And This Is Why You Can't Take Them Seriously

President Obama had a bipartisan meeting yesterday on the Hill about job creation. During the course of the conversation resident House GOP golden boy Eric Cantor had this to say.

"The president said he would look at some of our proposals,'' Representative Eric Cantor, the House Republican whip, told reporters after the session. But, he added, "there is a stark contrast between what the president is proposing and our no-cost jobs plan.''

And what exactly is their "no-cost jobs plan"?

TAX CUTSSSSSSSSSSS!!!

Of course.

But here is the thing, tax cuts actually, you know, cost money. Any cuts in revenue will have a negative effect on our deficit. Now sometimes that is necessary, like now, when you have an economy that is faltering. But make no mistake about it, when the CBO scores any tax cuts that are proposed and or are eventually implemented, it will affect our bottom line and add to our deficit. That the GOP is still classifying tax cuts as "no-cost" tells you everything you need to know about their mindset. Not only did they learn nothing about how the economy over the previous 8 years of big tax cuts to the wealthy, they seem to know absolutely nothing about what adds to the deficit.

Now again, in this case some targeted tax cuts will probably be beneficial in the short term to get our economy back on track. But to try to say that they will be free is just another sign of how dumb the GOP's leading figures really are. It ain't rocket science. Hell even a high school economics student would recognize that tax cuts cost money.

But this is your Republican Party these days, and that's why there is no reason to really take them seriously.

It is what it is.

The Tax Fairy

The GOP just loves them some mythology.

Shuster PWNS Campbell

Hardball was a major dissappointment today but David Shuster more than made up for it by PWNING Congressman Campbell over the GOP alternative budget. Now on Olbermann they announced some bullshit show for Ed Shultz called "The Ed Show" which supposedly is going to air at the time that Shuster comes on. Ed Shultz is great on radio but sucks monkey balls on Tee Vee and if they make that switch I am definitely not watching that show and I don't think I am alone. I hope somebody brings some clarity to the situation, and soon!

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Conservadem Senator Shaheen Should Give This A Gander

Behold the GOP hypocrisy on the budget reconciliation process.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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.

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

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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.

Looks Like Jindal Is Gonna Need To Perform An Exorcism On His Budget

I have to admit that I am gloating a little bit. It was just funny to me how Bobby Jindal suddenly became the "future of the Republican Party" right after Barack Obama won the election simply because he has brown skin. Oh Republicans will never admit to that, but the guy has pretty much as light or lighter of a resume as Caribou Barbie. Now we get word from the New York Times that conservatism has struck again and the victim this time is the state of Louisianna.

In Louisiana, the oil-drunk always ends badly. This time, though, the political stakes are bigger than in the past, as the Republican Party’s national pinup, Gov. Bobby Jindal, has to absorb the brunt of the state’s abrupt shift in fortunes. After glorying in the largess earlier this year, Mr. Jindal has gone to issuing sober news releases about hiring freezes and the new austerity.

His fate is tied as much as anybody’s to Louisiana’s overdependence on oil. Severance taxes, mostly from oil and gas, made up just over 8 percent of state tax revenue in 2007, according to Census Bureau data, much less than Alaska’s 64 percent, but higher than Texas’ 6.9 percent. The total take, including royalties and leases from oil, gas and other resources, accounts for just under 17 percent of the Louisiana budget.

But while the leading good-government group here, citing that addiction, warned last May against the Legislature’s plan for a $360 million income tax cut, Mr. Jindal called the tax break “terrific news” and happily signed it into law as legislators cheered.

snip

Health care and higher education will probably suffer cuts, the latter perilous in a state that regularly bemoans chronic white-collar outmigration, a trend that touched the governor’s own family when his brother moved out of Louisiana. Mr. Jindal recently pointed out that his state was the only one in the South to regularly lose more people than it gained. Now, in the universities that are supposed to be magnets and incubators, faculty positions will go unfilled; academic programs will probably be cut.

There could be some $109 million in education spending cuts alone, and an additional $160 million in health care cuts, much from Medicaid — unfavorable circumstances for the rollout of Mr. Jindal’s ambitious new plan to partly privatize Medicaid in the state.

snip

Indeed, there was teeth-gnashing when Gregory Albrecht, the legislature’s chief economist, used what most felt to be a low-ball forecast for the price of oil, $84 a barrel, when forecasting the revenue the state could spend. “You can tell by the subtext of the questioning — ‘why are you so low?’ ” Mr. Albrecht recalled. “Money was coming in like crazy. Why worry about delaying a tax cut?”

The seasons have turned, and the mood here now is much darker. Now, it is the president of L.S.U. who is gnashing his teeth.

“If we have an open position, we have to stop that looking,” said John V. Lombardi, the university system president. Next year, he said, “we may have to confront the possibility of eliminating academic programs.”

Doesn't this sound all too familiar? At some point Republicans are going to have to pull their collective heads out of their collective asses and realize that tax cuts do not cure all ills. But then again I am kind of cool with them never finding their way out of the wilderness, so game on Republicans. Keep up the wingnuttery!!!!