Rhode Island GOP Congressional Candidate Brendan Doherty

Joining the list of Republicans not interested in signing Norquist’s pledge is Brendan Doherty, who is running for the seat in Rhode Island’s first congressional district:

“Brendan has not signed the ATR pledge and has no plans to sign it,” Doherty spokesman Robert Coupe told WPRI.com, using the acronym for Norquist’s group, Americans for Tax Reform. [...]

“The premise behind this and similar pledges that seek to tie the hands of candidates and elected officials tends to result in greater division and increased gridlock in Congress, at a time when we need to seek consensus and common-sense solutions,” Coupe said.

“Brendan has called repeatedly for comprehensive tax reform to simplify the tax code, close loopholes and create a tax plan that treats middle class families fairly and allows small businesses to compete and create jobs,” he continued. “That is Brendan’s commitment to the citizens of Rhode Island and his pledge is to provide the real leadership that is needed in Congress right now.”

Of course, Doherty is running in a heavily Democratic district, which may have something to do with his decision to ignore Norquist’s directive. Earlier this year, Rep. Tim Johnson (R-IL) blasted the pledge, saying, “I think anybody who doesn’t indicate their willingness to look at revenues — expiration of tax loopholes, tax credits, increase in contribution to Social Security, which is a tax, and otherwise — would be disingenuous and irresponsible.“

Honeywell CEO David Cote

SORKIN: David, I have a tax question for you. What do you think the ultimate effective tax rate should be on corporations?

COTE: Zero.

SORKIN: Zero?

COTE: The problem is from a fairness perspective, nobody would be able to stand it. But at the the end of the day, jobs come from companies and if we wanted to create the most effective foreign direct investment pipeline you’ve ever seen, we would have the lowest rate possible.

Watch it:

Cote’s belief that a low corporate tax rate will spur job creation stands at odds with the country’s current experience. After all, U.S. corporate taxes that were actually paid (the effective rate) fell to a 40-year-low in fiscal year 2011, despite corporate profits rebounding to their pre-Great Recession heights. The U.S. actually has one of the lowest effective corporate tax rates in the developed world. However, job creation has been slow, if steady.

“Our corporate tax rate last year, effectively, in terms of taxes paid for the United States, was around 12 percent, which is well below those existing in most of the industrialized countries around the world,” explained billionaire investor Warren Buffet. “Corporate taxes are not strangling American competitiveness.”

Cote made $37 million in total compensation in 2011, while spending the last few years busting unions and driving down pay and benefits for his company’s workers.

• The dive in Facebook’s stock price could be bad news for California’s budget. [Los Angeles Times]

• The cost for the U.S. government to borrow has hit its lowest level since 1946, while it hit all-time lows in Germany and the UK. [Financial Times]

• Ireland will vote today on a European fiscal treaty that would impose limits on budget deficits and debt. [Washington Post]

• Colleges are cutting deals with financial institutions to provide debit cards and to disperse financial aid. [New York Times]

• Short sales of U.S. homes have hit a three year high. [Bloomberg]

• JP Morgan Chase is removing its “special investment group” from its chief investment office in an attempt to clean up after losing billions in a bungled trade. [Financial Times]

• House Democrats are pushing a bill to ensure that financial executives can have their pay “clawed back” if their companies break federal laws. [The Hill]

Now, housing advocates are alleging that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) is doing the same thing, diverting $75 million meant to help homeowners into the Garden State’s general fund:

Affordable housing advocacy groups today said Gov. Chris Christie is misusing $75 million from a foreclosure settlement, calling his budget plan “reckless” and “a shell game.”

Christie is putting that money into the budget general fund, advocates said at a Statehouse press conference this morning, instead of specifically earmarking it to fund help for people who have been foreclosed on.

Several governors, the first of whom was Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), have used the settlement money to simply bolster their general funds, patching over budget problems that they’ve created. Progressives in New Jersey have been concerned that Christie would follow suit, and those concerns now seem to be justified. Previously, New Jersey’s attorney general had declined to confirm whether or not the state would use the settlement funding for foreclosure aid.

But not all homeowners are quietly accepting losing out on the funding. In Arizona, a group of homeowners have sued the state, saying that the diversion of settlement funds is illegal.

Lagarde, predicting that the debt crisis has yet to run its course, adds: “Do you know what? As far as Athens is concerned, I also think about all those people who are trying to escape tax all the time. All these people in Greece who are trying to escape tax.” She says she thinks “equally” about Greeks deprived of public services and Greek citizens not paying their tax.

“I think they should also help themselves collectively.” Asked how, she replies: “By all paying their tax.”

Asked if she is essentially saying to the Greeks and others in Europe that they have had a nice time and it is now payback time, she responds: “That’s right.”

But as it turns out, Lagarde was throwing stones from inside a glass house, since she doesn’t pay any taxes of her own due to working for the IMF, which is part of the United Nations system. Most UN employees pay no taxes on their income.

Of course, when it comes to Greece and revenue, Lagarde did have a bit of a point. Greece’s revenue is on the low end for a European nation, due in part to its large underground economy:

In 2009, Greece collected just 36.9 percent of GDP in total government revenues. That was far below the overall EU total of 43.9 percent. Greece’s anemic tax collections ranked them seventh from the bottom among EU countries…This has been a longstanding problem in Greece. From 2001 to 2007, Greece consistently collected far less in revenue than a typical EU country. [...]

The current crisis has cast a light on Greece’s shadow economy and massive illicit financial flows. There are varying estimates of the size and impact of the country’s underground economy. Some suggest that a quarter of Greece’s GDP comes from its underground economy and estimates are that Greece lost an estimated $160 billion in unrecorded transfers through its balance of payments over the last decade ending 2009.

Perhaps next time, though, Lagarde should find a messenger that doesn’t earn a tax-free income that is larger than that made by the President of the United States.

Republicans are opposing the request, even though it would lower taxes for small businesses. They’re seeking to repeal Obamacare, not change it. “I don’t think expanding it is going to make any difference whatsoever,” said Rep. Sam Graves (R-MO), who chairs the House Small Business Committee.

But their runs against what GOP leaders proposed in 2009, during the debate over health care reform. Then-Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) had deputized Rep. Roy Blunt (R-MO) to lead the Health Care Solutions Group and shape the GOP alternative to the Democrats’ health care proposals. “Unlike the Democrats’ government takeover of health care, this common-sense plan keeps patients and doctors in charge of key medical decisions,” Boehner said of the plan. In it, Blunt’s group called for a small business tax credit to help employers offset the cost of providing health insurance:

To expand availability and accessibility of health care coverage, the Republican plan: [...]

• Helps employers offer health care coverage to their workers by reducing their administrative costs through a new small business tax credit.

The Affordable Care Act’s tax credit was designed to help small businesses with fewer than 25 employees, which have the most difficult time offering insurance to their employees. These businesses make up almost 90 percent of all employers in the U.S., so improving the application process for tax credits would expand health insurance to thousands of workers.

Congressional Democrats are gearing up for another legislative effort to ensure that women and men receive equal pay for equal work and are renewing their push for the Paycheck Fairness Act. But as with many ongoing political fights, Romney is not taking a decisive position.

Romney was originally unclear about his position on another fair pay bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act and he has not spoken about this specific legislation — despite repeated requests for comment from the Washington Times:

His campaign didn’t respond to five messages left over the past week seeking his stance on the Paycheck Fairness Act. In April, when he was fending off questions about his stance on women’s compensation, his campaign would only say he “supports pay equity” but would not say any more about the new legislation.

“Governor Romney only says that he wouldn’t change existing law, raising questions about why he feels the need to parse his words on issues that are so significant to the security of women and families,” said Ben LaBolt, President Obama’s campaign spokesman. “Would he sign a veto of Lilly Ledbetter? Why won’t he express support for the Paycheck Fairness Act?”

The Paycheck Fairness Act would close loopholes in existing pay equity law and give additional funding toward programs that help women close the gender pay gap. President Obama has come out strongly in favor of the legislation, as have several prominent Democrats, but many Republicans claim that it would be a hindrance to businesses.

For example, he said Mr. Romney would propose:

– replacing the new system for dismantling failing financial companies that was created as part of the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law with a new system, which he declined to specify.

– a new system of consumer financial regulation that either moves the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau outside of the Federal Reserve or breaks up the new agency and places the powers within existing financial regulators.

That Romney would break up and disperse the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s duties amongst existing financial regulators shows just how little he cares to address the causes of the 2008 financial crisis.

After all, it was the fact that consumer protection responsibilities were dispersed throughout the regulatory system — and were no regulator’s primary responsibility — that allowed banks to get away with so much pernicious behavior. The creation of the CFPB was meant to address this problem, giving consumers at least one regulator explicitly tasked with looking out for their interests.

Romney, of course, has been raking in money from Wall Street interests who fought the creation of the Bureau tooth and nail. Back in January, Romney called the Bureau the “most powerful and unaccountable bureaucracy in the history of our nation” and falsely claimed that it is “headed by a powerful and unaccountable bureaucrat with unprecedented authority over the economy.”

• According to a new poll, most Greeks want the terms of their country’s international financial rescue to be revised. [Bloomberg]

• The National Bank of Greece warned that an exit from the euro could cause Greeks to lose half of their annual income. [Associated Press]

• JP Morgan Chase is selling $25 billion in profitable securities in order to offset a huge trading loss it sustained earlier this year. [Reuters]

• The percentage of Americans between the ages of 25 and 54 who have jobs is the lowest its been in nearly a quarter century. [Washington Post]

• Eight more states received exemptions from parts of the No Child Left Behind education law, bringing the total number of states that have received waivers to 19. [Wall Street Journal]

• A whistleblower who found that Bank of America was inflating appraisals of government backed loans will receive $14.5 million. [Reuters]

• The odds are not good that the government will move forward with criminal prosecutions related to the 2008 financial crisis. [New York Times]

“Industrial production — the output of manufacturing and utilities — declined consistently from December 2007 to June 2009. Industrial production started growing again in July 2009, when infrastructure spending from the Recovery Act started to flow into the economy,” Weller wrote.

The problem with Washington is that people down there are always battling. That’s not how I operate. We’re Americans first, and I’ll work with anyone to get things done. I was the tie-breaking vote on Wall Street reform.

Watch it:

Brown did cross the aisle to vote with Democrats to approve the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform law. However, what the ad neglects to mention is the role Brown played in significantly watering the down the law, which has landed him heaps of Wall Street cash.

Brown was instrumental in weakening the Volcker Rule, which was meant to rein in risky trading with federally backed dollars by the nation’s biggest banks. He also forced Democrats to strip from the law a $19 billion bank tax. Without that provision, the Congressional Budget Office is now bizarrely claiming that the law has a “cost” of about $20 billion, a score which Republicans have seized upon as justification for their efforts to repeal the law entirely.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, employees from the securities and investment industries have given more money to Brown than those of any other industry. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase, which just lost billions of dollars on the sort of trading that the Volcker Rule was originally meant to curtail, are amongst his top ten donors.

During the campaign, Romney has routinely dismissed the nation’s 3.1 million clean energy jobs while intensifying his attacks on the industry. Ironically, the clean energy industry is booming in his home state of Massachusetts, creating 64,000 jobs across the energy efficiency and renewable energy sectors.

In a story published over the weekend, the Boston Globe highlights how solar is “flourishing” in his home state:

In the past two years alone, solar energy-generating capacity in the state has more than doubled to 105 megawatts, ­according to the state Department of Energy Resources. That’s enough to power at least 15,750 homes.

The number of solar installation firms in the state has also exploded, to nearly 200 last year from about 43 in 2007. In total, state energy officials estimate that more than 1,300 solar energy firms — installers, manufacturers, and others — operate in Massachusetts, employing about 14,000.

In addition, Massachusetts has created a market for solar renewable energy credits, which solar project owners can sell to power plant operators to meet state regulations aimed at reducing greenhouse gases.

The money from those sales helps further lower the cost of solar power.

Such policies have made solar economically competitive in the state, despite less than optimal sun, said Jim Dumas, principal at Solect Inc., a Hopkinton company with 10 employees. Solect is currently installing a 475-kilowatt solar system atop a commercial building in Northborough.

In April, the Center for American Progress filmed a short documentary on the explosion of activity in Massachusetts’ clean energy sector.

Even while solar grows quickly in Massachusetts, helping grow new businesses, Romney’s plan would reduce investments in clean energy. He would strike subsidies, loans, and research for the clean energy industry — all while endorsing a House GOP budget that maintains subsidies for oil and coal giants.

Despite a year of investigation finding no evidence of political misconduct, the GOP has hammered away at Solyndra. American Crossroads is up with its own ad today on Solyndra, following an earlier fact-challenged ad from its affiliate Crossroads GPS.

Factcheckers have called every one of these ads bogus. The Washington Post FactChecker labeled these ads a “depressing duty” because the same “erroneous assertions” had been debunked years ago. And Politifact gave a “false” to the claim that Solyndra contributed to higher gas prices.

In fact, an independent review of the loan guarantee program that supported Solyndra found that it will cost $2 billion less than originally anticipated.

[The rate is] based on the definition of relative poverty used by the OECD. Under this definition, a child is deemed to be living in relative poverty if he or she is growing up in a household where disposable income, when adjusted for family size and composition, is less than 50% of the median disposable household income for the country concerned. By this standard, more than 15% of the 200 million children in the 35 countries listed in Figure 1b are seen to be living in relative poverty.

The top five positions in the league table are occupied by Iceland, Finland, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Norway (with Slovenia and Denmark close behind). All of these countries have relative child poverty rates below 7%. Another eight countries including two of the largest — Germany and France– have rates between 7% and 10%. A third group, including Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, post rates of between 10% and 15%. A further six, including populous Italy and Spain, show rates of between 15% and 20%. In only two countries are more than 20% of children living in relative poverty — Romania and the United States.

The Great Recession has, of course, exacerbated child poverty. According to a recent report, 8.3 million children in the U.S. have been affected by the foreclosure crisis that arose after the housing bubble burst.

However, the social safety net has helped alleviate some of this suffering. For instance, food stamps reduced the number of children living in extreme poverty by half last year.

A recent report from the Education Sector, a think tank, shows that 30 percent of college students who took out loans eventually dropped out. As Anthony Carnevale, director of Georgetown’s Center on Education and the Workforce, noted, this is a problem because of the severe drop in earning potential that occurs when a student leaves school without a degree:

“In the end, it’s about money and time,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown University. “There’s almost a synergy between the two that will knock you out of school.”

The cost to the economy is roughly half a trillion dollars, he said. Although college dropouts make more than those with only a high school diploma, he said they earn about a million dollars less than college graduates over their careers.

Among 18 countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “the United States finished last (46 percent) for the percentage of students who completed college once they started it.”

In 2010, the total cost in lost earnings and tax revenue due to college dropouts in America was $4.5 billion. In California alone, “college dropouts are losing nearly $15 billion in earnings over their work lives, costing the federal government more than $3 billion in lost income taxes.”