Wednesday, April 30, 2014

The Tea Party Suckers

"A Washington Post analysis found that some of the top national tea party groups engaged in this year’s midterm elections have put just a tiny fraction of their money directly into boosting the candidates they’ve endorsed. . .

Out of the $37.5 million spent so far by the PACs of six major tea party organizations, less than $7 million has been devoted to directly helping candidates, according to the analysis, which was based on campaign finance data provided by the Sunlight Foundation. . .

Roughly half of the money — nearly $18 million — has gone to pay for fundraising and direct mail, largely provided by Washington-area firms. Meanwhile, tea party leaders and their family members have been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees, while their groups have doled out large sums for airfare, a retirement plan and even interior decorating.

The lavish spending underscores how the protest movement has gone professional, with national groups transforming themselves into multimillion-dollar organizations run by activists collecting six-figure salaries.

Three well-known groups — the Tea Party Patriots, the Tea Party Express and the Madison Project — have spent 5 percent or less of their money directly on election-related activity during this election cycle."

Read the Washington Post, Tea party PACs reap money for midterms, but spend little on candidates.

The so-called Tea Party is really just a subsidiary of the Republi-con party

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Another Republi-CON CONspiracy

"A shoe-throwing incident during a speech by Hillary Clinton gives rise to conservative conspiracy theories."

Watch the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert's Bats**t Serious - Hillary Clinton Shoe-spiracy Theory:


Thursday, April 24, 2014

The Republi-CON Reagan Myth, Reagan Was a Fiscal Failure

Just ask the old Paul Rand.

"[W]hen he stumped for his father in 2008 and again when ran for Senate in 2010, Paul often referred to the grand old man of the GOP with a touch of disappointment and criticism. And he routinely made an assertion that might seem like blasphemy to many Republicans: President Jimmy Carter had a better record on fiscal discipline than Reagan."

Read Mother Jones, Rand Paul Says Jimmy Carter Was Better on the Budget Than Ronald Reagan

The story include numerous video excerpts.  

Wednesday, April 23, 2014

The Republi-CON Common Core Circus

UPDATE:  "Of course, the Republican about-face on Common Core is only one of many such moves during the Obama presidency. An array of issues enjoyed GOP support until the president agreed with them, including payroll tax breaks for individuals, clean debt-ceiling increases, and immigration reform policies like the DREAM Act.

This near-senseless reaction is just one part of a growing tribalism that’s consumed the whole of conservative politics. It doesn’t matter the issue: If liberals are for it, then—for a large portion of the right—that means it is time to be against it.

Take light bulbs. In 2007, Congress approved—and President Bush signed—strict efficiency standards for incandescent light bulbs. The practical impact was to make 100-watt bulbs obsolete: an inconvenience, but not a huge imposition. In any case, the rule wouldn’t take effect for a few years, giving homes and businesses a chance to adjust.

Industry groups grumbled, but there wasn’t any outrage. That changed in 2011, after a Tea Party–fueled Republican Party took the House of Representatives in a landslide victory over the Democratic Party. This coincided with the implementation of the efficiency standards, and the result was a caterwaul of right-wing rage."

Read Slate, Conservative Tribalism.

"We are pretty familiar with this story: A perfectly sensible if slightly boring idea is walking down the street. Suddenly, the ideological circus descends, burying the sensible idea in hysterical claims and fevered accusations. . .

About seven years ago, it was widely acknowledged that state education standards were a complete mess. Huge numbers of students were graduating from high school unprepared either for college work or modern employment. A student who was rated “proficient” in one state would be rated 'below basic' in another. About 14 states had pretty good standards, according to studies at the time, but the rest had standards that were verbose, lax or wildly confusing.

The National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers set out to draft clearer, consistent and more rigorous standards. Remember, school standards are not curricula. They do not determine what students read or how teachers should teach. They are the goals for what students should know at the end of each grade.

This was a state-led effort, supported by employers and financed by private foundations. This was not a federal effort, though the Obama administration did encourage states to embrace the new standards. . .

But this makes no difference when the circus comes to town."

Read The New York Times, When the Circus Descends.

Thursday, April 17, 2014

Obama the Thrifty

UPDATE III:  "The basics are straightforward and unambiguous: The Congressional Budget Office yesterday reported that the federal budget deficit will fall to 2.8 percent of GDP this year, almost one-third below what it was in 2013.

As a percent of GDP, not only will that be the lowest deficit since 2007, the drop from 9.8 percent in 2009 to 2.8 percent in 2014 is the largest five-year reduction in federal red ink since the end of World War 2, that is, in almost 70 years.

Read Forbes, Why No One Is Celebrating The Much-Lower Deficit.

UPDATE II:  Read the Washington Post, Think Obama’s a huge spender? Then you need to see these two charts.  The article includes this chart:



So tell me again, which party is the real big spender?
  
UPDATE:  "[I]f you want to see government responding to economic hard times with the “tax and spend” policies conservatives always denounce, you should look to the Reagan era — not the Obama years. . .

As many economists have pointed out, America is currently suffering from a classic case of debt deflation: all across the economy people are trying to pay down debt by slashing spending, but, in so doing, they are causing a depression that makes their debt problems even worse. This is exactly the situation in which government spending should temporarily rise to offset the slump in private spending and give the private sector time to repair its finances. Yet that’s not happening.

The point, then, is that we’d be in much better shape if we were following Reagan-style Keynesianism. Reagan may have preached small government, but in practice he presided over a lot of spending growth — and right now that’s exactly what America needs."

Read The New York Times, Reagan Was a Keynesian


"Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has. . .

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%."

Read Market Watch, Obama spending binge never happened, which includes these two graphs:
















Thursday, April 10, 2014

What Great Event Happened on April 8, 1815, 199 Years Ago?

No, not Napoleon's final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo (which was fought on June 18, 1815). 

Read Slate, The Volcano That Changed the Course of History