Senator Warren: The Minimum Wage Should be $22/hour

When I first started seeing this headline the other day, I thought whoa, that's not possible. Doesn't Elizabeth Warren know that many people work for 20 years and never make $22 per hour? There are people who have never made more than $10 per hour in their entire lives!

Yes - yes, she knows. And she is making the case that asking Congress to raise the minimum wage to $10 and hour is perfectly reasonable, given inflation and the fact that it should actually be double that much if we lived in a fair society.

Will it happen? Maybe or maybe not, but at least Warren is there raising the right questions and using the right data.

Huffington Post:

"If we started in 1960 and we said that as productivity goes up, that is as workers are producing more, then the minimum wage is going to go up the same. And if that were the case then the minimum wage today would be about $22 an hour," she said, speaking to Dr. Arindrajit Dube, a University of Massachusetts Amherst professor who has studied the economic impacts of minimum wage. "So my question is Mr. Dube, with a minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, what happened to the other $14.75? It sure didn't go to the worker."

And here she grills a restaurant owner who objects to any raise in the minimum wage, saying it would hurt sales. She points out that he would only have to raise prices on his menu 4-8 cents to make up the difference.

Military Women in Combat

source: militarywomen.org

The United States Military has lifted restrictions for women in combat positions:

USA Today

The new order, signed Thursday by Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, will open as many as 237,000 new jobs to women. Women comprise about 14% of the 1.4 million active military personnel.

Military officials who briefed reporters on background said occupations such as infantry and artillery have exacting physical requirements and appropriate standards will be maintained. The officials declined to be named because they are not authorized to speak publicly.

The military has different physical standards based on age and sex for the Army and Marines. In either service, the standards for both sexes would be the same for those trying to get into the infantry and other combat arms specialties.

"The department's goal in rescinding the rule is to ensure that the mission is met with the best qualified and most capable people, regardless of gender," Panetta said.

I struggled with this title for this post because "Military Women Now Permitted in Combat" or "Military Women Finally Allowed in Combat" would mislead the reader into thinking that these women have led sheltered lives up till now. Women have always been in the thick of the battle as medics, pilots, technicians, military policewomen - you name it. And when battle lines change in distant lands, bombs and firefights are their reality, as well as their male counterparts. So it's not accurate to say "Now, Suddenly, Women are in Combat" as if something is new and unusual.

The only "new" feature is that women will now receive combat pay equal to men, and they will be considered for promotions and honors based on their very real combat experience.

Goldie Taylor, MSNBC pundit who served in the military, explained it well on last night's Ed Show:

You know, women have been serving in our armed forces and in
military operations around the world for decades. The fact is we`re doing
the job. We`re helicopter pilots. We`re Marine Corps, you know, military
police officers. We`re military intelligence officers.

We just don`t get formally recognized for it. And we certainly don`t
get paid for it. There`s a differential pay for someone who is formally
recognized as being a part of infantry. That is a boost in pay and
benefits that women don`t have access to. Certainly, if you serve on the
front line, you have greater access to leadership positions. That
opportunity is cut off for women who, again, not formally recognized.

I don`t know how much recognition you need than to look at someone
like Tammy Duckworth who comes home missing her legs, or someone like a
Shoshana Johnson, who was a POW, or someone like a Jessica Lynch, who was shot in the heels of her feet. So I don`t know how much more formal
recognition you need that women are doing the job today.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

SCHULTZ: Women have to volunteer for combat duty and face the same
physical standards that men do. Is that an issue or not an issue at all?

TAYLOR: You know, I went through boot camp back in 1987. My former
husband attempted to go through boot camp that very same year. He did not
graduate from boot camp and was returned home not a Marine. I, on the
other hand, did complete boot camp and did rise to the challenge. I do
believe that the standards for infantry should be high. They should not be
relaxed.

But if a woman can meet the physical and mental challenges of serving
on the front line, then she darn well ought to be able to serve on the
front line, be recognized, be promoted, and be paid for it.

Businessmen Backpeddling on Obamacare Threats

Some blabber-mouth business people in the restaurant world have been in the news threatening to raise prices, cut employee hours, and somehow weasel out of giving their workers health insurance promised to them by Obamacare. But after a backlash in the media and at the grassroots level, they are starting to eat their words.

CBS News

Papa John's founder and CEO John Schnatter wrote Tuesday that the media had it all wrong in its reporting on his comments on how the national health care law known widely as "Obamacare" will negatively impact his business.

"Many in the media reported that I said Papa John's is going to close stores and cut jobs because of Obamacare," he wrote in the Huffington Post. "I never said that. The fact is we are going to open over hundreds of stores this year and next and increase employment by over 5,000 jobs worldwide. And, we have no plans to cut team hours as a result of the Affordable Care Act."

Schnatter, who supported and fundraised for Mitt Romney in the presidential election, went on to say that while his company is still researching the impact of the law, "we will honor this law, as we do all laws, and continue to offer 100% of Papa John's corporate employees and workers in company-owned stores health insurance as we have since the company was founded in 1984."

. . . Not addressed in the post are Schnatter's reported comments on a conference call that "Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis."

"If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests," he reportedly added.

Huffington Post

Don't expect to hear more about an Obamacare surcharge from Denny's franchisee John Metz.

Denny's chief executive John Miller privately reached out to Metz to express his "disappointment" with the Florida franchisee's controversial statements about Obamacare, which sparked a wave of backlash for the national restaurant chain over the past few days. Metz released a statement Monday night expressing "regret" over his statements.

"We recognize his right to speak on issues, but registered our disappointment that his comments have been interpreted as the company’s position," Miller said in an email to The Huffington Post.

Miller is rushing to put out the fire sparked by Metz's controversial proposal to charge restaurant customers a 5 percent Obamacare fee. "Customers have two choices: They can either pay it and tip 15 or 20 percent, or if they really feel so inclined, they can reduce the amount of tip they give to the server," Metz told HuffPost in an interview last week.

Some Denny's franchisees have since dealt with angry customers, calls for a boycott and declining sales. A spokeswoman for Metz said he will not conduct more interviews.

The Bainport Sensata Tragedy in Illinois

pic via bainport.com
This tragedy in Illinois has been going on since back in the spring, actually, because the announcement was made then that a car parts plant in Freeport, Illinois, was going under, thanks to Bain Capital. When stories of Romney's connection to Bain came out during the Republican Primaries, many wondered if Mitt Romney would visit the workers at the Sensata car sensor plant. But of course he brushed them off and now is ignoring their continuing protests.

I'm sure he would say that they need to "pull themselves up by the bootstraps" or some kind of nonsensical old-fashioned phrase. I'm sure he thinks it is easy to watch your small town fall apart when a large business closes down. I think people like Romney forget that even the loss of a few jobs has a ripple effect as restaurants and stores close down, and schools suffer lack of tax funding (which is important, Mr. Romney, whether you care or not).

Many people might say that lots of folks in this economy have lost their jobs, what is so special about the people in Freeport? Well, not only are they victims of Bain, but they have the outrageous task of training their Chinese counterparts as Bain outsources their jobs to Asia, leaving them on unemployment. This sorry situation is what Romney wants to do to the whole economy in a nutshell - let venture capitalists sell it off piece by piece to the highest bidder, stash the money offshore in tax havens, and damn the consequences for the 47% or the 99%.

So tomorrow night in the debate when Romney points at Obama and talks about our debt held by China, I hope the President won't forget the workers in "Bainport."

From The Ed Show tonight on MSNBC:

Ed Schultz: So where does this leave all of these families? What's going to happen to Freeport, Illinois?

Worker Mary Jo Kerr: It's going to become a ghost town. That's one major company in Freeport. We really only have a few big companies and that's Honeywell, Sensata, and Titan Tires. And once Sensata goes down, it's going to be hard for anybody to find a job because there's nothing around there.

Ed: Normally when a company's not doing very well, the employees know it. Was it record profits for Sensata? Was it good, and that makes it hard to understand why this is happening?

Mary Jo Kerr: Yeah, we don't understand why this is happening. From my understanding, they liked Freeport. They liked the location. But it was 'we need more money.'

From the Freeport Rock River Times

FREEPORT, Ill. — U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., will visit “Bainport” in Freeport, Ill., at 9:45 a.m., Tuesday, Oct. 16.

Bainport is an encampment set up at Stephenson County Fairgrounds, 2250 S. Walnut Road, Freeport, by workers facing outsourcing at the Bain Capital-owned Sensata Technologies plant. Created in 2006, Sensata develops, manufactures, and sells sensors and controls for major auto manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors.

Workers at the plant have been training their Chinese replacements, who have been flown to Illinois by the company. The final layoffs are expected to be made in November. The plant employs 170.

Workers began to camp outside the plant to protest Bain’s decision to ship their jobs to China and increase the pressure on Republican presidential candidate and former Bain co-founder/CEO Mitt Romney — who still profits directly from Sensata — to help save their jobs. The workers plan to stay at the encampment until Romney agrees to help save their jobs, or, as stated in a release from the group, “until middle-class voters nationwide understand the dangers of a Romney economy for our country.”

From the Freeport Journal-Standard

Also visiting Freeport this week will be activist Reverend Al Sharpton. He is scheduled to appear at the Sensata camp on Saturday at 4 p.m. to speak to the employees. The appearances this week follow an active summer of rallies that saw the arrival of Illinois Governor Pat Quinn and former NAACP Chairman Julian Bond to Freeport.

The Sensata workers have also been involved in other acts of protest that include appearing at the Republican National Convention, a march at a fundraising event for Rep. Bobby Schilling that was attended by House Speaker John Boehner, and the attempted submission of petitions to both their employer and Romney, among other things.

Last weekend, 15 French workers from Samsonite, who lost their jobs to Bain Capital outsourcing in 2007, visited “Bainport” to show their support to the picketing workers. Sensata develops, manufactures, and sells sensors and controls for auto manufacturers. The closure of the plant will cost Freeport 170 jobs.

A Cornucopia of Debunking for GOP Theory that Obama Cooked Employment Data

pic by Brian McFadden
The jobless rate today went down to the lowest level since 2009 when Obama was sworn into office. And he gets full credit because the Republicans wouldn't lift a finger in Congress to help American get back to work.

U.S. Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8 percent

The rate declined from 8.1 percent because the number of people who said they were employed soared by 873,000 — an encouraging sign for an economy that’s been struggling to create enough jobs.
The number of unemployed Americans is now 12.1 million, the fewest since January 2009.

. . . The revisions show employers added 146,000 jobs per month from July through September, up from 67,000 in the previous three months.

The 7.8 percent unemployment rate for September matches the rate in January 2009, when Obama took office. In the months after Obama’s inauguration, the rate rose sharply and had topped 8 percent for 43 straight months.
. . . The September employment report may be the last that might sway undecided voters. The October jobs report will be released only four days before Election Day.

This is bad news for Mitt Romney, who wants everyone to believe the economy is in shambles and in need of a business guy like himself to take charge. Mitt would rather compare the U.S. to train wreck economies like Greece and Spain, and insist on cutting programs because we need "austerity." But he can't make that case if more people are going back to work.

So the conservative reaction has been predictable. As with the Poll numbers, they are attacking the messenger and attacking the humbers. The GOP is crying "Conspiracy" again because that's all they have.

From Jack Welch, former CEO of General Electric:

Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers
— Jack Welch (@jack_welch) October 5, 2012

Psychological projection much? Jack Welch was once accused of cooking the books for GE and at the time was described as a "modern day robber baron" much like Mitt Romney.

In fact, today all I can think about is Mitt's accountant - now there is a guy who knows how to cook the books.

Conn Carroll of the conservative Washington Examiner tweeted:

I don't think BLS cooked numbers. I think a bunch of Dems lied about getting jobs. That would have same effect.
— Conn Carroll (@conncarroll) October 5, 2012

Here are some others via BuzzFeed

This just proves what a criminal Obama is. He has lied & forced his labor dept to report 7.8% Unemployment with only 114,000 jobs created.
— Fritz Harrod (@bignels2) October 5, 2012

How do 800,000 people leave the work force; 114,000 jobs created and this is touted as good news...? Unemp rate is rigged!
— Barbara Foss (@b_bfoss) October 5, 2012

Another name for the Labor Dept's bogus "7.8 percent" unemployment number -- "Obama's October Surprise." Thanks, Hilda.
— Laura Ingraham (@IngrahamAngle) October 5, 2012

Yeah, sure ~ on the royal orders of Caesar Obama, the lockstep Bureau of Labor Statistics conspired to only call Democratic households to find out if anyone had gotten a job recently, and whoever answered the random phones in those households lied, every single one of them, because they knew Obama needed some good economic news two days after the first debate, which Romney was sure to win. *eyeroll*

Funny, ain't it, that we never heard a claim of statistics fraud when the numbers were bad for the last four years. And now suddenly they are all wrong, and everyone is shooting wildly at the humbers.

Matt Yglesias used logic to debunk attacks on the Bureau of Labor Statisticson Slate:

. . . Trustworthy economic data is a very valuable public good that serves as a useful production input for tons of private businesses. It also helps smaller-scale government agencies and nonprofits make smarter decisions. And last but by no means least, precisely because the BLS is credible presidents know that they'd take an enormous political hit if they were seen as manipulating it.

Keith Hall, former head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics said on Wall Street Journal that cooking the books is impossible, even the "Chicago Way" as Jack Welch insinuated:

“There’s nothing wrong with the numbers,” said Mr. Hall. “The only issue is the interpretation of the numbers. The numbers are what they are.”

. . . The unemployment rate estimate is derived from a survey of households, which came up with an estimate that 863,000 jobs were added for the month.

But the separate establishment survey from which the official payrolls number is derived reported a more modest seasonally adjusted gain of 114,000 jobs in September. That was below the consensus forecast of 118,000, though the previous two months were revised higher.

. . . “The household survey is much smaller. When you look at something like labor force and employment levels, the uncertainty of those numbers is much larger,” said Mr. Hall. “Within two months, the household survey could show the unemployment rate eking back up.”

Unfortunately, the debunking is coming too late for Republicans who saw "Morning Joe" on MSNBC this morning, when Scarborough spent several minutes muttering "These numbers just don't add up. It doesn't make sense."

Video via Media Matters


He seems to have missed the part about these being "revised numbers." Doh!

Mark Halperin tried to talk him down, also via Media Matters

If you go just based on Twitter right now, and the people I follow who are conservative - they're about to make a huge mistake. They're gonna say BLS numbers are horrible, some people are already saying the numbers are made up to help the president politically. They have to find a way to talk about the economy and why Governor Romney would be better, not to try to - it's exactly what they did with the polls the last two months, to attack the methodology. These numbers are good. They're not only good symbolically, they represent the economy moving in a better direction.

I'm sure we will hear more of this, the last desperate gasp of a dying party.

Funniest Quote from the DNC First Night

"If Mitt was Santa Claus, he'd fire the reindeer and outsource the elves."
~ Ex-Governor Ted Strickland, D-Ohio


The whole speech is a barn burner ~ Enjoy!!!

Obama: That "Trickle-Down Tax Cut Fairy Dust"

They have tried to sell us this trickle-down tax cut Fairy Dust before. And guess what? It didn't work then, and it will not work now. It's not a plan to create jobs, it is not a plan to reduce the deficit, it is not a plan to build our middle class, it is not a plan to move our economy forward. It takes us back to a place we don't need to be. We do not need more tax cuts for people who have done very very well. We need more tax cuts for working Americans.

Romney Talks Down to The Help

Mitt Romney attended a ~ $50,000-a-plate dinner in Mississippi last night. No, I'm not kidding. But the main course turned out to be his own foot on a platter when he used the "help" as an object lesson for why he is the better candidate than Barack Obama. Unbelievable!

What he did wrong:
A) You don't rudely point at people and objectify their existence.
B) He could have addressed the servers are voters, but instead talked over their heads and never mentioned the words "minimum wage."
C) Can't stop acting like Mitt Romney for even one day.

Quotes Via the Atlanta Journal Constitution

"It's tough being middle class in America right now. The waiters and waitresses that come in and out of this room and offer us refreshments, they're not having a good year. The people of the middle class of America are really struggling. And they're struggling I think in a way because they're surprised because when they voted for Barack Obama...he promised them that things were going to get a heck a lot of better. He promised hope and change and they're still waiting."
". . . We’re accused, by the way — in our party — of being the party of the rich,” Romney told the crowd among the tinkling of glasses. “And it’s an awful moniker, because that’s just not true. We’re the party of people who want to get rich. And we’re also the party of people who want to care to help people from getting poor. We want to help the poor."

From the Jackson, Mississippi, Clarion Ledger

Many of the 300-plus attending were among the wealthiest in the state, and sprinkled among them were some of the state’s powerful political figures, including Gov. Phil Bryant and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves.
U.S. Reps. Alan Nunnelee and Gregg Harper also were in attendance during Monday night’s event that raised over $1.7 million — with ticket prices set at $2,500, $10,000 or $50,000.

The presidential hopeful charmed the crowd, provoking more than one ovation (they already were all standing).
There were men and women dressed in cocktail attire — sharp suits and black dresses — accompanied by the traditional seersucker suit look that seems to always make its way into any formal Southern event.
One woman showed her enthusiasm by her bright pink outfit.

And once the speeches were made and the last glass of wine put down, the club cleared quickly. Even with the celebratory mood in the room, by the time 7 p.m. hit, the party was over. It was time to go home.

Boston Globe: Romney Was Bain CEO Until 2002

Dear Romney - he should give up telling fibs and do something else for a living.

Bombshell from the Boston Globe

Romney has said he left Bain in 1999 to lead the winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, ending his role in the company. But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.”

Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The timing of Romney’s departure from Bain is a key point of contention because he has said his resignation in February 1999 meant he was not responsible for Bain Capital companies that went bankrupt or laid off workers after that date.

. . . This is a fact in an SEC filing,” said Roberta S. Karmel, now a professor at Brooklyn Law School.

“It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to say he was technically in charge on paper but he had nothing to do with Bain’s operations,” Karmel continued. “Was he getting paid? He’s the sole stockholder. Are you telling me he owned the company but had no say in its investments?”

The Globe found nine SEC filings submitted by four different business entities after February 1999 that describe Romney as Bain Capital’s boss; some show him with managerial control over five Bain Capital entities that were formed in January 2002, according to records in Delaware, where they were incorporated.

The Romney Camp demanded a retraction as reported by Politico

"The article is not accurate," Romney press secretary Andrea Saul said in a statement. "As Bain Capital has said, as Governor Romney has said, and as has been confirmed by independent fact checkers multiple times, Governor Romney left Bain Capital in February of 1999 to run the Olympics and had no input on investments or management of companies after that point."

In a conversation with POLITICO, Romney adviser Matt McDonald also said the Globe report was inaccurate. "Romney wasn't involved in any investment decisions," McDonald said. "He was on the SEC filings becasue he was still techinically the owner, but hadn't transferred ownership to other partners."

Now, The Boston Globe is pushing back, and standing by their story with good reasons - they checked the story using government documents filed by Bain Capital.

Dear Ms. Gitcho:

We received your request late this afternoon for a correction regarding this morning’s Globe story. Having carefully reviewed that request, we see no basis for publishing a correction. The Globe story was entirely accurate.

The Globe story was based on government documents filed by Bain Capital itself. Those described Governor Romney as remaining at the helm of Bain Capital as its “sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president” until 2002. The story also cited state financial disclosure forms filed by Romney that showed he earned income as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings.

The Globe story accurately described the contents of those documents.

The Globe story also gave a full account of the Romney campaign’s position that, notwithstanding several years of regulatory filings, Mitt Romney “retired from Bain Capital in 1999 … (and) has had no involvement in the management or investment activities of Bain Capital, or with any of its portfolio companies, since that time.” In your correction request, you reiterate points that are fully detailed in the Globe story.

Sincerely,

Martin Baron
Editor, The Boston Globe

Romney Exposed by Vanity Fair

Vanity Fair has a bombshell investigative article on Mitt Romney's holdings in the Caymen Islands and elsewhere, as well as some explanation of how Bain Capital preyed on companies in order to raid their pension funds, which they would then roll into other sketchy investments.

Even though the reporters say several times that Bain isn't doing anything exactly illegal, I found the article quite disturbing. It's a must read!

Vanity Fair: Where the Money Lives

Something is fishy about all this - no pun intended. And I might add I normally wouldn't care, and most people in our country wouldn't care at all since we expect rich people to lie about their assets and hide them in shelters, but Mitt Romney is running for President! We have to hold him to some kind of standard. Remember how Hillary Clinton was dragged through the mud just for earning money on a legitimate investment? That was nothing compared to this.

The two paragraphs below were eye-opening. When is a "blind trust" not so blind?

Page One:

. . . there is a Bermuda-based entity called Sankaty High Yield Asset Investors Ltd., which has been described in securities filings as “a Bermuda corporation wholly owned by W. Mitt Romney.” It could be that Sankaty is an old vehicle with little importance, but Romney appears to have treated it rather carefully. He set it up in 1997, then transferred it to his wife’s newly created blind trust on January 1, 2003, the day before he was inaugurated as Massachusetts’s governor. The director and president of this entity is R. Bradford Malt, the trustee of the blind trust and Romney’s personal lawyer. Romney failed to list this entity on several financial disclosures, even though such a closely held entity would not qualify as an “excepted investment fund” that would not need to be on his disclosure forms. He finally included it on his 2010 tax return. Even after examining that return, we have no idea what is in this company, but it could be valuable, meaning that it is possible Romney’s wealth is even greater than previous estimates.

Page Two:

. . . All the assets on Mitt’s financial disclosures are in blind trusts or retirement accounts held by him and Ann. Blind trusts are designed to avoid conflicts of interest for those in public office by having politicians’ assets managed by independent trustees. The Romneys’ blind trust was created when Mitt was elected governor of Massachusetts. Curiously, the Romneys appointed Bradford Malt as their trustee. It’s certainly true that under Malt the trusts don’t appear to be as blind as they might be: for instance, in 2010 the Romneys invested $10 million in the start-up of the Solamere Founders Fund, co-founded by their eldest son, Tagg, and Spencer Zwick, Romney’s onetime top campaign fund-raiser; Solamere is now in the Ann Romney blind trust. Malt has said he invested in Solamere without consulting Mitt or Ann and explained he liked Solamere because of its diversified approach and because he knew the founders and had confidence in them

Paul Krugman ~ It's Depression, Not Recession

Paul Krugman in a keynote speech yesterday at the Netroots Nation Convention 2012 in Providence, Rhode Island (my slightly edited transcript).

A Recession is when things are headed down. A Depresssion is when things are down.

It's not as bad as the Great Depression but it's incredible awful. If you don't know people who are suffering then you must be living in a very rarified environment - with the Romney clan or something.



Every time I hear some politician saying we need to think about the Debt and the burden on the children, I think what about the young people right now who can't get their lives properly started?"

None of this has to be happening....We didn't have a plague of locusts. We were not hit by a tsunami. There wasn't some act of God that created this terrible situation. It was acts of man. And perhaps more importantly right now, it's easily solvable. We've seen this movie before. We know how this worked.

You tend to think that people who are demanding that we solve this thing quickly must be crazy idealists who are defying the wisdom of economic knowledge. But it's actually the other way around. It's actually the people in charge who are refusing to end this thing quickly, who are ignoring the lessons of history and rejecting economic knowledge that we know from history.

There are lessons that I thought we had learned really well like Do not slash government spending and lay off hundreds of thousands of workers in the middle of a Depression. I thought we knew that, and yet we've been ignoring all of that hard-earned knowledge.

I have seen an advance copy of the New York Times Book Review of my book . . . and the reviewer is shocked at the lack of respect I show for 'highly respected people' like Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. There's a phrase I picked up . . . "Very Serious People" - capitol V-S-P, and we've been living under the tyranny of the Very Serious People who are partly defending class interests and partly just plain getting it wrong. Just going with their prejudices instead of what we know from textbook economics, what we know from 80 years of historical experience, and are messing this up.

We could solve this. Solving this Depression is not fundamentally an economic problem. It's a political problem. It's a problem of getting those Very Serious People out of the way and doing what we actually all ready know, which is why gatherings like this are important. Thank you all.

Chris Matthews Goes Rant-tastic on "Dunce Cap" Republicans

Well actually, he first said that the Democrats and Obama have been "pissant" on the economy, but when a Republican pundit retorted that people want to wait on the private sector to save them, it got his dander up and he lashed back, talking about the fact that Romney wants to continue the same "dunce cap economics" as George Bush, LOL.

(Note: This is not a complete transcript - I did it from the video below and quotes I saw on Twitter, so I will fix it later if it is incorrect)

Matthews:(Obama)...has got to be aggresive. Stop this nickel and dime...a couple of bucks for the teachers, a couple of bucks for the firefighters. I'm going to reduce the payroll tax. This is pissant! You can't get reelected with tactics. He needs a strategy, which is 'we're different than the Republicans. They're basically Free Marketers who sit around and wait for business to deliver this country from hell, and business has let us down.' He's gotta say it.

. . . Here's the idiot Republican argument. You just got a bigger tax cut than Bush gave them, by the way.
. . . You know where they're investing their money? They're investing it in campaigns against the President. They're running ads against the President by the billions of dollars....Who do you think is giving to the Republicans? It's the business guys....

Pundit: Three years after the recovery began--

Matthews: What recovery? There wasn't any Bush 'recovery.' . . . There's only an Obama recovery.

Pundit: You're saying the way to keep the economy going is by more government spending--

Matthews: Investment. Investment. Investment. Have you been to Europe lately? Have you been to Asia? Have you seen how they have trains that go 300 mph while . . . know what we have? We have Amtrak. . . . and beat-up road systems.
. . . Can I make a point here? I feel like I'm teaching first grade. . . . Business and the Republican Party are the same thing. Just like Labor and the Democrats . . .

Pundit: That's crazy.

Matthews: Business wants Republicans to win this election. . . . They're spending tons of money to have that happen. I don't know how you can deny the obvious?

Pundit: Where were they in 2008?

Matthews: They had a weak candidate they didn't believe in. Business supported Barack Obama? Yeah, right.

. . . the same dunce cap leadership that took us into Iraq is the same dunce cap thinking that took us into the financial crisis. . . Dunce-cap policy of deregulation...and tax cuts for the rich.

And from GottaLaff on Political Carnival:

Matthews: “This is the same dunce cap leadership as W! The same dunce cap leadership and policy as W! Deregulation, tax cuts… doing the same thing that got us there [a bad economy]! Romney thinks W was smart! Jesus!!“

Economy Strains While "Constipation Congress" Ignores Business

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 274.88 points on Friday after the government released a lackluster unemployment report. Employment didn't fall, but it didn't go up much either.

This isn't good news for President Obama, and Mitt Romney and his surrogates will blame the weak economy on the Obama administration.

But what about members of Congress who get nothing done because they are stymied by constant filibusters, rants, nonsensical abortion laws, and other trivia from the Republicans?

In a speech in Manchester, New Hampshire, Democratic Governor Martin O'Malley of Maryland coined a colorful new term today: "Constipation Congress." And he had a few other piquant things to say as well. Washington Post reports:

“We have a constipation Congress. These Republican obstructionists wouldn’t pass gas if they thought it might help our president heal our economy...

Job creation is up. Unemployment is down. And while we still have a lot more work to do, because of President Obama’s leadership General Motors is alive and hiring and Osama bin Laden is not!

Could our nation’s jobs recovery be happening faster? Sure it could. but that would require compromise, practicality, and a focus on the common good — three concepts which the newly radicalized tea party Republican Congress is now totally incapable of grasping."

O'Malley's speech goes along with President Obama's Weekly Address entitled "It's Time for Congress to Get to Work," Obama also put the blame on the stonewalling of Congress on nearly every issue, but especially jobs programs.

Right now, this country is still fighting our way back from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The economy is growing again, but it’s not growing fast enough. Our businesses have created almost 4.3 million new jobs over the last twenty-seven months, but as we learned in this week’s jobs report, we’re not creating them fast enough. And just like last year at this time, our economy faces some serious headwinds. Gas prices are starting to come down again, but when they spiked over the last few months, it hit people’s wallets pretty hard. The crisis in Europe’s economy has cast a shadow on our own. And all of this makes it even more challenging to fully recover and lay the foundation for an economy that’s built to last.

But from the moment we first took action to prevent another depression, we knew the road to recovery wouldn’t be easy. We knew it would take time, that there would be ups and downs along the way. But we also knew that if we were willing to act wisely, and boldly, and together; if we were willing to keep at it, and never quit, we would come back stronger.

. . . I sent Congress a jobs bill last September full of the kinds of bipartisan ideas that would have put our fellow Americans back to work and helped reinforce our economy against those outside shocks. I sent them a plan that would have reduced the deficit by $4 trillion in a way that’s balanced – that pays for the job-creating investments we need by cutting unnecessary spending and asking the wealthiest Americans to pay a little more in taxes.

Since then, Congress has only passed a few parts of that jobs bill, like a tax cut that’s allowing working Americans to keep more of your paycheck every week. That was important. But Congress hasn’t acted on enough of the other ideas in that bill that would make a difference and help create jobs right now. And there’s no excuse for that. Not when so many people are looking for work. Not when so many people are struggling to pay the bills.

So my message to Congress is, get to work.

Obama and Romney Fight Battle of the Bain

It's Dueling Videos today and all about the Steelworkers. The Obama campaign released a video called "Steel" about Bain Capital's negative effect on a company named GST. As a counter-punch, the Romney folks released a vid called American Dream about a company called Steel Dynamics which was created with Bain start-up money.