Gov. Charlie Crist Tries To Weasel Away From His Endorsement Of The Stimulus
Gov. Charlie Crist Tries To Weasel Away From His Endorsement Of The Stimulus
Back in February, when the administration was pushing Congress to pass its Recovery Act, President Obama gained the support of a prominent Republican ally, Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Standing side-by-side with Obama, Crist explained why he was supporting the stimulus:
CRIST: We’ve had to cut about $7 billion the past two years and we haven’t raised taxes and we’re still in balance. But to be candid, it’s getting harder every day. It’s getting harder every day and we know that it’s important that we pass this stimulus package. It is important that we do so to help education, to help our infrastructure, and to help health care for those who need it the most — the most vulnerable among us.
As The Weekly Standard’s John McCormack notes, Crist explained that he was breaking from his own party to back the stimulus “because Florida needs it frankly.” In May, Crist said he would have made the “pragmatic” decision to vote for the stimulus had he been in the Senate.
But because he is currently engaged in a tight Senate campaign against fervent anti-Obama, anti-stimulus right-wing candidate Marco Rubio, Crist is conveniently forgetting his prior statements. Yesterday on CNN, Crist claimed that he never “endorsed” the stimulus package. “I didn’t endorse it, I didn’t even have a vote on the darn thing,” he said. Watch it:
The irony, of course, is that Crist is distancing himself from the Recovery Act at a time when the bill is beginning to bear fruit. Nearly $7 billion has flowed from the stimulus into the state of Florida, helping to create or save approximately 29,000 jobs. (State officials put the number closer to 47,000.)
The Crist administration has set up a website to specifically tout the benefits of the stimulus program. “I’m grateful for the federal dollars coming to our state for economic recovery,” Crist states in a video posted on that website. Some examples of its impact:
– More than 3,000 teaching jobs were saved and more than 500 coaching and support jobs created in Broward and Palm Beach County schools.
– Construction worker Leon Barron of Ft. Piece, FL, said he was “facing the prospect” of being laid off prior to the stimulus. “We appreciate the stimulus and the president,” said Barron, who works for Range Construction Industries.
– Ranger Construction Industries Vice President Bob Schafer said a stimulus contract allowed him to save the jobs of 25 to 30 people he otherwise would have laid off.
– Pasco County officials say they seriously underestimated the demand for federal stimulus money intended to prevent homelessness, and they are being overwhelmed with calls for help.
Sadly, Crist has taken to deceiving the public, rather than defending a proud record of saving and creating jobs in Florida.
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Cable news networks help spread Republicans’ ‘highly misleading’ stimulus math.
Cable news networks help spread Republicans’ ‘highly misleading’ stimulus math.
Back in January, the Republicans claimed that the economic stimulus package would cost $275,000 for every job created, which they calculated by taking the entire cost of the stimulus package and dividing it by the number of jobs created in just one year. At the time, Paul Krugman called the Republicans’ number a “bogus talking point.” With the White House’s announcement last week that the stimulus package has created 640,000 to 1 million jobs, the GOP is employing fuzzy math once again. Don Stewart, spokesman for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), told reporters on Friday to “get out your calculators” and divide the spending by the jobs, producing a figure of $230,769 per job. Media outlets Fox News, CNN, and CNBC have all repeated some variation of the number (using slightly different estimates) in the last few days. Watch a compilation:
The AP’s Calvin Woodward was not fooled, and today released a piece telling readers to “beware the math” coming from the Republicans and calling it “satisfyingly simple but highly misleading”:
First, the naysayers’ calculations ignore the value of the work produced. Any cost-per-job figure pays not just for the worker, but for material, supplies and that worker’s output — a portion of a road paved, patients treated in a health clinic, goods shipped from a factory floor, railroad tracks laid. Second, critics are counting the total cost of contracts that will fuel work for months or years and dividing that by the number of jobs produced only to date.
As Woodward wrote, “dividing apples by oranges won’t settle” whether or not the stimulus package has been a success.
Health care coalition premieres powerful new pro-reform ad highlighting medical bankruptcies.
Health care coalition premieres powerful new pro-reform ad highlighting medical bankruptcies.
Americans for Stable Quality Care has just released an emotionally-evocative new ad on health reform, calling attention to the plight of millions of uninsured and underinsured Americans who suffer through medical bankruptcies. Watch it:
ASQC is a pro-reform coalition primarily composed of health care interest groups that are in favor of reform — including the American Medical Association and PhRMA.
Goldman Sachs Analyst: Income ‘Inequality’ Will Lead To ‘Prosperity And Opportunity For All’
Goldman Sachs Analyst: Income ‘Inequality’ Will Lead To ‘Prosperity And Opportunity For All’
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Wall Street banks are on pace to pay out a record $140 billion in compensation this year. “Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did the peak year of 2007,” the Journal found.
The New York-based investment bank Goldman Sachs has “set aside $16.7 billion for compensation and benefits in the first nine months of 2009,” which is a 46 percent increase from last year. But according to a Goldman adviser, Wall Street’s record pay is necessary “to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all”:
A Goldman Sachs International adviser defended compensation in the finance industry as his company plans a near-record year for pay, saying the spending will help boost the economy. “We have to tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity and opportunity for all,” Brian Griffiths, who was a special adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, said yesterday at a panel discussion hosted by St. Paul’s Cathedral in London.
At the same time that Wall Street’s pay has skyrocketed, pay cuts in other sectors “are occurring more frequently than at any time since the Great Depression.”
While record bonuses may indeed spur spending on million dollar apartments in New York City, the growth in Wall Street pay — and the growing share of national income that is going to the richest Americans — has not translated into shared prosperity. Consider, “back in 1985, the average annual salary for all workers across the country was actually a bit higher than the average [Wall Street] bonus ($19,000 to $13,970),” but “while the average bonus soared almost 14 times higher (by 2006), the average salary has essentially been stagnant since the mid-1980s.”
Goldman Sachs is able to make its current profits ($3.19 billion last quarter) — and thus pay huge bonuses — because of government programs aimed at reviving the economy, which allow the company to make “big bets using cheap dollars.” As Simon Nixon wrote, the profits “aren’t the due rewards for exceptional skill but gifts from taxpayers.”
Sen. Burr Touts Funds From Stimulus Bill He Opposed
Sen. Burr Touts Funds From Stimulus Bill He Opposed
Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — commonly referred to as the stimulus — with the votes of only three Republicans in the Senate. Since then, a whole host of legislators who opposed the stimulus have jumped at the opportunity to personally deliver stimulus funds to their cash-strapped districts.
Now, the Hickory Daily Record reports that the latest senator to engage in stimulus hypocrisy is Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). Last week, Burr appeared in Bethlehem, North Carolina, to deliver ARRA funds for a fire station there:
This summer, the department applied for and won a $2,008,515 federal grant that will pay for a new 19,000-square-foot fire station.
On Friday, U.S. Sen. Richard Burr was in Bethlehem to present the grant to the department.
“This is a great thing for this county,” he said. “We’re not accustomed to federal dollars in that magnitude finding their way to North Carolina.”
“This will serve a huge need for us,” said Chief Shannon Lowrance of the Bethlehem Community Volunteer Fire Department. “This is a very fast-growing community. We’re building for the next 50 years.” [...]
Having the plans ready to go helped the department win three American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Assistance to Firefighters Station Construction Grants issued this year from the Federal Emergency Management Agency / Department of Homeland Security, Lowrance said.
Last winter, Burr slammed the stimulus on Fox News, telling one of their anchors, “This isn’t a stimulus package, this is a spending package.” The senator even delivered the official Republican response to President Obama’s weekly address on the stimulus, warning ominously that “the federal government is obligating the American people to a similar fate” as that of a family choking under credit card debt. He ended up voting against the funds he is now happy to tout.
Rep. Kingston Doesn’t Mention The Stimulus When Handing Out Stimulus Funds
Rep. Kingston Doesn’t Mention The Stimulus When Handing Out Stimulus Funds
Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — commonly referred to as the stimulus — without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives. Since then, a whole host of legislators who opposed the stimulus have jumped at the opportunity to personally deliver stimulus funds to their cash-strapped districts.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that not a single Georgian GOP legislator who voted against ARRA has turned down stimulus funds for their district. The paper notes one congressman, Rep. Jack Kingston (R-GA), has managed to get away with this hypocrisy by hiding the source of the funds he is doling out:
On July 28, Kingston’s office issued news releases announcing $245,187 combined in funding through the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services for the Alma and Jesup police departments. The money will pay the salary and benefits for one entry-level police officer for each department for three years, according to Kingston’s news releases, which did not mention the funding was made possible by the federal stimulus program.
“We’ve seen from experience that local initiatives go a lot further toward solving local problems than policies set in Washington,” Kingston said in his release about the funding for Jesup. “This funding will provide tax relief by saving local tax dollars.”
In February, Kingston said the recovery act is “fundamentally flawed and doesn’t represent the change we deserve or the stimulus we need.” His spokesman said Kingston, who remains opposed to the stimulus, routinely announces all types of federal funding for his district without identifying the legislation that created it.
“We are very cautious not to take credit for it in those releases,” Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford said.
Last week, ThinkProgress noted that Kingston’s colleague Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) — another ardent opponent of the stimulus — handed a giant, stimulus-funded check to the city of Cedartown, Georgia to help fund community development projects.
Gingrey — who remains opposed to the Recovery Act — was forced to release this statement explaining his hypocrisy: “If the Democrats are hellbent on spending an astronomical sum of money, it is my job as a member of Congress to see that the communities I represent receive consideration for the federal funds that the Democrats are spending, whether I agreed with its allocation or not.”
Kristol: ‘Thank God Most Of The Workforce Isn’t Unionized’
Kristol: ‘Thank God Most Of The Workforce Isn’t Unionized’
Earlier this week, hate radio host Rush Limbaugh was dropped from an investor group that was trying to purchase NFL’s St. Louis Rams franchise. Limbaugh’s involvement with the group sparked a week of controversy due to his history of racially divisive commentary. African-American NFL players said they “wouldn’t play” for Limbaugh’s team while the head of the NFL’s players union said he opposed Limbaugh’s bid because sports are meant to reject “discrimination and hatred.”
On Fox News Sunday today, the “All-Stars” jumped to Limbaugh’s defense. NPR’s Juan Williams set up a false comparison, claiming that people don’t complain about MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann announcing football games even though he makes “divisive” statements about conservatives. The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol used the NFL player’s union’s opposition to Limbaugh to attack unions in general, saying “thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized”:
KRISTOL: Thank God most of business isn’t a monopoly. Thank God most of the workforce isn’t unionized. Why could this happen? This could happen because all the NFL players are in one union. Because all the NFL owners are in one club and pressure can be put on them. Thank God there’s more diversity in this country in terms of different industries and different businesses. And people can be controversial and can still find places that are willing to have them.
Watch it:
Kristol’s attack on unionization ignores the fact that unions are good for the American economy since unions help workers secure higher wages and greater benefits. Additionally, the collective bargaining of unions give workers the ability to shape the conditions of their employment, as the NFL players union successfully demonstrated.
According to Dan Lebowitz, executive director of the Center for Sports and Society at Northeastern University, the NFL has 78 percent African-American players. Because the player’s union has leverage, that means the players won’t have to work for someone who said just two years ago, “the NFL all too often looks like a game between the Bloods and the Crips without any weapons. There, I said it.”
Fox News adopts the GOP mantra: ‘Where are the jobs?’
Fox News adopts the GOP mantra: ‘Where are the jobs?’
Fox News has been pushing back on White House Communications Director Anita Dunn’s assertion that the network is “a wing of the Republican Party” by arguing that “its news hours — 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. and 6 to 8 p.m. on weekdays — are objective.” Fox Political Analyst Brit Hume added that “if Fox News really were a GOP mouthpiece, the White House would not be attacking it.” However, Fox’s “objective” news hosts have literally served as the GOP “communications arm” when discussing the economic stimulus package and job creation. In July, House Republicans took to the floor to repeat the mantra “where are the jobs?” And Fox’s anchors, led by America’s Newsroom co-host Bill Hemmer, have adopted the phrase as their own, repeating it over and over on their “news” shows. Watch a compilation:
Thus far, Fox contributor Juan Williams seems to be the only one acknowledging the truth, saying that Fox consists of “conservative audience-oriented programming. And I don’t think anybody is going to debate that.” The Wonk Room has more.
Fox News’ Neil Cavuto: “Is this now the ‘Bush Recovery’”?
Fox News’ Neil Cavuto: “Is this now the ‘Bush Recovery’”?
For months and months, conservatives blamed President Obama for the slumping stock market. “Obama, since he’s elected, has tanked the markets,” Fox News’ Sean Hannity said in March. Now that the Dow has rebounded to over 10,000, what are the conservatives saying? On his Fox News today, Neil Cavuto claimed the stock market rebound is evidence of a “Bush recovery”:
After Previously Blaming Obama For Slumping Markets, Boehner Now Downplays Surging Dow
After Previously Blaming Obama For Slumping Markets, Boehner Now Downplays Surging Dow
Today on Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed above 10,000 for the first time this year as “U.S. stocks approached their highest levels since Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s bankruptcy sent the global economy into a tailspin.” In fact, the index is up 13 percent since the start of the year.
When asked about the surging markets, House Minority Leader John Boehner grumbled at the news. “[You're] certainly not talking to the American people,” if you’re placing any significance on the 10,000 mark, Boehner contended:
“The American people understand that unemployment is almost at 10 percent, they understand that they might be next so there are concerns about the economy,” Boehner said. [...]
Boehner said the stock market’s rebound is a reaction to the extreme shock from earlier this year, but it says little more than that.
“At the end of the day, the American people aren’t looking at the stock market in terms of putting food on the table,” Boehner said. “They want jobs, and they want them now.”
But Boehner hasn’t always been so dismissive of the stock market’s significance. In search of an attack line on the newly-inaugurated President Obama back in March, the GOP leader thought that the dismal numbers coming from Wall Street represented the public’s dissatisfaction with Obama’s policies:
“The president certainly remains popular, but his policies are becoming less and less popular,” Boehner said, citing the continuing slide in the financial markets. “Certainly the stock market hasn’t acted very well” since Obama’s inauguration.
As the markets continue to falter, Republicans are becoming more confident in their criticisms of the president — some have already taken to using the phrase “the Obama economy.”
But Boehner has also used the markets to tout the leadership of the Republican Party. At a rally just before the GOP got its “thumpin’” in the 2006 mid-term elections, then Majority Leader Boehner argued that his party would best handle the economy reportedly by “point[ing] to a hot stock market.”
In Ohio, Huckabee takes a veiled shot at Boehner as a ‘phony Republican.’
In Ohio, Huckabee takes a veiled shot at Boehner as a ‘phony Republican.’
Last year, just before Congress voted on the financial rescue package, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) told his caucus in a closed-door session that he thought the bailout was a “crap sandwich” but that it should still be supported. Later, on the House floor, he called it a “mud sandwich” that still needed to be passed. Appearing in Ohio yesterday to boost gubernatorial candidate John Kasich, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee took a veiled shot at Boehner in an interview with ONN:
HUCKABEE: What has to happen is that Republicans have to start acting like real Republicans. The reason Republicans got defeated in 2006 and 2008 is because people couldn’t tell the difference between them and the Democrats. In fact, the Democrats weren’t spending any more. What has to happen is Republicans who get elected have to show that they actually believe in something and mean it when they get there. You can’t have phony Republicans, people that don’t have any convictions and, these guys who say they’re conservatives but they went out and supported a TARP bill last year? There isn’t anything conservative about that. There were a lot of Republicans who were wringing their hands saying ‘oh, TARP, it’s terrible but we’ve got to do it.’ No you don’t. You don’t ever have to do something that’s stupid. And that was stupid.
Huckabee, a longtime critic of the bailout, has been making this argument for a long time. For instance, in a Nov. 17. 2008 talk at the Hudson Union Society, Huckabee called the rescue “the dumbest thing Congress has done in a long time.” “I was most distressed that people who claim to be hardcore Republicans and conservatives and free market thinkers, were out there wringing their hands and saying, ‘well we have to do this.’”
Phil Gingrey’s Stimulus Hypocrisy: Votes Against Recovery Act In DC, But Hands Out Giant Stimulus Check In Georgia
Phil Gingrey’s Stimulus Hypocrisy: Votes Against Recovery Act In DC, But Hands Out Giant Stimulus Check In Georgia
Earlier this year, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) — commonly referred to as the stimulus — without a single Republican vote in the House of Representatives. Since then, a whole host of legislators who opposed the stimulus have jumped on the chance to personally deliver stimulus funds to their cash-strapped districts.
The latest member of Congress to engage in this hypocrisy is Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA). Earlier this month, Gingrey appeared in the city of Cedartown, Georgia, to present a giant check of $625,000 in stimulus funds to the city commission to help fund the the city’s Streetscape project, which will install new sidewalks and infrastructure:
The money comes from federal stimulus funds and will fund the second phase of Cedartown’s Streetscape project, with new sidewalks, landscaping and other improvements to the downtown area. [...]
Believing that the project qualified for federal stimulus funds as a “shovel-ready” project, Gingrey presented the proposal at the federal level, his spokesperson, Linda Liles, explained. [..]
“These federal dollars will allow us to work both phases together and complete Streetscape by mid-2010,” [City Commissioner Scott] Tillery said. “This will be a big boost for the historic downtown area and for the whole city.
The Cedartown Standard snapped a picture of the congressman presenting stimulus funds which he once decried as the “trillion dollar debt” bill:
Gingrey joins numerous other conservatives in opposing the stimulus while touting its benefits and exploiting its funds. For example, following their votes against the stimulus, Sens. Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates to steer $50 million in stimulus funding into a bio-energy project they supported. Rep. Joseph Cao (R-LA) boasted about securing funds for streetcar expansions that came from ARRA funds. And perhaps the biggest hypocrite of all, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), toured his state handing out jumbo-sized checks that were funded by the stimulus, despite his pledge that if he was still a member of Congress, he would’ve voted against the Recovery Act.
Texas Lawmakers Who Voted Against The Recovery Act Now Beg For Stimulus Funds For NASA
Texas Lawmakers Who Voted Against The Recovery Act Now Beg For Stimulus Funds For NASA
Every single Republican in the House voted against the $819 billion Recovery Act in January. Among the Republican senators who voted against the stimulus were Texas’ Kay Bailey Hutchison and John Cornyn. Both of them complained that they wanted to see more tax cuts rather than government spending.
But now, both Hutchison and Cornyn are pressuring the Obama administration to give Texas $3 billion in stimulus funds. The co-signers on the letter are a bipartisan group of the Texas delegation in the House, including 19 Republicans, all of whom also voted against the funds for which they’re now begging. The letter was drafted and circulated by GOP Rep. Pete Olson. From the letter:
Therefore, to ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership in human space exploration, we respectfully ask that you include in your promised amended budget request for NASA’s Exploration Systems a request to Congress to reallocate the necessary funds for NASA from the funds that we anticipate will remain available from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA). As of last month, less than 15 percent of ARRA funds had been expended.
Since the stated purpose of the stimulus package was to secure good jobs and stabilize our economy, there is no better investment that could be made than the addition of up to $3 billion to NASA in FY2010, and the projection of at least that level of increase, as recommended by your Committee, at a 2.4% rate of inflation in the out-year projections included in the initial FY2010 Request.
Cornyn said that while the stimulus funding “that has already been spent [is] clearly not working, it is my hope that the Administration will use a portion of the remaining, authorized, unspent stimulus dollars to safeguard our nation’s space program.”
Texas isn’t the only state showing this stimulus hypocrisy. Some other examples:
– Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA) is now criticizing Gov. Tim Kaine (D) for being “slow” to spend the stimulus money allocated for Virginia — even though if Wolf and his Republican colleagues would have had their way, there would be no extra money for the state at all. “We could use that money desperately,” Wolf told reporters. “We’re in a critical situation.”
– Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) also voted against the Recovery Act and has since called it a failure. The stimulus, Grassley told the National Review last week, “is not working.” In June, he had harsher words, saying the stimulus had no positive impact on the economy, “none whatsoever.”
But recently, Grassley announced two grants totaling $399,875 to Goodwill Industries of Central Iowa and Goodwill Industries of the Heartland through the Homeless Veterans Reintegration program. “These funds will give a hand up to our veterans who have fought bravely and selflessly for our country,” Grassley said. The funds were authorized by the Recovery Act.(UPDATE: These grants were from FY 2009.)
In Louisiana, Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) continues to put his ideology over his state’s needs, refusing to listen to state officials’ requests for high-speed rail funding.
Jindal turns down $300 million in stimulus funds for high-speed rail.
Jindal turns down $300 million in stimulus funds for high-speed rail.
In response to President Obama’s national address in February, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal pointedly went after stimulus funding for high-speed rail projects as “wasteful spending.” But in August, state officials began drafting plans to request $300 million in stimulus funds to develop a high-speed rail between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. An official in the state Department of Transportation and Development called the project “a very valuable economic incubator.” The plan had the backing of Louisiana legislators such as Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao (R), who was pressing Jindal to request the money. Jindal, however, let the midnight Friday deadline pass, allowing his right-wing ideology to win out:
Jindal aides have said the administration is not applying because of concerns about the project’s ongoing costs. They said the state would incur an annual $18 million bill to run the rail system once it became operational. [...]
But U.S. Rep. Anh “Joseph” Cao, R-New Orleans, on Friday called on Jindal to apply for the money. Since all U.S. taxpayers will foot the bill for the stimulus spending, Cao said, the state’s elected officials should see that Louisiana gets its fair share. “It’s our duty to obtain as much as we can to rebuild this region,” Cao said at a news conference at his city’s train station.
He acknowledged “a real concern” about the state’s responsibility for paying the annual costs, but said the overall project would be “an $180 million win for the state of Louisiana.”
Earlier on Friday, Cao had still been optimistic that Jindal would file application for the funding, which was all ready to go. “We’re counting on his leadership in this goal to go beyond any party lines and do what’s right for Louisiana,” Cao said.
Following the release of ‘Capitalism,’ Rep. Gutiérrez will introduce legislation to curb ‘dead peasants insurance.’
Following the release of ‘Capitalism,’ Rep. Gutiérrez will introduce legislation to curb ‘dead peasants insurance.’
Yesterday, Michael Moore’s newest film, “Capitalism: A Love Story” was released in more than 1,000 theaters nationwide. One of the issues that Moore looks at is “dead peasants insurance,” where companies take out life insurance policies on their employees without their knowledge and then cash in when they die. Chicago Public Radio reports that Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL) will introduce legislation that will curb the ability of employers to take out these insurance policies:
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Chicago) is raising a red flag. He chairs the U.S. House Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit.
This week Gutiérrez introduced a bill that would ban employer-owned life insurance unless the worker earns at least a million dollars a year from the company. He presented the legislation Wednesday on the House floor.
“In a nation where millions of full-time workers have no health insurance, maybe if we can prevent companies from betting on the death of their employees, they’ll invest in the health of their employees,” Gutierrez told Chicago Public Radio.
Media Disregard Substance Of Michael Moore’s Film — Instead Engage In Character Assassination
Media Disregard Substance Of Michael Moore’s Film — Instead Engage In Character Assassination
Today is the nationwide release of Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story. The film chronicles how free market capitalism has created a system of “legalized greed” which corrupts government, removes basic elements of humanity from business, and has torn down the middle class. While Moore uses personal stories of individuals abused by corporate excess to create a narrative, he also explains much larger, sweeping problems like the rapidly widening gap between rich and poor.
As Moore has toured the media circuit promoting his film, hosts and pundits have worked quickly to try to marginalize his message. Rather than attack the substance of his film or debate the issues he raises, media figures are attempting to destroy Moore’s credibility. The most common trope has been to cast Moore as a “hypocrite” for being successful while at the same time criticizing capitalism. The other attack is to simply ridicule and mock Moore as an “extremist.” Business media in particular has been disdainful of Moore, accusing him of seeking “slavery.” Moore was scheduled to host CNBC’s Power Lunch, but was booted off shortly after six minutes. ThinkProgress has compiled a video of some of the character attacks on Moore. Watch it:
While Moore certainly has critics, in the past, much of the anti-Moore media assault had been orchestrated by powerful corporate interests. Bill Moyers Journal obtained two powerpoint presentations outlining in detail exactly how the industry coordinated an effort to marginalize Moore and the impact of his film SiCKO:
– Position Moore as “fringe” to stop any Democrats from embracing points he raises.
– “Position SiCKO as a threat to the Democrats’ larger agenda.”
– “Amplify the industry’s voice around the film’s release … outreach to broadcast and cable TV news.”
– “Create media tool kit on industry’s positions, strong track records, etc.”
The campaign to smear Moore has reemerged. Will the media ask serious questions about the failure of free market capitalism, or will they simply engage in character assassination against Moore?
Krugman on reducing long-term deficits: It’s not hard economically, but ‘politically impossible right now.’
Krugman on reducing long-term deficits: It’s not hard economically, but ‘politically impossible right now.’
Yesterday, the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities held a conference to discuss when and how to begin addressing the country’s long-term deficits. Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman explained, “This is a really bad time to engage in fiscal retrenchment; it’s a bad time on almost every dimension.” But eventually deficits will have to be brought down to a sustainable level, which, according to Krugman, is fairly easy to do economically. The problem, he said during an interview with The Wonk Room, is that we have a political system in which you can’t talk about tax increases “without it being political suicide”:
If we can do health care reform…that really does limit the growth in health care cost, then what’s left is a problem that we can deal with with fairly moderate policy. Things that would be politically impossible right now, but economically aren’t hard at all. [...]
You would end up still with the U.S. having lower taxes than almost all other OECD countries. And you’d end up with our social programs enhanced, not reduced, because we’d have universal health care coverage and some other improvements in the social safety net, and we would be good for the foreseeable future. All of this hinges on being able to actually talk about tax increases, even modest ones, without it being political suicide. It requires that you be able to talk about spending health dollars wisely and not have people start screaming about death panels.
Watch it:
The Wonk Room has more.
Jindal Was The Only Governor To Skip Biden’s Conference Call On The Stimulus
Jindal Was The Only Governor To Skip Biden’s Conference Call On The Stimulus
Yesterday, the White House held a conference call between Vice President Biden and governors of U.S. states and territories. The purpose of the call, according to the White House pool report, was to “exhort the states to collect and submit quarterly numbers of jobs created and saved by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act by the deadline of Oct. 10.” Forty-nine state governors or their representatives joined the call. The one person who skipped it? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R). From the pool report:
The invite was sent to 55 states and territories; if the governor could not join the call, a Lt. Governor, Chief of Staff or ARRA designee called in. There was one no-show state: Louisiana. Three no-show territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa.
Biden has been aggressively reaching out to U.S. mayors and governors to help them use stimulus funds. In July, Time reported that Biden had been able to get every governor on the line except Sarah Palin of Alaska, Rick Perry of Texas, and Jindal.
Jindal has been one of the most outspoken critics of the Recovery Act — at the same time he goes around the state and takes credit for the federal dollars he was handing out. In July, Jindal declared the legislation a “stimulus that has not stimulated.” Yet he had no problems with handing out giant checks with his name on them…that contained millions of dollars of Recovery Act funds for job training programs, housing assistance programs, homelessness prevention programs, police training, criminal justice technology upgrades, and community development block grants.
A Jindal appointee has even blocked the state transportation department from placing signs indicating that projects were funded by the stimulus:
State projects financed with federal stimulus dollars will have no signs that say that, said Mark Lambert, spokesman for the state Department of Transportation and Development.
Lambert said the decision was made by DOTD Secretary William Ankner.
“He directed that signs not go up,” Lambert said of Ankner.
Lambert noted, however, that “road and bridge work paid for with state surplus dollars included signs that pointed out the source of the funds.” His explanation was that the state signs were cheaper. ThinkProgress contacted Jindal’s office to ask why the governor skipped the Biden call, but we did not receive a response.
General Motors Bans Michael Moore From Detroit Premiere Of His Own Movie
General Motors Bans Michael Moore From Detroit Premiere Of His Own Movie
Michael Moore’s next documentary is “Capitalism: A Love Story,” a film which attacks the U.S. economic system as fundamentally unjust and declares, “Capitalism is an evil, and you cannot regulate evil. You have to eliminate it and replace it with something that is good for all people and that something is democracy.”
Although the movie is not set to open nationwide until Oct. 2, Moore has been premiering a number of sneak preview screenings for Detroit residents in his home state of Michigan. But, as Michigan Live reports, Moore ran into problems when it turned out one of the theaters he rented for the screenings was owned by General Motors (GM) — which Moore famously skewered for its anti-worker policies in his 1989 film Roger & Me.
GM agreed to run the movie only if both Moore and the local press were locked out. Essentially, GM banned Moore from his own screening. A local Detroit news station interviewed Moore about the incident. He said GM should “get over” its grudge against him and be more accountable to citizens, especially in light of the billions of dollars the government has loaned it:
MOORE: General Motors said that I could not be on the premises doing any interviews or press. … I would get over it if I were them. … In the movie I actually try to attempt to see the new chairman to share my ideas about mass transit and other things that the General Motors factories could be building that would benefit about society. … We have 50 billion dollars of our money sitting over there. That is owned by us now. And the de facto CEO is President Barack Obama. I legally rented the four theaters to have my Detroit premiere, and yet somehow they’re able to ban me from my own premiere here? What country are we living in?
Watch it:
In addition to the over 1,000 theater opening Oct. 2, Moore plans to screen the film for free on Oct. 1 in some of the poorest parts of the country.
Beck claims he ‘hated’ Bush for starting the bailouts.
Beck claims he ‘hated’ Bush for starting the bailouts.
Today on his Fox News show, Glenn Beck tried to show that his criticism is principled and bipartisan. He said that while President Bush did have czars, they weren’t “crazy people” — like President Obama’s appointees. To show that he doesn’t see political party, he pointed to his dislike of Bush’s $700 billion bailout:
He [Obama] will say that Bush started us down the path toward socialism, and he’d be right by that. Bush started the crazy spending. He would be right again. Bush started the bailouts. Yes, he did — hated him for it.
Watch it:
While Beck did come to have reservations about Bush’s bailout (because it allowed the Treasury Secretary to “expand this in any direction he feels is necessary”), he actually initially supported it. What he said on Sept. 22, 2008:
But these are anything but normal times. I thought about it an awful lot this weekend, and while it takes everything in me to say this, I think the bailout is the right thing do.
The “REAL STORY” is the $700 billion that you’re hearing about now is not only, I believe, necessary, it is also not nearly enough, and all of the weasels in Washington know it.
In that same segment, Beck called Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson “immortal.”
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