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President Barack Obama urged newly empowered Republicans on Saturday not to wage “symbolic battles” against him but to instead work together to help spur job growth and economic recovery. Obama issued his appeal in his weekly radio address after Republicans took power in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, setting up potentially fierce fights with the president and his Democrats on spending, debt and healthcare.

Things that, sadly, will never happen

The GOP-Teaparty has one goal: obstructionism until Election Day 2012 to put a Republican in the White House. End of goal.

Country last.

SIX ISSUES the Teaparty-Republicans consider more important than jobs

Because there has been NO JOBS’ BILL created or even discussed, the House Republicans’ supposed “mandate” last November apparently meant they should spend 3 months on the following cultural / societal issues:

1) Curtailing Abortion Rights

2) Defunding Planned Parenthood

3) Defunding NPR

4) Investigating American Muslims

5) Declaring English As America’s Official Language

6) Reaffirming The “In God We Trust” Motto

Read more…

It’s true — who cares if you have a job and food as long as English hasn’t yet been declared the official language? All this and maybe a government shutdown too! One could say that House Republicans have their finger DIRECTLY on the pulse of America.

And we’re all waiting for the GOP’s Merry Christmas Bill, where store clerks who say “Happy Holidays” are sent to Gitmo. The War on Christmas will not be ignored!

Republican-Teaparty values: anti-choice, anti-brown babies

Matt Yglesias reminds us that, according to the Republican-Teaparty value system, “Life… begins at conception, ends at birth, and doesn’t count if you’re from Mexico.“

  • Anti-choice state senators in Arkansas passed a bill on Thursday that could limit access to abortions for women in the state by subjecting clinics to the same standards as outpatient surgical centers.

These kinds of ‘values’ are exactly what’s at stake with the federal budget and the Republican-Teaparty’s Agree-Or-Government-Shutdown H.R.1 bill. The House was on a break last week, so the debate begins again this week — IF you can even call something a ‘debate’ when one side (Republicans) will change NOTHING in their bill.

Our government is temporarily funded through April 8, and here are the ‘very important issues‘ that the Republican-Teaparty have worked on since January: SIX ISSUES that are more important than jobs. Does that give you the impression they’re really worried about spending, at all?

image source How supply-side economics ACTUALLY works ~ Related: Where are the jobs? U.S. corporations are hoarding cash, giving themselves massive paychecks  They are not going to create jobs (here) with extra money. It’s not like they’re creating jobs… Without labor nothing prospers: how far the Republican party has fallen. 19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America Show me on the doll where the Benevolent Hand touched you Tax breaks to the wealthy will never create jobs
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image source

How supply-side economics ACTUALLY works

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Ten years ago, Bush said “Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth…”

Yesterday’s lies are today’s lies. A decade of FAIL, brought to you by George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the GOP. From Pat Garofalo | Think Progress — read the whole thing, but here are some highlights on this 10-year anniversary of fail:

10 years ago tomorrow, the first of the Bush tax cuts was enacted. That 2001 tax cut was followed up by a second tax cut in 2003, passed after Vice-President Dick Cheney reportedly asserted that “deficits don’t matter.” The tax cuts were sold as necessary economic stimulus that would boost job creation and a moribund economy. “Tax relief will create new jobs, tax relief will generate new wealth, and tax relief will open new opportunities,” Bush said on April 16, 2001 as he was pushing for the passage of the first tax cut. Two years later he said, “These tax reductions will bring real and immediate benefits to middle-income Americans… …

DIDN’T CREATE JOBS:

  • Following the Bush tax cuts, “Overall monthly job growth was the worst of any cycle since at least February 1945, and household income growth was negative for the first cycle since tracking began in 1967.”
  • “The economy boasted 132 million jobs in June of 2001, the month that the first of the Bush tax cuts was signed into law. Three years later, in June of 2004, there were just 131.4 million jobs.

BLEW UP THE DEFICIT:

  • During a 2001 address to Congress, Bush said, “At the end of those 10 years [in the 2001 budget], we will have paid down all the debt that is available to retire. That is more debt repaid more quickly than has ever been repaid by any nation at any time in history.”
  • However, thanks in large part to the Bush tax cuts, the debt ballooned under Bush, with debt held by the public increasing from $3.5 trillion to nearly $6 trillion and gross federal debt going from $5.6 trillion to nearly $10 trillion.

TODAY’S GOP DOUBLES-DOWN:

  • Republicans only agreed to last December’s tax deal because it extended the Bush tax cuts for the richest two percent of Americans.
  • Now, both the House Republican budget and the House Republican “jobs plan” released last week include further reductions in the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.
  • In fact, the “jobs plan” document calls for tax cuts to “Increase American competitiveness to spur investment and create more American jobs.”

REALITY:

When [Pres. Obama] took office, the economy was in recession. He made it worse. And he made it last longer. -Mitt Romney


Related:

“The U.S. fabrication industry could [not] put a project like this together.” Right… ANYMORE!

Or ever again…? Gah!

Depressing post from Balloon Juice:

The new Oakland Bay bridge is being pre-fabricated in China by workers earning $12 for a 16-hour day, working at times 7 days a week:

“I don’t think the U.S. fabrication industry could put a project like this together,” Brian A. Petersen, project director for the American Bridge/Fluor Enterprises joint venture, said in a telephone interview. “Most U.S. companies don’t have these types of warehouses, equipment or the cash flow. The Chinese load the ships, and it’s their ships that deliver to our piers.”

He’s absolutely right: As long as government—which, after all, builds all the bridges—can outsource major projects like this to the lowest-bidding, most exploitative employer in the entire world, we’re not going to have an local industry able to build new bridges. Such is the monumental, self-serving stupidity of our Galtian/governmental confluence.

Thanks, state government ‘patriots.’

From the comments of that post: MikeBoyScout – June 26, 2011 | 10:13 am · Link

Ambridge, Pennsylvania where today about 16.4% of families and 17.8% of the population were below the poverty line.

American Bridge attracted thousands of immigrants who came to fulfill their dreams of work, freedom, and peace. The steel mills became the focal point of the town. Most of the employees were relatives of relatives and the small town grew, with wards separating the town into ethnic sections.

With the growth of the steel mills, Ambridge became a worldwide leader in steel production.[citation needed] The borough became known for bridge building, metal molding, and the manufacture of tubes (large iron pipes). During World War II, the American Bridge Company fabricated steel for the building of LSTs (Landing Ship Tanks). The steel was then sent by rail to the adjacent American Bridge naval shipyard in Leetsdale, PA where the LSTs were built. The area was also home to several other steel mills like Armco, the pipe mill which manufactured oil piping, and A.M. Byers, a major iron and tool fabricator. Eventually competition by foreign steel producers began to cause the share of the steel market for U.S. manufacturers to dwindle. With the shift of steel production overseas, the Ambridge Bridge Company ended operations in Ambridge in 1983. The legacy of American Bridge can be seen today from coast to coast, from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York.

But wait. Michele Bachmann has a solution!

You see? Americans, too, could proudly earn $12 a day for 16-hour workdays!

I’ll say it again: Watch The Company Men. The ending of this movie is really going to be the only solution for America.

Corporations don’t need more MONEY (tax cuts) to expand — they need more CUSTOMERS

“So here’s what you should answer to anyone defending big giveaways to corporations: Lack of corporate cash is not the problem facing America. Big business already has the money it needs to expand; what it lacks is a reason to expand with consumers still on the ropes and the government slashing spending.” — Paul Krugman

via

Duh.

Government privatization and Minnesota’s government shutdown: this is Sparta! PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, The Real News Network MICHAEL HUDSON, RESEARCH PROF., University of Missouri-Kansas City JAY: So why should ordinary Americans or ordinary North Americans care about what’s going on in Greece? HUDSON: Because what’s happening in Greece is a dress rehearsal for what’s going on in the United States. Already, a few weeks ago in Athens, the protestors had signs up referring to Wisconsin and the problems here. What’s happening in Greece in the last week is exactly what’s happened in Minnesota with the close-down of government. And the demands of privatization–Greece sell off its roads, its land, its port authority, its water and sewer–is just what Illinois’s been doing, what Chicago’s been doing, what Minnesota’s been told to do, and what American cities are trying to do. So you have an identical strategy being used between Greece and the United States. Greece is the first domino since Iceland. And the financial interests that are looking at this post-2008 debt crisis as a grab bag think now is the chance for us to make our move. Now we can take all this debt that we’ve built up and we can get out of the financial system, we can turn it into direct ownership of property. We can own the Greek islands, we can own the Greek public domain, just like we can own what Minnesota, Chicago, Wisconsin, and California own. And all of a sudden you have a huge virtual foreclosure process.  Read more… [dailyrenegade] A coworker’s husband is a state employee in Minnesota. I forwarded this article to her: One by one, Minnesota bars run out of beer — and here’s part of her response: “We’ve got 22,000 state workers out of work, who are not paying MN tax, all road construction has stopped, so the state and all of those workers are losing wages and tax. all state parks are closed, no lottery sales, the horse race park has closed losing all of those workers’ pay and the revenues from this. We’re on day 13 of shutdown. The state workers can start claiming unemployment next week, costing the state more monies, but the workers will lose half of their normal pay, in additional to losing their contributions to retirement accounts. No back pay will be paid to them. Many feel the shutdown will last until the school year starts in September, because maybe that would make the Legislature wake up. (But maybe the beer shortage will have more impact.)” This Republican solution in Minnesota is clearly a winner for everyone! What else can this political party f*ck up, I wonder?
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Government privatization and Minnesota’s government shutdown: this is Sparta!

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, The Real News Network
MICHAEL HUDSON, RESEARCH PROF., University of Missouri-Kansas City

JAY: So why should ordinary Americans or ordinary North Americans care about what’s going on in Greece?

HUDSON: Because what’s happening in Greece is a dress rehearsal for what’s going on in the United States. Already, a few weeks ago in Athens, the protestors had signs up referring to Wisconsin and the problems here. What’s happening in Greece in the last week is exactly what’s happened in Minnesota with the close-down of government. And the demands of privatization–Greece sell off its roads, its land, its port authority, its water and sewer–is just what Illinois’s been doing, what Chicago’s been doing, what Minnesota’s been told to do, and what American cities are trying to do. So you have an identical strategy being used between Greece and the United States. Greece is the first domino since Iceland. And the financial interests that are looking at this post-2008 debt crisis as a grab bag think now is the chance for us to make our move. Now we can take all this debt that we’ve built up and we can get out of the financial system, we can turn it into direct ownership of property. We can own the Greek islands, we can own the Greek public domain, just like we can own what Minnesota, Chicago, Wisconsin, and California own. And all of a sudden you have a huge virtual foreclosure process.  Read more…

[dailyrenegade]

A coworker’s husband is a state employee in Minnesota. I forwarded this article to her: One by one, Minnesota bars run out of beer — and here’s part of her response:

“We’ve got 22,000 state workers out of work, who are not paying MN tax, all road construction has stopped, so the state and all of those workers are losing wages and tax. all state parks are closed, no lottery sales, the horse race park has closed losing all of those workers’ pay and the revenues from this. We’re on day 13 of shutdown. The state workers can start claiming unemployment next week, costing the state more monies, but the workers will lose half of their normal pay, in additional to losing their contributions to retirement accounts. No back pay will be paid to them. Many feel the shutdown will last until the school year starts in September, because maybe that would make the Legislature wake up. (But maybe the beer shortage will have more impact.)”

This Republican solution in Minnesota is clearly a winner for everyone! What else can this political party f*ck up, I wonder?

MillerCoors told to pull products in Minnesota because of government shutdown

Yet another example of just how great the Republican party is for jobs and business!

MINNEAPOLIS – Minnesota’s state government shutdown is causing a big problem for brewing giant MillerCoors.

The state has told MillerCoors it needs to pull its products from stores, bars and restaurants statewide because of a licensing problem caused by the shutdown.

Department of Public Safety spokesman Doug Neville said Wednesday that MillerCoors’ “brand label registrations” with the state have expired. The employees who process renewals were laid off when state government shut down July 1 in a budget dispute.

Neville says Chicago-based MillerCoors LLC has been told to come up with a plan for pulling its products in a few days.

Keep going, GOP. You’re doing great!

The vicious circle of tax cuts for the wealthy Related: The growing income gap, stalled economic growth, and financial deregulation The American Dream: we’ve gone from ‘prosperity for all’ to ‘the rich takes all’ Middle America since 1979: doing more work for less money, even as corporate profits rise Tax breaks to the wealthy will never create jobs 19 Facts About The Deindustrialization Of America
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The vicious circle of tax cuts for the wealthy

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What would income inequality look like today if union density had remained at 1973 levels?

From Kevin Drum | Mother Jones:

[What would] income inequality look like if union density had remained at its 1973 level.

…Among men, if you account only for the effect of individual membership in unions, it would be about a fifth lower, which agrees pretty well with previous estimates. But if you also account for the effect of unions on surrounding nonunion employers (who often raised wages to compete with union employers and to avert the threat of unionization in their own workplace), the effect is larger: Unionization at 1973 levels would decrease income inequality by a full third. You can see this in the chart below. For intragroup differences (which account for nearly the entire effect of unionization) the top line shows the actual rise of income inequality since 1973, while the red line is a prediction of what it would look like if union density were still at 1973 levels:

The effect of unionization on women is less dramatic because women were never unionized at the same rate as men. For them, increasing returns to education are a bigger factor in rising income inequality than deunionization. For men, however, deunionization has had a huge impact: “The decline of the US labor movement has added as much to men’s wage inequality as has the relative increase in pay for college graduates,” the authors say.

The teaparty Republican voter base, the majority of whom are at or near retirement age and who already receive their monthly government paycheck and benefits, are well past the heady days of unionization and the helpful effects it had on all other jobs across the national spectrum (i.e. equalizing pay and benefits). No more middle-class or middle-class jobs? Not the teabaggers’ problem. Anymore.

Related:

leftish: “This notion of cuts as somehow being the “medicine” for our economy is exactly the WRONG medicine for a sick economy. Actually the kinds of cuts that the Republicans propose will INCREASE unemployment, NOT reduce it. They are proposing things that are going to make the economy worse in the hopes that they will defeat Barack Obama.” ~ Rep. Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL)
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leftish:

“This notion of cuts as somehow being the “medicine” for our economy is exactly the WRONG medicine for a sick economy. Actually the kinds of cuts that the Republicans propose will INCREASE unemployment, NOT reduce it. They are proposing things that are going to make the economy worse in the hopes that they will defeat Barack Obama.”

~ Rep. Jan Schakowsky, (D-IL)

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