Washington's Deficit Obsession Is Insane, Chart Indisputably Proves. The unemployment rate is too damn high, and all that America's politicians can talk about is the budget deficit. If only they knew that we can take care of both of them at once. Friday's unemployment report, showing joblessness still stubbornly high, makes the absolute insanity of Washington's deficit obsession even plainer. In fact, unemployment and deficits are very much related, or at least correlated, as you can see from this chart, which shows the budget deficit as a percentage of GDP (represented by the green line) vs. the unemployment rate (blue line), going back for the past 65 years.
(h/t Joe Weisenthal at Business Insider) Notice anything? Like, how every time unemployment rises, the budget deficit also rises? And how every time unemployment falls, the budget deficit also falls? Why could this be? In fact, you can see that has already started to happen -- despite Washington's state of near-panic over the deficit, it has actually been falling steadily since the recession. Why the GOP Should Fear a Romney Presidency - Jack M. Balkin. At best, he would be hamstrung by the conflicting demands of a radicalized party. At worst, he would wreck the Reagan coalition. Brian Snyder/Reuters What kind of president would Mitt Romney be?
And what should we expect from Barack Obama's second term? To answer these questions, I'll draw on the work of Yale political scientist Stephen Skowronek, who has argued that presidents' fortunes depend on how they establish their political legitimacy in the particular circumstances under which which they assume power. In this essay, I'll discuss the prospects for a Romney presidency; in the next, I'll discuss the second term of an Obama presidency.
Reconstruction or Disjunction? When new presidents take office, they face not only the country's existing domestic and international problems but also the political regime created by their predecessors. A president who has the good luck to run in opposition to a political regime that is falling apart is in the best possible position politically.
A Way Out for Obama | Politics News. Right-Wing Billionaires Behind Mitt Romney | Politics News. Greed and Debt: The True Story of Mitt Romney and Bain Capital | Politics News. The great criticism of Mitt Romney, from both sides of the aisle, has always been that he doesn't stand for anything. He's a flip-flopper, they say, a lightweight, a cardboard opportunist who'll say anything to get elected. The critics couldn't be more wrong. Mitt Romney is no tissue-paper man. He's closer to being a revolutionary, a backward-world version of Che or Trotsky, with tweezed nostrils instead of a beard, a half-Windsor instead of a leather jerkin. His legendary flip-flops aren't the lies of a bumbling opportunist – they're the confident prevarications of a man untroubled by misleading the nonbeliever in pursuit of a single, all-consuming goal.
The incredible untold story of the 2012 election so far is that Romney's run has been a shimmering pearl of perfect political hypocrisy, which he's somehow managed to keep hidden, even with thousands of cameras following his every move. Debt, debt, debt. And this is where we get to the hypocrisy at the heart of Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney's Real Agenda | Politics News. How the GOP Became the Party of the Rich | Politics News. The nation is still recovering from a crushing recession that sent unemployment hovering above nine percent for two straight years. The president, mindful of soaring deficits, is pushing bold action to shore up the nation's balance sheet.
Cloaking himself in the language of class warfare, he calls on a hostile Congress to end wasteful tax breaks for the rich. "We're going to close the unproductive tax loopholes that allow some of the truly wealthy to avoid paying their fair share," he thunders to a crowd in Georgia. Such tax loopholes, he adds, "sometimes made it possible for millionaires to pay nothing, while a bus driver was paying 10 percent of his salary – and that's crazy. " Preacherlike, the president draws the crowd into a call-and-response. The crowd, sounding every bit like the protesters from Occupy Wall Street, roars back: "MORE!
" The year was 1985. Today's Republican Party may revere Reagan as the patron saint of low taxation. Then something strange happened. How the Oligarchs Took America. This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website. There is a war underway. I'm not talking about Washington's bloody misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq, but a war within our own borders. It's a war fought on the airwaves, on television and radio and over the Internet, a war of words and images, of half-truth, innuendo, and raging lies. I'm talking about a political war, pitting liberals against conservatives, Democrats against Republicans. I'm talking about a spending war, fueled by stealthy front groups and deep-pocketed anonymous donors. It's a war that's poised to topple what's left of American democracy. The right wing won the opening battle. Knocked out of their complacency, no longer basking in the glow of Barack Obama's 2008 victory, wealthy Democrats are now plotting their response.
Even the Obama administration, which shunned outside groups in 2008, has opened the door to a covert spending war. The endgame here, of course, is non-stop war. "The Thirty-Year War"