Goofball Conservatives and the Incandescent Light Bulb Ban Myth

Beck And FreedomWorks Campaign Against Fred Upton: ‘Light Bulbs Are Just The Beginning’

A war is brewing among the right wing over the chairmanship of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, which has jurisdiction over health care, climate policy, and energy policy. Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI) is the leading contender, but Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is seeking a waiver from Republican leadership to retake the gavel, while Reps. John Shimkus (R-IL) and Cliff Stearns (R-FL) are also in the hunt. Although the candidates are lockstep in opposition to the Obama agenda and in their intention to launch witch hunts against climate science, Upton is a relative moderate, having admitted in the past that greenhouse emissions should be reduced. In contrast, Barton — who famously apologized to BP this summer — is fully aligned with the oil and gas industry, with $1,482,630 in lifetime contributions.

Now this internal fight has exploded into a Tea Party battle royale. FreedomWorks, run by veteran GOP lobbyist Dick Armey, has launched Down With Upton, a website attacking “Big Government Republican Fred Upton” for a record “full of votes for more regulation, more spending, and more taxes.” In an email announcing the campaign, FreedomWorks cited Glenn Beck’s warning that “light bulbs are just the beginning”:

Fred Upton, currently considered the front-runner for chairmanship of the critical House Energy and Commerce committee, is far out of step with the Tea Party movement, the GOP and the American people as a whole. You may have heard Glenn Beck talking about Fred Upton introducing a bill to ban incandescent light bulbs in favor of so-called “environmentally-friendly” alternatives. The truth is, Fred Upton has a Big Government record a mile long, and light bulbs are just the beginning.

Upton has already reneged his position on light-bulb efficiency, telling Politico “he’s not afraid to go back after an issue he once supported but that has come under withering assault on the conservative airwaves, including on Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck’s talk shows.”

There was, in fact, no bill to ban incandescent light bulbs. Because of the advanced light-bulb standards Upton helped pass in 2007, “the incandescent bulb is turning into a case study of the way government mandates can spur innovation,” the New York Times reported last year. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

The Tea Party movement is increasingly attacking American innovation and 21st-century jobs on all fronts: Rush Limbaugh is leading the charge against the breakthrough Chevy Volt, Republican governors are killing high-speed rail, Glenn Beck is cooking up conspiracy theories about smart grid technology, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) is trying to kill the wind industry, and the entire right-wing movement is convinced green jobs are going to destroy the United States economy.

The Republican campaign against progress and destruction of our economy seems to be on track. Frequently more moderate American wonder half jokingly if Republicans are engaged in a war on America's core values. The light bulb myth and the Republican war on progress would seem to indicate conservatives are not joking - they really do hate America and freedom.

The 2010 Mid -Term Election - The Best Congress Money Can Buy

Best Congress Money Can Buy

There are plenty of Americans who don’t endorse Stewart’s indictment of cable news; there’s even a reasonably large group that doesn’t buy Beck’s perceived shortfall in American religiosity. But seemingly everyone is aggrieved about the hijacking of the political system by anonymous special interests. The most recent Times-CBS News poll found that an extraordinary 92 percent of Americans want full disclosure of campaign contributors — far many more than, say, believe in evolution. But they will not get their wish anytime soon. “I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle,” said David Axelrod as the Democrats prepared to play catch-up to the G.O.P.’s 2010 mastery of outside groups and clandestine corporate corporations.

The story of recent corporate political donations — which we may never learn in its entirety — is just beginning to be told. Bloomberg News reported after Election Day that the United States Chamber of Commerce’s anti-Democratic war chest included a mind-boggling $86 million contribution from the insurance lobby to fight the health care bill. The Times has identified other big chamber donors as Prudential Financial, Goldman Sachs and Chevron. These are hardly the small businesses that the chamber’s G.O.P. allies claim to be championing.

Since the election, the Obama White House has sent signals that it will make nice to these interests. While the president returns to photo ops at factories, Timothy Geithner has already met with the chamber’s board out of camera range. In a reportorial coup before Election Day, the investigative news organization ProPublica wrote of the similarly behind-closed-doors activities of the New Democrat Coalition — “a group of 69 lawmakers whose close relationship with several hundred Washington lobbyists” makes them “one of the most successful political money machines” since DeLay’s K Street Project collapsed in 2007. During the Congressional battle over financial-services reform last May, coalition members repaired to a retreat on Maryland’s Eastern Shore to frolic with lobbyists dedicated to weakening the legislation.

Such is the ethos in his own party that Senator Jim Webb, Democrat of Virginia, complained this month that he “couldn’t even get a vote” for his proposal for a one-time windfall profits tax on Wall Street bonuses. Republicans “obviously weren’t going to vote for it,” he told Real Clear Politics, but Democrats also demurred, “saying that any vote like that was going to screw up fund-raising.”

Roughly two-thirds of the New Democrat Coalition’s House contingent won re-election on Nov. 2. Now they’ll have more Republican allies in both houses of Congress. Tea Party populists — already being betrayed by one Senate leader, Jon Kyl, on the supposed pledge against earmarks — may soon be as disillusioned as those Democrats who had hoped Barack Obama’s economic team wouldn’t look like Wall Street.

For all the McConnell-Boehner rhetorical pandering to Tea Partiers, the health care law will not be repealed by Congress — and certainly not any provisions that benefit the G.O.P. establishment’s friends in the health care industry. Over at FreedomWorks, Dick Armey’s Tea-Party-organizing group, there’s much belligerent talk of retribution against corporations seen as too friendly to Obama policies — most notably General Electric. It’s all hot air: G.E.’s political action committees gave a total of $1.6 million to politicians in both parties in 2010, and one of its former high-powered lobbyists, Dan Coats, is the newly elected Republican senator from Indiana and a probable member of the Senate Finance Committee.

Tea nut or right-wing conservative nut. They're both the same corrupt conservatives they have always been. They've just had a name change to reflect the new and improved smiley-faced fascist nuttiness.

Will The New Republican Congress Turn Its Back on Jobless Americans?

Will The New Republican Congress Turn Its Back on Jobless Americans?

Congress has apparently decided that unemployed people are an expensive nuisance. Just in time for their own Thanksgiving break, a minority in the House of Representatives last week successfully blocked reauthorization of federal unemployment benefits, effectively yanking the safety net that has kept millions of Americans from total devastation. If Congress doesn't act quickly next week, the long-term unemployed will start dropping from the benefits rolls. By Christmas, two million will be gone—more than one in ten of the total 15 million currently unemployed Americans.

There is just a tiny window, between Congress's return on Monday and the expiration of the programs on Tuesday, for averting immediate cuts. To do the right thing, Congress must reauthorize the federal commitment to the long-term unemployed, people out of work for six consecutive months, as this country has done during high unemployment ever since the Great Depression, and ensure that commitment for a full year. (Economists project that US unemployment will remain above nine percent through the end of 2011.)

This struggle over helping the economy and the unemployed has continued throughout the recession. Each stopgap measure to reauthorize the programs has met obstruction—and even complaints that unemployment insurance for those who have exhausted their twenty-six weeks of state benefits discourages the unemployed from looking for work. In fact, the average unemployment extension check is a mere $290 a week, replacing only half of the average family's expenditures on transportation, food and housing. This modest assistance provides jobless workers a major incentive to look for work.

When these programs expired in June, it took Congress seven weeks to enact reauthorizing legislation, in which time more than two million unemployed Americans and their families saw their unemployment benefits cut off. Though benefits were retroactively provided to the unemployed, going weeks without this lifeline can be the last straw, forcing unemployed workers to run through their savings or lose their homes. Last week, as the House leadership tried to fast-track the renewal, the obstructionists won again.

The so-called "deficit hawks"—the same people who want budget-busting, extended tax breaks for the rich—are not just hurting jobless Americans. Their sudden concern for the deficit when it comes to renewing unemployment insurance will, paradoxically, damage the economy.

From friends, family and neighbors, most Americans have seen the toll of long-term unemployment, the result of a cruel game of musical chairs in which five workers compete for every job opening.

We hear [1] from many of them. There's Robert Pugh, in Santa Barbara, California, who earned his MBA after a long career as a chef and found work as a financial analyst in small business and commercial banking, only to be laid off last June. He will lose his unemployment benefits next month—and, after that, his apartment and health insurance. There's Robert Horvath of Glenview, Illinois, also laid off in June after a career in banking. Of his $1,500 in monthly benefits, due to expire in December, he needs $1,200 just for health insurance. At 58, he has applied for all kinds of jobs and received no offers. There's Sharron Tetrault from Mount Vernon, New York, who has worked as an event planner for nonprofits for fourteen years, but since being laid off in January has struggled daily to find work. She'll be cut off unemployment insurance in the coming weeks if Congress fails to renew the programs, "and it's only a matter of time before my phone gets shut off," she says. "How will employers call me?"

These are not irresponsible losers. They are victims of disastrous economic conditions. And the nation will "save" nothing by condemning them to poverty and homelessness. Rather, we will see a downward spiral in which yet more jobs and more tax revenue are lost.

In fact, just as the House torpedoed the federal programs last week, economic experts, including orthodox fiscal conservatives, begged to differ. A new Department of Labor study [2], commissioned by the Bush administration and co-authored by the chief economic adviser to John McCain's presidential campaign, found that the federal programs had injected enough into the economy to reduce the unemployment rate by 1.2 points. The Congressional Budget Office has ranked [3] unemployment insurance as the most effective stimulus to the economy, generating $1.90 in economic activity for every $1 the government spends.

Even the Concord Coalition, an advocacy group dedicated to cutting the deficit, questions the rationale of opposing unemployment insurance. Concord's chief economist, Diane Lim Rogers, has said [4] that "those who use their 'worry' about our longer-term fiscal outlook as a reason to oppose extended unemployment benefits don't want to reduce the deficit as much as they want to get rid of unemployment benefits."

And the American public emphatically supports the federal programs. In a poll [5] released last week, three in four of those surveyed agreed that "it is too early to start cutting back benefits for workers who lost their jobs." Two-thirds said the programs should continue until there is a significant drop in the unemployment rate.

Unfortunately, the jobs picture shows no sign of significant improvement in the next year. That means the federal programs must remain in place at least that long, and reauthorizing them now, through 2011, will avert more pain, uncertainty and, in Congress, wasteful gamesmanship.

Amazingly, while some in Congress believe $5 billion per month for unemployment benefits costs too much, they insist on borrowing $700 billion over the next decade to give more tax cuts to the richest 2 percent of Americans.

This Thanksgiving, those 2 percent have much to be grateful for. The rest of us should call our members of Congress.

During the Bush era Republicans controlled Congress for six of those years. even when the House of Representatives got a small Democratic majority they couldn't get any reasonable budget adjustments past Bush's veto threats. republicans were able to rack up the biggest deficit in history just as the economy they created crashed. Now Republicans think the wealthy need a break and the jobless deserve the shaft. Why do Republicans hate America and working class Americans.

Happy Thanksgiving! Conservatives Mangle History To Score Political Points

Happy Thanksgiving! Conservatives Mangle History To Score Political Points

It's reasonable to assume that tea partiers, Fox News hosts and conservative bloggers look forward to today for the same reason most Americans do: the turkey (or tofurkey, depending on your preference) and the football (or cable TV marathons, depending on your preference.)

But those folks also look forward to Thanksgiving for another reason that it's equally reasonable to imagine most Americans don't: the celebration of capitalism's final victory over communist-leaning Pilgrims.

"Sadly, few Americans know the real story of the early colonists," FreedomWorks' Julie Borowski wrote yesterday. "For evidence of the failures of communism, we do not need to look to disastrous experiments in foreign lands. In fact, the Plymouth Plantation is one of the most apparent examples of the failures of collectivism."

FreedomWorks is, of course, a leading tea party organization headed by Dick Armey. But tea partiers aren't the only ones saying that by breaking bread together on that first Thanksgiving, the early American colonists were really breaking the back of socialism.

John Stossel, noted sayer of "give me a break" and Fox News host, went on the air Wednesday afternoon to lay out the conservative story of the first Thanksgiving.

In an accompanying post on the Fox News website, Stossel explains that "had today's political class been in power" on that first Thanksgiving Day, today would be "called 'Starvation Day' instead of Thanksgiving."

Here's how Stossel and the tea partiers break it down:

The Pilgrims at Plymouth Colony organized their farm economy along communal lines. The goal was to share the work and produce equally.

That's why they nearly all starved.

According to the narrative, it wasn't until a more capitalist structure was imposed that things really started to work. From Borowski's FreedomWorks post:

In 1661 and 1662, the Pilgrims and Wampanoag Indians did share two meals together. But it wasn't until the "miracle of 1663" that they celebrated a bountiful feast like we do today. As Governor William Bradford wrote that year, "instead of famine now God gave them plenty." This was the year that Bradford switched to a more capitalist system.

In short, Borowski writes, "private property saved the Pilgrims."

As the New York Times reported last week, the story is part of Rush Limbaugh's yearly Thanksgiving broadcast, and it's part of the course load at Glenn Beck's online university.

Sounds great. Pass the cranberry sauce and the supply-and-demand dogma and let's do this thing.

Trouble is, the Times reports, the conservative Thanksgiving tale is not exactly true. At all. From the paper:

Historians say that the settlers in Plymouth, and their supporters in England, did indeed agree to hold their property in common -- William Bradford, the governor, referred to it in his writings as the "common course." But the plan was in the interest of realizing a profit sooner, and was only intended for the short term; historians say the Pilgrims were more like shareholders in an early corporation than subjects of socialism.

Whatever the political leanings of the Pilgrims in that system, a historian tells the Times, "the arrangement did not produce famine."

Oh and one more thing: "Bradford did get rid of the common course -- but it was in 1623, after the first Thanksgiving, and not because the system wasn't working," the paper reports. "The Pilgrims just didn't like it."

Watch the moronic John Stossel tell the conservative story of the first Thanksgiving in video at link. The history of early colonial America is long and complex. Scholars have been writing articles and books about those years for quite a while so there is tons of information to digest. That said this short blog post is helpful.

Right-wing conservatives Gobbling up our blessings

Republican Lunatic Beck tells audience to ruin Thanksgiving dinner with misinformation about inflation

Right-wing Republicans Urge Slashing Corporate Taxes as Profits Hit Soar

Republicans Dreams Come True. The Destruction of America

There Will Be Blood

Former Senator Alan Simpson is a Very Serious Person. He must be — after all, President Obama appointed him as co-chairman of a special commission on deficit reduction.

So here’s what the very serious Mr. Simpson said on Friday: “I can’t wait for the blood bath in April. ... When debt limit time comes, they’re going to look around and say, ‘What in the hell do we do now? We’ve got guys who will not approve the debt limit extension unless we give ’em a piece of meat, real meat,’ ” meaning spending cuts. “And boy, the blood bath will be extraordinary,” he continued.

Think of Mr. Simpson’s blood lust as one more piece of evidence that our nation is in much worse shape, much closer to a political breakdown, than most people realize.

Some explanation: There’s a legal limit to federal debt, which must be raised periodically if the government keeps running deficits; the limit will be reached again this spring. And since nobody, not even the hawkiest of deficit hawks, thinks the budget can be balanced immediately, the debt limit must be raised to avoid a government shutdown. But Republicans will probably try to blackmail the president into policy concessions by, in effect, holding the government hostage; they’ve done it before.

Now, you might think that the prospect of this kind of standoff, which might deny many Americans essential services, wreak havoc in financial markets and undermine America’s role in the world, would worry all men of good will. But no, Mr. Simpson “can’t wait.” And he’s what passes, these days, for a reasonable Republican.

The fact is that one of our two great political parties has made it clear that it has no interest in making America governable, unless it’s doing the governing. And that party now controls one house of Congress, which means that the country will not, in fact, be governable without that party’s cooperation — cooperation that won’t be forthcoming.

Elite opinion has been slow to recognize this reality. Thus on the same day that Mr. Simpson rejoiced in the prospect of chaos, Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, appealed for help in confronting mass unemployment. He asked for “a fiscal program that combines near-term measures to enhance growth with strong, confidence-inducing steps to reduce longer-term structural deficits.”

My immediate thought was, why not ask for a pony, too? After all, the G.O.P. isn’t interested in helping the economy as long as a Democrat is in the White House. Indeed, far from being willing to help Mr. Bernanke’s efforts, Republicans are trying to bully the Fed itself into giving up completely on trying to reduce unemployment.

And on matters fiscal, the G.O.P. program is to do almost exactly the opposite of what Mr. Bernanke called for. On one side, Republicans oppose just about everything that might reduce structural deficits: they demand that the Bush tax cuts be made permanent while demagoguing efforts to limit the rise in Medicare costs, which are essential to any attempts to get the budget under control. On the other, the G.O.P. opposes anything that might help sustain demand in a depressed economy — even aid to small businesses, which the party claims to love.

Right now, in particular, Republicans are blocking an extension of unemployment benefits — an action that will both cause immense hardship and drain purchasing power from an already sputtering economy. But there’s no point appealing to the better angels of their nature; America just doesn’t work that way anymore.

Modern conservatism has always thought democracy was not an inconvenience to maintaining the plutocracy of their dreams. The Bush tax cuts, while simultaneously spending trillions on nation building, were not poor decisions. On the contrary, cutting revenue while spending like mad men was the perfect plan. The crashing economy - made possible by the deregulatory fever of conservatism - was all part of the plan. Now they'll get their chance to finally finish off the world's greatest democracy.

Almost Turkey Day - which conservatives like to celebrate by rewriting history - The Pilgrims Were ... Socialists?

Oregon Senator Wyden(D) effectively kills Internet censorship bill

Oregon Senator Wyden(D) effectively kills Internet censorship bill

Oregon Senator Wyden effectively kills Internet censorship billIt's too early to say for sure, but Oregon Senator Ron Wyden could very well go down in the history books as the man who saved the Internet.

A bill that critics say would have given the government power to censor the Internet will not pass this year thanks to the Oregon Democrat, who announced his opposition during a recent committee hearing. Individual Senators can place holds on pending legislation, in this case meaning proponents of the bill will be forced to reintroduce the measure and will not be able to proceed until the next Congress convenes.

Even then, its passage is not certain.

The Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) would have permitted a blanket takedown of any domain alleged to be assisting activities that violate copyright law, based upon the judgment of state attorneys general.

"Deploying this statute to combat online copyright infringement seems almost like using a bunker-busting cluster bomb, when what you need is a precision-guided missile," Wyden said.

The act was unanimously approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday.

"Few things are more important to the future of the American economy and job creation than protecting our intellectual property," said Senator Patrick Leahy, a Democrat from Vermont who co-sponsored the bill.
"That is why the legislation is supported by both labor and industry, and Democrats and Republicans are standing together."

Opponents of the bill insist that many sites which contain allegedly infringing materials also traffic in legitimate data that's constitutionally protected. There's also a fear that whatever action the US takes, other countries will seek to emulate, and some to a much more zealous degree.

Activist group DemandProgress, which is running a petition against the bill, argued the powers in the bill could be used for political purposes. If the whistleblower Web site WikiLeaks is found to be hosting copyrighted material, for instance, access to WikiLeaks could be blocked for all US Internet users, they suggested.

A group of academics, led by Temple University law professor David Post, have signed a petition opposing COICA.

"The Act, if enacted into law, would fundamentally alter U.S. policy towards Internet speech, and would set a dangerous precedent with potentially serious consequences for free expression and global Internet freedom," Post wrote in the petition letter (PDF).

"Blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system," explained the Electronic Frontiers Foundation (EFF), a privacy and digital rights advocate group, is a "reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech."

At least for now, lets all remember a Democrat saved the internet.

Why Do Republicans Hate Our Military Heroes

AFA’s Fischer says America has ‘feminized’ the Medal of Honor

Army Staff Sgt. Salvatore Giunta certainly earned the Medal of Honor bestowed upon him Tuesday, said the American Family Association’s Bryan Fischer. But continuing to award the medal to people who save American lives instead of to those who kill the enemy has “feminized” the medal, Fischer contends.

Giunta, 25, of Hiawatha, rushed into enemy fire to aid fellow soldiers during a harrowing battle in Afghanistan in 2007. When his platoon was ambushed, Giunta pulled a wounded soldier to safety, and in the process was struck by two bullets himself. He recovered to help mount a counterattack, eventually reaching another injured soldier. Giunta continued pressing ahead in search of Sgt. Joshua C. Brennan, the third wounded soldier and one of Giunta’s best friends. When he found two insurgents attempting to carry away Brennan, he opened fire, killing one and wounding the other.

Brennan eventually died despite Giunta’s efforts.

For his courageous actions, President Barack Obama awarded him the medal, the first to a living soldier since the Vietnam War.

“When we think of heroism in battle, we used the think of our boys storming the beaches of Normandy under withering fire, climbing the cliffs of Pointe do Hoc while enemy soldiers fired straight down on them, and tossing grenades into pill boxes to take out gun emplacements,” Fischer wrote on his blog Tuesday. “That kind of heroism has apparently become passe when it comes to awarding the Medal of Honor. We now award it only for preventing casualties, not for inflicting them.”

Conservative Republican Fischer has never served in the military. It seems that most conservative right-wing Republicans have not served in the military. Fischer's mother probably never served, but she was brave enough to go through labor and wipe Fischer's ass for years, so one wonders why he has such a low opinion of his mother and preserving life.

Willow Palin Facebook Posts: Homophobic Slurs, Curse Words & More (PHOTOS)

Economists explain why Right-wing Republican Lunatic Glenn Beck's inflation theory doesn't add up

Republicans Run on Feelings Since They Have No Ideas

The Ideas Deficit - If "ideas have consequences," as conservatives like to say, what's the consequence of having none?

"Ideas have consequences," conservatives intoned during the Reagan era, boasting of their think tanks, journals, and networks of well-financed academics. When I first came to Washington 20 years ago, there was still some truth to this. The conservative intellectual machinery, though heavily weighted toward public relations, still managed to produce a steady flow of fresh-seeming ideas and credible advocates. The center-left, on the other hand, was burdened by stale assumptions, interest-group demands, and a technocratic approach to governing.

In the years since then, the balance of power in the war of ideas has switched. Beginning in the late 1990s, progressive donors began to see the value of think tanks like the New America Foundation and later the Center for American Progress that would not only conduct technical research but develop fresh perspectives and push them out into the world. New approaches to health care, national security, and education reform emerged from this investment.

Meanwhile, the right seems to have decided that ideas are unnecessary baggage. They've embraced candidates of staggering ignorance. Their halfhearted attempts to show that they would have a policy agenda should they take control of Congress have been embarrassingly vague, and not one of their plans would reduce the federal budget deficit by a dime. Right-wing think tanks have undertaken a purge of the brightest, independent-minded conservatives: David Frum was fired from the American Enterprise Institute, and Brink Lindsey and Will Wilkinson left the Cato Institute. Even the only real brain at the Heritage Foundation, the Thatcherite Stuart Butler, has been shuttled off into a small new "think tank within a think tank."

If ideas are so consequential, progressives should be romping over the unilaterally disarmed right. Indeed, as the Obama administration took office in 2009, it was fully armed with big ideas like cap-and-trade and health reform based on the public option as well as lower-profile initiatives such as student-loan reform, K-12 school reform based on teacher accountability, financial re-regulation, and an approach to national security that this magazine called the "Obama Doctrine." Mandate for Leadership, the Heritage Foundation's long-admired 1,093-page book of ideas for the incoming Reagan administration in 1980, had finally met its match.

Some of the progressive initiatives have been blocked or ignored, but others are now law, and some are being quietly put into place through provisions of the economic stimulus bill. The education program known as Race to the Top, for example, represents a vast change in the federal government's relationship to state and local school systems but was barely noticed when enacted. Other ideas served a more political purpose. Funding for green-jobs programs helped cement a coalition of labor and environmental groups, even if the promise of a renewable-energy economy was overstated. The public option in health care helped mobilize a supportive constituency on the left, even if it was ultimately bargained away.

Aside from health-care reform, however, the last two years have been defined largely by reactive policies, such as the auto bailout, rather than an affirmative agenda. Then there's the problem that on the economy, it's time to admit that we're missing a clear vision for how individuals can make the most of their potential. We have some small ideas -- more economic stimulus and investment in infrastructure -- that would ease the pain of the recession and perhaps hasten a recovery, but economists expect it to take several years to return to pre-recession employment levels. The Clinton-era answer, "Get more education," is no longer persuasive, even though it remains the default Democratic response. College graduates are better off than young workers without degrees, but researchers at Northeastern University estimate that fewer than half of recent college graduates hold jobs that require a degree, making the job market even tougher for less educated workers. "Invest in manufacturing," we often say in this magazine, but manufacturing is now so efficient that it can hardly be expected to create millions of middle-class jobs, as it did in the 1950s.

Without a persuasive alternative vision for the economy, it's no surprise that voters and legislators would be attracted to vacuous slogans like "lower taxes" or "reduce the size of government." It's time to get the idea machines cranked up. What we're looking for now aren't political answers, incremental reforms, or bargaining chips. We don't need ideas that will help Democrats win; we need ideas for the country. We need clarity about just how different the economy will be, even after the recession ends, and a strategy for how we can, once again, make sure that the vast majority of people will have a place in it.

Democrats had great ideas and enacted many of them. The problem was those ideas that became legislation were smothered by the economic mess Republicans left for others to fix. Conservatives keep yelling about high taxes, but the fact is taxes are lower then ever. They created a paper tiger and shot it, so they have the appearance of being heroes. Reality has been made over to resemble the fantasies of conservatives. No nation can survive living on fantasies.

What liberal media? CNBC Aids Rep. Ryan(R) In Pushing Falsehoods About The Bush Tax Cuts And Small Business

Conservative Tea Party Freshmen Attend Lobbyist Retreat

Conservative Tea Party Freshmen Attend Lobbyist Retreat

FreedomWorks is a pay-to-play corporate front group that has historically served as a service for corporate lobbyists to generate “grassroots” support for narrow special interest legislation. Dick Armey, after taking over the group, routinely used FreedomWorks to serve his corporate clients at his lobbying firm, DLA Piper. As the Washington Post noted, after ThinkProgress highlighted Armey’s use of FreedomWorks “organizing” to his own benefit, he resigned from DLA Piper. However, other corporate lobbyists, like Gray & Schmitz chief lobbyist C. Boyden Gray and Venable lobbyist James Burnley continue to oversee FreedomWorks (and continue to lobby for right-wing corporate interests). In the last two years, FreedomWorks has become known for its key role in organizing Tea Party opposition to President Obama and to reforms designed to help reign in corporate abuses.

On Thursday and Friday, FreedomWorks hosted a retreat for freshmen Republican lawmakers. Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT), according to the New York Times, recalled almost breaking out in tears over the vast resources FreedomWorks dedicated to helping him get elected. However, the retreat occurred amidst new reports claiming that Republican insiders and GOP operatives are using events during the upcoming lame duck session of Congress to co-opt new “Tea Party” lawmakers.

ThinkProgress traveled to Baltimore for the retreat, and asked Lee if he was worried about the appearance of attending a retreat run by a former lobbyist for banking other corporate interests:

TP: I know Tea Party groups have actually raised concerns about a lot of quote unquote insider trainings and conferences during this break period. Are you worried that some of this freshmen class are going to be co-opted by lobbyists? I know Dick Armey used to lobby for AIG and some of the big banks and some of the pharmaceutical companies. Are you worried about some of the lobbyists co-opting the Tea Party movement?

LEE: Not at all. To the supporters of the Tea Party movement, and to its antagonists, I have one thing to say: Watch what’s next.


In addition to Lee, other GOP freshmen, including Reps. Todd Young (R-IN), Renee Ellmers (R-NC), Tim Scott (R-SC), Reid Ribble (R-WI), Steve Pearce (R-NM), and Andy Harris (R-MD), attended the event. Shortly after the retreat, the Salt Lake Tribune reported that Lee appointed one of “Utah’s most prominent lobbyists” to be his chief of staff.

Armey, who presided over the event in Baltimore, has personally lobbied for multinational alcohol company Diego, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Medicines Co, Raytheon, Carmax, and many other corporations. Although Armey and his “Tea Party” cohorts have assailed President Obama’s economic stimulus, which helped create 3 million jobs for the middle class, as wasteful taxpayer “bailouts,” his lobbying firm helped engineer the bank bailouts of 2008. As the Wonk Room reported, while Armey worked for DLA Piper, the firm assisted AIG, Lehman Brothers, and Merrill Lynch during President Bush’s bank bailouts.

FreedomWorks is not a genuine grassroots group serving the public interest. Even the conservative-leaning Wall Street Journal has exposed Armey building “amateur-looking” websites — under the FreedomWorks brand — to promote Armey’s corporate clients.

It turns out tea bagger conservatives are just as corrupt, just as quick to lie and just as ready to be the puppets of special interests as plain old conservatives.

The Tea Party Conservatives Give Themselves the Shaft

The Tea Party Conservatives Give Themselves the Shaft

To all of you who either flip-flopped your wishy-washy ideals and switched your vote from bluish to reddish this past election because Obama and the lukewarm Dems failed to solve all world problems in 700 days, or because you got yourself so emotionally riled up/mentally watered down by the sexy caveman grunts of the Tea Party that you actually bought the BS line about being "mad as hell" about nothing even remotely coherent.

Here is your grand message: You are hereby wonderfully, thoroughly screwed.

Oh darling, it's so very true. The fun-filled news is, despite all the bluster and rhetoric, thinly veiled racism and rampant Islamophobia on display, the new army of jittery, anti-everything GOP bobbleheads that you just voted into office doesn't care a single iota about you, or your haphazard values, or what you sometimes occasionally stand for. And what's more, deep down, you secretly know it.

Are you slightly offended? Are you scowling and mistrustful of the notion? I'm delighted to hear it. Also: It doesn't really matter.

You don't have to believe me. Just wait until nothing at all is done to service the Tea Party non-agenda, because it's ridiculous and impossible to service. Just wait until you note how there is no actual shrinking of government, no restoring some bogus sepia-toned idealism that never existed, no saving of your job. There is, of course, but one GOP agenda: furthering their personal stranglehold on all things powermad and avaricious.

That's not to say they won't try to tackle some issues. Boehner & Co care very much about nailing down enormous tax cuts for wealthy people, preventing education reform, gridlocking Congress at every turn, denying the fact that seven billion rapacious humans have an effect on climate change, and blocking as much newly available health care for 30 million Americans as possible. And so on.

But truly, the issues themselves don't matter. For what Boehner & Co value most is not so much making any sort of significant change in American culture, but rather, in keeping the anger, the dread, the paranoia alive.

In other words, they care most about keeping you in the lower, plebian castes all riled and blind as long as possible. This way, power lies. This way we find war and military expenditure and all manner of misprision, torture, environmental rape, WMD and homophobia, you name it. Just ask Karl Rove. Hey, it's a platform. It worked for Dubya. Well, sort of.

Perhaps you secretly agree with this assessment, understanding that the Repubs are indeed mostly shmucks, but at least they're shmucks fighting in your corner. Maybe you think the Dems are no better, and it's all a matter of lesser-of-two-evils, a needful balancing of power, that the nation's new rightward tilt serves Obama right for -- what was it again? "Overreaching"? For daring to accomplish in two short years more than any president in six decades? Right.

One thing's certain: the populace remains angry and scared about, well, what we've always been angry and scared about: jobs, a massive deficit, war and terrorism, taxes and drugs, gangs and goons, evil bumps in the night.

But these days, one source of anger trumps all others. We are perhaps most furious about our dysfunctional political system, one that cherishes acrimony over cohesion, backstabbing over unity, bickering over a calm and respectful, unified vision. (Which is a little strange, considering how much Pelosi and the Dems accomplished in two years. It might have been acerbic, but the output was actually sort of stunning. But never mind that now).

Are both parties to blame for this hateful, acerbic tone? Are they equally responsible for the ongoing divisiveness? Sure. To some degree. Then again, no. Not really. Not by a long shot.

Let's be perfectly clear: The modern Republican party has one masterful, godlike skill unmatched by any other org in this century: Its leaders are geniuses at deceit, at leading throngs of blind believers into rabbit holes of war and fear and factual inaccuracy, often using an aggressively dumbed-down form of Christianity as a trump card. Sexual dread, mistrust of youth, of women, of gays, foreigners, of the ever-changing cultural landscape? It's in the DNA. And the Tea Party chugged it like Coors-flavored heroin.

And the Dems? The Dems wish they could be that masterful. Progressives are just terribly weak in fearmongering. There is something about the liberal spirit that values independent thought and self-determination, that defies screaming eye-glazed megachurch groupthink dread. This makes it tough to hold power for very long. It's so much easier to rally around sameness, conformity, institution, fear of the Other. Right, Karl?

Proof? Look no further than the GOP's leaders and mouthpieces: Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Fox News and even newly minted Senate demigod Mitch McConnell, et al. There are almost no liberal equivalents to these professional liars, warmongers, kingmakers and overlords. In the category of media and message manipulation, the libs have proven disastrous.

I take it back. Not all red-leaning voters this election are hereby screwed. If you're tremendously wealthy and/or run a very large corporation, you're feeling damn good right about now. Wall Street is giddy like Charlie Sheen in a Bangkok brothel, eager for more deregulation, bigger bonuses, less oversight. The CEOs of every oil company in the world are positively orgasmic knowing that their GOP breathren will now asphyxiate all attempts at new environmental legislation and regulation. And so on.

But if you are a lower to middle-class Republican, Tea Partier or flip-flopping indie voter, you are now in the most delightfully ironic position of all -- you think you just voted yourself more voice, when in fact you voted for far less. You think yourself a lion; you're actually the meat. You actually just voted yourself an even lower position on the food chain. Congratulations.

But don't worry. There is a bright spot ahead. 2012 is nigh, and a dramatic new vote simmers and looms, as it always does. Soon enough, it will shift and mutate all over again, and we can kickstart the eternal debate once more. Something to look forward to, no?

Mark Morford's new book, 'The Daring Spectacle: Adventures in Deviant Journalism,' is now available at daringspectacle.com, Amazon, BN.com, and beyond.

They say be careful what you wish for. Working class and middle-class conservatives just gave themselves one of the biggest shafts in history. Who knew that a group of people could have so much self hate. As Republicans try to block anything and everything they could very send the country into an economic down slide that makes our current troubles look good in comparison.

Smiley Faced Anti-American Fascist Glenn Beck Philanthropist

Under fire from Jewish leaders, Smiley Faced Fascist Beck again smears Soros as Holocaust collaborator

Today on his Fox News program, Glenn Beck again falsely accused Jewish philanthropist George Soros of being a Holocaust collaborator. Beck used this false attack to buttress his Soros conspiracies, suggesting that "the lesson he learned" from his supposed actions are what informs the shadowy tactics he is supposedly using to destroy the U.S. currency and government:

I'm going to concentrate on the fact that I think the lesson he learned in that horrific year of 1944 is if you hide your true identity you can gain power, you can survive. And those who are seen as disadvantaged or handicapped and don't hide their identity, well, they don't survive.

On Tuesday, during the first part of his three-day Fox News attack on Soros, Beck falsely suggested that Soros was a Holocaust collaborator, and that Soros felt no guilt about it. Yesterday on his radio show, Beck went so far as to suggest that Soros helped "send the Jews" to "death camps" during the Holocaust.

These attacks led to widespread condemnation from prominent Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors. Anti-Defamation League national director Abraham H. Foxman called the comments "completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top," as well as "unacceptable" and "horrific." Elan Steinberg, vice president of the the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants, called the Beck accusations "monstrous." And Simon Greer, president of the Jewish Funds for Justice, said that Beck had "deliberately and grotesquely mischaracterize[d]" Soros' experience and engaged in "a form of Holocaust revisionism."

But today, in a live Fox broadcast wrapping up his Soros attacks, Beck returned to the attack. He said that Soros had "to go and confiscate the property of your fellow Jews" during the Holocaust, and while he said that "I am not blaming or questioning a 14-year-old or his parents for trying to keep him alive trying to keep the family alive," he nonetheless attacked Soros because he "has never once said he regretted it." Beck went on to question how Soros' experiences "affected his feelings on Israel, which he does not support."

In fact, as we've repeatedly documented, Soros has said that he felt no guilt about his actions because he "had no role in taking away that property."

Will Beck say he regrets smearing a survivor of right-wing eliminationism? Beck is an anti-American smiley faced fascist who worships totalitarianism, militarism, redistribution of income to the richest Americans, polluting the nation's rivers and lakes, destroying our natural heritage so that one generation can live a decadent lifestyle - leaving solutions for some future generation to take care of. There is not one ideal in the Constitution for which Beck will speak up for.

The Keen Fiscal Insights of Republicans

House GOP recommend cutting program that has already expired

I guess they haven't been paying attention in class.

One program which House Republicans have consistently seized upon to bolster their budget-cutting bona fides is the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Emergency Contingency Fund, a successful program that has created 250,000 jobs in 37 states via subsidized employment programs for low-income and unemployed workers. And according to National Journal, Republicans are once again railing against the program, selecting it as one of their first programs to cut....

But the crux of the issue is that eliminating the TANF emergency fund will not save any money because the program has already expired. It was funded at $5 billion for two years, and ended on September 30, 2010. There is no money left for Price to save.

It's a program that shouldn't have expired, and which the administration has asked Congress to extend because it's direct assistance that creates jobs. It expired because of Republican obstruction, along with the 250,000 jobs it created. I guess a quarter of a million jobs lost just isn't enough. They want to take another crack at it.

It is great that the free markets works, but sometimes it can be stubborn and needs a little help to move along. Republicans beleive that as long as free markets are working for the wealthy that is all that matters. let the working poor eat cake.

New Republican Agenda. Wishy-washy on Banning Their Dear Earmarks

McConnell tepid on ending 'earmarks'

Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell said that banning lawmaker-directed spending projects known as "earmarks" from congressional legislation is more complicated than it appears but that he is willing to consider such a move.

McConnell said ending the common practice of slipping funding requests for home-state projects into legislation won't cut spending but will only limit the discretion of where to spend the vast federal budget.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina has said he wants to ban all lawmakers' requests for specific spending. President Obama has backed that idea.

McConnell said Republicans are ready to cut federal spending but banning earmarks is not a realistic way to do that. McConnell spoke Sunday on CBS' Face the Nation. — The Associated Press

McConnell is not going to ban earmarks because they are the way Republicans can funnel money back home and say hey look at what I did for my state or district. Republicans have never been against big government, they're simply against any big government that does not make them richer and more powerful. The 2010 mid-term elections will allow them to continue that tradition.

What Conservative Mandate?

Mid-term election results not a mandate for GOP, poll shows

Mid term election results not a mandate for GOP, poll shows

'Voters are looking for change — but not what the Republicans are offering'

It's the economy, stupid.

That catchphrase from the 1992 election -- which saw Bill Clinton propelled to the Oval Office on a wave of discontent over unemployment -- applies just as strongly in 2010, a new poll indicates.

The exit poll (PDF) from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research suggests that while voters gave control of the House to the Republicans, it was not out of a desire to return to Republican policies, but rather out of a lack of other options.

The poll shows voters largely rejected the narrative put forward by Republicans: That the American public rebelled against the liberal-minded over-reaching of the Obama administration.

Roughly even numbers of Democratic, Republican and independent voters -- about three-quarters in each case -- said the economy was a factor in their vote. No other issue polled nearly as high.

Dissatisfaction with the available political options was also high, with 26 percent of voters saying their vote was a "message to both parties" that they are unsatisfied with the state of US politics. By contrast, 20 percent said the vote was a message specifically targeted at President Obama.

That appears to mesh with a recent poll showing 54 percent of voters would like to see a viable third party rise in the US.

"The results show that voters weren't necessarily allying themselves with the GOP, but rather were voicing their disapproval with Washington as a whole," writes Andy Kroll at Mother Jones.

Nor did voters generally align themselves with Republican talking points. Even a majority of self-identified Republicans -- 62 percent -- said they wanted lawmakers to "keep their hands off" Social Security when addressing the budget deficit. Among all voters, 68 percent opposed cuts to Social Security.

Voters preferred Democratic ideas for tackling the budget deficit. Fifty-one percent said they wanted to see an end to the Bush tax cuts for the rich and a new bank tax to address the deficit, while 39 percent backed the GOP's proposals to cut $100 billion from domestic spending, raise the retirement age and cancel unspent stimulus funds.

Sixty-six percent of voters agreed with President Obama's declaration that "we have to reduce our deficits, but [also] make investments in education, in research and innovation" and "we have to lead in the new energy, Green industrial revolution sweeping the world."

Not that this reality will affect the way right-wing Republicans try to govern. They have a sordid mandate inside their head that tells them to govern without seeking the best solutions for most Americans. Government by and for the people? Republicans think that is a punch-line to a joke.

Govs. Haley Barbour (R-MS), Bobby Jindal (R-LA), Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) - Stimulus Bashing Governors Issue Hundreds Of Millions Of Dollars In Stimulus Funded Bonds. Republican is just a synonym for spectacular hypocrite.

Republicans To Spend Tens of Millions in Tax payer Funds to Investigate Non-Existent Scandals

Before the midterm elections, Republicans indicated that if they gained control of the House, they would launch investigations into numerous "scandals" that have been pushed by Fox News over the past two years. Since the elections, Fox News figures have also called for these investigations. But the purported "controversies" have long been debunked.

Republican BP Ass Kisser Might Be New Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee

Lawmaker who apologized to BP may chair House energy panel

Lawmaker who apologized to BP may chair House energy panel

The Texas lawmaker who apologized to BP for the US government's insistence that the oil giant set up a fund to compensate oil spill victims may soon be the most powerful voice in the House on US energy policy.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) is a leading contender for the chairmanship of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, a position he held once before, during the 2004-2006 congressional session.

Barton brought attention to himself in June, when the Obama administration announced that BP would set up a $20-billion escrow fund to compensate businesses and households affected by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

"I'm ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday," Barton said. "I think it's a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown ... in this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States...."

Barton concluded: "I'm not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize."

....As the New York Times noted shortly after the "apology" controversy, Barton "has long been one of the top beneficiaries of campaign donations from big energy companies, cornerstones of the Texas economy."

"BP and other major players in the oil business might hope for more of [Barton's] kind of solicitude from the House Energy and Commerce panel," writes Brett Michael Dykes at The Upshot. Dykes argues that putting Barton back in the Energy and Commerce driver's seat could be bad politics for the GOP.

Many Americans - they're called conservatives - apparently missed that good old corruption we had from 2000 to 2008. Well its back and more corrupt than ever.

people who think America is a democracy are naive at best. We're the best plutocracy money can buy - Conservatives outspent liberals 2-1 in elections

About That No Good Health Care Reform Law

About That No Good Health Care Reform Law

From Janet Adamy at the Wall Street Journal:

The number of small businesses offering health insurance to workers is projected to increase sharply this year, recent data show, a shift that researchers attribute to a tax credit in the health law. Many small businesses, however, remain opposed to the law.

Some small businesses are benefiting from portions of the law, which includes a tax credit beginning this year that covers as much as 35% of a company's insurance premiums.

According to a report by Bernstein Research in New York, the percentage of employers with between three and nine workers and which are offering insurance has increased to 59% this year, up from 46% last year. The report relies on data from a September survey by the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

A full tax credit is available to employers with 10 or fewer full-time workers and average annual wages of less than $25,000. The credit phases out gradually and has a cap at employers with 25 workers and average annual wages of $50,000. The White House estimates that 4 million employers will qualify for the credit.

Yet some right-wing small business owners are for repealing health care reform. They're egenrally not sure why or use some bogus informaton that got in a right-wing conservative viral e-mail. A country that runs on so much ignorance is bound to at best, sputter along.