Breitbart and Fox - Giving in to conservative spin ‘makes it worse’

Maddow to White House: Giving in to conservative spin ‘makes it worse’

MSNBC's Rachel Maddow has some advice for the White House about reacting to conservative media stories: "Believing conservative spin about what's so wrong with you and then giving into that spin, is not an effective defense. In fact, it makes it worse."

The Obama administration had asked for the resignation of USDA official Shirley Sherrod after a heavily edited video surfaced Monday on Andrew Breitbart's Big Government website that appears to show her describing how she had denied help to a white family trying to save their farm. The story was quickly picked up by Fox News as an example of racial discrimination by the Obama administration.

The NAACP condemned Sherrod and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack asked her to resign. After obtaining the unedited video, which showed that Sherrod had been describing an incident 24 years ago in which she did successfully help the white farmers, the NAACP apologized and Vilsack said he is willing to reconsider her firing.

Considering the rapid collapse of the original Breitbart story, Maddow had some tart comments to make on the Obama administration's hasty response.

"What is not really interesting about this whole situation is that Fox News is doing this," said Maddow on Tuesday. "This is what Fox News does. This is how they are different from other news organizations. This is why the White House argued months ago that Fox should be treated as a media organization, but not as a normal news organization, because they don’t treat news the way a normal news organization treats news."
Story continues below...

"What is interesting about this story is that the Obama administration inexplicably keeps falling for it," she continued.

"Dear White House, dear administration, believing conservative spin about what's so wrong with you and then giving into that spin, is not an effective defense against that spin," Maddow advised. "Just buying it and apologizing for it and doing whatever they want you to do doesn't make the problem of them lying about you go away. In fact, it makes it worse."

Breitbart has since asserted that his real target was not Sherrod but the NAACP, which has recently called on the Tea Party movement to expel racists from its ranks. According to Breitbart's Big Journalism site, the video "features Sherrod telling a tale of racism that is received by the NAACP audience with laughter and cheers. They weren’t cheering redemption; they were cheering discrimination. Upon hearing the cheers, Sherrod fails to offer any immediate clarification and even smiles right along with them."

Even conservative Jonah Goldberg, however, stated on Wednesday, "I think [Sherrod] should get her job back. I think she's owed apologies from pretty much everyone, including my good friend Andrew Breitbart."

Goldberg went on to express a perception of the Obama administration that was strikingly similar to Maddow's. "Meanwhile, as a matter of politics,' he wrote, "I think this episode demonstrates that this White House is a much more tightly wound outfit than it lets on in public. The rapid-response firing suggests a level of fear over Glenn Beck and Fox that speaks volumes."

I do not know that the White House is motivated by fear so much as that, unlike the Bush administration, the Obama administration bends over backwards to be fair. perhaps too much so rather than waiting and fighting back against it's unhinged critics when needed.

Economics 101 - Conservatives Are Corporate Shills and Social Darwinists

It's on the economy where the real differences between left and right are clear

That fault line involves the very nature of the economy itself. If we set aside the nonprofit and household realms, then it is a crude but fair generalization to say that conservatives believe in an economy with two sectors — the market and the government — while liberals believe in an economy with three sectors — the market, the government and the utility sector.

Liberals believe that some goods and services could be provided in a purely competitive market but should not be. Instead, these goods and services should be provided to citizens by an industry organized as a publicly regulated utility, which in the terms of ownership can be private, public or a mixed private-public enterprise.

Whether an industry should be treated as a public utility depends on the nature of the provider or the nature of the goods or services themselves. If the provider is a natural monopoly, like a sewer system, then there is a case for public ownership or for private ownership combined with public price regulation, so that the monopoly does not take advantage of its power to gouge consumers. In other cases, like electricity, competitive markets might be possible, but price volatility would be too disruptive to be tolerated by consumers and businesses.

This was taken for granted by generations of moderate American conservatives as well as liberals, and it would be difficult to find European or Asian conservatives who would question this reasoning. But thanks to the success of radical libertarians in converting the American right to their own free-market fundamentalism, the idea of a distinct utility sector is now seen as a heresy by American conservatives if not by British Tories or French Gaullists. While they acknowledge a role for government, for example in defense, today’s free-market conservatives as a rule reject the legitimacy of a regulated or publicly provided utility sector in an intermediate zone between government and competitive markets. This explains the fervor with which the right seeks to privatize or deregulate services that most Americans, along with most people in other countries, think of as utilities, like local electric power companies.

The most important economic debates between left and right involve industries whose treatment as utilities is less widely accepted than sanitation or electric power. Healthcare is one such industry. What divides American progressives not only from Republican conservatives but also from center-right neoliberals in the Democratic Party is the idea that healthcare should be a publicly regulated utility that is provided as a matter of right to all citizens, not a commodity like apples or shoes that should be sold in a typical competitive marketplace. Not all liberals agree on single-payer healthcare, all-payer price controls, or other specific policies, but it is safe to say that all liberals believe that healthcare should be treated as a utility.

Finance is another industry that American liberals think should be treated as a regulated public utility, not a competitive market. For progressive Americans, the provision of basic financial services like checking and small loans to households and businesses is as essential as the provision of water and electricity. The institutions of the financial sector that provide these basic, essential services should be carved off and converted into regulated utilities, as they were before Republicans and Democrats united to tear down the New Deal regulatory system in the 1980s and 1990s. Other sectors of finance, like investment banking, can be organized as competitive markets, not public utilities, as long as the public is not called on to swallow the costs of failure.

On the other side of the debate are those who believe that healthcare and basic banking services can be provided by multiple firms seeking to maximize their profits in competitive markets. If this were true, then most liberals would have no objection. After all, the center-left, unlike the socialist left, favors competitive markets where they provide abundant goods at low cost with no danger to the public. That is why you don’t see progressives campaigning for turning apple farms or shoe factories into public utilities with prices set by law or regulators.

The problem is that competitive markets do not work well in healthcare and basic financial services. For example, most people live in areas where there are only a few nearby hospitals, perhaps only one. Free-marketeers think that “transparency” can help control costs, thanks to comparative shopping by self-interested consumers. But even if the data were easily available, do libertarian conservatives really expect someone in the throes of a heart attack to go online to check hospital rates before choosing an emergency room? Hospitals are more like local water treatment plants than they are like shops in the mall.

By contrast, in all but the smallest communities there are numerous banks, not to mention other financial institutions like credit unions. In finance, the purpose of regulation is not to prevent a natural geographic monopoly from extracting monopoly rents, but to prevent a horde of mostly small producers and some large producers from competing to fleece their customers.

No problem, says the free-market conservative. Here, too, transparency will enable comparison shopping by well-informed consumers among competing service providers. But just as people cannot be expected to compare and contrast hospital rates before choosing an emergency room, so most people cannot be expected to devote hours or days to decoding deceptive jargon contained in the microscopic print in the blizzard of pages provided by credit card companies and banks. Such "transparency" is really opacity. That is why, in the opinion of many liberals, government should directly regulate basic "utility" financial services and the fees charged for them. And just as no American liberal wants to turn apple farms and shoe factories into public utilities, so no American liberal cares if investors lose their money gambling on South American chinchilla futures, as long as the public is not expected to make them whole.

The recent reforms in healthcare and financial regulation are too market-oriented for most liberals and too utility-oriented for most free-market conservatives. But this does not imply that each side is equally dogmatic. The center-left is much more flexible and open-minded.

For example, when the conditions that made a sector suitable for treatment as a utility change, liberals do not necessarily object to deregulation. As long as telephony was based on wires, regulated telephone monopolies like AT&T made sense. When technology, in the form of wireless telephony, made a competitive market in that industry possible, few liberals objected to deregulation.

Liberals, as I have noted, acknowledge the value of competitive markets in addition to the government sector and the utility sector. But the reverse is not true. Free-market conservatives usually do not acknowledge the need for a public utility sector in addition to competitive markets and government. Instead, they tend to equate the very idea of a publicly regulated utility sector of the economy with "socialism."

"Sewer socialists" was the term coined to describe early 20th-century socialists who boasted of their publicly owned water treatment system in Milwaukee. Later the term was generalized to include progressives who favored publicly regulated utilities. While the term "socialism" is misleading, contemporary American progressives who support an expansive definition of the utility sector should take pride in the term "sewer liberal."

The definition of liberal and moderate has shifted so far to the advantage of right-wing conservatives that any attempts to protect consumers and small investors is defined as socialism. What do conservatives stand for? Dog eat dog crony capitalism. The kind of system that got us into the mess we're in now and will probably take ten years to dig ourselves out of.

Get on the Republican Bandwagon. We Stand for something. We have solutions

Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) Refuse To Detail GOP Agenda, Offer Zero ‘Painful Choices’ To Cut Spending

The heads of the Republican congressional campaign committees — Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) — appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press today to discuss their party’s strategy for the November elections. Sessions began by saying that everyone knows exactly “what Republicans stand for,” but he quickly proved that even he doesn’t really know. Host David Gregory, visibly frustrated, repeatedly pressed the two campaign chiefs for substance, saying, “these are not specifics, voters get tired of that.” But all he got in return was vapid talking points, like how Republican candidates are “standing with the American people back home.”

Gregory correctly dismissed what he was hearing from Sessions as “gauzy,” and turned to Cornyn, saying, “I’m not hearing an answer here, what are the painful choices” that Republicans are prepared to make to cut the deficit? Instead of offering any ideas of own, and in direct contrast to the sense of urgency with which conservatives paint the deficit, Cornyn responded that he would wait for President Obama’s debt commission’s report, which will conveniently come after the election. Gregory replied, “wait a minute, conservatives need a Democratic president’s debt commission to figure out what it is they need to cut?”:

The Liberal Washington Post Pushes Fake Black Panther Story

Wash Post gives New Black Panther story new life
Just when the peddlers of the phony "corruption" claim are discredited, the paper restores their credibility

The always smart Adam Serwer, writing for the American Prospect, called Friday "The Day The Controversy Over The New Black Panther Case Fell Apart." He credited Politico's interview with conservative Civil Rights Commission vice chair Abigail Thernstrom, who says her GOP commission colleagues and the right-wing media have tried to use the "small potatoes" story of alleged voter intimidation by the "New Black Panther Party" to "topple" the Obama administration, as well as other developments undermining the claims of former Justice Department attorney J. Christian Adams, the main right-winger hyping this case in the right-wing media, particularly Fox News and the Washington Times.

But right on time, Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander chimes in to keep the specious story alive, chiding his paper for ignoring it while valiant journalists like Fox's Megyn Kelly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh fought to bring light to the darkness. The Post's "silence," Alexander complains, "prompted many readers to accuse The Post of a double standard. Royal S. Dellinger of Olney said that if the controversy had involved Bush administration Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, 'Lord, there'd have been editorials and stories, and it would go on for months.'"

First, a note to Alexander: Royal S. Dellinger of Olney, a former Reagan administration labor official, was last seen online attacking federal mortgage insurers Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and complaining about President Obama in Sarah Palin's words: "We have a community organizer running the government, and I ask, "Does the response to the Gulf oil spill look organized?'" Though the letter was apparently written to the Wall St. Journal, I only found it posted online at Sigforum.com, a Web site for Sig Sauer gun enthusiasts (who don't seem terribly enthused about Obama). Dellinger is apparently a regular righty letter to the editor writer, defending the Tea Party and opposing cap and trade legislation. Ironically, two years ago he was also quoted in former Post ombudswoman Deborah Howell's column complaining that the Post had been too easy on Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (Why not just make Dellinger the Post ombudsman?)

Alexander also tells a somewhat right-wing version of the story, insisting the Bush administration filed a voter-intimidation lawsuit against the NBPP, its chairman and both men at the Philly polling place, but the Obama administration ultimately went after the Panther with the billy club, with a "narrow injunction" forbidding him from bringing a weapon within 100 feet of Philadelphia polling places.

Sadly for Alexander, he seems to have written before Abigail Thernstrom told Politico she backed that decision, and said, “This doesn’t have to do with the Black Panthers, this has to do with [her Republican colleagues'] fantasies about how they could use this issue to topple the [Obama] administration,” said Thernstrom. “My fellow conservatives on the commission had this wild notion they could bring Eric Holder down and really damage the president."

Writing in the National Review, Thernstrom also noted the relative thinness of the case against the NBPP: "The legal standards that must be met to prove voter intimidation — the charge — are very high. In the 45 years since the act was passed, there have been a total of three successful prosecutions. The incident involved only two Panthers at a single majority-black precinct in Philadelphia. So far — after months of hearings, testimony and investigation — no one has produced actual evidence that any voters were too scared to cast their ballots. Too much overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges has been devoted to this case."

Thernstrom even took a veiled shot at the Republican activist at the center of the storm, J. Christian Adams. In the Washington Times, Adams accused the Obama administration of "corruption" in reducing the charges against the NBPP, and shrieked: "The dismissal is part of a creeping lawlessness infusing our government institutions. Citizens would be shocked to learn about the open and pervasive hostility within the Justice Department to bringing civil rights cases against nonwhite defendants on behalf of white victims. Equal enforcement of justice is not a priority of this administration. Open contempt is voiced for these types of cases." Thernstrom notes that Adams provides no evidence of his charges and suggests he and other conservatives should "get a grip."

I agree with Alexander to a point: I wish the Post had used its considerable resources to do what Media Matters has done, and debunk the phony right-wing charges against the Obama Justice Department on this case. In fact, I wish I'd assigned someone at Salon to do the definitive piece on J. Christian Adams, a GOP hack hired by Bradley Schlozman, the notorious Bush Justice Department official at the center of the U.S. attorney firings scandal. Schlozman, you'll recall, admitted using political criteria in department hiring, looking for "loyal Bushies" who were in his words "good Americans" – which meant, in practice, Republicans.

While Fox and others are hyping Adams as a whistleblower and voting rights activist, and Andrew Alexander is wringing his hands about a right-winger complaining about the Post's coverage, here's what Media Matters found:

• Adams is a long-time right-wing activist, who is known for filing an ethics complaint against Hugh Rodham that was subsequently dismissed, served as a Bush poll watcher in Florida 2004, and volunteered for a Republican group that [according to the legal Web site Main Justice] trains lawyers to fight "racially tinged battles over voting rights";

• Adams was hired to the Justice Department in 2005 by Bradley Schlozman, who was found by the Department of Justice Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility to have improperly considered political affiliation when hiring career attorneys -- the former head of the DOJ voting rights section reportedly said that Adams was "exhibit A of the type of people hired by Schlozman";

• Adams has admitted that he does not have first-hand knowledge of the events, conversations, and decisions that he is citing to advance his accusations.

If he's going to chide the Post, Alexander should be criticizing its failure to debunk the story, not to hype it. In fact, the ombudsman notes that the Post actually covered the NBPP developments in three stories in 2009, but only one this year, published last week, focused on the latest right-wing firestorm. And indeed, the Post embarrassed itself in that story, but not the way Alexander implies. It was first headlined with the breathless " 2008 voter-intimidation case against New Black Panthers a political bombshell," which was later changed to "2008 voter-intimidation case against New Black Panthers riles the right," when someone realized there was no "political bombshell" in the trumped-up charges against Obama. (Alexander didn't mention the headline rewrite in his screed today.) Sadly, features editor Kevin Merida gave Alexander a mea culpa, terming the controversy "significant," and saying he wished The Post had covered it sooner. Ugh.

This reminds me of when the New York Times took itself to the woodshed for not covering the right-wing "scandal" that brought down former White House Green Jobs "czar" Van Jones. The fact is, from the New York Times to the Washington Post to Salon, it really is hard, with limited news room resources, to decide whether and how to cover the insane narrative of rumors, half-truths and lies being peddled by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, not to mention Fox News "reporters" like Megyn Kelly. By covering them (as Salon readers frequently remind us) we risk spreading lies and delusion beyond the right-wing smogosphere. But by ignoring the ones that gain political currency, we risk letting them acquire more influence than they deserve.

Let me state, for the record, that the New Black Panther Party is a despicable, deluded, crackpot fringe group, whose members' insane anti-white rhetoric sometimes makes me wonder if they're still on the payroll of the FBI's COINTELPRO, that 60s-era project in which righty provocateurs infiltrated left-wing groups, including the Black Panthers, and egged on some of the worst violence (not that the old Panthers weren't capable of violence and thuggishness all on their own, along with the breakfast programs their lefty admirers like to remember).

But the right wing needs the thuggish but miniscule and derided NBBP to matter, and to tie the crazy group to our black president, in order to advance their narrative of lies about Obama's "racism," tyranny and illegitimacy to be president. If they can convince enough people that Obama was elected thanks to intimidation by the NBPP, and "voter fraud" by the now-defunct ACORN, they won't even need the crazy Birthers to prove he's not legitimately president, even though he won with a bigger mandate than any first-term president since Lyndon Johnson (who of course had become president after the Kennedy assassination.)

It also serves a purpose for more mainstream conservative pundits, who never adequately denounce the Birthers, or Tea Party racists, or violent right-wing threats, instead resorting to false equivalance: "OK, well, we have Birthers and racists and guys who carry guns to presidential speeches, but the left has the New Black Panther Party!" How about this: If I denounce the New Black Panther Party, will Sarah Palin denounce racist Tea Party leader Mark Williams? Somehow I doubt it.

It's the job of editors at big papers like the Post to expose those lies, and the movement behind them – not to flagellate themselves for not saying "How high?" when right-wing media watchdogs say "Jump!" Andrew Alexander botched his job today.

Reprinted here for educational purposes.

Charles Krauthammer also writes for the "liberal" WaPO and is yet another conservative who does not believe in fact based journalism Krauthammer Revives Reagan Small Government Myth

Republicans Playing Politics With the Unemployed to Get Tax Cuts for the Wealthy

Obama rips Republicans for impeding unemployment benefits
The President claims that GOP legislation blockage will "filibuster our recovery"

President Barack Obama says Senate Republicans are playing politics with bills that would extend benefits to the unemployed and increase lending to small businesses.

Striking a deeply partisan tone in his weekly radio and online address, Obama said the GOP leadership has chosen to "filibuster our recovery and obstruct our progress" by blocking votes on agenda items the president says would breath life into the economic recovery.

"These steps aren't just the right thing to do for those hardest hit by the recession," Obama said. "They're the right thing to do for all of us."

The address was recorded at the White House before Obama flew to Maine on Friday for a weekend family vacation.

Lawmakers have battled for weeks over extending unemployment benefits to workers who have been out of a job for long stretches of time. The last extension ran out at the end of May, leaving about 2.5 million people without benefits.

The House has already passed a bill to extend the benefits through November, but with the death of Sen. Robert Byrd, Senate Democrats don't have the 60 votes they need to overcome a GOP filibuster. The Senate plans to take up the measure again on Tuesday -- when Byrd's successor, the former chief counsel for Gov. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., is expected to be sworn in.

Obama said lawmakers' obligation to extend benefits is both moral and practical, citing some economists who believe extending unemployment insurance is one of the most cost-effective ways to jump-start the economy because it puts money in the pockets of people who are likely to spend it quickly.

As Republicans stall unemployment benefits for working Americans - the ones suffering most because of conservative economic policies - Republicans are crying over the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest do nothings -

Of course, just because Republicans claim it, doesn't make it so.
Ezra Klein was quick to sum up the "evidence" Mitch McConnell pretended was non-existent:

But how about the Congressional Budget Office's estimations? "The new CBO data show that changes in law enacted since January 2001 increased the deficit by $539 billion in 2005. In the absence of such legislation, the nation would have a surplus this year. Tax cuts account for almost half -- 48 percent -- of this $539 billion in increased costs." How about the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget? Their budget calculator shows that the tax cuts will cost $3.28 trillion between 2011 and 2018. How about George W. Bush's CEA chair, Greg Mankiw, who used the term "charlatans and cranks" for people who believed that "broad-based income tax cuts would have such large supply-side effects that the tax cuts would raise tax revenue." He continued: "I did not find such a claim credible, based on the available evidence. I never have, and I still don't."

Rand Paul (R) The Next No Nothing Senator From Kentucky?

Kentucky curently has Mitch McConnell, was of the most do nothing and dumb senators to ever hold office. Rand Paul seems like he will fellow in Mitch's footsteps,

RAND PAUL, NOT EXACTLY 'FORTHRIGHT'.... Kentucky's Senate hopeful, right-wing ophthalmologist Rand Paul (R), used to be quite candid about his radical political beliefs. Social Security? It's a Ponzi scheme. Medicare? Obviously socialism. The Civil Right Act and Fair Housing Act? Both are examples of abusive government intervention.

But as the Senate election draws closer, Paul's extremism has been muted. Talking to National Review, the Republican candidate effectively conceded he's trying to keep the truth from the public in order to get votes.

"No one [in the Republican Party] is forcing me to do anything. I do exactly what I want, but I am also realistic about what it takes to run a campaign and get elected."

For instance, instead of calling for the elimination of many federal departments -- as his father, Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican congressman and former presidential candidate, regularly does -- Paul says he is trying to "nibble around the edges," to "not be the person who says he will eliminate every department in the federal government. My dad freely will say that, that he would eliminate at least half of the departments, but he is just more forthright."

As a rule, candidates for statewide office don't admit to being less forthright, but Rand Paul is special. He could talk about his actual beliefs during the campaign, and try to persuade the public that he's correct, but the far-right Kentuckian has decided it's much easier to hide his principles to win votes.

Of course, Rand Paul wasn't always a Senate candidate. Back in the 1990s, he appeared on several episodes of "Kentucky Tonight," a state-based public affairs show, and "talked about the elderly dying at the hands of Medicare rationing; the need to privatize Social Security, which he called 'a Ponzi scheme;' and the rights of the government to invest in racist companies." In one episode, he even equated Medicare with the Soviet Union.

Voters won't hear much about this during the election -- Paul just isn't "forthright" enough.

On a related note, Paul also insisted recently that he's running to help Kentucky get a better return on its federal tax dollars. According to the Lexington Herald-Leader, "When tax money flows to the nation's capitol, half stays there, half is wasted and half of it goes to political cronyism, Paul said."

Putting aside the fact that a dollar can't have three halves, Alan Pyke reminds the right-wing candidate, "When Kentucky sends a tax dollar to Washington, it does miraculously turn into three-halves of a dollar. Kentucky gets at least $1.51 back from the federal government for every $1.00 that it contributes to the nation, placing it near the top of state rankings. Paul is in effect saying that if he is Kentucky's next Senator, he will work to reduce his state's share of federal spending, thus hurting his own constituents."

Government should be whatever size -small or big, often the subject of debate - but whatever size it is should be effective. Paul, like Mitch wants to make sure it is not effective in between wacko political theories.

Businesses And Attendees At Eric Cantor (R-VA) Job Fair Debunk Right-Wing Talking Points On Unemployment Benefits

58% of Real Income Growth Since 1976 Went to Top 1% (and Why That Matters)

Republicans And Ben Nelson Say Screw What America Wants

Ben Nelson Vs. The Public: Super Majority In Favor Of Extending Unemployment Benefits Despite Deficit Impact

Before Congress ajourned for recess, the U.S. Senate failed to extend unemployment benefits for millions of Americans due to a united filibuster by Republican senators joined by Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson (NE).

Despite the fact that the unemployment rate is at a high 9.5 percent and that the benefits are the only source of income for many of those unable to find work, conservatives have demanded that spending on the benefits be offset before they vote for them (a demand they do not make for tax breaks for mulitmillionaires). In a statement explaining his decision to join conservatives to filibuster the extension, Nelson cited the relatively tiny deficit impact of extending them:

“Recently, Nebraska state officials estimated that our unemployment had improved slightly and was down to 4.9 percent. I am very sympathetic to the many Nebraskans who remain out of work and recognize that the federal government should extend unemployment benefits to help them. Before the vote last week on the tax extenders bill, which provided unemployment benefits, I informed Senate leadership that I was willing to vote for new spending as long as it is paid for. I believe this can be done and that the votes are there to pass it. The bill has been revised several times already and each time the deficit spending was less. Tough choices are possible and necessary to not add to the deficit. [...] So, Congress should provide additional unemployment benefits but not as a bailout to the states that worsens the deficit and passes the bills onto our children.”

Yet today, the Washington Post reveals a new poll that finds that the overwhelming majority of Americans support extending unemployment benefits, even in the face of concerns of opponents who say it “adds too much to the federal budget deficit”:



The poll also finds that 57 percent of self-identified “moderate or liberal” Republicans support extending benefits. If Congress fails to extend benefits, it will — by the end of the week — “bring the total number of long-term unemployed prematurely cut off from aid to 2.5 million.” Considering the public’s views on the issue, Nelson should reconsider his stance.

For eight years -as Dick Cheney famously said, deficits did not matter - that was when conservatives went on the wildest spending spree in the nation's history. They put the debt on America's future, acting like the irresponsible brats that conservatives usually act like. Now those same Republicans think the 9.5 million unemployed should pay for the criminal negligence of Republican management of the economy.

Can infrastructure-led growth save the economy?
Forget "stimulus." The U.S. needs more public investment paid for by more borrowing and higher taxes