Politics Plus

All kidding aside, I have no intention to suggest that the epicenter of yesterday’s quake in Cantor’s district, after he took the lead in pushing Republican plans to defund federal disaster relief, was an act of divine vengeance.  Nevertheless, the happenstance is most entertaining.  It reminds me of the time when Pat Robertson prophesied that God would smite Disney World with a hurricane, because they had ended hiring discrimination against LGBT people.  The next hurricane to make landfall in the US damaged Robertson’s Virginia Beach headquarters.  Well, if it was God, you have to credit her with a sense of humor.

Back in March, after the Japanese earthquake, Eric Cantor defended Republican plans to cut funding from the USGS and warning systems to help in case of a disaster.

What if we where to experience a disaster like Japan? How prepared are we in our country? Yesterday house republican leader Eric Cantor defended republican proposals to cut spending for the United States Geological Survey, the National Weather Service, and NOAA.

Government officials predict the closure of as many as 12 NOAA offices – which provide warning services for 30 million Americans. The national weather service budget would be cut by $126 million over the next six months with furloughs at 22 forecast offices. -and shorter work weeks for the storm prediction center and the national hurricane center shall be expected.

Any local LEPC or emergency coordinator will tell you that the inability for warnings to be disseminated to the public, whether due to staffing inadequacies, radar maintenance problems, or weather radio transmitter difficulties would be disastrous.

Luckily, this wasn’t a quake like Japan’s… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Daily Kos>

Keith Olbermann and Paul Tompkins had some fun with this on Countdown.

Taking a more serious turn, America needs to have emergency services fully funded,  Doing a heck of a job, just like Brownie, meets Republican standards, but we saw what Republican standards did to the people of New Orleans.

Furthermore America needs to take a close look at either upgrading nuclear power plants in vulnerable areas, and closing them, when upgrades can’t guarantee safety in worst case scenarios.  That could provide a lot of jobs.

None of us had any real doubt that the Fed had been funneling money to Banksters even before TARP in the closing days of the Bush regime, during which he and his Republican cronies trashed the economy.  How much it actually was and where it actually went is obscene.  Had that money gone to main street, it could have been used to pay off every loan Banksters foreclosed after they killed the housing market.  I’m not suggesting that, but just want to give you an idea of the scale involved here.

Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp. (BAC) were the reigning champions of finance in 2006 as home prices peaked, leading the 10 biggest U.S. banks and brokerage firms to their best year ever with $104 billion of profits.

By 2008, the housing market’s collapse forced those companies to take more than six times as much, $669 billion, in emergency loans from the U.S. Federal Reserve. The loans dwarfed the $160 billion in public bailouts the top 10 got from the U.S. Treasury, yet until now the full amounts have remained secret.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s unprecedented effort to keep the economy from plunging into depression included lending banks and other companies as much as $1.2 trillion of public money, about the same amount U.S. homeowners currently owe on 6.5 million delinquent and foreclosed mortgages. The largest borrower, Morgan Stanley (MS), got as much as $107.3 billion, while Citigroup took $99.5 billion and Bank of America $91.4 billion, according to a Bloomberg News compilation of data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests, months of litigation and an act of Congress.

“These are all whopping numbers,” said Robert Litan, a former Justice Department official who in the 1990s served on a commission probing the causes of the savings and loan crisis. “You’re talking about the aristocracy of American finance going down the tubes without the federal money.”

(View the Bloomberg interactive graphic to chart the Fed’s financial bailout.)

Foreign Borrowers

It wasn’t just American finance. Almost half of the Fed’s top 30 borrowers, measured by peak balances, were European firms. They included Edinburgh-based Royal Bank of Scotland Plc, which took $84.5 billion, the most of any non-U.S. lender, and Zurich-based UBS AG (UBSN), which got $77.2 billion. Germany’s Hypo Real Estate Holding AG borrowed $28.7 billion, an average of $21 million for each of its 1,366 employees… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Bloomberg>

I strongly urge you to read the rest of this article.  I gave you only a small part of it.  Also, try playing with the interactive graphic noted above.

What is critical to understand here is that, by the time Obama took office in 2009, the Bush regime had already funneled so much into the TBTF banks that Obama had no choice except to complete the process,  lest Bankster default collapsed the Fed as well.  Therefore, Republican attempts to blame Obama for their own crisis are pure bull.

Under water homeowners, should have an opportunity to refinance, devaluing the loans to market levels, but Republicans refuse to allow help for Main Street.

The Republican solution is to deregulate the Banksters.  Frankly, these corporate criminals need to be so tightly regulated that even the eagles on their quarters are constipated.  This will not happen unless Democrats, excluding DINOs, have strong majority in the House and a super-majority in the Senate.

You don’t need to clean your glasses.  Your eyes are not playing tricks on you.  Republicans actually do oppose a tax cut.  They may keep telling you that the don’t want to allow anyone to raise your taxes, but they are lying.  They want you to pay more in taxes, so that millionaires, billionaires and criminal corporations can pay less.  These are the only ones for whom Republicans govern.  They do NOT represent YOU.

It’s been the GOP’s dominant meme after the 2010 midterm elections: cut government spending dramatically and endlessly cut taxes for the rich and corporations. They preach day after day that that’s the only true job creation scheme in which America should consider. They mask it with hazy words that cover up their real intentions like their latest bogus con called the "Cut, Cap and Balance" constitutional amendment. Frank Luntz must be proud to see that one phrase repeated over and over again no matter what further destruction and harm will come to the 98% of working Americans.

Now as Labor Day approaches, Republicans are making it plain that they will not support extending the payroll tax holiday that will be proposed again by President Obama. Never mind that they had earlier called for it and it is in and of itself a Republican idea. The AP got a headline right for a change:

 

GOP may OK tax increase that Obama hopes to block

News flash: Congressional Republicans want to raise your taxes. Impossible, right? GOP lawmakers are so virulently anti-tax, surely they will fight to prevent a payroll tax increase on virtually every wage-earner starting Jan. 1, right? Apparently not.

Many of the same Republicans who fought hammer-and-tong to keep the George W. Bush-era income tax cuts from expiring on schedule are now saying a different "temporary" tax cut should end as planned. By their own definition, that amounts to a tax increase.

The tax break extension they oppose is sought by President Barack Obama. Unlike proposed changes in the income tax, this policy helps the 46 percent of all Americans who owe no federal income taxes but who pay a "payroll tax" on practically every dime they earn.

There are other differences as well, and Republicans say their stand is consistent with their goal of long-term tax policies that will spur employment and lend greater certainty to the economy.

And what’s the new rationale for the opposition?

 

"It’s always a net positive to let taxpayers keep more of what they earn," says Rep. Jeb Hensarling, "but not all tax relief is created equal for the purposes of helping to get the economy moving again." The Texas lawmaker is on the House GOP leadership team.

… [emphasis original]

Inserted from <Crooks and Liars>

“Not all tax relief is created equal.”  Lets convert that RepubliSpeak into language we can understand.  This simply means that they don’t want a tax cut passed, unless the vast majority of it goes to the super-rich.

Ed Schultz covered this with Economist David Cay Johnston.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Republicans have shown over and over again that only the rich matter to them.  They shoved you under the bus long ago!  That’s why…

Every Republican in office is one Republican too many!

When Republicans ran for office in 2010, their mantra was jobs, jobs, jobs.  Since then their only offerings they claim is jobs related is taking from the poor and middle classes to give yet another tax cut to millionaires, billionaires and corporate criminals.  Republicans had planned a jobs agenda in the House Judiciary Committee this fall, but have cancelled it to pursue a racist agenda.

On Thursday, Roll Call reported that Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) was planning to use his House Judiciary Committee gavel this fall to promote a "jobs agenda." This would represent a significant shift for a committee that has largely been focused on radical attacks on undocumented immigrants.

But later that day, the Obama administration announced that it would begin reviewing the cases of the 300,000 illegal immigrants currently awaiting deportation and prioritize the expulsion of the more dangerous criminal violators, rather than targeting low-level immigration offenders for deportation.

Smith quickly abandoned his "jobs agenda," telling right-wing radio host Joe Pagliarulo that he was now planning to hold hearings on the subject with the avowed purpose of trying to "embarrass the President." Smith also suggested that the House Appropriations Committee would defund the administration’s ability to implement their plan… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Political Correction>

For Republicans, deporting brown people is too important to allow something as petty as jobs for American workers to interfere.  The only way to get them to care about jobs is to take their jobs away.