Anti-government Tea-Publican austerity has inhibited economic recovery
April 9, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie: Private businesses have added jobs for 25 consecutive months as the American economy recovers from the Bush Great Recession. At the same time, however, the loss of public sector jobs at the federal, state, and local levels has inhibited economic recovery. It is largely due to the ideology of Tea-Publican controlled state … Read more
Rampant speculation by the banksters of Wall Street is driving up gas prices
April 9, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
As I posted back in March, the real reason for rising gasoline prices today is the same as it was during the 2008 election — these guys. OK, let me be clear, not these guys in the photo specifically, but speculators in the commodities futures trading and derivatives markets in general.
Shannon Stapleton/Reuters
Traders on the floor of the New York Mercantile Exchange.
The rise in gasoline prices has almost nothing to do with energy policy. It has everything to do with America’s continuing failure to adequately regulate Wall Street. The Huffington Post reported last week Gas Price Experts: Wall Street 'Casinos' Raise Pain at the Pump:
Americans are paying for $4-a-gallon gasoline because Wall Street "casinos" have blocked regulators from cracking down on rampant oil speculation, finance experts argued on Capitol Hill [last] Wednesday.
In an effort to counter Republican claims that gas prices are high because the Obama administration does not allow enough drilling, House Democratic leaders staged a hearing featuring former Reagan and Clinton administration oil and trading analysts who blame the surge on speculation.
And the vast profits from that speculation do not go into developing more oil or creating jobs, the analysts argued.
"Your constituents should know that every time they break their heart by buying $4 and maybe soon $5 gasoline, that money isn't going into production," said University of Maryland professor Michael Greenberger, who served as director of the division of trading and markets for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission in the Clinton administration. "It's going into homebuilding in the Hamptons and yacht building."
And the big finance firms are working overtime to ensure that the speculative commodity keeps flowing, he said.
"They've got hundreds of millions of dollars that they are using in lobbying on the Hill" or the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Greenberger told HuffPost after the session. "Now they are bringing all these lawsuits; they are stopping the action that has already been asked for by Congress to stop the speculation."
He was referring to suits that seek to limit certain Dodd-Frank financial reforms that, among other things, grant the commission the power to crack down on excessive oil speculation.
About the Quality Education and Jobs Initiative to renew the one cent sales tax
April 9, 2012
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by David Safier I haven't written much about the Quality Education and Jobs Initiative to renew the one cent sales tax, which will mainly be used to fund education, because it's fairly complex and I didn't want to get it wrong. So I sat down with Ann-Eve Pedersen, one of the driving forces behind the … Read more
Money = Choice (video)
April 9, 2012
By Pamela Powers Hannley
At the risk of dating myself…
I remember the days when the only place a young, sinlgle woman could buy affordable birth control pills– without being judged or lectured– was Planned Parenthood.
I remember riding the Columbus city bus for an hour and a half each way to go to the near east side clinic– to the ghetto. I remember the dark, dingy waiting room packed with young black women, little kids, and college students like me– all waiting for a free exam and contraception.
I remember those days before Roe v Wade legalized abortion in the US.
I remember women in my dorm– crying when they found out they were pregnant. Most of them scraped together the money to fly to New York City or drive to Detroit to have abortions because those were the only places in the US where that service was offered. I even drove a friend to Detroit… a somber, desparate journey.
We don't want to go back to that time
… a time when women had to deal with the circumstances of an unwanted pregnancy without a full aray of choices.
… a time when only wealthy women had the right to choose what is best for themselves, their bodies, and their families.
Here are two eye-opening stories about how choice is being whittled away by political and religious leaders.
As It Was Before Roe, So It Is Again: "Choice" Often Comes Down to Money
The real impact of a 20 week abortion ban
Video after the click…
Paul Krugman: The GOP cult of Paul Ryan
April 9, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
A great column today from Paul Krugman of the New York Times on the GOP's "boy genius" and Ayn Rand acolyte, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), and the feckless media villager "serious people" who advance his economic nonsense. The Gullible Center:
So, can we talk about the Paul Ryan phenomenon?
And yes, I mean the phenomenon, not the man. Mr. Ryan, the chairman of the House Budget Committee and the principal author of the last two Congressional Republican budget proposals, isn’t especially interesting. He’s a garden-variety modern G.O.P. extremist, an Ayn Rand devotee who believes that the answer to all problems is to cut taxes on the rich and slash benefits for the poor and middle class.
No, what’s interesting is the cult that has grown up around Mr. Ryan — and in particular the way self-proclaimed centrists elevated him into an icon of fiscal responsibility, and even now can’t seem to let go of their fantasy.
The Ryan cult was very much on display last week, after President Obama said the obvious: the latest Republican budget proposal, a proposal that Mitt Romney has avidly embraced, is a “Trojan horse” — that is, it is essentially a fraud. “Disguised as deficit reduction plans, it is really an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country.”
The reaction from many commentators was a howl of outrage. The president was being rude; he was being partisan; he was being a big meanie. Yet what he said about the Ryan proposal was completely accurate.
Actually, there are many problems with that proposal. But you can get the gist if you understand two numbers: $4.6 trillion and 14 million.
Of these, $4.6 trillion is the revenue cost over the next decade of the tax cuts embodied in the plan, as estimated by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. These cuts — which are, by the way, cuts over and above those involved in making the Bush tax cuts permanent — would disproportionately benefit the wealthy, with the average member of the top 1 percent receiving a tax break of $238,000 a year.
Mr. Ryan insists that despite these tax cuts his proposal is “revenue neutral,” that he would make up for the lost revenue by closing loopholes. But he has refused to specify a single loophole he would close. And if we assess the proposal without his secret (and probably nonexistent) plan to raise revenue, it turns out to involve running bigger deficits than we would run under the Obama administration’s proposals.
Meanwhile, 14 million is a minimum estimate of the number of Americans who would lose health insurance under Mr. Ryan’s proposed cuts in Medicaid; estimates by the Urban Institute actually put the number at between 14 million and 27 million.
So the proposal is exactly as President Obama described it: a proposal to deny health care (and many other essentials) to millions of Americans, while lavishing tax cuts on corporations and the wealthy — all while failing to reduce the budget deficit[.]
People to gather in support of Sean Arce before Tuesday’s School Board meeting
April 9, 2012
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by David Safier The gathering starts at 6pm Tuesday at the TUSD Admin Building, 1010 E. 10th St. In honor of Michael Hicks' comment on the Daily Show about the MAS Burrito Conspiracy — "They would, every week, go out and buy burritos and feed these kids" — it's being billed as a Burrito Tardeada. … Read more
Three Sonorans is back
April 9, 2012
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by David Safier Three Sonorans is back as an independent blog with its own domain, http://threesonorans.com, and an in-your-face header: "History is being made today, What side will you be on?" David Morales gets thoughtful and meditative in his most recent post, discussing the nature of his blog and his now-severed relationship with Mark Evans … Read more
Jon Perr’s analysis of the Ryan 2.0 GOP Budget
April 9, 2012
Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Unlike the "patrician prevaricator" at the Neoconservative Washington Post, George Will, Jon Perr actually knows of what he speaks on economic issues, and he is no fan of the GOP's "boy genius" and Ayn Rand acolyte, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI).
Perr has an excellent analysis of the Ryan 2.0 GOP Budget at perrspectives.com. The Resurrection and Immaculate Deception of Paul Ryan:
Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan has become the perfect Republican Easter story. Each spring, Ryan reemerges with a new version of his draconian "Roadmap for America's Future" [or as I call it, the Roadmap to America's Ruin]. Despite being crucified each time by most Democrats, much of the press and even some members of his own party, Ryan nevertheless rises again, earning more followers (like Mitt Romney) each time. But at the heart of his budget plan – one that guts domestic spending, delivers a massive tax cut windfall to the rich and ends Medicare as a guaranteed health insurance program for the elderly – is a miraculous fraud, an immaculate deception. By refusing to name a single tax deduction or loophole he would close, Ryan's holy book produces not a balanced budget but trillions more in new national debt.
The Gospel of Paul begins on April 1, 2009. As it turned out, April Fool's Day was a fitting launch date for what Ryan touted as the "GOP's Alternative Budget." Short on details beyond steep cuts for the rich and privatizing Medicare, Ryan admitted his was merely a "marketing document."
But the glossy pamphlet Ryan and then House Minority Leader John Boehner waived around created the template for the annual spring ritual to come. While the Center for American Progress concluded the Boehner-Ryan giveaway would hand an annual tax bonanza of $1.5 million to the average CEO, an analysis from the Center for Tax Justice last week concluded that by 2011, the GOP scheme would drain the Treasury to the tune of $300 billion more than the Obama plan.
