6.07.2010

Barack Obama: I'm Talking To Gulf Experts 'So I Know Whose Ass To Kick'

Huffington Post quotes tomorrow's Matt Lauer interview with President Obama.

"I was down there a month ago, before most of these talking heads were even paying attention to the Gulf," Obama said. "A month ago I was meeting with fishermen down there, standing in the rain talking about what a potential crisis this could be. And I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar, we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick."
Huzzah! But he'd better follow-up.

6.06.2010

GOP hypocrisy: Ronald Reagan raises taxes, adds to bureaucracy, supports gov't entitlements

When Republicans go after entitlements, criticize Obama on taxes or invoke The Great Communicator, remember that Reagan signed a $165 billion tax increase that added hundreds of thousands of "bureaucrats" and that his tax increases in 1982, 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987 took back most of the reductions made ion his 1981 tax bill.
PolitiFact

In 1983, Reagan signed legislation aimed at preserving Social Security's solvency by raising payroll taxes and taxing Social Security benefits of upper-income Americans.

The plan certainly preserved Social Security but also demonstrated that Reagan was willing to impose tax increases, even if he didn't propose them and rarely accepted them with enthusiasm.

As former Reagan adviser Bruce Bartlett wrote in a 2003 article for National Review, Reagan signed two major tax increases in 1982 that took back much of the break he'd provided in his 1981 tax bill. After the Social Security tax increase of 1983, Reagan approved further tax increases — in one form or another — in 1984, 1985, 1986 and 1987.

None of them was particularly draconian and taxes as a share of GDP continued to decline until 1984, when they bottomed out at 18.4 percent but then rose back to 19.2 percent by 1989, when Reagan left office. The overall percentage then was still lower than during Reagan's first year in the White House.

Still, the fact that Reagan signed legislation raising taxes at all during his presidency certainly runs counter to the current GOP orthodoxy and would seem to contradict, if not disprove, McCain's statement, which we find to be Barely True.
Krugman (2004)

The first Reagan tax increase came in 1982. By then it was clear that the budget projections used to justify the 1981 tax cut were wildly optimistic. In response, Mr. Reagan agreed to a sharp rollback of corporate tax cuts, and a smaller rollback of individual income tax cuts. Over all, the 1982 tax increase undid about a third of the 1981 cut; as a share of G.D.P., the increase was substantially larger than Mr. Clinton's 1993 tax increase.

Mr. Reagan's second tax increase was also motivated by a sense of responsibility -- or at least that's the way it seemed at the time. I'm referring to the Social Security Reform Act of 1983, which followed the recommendations of a commission led by Alan Greenspan. Its key provision was an increase in the payroll tax that pays for Social Security and Medicare hospital insurance.

For many middle- and low-income families, this tax increase more than undid any gains from Mr. Reagan's income tax cuts. In 1980, according to Congressional Budget Office estimates, middle-income families with children paid 8.2 percent of their income in income taxes, and 9.5 percent in payroll taxes. By 1988 the income tax share was down to 6.6 percent -- but the payroll tax share was up to 11.8 percent, and the combined burden was up, not down.

Nonetheless, there was broad bipartisan support for the payroll tax increase because it was part of a deal. The public was told that the extra revenue would be used to build up a trust fund dedicated to the preservation of Social Security benefits, securing the system's future. Thanks to the 1983 act, current projections show that under current rules, Social Security is good for at least 38 more years.
I'll remind you that in 2009, Americans paid the lowest tax rate in 50 years, 9.2% of all income. In the Reagan years of 1981-89, the lowest rate paid was 13.1%.

So please, don't buy in to the GOP's "the sky is falling" mentality. They're lying.

South Carolina, your racism NEVER disappoints

Washington Post

The knock-down-drag-out brawl for South Carolina's Republican gubernatorial nomination just got nastier.

A GOP state senator called front-runner Nikki Haley, the only woman in the race and a daughter of Indian immigrants, "a raghead" on a political talk show Thursday night.

"We already got one raghead in the White House," John M. "Jake" Knotts Jr. said on the Internet talk show "Pub Politics," according to The State newspaper. "We don't need another in the governor's mansion."

Knotts, a supporter of one of Haley's opponents, later apologized and said his comment was made in jest.
The comments were made on the June 3rd episode of Pub Politics, a South Carolina politics webcast co-hosted by conservative Wes Donehue and Democrat Phil Bailey.

As Dave Weigel reports:
Video of the interview has been kept offline since its initial broadcast. In a statement, Bailey and Donehue say that "what Senator Knotts said on Thursday’s show does not fit with our program and its goals." Conveniently for Knotts -- who has been condemned by state Republicans anyway -- the lack of the video prevents the story from taking on more steam. What's interesting about this is that Knotts is a close political ally of Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) -- and Donehue, according to FEC reports, has done work for Wilson.
Nice. Really nice.

When are Bobby Jindal and the states rights Republicans going to stop the oil spill?

Media Matters

As Jindal and the conservative media criticize the federal government for not deploying enough resources, they seem to overlook that they are the same ones who have championed the private sector over the public sector. Jindal himself just over a year ago said, "There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle."

In this case, the private sector clearly caused the greatest ecological disaster in the history of the United States. But the private sector cannot clean up its own mess. Further, the states, including Louisiana, clearly cannot solve the crisis on their own.

As Mother Jones' Josh Harkinson noted:
In February, 2006, while serving as a member of the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, Jindal introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Passed by the House a few months later, the bill would have opened up the entire US coast to offshore oil drilling. States could override the law and ban rigs in their territorial waters, yet the law would let them share lease royalties with the federal government--a strong incentive to drill. Adjacent states would have little say in the matter (clearly a problem, given that BP's spill has marred several states' coastlines). On the risks of deepwater drilling, the text of Jindal's bill is comically pollyannaish:

(4) it is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline.

(BP's Deepwater Horizon rig is located 50 miles from the coast, and of course would have devastated the Gulf even if it was further out to sea).
Jindal is certainly at the forefront of the conservative media campaign to discredit the ability of the Obama campaign to deal with the oil spill. But Jindal and the media conservatives will never be able to escape the fact that spills like this are bound to happen with more and more offshore drilling. Nor can they escape the fact that this ecological disaster is the consequence of the private sector's inability to clean up its own mess.

Stewart rules: Rips Glenn Beck over Israel, John Oliver gets Larry Craig on camera


Huff Post
During last night's "Daily Show," John Oliver did a piece on retired Senators. And wouldn't you know it? Larry Craig was one of them. And wouldn't you know it? John Oliver completely mocked him - for obvious reasons.

Making it even better was that Craig had specifically requested that Oliver not ask him questions about his infamous bathroom stall sex scandal. Watching Oliver squirm and do everything he can from bringing it up is pure comedic gold.