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Monday, November 19, 2012

It’s been 3 weeks now



It's going on three weeks now but I can't remember a time in my life when I've seen as much resentment to the results of a presidential election from the losing side. I've seen petitions for sessions filed in all 50 states, I also heard of a woman who tried to run over husband because he didn't vote for Romney, a Montana lawmaker (Ron Paul fan) asking to be paid in gold because he lost faith in our currency and then there were those students at the University of Mississippi who burned Obama signs. I can't remember democrats doing any of those things when our candidate lost.

We've gotten to the point to where we consider the protest nonsense a common occurrence and the talk shows hardly mention them. The talk shows are more interested in the future of the new GOP, the fiscal cliff and who knew what and when, in the Petraeus and Benghazi incidents.

The subjects that I mentioned and were all discussed without any general consensus.

This morning David Gregory came up with theory about Benghazi which I haven't heard before but I believe it has a lot of truth to it. I believe senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain hate the administration's policy of having a small footprint in Libya. They wanted a larger military presence in North Africa, Iraq and Afghanistan. "There was already bad blood between U.N. Secretary Susan Rice and John McCain over us leaving Iraq. She also mocked McCain's trip to Iraq ("strolling around the market in a flak jacket"), called his policies "reckless" and said "his tendency is to shoot first and ask questions later. It's dangerous."Today John McCain is the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, but he will no longer hold that position after January because he has been termed out. That's why he wants a brand new Watergate style committee but his colleagues don't see a need for that. I also believe that the CIA was involved in illegal activities and the terrorist attack in Benghazi blew their cover. I don't agree with Senator Graham's point about the administration doctoring the talking points to give the president a political edge. I believe anybody that can read a newspaper knew that the raid on the consulate in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and selective talking points from the White House were not going to change anyone's minds. Again, anyone with a brain knows that elements of Al Qaeda will be around for a long time despite the president's efforts to kill more of their leaders. The American people are not as gullible as some try to make them out to be. If the president withdraws the nomination of Susan Rice to be the next secretary of state; this issue will go away.

The panel on "Morning Joe" tried to make Nancy Pelosi's reluctance to give an inch on and raising the tax on the top 2% as part of the problem. Even Glenn Hubbard, Mitt Romney's top economic adviser, now says the wealthy need to pay more in taxes as part of a budget settlement. Raising the top rates 3or 4% for the top 2% will raise the necessary revenues for a short term fix. The market's just want to see the framework for a solution that doesn't send us back into a recession. The legislators will not have time to tackle a tax reform plan in the lame duck session. The emphasis still needs to be on jobs and growth and reforming Medicaid and Medicare. Once the economy comes back, the American people will have to decide how to pay for the goodies we want. Taxes will inevitably have to be raised on the middle class as part of the solution but not right now.

The trickle down supply side economic theory has run its course and so has the" makers and takers" mantra. I don't think it's going to be easy to convince the GOP constituencies that 47% of American citizens are not lazy or do not want to be productive. There's too many people like Representative Paul Ryan who preach “if you do all the right things, you too can be successful like me" not knowing all the barriers that face the most vulnerable in our society. I was surprised to hear an entrepreneur of a multimillion dollar company say that he needed government resources to pay for job training or else he would have to shut down. I can remember when corporations paid for job training, benefits and still offered a pension.

I'm fairly confident that a bargain will be struck between the political parties to avert our current fiscal cliff but it will be eventually replaced with a brand new one.

I’m reading a good book which I received for my recent birthday called “Who Stole the American Dream?" By Hedrick Smith. The book is about the steps big businesses took to take the reins of economic prosperity away from the middle class. Big businesses got together to form strong lobbyist groups to counter the strong worker unions of the 1970s. They lined the pockets of the politicians who would go out and try to convince us that there was such a thing as " clean coal" and energy efficient corn ethanol. Meanwhile they got out of their union contracts with new lenient bankruptcy laws. They then replaced, pensions with 401K's and made their employees pay more for their health insurance and benefits. Today's businesses do not see the value of higher compensation, which reduces turnover costs, increases employee consumption and productivity. We have so many resources that we will always be an economic giant but, unless we raise the minimum wage substantially, we will constantly see the high unemployment figures and slow economic growth. Yes, a tight market usually demands higher wages but the it's a known fact that we need to change our current economic model to one that suits the world we are living in.

Happy Thanksgiving

7 comments:

Mike said...

Oh my goodness,a United States Senator says ""I'm not a scientist, man" when a reporter asked him how old the earth is....He went onto say " I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that's a dispute amongst theologians." Huh? How about 4.5 billion years old according to science...Believing in the science is a starter.

Legion said...

The fiscal cliff... I tend to agree with Jim at
Stonekettle Station , another crisis invented by politicians to further their own agenda.

There is no doubt that revenues have to be increased, and debt reduced. It seems to me that a increase in revenue by itself would reduce the debt burden.

IMO a increase of tax rates on the top 1%, or hell even the top 2%, is not going to effect their life style or business practices in any way, except for that one sin...you know, greed.

Mike said...

That's a good point Legion and I also agree that Jim http://www.stonekettle.com/ makes some good points in his blog titled “With Friends like these."

It's true that democrats and republicans put together some outrageous figures in their sequestration plan to make both parties come up with a solution. But if they don't, the Bush tax cuts will expire and a lot of cuts will take place which will not only shake the markets, it will probably send back into recession. It doesn't have to be because the numbers don't lie and both parties know the solutions for the short term fix.

It's also true that the media has played this up as if the whole financial world will collapse if Congress doesn't make a deal by December 31, 2012. That's not true at all.

I think Congress needs to pass a patch to the Alternative Minimum Tax (by the end of the year) because of the acts are burden it will put on the middle class.

It can't be that critical,Congress has already left for the Thanksgiving holidays.

Mike said...

The republicans just won't let the Benghazi incident go... About 97 members of the House of Representatives wrote President Obama asking him not to submit U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice's name as a nominee for the Secretary of Defense saying she was incompetent, basing it on her role as a White House surrogate on five Sunday talk shows where she repeated the talking points the intelligent community gave her... The senate (not the house of representatives)does have a advise and consent role and I could understand their objection if they were to say" we don't want to repeat the mistakes of giving false information like Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice did."

Shawn Turner, the spokesman for the Director of National Intelligence, told CNN that it wasn't the White House decision to make any minor changes and CIA Director Petraeus said there were no political intentions.

Some in the media are now saying that it was racially motivated but I think it's more about personal grudges, political games and the GOP thinking that Susan Rice was an easy prey. I don't think they would publicly go after Hillary Clinton because she would retaliate. The State Dept has a lot to answer for and I'm sure Hillary Clinton will be called to testify.

The democrats hope that President Obama calls the GOP's bluff because he has all the votes to get her confirmed and Harry Reid should a make John McCain stand before the chamber and filibuster (the way it was intended) if that is what he intends to do; so the whole world can see how childish he is behaving.

born2Bme said...

They have to get the public off the elections and why they lost. This is just a diversional tactic and I doubt we would be hearing a thing about it if Romney had won.

Mike said...

The GOP has been on this issue for a while and I agree It would have gone away with a Romney win.

Today,Ted Cruz is calling for the GOP to run right Wong candidates instead of establish Republicans like Romney...They must not have seen the same election I saw...Mitt Romney (right winger) was losing by 4 or more points before the first debate...It wasn't until Mitt moved to the center that he made the race closer...They ran the worse candidates ever in the primaries...One week they wanted Donald Trump,then Herman Cain,Rick Perry and Rick Santorum....They selected Mitt and were praising him just three weeks ago and wanted to make him president......They need to start blaming themselves before they can fix what's broke.

Mike said...

Oh yeah,Ted Cruz told a crowd of fellow conservatives that it looked like Mitt Romney was French kissing Obama....It's pretty bad when a freshman senator (elected 3 wks ago)becomes one of the new faces of the GOP spotting that message....Oh,we'll it's their party....lol