The Goal of the Neo-Liberal Consensus Is to Manage the Decline

"578,000 live homeless on any given night" (click to enlarge; source)

by Gaius Publius

If you think of the country as in decline, as most people do, and you think the cause is the predatory behavior of the big-money elites, as most people do, then you must know you have only two choices — acceptance or resistance.

Why do neo-liberal Democrats, like the Clinton campaign, not want you to have big ideas, like single-payer health care? Because having big ideas is resistance to the bipartisan consensus that runs the country, and they want to stave off resistance.

But that's a negative goal; there's one more. They not only have to stave off your resistance, they have to manage your acceptance of their managed decline in the nation's wealth and good fortune.

Again: The goal of the neo-liberal consensus is to manage the decline, and manage your acceptance of it.

I want to turn the keyboard over to one of my favorite left commenters, Avedon Carol, proprietor of Avedon's Sideshow, to explain. Her kickoff point is the identity-fight on the left, or as she calls it, an attempt to "actively divide us by making personal and tribal differences into the main show of the public political arena." She offered her thoughts via email (emphasis hers):

Bernie Sanders wants to do these two important things:

1. Create enough abundance for everyone so that there is far less resentment and bitterness to divide us.
2. Empower us to be better able to fight for ourselves.

Clinton's program for dealing with sexism and racism is ... what?

As far as I can see, she's offering, at best, a kind of paternalistic sympathy that does little to ameliorate the actual problems we face.

And yet, the Clinton campaign is attacking Sanders for some sort of weird and undefined insensitivity to issues of racism and sexism that is "proven" by an inadequacy of photo-ops and the fact that some of his supporters, just like some of her own supporters, say things that are sexist and insensitive.

And she is still talking like the DLC.

Corey Robin says when Clinton tells the truth, believe her:

"Amid all the accusations that Hillary Clinton is not an honest or authentic politician, that she's an endless shape-shifter who says whatever works to get her to the next primary, it's important not to lose sight of the one truth she's been telling, and will continue to tell, the voters: things will not get better. Ever. At first, I thought this was just an electoral ploy against Sanders: don't listen to the guy promising the moon. No such thing as a free lunch and all that. But it goes deeper. The American ruling class has been trying to figure out for years, if not decades, how to manage decline, how to get Americans to get used to diminished expectations, how to adapt to the notion that life for the next generation will be worse than for the previous generation, and now, how to accept (as Alex Gourevitch reminded me tonight) low to zero growth rates as the new economic normal. Clinton's campaign message isn't just for Bernie voters; it's for everyone. Expect little, deserve less, ask for nothing. When the leading candidate of the more left of the two parties is saying that - and getting the majority of its voters to embrace that message - the work of the American ruling class is done."

In Germany after WWI, austerity imposed by outsiders created the conditions for fascism to grow. We knew this. We were even taught this in school. And we certainly know just how good that is for women and minorities.

But in America (and Britain), that austerity is being imposed by our own leaders, and most effectively by leaders of the Democratic Party (and Labour Party) — the supposed "left" party, the party that was understood to support working people.

Clinton, like all of the DLC, talks like this "new economy" of decline is something that just happened, like it's a natural force. They do not admit that it was a political decision to break the power of ordinary working people and put it back into the hands of the aristocracy. They pat us on the head and tell us they will try not to make it as bad as the Republicans will, but it will happen and there is nothing to be done about it.

And they actively divide us by making personal and tribal differences into the main show of the public political arena (only 7% of Americans claim never to have used birth control, so how is it a "Democrat" thing?) while behaving like the really big decisions that are wrecking our lives are none of our business. (Bank bailouts that were opposed 200-1 in calls to the White House from the public! Stopping the prosecutions of fraudulent banksters! HAMP instead of real home-owner relief! Secret TPP talks, for godssakes!)

As a woman and person of funny-color, I know who is being callous and insensitive toward me, and it isn't Bernie Sanders.

To emphasize one of Avedon's last points — bank bailouts — Clinton accused Sanders of being against the auto bailout by voting against a bank bailout bill, which she supported. An excellent piece of misdirection — she puts him on defense, when she should be on defense herself. Deeply dishonest, of course, but well-manipulated. (Seems to have cost her, though, in Michigan, whose voters weren't buying it.)

Again, the main point is this one from Corey Robin (emphasis mine):

The American ruling class has been trying to figure out for years, if not decades, how to manage decline, how to get Americans to get used to diminished expectations, how to adapt to the notion that life for the next generation will be worse than for the previous generation, and now, how to accept (as Alex Gourevitch reminded me tonight) low to zero growth rates as the new economic normal.

All you need to know. Both parties are giving away the store, cleaning out the cash register. Your lives will be very much worse unless you stop them. Yet both parties want you to get used to it, get used to being made poor. The Democrats want to soften the blow more than the Republicans — a kinder, gentler devastation if you will. A softer crash landing.

But either way, the goal of the neo-liberal consensus is to manage the decline, and manage your acceptance of it. And that's what this election is about — on both sides. Acceptance or resistance.

(Blue America has endorsed Bernie Sanders for president. If you'd like to help out, go here. If you'd like to "phone-bank for Bernie," go here. You can volunteer in other ways by going here. And thanks!)

GP
 

How Far Are Republicans In General-- And Fred Upton In Particular-- Willing To Go To Sabotage The Affordable Care Act?

Unlike Benghazi! and the rest of the nonsense Darrell Issa's Witch-Hunt Committee "investigates," Boehner is eager to try to get some serious attention focused on the flaws in the roll out of the Affordable Care Act. (Like Medicare the rollout has been messy and, like Medicare, the Republicans want to demagogue it instead of helping to make it better.) So he assigned the investigation not to the clownish Oversight Committee chaired by Issa but to Fred Upton's Energy and Commerce Committee. Here's the press release the Republicans put out last Thursday:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee today announced a full committee hearing-- PPACA Implementation Failures: Didn’t Know or Didn’t Disclose?-- to examine the health care law’s troubled rollout on Thursday, October 24 in room 2123 of the Rayburn House Office Building. Thus far, the administration has rejected the committee’s invitation to participate and publicly answer questions. Committee leaders sent a letter to Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting the administration reconsider its participation. The letter was signed by Full Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), Chairman Emeritus Joe Barton (R-TX), Full Committee Vice Chairman Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Health Subcommittee Chairman Joe Pitts (R-PA), Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy (R-PA), and Health and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Vice Chairman Michael C. Burgess, M.D. (R-TX).

The administration and the companies involved with implementation repeatedly assured the committee that everything was “on track” for October 1; however, the first two and a half weeks of open enrollment have been defined by significant “glitches” that have prevented Americans from being able to even use the system.

"It's well past time for the administration to be straight and transparent with the American people. Top administration officials repeatedly testified everything was on track, but the broad technological failures reveal that was not the case,” said Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI). "Either the administration was not ready for launch, or it was not up to the job. The president and top officials were quick to boast the number of visitors to HealthCare.gov, but they have since gone silent, refusing to disclose even basic enrollment figures. The rollout has been a complete mess, beyond the worst case scenario, and yet those administration officials responsible have indicated they will not be available to testify next week. This is wholly unacceptable. Secretary Sebelius had time for Jon Stewart, and we expect her to have time for Congress."

Energy and Commerce Committee leaders have sent letters to the administration as well as lead IT contractors regarding the “glitches” and failures that have plagued the roll out. The committee is also requesting enrollment figures from the administration, which have been withheld from the public and policymakers to date.

So, let's get this straight. Republicans in Congress, Republicans in state legislatures, Republican governors, the Republican Think Tank Industry and the Republican Media Echo Chamber have all worked ceaselessly to sabotage the Affordable Care Act and now they want to whine about glitches in the roll out? As Digby pointed out over the weekend, "One of the most effective acts of Obamacare sabotage was for so many states to "opt out" of creating their own exchanges, thus forcing the Feds to pick up the slack. Since the federal government offered up large sums to help them set up their own, it was assumed they's be happy to create some state government jobs and allow their own people to benefit. But no, they sent the money back. And the result is an overwhelmed and poorly designed system that was never intended to serve so many. Three points to the saboteurs… [T]he blame for this failure lies equally with the disgusting GOP politicians who would rather see their own constituents die in the street than help make health insurance affordable and available to them. After all, according to their own philosophy the smaller scale of 50 individual states attempting a new program is automatically superior. (Indeed, the Democrats who designed the system bought that line of logic and assumed this would be a big selling point.) So they did it with the intention of making the federal system fail. That's sabotage."

Let me take a break for a moment to point out that Fred Upton, heir to the Whirlpool fortune (one of the worst-- if not the worst-- outsourcers of American manufacturing jobs to low-wage/slave labor Third World countries), has been given a free pass to reelection by Steve Israel once again. Even though there is a dedicated progressive opponent, Paul Clements, running against Upton and even though polling shows that if the election were held right now, Upton would lose 51-38%-- and would lose 56-36% if the voters were aware Upton supported the government shutdown-- the DCCC treats the R+1 district as though it were some kind of Texas or Georgia rural red hellhole that can't be won over. Obama beat McCain here 184,186 (53%) to 156,836 (45%) in 2008 and, despite it being home turf for Mitt Romney last year, Obama held him to a bare 50-49% win. And even with Israel actively sabotaging 2012 candidate Mike O'Brien's race against Upton, O'Brien still managed to hold Upton to a 55% win. Upton spent $4,724,798 for the win against O'Brien, who, unable to get the DCCC to stop telling donors to not give him any support, managed to spend only $292,383 (about one-twentieth of what Upton spent). Thanks for nothing, DCCC.

Upton, of course, voted against the Affordable Care Act, would like to get rid of Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security and voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act 41 times. That's what passes as a "mainstream conservative" in today's radicalized Republican Party. Voters in Western Michigan don't agree and they're ready for a change. Steve Israel isn't and won't help Paul Clements, but you can, right here.

Paraphrasing a report from the Center for American Progress, Fred Upton fears the consequences of Obamacare working the way it is meant to. A successful law that provides millions of Americans with access to health care, better benefits, and lower costs undermines Upton’s extreme conservative ideology. The effort to undermine the law is a sabotage campaign, plain and simple. This is what Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution had to say about sabotage by Republicans like Upton: "There has been a full-court press from Day One from the opposition to characterize and demonize the [Affordable Care Act.] The campaign against the law after it was enacted, the range of steps taken, the effort to delegitimize it-- it is unprecedented. We’d probably have to go back to the nullification efforts of the Southern states in the pre-Civil War period to find anything of this intensity."

It is unfortunate that many conservatives are resorting to a sabotage campaign
to refight old political battles, but this is not the only possible approach. A better approach would be for Congress and state lawmakers-- regardless of where they stood when it was passed-- to work together to make the Affordable Care Act work as well as possible. Even among those who oppose the law, a majority wants to see elected officials work together to make it work. The Affordable Care Act is the law of the land. There will undoubtedly be bumps in the road and problems that arise, but we can identify and fix them.


On this approach, the evidence is clear: In those states where lawmakers are working together to implement the law, the law is working. Implementing the Affordable Care Act will be a serious undertaking and will require all of us to do our part, but the country-- and millions of Americans-- will be better off for it.

To date, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives has voted 41 times against the Affordable Care Act. These votes range from full repeal of the law to banning federal money that would be used to implement the law to targeting certain provisions to undo or postpone implementation of the law.

Not content with what they say are symbolic measures, however, some Republican members of Congress have employed a more confrontational strategy that carries serious economic consequences. A growing number of Republican House [Upton included] and Senate members insist that the continuing resolution that keeps the government open include an amendment to defund the Affordable Care Act-- or they will vote against it. In other words, unless the Affordable Care Act is stopped, they will shut down the government. A government shutdown would severely hurt our economy, immediately throwing hundreds of thousands of people out of work and potentially leading to disruptions in things such as Social Security checks and paychecks to our troops on the frontlines.

Another sabotage strategy is to insist on defunding the Affordable Care Act when Congress considers raising the debt ceiling this fall. An aide to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said last month that the debt limit debate is a “good leverage point” to force action on the Affordable Care Act. Two years ago, the mere threat of the government defaulting on its obligations led to the first-ever downgrade of the nation’s credit rating. Actually defaulting would cause a worse global financial crisis than what we experienced in 2008.

Not surprisingly, the defund strategy is unpopular with the vast majority of Americans. In a recent Kaiser Health survey, 57 percent of respondents disapproved of the strategy to defund the law. Another poll found that just 6 percent of registered voters surveyed-- and only 7 percent of Republicans-- agreed with the defund strategy.

Increasing opposition among Republicans to the defund strategy has led to an emerging proposal that would ask for a one-year delay in the implementation of the Affordable Care Act in exchange for Congress raising the debt ceiling. Make no mistake: Their goal here is the same as that of all of the other strategies they have employed. While it would be nice to believe that these lawmakers are pursuing delaying implementation in an effort to work with the Obama administration to improve the law and ensure it is implemented smoothly, it would also be naïve. A vote to delay is a vote to repeal. Not only that, but delaying the law would leave more Americans without insurance and could raise premiums as much as 27 percent.

Another anti-Obamacare sabotage-campaign tactic is intimidation. The goal of this strategy is to scare people and organizations away from helping the Obama administration enroll or educate Americans about the new marketplaces.

…In June of this year, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that she was in talks with the National Football League, or NFL, about partnering with it to help educate Americans about the benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Days later, however, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Senate Minority Whip John Cornyn (R-TX) sent a letter to not just the NFL but also to Major League Baseball, or MLB; the National Hockey League, or NHL; the National Basketball Association, or NBA; NASCAR; and the Professional Golfers’ Association, or PGA, warning them not to do so. “Given the divisiveness and persistent unpopularity of this bill, it is difficult to understand why an organization like yours would risk damaging its inclusive and apolitical brand by lending its name to its promotion,” the senators wrote. Moreover, House Republican Study Committee Chair Steve Scalise (R-LA) sent his own letter to the commissioners of the NFL and NBA, requesting information on what the Department of Health and Human Services asked for regarding help raising awareness for the Affordable Care Act.

Having sports teams promote health care marketplaces is not new. After all, the Boston Red Sox began partnering with the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector Authority in 2007 to educate residents of Massachusetts about the landmark health legislation signed by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) in 2006. Still, the sabotage tactic had some effect. A spokesman for the NFL responded, saying that the league had “no plans” to engage with the Affordable Care Act. But this tactic has its limits. One promising development was the Baltimore Ravens’ announcement that the team would help Marylanders learn about the new marketplaces that begin enrolling people October 1.

Obamacare opponents have also spread their tactics of intimidation to the very organizations that are helping enroll Americans in the new health care marketplaces. In late August, Republicans on [Upton's] House Committee on Energy and Commerce sent letters to more than 100 organizations that received federal grants to serve as navigators of the Affordable Care Act. Many of these civic and charitable organizations, such as the Ohio Association of Foodbanks and the Epilepsy Foundation of Florida, are not accustomed to the daily Washington political fight. The timing is questionable as well, given that they received the letter requesting voluminous amounts of information as they are preparing for open enrollment in the new marketplaces to begin on October 1. And Commerce Committee Republicans did not target every navigator grant recipient; organizations were targeted in a handful of states-- Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas-- which are also among the states with the highest rates of uninsured populations.

…Washington and Lee University School of Law Professor Timothy Jost added that the letter was "an obvious attempt at intimidation of navigator programs, most of which are nonprofits that don’t have the resources to hire lawyers to fight this, nor the time to respond at this very busy time. ... This attempt to bully these programs is shameful." The executive director of the Ohio Association of Foodbanks, Lisa Hamler-Fugitt, called the letter "quite offensive" and said it was "absolutely shocking."

It's with great interest that we'll be following Upton's anti-healthcare hearings in his committee starting Thursday. Although there are one or two anti-healthcare fake Dems on the committee-- Utah and Georgia right-wingers Jim Matheson and John Barrow-- who can be expected to make common cause with Upton and the Republicans, there is every reason to believe Ranking Member Henry Waxman, along with fellow progressives Jan Schakowsky, Peter Welch, Ben Ray Lujan, John Yarmouth, Frank Pallone, and Diana DeGette, will mount an effective pushback against Upton's obstructionism and sabotage on the committee.

One of Upton's allies, domestic terror suspect Steve Stockman sat around in the peanut gallery while the President talked about the legitimate problems with the ACA website. Stockman, a former meth freak and widely considered one of the stupidest and most extreme Members of Congress, is an icon for GOP opposition to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act and, after consistently voting for shutting down the government-- as well as for default, of course-- he shrieked like a stuck pig when angry constituents reminded him that his ideological jihad against government had closed down NASA, the biggest employer in his poverty-stricken, backward east Texas district. Boehner put him on the House Science Committee so he and his cronies could have a good laugh-- at the expense of the American people. This twitter feed isn't a tenth of his childish and disrespectful whining from yesterday. And, yes, he's an accurate reflection of the kind of people who vote in his district. They should all be ashamed that they have the most anti-American Member of Congress as their Representative in Washington.

America's Ruling Elites Are Screwing The Rest Of Us Out Of Selfishness And Greed

"We can't have a prosperous economy," explains former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich in the video above, "without a large and growing middle class." Over the weekend, his column dealt with the Republican Party's systematic sabotage of the economy. They're opposing policies that grow and sustain the middle class and they're pushing an agenda that pushes more ordinary working families into economic distress and poverty. Reich focuses on the GOP's obstruction of every attempt to improve the jobs situation. They're not just not doing anything to help in the House, they're using their power in the Senate to prevent the majority Democrats from doing anything, "even," he points out, "last week’s almost absurdly modest proposal by President Obama to combine corporate tax cuts with increased spending on roads and other public works." The Austerity agenda that Paul Ryan and Republicans who back him and his childish Ayn Randian ideas want to bring to the U.S. after its tragic failure in Europe is so obviously non-viable that not even the House Republicans can pass budgets based on it any longer. So why are the Republicans holding down job creation? Reich knows who to blame-- and why:

The real answer, I think, is they and their patrons want unemployment to remain high and job-growth to sputter. Why? Three reasons:

First, high unemployment keeps wages down. Workers who are worried about losing their jobs settle for whatever they can get-- which is why hourly earnings keep dropping. The median wage is now 4 percent lower than it was at the start of the recovery. Low wages help boost corporate profits, thereby keeping the regressives’ corporate sponsors happy. 

Second, high unemployment fuels the bull market on Wall Street. That’s because the Fed is committed to buying long-term bonds as long as unemployment remains high. This keeps bond yields low and pushes investors into equities-- which helps boosts executive pay and Wall Street commissions, thereby keeping regressives’ financial sponsors happy.

Third, high unemployment keeps most Americans economically fearful and financially insecure. This sets them up to believe regressive lies-- that their biggest worry should be that “big government" will tax away the little they have and give it to “undeserving" minorities; that they should support low taxes on corporations and wealthy “job creators;" and that new immigrants threaten their jobs.

It’s important for Obama and the Democrats to recognize this cynical strategy for what it is, and help the rest of America to see it.

And to counter with three basic truths:

First, the real job creators are consumers, and if average people don’t have jobs or good wages this economy can’t have a vigorous recovery.

Second, the rich would do better with a smaller share of a rapidly-growing economy than their current big share of an economy that’s hardly moving.

Third, therefore everyone would benefit from higher taxes on the wealthy to finance public investments in roads, bridges, public transit, better schools, affordable higher education, and healthcare-- all of which will help the middle class and the poor, and generate more and better jobs.

One caveat to blaming the Republicans. They have willing allies in most of this agenda among the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the self-styled New Dems. Voters may think New Dems like Sean Patrick Maloney (NY), Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Patrick Murphy (FL), Ron Barber (AZ), Scott Peters (CA), John Delaney (MD), Bill Foster (IL), Bill Owens (NY), Dan Maffei (NY) and Joe Garcia (FL) are "progressives" because they are pro-Choice and pro-gay, but when it comes to economic policies, they're as bad as a garden variety Republican and make common cause with the GOP on behalf of Wall Street. Each of these New Dems has earned a primary challenge. None of them have one. Instead, voters will be asked to chose between these worthless Big Business shills and Republicans just as bad or worse. Last time that happened-- in 2010-- millions of Democrats across the country stayed home on election day and the Great Blue Dog Apocalypse saw the effective end of that right-wing branch of the Democratic Party-- and the rise, in DC , of the New Dems, financed by the same special interests and criminal K Street lobbyists.

By the way, as long as we're on the subject of delusion, you remember back in the '90s when fast food workers were flinging pizzas out of their Rolls Royces, right?

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Is Sabotage A Crime Punishable By Something or Other?

Has the whole media signed an agreement to avoid the word "obstructionism" when reporting on the Republican Party policy agenda in Congress? Because I never see the mainstream media using that word-- and there is virtually no other way to describe what Boehner, Cantor and Miss McConnell have been doing for the past 5 years. Last week, the National Memo ran a bang-up post of the 5 ways the Republican Party has sabotaged our economic recovery, Republican Party sabotage being a direct outgrowth of Republican Party obstructionism.

The GOP "made a conscious decision to slow the economic recovery the moment the president took office in the hopes of denying him a second term. They made that decision before he was even inaugurated. And they haven't slowed down now that he has won a second term!

To deny Obama a second term, they knew they had to slow the recovery. And their plan worked in 2010. The unemployment rate was rising as the GOP swept to the largest congressional landslide in the last half-century. However, their plans were thwarted as they paused their most aggressive efforts for the 2012 campaign and job growth continued at a steady pace of around 160,000 new jobs a month.

The Economic Policy Institute’s Josh Bivens and Andrew Fieldhouse summarized how the congressional GOP actively smothered the economic recovery. But the effort to cut spending and spread destructive myths about the economy united the entire party and could have easily caused a recession, if it had only been more effective.

...The stimulus-- along with the auto rescue-- should go down in history as the most effective government interventions for long-term job growth since the New Deal. But it could have been so much more effective.

Because three Republican votes were needed in the Senate to pass the American Recovery Act, the total cost of the bill had to be kept under $1 trillion, when $1.8 trillion was needed. Those Republican senators made specific changes to the bill that ended up killing as many as one million jobs, EPI’s Bivens and Fieldhouse explain:

The price tag of getting these votes was nearly $30 billion in school construction funds stripped out of the bill at the insistence of Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), one of the three GOP votes in the Senate. These funds would have supported roughly 250,000 additional jobs. Further, the final version also included the nearly $70 billion cost of a one-year extension of the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT) ‘patch’-- a provision that provided no stimulus at all, since it was done literally every single year, but which was included to woo another GOP senator, Olympia Snowe. If this amount could instead have been spent on productive stimulus, it could have created roughly 750,000 jobs. In short, just luring the minimal GOP votes needed to pass ARRA in the Senate likely kept it from supporting or creating nearly a million more jobs than it did.

What Republicans did after the stimulus passed was even more destructive. They coordinated their messaging and began calling it “the failed stimulus” before it even went into effect. That talking point was supplemented by millions in political advertising calling the stimulus “failed” and “reckless.”

...In March of 2013, the Wall Street Journal‘s Phil Izzo estimated that federal, state and local governments employed 950,000 fewer Americans than in June of 2009. Without those cuts, he estimated the unemployment rate would be .6 percent lower, meaning today it would be a flat 7 percent. A Brookings study suggests the unemployment rate could be as low as 6.1 percent if not for cuts.

Yale University’s Ben Polak and Peter K. Schott confirm that we’ve experienced “unprecedented austerity at the level of state and local governments, and this austerity has slowed the job recovery.”

...No Republican president has balanced a budget since Dwight Eisenhower. A Republican president and Congress took a budget surplus and grew the deficit at a startling pace-- Bush Jr.’s final year in office left a deficit of well over a trillion dollars. Despite all this, Republicans decided they were the voice of fiscal reason and President Obama, who grew government at a slower rate than any president since Eisenhower, was busting open your grandchild’s piggy bank to buy beers for Solyndra.

Overwhelmed by impressive message discipline, Democrats bought into the “family budget” analogy Republicans used to justify cuts: What’s the first thing your family does in a crisis? Cut back! But I might cut back on my family’s nuclear weapons first.

And then there were the GOP shenanigans with the debt ceiling and the Sequester. It's the kind of thorough and independent reporting I've come to depend on the National Memo for-- what a lot of people used to think Huffington Post would be all about before they were all about... well, you know. Anyway, I was more than a little surprised to see an editorial in the NY Times over the weekend finally making many of the same points-- that congressional Republicans are sabotaging the efficient and orderly functioning of government-- even if Andrew Rosenthal choses not to speculate on their transparently ugly motives.

Filibuster Abuse: The practice of halting Senate deliberation is an old one, practiced by both parties, but the current Republican caucus has taken it to new heights. They have filibustered an unprecedented number of President Obama’s nominees. The District Court for Washington, D.C., perhaps the most important appeals court in the land, has four of its 11 seats vacant. The last time the Senate confirmed a judge was in 2006. The Republicans have filibustered all of Mr. Obama’s nominees because Republicans simply don’t want him to appoint any judges to a currently conservative court, which rules on appeals involving federal regulatory agencies, and which has exclusive jurisdiction over national security matters.

Boycotting: Also known as taking your marbles and going home, the most recent example came on Thursday, when Republicans refused to attend a meeting of the Environment and Public Works Committee, thereby blocking the nomination of Gina McCarthy as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. They claimed they were not completely satisfied with her answers to the more than 1,000 questions they dumped on her in the confirmation process. In addition to stymying Mr. Obama, holding up her nomination has the great virtue of hamstringing the E.P.A., which the right thinks shouldn’t exist in the first place. And that leads us to the next G.O.P. tactic:

Denial of services: Some government agencies require a certain number of members, or a permanent chief, to operate. If the Republicans don’t like those agencies, they simply make sure those positions never get filled. For instance, the National Labor Relations Board, which Republicans loathe because it protects workers, requires a quorum to take action. So the Republicans refused to confirm Mr. Obama’s nominees. Then they held fake pro-forma sessions during their vacations to try to prevent him from making recess appointments. He did that anyway and the Republican-packed D.C. appeals court (see above) ruled that the appointments were illegitimate-- which could invalidate scores of decisions. The Republicans are playing this same trick with the Federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which was created in response to the wildly reckless actions that led to the financial collapse of 2008.

Investigate again and again and again: When Darrell Issa, took over the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform after the G.O.P. won the House majority in 2010, he said he wanted to hold “seven hearings a week times 40 weeks.” His supposed reason was that Mr. Obama is “corrupt.” That’s a frequent Republican talking point, but it’s so obviously ridiculous that I wonder if they actually believe it. In any case, the real reason is that endless “investigative” hearings cause trouble and distract administration officials from their actual jobs. The hearings on Benghazi, for example, have revealed none of the impeachable offenses that Republicans claimed would come to light. They have kept Congress and the administration focused on what happened in Libya eight months ago, which was awful, rather than on what is happening there today, which is awful.

Refuse to negotiate: Republicans in Congress used to complain that the Senate Democrats hadn’t produced a budget in the last four years. But recently the Democrats did just that. So the Republicans abandoned their old talking point and are now refusing to form a conference committee to reconcile the Senate budget with the House budget.

Is There Recourse When A Political Party Decides To Sabotage The Economy To Undermine The Country?

When I retired from my job at Warner Bros, one of the happiest thoughts I had is that I would never have to go to a Grammy Awards show again-- nor anything like it-- and never have to be a prop in the audience in someone's lame TV extravaganza. All those shows made me sick and I had to go to all of them. However... there was only one I actually did like and that was the U.K. version of the Grammies, the BRIT Awards. I was at the 1998 version, the night before my birthday at the London Arena, primarily to support Fleetwood Mac, who were performing and getting an Outstanding Contribution to Music Award, or something like that. I had a table right up front for the event, right next to Cherie Blair, Prime Minister Tony Blair's wife.

I recall a band with a catchy tune I had barely heard of getting up to play a song, the one Ezra referenced in the video about the American economy Friday night (in the video above), "Tubthumping (I Get Knocked Down, But I Get Up Again)." Chumbawumba were an anarchist punk band and they were wearing t-shirts that said "Sold out" and "Labour whore" and changed the lyrics of their hit song to "New Labour sold out the dockers, just like they sold out the rest of us." Sitting right across from me at Cherie's table was Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, basking in the glory of how Labour wasn't Margaret Thatcher but was hip and cool enough to be hobnobbing with the pop stars. Unfortunately for Prescott, people were becoming aware that Labour-- or at least Blair's New Labour actually was Margaret Thatcher (just a slightly defanged, less bloodthirsty version). Labour had just decided to not support the striking Liverpool dockworkers, inspiring Chumba singer/guitarist Danbert Nobacon to jump up on the table and empty a bucket of ice water on his head. Nothing like that has ever happened-- nor could ever happen-- at the staid old boring, hideous Grammies, where "politics" is a no-no.

Now the point of Ezra's rant that brought up Chumbawumba (several times), the Scarborough/Krugman debate on the Charlie Rose Show and Venn diagrams, is that the Austerity-minded Republicans are sabotaging the American economy. And they are. There's no question about it. Perhaps it's unfair to assign motivation but you can't seriously dispute that John Boehner and Miss McConnell are undermining growth and literally doing everything they can to drive up unemployment numbers. That's what they do; that's what they are-- the sworn enemies of working families. And what about the Democrats? Glad you asked.

The progressives in Congress have some ideas for growing the economy and gradually decreasing the deficit at the same time. The Big Money behind the Democratic Party does not like what they've been hearing from these guys and gals. And they've made a massive push-- along with elements of the Beltway political Establishment-- to empower a more Big Business-oriented faction, the New Dems, very much like Blair's New Labour, or failed U.S. attempts to undermine progressive ideals within the Democratic Party in the past (DLC, Blue Dogs, Boll Weevils, Bourbon Democrats, Dixiecrats). So will Al Barr or Ken Casey jump up on a table and pour a bucket of water over hipster Joe Crowley, Allyson Schwartz, Jim Himes, Rick Larsen or Ron Kind, the corporate whores at the heart of the New Dem take-over of the House Democratic Caucus? [If you didn't click on that "hipster Joe Crowley" link, you missed something none of your friends know about.]

Voters need to start understanding that not all Democratic members of Congress are Democrats the way we think of Democrats. Blue Dogs and New Dems are, basically, your father's Republican Party. Backed by the Village, they have a mission-- a Grand Bargain with the Republicans that pushes the failed European Austerity agenda. Robert Reich discusses it with Ezra in the video above-- although they both just blame the Republicans. But lifelong Republican (opportunistically calling himself a "Democrat" now) Patrick Murphy rounded up a band of naive freshmen Democrats to start sacrificing working families on the alter of Republican Austerity. Last week Tom Edsall went a long way towards explaining why Obama shouldn't cut Social Security and Medicare in a smart NY Times column. There's no support in the country, among actual Americans outside the Beltway, for these cuts. Edsall even as a suggestion of what the Democrats ought to do instead:

So why don’t we talk about raising or eliminating the cap-- a measure that has strong popular, though not elite, support?

When asked by the National Academy of Social Insurance whether Social Security taxes for better-off Americans should be increased, 71 percent of Republicans and 97 percent of Democrats agreed. In a 2012 Gallup Poll, 62 percent of respondents thought upper-income Americans paid too little in taxes.

Medicare, in turn, is financed by a flat 1.45 percent tax on the first $200,000 of earnings for a single person and $250,000 for a married couple, matched by the employer, after which it rises by a modest 0.9 percent on all income above the $200,000 and $250,000 levels.

...As 10,000 baby boomers turn 65 every day, 72 percent of them are currently without the protection of a defined benefit pension plan, which leaves growing numbers dependent on inadequately funded 401(k) and other voluntary (defined contribution) plans to keep their heads above water.

Cutting benefits is frequently discussed in the halls of Congress, in research institutes and by analysts and columnists. The idea of subjecting earned income over $113,700 to the Social Security payroll tax and making the Medicare tax more progressive-- steps that would affect only the relatively affluent-- is largely missing from the policy conversation.

The Washington cognoscenti are more inclined to discuss two main approaches that are far less costly for the affluent: means-testing of benefits and raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. (Sidenote: policy makers and national journalists who weigh in on this issue generally earn more than $113,700 a year.) Means-testing and raising the age of eligibility as methods of cutting spending appeal to ideological conservatives for a number of reasons.

First, insofar as benefits for the affluent are reduced or eliminated under means-testing, social insurance programs are no longer universal and are seen, instead, as a form of welfare. Public support would almost certainly decline, encouraging further cuts in the future.

Second, the focus on means-testing and raising the age of eligibility diverts attention from a much simpler and more equitable approach: raising the payroll tax to apply to the earnings of the well-to-do, a step strongly opposed by the ideological right.

Third, and most important in terms of the policy debate, while both means-testing and eliminating the $113,700 cap on earnings subject to the payroll tax hurt the affluent, the latter would inflict twice as much pain.

The C.B.O. estimates that elimination of the payroll earnings cap would cost the well-to-do the equivalent of 0.6 percent of Gross Domestic Product, while substantially reducing Social Security payments to the top third of the income distribution, through means testing, would only cost those better off recipients the equivalent of 0.1 percent of G.D.P.

...In the rarefied community that sets many of the terms of national policy making, a recurring theme is the notion that the federal government is subsidizing the “good life” of the nation’s elderly at the expense of needed investments in young people, in infrastructure and in innovation.

...In this kind of conflict over limited goods, one of the most valuable resources that can get lost in the fray is the wisdom of the electorate at large. In this case, the electorate is pointing toward progressive tax increases for those closer to the top far more readily than members of the political class, for whom high-earners are a crucial source of campaign contributions.

The very nature of the basic security Americans are entitled to is at stake.

It's a losing argument economically and politically. Democrats shouldn't be stampeding into making it in the false name of bipartisanship. New Labour was thumped and the New Dems, if they make the same mistake again, will be as well. By the way, and apropos of nothing at all, here's my favorite version of "Tubthumping," one that didn't get much play in America. I dedicate it to... Ezra:

When There's Sabotage, What Happens To The Saboteurs?

The evidence has been front and center for anyone who's wanted to look at it and we've been asserting it for more than two years but the media is finally starting to ask if the Republicans deliberately crashed the U.S. economy. Yesterday the most respected national newspaper in Britain, The Guardian went right to it with their columnist, Michael Cohen, asserting that "the GOP has blocked pro-growth policy and backed job-killing austerity-- all while blaming Obama." Democrats, he writes, are finally starting to say in public "what many have been mumbling privately for years-- Republicans are so intent on defeating President Obama for re-election that they are purposely sabotaging the country's economic recovery." Miss McConnell's infamous from two years ago is usually the jumping-off point for the argument: "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president."

Such words lead some to the conclusion that Republicans will do anything, including short-circuiting the economy, in order to hurt Obama politically. Considering that presidents– and rarely opposition parties– are held electorally responsible for economic calamity, it's not a bad political strategy.

Then again, it's a hard accusation to prove: after all, one person's economic sabotage is another person's principled anti-government conservatism.

Beyond McConnell's words, though, there is circumstantial evidence to make the case. Republicans have opposed a lion's share of stimulus measures that once they supported, such as a payroll tax break, which they grudgingly embraced earlier this year. Even unemployment insurance, a relatively uncontroversial tool for helping those in an economic downturn, has been consistently held up by Republicans or used as a bargaining chip for more tax cuts. Ten years ago, prominent conservatives were loudly making the case for fiscal stimulus to get the economy going; today, they treat such ideas like they're the plague.

Traditionally, during economic recessions, Republicans have been supportive of loose monetary policy. Not this time. Rather, Republicans have upbraided Ben Bernanke, head of the Federal Reserve, for even considering policies that focus on growing the economy and creating jobs.

And then, there is the fact that since the original stimulus bill passed in February of 2009, Republicans have made practically no effort to draft comprehensive job creation legislation. Instead, they continue to pursue austerity policies, which reams of historical data suggest harms economic recovery and does little to create jobs. In fact, since taking control of the House of Representatives in 2011, Republicans have proposed hardly a single major jobs bill that didn't revolve, in some way, around their one-stop solution for all the nation's economic problems: more tax cuts.

Still, one can certainly argue-- and Republicans do-- that these steps are all reflective of conservative ideology. If you view government as a fundamentally bad actor, then stopping government expansion is, on some level, consistent.

So, let's put aside the conspiracy theories for a moment, and look more closely at how the country is faring under the GOP's economic leadership.

As Paul Krugman wrote earlier this week, in the New York Times, while a Democrat rests his head each night in the White House, the United States is currently operating with a Republican economy. After winning the House of Representatives in 2010, the GOP brokered a deal to keep the Bush tax cuts in place, which has reduced the tax burden as a percentage of GDP to its lowest point since Harry Truman sat in the White House. At the insistence of the White House, Congress also agreed to extend unemployment benefits and enact a payroll tax cut-- measures that provided a small but important stimulus to the economy, but above all, maintained the key GOP position that taxes must never go up.

But as Congress giveth, Congress also taketh. The GOP's zealotry on tax cuts is only matched by its zealotry in pursuing austerity policies. In the spring of 2011, federal spending cuts forced by Republican legislators took much-needed money out of the economy: combined with the 2012 budget, it has largely counteracted the positive benefits provided by the 2009 stimulus.

Subsequently, the GOP's refusal to countenance legislation that would help states with their own fiscal crises (largely, the result of declining tax revenue) has led to massive public sector layoffs at the state and local level. In fact, since Obama took office, state and local governments have shed 611,000 jobs; and by some measures, if not for these jobs, cuts the unemployment rate today would be closer to 7%, not its current 8.2%. In 2010 and 2011, 457,00 public sector jobs were excised; not coincidentally, at the same time, much of the federal stimulus aid from 2009 ran out. And Republicans took over control of Congress.

These cuts have a larger societal impact. When teachers are laid off, for example (and nearly 200,000 have lost their jobs), it means larger class sizes, other teachers being overworked and after-school classes being cancelled. So, ironically, a policy that is intended to save "our children and grandchildren" from "crushing debt" is leaving them worse-prepared for the actual economic and social challenges they will face in the future. In addition, with states operating under tighter fiscal budgets-- and getting no hope relief from Washington-- it means less money for essential government services, like help for the elderly, the poor and the disabled.

This is the most obvious example of how austerity policies are not only harming America's present, but also imperilling its future. And these spending cuts on the state and local level are matched by a complete lack of fiscal expansion on the federal level. In fact, fiscal policy is now a drag on the recovery, which is the exact opposite of how it should work, given a sluggish economy.

This collection of more-harm-than-good policies must also include last summer's debt limit debacle, which House speaker John Boehner has threatened to renew this year. This was yet another GOP initiative that undermined the economic recovery. According to economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, "over the entire episode, confidence declined more than it did following the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc in 2008." Only after the crisis did the consumer confidence stabilize, but employers "held back on hiring, sapping momentum from a recovery that remains far too fragile." In addition, the debt limit deal also forced more unhelpful spending cuts on the country.

Since that national embarrassment, Republicans have refused to even allow votes on President Obama's jobs bill in the Senate; they dragged their feet on the aforementioned payroll tax and even now are holding up a transportation bill with poison-pill demands for the White House on environmental regulation.

Yet, with all these tales of economic ineptitude emanating from the GOP, it is Obama who is bearing most of the blame for the country's continued poor economic performance.

Whether you believe the Republicans are engaging in purposely destructive fiscal behavior or are simply fiscally incompetent, it almost doesn't matter. It most certainly is bad economic policy and that should be part of any national debate not only on who is to blame for the current economic mess, but also what steps should be taken to get out from underneath it.

Will voters believe it? Well, partisan Democrats will. Partisan Republicans will as well, since it's exactly what they demanded of their elected representatives. Bit what about everyone else? What about all the passive voters in the middle. It's quite a charge for people who haven't been following along closely or for folks have been listening to Hate Talk Radio on the way to work or watching Fox when they get home. And, besides, if Republicans have been committing sabotage and destroying the economy, why aren't they being charged with something? There are no indictments, no trials, no Republicans languishing in prison cells for economic treason. More he said/she said. And what it comes down to, is who can say it louder and more persuasively-- and that takes money. Which, brings us back to Citizens United and the role of the billionaires who are seeking to take firmer control of the U.S. government. A plug: if you want to see how this ends, almost inevitably, pick up a copy of Stephen Goldstein's delightful new book, Atlas Drugged, which demonstrates, quite graphically, what happens when a democratic society decides to go along with the rantings and raving of the prophets of Greed and Selfishness and follow the Jim DeMints, Eric Cantors, Rand Pauls, and, most ominously, Mitt Romneys. Fortunately, it's written in an entertaining manner-- helps take the sting off sheer terror.

What's The Appropriate Punishment For Sabotage?

Before President Obama was even inaugurated the Party of Plutocracy (and of die-hard racism) had resolved to prevent an economic recovery and in all ways to obstruct an orderly functioning of government in order to prevent a successful first term and thereby to prevent a second. Some, like Miss McConnell, Jim DeMint and Jon Kyle were quite public about their intentions while others, like Eric Cantor, tried keeping the GOP's nefarious intentions and stratagems against the country under wraps. But it would be literally impossible to have not noticed that this has been the Republican strategy since 2009. Obstructionism is the name of the game they have played and continue to play. Their Foxified base, brainwashed by Hate Talk radio will never hold them accountable for their perfidy and betrayal. But now even the mainstream media is unable to ignore it any longer. Over the weekend, AP ran a feature that asked Is GOP Trying To Sabotage Economy To Hurt Obama>.

Are Republican lawmakers deliberately stalling the economic recovery to hurt President Barack Obama's re-election chances? Some top Democrats say yes, pointing to GOP stances on the debt limit and other issues that they claim are causing unnecessary economic anxiety and retarding growth.

The latest Democratic complaint came after House Speaker John Boehner said Tuesday that when Congress raises the nation's borrowing cap in early 2013, he will again insist on big spending cuts to offset the increase. Boehner, R-Ohio, continues to reject higher tax rates, which Democrats demand from the wealthy.

That led Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to say Boehner is virtually assuring another debt-ceiling crisis as bad or worse than the one that shook financial markets nine months ago.

"The last thing the country needs is a rerun of last summer's debacle that nearly brought down our economy," Schumer said in a statement. In an interview, Schumer added: "I hope that the speaker is not doing this because he doesn't want to see the economy improve, because what he said will certainly rattle the markets."

...Regardless of whether Schumer's suspicions are right, there's evidence that unceasing partisan gridlock and the prospect of big tax increases and spending cuts in January are causing some companies to postpone expansions. Even small economic slowdowns are bad news for Obama, who is seeking re-election amid high unemployment.

The Washington Post this past week compiled a list of military contractors, hospitals and universities that are delaying hires and bracing for cuts, partly because of fears that Washington's partisan divisions will not abate.

The most obvious showdown will happen soon after the Nov. 6 election. Unless a lame-duck Congress can make deals, the economy will suffer a double whammy of large tax increases and spending cuts, starting Jan. 1. The tax increases would hit virtually every working American and the spending cuts would affect military and domestic programs.

...Schumer and other top Democrats have said for months that GOP lawmakers may be trying to strangle the economic recovery for political reasons.

"Their strategy is to suffocate the economy for the sake of what they think will be a political victory," Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, wrote in an email to supporters last October, when Congress was debating a jobs bill.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said his Republican counterpart was not cooperating on that legislation "in hopes that he can get my job, perhaps."

Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley, chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, told The Associated Press last year that some GOP lawmakers, "through their intransigence, cleverly set up a situation for America's economy to fail, either by needlessly driving us to default, or needlessly driving us into massive public-sector layoffs."

Federal, state and local government layoffs have been under way for months. They may be necessary to reduce deficits and survive recessions. But they increase unemployment, a problem for any president seeking a second term.

Since February 2010, when the economy began consistently adding jobs, the private sector has gained 4.2 million positions. But federal, state and local governments during that time have cut more than 500,000 jobs.

House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California did not ascribe partisan motives to Boehner's latest warnings about the next debt ceiling showdown. But she said he may be unnecessarily hurting the economy. "It already can be damaging, just the fact that it's brought up," Pelosi told reporters Thursday.

More Democrats need to run more ads like this one that Eric Griego (D-NM) ran last week-- they need to run them, and like Griego, they need to mean it:

Bob McDonnell's Try Out For VP Goes Over Like A Lead Balloon

Not that it should be unexpected, but one of the weirdest claims coming out of the right-wing cadre of Republican governors these days-- you know, the guys who are firing public employees as fast as they can-- is that the economic recovery isn't because of anything Obama is doing but because of their policies. That would be like Mitt Romney, who advocated letting the car companies go bankrupt, taking credit for Detroit's successful turnaround. Virginia winger, and VP hopeful, Bob McDonnell has been the most vocal about the claims. “Look, I’m glad the economy is starting to recover, but I think it’s because of what Republican governors are doing in their states, not because of the president,” McDonnell said on CNN’s State of the Union. An odd and insupportable claim, considering that the recovery is weakest in the red states that have fired so many public employees.

The Virginia governor unleashed a comprehensive broadside against Obama’s economic record and governance in his first term. “It’s been a complete failure of leadership,” he said. “He cannot run on his record. He’s had no plan for jobs or energy that he’s got passed, so he’s got a tough record.”

The remarks came just two days after the Labor Department revealed the U.S. economy added 243,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, a development that was widely heralded as good political news for Obama.

The intricacy of McDonnell’s argument is noteworthy: He didn’t say jobs are created on the state level, as opposed to the federal level. He said the improvements happened because of Republican governors. That’s a difficult argument to make when the recovery is taking hold across the country, even in states with Democratic governors.

It’s also problematic because Republicans have been eager to give Obama ownership of the economy. But McDonnell’s trial balloon suggests that if the economic indicators continue to tick upward, the 2012 elections could shift from a battle over who’s to blame for a weak economy to who deserves credit for an improving one.

As Steve Benen pointed out yesterday from his new perch at Rachel Maddow's blog, "the more one scrutinizes McDonnell's new talking points, the less persuasive they appear. To hear the Virginia governor tell it, the economy is improving because of Republican governors, but whether McDonnell likes it or not, the current evidence points to a national recovery. There are 20 Democratic governors, including Democratic chief executives in two of nation's three largest states, and their economies are improving, too.

For that matter, there's ample reason to believe McDonnell has it backwards. One of the factors holding back the economy over the last year is the shrinking public sector, and the deliberate layoffs of thousands of government employees. Governors from both parties have contributed to this-- since states can't run deficits, they generally haven't had much of a choice-- but it's the GOP governors who've put austerity measures at the top of their respective to-do lists.

That doesn't boost the economy; it does the opposite.

Indeed, there's a degree of irony hearing McDonnell make the argument in the first place: thanks to money his state receives from Washington, Virginia has seen its government payrolls grow, even while most states slash public-sector jobs.

As you can see in the important video above, the Republican Party has blatantly sabotaged President Obama's attempts to repair the damage conservatives have done to the economy. The latest polling, though, shows the public turning against them.

·         -68 percent believe the tax code is rigged in favor of the wealthy, including 56 percent who strongly believe so

·         -72 percent support raising taxes on millionaires, including 59 percent who strongly support it (both numbers also include majorities of Republicans).

·         -Two-thirds believe that Romney is NOT paying his fair share in taxes

·         -The president leads Romney on the issue of taxes 52 percent to 42 percent

·         -On the issue of who people trust to “protect the middle class,” the president leads Romney 55 percent to 37 percent

·         -Of those who have heard about it or read it, 57 percent approved of what they heard in the State of the Union address.

Sure, Republican politicians would rather see the President fail than watch him get any credit for helping Americans get back to work. Media Matter's case in that clip is airtight.

Americans are demanding action to create jobs.

• Americans believe creating jobs should be our leaders' top priority.

• Americans support creating jobs to fix our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools; putting teachers, firefighters, and cops back to work; and cutting the payroll tax for all working families and small business owners.

President Obama's jobs plan would create jobs.

• President Obama's American Jobs Act would create 2 million jobs.

* It puts Americans back to work right away rebuilding our crumbling roads, bridges, and schools.

* It puts our firefighters and police officers back on the job and keeps 400,000 teachers in our classrooms.

* His payroll tax cut puts money directly in the pockets of middle-class Americans and small businesses, putting more customers in our stores and making hiring new workers more affordable.

But Republicans are standing in the way.

• Every single Republican voted against the American Jobs Act and then voted to lay off teachers, firefighters, and cops just to save millionaires half a penny on the dollar in taxes.

Even though these are ideas they've supported and admitted will create jobs.

• The President's jobs plan is filled with practical ideas that Republicans have supported in the past and admit will create jobs, like tax credits for companies that hire out-of-work veterans and investing in our nation's infrastructure.

Instead, Republicans have voted to kill jobs.

• In the first half of this year alone, Republicans in Congress tried to kill nearly 7 million jobs.

• When asked about the potential for more job losses, Speaker John Boehner said, "so be it."

The motive for their agenda should be obvious.

• As Republican leader Mitch McConnell admitted, "The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." 

The Republicans have been doing everything in their power to destroy the economy and seize the government again. They're getting gigantic resources from criminal oligarchs like the Kochs, Foster Friess and Sheldon Adelson to bankroll these efforts. And they've been helped by corrupted, conservative forces inside the Democratic Party, Blue Dogs, New Dems and like-minded trash. If there's any chance for our country and our democracy, it's empowering progressives-- real progressives-- to take control of Congress. Blue America is trying to help that along and you can too-- here in the House and here in the Senate.

No Shame-- None At All: GOP Continues To Purposefully Wreck The Economy To Hurt Obama's Reelection Chances

Unless you accidentally wandered over here looking for mediocre TV show DWTS or mediocre Democratic Party operative DWSTweets, instead of DWT, you've no doubt seen Ken and I railing about the perfidy of Republican elected officials trying-- in many cases successfully-- to undercut the economy of the country and the financial well-being of their own constituents, in the hopes of turning voters against President Obama, a strategy that has borne them some fruit. Yesterday Michael Tomasky explained in no uncertain terms why so many people now think of them as the party of predators.

The four GOP congressional leaders-- John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, Eric Cantor, and Jon Kyl-- sent a letter to Fed chair Ben Bernanke warning him against further intervention in the economy. They released the letter the day before the Fed is to announce its next steps Wednesday afternoon. “We have serious concerns,” the letter said, “that further intervention by the Federal Reserve could exacerbate current problems or further harm the U.S. economy.” What that sentence actually means, of course, is that they have serious concerns that an interventionist monetary policy might help the economy in the next 14 months, and thereby help Barack Obama’s reelection chances. ... [T]he Republicans have now covered both bases. Their first dose of poison to the economy has been to ensure that the federal government can’t do anything via legislation to spur economic growth and activity. As with the sentence from the letter above, the way to translate Republican-speak is to assume that the truth is the exact opposite of what they say. So when they say things like “the government can’t create jobs,” they actually know very well that the government can create jobs and can do so rather efficiently and easily, provided that Congress passes, say, a bill providing direct funding for jobs, which could put millions of people to work. So their task, in the name of preventing a Democrat from being a successful president, has been to ensure that Congress do all it can to keep the economy in dismal shape.

And now comes the second dose. If the government can’t create jobs legislatively, then perhaps it can do so through monetary policy. This letter very clearly is meant to pressure Bernanke not to try anything sneaky that might actually lower the unemployment rate before the election. From Robert Reich, on his blog: “To say it’s unusual for a political party to try to influence the Fed is an understatement. When I was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton Administration, it was considered a serious breach of etiquette—not to say potentially economically disastrous—even to comment publicly about the Fed. Everyone understood how important it is to shield the nation’s central bank from politics.”

In the face of things like this, it’s supposed to be controversial that Obama has decided to stop trying to meet the Republicans halfway? Meeting today’s GOP halfway is like letting a sexual predator take your clothes off. You haven’t been touched yet, but things are unlikely to end happily for you.

Ari Berman made much the same point in The Nation yesterday, starting with Miss McConnell's infamous exercise in self-exposure right after the 2010 election. "The single most important thing we want to achieve," he lisped menacingly, "is for President Obama to be a one-term president." Berman writes what most astute observers have seen for months: "Those words have become the guiding light for Congressional Republicans, and explain nearly every decision the GOP has made since the last election. The better the economy performs, the more likely it is that Obama will be re-elected. The longer the recession lasts, the better the chance that McConnell will get his wish. And it goes beyond sabotaging his new jobs program and his proposal to bring taxes for those making over a million dollars a year into some kind of semi-fairness range where they would have to pay the same rates as middle class workers.

With Congress eternally deadlocked because of Republican obstructionism, the Fed is perhaps the only institution that can still give the economy a boost.

The Fed, of course, is supposed to be politically independent and should pursue policies that are in the best interest of the American economy regardless of political pressure. But if those policies happen to improve the economy, which in turn improves Obama’s political standing, then Republicans will predictably resort to their default strategy: just say no.

Late yesterday the Fed basically told the right-wing leaders to take their transparent threats and go suck a lemon. They announced they'll be buying $400 billion in Treasury bonds, which will further lower interest rates and boost the economy by making it easier for businesses to borrow money.

This is now playing out politically with the Rick Perry wing of the GOP, especially a certain eager beaver who would like to avoid a bruising reelection battle and run for VP instead, jumping on board the doomed Ponzi Scheme Special. After initially refusing to go all the way with Perry, Paul Ryan is now an out-and-out Ponzi Schemer. (So is Tom Tancredo's equally psychotic replacement in Colorado, Mike Coffman, an extremist with one of the savviest progressives in Colorado, Joe Miklosi as an opponent.)

On Capitol Hill, it seems they just can’t stop saying “Ponzi Scheme.”

Mitt Romney’s not the only one imploring his fellow Republicans to, please, stop calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme. The one-time establishment GOP superstar Mitch Daniels did it this week, in an interview with the New York Times. Here’s what that sounded like:

“If there’s a problem with ‘Ponzi scheme,’ it is that it’s too frank, not that it’s wrong,” Daniels said. There’s polling to back him up.

Republicans polled by Gallup recently didn’t have a problem with calling Social Security a Ponzi Scheme (which for the record, it totally isn’t). But independents did, and there are signs that Rick Perry’s continued use of the term could hurt his electability.

So, Romney and Daniels (and others) say, don’t go near it. Apparently nobody told Capitol Hill.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), who already dragged the GOP through a tough entitlement fight over his House Republican budget package, picked up on the phrase today on the Laura Ingraham radio show.

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) joined in on the fun, too. While analyzing one of the presidential debates on radio TV recently, Coffman picked up on the shift in Perry’s rhetoric on Social Security-- namely from “it’s unconstitutional” to “I’m going to fix it and protect it forever”-- and praised it, while also jumping feet-first into the it’s a Ponzi Scheme camp.

Rep. Miklosi was more than a little shocked that Coffman would endanger the vital interests of so many people in the area around Denver they both represent. "Since being elected," he told us this morning, "my opponent has pursued a radical social agenda and served as an obstructionist to all else. He voted twice to destroy Medicare and now he's attacking Social Security. It is hauntingly hypocritical for someone to oppose a woman's choice in every instance, yet so carelessly cast aside a proven and vital lifeline to our seniors."

Late yesterday Boehner had a resolution on the floor, H.R. 2608, sponsored by Sam Graves (R-MO) and Nydia Velazquez (D-NY), which amends part B of title IV of the Social Security Act to extend the child and family services program through 2016. All 184 Democrats voted YES, as did 211 Republicans, so it passed, overwhelmingly 395-25. Many of the worst hard-core right-wing extremists, the ones hell-bent on wrecking the social safety net and abolishing Medicare and Social Security even if it were to mean electoral defeat, voted against it, deranged sociopaths like Virginia Foxx (R-NC), Joe Walsh (R-IL), Paul Broun (John Birch Society-GA) and Scott Garrett (R-NJ). Michele Bachmann and Ron Paul were running around making believe they're running for president, so neither voted-- nor did the new sociopath just elected from NY-9 (Bob Turner). But here's the list of the 25 Republicans who voted today, in effect, to end Social Security:

Justin Amash (R-MI)
Paul Broun (R-GA)
John Campbell (R-CA)
Jason Chaffetz (R-UT)
Jeff Duncan (R-SC)
Jimmy Duncan (R-TN)
Jeff Flake (R-AZ)
Virginia Foxx (R-NC)
Scott Garrett (R-NJ)
Trey Gowdy (R-SC)
Tom Graves (R-GA)
Tim Huelskamp (R-KS)
Bill Huizenga (R-MI)
Jim Jordan (R-OH)
Raul Labrador (R-ID)
Doug Lamborn (R-CO)
Cynthia Lummis (R-WY)
Tom McClintock (R-CA)
Mick Mulvaney (R-SC)
Ted Poe (R-TX)
Tim Scott (R-SC)
Austin Scott (R-GA)
Sensenbrenner (R-WI)
Marlin Stutzman (R-IN)
Joe Walsh (R-IL)