Founding Fathers Reality vs Tea Party Fiction - Blacking It Up. Occupy Movement Regroups, Laying Plans for the Next Phase. Tea Party vs. OWS: The psychology and ideology of responsibility | The Moral Sciences Club. One of the most robust findings in political psychology is that liberals tend to explain both poverty and wealth in terms of luck and the influence of social forces while conservatives tend to explain poverty and wealth in terms of effort and individual initiative.
Here's a useful summary of the sort of thing I have in mind: Harmon (2010a) built on these works by testing their conclusions against six U.S. public opinion polls. Secondary analysis found consistent and strong relationships. Conservatives and Republicans overwhelmingly attributed poverty to the personal failings of the poor themselves (lazy, drunk, etc.) while Democrats and liberals consistently offered social explanations like poor schools and lousy jobs for poverty.
What about libertarians? But, having lived most of my adult life among them, experience tells me that when it comes to the explanation of poverty and wealth libertarians are close cousins to conservatives. Which really hacks off Welch: Welch's kicker: Jack Abramoff critiques OWS, Republicans’ media exposure in Yahoo News interview | The Ticket. Now that Jack Abramoff is out of prison, he's speaking out against corruption in Washington, and he told Yahoo News in a recent interview that he's opened a pathway of communication with an unlikely source: Occupy Wall Street. That's right. The former felon, who served three and a half years in prison for corruption, including bribing public officials, is promoting a new book, Capitol Punishment: The Hard Truth About Corruption From America's Most Notorious Lobbyist, which offers an autobiographical account of his rise and fall while also presenting a prescription for cleaning up Washington. Abramoff says that since his release, he's been in touch with some of Occupy's "sensible" leaders, as he calls them, via Twitter and other channels of communication.
But Abramoff, once a major conservative Republican figure in Washington, hasn't switched party allegiances. "I think the response is 'while we're revolutionary, we're not in the power structure,' " Abramoff said of OWS supporters. Tea Party ‘Is Dead’: How the Movement Fizzled in 2012’s GOP Primaries. Months away from Election Day, the Democrats are already cutting and running away from Obamacare. Clinton is the man to help them embrace it, attack obsessed Republicans—and win. Let Bill do it. With Democrats facing a daunting midterm season, it’s time to bring in the Big Dawg, not just as a campaigner but as a strategic driving force with the resources to deploy and dominate the message wars from coast to coast.
Put him in charge of one of the existing super PACs—which would instantly multiply its fundraising—or form a new one that can operate on a genuinely super scale, with a pervasive reach. Let the Republicans have Karl Rove and Sheldon Adelson, the gambling mogul who in 2012 seemed to have all the electoral magic of a muggle. They, and the Koch brothers, would prove no match in messaging for Bill Clinton—and he’s the best chance to come close to matching them financially by attracting money beyond the Obama true believers among the big givers and the grass roots.
Why Clinton? Obama vs. Bush: Who’s the Bigger Tax Cutter? SOURCE: AP/J. Scott Applewhite It would be easy to assume that President George W. Bush cut taxes more in his first term. By Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger | September 13, 2011 If you had to guess whether President George W. Bush or President Barack Obama cut taxes more in his first term, which one would you choose? Given all that, you could be forgiven for guessing that President Bush is the bigger tax cutter. President Obama’s tax cuts versus President Bush’s tax cuts President Bush enacted his tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, and over their 10-year lifespan, they reduced tax revenues by around $2.4 trillion, with $474 billion of that coming in the first four years. President Obama has also signed two major pieces of tax-cutting legislation into law. All told, the Recovery Act included $243 billion worth of tax cuts through 2012. Put it all together, and in one fell swoop, President Obama cut taxes by $654 billion in 2011 and 2012 alone.
How the cuts differ.