Lew Ciefer, May 4 at 5:07 pm,

You are proficient in twaddle, Lew Ciefer.

@MarthaA:

You certainly have honed your skills at groupthink and duckspeak.

You’ve just proved what I said about “jobs” being the result of “derived demand.” Labour is a resource just like rubber, cement, and oil. Just as you will buy the best product for the lowest price so it is with labour. One purchases the best labour—skill to do the work—at the lowest price; thus China and other markets. It is NOT government creating jobs.

What you’re crying about is lack of legislation to prevent producers from seeking the best price for labour. That’s known as “protectionism.” One of the immediate problems with that is that there is no guarantee that the “derived demand” will exist at much higher good prices. What happens to that “derived demand” when the price of the demanded good or service quadruples? Remember to demand a good and have the means to pay for that good are two different matters.

As for the Conservatives and Republicans ... get a life will ya! Your precious democrats controlled the Congress from 2006 - 2010. They—like the republicans before them—enjoyed control of both Houses and the Executive for a year and NOT A SINGLE PIECE OF LEGISLATION was passed to “protect” American jobs. As a matter of fact your fearful Senate leader, Harry Reid, was on a dangerous mission to China for the past couple of weeks selling you out even more. So grow up lady! There’s only ONE party and it belongs to the Ruling Oligarch. The democrats and republicans are two wings on the same bird of prey. 

North Korea isn’t “capitalist.” Would you want to live there? I seriously doubt it. North Vietnam is communist and like China before it, finds itself having to adopt “capitalist economy” to avoid the same fate as the former Soviet Union. Socialist and Communist economies mean death!

You can help fight back by educating yourself. Capitalism is a misnomer. You can’t do anything without investing capital, not even your morning constitutional! It requires energy and some straining to force out the waste; that’s capital investment. What you are against, what you see destroying the world economy, is predator capitalism. It’s 21st century Mercantilism. It’s 21st century monopoly. And your Mocha Savior and all the democrats are nothing more than boot-licking lackeys for their masters; the same masters whose boots are licked by the republicans also!

Keep thinking Democrat vs. Republican and you’ll die in that pit of ignorance.

Lew Ciefer, May 2 at 5:33 pm,

When you did all your noting—did you note that
your notable stuff was all made in China, India,
Korea, Mexico or some other country other than
the USA? —the result of Conservatives and Republican
capitalists corporate freedom to
manufacture in other countries which outsourced
USA jobs——deleted USA jobs—— and is why there
can’t be jobs in the USA, other than low paid service
type jobs——  very few anything is made in the USA.

@ MarthaA:

Job creation—real jobs, not parasitical bureaucratic employment—is the result of “derived demand.” Non-parasitical jobs (private sector) are NOT created by government dictate and certainly not from the idiotic statements of a clueless and duplicitous harridan pandering to her beguiled and equally clueless base.

If government creates jobs why did government allow unemployment to reach such horrific levels? Isn’t an ounce of prevention worth more than a pound of cure?

More food for thought ... if the Fed, as Bernake claims, has the ability to deal with inflation ... why does the “government” allow inflation to rise to such high levels while claiming that there isn’t any inflation?

The village idiot Bush and your mocha savior Obama are corporate boot-licking lackeys. This so-called government is nothing but theatre for the stupid. Welcome to 1984! You’re trapped Martha ... as Carlin said many years ago ... “They’ve got you by the balls!”

The population of the world is at the mercy of the most amoral savages to have ever walked the earth and there isn’t a damn thing you or I can do about it.

Get a pen and paper and stroll throughout your home, the closets, the frig, the cupboards, the bathrooms, etc. and note down everything in your domicile—including the domicile—that hasn’t been or is not being provided to you by a corporation then take a second stroll and note down all that is and compare the two lists.

Mankind is screwed.

“Our dependency on corporations at every level of the needs hierarchy is total. We cannot see beyond the corporate manufactured reality because, to us, it is the only possible reality. We cannot see around it or out of it from the inside. Corporate reality is all permeating. Air tight, too. Each part so perfectly reinforces all of its other parts as to be seamless. Inescapable. In that sense, we are prisoners for life.”—Joe Bageant (Corporations Are Now After Our Very Being)

There would be jobs and a growing economy in the United States if
Bush and the squeaker and Obama and the squeaker had made the
mega bankers rely on their own steam instead of socialism’s welfare
from the public.

@ MarthaA:

Really Martha? Hitleresque drivel?

I can understand your anger. I would be also if after 8 years of laughing at the political right for having voted into office a village idiot, I’d voted for a Trojan Mule that proved to be nothing more than a PW’d “Stepin Fetchit” for the Wall Street and Pentagon mobs. It must be very embarrassing to find oneself on the same level as those stupid and ignorant teabaggers, huh? Feel that thud in your back? That’s your change… hope disappeared long ago! Bwaaaaaa!

Why aren’t you and the media asking that termagant, Nancy Peloser, where are all those jobs and growing economy that she claimed would be the result of extending unemployment benefits?

“Again, this[extension of unemployment benefits] is the right thing to do, it grows the economy, it creates jobs, it’s absolutely necessary that we get it done… ” (WASHINGTON, Dec. 1, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire)

Yep! I feel your pain! If someone that I admired and supported had made such a muddleheaded claim as that—especially after calling George Bush stupid for 8 years—I’d be as angry and embarrassed as you.

So why aren’t you, the author of this article, and the rest of the corporate media not asking the former Squeaker of the House where are all those jobs and that growing economy?

“O Life! thou art a galling load, Along a rough, a weary road, to wretches such as I.” -Robert Burns

Lew Ciefer, April 27 at 4:25 pm,

Hitleresque drivel.

Americans will have to be patient. The U.S.S.R., North Korea, Red China, Vietnam, and other communist/socialists states were not successful in creating their enviable economies and societies overnight.

President Obama has a tough road ahead in completely dismantling the U.S.’s criminal capitalist system and creating a pure socialist society.

We don’t need jobs if we’re all wards of the state. Obama will simply tax the rich and we’ll all be equal. Go prez!

What Obama has to do is tax every citizen 100% and let the government determine what the needs of each citizen is and set up appropriate governmental agencies to see to it that each citizen receives his merited due. It’ll be heaven on earth.

ohiolibgal, April 27 at 5:33 pm,

Who is “our side?”  Is “our side” the middle class?
Is “our side” the American Populace, the majority
population?  “Our side” as a trope is meaningless.

The MSN has been all over the right’s crazy budget proposals but hardly a peep about the People’s Budget.

Thom Hartmann is correct, MSN is mainly infotainment theses days. The craziest thing is the “let’s leave it there” syndrome. Both sides are given equal treatment and voice, even if one take is loony as Hell and the other is not.

Barack Obama? He had two years to do whatever he wanted to do if he really wanted to get it done. But right out of the gate he hires people like Summers and Geithner, pretty obviously choosing Wall Street over Main Street.

Obama talked some good stuff running for the job but once he got in he didn’t much follow through.

So here we are and it’s fairly depressing. There are good honest people in congress on our side but way too few of them.  Without serious public unrest it really seems like game, set, match.

purplewolf, April 27 at 12:59 pm,

Last time I checked, Barack Obama was the President of the
United States and the Democrats still control the Senate.

Those who truly represent the Left and Liberals argue the cause
of the Left and Liberals using the dialectic of the Left and Liberals,
rather than the dialect of the Right and Conservatives.

Why do you contend with and argue the cause of the Left and
Liberals using the dialectical frame of the Right?

It is a foregone conclusion that if you argue the logic of your cause
using the logic of an opposing cause that all of your argument will
be in support of the opposing cause.

Therefore, why would anyone who actually is a part of the Left
and Liberals use the dialectical frame of the Right and
Conservatives to argue the cause of the Left and Liberals?

It is not acceptable for the Left and Liberals to allow the Left and
Liberals to be represented by those who talk Left and Liberal
representation with opposing dialectic of the Right and
Conservatives; this is the same as the Sheep arguing the cause of
the Wolf with the dialectic of the Wolf.  The Wolf would support the
Sheep’s use of the dialectic of the Wolf and the Wolf would be
grateful—— but, what of the Sheep?

Tell me what you suppose that the destiny of the Sheep that
supports the dialectic of the Wolf would be? —And, why the Left
and Liberals should continue to support the dialect of the Wolf,
Right-Wing Conservative dialectic?

If the GOP and their interfering busybodies spent as much time on retaining and creating more jobs here besides war and forcing every pregnancy to term, we would be in a better position. Instead the GOP has had a wildfire war against a woman’s tight to choose. They have put forth about 600 bills against women when it comes to their bodies since Jan. this year. Last might another repukelican had proposed a 14 year prison sentence for a woman who gets an abortion, others have proposed the death sentence on the mother if she has a miscarriage and they want the local police and the FBI to investigate this pre-natal homicide as they call it. Even to the point of charging the mother if she gives birth to a defective baby, yet these same people refuse to let a defective fetus to be aborted.

Then there is the tax cuts to the rich on the backs of the poor, elderly and disabled. And don’t forget all those big profit making corporations that need more money, they have to come first before the critical things that need to be fixed and updated here in America to make it a strong country again.

Then there is the wars wasteful b.s. spending to protect us. WHY protect a dying and crumbling country, certainly not for the people who live here.And why would the elites want to stay in a decaying and destitute country when they can afford to go to a healthy and growing city anywhere in the world better than what is at home in America ?

Once the rich get everything they want, what makes these Repukes and GOP fanatics think that they will be needed any longer by the rich. Once they have done all the dirty work, they will be kicked to the gutter like the rest of us, it will only take them a little longer to arrive there.

“Why do they ignore the issues that Americans care most desperately about?”

Why do hogs ignore other hogs needs at the trough?

The ugly truth is that there is no scarcity of jobs but an ever increasing glut of humanity facing a future of nothing to do and an ever eroding standard of living as technology eliminates the need for manual labor. Also, the continuing increase in global population resulting in the rapid decrease of natural resources commensurate with a proportional amassing of waste and pollution will spur unending conflict and a further worsening of human sustainability. All told, Jeebus better step it up otherwise Armeggedon will get here before he(?) knows it!

“All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law.”
—Theodore Roosevelt, 1905.

Important we ban contributions by labor unions as well.

Yea, I know, kajsa, rebellion will happen here as well. But remember Kent State… Egypt protesters threw rocks but Americans have guns. It is not going to be pretty.

Jack

Totally agree with your post, Jack.  The first thing that needs to be taken care of is campaign financing.  I wrote E-mails to the Whitehouse and all of Congress the other day to tell them how corrupt they are.  Nothing will get done ‘til the people here start an uprising.  The elites don’t connect that the same will happen in the U.S. as the Mideast when people are pushed to the brink.

I have heard of it and support it, kajsa, but the Fat Cats don’t because it does not include taxpayer cash to the corporate interests that fund the elections.

Jack

Have you heard about “The People’s Budget?”  http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/04/22/969354/-Serious-media-starting-to-warm-to-The-Peoples-Budget

That’s the way it is. Absolutely *NOTHING* will fix our system without getting to the root: political corruption. Politicians sharing in the booty by taking campaign bribes, and then rolling over to the industry that wants in the taxpayer’s pockets. The recent “crisis commission” blamed everyone except the nation’s board of directors—our CONGRESS—even when the politicians are 100% to blame.

The key problem is the way we finance elections. There are only two kinds of money: public and private. Private money got us here and nothing will change until we get these legal bribes out of politics. But a fix is vigorously opposed by the political elite that benefit from the existing corruption.

Nothing else matters, regardless of your issue. Nothing is going to change until we have public funding of campaigns. Politicians spend taxpayer dollars because they ARE PAID to spend taxpayer dollars, and robbing the SSI fund and Medicare (as just two examples) gives them the cash needed to attract campaign dollars.

Our problem is NOT government, and it is not R’s or D’s. It *IS* that government is owned by CEOs and corporate interests that want in the taxpayer’s pockets. The 2010 elections were funded by just 1% of Americans, when they should be financed by 100% of taxpayers. And at $5 per taxpayer it would be a bargain. Even at 100 times that.

CEOs want short-term profits to increase their already massive salaries, and are willing to share those profits with the politicians that made it all happen. Thus NAFTA and other laws are passed that enable outsourcing to countries with wage scales one-tenth ours. Or are repealed (like Glass-Seagall) to enable the Fat Cat bankers to rip off the public. And all while deregulation crashes our country, China and India flourish.

In addition to public funding of campaigns, politicians must also (a) be put on a pay-for-performance basis, where if deficits or pork barrel and special interest spending go up, their pay goes down, and (b) they must put their own wealth in a blind trust that blocks political insider trading (which today is rampant). They must also get their health care from Medicare and their retirement from Social Security, and receive it only when they reach 67 or 69 or whatever age the rest of us qualify.

As a former CEO my company would not have survived if I had an employee or board of directors who took money on the side and gave away company assets in return. Our country can’t survive this corruption either.

So the voters change nothing. We elect a new group of politicians and the Fat Cats simply re-direct their bribes as we continue down our spiral. But the problem is that all of these changes must be made by the foxes themselves (congress).

The public’s choices are simple: a 100% turnover of politicians until the above fixes are made, or a national revolution is inevitable. And all because our politicians refuse to stop the bribery they benefit from, and the public refused to stop it.

If politicians are going to be beholden to their funders, those funders should be the taxpayers. We MUST demand that our senators and representative pass the bill at: http://fairelectionsnow.org/about-bill

Jack Lohman …
http://MoneyedPoliticians.net

Eugene Robinson:

“President Obama gives signs of beginning to perceive this disconnect.”

give me a break.

I believe that the wealthiest should pay more taxes, I think corporations like GE should be paying their fair share, but the idea of spending $100,000 on someone in the terminal state of pancreatic cancer, with doctors ordering tests and prescribing medicines that will do nothing is reprehensible. We have a population time bomb ticking, not because women are having more children, (in fact they are having fewer), but because people are living longer. That is good if they lead productive lives, but spending enormous sums extending the lives of patients whose only prognosis is death is a waste of valuable scarce resources. Much better a fraction of that money be spent on pain medication and hospice care. We need to promote death as the natural end of point of life, time to get over our adolescent fantasies that we can live forever.

Fine article.

Our nation’s leaders perfectly understand the term ‘Jobs’. They’ve been handing ‘We, the People’, a massive, continuous ‘Con-Job’ for at least the past five administrations, by directing their lobbyists which politicians to bribe, and for how much, to get their lackeys to legislate and act in the manner that will return the most profit to our leader’s corporations and other bidnesses.
They have simultaneously been giving the public a continuous ‘Snow-Job’ with their media PR about ‘How We Do It All For You’.
And the ‘Job’ at which they excel, is the perpetual ‘Hand-Job’ they foist upon We, the People, about how the ‘Whole World Hates US Because We Are A Free Democracy’, and ‘Wants to Destroy US’, so be afraid, very afraid, and support your MIC corporations and their wars, or ‘Their Crazy Religious Whackos’ will be over here raping and killing our crazy religious whackos in the streets.
Neglecting to mention, of course, that it is the past policies of our nation’s leaders, it’s ‘Bidnessmen’, (sorry ladies, if you want to claim partial credit, jump right in) that have repeatedly sent our Christian Soldiers ‘Over There’ to preemptively rape and pillage a whole bunch of folks in many different parts of the world, some of whom, unfortunately for US, take umbrage at that.
Think of all the decent jobs we’d have right here in the Good Old US of A if all that money hadn’t been shrink-wrapped and baled-up by the Billions and thrown around Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc, etc, ad infinitum. If we could only recover the portion of that loot that was stolen by our amoral corporate ‘leaders’, and their contracted ‘security forces’, we’d have an unemployment rate of less than one percent here at home, a completely rebuilt US infrastructure, a well-educated and healthy upcoming new generation, and a helluvalot better reputation around the world.
Of course, we can’t do that, reverse history, recoup those funds.
But hey, what if instead of borrowing more money to keep our perpetual wars going, what if we took that future money and hired our unemployed, and sent them, together with our retrained army, back to all the places we’ve ‘Shocked and Awed’, and had them rebuild what we, the US, have effed-up? Despite our ‘Christian’ claims, we’re not very good at resurrection, so we can’t do anything about all those ‘collateral damages’, but we could do the best we can to ameliorate the effects of our travesties.
Consider, WWJD, all you hypocritical US war-mongering ‘christians’ out there?

“A definitive 78 percent of respondents said they oppose cuts in federal spending on Medicare. An almost equally impressive 69 percent oppose cutting spending on Medicaid.”

Eugene, you’re terrific, but here’s the deal… These polls you quote? They take polls to see what the people want for the singular purpose of doing the exact opposite. Remember the public option? Taxing the rich? They want to make sure that whatever we want or need will not be done. It’s a fact.

Yes, it’s always been about jobs.
But Obama’s has been a Presidency Distracted.  Bailouts, Health Care, the Oil Spill, 2.5 Wars, the Midterm Election, Tucson, Japan’s triple disaster, tax cut extensions, Middle East revolutions, budget deficits, now the debt ceiling.  Forgive me if I’m a little off on the chronology.

But the 2012 election is going to be about jobs.  Nowhere to hide anymore.

Look at recent unemployment history:
http://portalseven.com/employment/unemployment_rate.jsp?fromYear=1975&toYear=2011
 
Would you believe it was 10.3% at the same point in Reagan’s first term?  If we can work unemployment down into the low 7%s (7.2% when RR was re-elected in 1984), Obama has a good chance against whomever the GOP throws at him.

But if not, barring a cartoon candidate like Trump or Palin, he will have a tough time winning a 2nd term.

What can he do now to create jobs between now and the election? 

Grow the economy.  There isn’t time for anything else.  Build confidence.

How?

Propose the higher income tax rate at 39.6% for those earning $250k or more.
Include the $5M/35% Estate Tax formula.

For both, add an inflation allowance to prevent bracket creep.

Then make the whole thing PERMANENT.

For the wealthy, a good trade:  a small increase in exchange for what they really want, stability.  And they’ll start spending again.  You see, the wealthy aren’t greedy.  They’re scared, just like most of the rest of us. 

The Repubs will whine and moan, but they’ll go for it, watch.

Later, we’ll have to change our paradigm from a “tax labor” design (payroll taxes) to a “tax consumption” model.  That’ll have to wait for Obama’s 2nd term.