President Obama On Job Creation

He Is Just Not Very Bright

I don't know how Charlie Crist has made it thus far in politics, but it has become increasingly clear that the guy just isn't very smart. I mean I understand how much pressure he feels now to go full wingnut after the NY 23 debacle and Marco Rubio hot on his heels. But you have to be a special kind of stupid to try to lie about your support for a stimulus bill not even a full year ago and then not have the common sense to take evidence (ie truth)to the contrary down from your own website.

Tuesday I joined President Barack Obama for a town hall meeting in Fort Myers to discuss with Floridians the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

During the town hall, I reiterated my support for the federal stimulus package, and pledged to the people of Florida that here in Florida we stand ready to use our share of the money quickly and responsibly to create new jobs and serve our most vulnerable citizens.

There is no doubt that these are historic, challenging times for this nation – and our state.

We are balancing our budget here, even when it calls for difficult decisions. We cut spending by $2.5 billion dollars during the recent special Legislative session.

But even as we tighten our belts, we need a stimulus to help the people of Florida, and to help every state that is hurting. This federal stimulus package is a bridge of help for Florida.

This reminds me of the kind of revisionist history the Bushies tried to pull off after no WMDs were found in Iraq. At what point will the people of Florida get fed up with the way Crist insults your intelligence?

Hopefully, soon...

Jobs Numbers Better Than Expected

It looks like the economy is starting to turn around. We still aren't out of the woods yet but at least we are seeing postive signs. It is also key because good economic news helps to justify President Obama's stimulus bill and takes away some of the criticism that is muddying the waters in the fight for health care reform.

From the NYTimes:

The American economy lost 247,000 jobs in July, and in a reversal, the unemployment rate fell slightly, to 9.4 percent, the government reported Friday.

Although businesses are expected to keep cutting jobs through the rest of the year, the Labor Department’s latest figures offered some faint signs that the sinking job market was approaching bottom.

The length of the workweek increased, albeit slightly, for the first time since August, a sign that businesses were not scaling back hours to cut their payroll costs. The government said fewer jobs were lost this spring than it had initially estimated, revising June’s lob losses to 443,000 from 467,000.

snip

Friday’s employment picture was better- than forecasters had been expecting. Economists had estimated that 325,000 jobs were lost in July and that the unemployment rate would rise to 9.6 percent.

The report offers a measure of relief to the Obama administration, which weathered intense criticism when the pace of job losses accelerated in June after leveling off a month earlier. Conservative critics have cited the monthly jobs report, which has rapidly become a political football, as evidence that the $787 billion stimulus was not working, while liberals have previously maintained that it showed that the economy needed another jolt of stimulus.

But the president and his economic advisers have said the stimulus put the brakes on the economy’s swift decline, and was instrumental in reducing the rate of economic contraction to 1 percent during the second quarter. The White House has said there is no immediate need for an additional package, and has urged Americans to be patient as stimulus spending percolates through the economy. But for unemployed Americans scouring want-ads and tacking their résumés up onto online job boards, patience — and money — are wearing thin.

Stimulus In Action

Man, I guess government CAN create jobs.

CHICAGO — The 250 workers who staged a December sit-in at a Chicago window factory to protest losing their jobs were celebrating Thursday, after another window manufacturer announced plans to reopen the plant and start hiring back the displaced workers within months.

The sale of what had been Republic Windows and Doors to a California company, Serious Materials, for $1.45 million, was completed in bankruptcy court this week, with company officials promising United Electrical Workers Local 1110 to rehire all the laid-off workers at their former rate of pay.

“We see this opportunity to expand our operations in direct relation to the stimulus package, which includes the greening of federal buildings and the weatherization assistance program,” said Sandra Vaughan, the chief marketing officer for Serious Materials, which also manufactures energy-efficient windows and building products in Boulder, Colo., and Vandergrift, Pa.

Suck on that Michael Steele. That is after you finish up with Rush lol.

Well That Explains A Lot...

Dear Cable News Folks,

You might want to have an economist on your show if you want to, you know, discuss the economic stimulus bill. Just a thought.


Thanks for nothing assholes.


Sincerely,

Moi

Now That's Power

Caterpillar announces that as soon as President Obama signs the American Recovery and Reinvestment act, they will be able to rehire some 20,000 workers.

I'd say thats pretty damn stimulative.

The Facts, They Burnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

This clip from Rachel Maddow needs to spread like wildfire around the liberal blogosphere. No one else has so throughly explained what stimulus is and why this bill is in fact stimulative. That she totally PWNED about 4 or 5 Republican Senators that were spouting pure unadulterated BULLSHIT was just the icing on the cake for me.

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Republicans Want To Raise Your Taxes...

Remember that handy dandy super duper rainbow filled economic stimulus plan touted by the Republicans earlier this week as beng able to create double the amount of jobs as the the House Democratic plan? Well not only were they full of shit, but they also left out a little detail. Their plan actually would raise taxes. Now normally this wouldn't be a big deal considering someone has to pay for all this spending, but the "party of low taxes" is probably going to catch hell on this one. I can't wait to hear their leader Rushbo rake their asses over the coals.

And Everybody Would Get A Pony Too...

I am pretty sure that nobody was buying John Boehner's bullshit about the GOP economic proposal creating twice as many jobs for half the money as the Democratic plan. But just in case anybody was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo has some news for you:

But where did the Republicans get that number? By drawing some fuzzy conclusions from a 2007 paper by Dr. Christina Romer, chair of Obama's Council of Economic Advisers

snip

In fact, a year before being tapped to serve as the Chairman of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisers, Romer co-authored a report echoing the view that tax cuts can have a very large economic stimulus effect. As the authors noted at the time, 'tax cuts have very large and persistent positive output effects.' ... Using different assumptions and different sample periods, they estimated that a change in taxes equal to 1 percent of GDP resulted in a 2.2 percent to 3 percent change in GDP, with tax cuts increasing GDP.

We find Dr. Romer's previous conclusions on the economic impact of change in tax policy as an appropriate multiplier for examining the impact of stimulus proposals.

Except that the Romer analysis used by the GOP (linked to in the third paragraph of this page) never examined the effects of tax cuts on a deflationary economy -- it looked at the effects of tax increases on the economy as a whole and found a negative effect of 2.2% - 3% on GDP.

The Republican analysis simply flipped those numbers to positive and applied them to the GOP-backed tax cuts, then multiplied the result by a broad job creation estimate used in a recent paper from Romer and Jared Bernstein, an economic adviser to the vice president.

Like my Momma always told me, if it sounds too good to be true it probably is. Especially if its a Wing Nut's voice you are hearing.

Money For Condoms, Oh Noez

I am sure by now you have heard wingnut Congressman John Boehner say and the Villagers repeat that hundreds of millions of dollars in the economic stimulus bill will go for contraceptives and of course the resulting "outrage". Well, as usual, it's not what they make it out to be.

First of all, the family-planning program that Pelosi supports expanding in the stimulus bill was created in 1972 under the leadership of Republican president Richard Nixon.

What's being proposed is an expansion in the number of states that can use Medicaid money, with a federal match, to help low-income women prevent unwanted pregnancies. Of the 26 states that already have Medicaid waivers for family planning, eight are led by Republican governors (AL, FL, MS, SC, CA, LA, MN and RI -- a ninth, MO, had a GOP governor until this past November). If this policy is truly a taxpayer gift to "the abortion industry," as John Boehner and House Republicans claim, where are the GOP governors promising to end the program in their states?

Additionally, the process of obtaining a waiver for Medicaid family-planning coverage is extremely cumbersome. A letter written by Wisconsin health regulators in 2007 noted that some states have had to wait for as long as two years before their request was approved. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that eliminating the waiver requirement would save states $400 million over 10 years.

I swear man, the Republicans are going to keep fact checkers busy for the next 4 to 8 years. Lord knows the Villagers aren't going to investigate. Isn't it ironic how many times the Villagers have flogged the nonexistent CBO report that was spoonfed to them by the Republicans, yet they don't even refer to a real CBO report that justifies this spending?

Scoreboard Bitches!

For those who thought President Obama was going to get punked in his effort to be bipartisan....

The top congressional leaders from both parties gathered at the White House for a working discussion over the shape and size of President Barack Obama’s economic stimulus plan. The meeting was designed to promote bipartisanship.

But Obama showed that in an ideological debate, he’s not averse to using a jab.

Challenged by one Republican senator over the contents of the package, the new president, according to participants, replied: “I won.”

The statement was prompted by Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl of Arizona , who challenged the president and the Democratic leaders over the balance between the package’s spending and tax cuts, bringing up the traditional Republican notion that a tax credit for people who do not earn enough to pay income taxes is not a tax cut but a government check.

Obama noted that such workers pay Social Security and Medicare taxes, property taxes and sales taxes. The issue was widely debated during the presidential campaign, when Sen. John McCain, the Republican nominee, challenged Obama’s tax plan as “welfare.”

With those two words — “I won” — the Democratic president let the Republicans know that debate has been put to rest Nov. 4 .

(h/t Benen)

Still Out Of Touch

Keep these poll numbers in mind the next time you see that jack ass John Boehner on Tee Vee dissing infrastructure spending as economic stimulus.

"Its better to be silent and thought a fool than open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Krugman's Letter

Paul Krugman, nobel prize winner in economics, has penned a letter to President Elect Barack Obama in Rolling Stone. The whole thing is a very interesting read as he gives his opinion for what Obama should do regarding the economy and at the end in regards to prosecuting people in the Bush Administration. There is one part I want to excerpt though because of some of the things I have seen on liberal and progressive websites.

IMHO to a certain extent we (liberals and progressives) have caught some of the "ideologue" bug when it comes to tax cuts/stimulus checks. Its interesting when you stand back and watch it because now we are willing to take the word of wing nut economists when they say the first round of stimulus checks didn't work. Well I dont think you can even begin to quantify whether they worked or not in light of the jobs lost last year and the mortgage crisis. I expressed my reasoning about this yesterday at the Swampland blogs and Krugman kind of makes the same case. What we should take great care to do now that we have the Presidency and Congress is avoid taking totally ideological and partisan stances against policies that might have a great benefit. When President Elect Obama put forth his stimulus plan there was no shortage of belly aching because it contained tax cuts/stimulus checks for middle income families, tax cuts that Obama actually campaigned on. But most if not all of the criticism never even took into account of WHY they might be needed as a part of an economic stimulus plan. Well here is Krugman speaking on it in Rolling Stone:

You can also do well by doing good. The Americans hit hardest by the slump — the long-term unemployed, families without health insurance — are also the Americans most likely to spend any aid they receive, and thereby help sustain the economy as a whole. So aid to the distressed — enhanced unemployment insurance, food stamps, health-insurance subsidies — is both the fair thing to do and a desirable part of your short-term economic plan.

Even if you do all this, however, it won't be enough to offset the awesome slump in private spending. So yes, it also makes sense to cut taxes on a temporary basis. The tax cuts should go primarily to lower- and middle-income Americans — again, both because that's the fair thing to do, and because they're more likely to spend their windfall than the affluent. The tax break for working families you outlined in your campaign plan looks like a reasonable vehicle.

But let's be clear: Tax cuts are not the tool of choice for fighting an economic slump. For one thing, they deliver less bang for the buck than infrastructure spending, because there's no guarantee that consumers will spend their tax cuts or rebates. As a result, it probably takes more than $300 billion of tax cuts, compared with $200 billion of public works, to shave a point off the unemployment rate. Furthermore, in the long run you're going to need more tax revenue, not less, to pay for health care reform. So tax cuts shouldn't be the core of your economic recovery program. They should, instead, be a way to "bulk up" your job-creation program, which otherwise won't be big enough.

Now most of the liberal/progressive blogosphere swears by Krugman when it comes to economic policy. I think it would be wise to take note that he himself believes that tax cuts should be an integral part of any economic stimulus. If you are going to believe him when he advocates infrastructure spending then you can't be selective when he also advocates middle and lower class tax relief. In the end we need to be about results, not about how we accomplish them. To do any less would relegate us to the left wing version of Wing Nuts and make it even harder than it is now to get our voices heard.

Don't Do It Cuz It Just Might Work

Ken Blackwell is just so full of win. I truly hope that moron is chosen to take the reigns as head of the RNC. You just can't teach the level of stupid that this guy has at his command. He is sure to take their bad situation heading into the wilderness and turn it into a nuclear meltdown of which they will never recover.

His latest foray into ass hattery comes from this post on his townhall blog. Now I know much has been made about the GOP trying to reinvent themselves online after President Elect Obama kicked their asses all over the net this election season, but evidently not everyone has been taking their correspondence courses. You see Blackwell published a manifesto about why the Republicans should oppose Obama's stimulus plan apparently unaware that ANYBODY can read it. And what is the problem with people other than Republicans being able to read his post you ask? Well its because of the reasons WHY he tells them to oppose it. The most interesting reason by far is that they should oppose it because.......wait for it......wait for it.......it just might work.

A week ago, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, mentioned Mr. Obama says his goal is for 80% of these three million jobs to be private-sector. That means, Senator McConnell continued, that 20% would be public-sector, meaning this bill would create 600,000 new federal government jobs. For comparison, Mr. McConnell noted this would be the size of the entire Postal Service workforce.

Once government creates a job, it rarely eliminates it. Government swells by nature, feeding on tax dollars taken away from private citizens and employers until it becomes a bloated, sprawling bureaucracy.

So if Mr. Obama creates 600,000 new government bureaucrats, those jobs should be expected to be kept around permanently, long after this economic crisis is resolved. After all, eliminating those jobs means laying off 600,000 people. Who wants to take responsibility for that?

But most federal employees, that are not political appointees, vote Democrat. Since Washington, DC is the seat of government, whenever new federal bureaucrats are created many live in Maryland and Virginia. In 2008, Virginia went Democrat for the first time since 1964, and Mr. Obama won it by 130,000 votes. Creating 600,000 new jobs might help cement Virginia in the Democrat column, making it harder for Republicans to retake the White House.

Now I for one don't think most Americans would be upset about 600,000 new jobs being created in the public sector because right now most people just want to have a job. That he doesn't realize this is just another example of how divorced from reality the members of the GOP really are. But that's not the best part...

What makes this particularly damaging to this authoritarian deficit-expanding coward is that on the one hand he accuses Obama of trying to create these jobs for political purposes and then in the next breath he says the GOP should oppose these new jobs being created so they can have a shot at the Presidency again in 2012. Some how I doubt that the over two million people who lost their jobs over the course of the last year will give much of a shit if the Republicans EVER get back into office if it means they will be able to get a new job and take care of their families. And unfortunately for him it is now public knowledge that he would rather deny them the dignity of work than deny his conservative cronies their shot at the ring.

At least back in the day when Bill Kristol sent his memo commanding the Rethugs to oppose kill universal healthcare because Americans would like it, he had the common damn sense to do it in secret. Of course being a black man who chooses to be a Republican pretty much shows you his level of intellect doesn't it?

Can they please stop making it this easy? Seriously. I mean damn I would like a challenge every now and then.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Deep Thought

How smooth is President Elect Obama in that when he proposes almost $800 BILLION dollars in stimulus spending he has set it up so lovely that the debate isn't over how big the number is, instead its over whether its big ENOUGH?!

Game recognize Game

I Guess Maybe They WEREN'T Paying Attention

Last night after watching some good NFL football I started to peruse some of the better liberal websites. All was quiet for awhile but then later on in the evening I started seeing several posts pop up discussing reports that President Elect Barack Obama was going to include something like $300 billion dollars in tax cuts in his economic stimulus plan. What weirded me out was that most if not all of the posts were diatribes against Barack Obama for cutting taxes. One jerk off even used the term "douchebag" to describe him.

Now the reason I was weirded out was because I could have sworn Obama had been talking about giving middle class tax cuts for the last year or so. Hell wasn't that what the whole "socialist" meme was all about? So I decided I needed to read these reports and see what the fuss was all about. I saw where this move was being sold as a way for Obama to gain bipartisan support for the bill because the Republicans would like the tax cuts. For about half a second I understood why people were getting pissed off but then I thought on it a little more.

First of all Obama DID promise middle class tax cuts damn near from jump street so they shouldn't have been a surprise. Second of all it came off to me like Republicans were framing the story this way because it plays into the meme that Democrats NEVER want to cut taxes and would only do so to appease the "fiscally conservative" Republicans. And last but not least the Wing Nut Wall Street Journal story about it all of a sudden low balled the overall cost of the stimulus plan to below $800 billion. But just a few weeks ago when they were slamming the idea of spending on infrastructure as economic stimulus didn't they estimated the plan at $1 trillion dollars or more? Thats a huge difference because the new story would have you believe that tax cuts would make up almost half of the stimulus plan. But their earlier assesments would have it more around 30%. After thinking it through I smelled a rat. For that reason I was highly anticipating today's press availablity by Obama just to see what he had to say about it. Lets check him out.

You can fast forward to 5:38

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Yeah, what HE said!

Now I have just about had enough of this hand wringing, hair on fire mentality of so many people on the left now. Its almost like the Republicans won't even have any work to do for the next four years because the liberals and progressives will handle all the attacking of President Elect Obama. Its almost like we all have PTSD from the Bush years and now we are so used to pushing back on any and everything that we don't recognize friend from foe. I have said it once I will say it again, can we PLEASE wait for the man to get in frikkin office and actually DO something before we start tearing him down? Thanks in advance.