Rachel Maddow Show May 23, 2012

Rachel Maddow Show

The show features Maddow’s take on the biggest stories of the day, including issues in the news that most of the media may have underplayed or overlooked. The show airs 9 p.m. ET weeknights on MSNBC.

May 23, 2012

Check Out the Facts!

May 21, 2012

Cuts + Tax Brks + Invest vs Cuts + Tax Brks for Wealthy?

Speaking in Shelby Township, MI, the former Massachusetts governor took a question about the Simpson-Bowles fiscal commission empaneled by President Obama to address the nation’s deficit and debt issues. In his response, he said that addressing taxes and spending issues are essential.

“If you just cut, if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy,” he said in part of his response. “So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”

Governor Quinn of Illinois like many other governors, Democrat or Republican, across this nation is cutting government spending with an ax to chop away any spending he feels is no longer needed, instead of using a scalpel to carefully slice away excess spending without causing major damage to the main blood vessels of our economy.  Besides taking money away from citizens by cutting their benefits they are taking money away from the economy because those folks will no longer have money to spend on much needed items like clothes, appliances, home repairs, car repairs, entertainment, etc…  They also are also taking way the tools the middle/lower class need to rebuild America for future generations.

Our leaders have swallowed the bait from the radical Right and Left wing once again.  The Right wingers say jobs are lacking because those that create jobs have too many regulations against them, not enougjh tax breaks and worry about the spending government is doing.  The famous “Trickle Down Economics” theory.  The idea that tax breaks or other economic benefits provided by government to businesses and the wealthy will benefit poorer members of society by improving the economy as a whole…  If the top income earners are taxed less that they will invest more into the business infrastructure which will in turn lead to more goods at lower prices, and create more jobs for middle and lower class individuals.

The extreme Left wingers think that cutting the defense budget, raising the minimum wage and taxing the wealthy is the way to go, use the money to pay down the debt and invest in rebuilding America’s infrastructure - that will create jobs.

They are both right to a certain degree; but without the mainstream Democrats and Republicans in charge in Congress we can no longer use the best of both ideas.  Congress is currently filled with the extreme Right and Left winged politicians.  Getting rid of them, or at the very least pushing them to the side lines is the first big job we as Americans must tackle.

History shows us the way to go but as usual each Party ignores the lessons learned from their own Party’s mistakes.

Tax cuts: The past 40 years we’ve seen top bracket’s income tax rate, from 91% in 1963 to 35% in 2003.  It went as low as 28% in 1988 and 1989 due to legislation passed under Reagan, the trickle-down theory’s most famous adherent. The Clinton years saw the top bracket hold steady at a higher rate of 39.6%.  We’ve had 12 years of nothing but tax cuts yet unemployment is still high.   Tax cuts do not create growth in our economy or jobs, they havent for the past 50 years why would they now?  Two of the three years with the highest growth were during the 1950s, when the top tax rate was 91%.  During the Clinton years with a rate of 39% we still ended up with a budget surplus, first in decades.  Hourly wages also grew more when taxes are higher.   Tax cuts alone do not create jobs.  They do however increase the deficit.  We have even more recent proof of this, the past 12 years.  Not only did deficit go away under more taxes, the debt also decreased during those years.

Cutting Spending: Massive cuts to spending will hurt the economy.  Jobs are lost and that means less income for consumers to spend money at local stores which also means less revenue for the government.  For example, 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.  That’s an increase in unemployment folks.  A half a million people are either now broke or living on unemployment which equals less income for consumer spending.  Cutting benefits or programs also causes loss of income.  You make people pay more for college for example, that’s less income to spend at your local Walmart or County Market.  While cutting spending may ‘sound’ nice, it apparently hurts more then it helps – if you aren’t careful in the way you approach doing it.  As the first paragraph of this post shows, even Mitt Romney agrees that cutting spending alone will only hurt our economy.  Federal Reserve Chairman, Ben Bernanke recently said, “Don’t make a bad economy worse with big short-term spending cuts”.  This coming from a Republican.

Rebuilding America: Investing more money to rebuild our infrastructure means increasing our debt.  Some of the jobs that it creates may only be temporary.

All three options should be taken and merged as one package, not just one or the other. 

President Obama has pushed for a little bit of all three since taking office.  He’s given more tax cuts then any other President in history to individuals, he’s given businesses several tax cuts as well.  His administration has also cut spending and has offered to cut Defense, Medicare and Social Security as well in exchange for tax increases on the millionaires.  With his very first move in office he invested money into rebuilding America while at the same time saving or creating over 4 million jobs.  By doing so they saved us from going into a Great Depression again.  He and the Democratic Party did the bulk of all this ‘alone’.  Virtually every Republican refused to vote for anything except for tax cuts for the wealthy.

The federal government broke its record deficit streak in April, notching its first monthly surplus since the end of the Bush administration, according to preliminary estimates released Monday.

While the economy is still fighting it’s way back reports prove it is improving, going in the right direction.  Unemployment is below 7% in over 26 of our states now.  4 States have unemployment less than 4%.  Nearly half of the country is at 8.1% or less.  Why screw this up with more of the same policies that got us to a near Depression and into the GREAT RECESSION to begin with?

Now we hear that the Republicans are once again ready to fight raising the debt ceiling causing another melt down in the stock market…just what the economy doesn’t need.

Mitt Romney, the Republican nominee for president plans on sticking with the current Republican Party actions.  Not only more spending cuts but even more tax cuts for the wealthy (job creators they claim).  He’s also planning on shutting down departments in the government.  More public sector jobs cut which means even less money to consume with. 

Romney equals – More of the same prescription.

What happens when you take a drug that isn’t working?  You make yourself even sicker.

May 17, 2012

Spending, Taxes and Deficit all Lower Under Obama

In January 2009, before President Obama had even taken the oath of office, annual spending was set to total 24.9 percent of gross domestic product. Total spending this year, fiscal year 2012, is expected to top out at 23.4 percent of GDP.

Here’s another interesting fact. Taxes today are lower than they were on inauguration day 2009. Back in January 2009, the CBO projected that total federal tax revenue that year would amount to 16.5 percent of GDP. This year? 15.8 percent.

One last nugget. The deficit this year is going to be lower than what it was on the day President Obama took office. Back then, the CBO said the 2009 deficit would be 8.3 percent of GDP. This year’s deficit is expected to come in at 7.6 percent.

Too bad these kinds of figures aren’t reported by the LIBERAL MEDIA.

Rachel Takes on FOX May 16, 2012

Maddow accuses Fox Inventing Scandal

Rachel Maddow accused Fox News on Tuesday of inventing a scandal out of whole cloth to help Mitt Romney’s campaign. In a segment that took up nearly half of her show.

May 9, 2012

Unemployment Would be 7.1% If Not for Gov Job Cuts

The government has slashed its workforce by 6 percent since December 2008, putting 1.2 million workers out of a job. In Congress, many are arguing for more cuts in government spending…

 

In an analysis sure to bolster austerity critics, Justin Lahart at the Wall Street Journal crunched April’s jobs numbers and discovered that if not for government job cuts since the financial crisis, the unemployment rate would have been at a more sustainable 7.1 percent in April.  That’s 12 percent lower than April’s 8.1 percent jobless rate.

Doesn’t this make ya want to just hug those Republicans that called for government jobs to be CUT?

May 9, 2012

Romney’s Frenemies

Tells it like it is!

May 8, 2012

Want a Website or Blog of Your Own?

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May 3, 2012

Stimulus is Still WORKING!

If the federal government hadn’t reacted to the financial crisis the way it did, things would have been a lot worse…The country’s economic growth would have been even lower in 2010 and 2011 without the stimulus policies meant to combat the Great Recession…

The U.S. might still be mired in a recession” if not for the various stimulus measures enacted by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama….

That’s the conclusion of a new research note from Fitch Ratings, in collaboration with Oxford Economics

May 3, 2012

Romney says Dems Don’t Want You in a Mansion