13 Nov 2009 01:19 pm
FROM ANDREW SULLIVAN
Fox News: Enemy Of Conservatism
The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sean Hannity Apologizes to Jon
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis
Above is Jon Stewart's version of watching Sean Hannity. Yes, I've tried to as well. It's like listening to Hugh Hewitt. Or reading Pravda in the old Soviet Union. But somehow watching a human being so brainwashed and engaging in conscious brain-washing makes it worse. Hannity is a pathological level of propagandist, because his entire reality, his entire mindset is programmed for ideology and partisanship. There is no world for him but politics; and no perspective within politics except conflict and warfare. He greets views that do not comport with the opportunistic ideology of the moment as threats to be extinguished, not ideas to be engaged.
Whatever else this toxic, shallow and brutal perspective is, it is not now and never will be conservative - unless that word has now been so corrupted it has no meaning at all.
Here I am at a conference on two of the greatest conservative minds of the last century: Leo Strauss and Michael Oakeshott. Perhaps Strauss would have regarded this poisonous propaganda as a necessary evil to keep the demos in check (perhaps that's how cynics like Kristol can support and enable this sophomoric, near-fascist crap). Oakeshott would have never stopped throwing up, if, of course, he would even have stooped to watching.
At the core of real conservatism is a distinction between theory and practice, a deep resistance to ideology, a respect for free inquiry and the philosophic spirit, a respect for social stability and coherence, a moderation in governance and a deliberation in action.
It is really time to point out that what Hannity represents, what much of Fox News represents, is not a defense of conservatism but one of conservatism's deepest, most vicious and most pernicious enemies. I am sick and tired of having this political tradition coopted and vandalized in this manner.
Friday, November 13, 2009
One Person's Take on the Impact of the Internet
from Newsweek
Richard Bangs / Business Wire via Getty Images
The past decade is the era in which the Internet ruined everything. Just look at the industries that have been damaged by the rise of the Web: Newspapers. Magazines. Books. TV. Movies. Music. Retailers of almost any kind, from cars to real estate. Telecommunications. Airlines and hotels. Wherever companies relied on advertising to make money, wherever companies were profiting by a lack of transparency or a lack of competition, wherever friction could be polished out of the system, those industries suffered.
Remember all that crazy talk in the early days about how the Internet was going to change everything and usher us into a brave new techno-utopia? Well, to get to that promised land, we first have to endure a period of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” as the Internet crashes like a tsunami across entire industries, sweeping away the old and infirm and those who are unwilling or unable to change. That’s where we’ve been these past 10 years, and it’s been ugly.
Let’s start with newspapers. You wouldn’t think that in an information age the biggest victim would be purveyors of information. But there you go. Newspapers are getting wiped out in part because they didn’t realize they were in the information business—they thought their business was about putting ink onto paper and then physically distributing those stacks of paper with fleets of trucks and delivery people. Papers were slow to move to the Web. For a while they just sort of shuffled around, hoping it would go away. Even when they did launch Web sites, many did so reluctantly, almost grudgingly. It’s hard to believe that news companies could miss this shift. These companies are in the business of spotting what’s new, right? Yet they were blind to the biggest change (and the biggest opportunity) to ever hit their own business. Watching newspapers go out of business because of the Internet is like watching dairies going out of business because customers started wanting their milk in paper cartons instead of glass bottles.
Newspapers are getting wiped out because the Internet robbed them of their mini-monopolies. For decades they had virtually no competition, and so could charge ridiculous amounts of money for things like tiny classified ads. This, we are told by people who are wringing their hands over the demise of newspapers, was somehow a good thing. Good or no, it’s gone, thanks to Craigslist, which came along and provided the same service at no charge. Whoops.
TV is in the same boat. For decades we had three big broadcast networks. They weren’t exactly a monopoly, but close enough; with so little choice, the networks could aggregate huge audiences and charge outrageous fees for advertising time. Along came cable, which brought in dozens of competitors. This hurt a little bit, but when the Internet arrived, the dam burst. Suddenly the number of “channels” soared as high as you can count. There is no limit. It’s infinite. That sudden surplus has drained ad money from TV networks, which is why TV is now jammed with low-cost junk—reality shows, cable “news” that owes more to Jerry Springer than to Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno on five nights a week in prime time—taking the place of scripted shows, which cost more to make. Basically, TV is on a race to the bottom, cutting costs to stay ahead of the destruction. This may be a short-term fix, but simply putting out a worse product is probably not the way to survive.
The music business has suffered even more. First there was Napster, distributing music at no cost. Apple’s iTunes Store offered a path to survival, but it forced the music companies to cede control of their industry to Steve Jobs. As for music retailers—remember them? Yes, children, there used to be actual stores that you could walk into and buy music, on CDs and even on vinyl record. You don’t see many of those about anymore.
As for the film industry, Apple now offers movie studios the same Faustian bargain it made with music companies: “You just focus on making movies, and let us take care of digital distribution.” But the movie guys remain wary, and at the very least would rather deal with many different digital distributors and not let any single distributor get too powerful. The studios realize that the digital revolution is disrupting their business. The best they can hope to do is slow down the disruption.
But it’s not just stodgy old-fashioned companies that have been hurt by the rise of the Internet, even tech companies suffered damage. Before the Internet came along, Microsoft ruled the computer industry. Tiny software companies lived in Microsoft’s shadow, and they knew that if their business struck gold, Microsoft would offer them an unpleasant choice: either sell your company to us for a pittance, or we’ll create software that mimics your product and put you out of business. Microsoft bullied rivals and business partners alike, until the latter squealed to the U.S. Department of Justice, which brought an antitrust case against the software giant, resulting in a judgment against Microsoft in 2002.
These days nobody fears Microsoft. The company has become a stumbling, bumbling joke. That’s not because of the government, however. What really tripped up Microsoft was the Internet. Microsoft’s business model was based around waiting for others to innovate, then making cheap knockoffs of what others were selling. Microsoft copied Apple to make Windows. They copied Lotus and WordPerfect to make Excel and Word, then bundled those apps into a low-cost suite called Office. They copied Netscape Navigator to make Internet Explorer, and then gave it away free, tied to Windows, and killed Netscape. But then the copycat model stopped working. Why? For one thing, Microsoft got slower, while everyone else got faster. The new Web-based companies, like Yahoo and Google, needed little money to get started and could scale up quickly. Google figured out keyword-search advertising and got so big so fast that Microsoft could not drag it back. Apple rolled out the iPod and then the iTunes store, and by the time Microsoft realized that selling music online was a big market, it was too late—Apple had it sewn up. The same is true of Amazon with the online retail market, and the Kindle, and its cloud-computing services.
Now Microsoft finds itself racing to catch those companies, even as it invests resources and energy into defending its money-making products like Windows and Office. It’s a case study that could have sprung from the pages of Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma. Microsoft is too big to get swept away. But it’s too wedded to the old world to make it across into the new one. It is quickly becoming irrelevant—maybe not as much as the average newspaper, but close enough.
The Internet has changed pretty much every aspect of our lives over the past decade. Is that for the better or the worse? Depends on who you ask.
Richard Bangs / Business Wire via Getty Images
The past decade is the era in which the Internet ruined everything. Just look at the industries that have been damaged by the rise of the Web: Newspapers. Magazines. Books. TV. Movies. Music. Retailers of almost any kind, from cars to real estate. Telecommunications. Airlines and hotels. Wherever companies relied on advertising to make money, wherever companies were profiting by a lack of transparency or a lack of competition, wherever friction could be polished out of the system, those industries suffered.
Remember all that crazy talk in the early days about how the Internet was going to change everything and usher us into a brave new techno-utopia? Well, to get to that promised land, we first have to endure a period of what economist Joseph Schumpeter called “creative destruction,” as the Internet crashes like a tsunami across entire industries, sweeping away the old and infirm and those who are unwilling or unable to change. That’s where we’ve been these past 10 years, and it’s been ugly.
Let’s start with newspapers. You wouldn’t think that in an information age the biggest victim would be purveyors of information. But there you go. Newspapers are getting wiped out in part because they didn’t realize they were in the information business—they thought their business was about putting ink onto paper and then physically distributing those stacks of paper with fleets of trucks and delivery people. Papers were slow to move to the Web. For a while they just sort of shuffled around, hoping it would go away. Even when they did launch Web sites, many did so reluctantly, almost grudgingly. It’s hard to believe that news companies could miss this shift. These companies are in the business of spotting what’s new, right? Yet they were blind to the biggest change (and the biggest opportunity) to ever hit their own business. Watching newspapers go out of business because of the Internet is like watching dairies going out of business because customers started wanting their milk in paper cartons instead of glass bottles.
Newspapers are getting wiped out because the Internet robbed them of their mini-monopolies. For decades they had virtually no competition, and so could charge ridiculous amounts of money for things like tiny classified ads. This, we are told by people who are wringing their hands over the demise of newspapers, was somehow a good thing. Good or no, it’s gone, thanks to Craigslist, which came along and provided the same service at no charge. Whoops.
TV is in the same boat. For decades we had three big broadcast networks. They weren’t exactly a monopoly, but close enough; with so little choice, the networks could aggregate huge audiences and charge outrageous fees for advertising time. Along came cable, which brought in dozens of competitors. This hurt a little bit, but when the Internet arrived, the dam burst. Suddenly the number of “channels” soared as high as you can count. There is no limit. It’s infinite. That sudden surplus has drained ad money from TV networks, which is why TV is now jammed with low-cost junk—reality shows, cable “news” that owes more to Jerry Springer than to Walter Cronkite, Jay Leno on five nights a week in prime time—taking the place of scripted shows, which cost more to make. Basically, TV is on a race to the bottom, cutting costs to stay ahead of the destruction. This may be a short-term fix, but simply putting out a worse product is probably not the way to survive.
The music business has suffered even more. First there was Napster, distributing music at no cost. Apple’s iTunes Store offered a path to survival, but it forced the music companies to cede control of their industry to Steve Jobs. As for music retailers—remember them? Yes, children, there used to be actual stores that you could walk into and buy music, on CDs and even on vinyl record. You don’t see many of those about anymore.
As for the film industry, Apple now offers movie studios the same Faustian bargain it made with music companies: “You just focus on making movies, and let us take care of digital distribution.” But the movie guys remain wary, and at the very least would rather deal with many different digital distributors and not let any single distributor get too powerful. The studios realize that the digital revolution is disrupting their business. The best they can hope to do is slow down the disruption.
But it’s not just stodgy old-fashioned companies that have been hurt by the rise of the Internet, even tech companies suffered damage. Before the Internet came along, Microsoft ruled the computer industry. Tiny software companies lived in Microsoft’s shadow, and they knew that if their business struck gold, Microsoft would offer them an unpleasant choice: either sell your company to us for a pittance, or we’ll create software that mimics your product and put you out of business. Microsoft bullied rivals and business partners alike, until the latter squealed to the U.S. Department of Justice, which brought an antitrust case against the software giant, resulting in a judgment against Microsoft in 2002.
These days nobody fears Microsoft. The company has become a stumbling, bumbling joke. That’s not because of the government, however. What really tripped up Microsoft was the Internet. Microsoft’s business model was based around waiting for others to innovate, then making cheap knockoffs of what others were selling. Microsoft copied Apple to make Windows. They copied Lotus and WordPerfect to make Excel and Word, then bundled those apps into a low-cost suite called Office. They copied Netscape Navigator to make Internet Explorer, and then gave it away free, tied to Windows, and killed Netscape. But then the copycat model stopped working. Why? For one thing, Microsoft got slower, while everyone else got faster. The new Web-based companies, like Yahoo and Google, needed little money to get started and could scale up quickly. Google figured out keyword-search advertising and got so big so fast that Microsoft could not drag it back. Apple rolled out the iPod and then the iTunes store, and by the time Microsoft realized that selling music online was a big market, it was too late—Apple had it sewn up. The same is true of Amazon with the online retail market, and the Kindle, and its cloud-computing services.
Now Microsoft finds itself racing to catch those companies, even as it invests resources and energy into defending its money-making products like Windows and Office. It’s a case study that could have sprung from the pages of Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s book The Innovator’s Dilemma. Microsoft is too big to get swept away. But it’s too wedded to the old world to make it across into the new one. It is quickly becoming irrelevant—maybe not as much as the average newspaper, but close enough.
The Internet has changed pretty much every aspect of our lives over the past decade. Is that for the better or the worse? Depends on who you ask.
How Can Fox Stand it?
The historical record is clear: the stock market does best under Democratic administrations. How can Fox stand it?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 11, 2009, 9:25 pm
The agony of Fox Business
James Wolcott is made of sterner stuff than I am: he actually has the fortitude to watch Fox Business, where the talking heads manage to find nothing but clouds in the silver lining of a huge stock rally. To make their point they bring on such market experts as … John Bolton. As Wolcott writes, “It takes more than a market rally to pull the wool over Bolton’s mustache.” (Now that’s writing!)
But seriously, sort of, there’s a broader moral to be drawn from this.
Clearly, the Fox Business crew is having a very hard time. They bill themselves as being truly pro-business — not like those leftists at CNBC. But they aren’t really pro-business; they’re pro-Republican. They’d like you to believe that it’s the same thing; but there’s this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama.
And this isn’t just a phenomenon of the last few months. Look back at stock returns under recent presidents, which is easy using a clever gadget at Political Calculations. Taking real, dividend-inclusive annual returns on the S&P 500, I get:
Reagan: 10.08%
Bush I: 10.16%
Clinton: 14.35%
Bush II: minus 5.81%
Tax-hiking Democrats are supposed to be terrible for business; I mean, Norman Podhoretz whines that Jews should be conservatives because Republican policies are better for the economy. But the data just refuse to say that — and that’s even if we restrict ourselves to the stock market, never mind job creation, wages, poverty and all that.
So the whole idea of Fox Business is problematic. It’s Fox, which means that it’s basically an arm of the GOP; but that’s a terrible match for business coverage, because the economy just refuses to punish liberals and reward conservatives the way it’s supposed to.
I gather that Fox Biz has managed to push up its morning ratings by hiring that great financial guru Don Imus. But that sort of proves the point; Fox Business can get viewers, but only by turning itself into … Fox News.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
November 11, 2009, 9:25 pm
The agony of Fox Business
James Wolcott is made of sterner stuff than I am: he actually has the fortitude to watch Fox Business, where the talking heads manage to find nothing but clouds in the silver lining of a huge stock rally. To make their point they bring on such market experts as … John Bolton. As Wolcott writes, “It takes more than a market rally to pull the wool over Bolton’s mustache.” (Now that’s writing!)
But seriously, sort of, there’s a broader moral to be drawn from this.
Clearly, the Fox Business crew is having a very hard time. They bill themselves as being truly pro-business — not like those leftists at CNBC. But they aren’t really pro-business; they’re pro-Republican. They’d like you to believe that it’s the same thing; but there’s this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama.
And this isn’t just a phenomenon of the last few months. Look back at stock returns under recent presidents, which is easy using a clever gadget at Political Calculations. Taking real, dividend-inclusive annual returns on the S&P 500, I get:
Reagan: 10.08%
Bush I: 10.16%
Clinton: 14.35%
Bush II: minus 5.81%
Tax-hiking Democrats are supposed to be terrible for business; I mean, Norman Podhoretz whines that Jews should be conservatives because Republican policies are better for the economy. But the data just refuse to say that — and that’s even if we restrict ourselves to the stock market, never mind job creation, wages, poverty and all that.
So the whole idea of Fox Business is problematic. It’s Fox, which means that it’s basically an arm of the GOP; but that’s a terrible match for business coverage, because the economy just refuses to punish liberals and reward conservatives the way it’s supposed to.
I gather that Fox Biz has managed to push up its morning ratings by hiring that great financial guru Don Imus. But that sort of proves the point; Fox Business can get viewers, but only by turning itself into … Fox News.
Maybe there are Standards
Maybe even in the fantasy world of the Right Wingnuts there is a level below which a blowhard cannot sink. Witness the fall of Lou Dobbs.
November 12, 2009, 7:09 pm
Lou Dobbs
I used to go on Lou Dobbs fairly often in the early years of this decade — and I liked him. We didn’t agree on much, but the on-air discussions were always even-tempered and kind of fun. I would never have expected him to snap the way he did.
Greg Sargent asks whether progressive bloggers and web sites, Media Matters in particular, will get any credit for Dobbs’s fall, the way the ludicrous Powerline got lionized for bringing down Dan Rather. Probably not; Washington is still, as Josh Marshall likes to say, wired for Republicans.
But there is nonetheless some significance in what happened. Until now it really has seemed as if there was nothing, nothing at all, that someone on the right could say and do that would make them unacceptable in polite company. Now it at least seems that there is a line somewhere
November 12, 2009, 7:09 pm
Lou Dobbs
I used to go on Lou Dobbs fairly often in the early years of this decade — and I liked him. We didn’t agree on much, but the on-air discussions were always even-tempered and kind of fun. I would never have expected him to snap the way he did.
Greg Sargent asks whether progressive bloggers and web sites, Media Matters in particular, will get any credit for Dobbs’s fall, the way the ludicrous Powerline got lionized for bringing down Dan Rather. Probably not; Washington is still, as Josh Marshall likes to say, wired for Republicans.
But there is nonetheless some significance in what happened. Until now it really has seemed as if there was nothing, nothing at all, that someone on the right could say and do that would make them unacceptable in polite company. Now it at least seems that there is a line somewhere
Right-Wing Economics is WRONG
AS if we didn't know this already----
by Robert Creamer
Even as Republicans blather on about the evils of a so-called "government takeover of health care," economic news has provided two new key illustrations that the intellectual foundation of right-wing economic orthodoxy has collapsed.
First, the most recent economic numbers on changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment made it increasingly clear that -- as The New York Times reported last Saturday -- the Obama economic stimulus and the massive government intervention in the financial markets were the critical medicine needed to prevent complete economic collapse.
It is now clear that, left to their own devices, there can be no doubt that private financial markets would have pulled the entire economy into another Great Depression. Though job losses continued, last month they continued to shrink from their massive January highs. At the same time, the contraction of the GDP dropped to its lowest level since Lehman Brothers collapsed last September.
Even as the right continues to rail against the Obama stimulus package, there is now near-universal consensus that the $700-billion-plus stimulus bill is largely responsible for beefing up the GDP in the last quarter. Studies by the private research firms IHS Global Insight and MoodysEconomy.com concluded that it is already responsible for saving 500,000 jobs.
Everyday there is fresh evidence that government spending to stimulate demand was critically necessary to pull the country out of the economic tail spin caused by the reckless risk-taking of essentially unregulated private financial markets. Contrary to right wing theory, private consumer demand and new business investment are not leading the way out of the Great Recession -- in reality, government demand was an absolute necessity.
But the second piece of economic news tells even more about the bankruptcy of right wing economic thought. Throughout the heyday of Reagan's "supply side revolution" and Bush's tax cuts, the Republicans and the right wing intellectual establishment have hung fast to their foundational belief that tax cuts for business would create private sector jobs.
Well, the great experiment in "trickle down" economics is over and the results are in. The New York Times reports that, "For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring."
In fact, since George Bush and the Republicans in Congress passed two massive tax cuts, we have seen a massive, secular decline in the creation of private sector jobs.
Of course it won't surprise anyone that this decline has been led by the reduction of American manufacturing jobs. There has been a decline of 3.7% in overall manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last decade.
Remember that we're talking here about an absolute lack of increase in private sector jobs -- zero increase in actual jobs -- even as the population of the United States has grown. Economists tell us that the economy must create 150,000 new jobs each month just to stay even with population growth.
The failure of the economy to produce any private sector jobs at all would have been even more devastating had it not been for a small but significant growth in public sector jobs at the state, local and Federal levels. Of course these are precisely the kind of jobs that the Republicans and Right decry at every opportunity. "Every one knows," they say, "that job growth is really driven only by the private sector." Wrong...maybe in the imaginary world of the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute, but not in the real world of the American economy.
And let's be clear, the Bush tax cuts didn't just produce fewer jobs than advertised. They didn't produce any private sector jobs at all. The whole experiment in handing over money to the wealthiest people in America so they could use it to benefit the rest of us was a colossal - empirically verifiable - failure.
Turns out that when given the chance to use all of those tax cuts, the top two percent of the population used them to speculate in exotic derivatives, to drive up the prices of high end real estate, pay exorbitant prices to the designers of $4,000 blouses and $2,000 shoes. There is absolutely no evidence that they made any more investments in new manufacturing plants, or started up any more businesses than they would have had they paid the same tax rates that they did when Ronald Reagan took office and private sector job growth was 3% per year.
No, instead the rich used the Bush Tax Cuts to create the gigantic economic "bubble" that ultimately burst and caused immeasurable hardship and suffering to millions of average Americans and everyday people across the globe.
Bottom line is that the rich sold America a bill of goods. Give us big tax cuts and we'll give you jobs growth, they told us. America kept its end of the bargain, and the rich reneged entirely on theirs.
In a word, the economic theories of the Republicans and the Right were simply wrong. In fact, they were elaborate intellectual justifications for the richest among us to enrich themselves even more.
The Republicans and the Right Wing establishment will continue to ignore reality, to repeat their slogans, to pander to fear, stand up for wealthy special interests. But history has rendered its verdict. Everyday more and more people see clearly that the Right Wing ideological emperor has no clothes -- and realize that if, together, they take control of their own destiny they can build a foundation for long-term economic prosperity that benefits us all.
by Robert Creamer
Even as Republicans blather on about the evils of a so-called "government takeover of health care," economic news has provided two new key illustrations that the intellectual foundation of right-wing economic orthodoxy has collapsed.
First, the most recent economic numbers on changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employment made it increasingly clear that -- as The New York Times reported last Saturday -- the Obama economic stimulus and the massive government intervention in the financial markets were the critical medicine needed to prevent complete economic collapse.
It is now clear that, left to their own devices, there can be no doubt that private financial markets would have pulled the entire economy into another Great Depression. Though job losses continued, last month they continued to shrink from their massive January highs. At the same time, the contraction of the GDP dropped to its lowest level since Lehman Brothers collapsed last September.
Even as the right continues to rail against the Obama stimulus package, there is now near-universal consensus that the $700-billion-plus stimulus bill is largely responsible for beefing up the GDP in the last quarter. Studies by the private research firms IHS Global Insight and MoodysEconomy.com concluded that it is already responsible for saving 500,000 jobs.
Everyday there is fresh evidence that government spending to stimulate demand was critically necessary to pull the country out of the economic tail spin caused by the reckless risk-taking of essentially unregulated private financial markets. Contrary to right wing theory, private consumer demand and new business investment are not leading the way out of the Great Recession -- in reality, government demand was an absolute necessity.
But the second piece of economic news tells even more about the bankruptcy of right wing economic thought. Throughout the heyday of Reagan's "supply side revolution" and Bush's tax cuts, the Republicans and the right wing intellectual establishment have hung fast to their foundational belief that tax cuts for business would create private sector jobs.
Well, the great experiment in "trickle down" economics is over and the results are in. The New York Times reports that, "For the first time since the Depression, the American economy has added virtually no jobs in the private sector over a 10-year period. The total number of jobs has grown a bit, but that is only because of government hiring."
In fact, since George Bush and the Republicans in Congress passed two massive tax cuts, we have seen a massive, secular decline in the creation of private sector jobs.
Of course it won't surprise anyone that this decline has been led by the reduction of American manufacturing jobs. There has been a decline of 3.7% in overall manufacturing jobs in the United States over the last decade.
Remember that we're talking here about an absolute lack of increase in private sector jobs -- zero increase in actual jobs -- even as the population of the United States has grown. Economists tell us that the economy must create 150,000 new jobs each month just to stay even with population growth.
The failure of the economy to produce any private sector jobs at all would have been even more devastating had it not been for a small but significant growth in public sector jobs at the state, local and Federal levels. Of course these are precisely the kind of jobs that the Republicans and Right decry at every opportunity. "Every one knows," they say, "that job growth is really driven only by the private sector." Wrong...maybe in the imaginary world of the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute, but not in the real world of the American economy.
And let's be clear, the Bush tax cuts didn't just produce fewer jobs than advertised. They didn't produce any private sector jobs at all. The whole experiment in handing over money to the wealthiest people in America so they could use it to benefit the rest of us was a colossal - empirically verifiable - failure.
Turns out that when given the chance to use all of those tax cuts, the top two percent of the population used them to speculate in exotic derivatives, to drive up the prices of high end real estate, pay exorbitant prices to the designers of $4,000 blouses and $2,000 shoes. There is absolutely no evidence that they made any more investments in new manufacturing plants, or started up any more businesses than they would have had they paid the same tax rates that they did when Ronald Reagan took office and private sector job growth was 3% per year.
No, instead the rich used the Bush Tax Cuts to create the gigantic economic "bubble" that ultimately burst and caused immeasurable hardship and suffering to millions of average Americans and everyday people across the globe.
Bottom line is that the rich sold America a bill of goods. Give us big tax cuts and we'll give you jobs growth, they told us. America kept its end of the bargain, and the rich reneged entirely on theirs.
In a word, the economic theories of the Republicans and the Right were simply wrong. In fact, they were elaborate intellectual justifications for the richest among us to enrich themselves even more.
The Republicans and the Right Wing establishment will continue to ignore reality, to repeat their slogans, to pander to fear, stand up for wealthy special interests. But history has rendered its verdict. Everyday more and more people see clearly that the Right Wing ideological emperor has no clothes -- and realize that if, together, they take control of their own destiny they can build a foundation for long-term economic prosperity that benefits us all.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Lou Dobbs Resigns from CNN
AT the heart of EVERY conservative bigmouth is RACE. Lou Dobbs proves it.
LOU DOBBS LEAVING CNN
Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments (VIDEO)
digg Huffpost - Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments (VIDEO)
First Posted: 11-11-09 09:15 PM | Updated: 11-11-09 10:24 PM
Read More: Cnn, CNN Lou Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs Leaves Cnn, Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs Anti-Immigration, Lou Dobbs Birthers, Lou Dobbs Condoleeza Rice, Lou Dobbs Departs, Lou Dobbs Leaves Cnn, Lou Dobbs Leaving Cnn, Lou Dobbs Media Matters, Lou Dobbs Most Scandalous Moments, Lou Dobbs Scandalous, Slidepoll, Media News
On Wednesday night, embattled CNN host Lou Dobbs announced his resignation from the network, effective immediately. Dobbs, the longest-running anchor on CNN's air, is known for his anti-immigration rhetoric, his "birther" conspiracy advocacy, and that time he almost called Condoleeza Rice a "cotton picker," among other gems. Not surprisingly, groups that have been advocating for Dobbs' removal, are already celebrating the evening's news.
While Dobbs does not yet know what his future holds ("I will let you know when I set my course," he said during Wednesday night's final broadcast), we here at HuffPost Media feel qualified to talk about his past. Below, we bring you a collection of Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments.
Dobbs Almost Calls Condi Rice A "Cotton Picker"
"The reality is, this is the most socially, ethnically, religiously, racially diverse society on the face of the earth. Now, Wolf, we don't make enough of that in the national media. We listen to some idiot say you can't talk about race. Not a single one of these cotton...[stammering]...these just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race."
comments(27)
LOU DOBBS LEAVING CNN
Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments (VIDEO)
digg Huffpost - Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments (VIDEO)
First Posted: 11-11-09 09:15 PM | Updated: 11-11-09 10:24 PM
Read More: Cnn, CNN Lou Dobbs, Dobbs, Dobbs Leaves Cnn, Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs Anti-Immigration, Lou Dobbs Birthers, Lou Dobbs Condoleeza Rice, Lou Dobbs Departs, Lou Dobbs Leaves Cnn, Lou Dobbs Leaving Cnn, Lou Dobbs Media Matters, Lou Dobbs Most Scandalous Moments, Lou Dobbs Scandalous, Slidepoll, Media News
On Wednesday night, embattled CNN host Lou Dobbs announced his resignation from the network, effective immediately. Dobbs, the longest-running anchor on CNN's air, is known for his anti-immigration rhetoric, his "birther" conspiracy advocacy, and that time he almost called Condoleeza Rice a "cotton picker," among other gems. Not surprisingly, groups that have been advocating for Dobbs' removal, are already celebrating the evening's news.
While Dobbs does not yet know what his future holds ("I will let you know when I set my course," he said during Wednesday night's final broadcast), we here at HuffPost Media feel qualified to talk about his past. Below, we bring you a collection of Lou Dobbs' Most Scandalous Moments.
Dobbs Almost Calls Condi Rice A "Cotton Picker"
"The reality is, this is the most socially, ethnically, religiously, racially diverse society on the face of the earth. Now, Wolf, we don't make enough of that in the national media. We listen to some idiot say you can't talk about race. Not a single one of these cotton...[stammering]...these just ridiculous politicians should be the moderator on the issue of race."
comments(27)
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
The Hypocrisy of Railing Against "Big Government"
The Right Wingnuts love to rail against "Big Governement," but the fact is that when there are problems in this country, everyone looks immediately to Big Government to do something about it. A hurricane hits and everyone has their hand out to FEMA to fix their roof. The economy is bad and everyone expects the government to do something about it. The hypocrisy of the Wingnuts, evident in so many ways, is especially relevant here.
Poll: Southerners want federal help, fear for jobs
By The Associated Press
November 11, 2009, 6:29AM
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A new poll shows Southerners are fretting about job loss and the economy and don't think the federal government is doing enough to address either.
The Winthrop Poll of 866 respondents in 11 Southern states found the economy was the top concern of four in 10 -- the same share of people who said they were concerned about losing their jobs.
Overall, the economy was the biggest worry for 39 percent of the Southerners, followed by health care and unemployment at 12 percent each. Meanwhile, 38 percent said they were somewhat concerned or very concerned about possibly losing their jobs during the next year.
"More than one in three employed persons worried about losing their job means a lot of people who will put off spending and investing and that will slow economic recovery on the whole," said Scott Huffmon, a political science professor who oversees the poll and runs Winthrop University's social and behavioral research lab.
The poll found abundant finger-pointing for the economic mess as nearly three-quarters of the respondents said banks and financial institutions took unnecessary risks and shouldered a "good amount" or "great deal" of the blame. The same percentage blamed economic problems on consumers for taking on too much debt and big businesses for poor management decisions.
Getting out of the nation's financial mess is something the government should take the lead on, the poll respondents overwhelmingly said.
Nearly 72 percent said they favored new government programs to create jobs. Meanwhile, 63 percent said the federal government needs to give aid to states in serious financial trouble. Those positions were strongest among Democrats and independents, while Republicans were narrowly opposed.
Nonetheless, nearly 58 percent of the Southerners polled said the current federal stimulus efforts were making things worse or having no effect.
Huffmon said that's a sign of ambivalence.
"People definitely feel it is the role of the government to step in during this crisis. However, they do not feel the way they are doing it is working," he said. He compared it to the government addressing transportation problems by giving out bus passes -- even to people who don't have access to public transit.
But it can make the ongoing debate on reviving the economy tough. To these respondents, Huffmon said, the stimulus and recovery program isn't working. "That's a blow to supporters of the current program," he said. Yet the sentiment is strong for government intervention, a blow to conservatives who want the government's hands off the recovery.
"Neither side should be fully happy with these results," Huffmon said.
The Winthrop Poll also found a sizable number of people who weren't decided on a national health care overhaul, the nation's biggest ongoing political and policy debate. Southerners were asked if they'd call on their federal legislators to vote for or against the legislation. Just under a third said they would encourage a vote for the bill and 42 percent said they'd encourage a vote against it.
However, a quarter had no opinion. "That ought to be a stunning finding given how much information has been put out there about the health care debate," Huffmon said.
President Barack Obama mostly faired well in poll, with 84 percent saying he was good communicator, 76 percent that he was warm and friendly and 54 percent that he was trustworthy, a question that broke sharply along partisan lines.
More than 61 percent said Obama "cared about like people like me," including 51 percent of white males.
The Winthrop Poll involved randomly dialed land and cellular telephone interviews with 886 people 18 and older in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The interviews were conducted between Oct. 24 and Nov. 7. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.
Poll: Southerners want federal help, fear for jobs
By The Associated Press
November 11, 2009, 6:29AM
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- A new poll shows Southerners are fretting about job loss and the economy and don't think the federal government is doing enough to address either.
The Winthrop Poll of 866 respondents in 11 Southern states found the economy was the top concern of four in 10 -- the same share of people who said they were concerned about losing their jobs.
Overall, the economy was the biggest worry for 39 percent of the Southerners, followed by health care and unemployment at 12 percent each. Meanwhile, 38 percent said they were somewhat concerned or very concerned about possibly losing their jobs during the next year.
"More than one in three employed persons worried about losing their job means a lot of people who will put off spending and investing and that will slow economic recovery on the whole," said Scott Huffmon, a political science professor who oversees the poll and runs Winthrop University's social and behavioral research lab.
The poll found abundant finger-pointing for the economic mess as nearly three-quarters of the respondents said banks and financial institutions took unnecessary risks and shouldered a "good amount" or "great deal" of the blame. The same percentage blamed economic problems on consumers for taking on too much debt and big businesses for poor management decisions.
Getting out of the nation's financial mess is something the government should take the lead on, the poll respondents overwhelmingly said.
Nearly 72 percent said they favored new government programs to create jobs. Meanwhile, 63 percent said the federal government needs to give aid to states in serious financial trouble. Those positions were strongest among Democrats and independents, while Republicans were narrowly opposed.
Nonetheless, nearly 58 percent of the Southerners polled said the current federal stimulus efforts were making things worse or having no effect.
Huffmon said that's a sign of ambivalence.
"People definitely feel it is the role of the government to step in during this crisis. However, they do not feel the way they are doing it is working," he said. He compared it to the government addressing transportation problems by giving out bus passes -- even to people who don't have access to public transit.
But it can make the ongoing debate on reviving the economy tough. To these respondents, Huffmon said, the stimulus and recovery program isn't working. "That's a blow to supporters of the current program," he said. Yet the sentiment is strong for government intervention, a blow to conservatives who want the government's hands off the recovery.
"Neither side should be fully happy with these results," Huffmon said.
The Winthrop Poll also found a sizable number of people who weren't decided on a national health care overhaul, the nation's biggest ongoing political and policy debate. Southerners were asked if they'd call on their federal legislators to vote for or against the legislation. Just under a third said they would encourage a vote for the bill and 42 percent said they'd encourage a vote against it.
However, a quarter had no opinion. "That ought to be a stunning finding given how much information has been put out there about the health care debate," Huffmon said.
President Barack Obama mostly faired well in poll, with 84 percent saying he was good communicator, 76 percent that he was warm and friendly and 54 percent that he was trustworthy, a question that broke sharply along partisan lines.
More than 61 percent said Obama "cared about like people like me," including 51 percent of white males.
The Winthrop Poll involved randomly dialed land and cellular telephone interviews with 886 people 18 and older in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia. The interviews were conducted between Oct. 24 and Nov. 7. The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.3 percent.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)