/rachel-maddows-epic-koch-brothers

January 3, 2014

Thomas Cahill: Conservatives are afraid of pope’s ‘pure Christianity,’

Conservatives are less concerned with the new pope’s politics than they are with his religious teachings, said scholar and author Thomas Cahill.

Republicans, including right-wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, have criticized comments made by Pope Francis about unfettered free market economies and the lack of concern in capitalist societies for the poor.

“They’re not really afraid of ‘pure Marxism,’” Cahill said, quoting one of Limbaugh’s complaints. “They might be more afraid of ‘pure Christianity,’ which it sounds to me like what he’s spouting.”


http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/01/03/thomas-cahill-conservatives-are-afraid-of-popes-pure-christianity-not-pure-marxism/