It Was Bad Enough When GOP Governors Were Playing Politics With Stimulus Money, Now We Have Virginia's Wanna Be Gov Playing The Same Game

Bob McDonnell prepares for GOP Version of prime time

Yesterday Bloomberg reported on the bleak outlook many retired auto industry workers have about the value of their pensions. If GM is pushed into bankruptcy, as looks increasingly probable, retirees (and workers) "are bracing for what may be $16 billion in pension losses if the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. has to take over the plans, according to the agency. As many as half of GM’s 670,000 pension-plan participants might see their benefits trimmed if that happened, an actuary familiar with the company’s retirement programs estimates." As if to rub shit in the face of American workers, the failed CEO who made the decisions that have brought GM to the brink of insolvency, Rick Wagoner, is walking away with over $20 in pensions.

Business news pretty much across the board continued to look glum and threatening. Moody's downgraded the credit rating of Warren Buffet's company, Berkshire Hathaway. Muni bonds could be next as Moody issued a report that towns, counties and school districts across the nation are loosing creditworthiness-- "the first time it had ever issued such a blanket report on municipalities." The retail sector-- even WalMart-- just reported a crappy quarter.

Meanwhile we have every entrenched vested interest with political protection, from banksters to corporate farms to Big Oil refusing to follow the Obama Administration's gentle lead to rescue the country's economy, an economy that has been laid low by their unrestrained greed and unregulated avarice.

And in the midst of all this painful economic turmoil, right-wing ideologues are still playing politics. Most of the Republican governors who see themselves as viable presidential and vice-presidential candidates-- your Sarah Palins and Haley Barbours and Piyush Jindals and Mark Sanfords-- have been slapped down enough by their state legislatures to have now accepted federal bailout money for hard-pressed school districts and for unemployed workers in their states (although Sanford is still bitching and still threatening to let his state's public schools-- never much valued by right-wing political hacks to begin with-- go down the tubes). As if inspired by Sanford, the Republican dominated Virginia General Assembly-- a real band of kooks and misfits-- rejected $150 million in federal aid for unemployed workers yesterday. The mess was inspired by the Republicans' ambitious nominee for governor, right-wing fanatic Robert McDonnell, who decided to flex his muscles after smashing down Republican Party state chairman Jeffrey Frederick last weekend. Yesterday McDonnell came out against accepting federal benefits for Virginia's rising tide of workers (unemployment rate is now over 7%) who have been thrown out of jobs, due almost entirely to Republican economic policies advocated by McDonnell and the kooks and loons in the General Assembly and Virginia's woefully inadequate Republican congressional delegation.

On a mostly party-line 46-53 vote, the House turned down amendments by Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that were necessary to make Virginia eligible for the federal aid... Wednesday’s vote makes Virginia among the first states to definitively repudiate the unemployment insurance expansion.

One extremist sociopath ally of McDonnell's, telemarketer, anti-choice fanatic and Piedmont Delegate Kathy Byron, whose big contributors are all banksters, claimed, incorrectly, that "paying workers not to work does not promote economic growth." Economist Ian Welsh explained it to McDonnell and his dim bulb allies like Ms Byron:

Actually, Delegate Kathy Byron, paying workers not to work does promote economic growth. This is economics 101, people who have money (unless they’re useless rich) spend that money. When they spend that money they spend it on products and services made by people who work. The more of those products and services which are bought, the more economic growth there is, since you can’t have economic growth if there’s no demand for products and services.

In times when there is insufficient demand, like in a massive recession or depression, the best thing to do is for the government to spend. And since there are people losing their houses, who are going without food, clothes and medical services, the best way to spend is to give those people money so you kill two birds with one stone: you get demand through spending, and you help people who need it so they don’t wind up starving or on the street.

But let’s extend this even further-- when you have a demand problem and you also have very high income inequality (money pooling with the rich, who tend not to spend it) an even better way to increase demand is to increase tax rates on the rich, and then spend that money. You could even give it to the poor and middle class, who haven’t had a raise in 30 years.

And yes, Byron, that would create economic growth, though I’m sure you aren’t capable of understanding that. But it worked for FDR, Truman, Eisenhower and so on, and it would work now, while the Reaganesque policies of the last thirty years haven’t worked and have led to this disaster.

So, if you actually care about economic growth (we won’t pretend you care about unemployed people) you should both accept the UI money and push for highly progressive taxation.