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Earlier, we noted that, over the next two weeks, President Obama's schedule will be heavy on items not related to the economy: Hurricane Katrina (yesterday), Iraq/Afghanistan (tomorrow), Middle East peace (Wednesday), and the 9/11 anniversary (next week).
Clearly not wanting the economy to take a backseat to those other issues, the White House has just announced that Obama will make a statement to reporters at 12:30 pm ET. Per MSNBC's Richard Wolffe, the subject is the economy.
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Read Nash's post about visiting 3 stores, that'll tellya all you need to know about the Economy.
Customer service has'nt caught up with demand yet.
The Chamber of Commerce will spend $75 Million on the Midterm Election's, Thats where thier Priorities are, Not in Customer satisfaction or HIREING!
That's where their priorities always have been, Rick. Billions for elections, but no relief for those who are still unemployed owing to our last tour of duty as buffoons at the helm.
I'll pretend my ship's not sinking ... I'm the king of wishful thinking.
Rick,Ky
The Chamber of Commerce will spend $75 Million on the Midterm Election's, Thats where thier Priorities are, Not in Customer satisfaction or HIREING!
The flood gates are opening wider. As Rush Limbaugh said "I want him(President Obama )to Fail" so those angry billionaires claim they're afraid to hire people because of the uncertainty and failing. But, sensible Americans know better.
Witness the new Republican talking point about uncertainty in the economy. The only real uncertainty here is whether the Kings of Wall Street are going to make a lot of money or a LOT of money. There absolutely will be hiring after Election Day because it's so desperately needed. Whether the GOP gains a few seats or a bunch the narrative will instantly change to how it's only possible due to increased Republican presence in the economy.
Obama has been complaining about the previous Administration's "Driving the car into the ditch", but let's take a closer look at the REAL facts - based on the government's own Federal Fiscal Year records.
During Bush's first 6 years, when Republicans had control of the White House and Congress, we find the following, in spite of the dramatic bad effects of 9/11;
The economic growth rate of Gross Domestic Product averaged 5.5% per year.
The Deficit averaged $231 Billion per year.
The average Unemployment Rate was 5.28%.
A net of 4.3 million jobs were added to the economy.
The National Debt averaged only 60.88% of GDP, better than Clinton's average of 63.76%.
The Public Debt increased only $1.44 Trillion in 6 years.
Since the Democrats took over Congress (including the legislative and spending agenda) in 2006 (4 years ago);
The economic growth rate of Gross Domestic Product averaged only 1.8% per year.
The Deficit has averaged $890 Billion per year.
The Unemployment Rate has averaged 7.5%, and is currently stuck at 9.5%.
A net of 5.2 million jobs have been LOST to the economy.
The National Debt has averaged 77.84% of GDP, and is now over 93% of GDP.
The Public Debt increased by $4.46 Trillion in 4 years (Obama's projection for 2010).
And remember, the "financial meltdown" happened 2 years AFTER the Democrats took over all legislation and spending, including Congressional oversight of Wall Street. Thanks Barney Frank & Chris Dodd.
So the question should be asked "Who REALLY drove the car into the ditch?"
Mr Wilson,
You keep posting this day after day after day and nobody is buying the argument. It has been answered more than once and each time it has been shown to be misleading, containing misinterpreted data, misapplied logic, misrepresented data and, in some cases, factually challenged.
Give it up, no matter how many times you post it, no matter how many times you say it won't magically become true.
This should be good. My guess is that Barry will tell us that the dismal state of the U.S. economy is like eating a chocolate covered turd, and as long as we focus on the chocolate taste and vote for Dems, all will be well.
Joe ~ I wonder. Do you stay up all night dreaming up these little nuggets of "wisdom," or do they just come to you without warning, like bad digestion?
Dont forget joe. He will tell us after 19 months of running the country that is still Bush Fault..
Why not, Steve? Bush and Cheney told us it was Clinton's fault for eight years. They demonstrated that there's no statute of limitations on blame shifting. Even now, they continue to blame Jimmy Carter for everything Ronald Reagan did to screw things up.
Steve,
And the 1929 crash is STILL Hoover’s fault !!!!
Ask the US Chamber of Commerce where the jobs are. They seem to have millions and millions of dollars to waste on Republican elections, and trying to make sure that President Obama fails.
Chris, Ask the unions where the jobs are, since they contribute millions and millions on the democrats. Don't you think the unions would spend their money helping their members. If Obama had helped the small businesses with his stimulus instead of the union members maybe there would be more jobs. Obama is in over his head and knows nothing about creating jobs. He needs a new team with some business experience.
Dems are set to pass the Small Business Bill,,,,,,,,,,,,,,Tell Republicans to get off their butts help pass it instead of being the Party of destruction of the US economy.
If they are trying to pass the same bill they had previously submitted then it is not worth the paper it's printed on. It does nothing to help small business, it just throws more money in the crapper. Why don't the administration listen to what small businesses want not what the administration thinks is best. No one in this administration's economic circle has ever ran a business, wrote a paycheck, or expanded anything but the size of government.
The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party
“The Koch brothers must be laughing all the way to the bank knowing that “Working Americans” are “Aiding and Abetting” their “Selfish Interests”
&
The Republicans Want To Give Them A $$3 Trillion Dollar Tax Cut Of Your Tax Dollars!
Their program opposes a Federal Deficit,
but has no objection to running up “Trillions in red ink in “Tax Cuts” to Corporations and the “Superrich;”
Just Think How Many Jobs Could Be Generated With The Dollars These Billionaires Are Spending & Money The Are Paying To “Lobbyists” To “Take Over” America!
When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools
, another grass-roots demonstration starring Real Americans who are mad as hell and want to take back their country from you-know-who. Last Sunday the site was Lower Manhattan, where they jeered the “ground zero mosque.” This weekend, the scene shifted to Washington, where the avatars of oppressed white Tea Party America, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, were slated to “reclaim the civil rights movement” (Beck’s words) on the same spot where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. had his dream exactly 47 years earlier
Vive la révolution!
There’s just one element missing from these snapshots of America’s ostensibly spontaneous and leaderless populist uprising:
the sugar daddies who are bankrolling it,
and have been doing so since well before the “death panel” warm-up acts of last summer.
Three heavy hitters rule.
You’ve heard of one of them, Rupert Murdoch.
The other two, the brothers David and Charles Koch, are even richer, with a combined wealth exceeded only by that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett among Americans.
But even those carrying the Kochs’ banner may not know who these brothers are.
Their self-interested and at times radical agendas, like Murdoch’s, go well beyond, and sometimes counter to, the interests of those who serve as spear carriers in the political pageants hawked on Fox News.
The country will be in for quite a ride should these potentates gain power, and given the recession-battered electorate’s unchecked anger and the Obama White House’s unfocused political strategy, they might.
All three tycoons are the latest incarnation of what the historian Kim Phillips-Fein labeled “Invisible Hands” in her prescient 2009 book of that title:
those corporate players who have financed the far right ever since the du Pont brothers spawned the American Liberty League in 1934 to bring down F.D.R.
You can draw a straight line from the Liberty League’s crusade against the New Deal “socialism” of Social Security,
the Securities and Exchange Commission and
child labor laws
to the John Birch Society-Barry Goldwater assault on J.F.K. and
Medicare to the Koch-Murdoch-backed juggernaut against our “socialist” president.
Only the fat cats change — not their methods and not their pet bugaboos (taxes, corporate regulation, organized labor, and government “handouts” to the poor, unemployed, ill and elderly).
Even the sources of their fortunes remain fairly constant.
Koch Industries began with oil in the 1930s and now also spews an array of industrial products, from Dixie cups to Lycra, not unlike DuPont’s portfolio of paint and plastics. Sometimes the biological DNA persists as well.
The Koch brothers’ father, Fred, was among the select group chosen to serve on the Birch Society’s top governing body. In a recorded 1963 speech that survives in a University of Michigan archive, he can be heard warning of “a takeover” of America in which Communists would “infiltrate the highest offices of government in the U.S. until the president is a Communist, unknown to the rest of us.” That rant could be delivered as is at any Tea Party rally today.
Last week the Kochs were shoved unwillingly into the spotlight by the most comprehensive journalistic portrait of them yet, written by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker.
Her article caused a stir among those in Manhattan’s liberal elite who didn’t know that David Koch, widely celebrated for his cultural philanthropy, is not merely another rich conservative Republican but the founder of the
Americans for Prosperity Foundation,
which, as Mayer writes with some understatement, “has worked closely with the Tea Party since the movement’s inception.”
To New Yorkers who associate the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center with the New York City Ballet,
it’s startling to learn that the Texas branch of that foundation’s political arm, known simply as Americans for Prosperity, gave its Blogger of the Year Award to an activist who had called President Obama “cokehead in chief.”
The other major sponsor of the Tea Party movement is Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks,
which, like Americans for Prosperity, is promoting events in Washington this weekend. Under its original name, Citizens for a Sound Economy,
FreedomWorks received $12 million of its own from Koch family foundations.
Using tax records, Mayer found that Koch-controlled foundations
gave out $196 million from 1998 to 2008, much of it to conservative causes and institutions.
That figure doesn’t include $50 million in Koch Industries lobbying and $4.8 million in campaign contributions by its political action committee, putting it first among energy company peers like Exxon Mobil and Chevron.
Since tax law permits anonymous personal donations to nonprofit political groups, these figures may understate the case
The Kochs surely match the in-kind donations the Tea Party receives in free promotion 24/7 from Murdoch’s Fox News, where both Beck and Palin are on the payroll.
The New Yorker article stirred up the right, too. Some of Mayer’s blogging detractors unwittingly upheld the premise of her article (titled “Covert Operations”) by conceding that they have been Koch grantees. None of them found any factual errors in her 10,000 words. Many of them tried to change the subject to George Soros, the billionaire backer of liberal causes. But Soros is a publicity hound who is transparent about where he shovels his money. And like many liberals — selflessly or foolishly, depending on your point of view — he supports causes that are unrelated to his business interests and that, if anything, raise his taxes.
This is hardly true of the Kochs. When David Koch ran to the right of Reagan as vice president on the 1980 Libertarian ticket (it polled 1 percent), his campaign called for the abolition not just of Social Security, federal regulatory agencies and welfare but also of the F.B.I., the C.I.A., and public schools —
in other words, any government enterprise that would either inhibit his business profits or increase his taxes.
He hasn’t changed.
As Mayer details, Koch-supported lobbyists, foundations and political operatives are at the center of climate-science denial — a cause that forestalls threats to Koch Industries’ vast fossil fuel business.
While Koch foundations donate to cancer hospitals like Memorial Sloan-Kettering in New York, Koch Industries has been lobbying to stop the Environmental Protection Agency from classifying another product important to its bottom line, formaldehyde, as a “known carcinogen” in humans (which it is).
Tea Partiers may share the Kochs’ detestation of taxes, big government and Obama.
But there’s a difference between mainstream conservatism
and a fringe agenda that tilts completely toward big business,
whether on Wall Street or in the Gulf of Mexico, while dismantling fundamental government safety nets designed to protect the unemployed, public health, workplace safety and the subsistence of the elderly.
Yet inexorably the Koch agenda is morphing into the G.O.P. agenda,
as articulated by current Republican members of Congress, including the putative next speaker of the House, John Boehner,
and Tea Party Senate candidates like Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, and the new kid on the block,
Alaska’s anti-Medicaid, anti-unemployment insurance Palin protégé, Joe Miller.
Their program opposes a federal deficit,
but has no objection to running up trillions in red ink in tax cuts to corporations and the superrich;
apologizes to corporate malefactors like BP and derides money put in escrow for oil spill victims as a “slush fund”;
opposes the extension of unemployment benefits;
and calls for a freeze on federal regulations in an era when abuses in the oil, financial, mining, pharmaceutical and even egg industries (among others) have been outrageous.
And surely Murdoch is snickering at those protesting the “ground zero mosque.” Last week on “Fox and Friends,” the Bush administration flacks Dan Senor and Dana Perino attacked a supposedly terrorism-tainted Saudi prince whose foundation might contribute to the Islamic center. But as “The Daily Show” keeps pointing out, these Fox bloviators never acknowledge that the evil prince they’re bashing, Walid bin Talal, is not only the biggest non-Murdoch shareholder in Fox News’s parent company (he owns 7 percent of News Corporation) and the recipient of Murdoch mammoth investments in Saudi Arabia but also the subject of lionization elsewhere on Fox.
No less a Murdoch factotum than Neil Cavuto slobbered over bin Talal in a Fox Business Channel interview as recently as January, with nary a question about his supposed terrorist ties. Instead, bin Talal praised Obama’s stance on terrorism and even endorsed the Democrats’ goal of universal health insurance.
Do any of the Fox-watching protestors at the “ground zero mosque” know that Fox’s profits are flowing to a Obama-sympathizing Saudi billionaire in bed with Murdoch?
As Jon Stewart summed it up, the protestors who want “to cut off funding to the ‘terror mosque’ ” are \
When wolves of Murdoch’s ingenuity and the Kochs’ stealth have been at the door of our democracy in the past, Democrats have fought back fiercely.
Franklin Roosevelt’s triumphant 1936 re-election campaign pummeled the Liberty League as a Republican ally eager to “squeeze the worker dry in his old age and cast him like an orange rind into the refuse pail.”
When John Kennedy’s patriotism was assailed by Birchers calling for impeachment, he gave a major speech denouncing their “crusades of suspicion.”
And Obama?
Thank you for speaking out on the economy and not letting the Media and these folk set your course!
Way to tell it like it is June, Fl about the corrupt Koch Brothers who just want to stay coked up all the time on our dime! The Koch Brothers have found their Useful Idiots in the Tea Bagging Drag Queens who want to make life a real drag for anyone not Corrupt Conservative Christian. The Koch Brothers understand that religion and the rich are the unholy union that keeps the rest of us from enjoying our Secular Democracy.
June,
Excellent post. Thank you!
I always wonder how the poor democrats manage to win any elections.
If the Koch brothers want to spend millions or even billions to persuade people let them. If people don't agree then it will be a waste of money. You think any product or idea can be sold on the basis of a huge advertisement campaign? If that were true we'd have bought Ford Edsels. The truth is if the product is lousy it won't sell and that goes for ideas too.
BTW Wasn't it President Obama that opted out of public financing?
Good to see that Obama remembers the old saying "It's the Economy Stupid" as he speaks to his fellow Americans. He needs to keep hammering the dopes of nope for doing absolutely nothing to help bring back the jobs they lost in our Bushwhacked economy. About time for Obama to shame the repugnant ones for doing nothing to help recover our Bushwhacked economy. Let the Tea Bagging Drag Queens whine about the mosque in NYC, or other such unimportant nonsense that does nothing to help recover our Bushwhacked economy.
Obama can talk all he wants about the economy. He doesn't understand it; never will. Today he will blast GOP for not approving his tax cut on small business. Do the math. His tax cut amounts to 0.4% of GNP; totally immaterial. Anyone with common sense knows he wants to pass something prior to the election so he has a talking point; nothing more. No amount of gov't borrowing and spending is going to turn the economy around. Sure the stimulus saved / created 3.5 million jobs but at the cost of $200,000 per job for a short term bandaid creating a debt that must be paid back with interest. The problem is no business wants to make an investment when they don't know by how much the added cost of taxes, healthcare, and regulation will be.
Do you think it's "immaterial" if you're one of the small businesses that would be getting a tax break?
How many talking points does Obama need, He was elected by a large majority of the USA to pass HCR, WSR, and end 2 wars that have no reason for being fought
HCR passed
WSR passed
Iraq war over
Afghan war winding down
Republicans love to talk about his huge deficit, Even though most of that deficit still belongs to Bush's wars (plus a few hundred billion in debts he'd kept hidden until he was out the door)
Fox’s Greta Van Susteren Follows MSNBC’s David Gregory In Holding The Republican Party’s Feet To The Fire & Not One Will Tell The American People The Truth That The $3 Trillion Dollar Tax Cut To The Rich They “Demand” Increases The Deficit They Love To Use To Say Will Be Left With Americans Next Generation, Republicans Say There’s No Need To Pay For It
But Anything Else That Might Help American Families Hurting From This Awful Near Depression They Caused “Must Be Paid For In Advanced”
When Asked What, Besides Tax Cuts, Would Help The Economy, Pence Says Tax Cuts
We Wonder Why America Has An Education Problem, Look No Further Than Congress!
Rep. Mike Pence (R-IN) went on Fox News last night to back up House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-OH) over-the-top call for President Obama to sack his entire economic team, including Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and top adviser Larry Summers. “The President ought to ask for and accept the resignation of the Secretary of the Treasury and Larry Summers, and he ought to bring a new team,” Pence said.
But beyond that, Pence, like the rest of his GOP colleagues, didn’t offer any ideas of his own that would help the ailing economy.
When host Greta Van Susteren asked what, besides tax cuts, he would do to turn the economy around,?
Pence at first dodged, but then said tax cuts for the rich would be the way to go:
VAN SUSTEREN: What — besides the sort of the usual — the — you know, the tax program, extending the Bush tax cuts that I know the Republican Party want, what is it that you could do to turn it around?
PENCE: Yes, look, the enemy of our prosperity is uncertainty. … the greatest uncertainty right now is — and you just heard — you heard the Vice President again kind of defend it in passing, their tax cuts — their tax increases on the rich — is this administration actually thinks that it would be a good idea to allow a tax increase on job creators on January 1st, 2011. You know, higher taxes never got anybody hired
In addition to creating massive deficits, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest 2 percent of Americans would do little to help the economy and create jobs. In fact, the evidence suggests that if the GOP got their tax cuts for the rich, the economy could get worse.
After the Bush tax cuts were enacted, the country “registered the weakest jobs and income growth in the post-war period.”,
GDP increased faster following the tax increases of 1993 than it did following either the Bush or Reagan tax cuts.
It’s clear that Pence and his GOP colleagues just don’t have much to offer.
Given that Pence has been asked repeatedly for new ideas on the economy — and
hasn’t been able to offer any —
one would imagine that he could think of something other than “tax cuts,” but apparently not
Republicans nothing to offer, "Holding Americans Hostage" For The Rich, "Just Say No" Bullies!
June, dear, I'm going to speak to you as a former teacher.
When you post, or write, using someone else's words without attribution, it is called plagiarism, and is a form of theft.
Now, you can post what you are posting, but you must preface it with an attribution as to the source of the material.
Or, you can take the reading material, and put it into your own words.
I am telling you this because I believe that you are unaware that what you are doing is wrong. Now that you do know, I hope you will refrain from doing it.
get a life all blow. go preach to some other group. who died and made you the FR police?
June, are you advocating for the end of all the Bush tax cuts? If you only let the ones on the top 2% expire that will save 750Billion over 10 years. The 3 trillion number is the saving if all (including child credit and the marriage penalty) the tax cuts are allowed to expire.
"The problem is no business wants to make an investment when they don't know by how much the added cost of taxes, healthcare, and regulation will be."
Translation"
No business wants to create jobs unless they can re assured of ""Deregulation" which is what brought this country to this struggling mess, has almost turned American Families into a 3rd world country
China is laughing all the way to the bank, Our Media is Selling us out constantly Preaching How America will fail
No Confidence, absolutely no Confidence, Media is about making money, Mr. President lead the way Confidence, Confidence Confidence, ignore the Nay sayers!
Selling out their own self intrest and their families for what ever reason to back Republicans who caused this Awful Mess
Fired Up And Ready To Go!
Deregulation and the turnover of the Government to Corporations is what made China what it is today, A Republic ran by Republicans
Obie is racking up the frequent flier miles during the next two weeks, talking about everything but the economy and jobs. Why? To keep away from the subject? Today he will tell us that he knew about the lagging economy and some other blah blah statement to spin. But will he discuss his plan to move forward to create jobs and improve the economy? I doubt it.
Why do the progressives talk about everything but the issue?
Here's his fix... print more dollars to throw at it, devalue the dollar on the world market by doing so and plunge our country further into the $4 trillion debt range.
Great job B-O, great job.
IMPEACH OBAMA AND PELOSI NOW !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Listening to CSPN. There saying that the Democrats are going to loose there seats.
I shake my head and say that can not be true. And I keep in mind that no one can know the future.
Then I think on what America has come to. I know there are some twisted people out there. I just hope that there are not more of them then us. And it comes down to that the question is there more twisted people out there that hate and feel the need to self destruct.
I look at the facts and my own self awareness. I don't care about who is Dem and who is Rep. That is not my thing at all. I am proud to say I don't have that Hang-up. I am with the Party that is with me. It is as simple as that. These Republicans and I can paint them all with the same brush haven't done anything for me and they don't seem in the foreseeable future to have a plan that will effect me in a positive way. I mean no Plan at all. And if that is not enough, they seem Hell Bent on changing all the positive legislation that is in place right now. I live in the same world as every one else. Yes we have different demographies. I ask can there really be that big of a difference in self preservation. I mean what is the alternative. With the Republicans out of the way the Democrats will be-able to get things done . That is just the way I see it and I am adamant on that with out the consent disruption of these few Republicans things can finally get done. Now if I know this to be true. And I know that I am not the most intelligent person in America.... What The Problem Is???
Safecracker, just what is the plan from the dopes of nope GOBP?
No plan, and worse then that the "liberal Media" refuses to hold republicans feet to the fire. the pundits keep repeating the mantra that the election is about jobs,jobs,jobs. yet few ever ask republicans how they will bring jobs back.
June, fantastic post!!! How many times have I said (mostly to myself) "'wish I'd have said that". We are indeed 'sheeple' if we can't wake up and see what's out there.... How can anyone call themself a Republican if they're making under $200,000.00 yearly ??? ...more wood for the fire!!!
Hey all you people posting from the right, enough already with the GOP talking points. We've already heard:
Businesses aren't hiring because they are uncertain.
Stop blaming Bush the democrats were in control for the last 4 years.
Obama is a Muslim.
Obama is a Communist.
Obama is . . . whatever.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac caused the recession.
etc., etc., etc.
They were not true the first time you said them and they are still not true. No matter how many times you repeat them, they will not magically become true.
You have every right to say them, write them and shout them from the highest mountain, it just doesn't do your credibility much good and makes you look foolish.
You people are arguing about the tax cuts for the top 3%. But Obama and the Democrats have been in office together for two years. They have told us they are going to extend the cuts for everyone but the top 3%. Now they say they are going to do it after the mid terms. With all the apprehension between the average people and small business, why have they waited two years. The reason is easy. They have no intention of extending anyone's cuts. They will let taxes go up on the rich and the middle class. They will say they need the money because of the large deficits just like Clinton did when he went back on his promise not to raise taxes. But the more tax money the more Democrats like it. They will spend it on more new programs. They are waiting until after the November mid terms so the Republicans cannot use it as a campaign issue. It is not like Obama hasn't broken other campaign promises. Mark my word, everyone's taxes are going up at the beginning of the year. The Dems simply want the money!!
Ray, why did Republicans time this to expire at just this time? They could have chosen any time frame up to 10 years but it's right now. The Democrats are debating it now because it's due to expire. Why did the Republicans set it up to expire just beyond a midterm election?
Tax cuts for all should be in order to bring down Obama's spending of endless bailouts, failed stimulus, massive debt he has created and goverment healthcare that will cost us millions and put a very BIG strain on small and large companies. No one wants to hire because they cannot continue paying their employees healthcare and pay their taxes too!!! Look at the large companies that have employed millions of people- all Henry Fords, Rockefellers, Goodrich, Cereal companies, Kimberly Clark, etc. when all these companies were going strong-everyone had a job that wanted one. Start pileing taxes on, restrictions of all kinds and goverment sticking their nose in everyone's business with mountians of paper work and interference in the work place, it's all going by the wayside. We don't want a nanny country-a goverment saying we have to go to this doc. or that one, hand outs so we can become dependent on the Goverment. We will be another Greece and have a socialized nation before you know it!!!