Are The Protest Demonstrations Going To Make The Pandemic Worse While President Dunsel Looks On Impotently?

In his Bloomberg News column yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein noted that as America's upheaval mounts, Trump has no plan and recalled "The Ultimate Computer" episode from Star Trek (above) in which a rival captain calls Kirk "Captain Dunsel" after a fancy new computer takes control of the Enterprise, making Kirk superfluous; Spock explains that "dunsel" was cadet slang for "a part which serves no useful purpose."

"This," wrote Bernstein, was "Donald Trump’s President Dunsel weekend. Not, as in the original, because he had been replaced; Trump simply seems to have given up on the job. He’s had no policy on the pandemic for about a month now. He basically has no policy on recovering from the economic calamity. And he has no policy to deal with the police violence, demonstrations and the rest of the upheaval that has gripped the nation for the past week. As Philip Rucker put it in the Washington Post:"

Never in the 1,227 days of Trump’s presidency has the nation seemed to cry out for leadership as it did Sunday, yet Trump made no attempt to provide it.

That was by design. Trump and some of his advisers calculated that he should not speak to the nation because he had nothing to say, according to a senior administration official. He had no tangible policy or action to announce, nor did he feel an urgent motivation to try to bring people together. So he stayed silent.

"He did have his Twitter account, of course," Bernstein reminded his audience, "and he made a few comments to reporters over the weekend. But that was far from policy. At one point, Trump echoed civil-rights era reactionaries by threatening “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” only to back down when Republicans urged him to. That is, even when all Trump has is words, he’s easily rolled by his own allies. (They’re not willing to remove him from office, partly because they know how easy he is to defeat any time they want to.) By Sunday, he had moved to one of his favorite devices, the fictional tough stand. This one was a tweet about designating “ANTIFA” a terrorist organization, something the president very likely doesn’t have the power to do. It joins other fictional tough stands such as his threat to shut down Twitter or to order state governments to exempt churches from distancing rules. It’s all phony, bluster instead of policy... President Dunsel, indeed."

Death Of A Salesman by Nancy Ohanian

Sunday another Bernstein, Lenny-- presumably related to neither Jared nor the actual Lenny-- addressed the widespread concerns about the renewed spread of the coronavirus through the demonstrations against racism and police brutality. With infections going down in cities like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Newark, no one is eager to see anything spark new outbreaks. With the country hurtling towards 2 million cases, in states where the pandemic is getting stronger-- like in California, Texas, Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia, Virginia, Iowa, Nebraska, Nevada Ohio, Indiana and Alabama-- people are legitimately wondering if the demonstrations are going to make things even worse. Don't look towards President Dunsel for any answers-- let alone guidance or hope.




Bernstein reminded his readers that "The rules of the covid-19 pandemic, so recently learned at considerable inconvenience, have been discarded on the streets in recent days. Protesters frequently find it impossible to stay six feet apart, to avoid hand-to-hand contact or to dodge the respiratory droplets of their shouting, chanting comrades amid the swirling chaos. And because the virus can be spread by people with no symptoms, it can be impossible to figure out whom to avoid. Officials are clearly worried about the possible impact of the protests on the health crisis. As of Sunday, the United States had recorded 1.7 million coronavirus infections and 103,000 covid-19 deaths-- a disproportionate number of them black and brown people."

D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said she is concerned about renewed outbreaks caused by large demonstrations in the nation’s capital. And Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D) urged her city’s demonstrators to seek tests for the virus as soon as possible.

“If you were out protesting last night, you probably need to go get a COVID test this week,” Bottoms said at a news conference Saturday. “There is still a pandemic in America that’s killing black and brown people at higher numbers.”

Experts said it remains to be seen whether the protests will produce a surge in infections. Given the behavior on the street, they said, there is cause for concern.

“Crowded protests, like any large gathering of people in a close space, can help facilitate the spread of covid-19, which is why it’s so important participants wear masks, eye protection and bring hand-gel,” Saskia Popescu, an infectious-disease epidemiologist at George Mason University’s Schar School of Policy and Government, wrote in an email.

“Shouting and screaming, as some studies have shown with singing, can project droplets farther, which makes the use of masks... and eye protection... that much more important.”

...Linsey Marr, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Virginia Tech, who specializes in airborne transmission of viruses, said that even when people are crowded against each other, it takes time to transmit the virus in significant amounts-- especially outdoors. She said she would worry if the density of the crowd approximated the conditions of packed seats in a basketball arena, and if people did not move much for at least a half-hour.

Mask-wearing by infected people would cut down on the spread of respiratory droplets, offering some protection to people nearby. Unless they are rated N95 or better, however, masks offer only limited protection against the microscopic virus for the people wearing them.

On the streets in recent days, many protesters, police and reporters appeared to be wearing masks, though some did not. Some police officers also wore plastic face shields.

“Outdoor contact is far, far less risky than indoor contact,” said Tom Frieden, former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “When outdoors within 6 feet, a mask will further reduce risk.”

2020 America

Shouting projects droplets farther than speaking, however. The best-known incident of this means of infection came in March, when 53 members of a Washington state choir were infected during a single rehearsal by droplets expelled while they sang. Two of them died.

Even ordinary speech can send out droplets that carry virus. One research group found these can linger for eight minutes-- and possibly much longer-- in stagnant air under laboratory conditions. The study could help explain why infections so often occur in houses, nursing homes, conferences, cruise ships and other confined spaces with limited air circulation.

The report, from researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the University of Pennsylvania, was published in May in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed journal.

Frieden raised one other aspect of the protests that may contribute to the spread of the virus: the breakdown of trust in government. “Successful public health requires engagement and trust of the community,” he said.

Some demonstrators said they weighed the risk of covid-19 when deciding whether to attend a protest. Columbia University student Juliet Shatkin, 26, said her friends were “nervous about coronavirus,” so they did not join her during a protest Saturday on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.

“It’s scary, but I don’t know,” Shatkin said. “People are mad, and everyone I’ve seen is wearing a mask.”

Elise Barr, a teacher at a child-care center, wore a mask to attend a protest Sunday in Kansas City, Missouri., but she said she was not worried about catching the virus.

Coronavirus is going to have to take a back seat. This movement is about more than that,” she said. “Black people are being murdered.”

"This was a peaceful protest until the cops showed up." Watch:





And for those who think the pandemic is over (because they really, really, really want it to be over... because we've all had enough of it... well, I feel your pain but, no, it's not over. Chris Martenson has cut back his broadcast to just twice a week instead of 5 times a week. I cut out the whole boring beginning-- although, obviously if you want to hear him read his increasingly uninteresting fan letters, you can start from the beginning-- but here's the important stuff from last night's podcast:

Mixing Up The Voters-- A Cover-Up Strategy

Chuck Schumer by Nancy Ohanian

Writing for Bloomberg News yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein noted that Republican senators don’t even know what they’re covering up for, or at least what they would be covering up for if they follow the White House’s preference to rush through the Senate impeachment trial that starts next week and refuse to hear from relevant witnesses and collect relevant documents." He's right, although Moscow Mitch very much does know exactly what he's covering up.

"Some of those senators, to be sure, just don’t care," continued Bernstein. "They’ve decided they can live with (both politically and ethically) any revelations that may come down the road-- that no one who they care about will hold them accountable for burying important evidence, no matter what it turns out to be. Others may really be so fully inside the conservative information-feedback loop that they sincerely think that Trump is an honest, innocent man being railroaded by partisans; they may not even be aware of the considerable evidence to the contrary. But for anyone else? As I said just 24 hours and a couple rounds of ugly revelations ago: 'If new ugly details are still emerging, who’s to say that more won’t turn up later?'"

And it has. Will it matter is the question. Sean Illing pointed to the method in their madness: flooding the zone with shit, utterly overwhelming the capacity for Trump's low-info supporters to be able to discern what's real and what isn't. Illing wrote that "Regardless of how clear a case Democrats make, it seems likely that a majority of voters will remain confused and unsure about the details of Trump’s transgressions. No single version of the truth will be accepted. This is a serious problem for our democratic culture. No amount of evidence, on virtually any topic, is likely to move public opinion one way or the other. We can attribute some of this to rank partisanship-- some people simply refuse to acknowledge inconvenient facts about their own side... We live in a media ecosystem that overwhelms people with information. Some of that information is accurate, some of it is bogus, and much of it is intentionally misleading. The result is a polity that has increasingly given up on finding out the truth. As Sabrina Tavernise and Aidan Gardiner put it in a New York Times piece, 'people are numb and disoriented, struggling to discern what is real in a sea of slant, fake, and fact.' This is partly why an earth-shattering historical event like a president’s impeachment has done very little to move public opinion. The core challenge we’re facing today is information saturation and a hackable media system. If you follow politics at all, you know how exhausting the environment is. The sheer volume of content, the dizzying number of narratives and counternarratives, and the pace of the news cycle are too much for anyone to process. One response to this situation is to walk away and tune everything out. After all, it takes real effort to comb through the bullshit, and most people have busy lives and limited bandwidth. Another reaction is to retreat into tribal allegiances. There’s Team Liberal and Team Conservative and pretty much everyone knows which side they’re on. So you stick to the places that feed you the information you most want to hear."

We’re in an age of manufactured nihilism.

The issue for many people isn’t exactly a denial of truth as such. It’s more a growing weariness over the process of finding the truth at all. And that weariness leads more and more people to abandon the idea that the truth is knowable.

I call this “manufactured” because it’s the consequence of a deliberate strategy. It was distilled almost perfectly by Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and chief strategist for Donald Trump. “The Democrats don’t matter,” Bannon reportedly said in 2018. “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”

...For most of recent history, the goal of propaganda was to reinforce a consistent narrative. But zone-flooding takes a different approach: It seeks to disorient audiences with an avalanche of competing stories.

And it produces a certain nihilism in which people are so skeptical about the possibility of finding the truth that they give up the search. The fact that 60 percent of Americans say they encounter conflicting reports about the same event is an example of what I mean. In the face of such confusion, it’s not surprising that less than half the country trusts what they read in the press.

...Trump can dictate an entire news cycle with a few unhinged tweets or an absurd press conference. The media cycle is easily commandeered by misinformation, innuendo, and outrageous content. These are problems because of the norms that govern journalism and because the political economy of media makes it very hard to ignore or dispel bullshit stories. This is at the root of our nihilism problem and a solution is nowhere in sight.

The instinct of the mainstream press has always been to conquer lies by exposing them. But it’s just not that simple anymore (if it ever was). There are too many claims to debunk and too many conflicting narratives. And the decision to cover something is a decision to amplify it and, in some cases, normalize it.

We probably need a paradigm shift in how the press covers politics. Nearly all of the incentives driving media militate against this kind of rethinking, however. And so we’re likely stuck with this problem for a very long time.

As is often the case, the diagnosis is much easier than the cure. But liberal democracy cannot function without a shared understanding of reality. As long as the zone is flooded with shit, that shared understanding is impossible.

Yesterday, for example, it was widely reported by the mainstream media that "The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office found that the Trump administration broke the law when it put a hold on aid to Ukraine." That line was from the Murdoch-owned, Republican-leaning Wall Street Journal. Think about it: "the Trump administration broke the law." There were no mainstream news sources that didn't run with the story. This is from Jeff Stein's and Ellen Nakashima's at the Washington Post, White House hold on Ukraine aid violated federal law, congressional watchdog says. Ironically, Trump and Giuliani are probably happy to see it moving Maddow's devastating interview with Trump crony Lev Parnas Wednesday night (video below). Stein and Nakashima wrote that "The White House violated federal law in its hold on security aid to Ukraine last year, according to a decision by a congressional watchdog released on Thursday and reviewed by the Washington Post. The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that reports to Congress, found the Trump administration violated a law that governs how the White House disburses money approved by Congress. The GAO decision comes as the Senate prepares for the impeachment trial of President Trump, a process set to begin Thursday. 'Faithful execution of the law does not permit the President to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,' the decision states. 'OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.' ... The GAO found that the administration broke the Impoundment Control Act-- a 1974 law that provides a mechanism for the executive branch to request that Congress reconsider a funding decision that’s been signed into law. 'This bombshell legal opinion from the independent Government Accountability Office demonstrates, without a doubt, that the Trump administration illegally withheld security assistance from Ukraine' said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who requested GAO write the report in December... 'If the executive branch violates the [Impoundment Control Act] with impunity, then Congress loses its power to direct the expenditures of federal funds and any program authorized in law could be defunded by Executive fiat,' Van Hollen wrote in a letter to Gene L. Dodaro, comptroller general of the GAO, in December."

That all said, let's remember that the case against Trump being removed has continued to grow in popularity-- despite the Republican gaslighting strategy-- as more information leaks out. The Morning Consult poll released by Politico earlier this week shows Trump's approval number's underwater, with 54% of registered voters disapproving and just 43% approving. Also among registered voters 31% say they are definitely voting to reelect Trump and 45% say they are definitely voting against reelecting him. When you add in leaners, 39% will vote for him and 52% will vote against him. 49% of registered voters approved of the House impeaching Trump and 43% disapproved and 49% say he should now be removed by the Senate, 43% saying he should not be removed.

Will The Economy Keep Trump From Being Impeached? It Shouldn't

Yesterday, the NY Times reported that senior Republican Party leaders are now urging their most imperiled incumbents to speak out about the wrongdoing surrounding Señor Trumpanzee. Tom Cole (R-OK) offered an example of what some sinking GOP congressmembers in swing districts-- like Bruce Poliquin in Maine, Mimi Walters in California, Cathy McMorris Rodgers in Washington or Don Bacon in Nebraska could say: "Where there’s smoke, and there’s a lot of smoke, there may well be fire." The Times noted that "By urging some candidates to speak out or at least stay silent, Republican leaders who gravely fear losing control of the House risked opening the first significant rift between the Trump White House and the Republican-controlled Capitol."

Jared Golden, the progressive Democrat running for the Maine seat currently held by the Poliquin GOP leaders are so worried about told us that he believes "all leaders should be held accountable and no one is above the law. Voters are concerned about the culture of corruption in Washington, from the indictment of members of Congress for insider trading, the misuse of campaign funds for personal vacations, or possible campaign finance violations by the Trump campaign, voters are losing faith in our democracy. Restoring that faith in our government must be a top priority."

Señor T, of course is trying to turn the narrative in his favor. He seems to have asked Fox to have the blankest of their blank slates interview him-- and they found her yesterday.

EARHARDT: What grade do you give yourself so far?

TRUMP: So I give myself an A+.

...I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job. If I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash, I think everybody would be very poor. Because without this thinking [points to head] you would see, you would see numbers that you wouldn’t believe in reverse.

Jared Bernstein may have been glad he asked-- because Joe Biden's chief economic advisor and the Obama administration's most progressive economist had just answered that question in a Washington Post piece. Like Trumpanzee, one of the regime's top economic advisors, TV reality show economist (and drug addict) Larry Kudlow, had claimed in a cabinet meeting last Thursday that the economy is "crushing it," thanks to the leadership of the great Señor T (giving him "credit for trends that were largely ongoing before he took office"). Bernstein decided to drill down into the evidence for this “crushing it” claim. "Who’s actually getting ahead in the Trump economy" is what Bernstein wanted to get to. And he did-- much better than a clown like Kudlow, let alone his boss, ever could.

To telegraph our punchline, while the tight labor market is highly welcomed, real hourly pay for most workers remains flat. In contrast, corporate profits and equity markets truly are crushing it, both on a pre- and especially, given the large business tax cuts, a post-tax basis. There’s also no evidence of an investment boom, suggesting the recent, above-trend growth in GDP is Keynes, not Laffer-- meaning the deficit spending is providing a temporary boost but will not have lasting, positive impacts for long-term economic growth.

Starting with wages, since Trump took office, the real hourly wage for the 82 percent of the workforce that’s blue collar in factories and non-managers in services is up half-a-percent, an extra 11 cents per hour. In nominal terms-- before accounting for inflation-- the growth of mid-level pay has picked up a bit, as we’d expect with such low unemployment. But inflation, largely driven by higher energy costs, has also sped up, cancelling out any real gains.

If energy prices come down and unemployment continues to fall, real wage growth for mid-wage workers will improve. But the magnitude of their gains will likely be nothing close to the administration’s claim that the tax cut would add at least $4,000 to annual earnings within a few years of the legislation.

Remember, its promise was for $4,000 above whatever baseline gains in wages would be expected without the tax cut. In President Barack Obama’s second term, real annual wage growth for mid-wage workers was about 1 percent, so call that the baseline. Meeting the administration’s goal requires another 2 percent real growth on top of that, or 3 percent per year. They are not even in the ballpark to achieve that.

Sticking with the tax cut, its proponents main claim was that the big corporate cuts would generate more business investment, which would lead to faster productivity growth, which would position us for higher paying jobs. So far, every link in that chain is broken.

Business investment is growing, as we’d expect in an economy operating close to full capacity. But its growth rate is not faster now than at various points earlier in the expansion. There’s been a modest uptick in investment in structures (such as plants, offices, wells, mine shafts, warehouses) in the first half of 2018, but, as economist Dean Baker has shown, the growth in such investment was due to higher energy prices generating increased investment in mining for oil and natural gas. While mining investment has increased by 36.7 percent over the last year, it rose by 47.3 percent from the second quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2010, when the Obama administration was still enforcing environmental laws. In both cases ,the key factor was rising world oil prices.

It takes time to plan investments, so it’s too soon to conclude the tax cuts haven’t made a difference. But none of the surveys of companies’ investment plans show any plans to ratchet up capital spending, including the Commerce Department’s monthly data on orders for capital equipment, the National Federation of Independent Businesses’ survey on plans for capital expenditures, and investment surveys by regional Federal Reserve Banks.

What is clear is that firms are using their tax windfalls to boost share prices through buybacks, which, along with strong corporate profits, are fueling a historical bull market for stocks. But equity markets are decidedly not a source of trickle-down: 80 percent of the value of the stock market is held by the wealthiest 10 percent of households. The bottom half own no stock at all, including retirement plans.

In other words, it’s clear who’s crushing it and who isn’t. What is sad is that instead of borrowing $2 trillion to finance the regressive tax cut, Congress could have put more money in the pockets of working Americans and made investments for our economic future. Here is what we should have done-- and should still do-- to crush it for all Americans.

First, we should have expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit to compensate for decades of stagnant wage growth. The Brown-Khanna plan, calling for a $1.4 trillion EITC expansion, would have provided working families making up to $75,000 with up to $8,000 more in take home pay. As we often say, the best way to raise pay for ordinary Americans is to do so directly as opposed to pretending it will come through the largess of executives and shareholders.

Second, we should have put billions to expand the National Science Foundation’s Advanced Technological Education program, linking employers to technical schools to develop credentials that respond to the needs of our cutting-edge industries. This is one of the most successful programs in the federal government, and we could have made sure that every American, whether rural or urban, would have access to credentialing for the jobs of the future. This program could be the land grant of the 21st century.

Third, we should have provided hiring incentives for anchor companies to create jobs in places left behind such as Paintsville, Ky. or Flint, Michigan. If a company is willing to hire in places where people don’t have enough access to high-wage jobs, then they should get support for doing so.

Fourth, we should have invested in bringing high speed Internet to every corner of America. Providing fiber broadband to every corner of the United States is the modern equivalent of rural electrification. Ask the mayors of places like Huntington, W.Va., or Akron, Ohio what would help them grow business in their cities. They will undoubtedly ask for investments in broadband instead of tax cuts for the wealthy.

Larry Kudlow’s right: The Trump administration is crushing it for its donor base, which is in turn handsomely rewarding them. But it has done nothing for the forgotten Americans and nothing to make sure America is a winner in the 21st century. We don’t need more sugar highs for those already doing well. We need to give lasting pay raises to those struggling to pay the bills and then focus on the forward-looking investments that will finally reconnect GDP growth to broadly shared prosperity.

Katie Porter is running for the Orange County district currently held by Trump rubber-stamp Mimi Walters. Hillary won this district in 2016 and all the current polls show a neck-and-neck race that is too close too call-- but moving in Katie's direction. Two of Katie's earliest endorsers were Elizabeth Warren and Ro Khanna, most focussed on making the economy more equitable for working families-- which is Katie's goal as well. "No ad or statement can hide the fact that Mimi Walters votes with Trump 99% of the time," she told us yesterday, "but she will continue to try to distract from her own record. The truth is, Walters, supported Donald Trump's healthcare plan that would have gutted protections for pre-existing conditions and caused premiums to spike, and voted to give the largest corporations a tax break at the expense of her constituents."

The Truth About The Trumpanzee Tax Plans

Former CNN Chief Business Correspondent Ali Velshi, now an MSNBC anchor, is not an idiot... but... On his morning show yesterday the Hairless Prophet of Doom introduced a question to Jared Bernstein, once a professor at Columbia and then Vice President Biden's Chief Economic Adviser, by claiming that Trump's plan to eliminate the estate tax would help the middle class. Before Bernstein got to whatever Velshi's question was, he addressed the GOP talking point Velshi had just slipped onto the air so matter-of-factly. The estate tax only impacts .02% of the richest Americans. ZERO is paid, he said, by any estate worth under $11 million. Velshi pushed back with another Republican Party myth: "but the family farms..." Bernstein cited the NY Times exhaustive search for a family farm, GOP congressmen are always whining about, that has been impacted by the estate tax. That found exactly none-- not one.

Trump's largely nonexistent tax proposal is entirely based on a tissue of outright lies. At a meeting with lawmakers from both parties in the Cabinet Room this week, Señor Trumpanzee insisted that the so-called Tax reform plan his Regime is still trying to draft "will not lower the amount of taxes paid by the wealthiest Americans." Fox News pushed his lies:



Trumpanzee claims the amount of taxes-- even his own-- could even go up. "The rich," he bullshitted, "will not be gaining at all with this plan. We are looking for the middle class and we are looking for jobs-- jobs being the economy. So we're looking at middle class and we're looking at jobs. I think the wealthy will be pretty much where they are, pretty much where they are... If they have to go higher, they'll go higher." Tucson-based GOP mental midget Martha McSally (video up top) bought right into it. She's so fucking stupid-- a Republican version of Blue Dog Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. Americans For Tax Fairness are not as gullible as McSally. They pointed out that Trump's nonsense might be music to the ears of Congress' most foolish members (the so-called "Problem Solvers Caucus") but that doesn't make any of it real or true.

Frank Clemente, Executive Director, Americans for Tax Fairness, replied without mincing words: "That's a lie. Trump's current tax plan will overwhelmingly benefit millionaires, billionaires, and large corporations, at the expense of everyone else. The top 1% will get half of his proposed tax cuts-- $175,000 each on average. Trump plans to pay for his massive tax giveaway with budget cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, public education and other priorities for the middle class. He even plans to cut $667 million from FEMA next year. Unbelievable."

Here are the facts about Trump's tax plan as outlined in April 2017:

• Half of the tax cuts in Trump's plan will go to the top 1% (those making more than $732,900).
• The average tax cut for the top 1% will be $175,000.
• The average tax cut for a family making between $25,000 and $48,600 will be $210.
• A quarter of all families making between $48,600 to $86,100 will actually see their taxes INCREASE.

On top of that, these tax cuts for millionaires will be paid for by Trump's budget cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, public education, and many other priorities for working families and the middle class-- including FEMA and other disaster recovery agencies.

A few other things to note:

• Trump's tax cuts will not create jobs.
• Trump's tax cuts will not trickle down to workers.
• Trump's tax cuts will not benefit small businesses.

Ro Khanna (D-CA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) have offered a viable alternative to the Trump Regime's bullshit plan to make the rich richer. On Wednesday they introduced a bill that would give low-income and working-class taxpayers a big tax credit, dramatically expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit, which Republicans would like to abolish altogether. The EITC helps people at the bottom end of the salary range. Low-income taxpayers without dependent children would see their credit rise from a maximum of $510 to $3,000, and families would see their maximum rise from $6,318 to $12,131, depending on their income and number of children. Economists say the increased credit would help compensate for the fact that working class salaries have stagnated in recent decades even as the U.S. economy has continued to grow.

Khanna knows Paul Ryan will never allow his plan to even get a vote in Congress while he's Speaker, but he's hoping Democrats will incorporate it into their own vision of ameliorating massive and increasing wealth inequality in this country. He said he's hopeful that his plan "is going to be our party’s answer to Donald Trump on taxes. While he’s proposing tax cuts for the investor class, we’re proposing support for the working and middle class. He is counting on a separate financial transaction tax and taxes on the highest-earning incomes to pay for it. The San Jose Mercury News reported that "Experts say the Trump plan would give the largest benefits to corporations and individuals with high incomes. The Brown-Khanna plan, on the other hand, would increase credits for families making up to about $75,000 and individuals without children making up to about $37,500."

Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit would do more to help working-class Trump voters than tax cuts for the wealthy, argued Chuck Marr, an economist at the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “If you were to take seriously the people he was talking about in the campaign-- rust belt workers, truck drivers, cooks in restaurants, people who clean offices-- this is what you would do,” Marr said.

The credit was first introduced in 1975 as a way to incentivize low-income people to get work and stay off of welfare. It has been expanded over the years, and most economists, both liberal and conservative, see the credit as a successful policy to boost low wages.

...Khanna said his proposal is already getting support from prominent Democrats. He said he’s heard from potential Democratic presidential candidates interested in backing the bill, including senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Cory Booker (D-NJ). Rep. John Delaney (New Dem-MD), who is the first declared 2020 presidential candidate from the party, will be a co-sponsor.

The Brown-Khanna plan would boost wages for full-time and part-time workers alike, which Khanna said made sense for an economy of more Uber drivers and other workers with uncertain incomes. It would also let taxpayers request a credit in the middle of the year instead of waiting to receive their refund check, in order to help them pay for large, unexpected expenses.

The plan could fit in with the Democratic party’s larger economic message, which has focused on increasing wages. “The question is how are you going to do that. Democrats need to have an answer, and this is an answer,” Khanna said. “People say, ‘don’t just be against Donald Trump, tell us what’re you for.’ This is what we can be for.”

Even a few extra hundred dollars in the tax credit would go a long way for low-income people in the Bay Area, said Marie Bernard, the executive director of Sunnyvale Community Services, a financial aid organization that helps residents of Santa Clara County. Some of Bernard’s clients count the days until their EITC check arrives in April, and find their tax credit to be the difference between paying rent and being evicted.

“There are so few resources for smaller families and single people,” she said. “This will go straight to keeping them housed and fed.”

Trump Tax Cuts For Multi-millionaires Will Be Paid For By Painful Cuts To Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Education

On Tuesday we asked half a dozen of the Blue America candidates how eager they are to go on the offensive over the GOP tax agenda. All of them are very eager to do just that. For example, James Thompson, the candidate for the Kansas congressional district centered around Wichita, thinks if the 2018 election iOS decided on tax policies, he'll be the next congressman from KS-04. "If you want to know what will happen to the rest of the United States as a result of Trump's tax reform," Thompson told us Tuesday morning, "just look at Kansas. The so called 'tax reform' being pushed by President Trump and Ron Estes is the nationalization of the same failed trickle down tax experiments of Sam Brownback in Kansas. Our schools and hospitals are underfunded and closing. Our infrastructure, especially in rural areas, is collapsing. Our businesses are leaving our state. Our guards in the prison system are underpaid and overworked in overcrowded prisons. Our police departments don't have the money for proper training and are short staffed. Our mental health care facilities, formerly number one in the country, are now ranked at the bottom. More and more people are falling below the poverty line. These are just a few of the examples of what 'tax reform' did to Kansas. The filthy rich got the tax break goldmine, and the working people of Kansas got the shaft. Supply side economics do not work. Businesses do not hire new employees because of tax breaks. Demand drives business. Rather than trying to get a bigger piece of the pie, how about increasing the size of the pie? Paying a living wage will circulate more money into the economy and create a larger tax base. Finally expanding Medicaid will allow 100,000 additional Kansans to get medical care, again pumping more money into our local economy. We have lost more than 2 billion dollars in the last couple of years as a result of failing to expand Medicaid. Using targeted trade agreements to allow farmers to sell their products internationally while also protecting the wages of our working class people at home will bring more money into our state. Republicans don't want to do this though, they want the pie all for themselves. In Kansas, we say 'pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered.' The Republicans are all greedy hogs lined up at the 2018 trough gorging themselves on the slop Trump is feeding them."

The next day, Tumpanzee was in Springfield, Missouri promoting his tax plan-- with one lie after another-- at a closed-to-the-public event behind the closed doors of one of his rich campaign donors. Just before Trump spoke, Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness, warned the media to “Make no mistake; what Trump and Republican leaders in Congress are proposing is not tax reform. They simply want massive tax cuts for millionaires, billionaires, and big corporations, at the expense of everyone else. And those tax giveaways will be paid for by cuts to Social Security, healthcare, education and other programs that maintain living standards for working families. It’s Trumpcare all over again, and it must be blocked.”

When Señor Trumpanzee says he will enact historic tax reform, as he always brags he will, all he's talking about is a fairly standard conservative $5 trillion tax giveaway benefitting the wealthy and big corporations. What there is of a Trump budget shows tax cuts being paid for by $4.3 trillion in cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, education, and other services that help working families get by in the GOP law of the jungle society they envision. He claims his plan will help the middle class but his revisions to the tax code primarily benefit the top 1% of income earners, no one's definition of the middle class. Everyone in the top 1% gets, on average, a nice $175,000 tax cut. Something like 25% of middle-class families would actually pay higher taxes under the Trumpanzee/Paul Ryan plan. Even worse, Trump would pay for his tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations by cutting public services working families rely on, such as Social Security, Medicaid, education, infrastructure, nutrition programs and other vital services.

Likewise, his bullshit claims that his plan helps small businesses are nothing but a hoax-- another boon for the wealthy. Trump says he's going to lower small business' taxes to 15% but most small businesses already pay taxes at a 15% rate or lower, so less than 7% of business owners would get any tax cut. More than three-quarters of the tax cuts would go to the richest 1% of business owners, who would get an average tax cut of $75,000 each year. These are not Main Street shopkeepers, but hedge fund managers, Wall Street lawyers and real estate developers like Trump, who would lower his own tax rate from roughly 40% to 15%.

And Trump was braying in Springfield, as Republicans always do, that corporate and individual tax rates need to be reduced because we have the highest taxes in the world-- a flat out lie Republicans love to recite endlessly. As Americans for Tax Fairness has shown, Americans are not taxed higher than other countries and, as a percentage of the overall economy, Americans pay less in taxes than 30 of 35 other similarly developed countries. And although the official corporate tax rate is 35%, most corporations pay much less because of loopholes. In fact, the Government Accountability Office found that profitable U.S. corporations paid an effective tax rate of only 14% from 2008 to 2012.

And when Trump boasted that his plan making deep cuts to the tax rate on accumulated offshore corporate profits will “bring that cash home” to be “reinvested” in the American economy, it's a complete conservative fantasy. The GOP's proposal to tax those offshore earnings at just 10%, instead of the 35% they currently owe, amounts to a $600 billion tax cut for tax-dodging corporations-- a huge loss of revenue that could be used for economy-boosting public investments. When Congress provided a similar tax giveaway in 2004, corporations that brought home their profits cut tens of thousands of jobs and gave 90%-- so 90 cents of every dollar-- in earnings brought home to rich shareholders through stock buybacks and dividends.

Americans For Tax Fairness: "Recent experience and academic research both show that tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations are a poor way to stimulate the economy and create jobs. And Trump’s proposed deep budget cuts to infrastructure, healthcare, medical research and education won’t help create jobs, either... Only the richest one of every 500 estates currently pays the estate tax-- the estate must be worth $5.5 million or more to be affected. The only effect abolishing the estate tax will have on American workers is to deprive them of over $20 billion in annual revenue, which pays for public services used by those who haven’t inherited a fortune... Big corporations don’t need a tax cut-- what they need is to start paying their fair share of taxes again.

As Sam Jammal, the progressive opponent challenging Wall Street shill Ed Royce-- Royce has taken an astronomical $7,303,507 in bribes from the Financial Sector since coming to Congress in 1993-- told us earlier in the week, he finds "this whole tax reform conversation to represent everything wrong with Washington. Right now, thousands of lobbyists are lining up with their own 'fixes' to our tax system. Everything is centered on how the most wealthy will benefit. None of the conversation is about how we help working families... Tax reform should be about making sure the middle class is still a reality for our community. We should scrap corporate tax reform and focus on reforms that help regular people. This includes increasing the Earned Income Tax Credit, expanding deductions on child care, student loans and home ownership, and promoting job creation by entrepreneurs and small business-- not paybacks to the uber wealthy. We can't continue to have an economy where so few can get ahead and so many are falling behind. Everything we are hearing on Trump's tax reform looks like a bad deal for our families. We need to stop this 'reform.'"

Matt Cartwright is one of a small handful of progressive Democrats reelected last year in district that Trump won (click on the thermometer on the right for the list). Trump beat Hillary in Matt's largely blue collar Pennsylvania district 53.4% (10 points better than Romney had done) to 43.3% (12 points worse than President Obama had done in 2012). Meanwhile, Cartwright, an assertive and skillfiul champion for working families, was reelected 53.8% to 46.2%, a margin of over 20,000 votes. But the Republican Party is targeting Matt in a big way this cycle. They've recruited a self-funding Wall Street hack, John Chrin, a former managing director at JP Morgan Chase who lives on millionaires' row in swanky Short Hills, New Jersey-- a Wall Street company town. He claims he can run in PA-17 because his paternal grandfather owns a company that owns a landfill in Northampton County. Chrin's mansion is about a two hour drive--more if there's traffic on the I-80-- from Scranton and Wilkes-Barre in the district. He lives in Leonard Lance's district although I suppose he can move into his grandfather's company's landfill if the commute to PA-17 gets too arduous for him. Trump's tax plan is tailor-made for people exactly like John Chrin. Above is the new ActBlue "Trump District Progressives" thermometer. It's important; please take a look.

Yesterday, Matt, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, told us that his "own impression is that in all likelihood, the GOP tax plan will follow the 2017 playbook for major Republican legislation:  it will be introduced with much fanfare and loudly ballyhooed by the president. Then, people will read it. These people will include the diligent accountants and analysis at the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The CBO will score it and reveal it to be an unabashed giveaway to the wealthiest people in America, an actual tax increase to many middle-income earners, and a drain on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. The ensuing public outcry will stun even the most insensate GOP members of Congress, and result in the president blaming GOP congressional leaders and claiming he never had anything to do with it. Then the president will send out an astonishing tweet, on a different subject, so outrageous as to be incapable of being ignored, attempting to get everyone to forget about his festival of legislative failures and broken promises. How long Americans continue to fall for this nonsense is anybody’s guess."

Ro Khanna represents a big chunk of white collar Silicon Valley. He also represents the solidly middle and working class blue collar areas in the South and East Bay like Newark and Fremont. He's no more a fan of Trump's tax plan than Matt Cartwright is. He told us that "Trump's $5 trillion giveaway to the speculator class is not just morally wrong but also hurts our economic growth. If we really want to grow the economy at 3 percent, we should use that money instead to give tax credits to working families, to have Medicare for all, to invest in research and development, to provide debt free college and to support apprenticeships, tech courses, and vocational education. The democrats need to make the case that our policies are pro growth and pro American competitiveness.  We also shouldn't be afraid to provide a bold $5 trillion plan for investing in our economy as a counter to Trump."

Meanwhile, in the alternative universe on the fringes of American society, this is not a parody of the Bannon-Mercer neo-Nazi website, Bretbart. This is an actual Breitbart page from yesterday. This is what the neo-Nazis across America are reading today. And remember, we're talking about people with 2-digit IQs incapable of intellectual discernment beyond that of a slow-witted 8 or 9 year old. And they're armed.

Nein, Nein, Nein

I can't believe we're still talking about The Hermanator. I guess it's a testament to how unenthusiastic Republican base voters are with the wishy-washy Mormon bishop the party establishment is forcing down their throats. One poll analyst said that when respondents pick "Cain" it's like picking "none of the above." It's kind of a dream scenario for Barack Obama. He's been a pretty mediocre president-- name one in your lifetime who wasn't-- and his one path to reelection, rather than being a great president (too high a bar) was to count on the Republicans to come up with someone really implausible... someone like Mitt Romney, Rick Perry, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann or... The Hermanator.

This week an actual economist debated Cain's "economic advisor," Rich Lowrie on Larry Kudlow's submit-to-plutocracy-now show as though Cain were a real candidate for president and as though his 9-9-9 were a serious economic and fiscal proposal instead of a slick marketing plan cribbed from an Atari video game (see Rachel in the video above). Bernstein would have devastated Cain's "plan" if it were really a "plan."

A key point here is that the plan, which Bruce Barlett calls a “distributional nightmare,” radically shifts the tax burden from high-income households to everyone else.  I focused on the median household, and Lowrie either doesn’t understand the implications of the plan or he’s deliberately misrepresenting it.

For a $50K household, married couple, two kids, all income from earnings and standard deductions, the current tax burden is $8.3K.  Under 9-9-9, that would grow to $13.5K, an increase of over $5,000 (hat tip: CCH, BS).  The WaPo fact checker came to a similar conclusion.  E Klein too.

(I expect that any minute now the Tax Policy Center will release a slew of data supporting these points with their much more detailed tax model.

But Lowrie wouldn’t accept that conclusion.  In fact, he asserted that their federal tax would be lower because they’d move from a 15% payroll tax to a 9% income tax. This, as I said on air, is “patently wrong.”

First of all, assuming they plan to exist, they’ll need to consume stuff, and thus they’ll also face the 9% sales tax.  That already makes their tax rate 18%, higher than the 15%. 

But as Michael Linden points out, and this is widely agreed upon by tax economists, the incidence of the 9% tax on business income (which denies businesses a deduction for wages paid) also hits them, which is why former Joint Tax Committee chief of staff Ed Kleinbard described the tax as a 27% payroll tax for families whose incomes derive from earnings (note that Lowrie is perfectly comfortable with the standard assumption assigning the incidence of the employers side of the payroll tax to the family-- this one re the business tax is equally standard).

For a family with $500K, same assumptions as above, their tax bill would fall by $44K.

But where this plan really gets regressive is when you get up into the families who derive their income from non-labor sources.  While the details of the plan are fuzzy when it comes to capital gains and dividends, it seems clear that those earning thousands or even millions of dollars in these types of non-labor income would enjoy a massive tax cut.  And that would further widen the disparity between the highly preferential treatment of capital gains and dividends on the one hand, and the taxation of “ordinary” wage and salary income on the other.
We’ve got enough income and wealth inequality coming from the pretax distribution--we don’t need to exacerbate it through the tax code.

Middle class families that depend on earnings will pay more taxes under the Cain tax plan.  High income families will pay a lot less.  His advisors who say otherwise are misleading the electorate and that must not stand.

Of course the author of the Republican plan to do away with Medicare (and Social Security), Wall Street's ultimate buttboy, Paul Ryan, loves 9-9-9. It's right up his alley. “We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible. I’m more of a flat-tax kind of a guy. It’s great to see such bold ideas.” Cain and Ryan have never met but Cain would like to offer him a chance to run for vice-president. No, really.

Of Course The Conservative Consensus Is Completely Wrong

I often go to sleep watching MSNBC. The other night I turned off the TV right after Ed Schultz's show, where he had Bernie Sanders on as a guest. Bernie's the greatest, a national treasure. We need more like him... desperately. The problem with going to sleep right after the Ed Show is that when I wake up, before I can catch myself, I've tuned into MSNBC's insidious Republican propaganda program, Morning Joe.

Yesterday before I had even fully opened my eyes and gotten out of bed, I was being bombarded by deranged Inside the Beltway consensus. Everyone agreed that America went wrong by passing Social Security and that that has led us down the road to ruin, culminating in Medicare, which must be ended or America is doomed. Thanks, MSNBC! And thanks, Democrats, for not even standing up against this well-planned attack on our country by the Austerity Monster.

Jared Bernstein is one of the few economists the Obama Administration hired for a top-level position who isn't a dedicated Wall Street shill and a class enemy of 95% of America. He didn't last long. His blog, On The Economy is worth following. Thursday he found the Beltway debate unbelievable.

–How could it be that we’re a less than a week out from a totally self-inflicted wound to our already frail economy?

–Why are policy makers spending every waking minute on deficit reduction when jobs are the most immediate problem facing the economy?

–How did a relatively small group of far right activists totally highjack the national debate?

According to Greg Sargent (citing E. J. Dionne), more people are beginning to buy the most insidious arguments about immediate fiscal austerity-- large spending cuts that kick in right away-- leading to growth, even in the light of the current slowdown, which is itself driven in part by the fading of fiscal support.

As I noted last night, the UK is a living example of the damage done by premature contraculation, but you don’t have to look abroad to see the problem. The figure shows how much diminished gov’t spending has shaved off of GDP growth in the past six months. No wonder employment is in a stall, driven by job losses in the public sector.


But those are facts. And facts are not winning. Facts, in fact, are getting crushed. One almost feels embarrassed to raise them in this climate, as if you’re impolitely butting your pointy head into the dream world of the Washington policy debate.

A highly subsidized Big Oil industry's second quarter haul is a staggering $35.4 billion profit, but the Conservative Consensus doesn't factor getting them to share the sacrifice as part of a problem worth addressing-- not like abolishing Medicare.

Yesterday I was talking with Ed Potosnak about the Blue America candidates' commitment-- absolute commitment-- to not just preserving but strengthening Medicare, for a healthier and more equitable society. Monday we're planning to release a statement from all the Blue America candidates. Ed mentioned that his mom was "near tears telling me about how important Medicare is to her, and she's not alone. I have heard a similar impassioned pleas to preserve Medicare from seniors and their families across the district." His opponent, wealthy Republican career politician Leonard Lance, has voted several times to gut Medicare. In fact... every Republican has.

We don't need more politicians like Leonard Lance. We need more political leaders like Bernie Sanders. I know I started this post with him on the Ed Show. At the bottom is a speech he gave on the floor of the Senate this week. It's worth-- really worth-- listening to the whole thing. Here's a painful synopsis for video-haters:

The rich are getting richer, and their effective tax rate is the lowest in modern history. Many corporations are enjoying huge profits and, because of outrageous loopholes, pay nothing in taxes. Among many other absurdities, we lose about $100 billion every year from companies and individuals who stash their wealth in tax havens in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda and other locations.

And yet, the Republicans have been fanatically determined to protect the interests of billionaires and large multi-national corporations so that they do not contribute one penny toward deficit reduction. The Republicans want the entire burden of deficit reduction sacrifice to be placed on the elderly, the sick, children, and working families. That is morally wrong and, in terms of getting us out of this recession, bad economic policy.

Sadly, the Democrats have yielded far, far too much. In December, with the Democrats controlling the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate they extended Bush's tax breaks for the rich and lowered the tax rates on estates for the very rich. In April, they allowed tens of billions of dollars in cuts to vitally important programs for low- and moderate-income Americans.

And now, we find ourselves debating two plans. The Reid plan, which calls for $2.2 trillion in cuts over a 10-year period, includes $900 billion in cuts (which will be determined later by committees) in education, health care, nutrition, affordable housing, child care and many other programs desperately needed by working families. Appropriately, it calls for meaningful cuts in military spending and ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Reid plan does not require the wealthiest people in this country and the largest corporations to pay one nickel in deficit reduction.

The Reid plan is bad. The Boehner plan is much worse. It calls for large cuts in discretionary spending now and demands that this debt-ceiling discussion be revisited next year-- which is totally absurd and which will likely keep the Congress paralyzed.

Lastly, both plans call for a congressional committee to determine future efforts toward deficit reduction. Based on recent committees-- Bowles-Simpson, the Gang of Six, etc.-- I have little doubt that that new committee will call for major cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid and will ask very little of the wealthy and multi-national corporations.

Meanwhile, while all of this is occurring in Washington the American people have consistently stated, in poll after poll, that they want the wealthy and large corporations to pay their fair share of taxes and they want to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. For example, a recent Washington Post poll found that 72 percent of the American people believe that Americans earning over $250,000 a year should pay more in taxes.

Given that reality, is there any reason to wonder why the American people are so angry and frustrated with what's going on in Washington?

If the GOP is determined to wage a fanatic class war against the American people, we need stalwart fighters who won't back down on our side to fight back. You will always find them here.

Obama Defends Social Security And Freedom Of Religion-- Republicans Really Have The Country Off Balance If This Is The Battleground

Chris Van Hollen is the current chairman of the DCCC, although he's been making way for the next-- and much worse-- selection, Rahm Emanuel disciple and corporate shill, Debbie Wasserman Schultz. The two of them decided, along with Steny Hoyer, to give John Boehner a pass on reelection. The DCCC will not go after him, will not try to defeat him and have been extremely hostile to Justin Coussoule's grassroots campaign which is being supported by the local Democratic Party in Ohio, the party organizations in Butler, Montgomery, Preble, Darke, Miami and Mercer counties and by all the Democratic constituency groups, from the AFL-CIO to VetPAC, the Veterans' Alliance for Security and Democracy. So when Boehner stumbles into a rank against Social Security or Medicare or says something that betrays his allegiance to his Wall Street masters, Van Hollen or Wasserman Schultz give us some weak, mealy-mouthed statement about what a bad fellow he is; naughty, naughty-- but you will never, ever under any circumstances hear them tie their fake outrage to the election in OH-08.

"Incredibly, the Republican Leader John Boehner disparagingly referred to those who teach our children, protect our homes, and keep our streets safe as ‘special interests.’ Washington Republicans are opposed to supporting our teachers, firefighters, and policemen at home in order to protect corporate tax loopholes that promote the export of American jobs."

That was Van Hollen. He's in charge of electing Democrats to the House. Anyone think that might have been a good moment to mention Justin Coussoule and talk about why he would make such a much better representative for folks living in southwestern Ohio? I mean, it's that his effin' job? Or is it only to reelect Blue Dogs who vote with Boehner to take away Choice from women or vote with Boehner to make gays second class citizens or vote with Boehner against healthcare reform or vote with Boehner against Wall Street regulations? That's the Van Hollen/Wasserman Schultz DCCC strategy for 2010. And when it proves catastrophic and the Democrats lose dozens of seats, each will move up in the hierarchy as a reward for a job well done-- well done from a certain perspective.

So I've been pretty happy, relatively, with the White House lately. Like those of us at Blue America and like Ed Schultz and MSNBC, the White House has come to realize that criticizing Boehner is more meaningful when it's tied to his own district than when it's tied to districts in Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Tennessee. This is how Jared Bernstein, Vice President Biden's chief economic advisor, framed his criticism of Boehner's toxic outburst a couple of days ago:

“Though we’re sure he didn’t know it, the Congressman is advocating to kill the expansion of the Butler County Community Health Center and bring some of the 25 highway projects across the district to a grinding halt."

Maybe he should take over the DCCC from Van Hollen instead of Rahm-in-a-dress (D-FL). And bashing Boehner effectively isn't the only thing the White House has done right since the disastrous Gibbs incident this week. (As Robert Kuttner so well put it for the Boston Globe yesterday, Gibbs and the rest of Obama's inner circle just do not understand that the blow up is not about ideological purity-- it’s about Obama bungling a Roosevelt moment by failing to either deliver a recovery or demonstrate to regular people that he is trying his damnedest over Republican obstructionism. If he were doing that, all the lefty criticism over the particulars would fade. We're all glad he's promised to not privatize Social Security-- the Ryan roadmap (yes, the same Ryan he appointed to the Cat Food Commission), which has been the conservative goal for exactly 75 years). But he' still clinging to the Cat Food Commission, still not saying he won't back raising rates on normal working people or that he will raise the absurd FICA cap that guarantees the richest 100 families in America will never pay their fair share; still not promising he won't cut benefits or limit the cost of living adjustment (COLA, another Republican demand); still not promising not to go along with Boehner and Ryan when they insist the retirement age be lifted high enough so that millions of people die before ever getting back any of the money they invested in Social Security... Oops, this was supposed to be about something good the White House did and I got a little carried away. Let me start again. Obama had to have known the vicious bigots who control the GOP and Tea Party base would go insane over his defense of Freedom of Religion, something they hate and are eager to abolish. Here's what he had to say at the Ramadan dinner he hosted at the White House Friday:

Here at the White House, we have a tradition of hosting iftars that goes back several years, just as we host Christmas parties and seders and Diwali celebrations.  And these events celebrate the role of faith in the lives of the American people. They remind us of the basic truth that we are all children of God, and we all draw strength and a sense of purpose from our beliefs.
 
These events are also an affirmation of who we are as Americans.  Our Founders understood that the best way to honor the place of faith in the lives of our people was to protect their freedom to practice religion.  In the Virginia Act of Establishing Religion Freedom, Thomas Jefferson wrote that “all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion.”  The First Amendment of our Constitution established the freedom of religion as the law of the land.  And that right has been upheld ever since.
 
Indeed, over the course of our history, religion has flourished within our borders precisely because Americans have had the right to worship as they choose-- including the right to believe in no religion at all.  And it is a testament to the wisdom of our Founders that America remains deeply religious-- a nation where the ability of peoples of different faiths to coexist peacefully and with mutual respect for one another stands in stark contrast to the religious conflict that persists elsewhere around the globe.
 
Now, that's not to say that religion is without controversy. Recently, attention has been focused on the construction of mosques in certain communities-- particularly New York.  Now, we must all recognize and respect the sensitivities surrounding the development of Lower Manhattan.  The 9/11 attacks were a deeply traumatic event for our country.  And the pain and the experience of suffering by those who lost loved ones is just unimaginable.  So I understand the emotions that this issue engenders.  And Ground Zero is, indeed, hallowed ground.
 
But let me be clear.  As a citizen, and as President, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.  (Applause.)  And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances.  This is America.  And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable.  The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are.  The writ of the Founders must endure.
 
We must never forget those who we lost so tragically on 9/11, and we must always honor those who led the response to that attack-- from the firefighters who charged up smoke-filled staircases, to our troops who are serving in Afghanistan today. And let us also remember who we’re fighting against, and what we’re fighting for.  Our enemies respect no religious freedom.  Al Qaeda’s cause is not Islam-- it’s a gross distortion of Islam.  These are not religious leaders-- they’re terrorists who murder innocent men and women and children.  In fact, al Qaeda has killed more Muslims than people of any other religion-- and that list of victims includes innocent Muslims who were killed on 9/11.
 
So that's who we’re fighting against.  And the reason that we will win this fight is not simply the strength of our arms-- it is the strength of our values.  The democracy that we uphold. The freedoms that we cherish.  The laws that we apply without regard to race, or religion, or wealth, or status.  Our capacity to show not merely tolerance, but respect towards those who are different from us-- and that way of life, that quintessentially American creed, stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of those who attacked us on that September morning, and who continue to plot against us today.
 
In my inaugural address I said that our patchwork heritage is a strength, not a weakness.  We are a nation of Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus-- and non-believers.  We are shaped by every language and every culture, drawn from every end of this Earth.  And that diversity can bring difficult debates.  This is not unique to our time.  Past eras have seen controversies about the construction of synagogues or Catholic churches.  But time and again, the American people have demonstrated that we can work through these issues, and stay true to our core values, and emerge stronger for it.  So it must be-- and will be-- today.
 
And tonight, we are reminded that Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity.  And Ramadan is a reminder that Islam has always been a part of America.  The first Muslim ambassador to the United States, from Tunisia, was hosted by President Jefferson, who arranged a sunset dinner for his guest because it was Ramadan-- making it the first known iftar at the White House, more than 200 years ago.    
 
Like so many other immigrants, generations of Muslims came to forge their future here.  They became farmers and merchants, worked in mills and factories.  They helped lay the railroads.  They helped to build America.  They founded the first Islamic center in New York City in the 1890s.  They built America’s first mosque on the prairie of North Dakota.  And perhaps the oldest surviving mosque in America-- still in use today-- is in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
 
Today, our nation is strengthened by millions of Muslim Americans.  They excel in every walk of life.  Muslim American communities-- including mosques in all 50 states-- also serve their neighbors.  Muslim Americans protect our communities as police officers and firefighters and first responders.  Muslim American clerics have spoken out against terror and extremism, reaffirming that Islam teaches that one must save human life, not take it.  And Muslim Americans serve with honor in our military. At next week’s iftar at the Pentagon, tribute will be paid to three soldiers who gave their lives in Iraq and now rest among the heroes of Arlington National Cemetery. 
 
These Muslim Americans died for the security that we depend on, and the freedoms that we cherish.  They are part of an unbroken line of Americans that stretches back to our founding; Americans of all faiths who have served and sacrificed to extend the promise of America to new generations, and to ensure that what is exceptional about America is protected-- our commitment to stay true to our core values, and our ability slowly but surely to perfect our union.
 
For in the end, we remain “one nation, under God, indivisible.”  And we can only achieve “liberty and justice for all” if we live by that one rule at the heart of every great religion, including Islam--- that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. 

This was the Obama I voted for in 2008, not the one who appointed Paul Ryan to the Cat Food Commission. Anyone know if Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillbrand have chimed in on the Freedom of Religion thing yet? The local congressman, Jerry Nadler, has put out a statement, one that makes perfect sense-- and is therefore sure to engage Republicans and other hatemongers: "As the Member of Congress who represents Lower Manhattan and Ground Zero, I commend President Obama’s statement on the Cordoba House and his support of our First Amendment rights of freedom of religion and separation of church and state. As I previously stated, government has no business deciding whether there should or should not be a Muslim house of worship near Ground Zero. The United States was founded on the principle of religious liberty and tolerance, and it is equally important 234 years later that we uphold this principle. Hate should have no place in America."



UPDATE: Predictably, Boehner Disagrees WithThat Whole Freedom Of Religion Thingie

Obama, sensibly in some eyes and shabbily in others, explained that defending the right of Muslims to build a community center and mosque near ground zero in Lower Manhattan, he was “not commenting on the wisdom” of that project, but rather trying to uphold the broader principle that government should treat “everyone equal, regardless” of religion. That's not good enough for the GOP, eager to stir up some tension and hatred-- par for the course. Speaking of which, Boehner favors "Freedom of Religion" in principle; it's just when it comes to religions he hates or can demagogue that he feels troubled, He and a couple of other right wing haters, Newt Gingrich and Peter King, jumped out of their clown car and started screaming today in the hope that Islamaphobes would go on the warpath. Boehner: "The decision to build this mosque so close to the site of ground zero is deeply troubling, as is the president’s decision to endorse it. The American people certainly don’t support it." Suggestion: help Blue America and Justin Coussoule beat Boehner in November. This guy belongs in a retirement home where he can golf away the days and drink away the nights without screwing the rest of us up.