Phast, Phurious and Phony!

Well well, it turns out that the Republican witch-hunt that snared A.G. Eric Holder was even more manufactured than it has long appeared to reasonable people.

Thanks to well-documented reporting by Fortune Magazines' Katherine Eban, we have learned that the so-called 'gun-walking' program Fast & Furious was a fiction from get-to-go.  ATF agents didn't intentionally allow2000 guns to 'walk' to Mexico in order to track them, instead it turns out that federal prosecutors felt that the gun purchases were legal according to current gun laws, and the agents had no legal standing to interdict the guns.

Issa's kangaroo-court has been making the claim that ATF agents lost track of 2000 guns that they let go to Mexico, resulting in the death of one agent.  But his investigation didn't pursue the F n F program, nor the people responsible for the first gun-walking operation from the Bush administration. Issa didn't interview anyone related to the actual operation, instead he focused solely on Eric Holder, demanding and receiving more than 7000 documents until he came to some that, by law, Holder wasn't allowed to release.

That was what Issa was waiting for as he badgered Holder relentlessly. No matter how much the A.G. cooperated it wasn't enough for the Tea Partisan,  who are now making the insulting and ludicrous claim that President Obama intentionally let the program go forward in hopes that the resulting violence would give him public backing to enact new gun laws and get rid of the 2nd amendment.

This is completely idiotic. Obama has made no attempt to further restrict guns, and if he had such a desire he didn't need any more evidence to justify doing so. Thanks to the NRA, the United States is awash with semi-automatic weapons, and the result is exactly what Issa accuses the President of...thousands of weapons causing millions of deaths in Mexico and the USA.

As the Issa farce went forward, several ATf  'whistle-blowers' came forth to tell their side of the story. They knew of purchasers who were buying hundreds of weapons each week, and wanted to pursue these buyers to make arrests. However, as mentioned, prosecutors recognized that this type of sale is legal, and the ATF agents had no choice unless they wanted to break the law by arresting the buyers in question.

The truth is that the GOP has been following the plan they created on Obama's very first day in office, continue to attack him with coordinated accusation regardless of the truth value of such claims. The result of that plan has been to convince some otherwise intelligent people that the Obama administration is rife with scandal. Those people watching other news sources besides Fox and the Wall Street journal, however, are aware that none of the trumped up charges against Obama add up to anything other than a man trying his best to work across the aisle and pass legislation to improve the economy.

Readers of this blog know that every single economic indicator is better now than it was before Obama took office, and that the economy is improving despite the fierce opposition to such by a recalcitrant congress more interested in voting on abortion bills than jobs or other legislation. Case in point, the US Flood Insurance bill was just stalled in congress due to "personhood" amendments being added to it by the GOP. What, you might ask, does a  flood insurance bill have to do with  abortion?" Nothing. 
Despite Issa's rationale for pursuing Holder being laid bare and revealed as a large load of partisan crap, the Tea party congress held Holder in contempt.

The irony here is that the only real case of contempt is the contempt that this congress has for the American people, as witnessed by their willingness to throw the country under the bus in order to get rid of Obama.

Disgusting.

One Simple Chart

What's Wrong With The Economy, In One Simple Chart

Here it is, the most important chart of the year

This chart shows the history of income inequality in America.

Highlights include the peak in 1928 and subsequent fall, otherwise known as The Great Depression.

The share of income going to the top 1% fell to around 10% in 1953.

In the period from WWII to 1970,  the middle class grew & the American economy was the best in the world, as was American achievement.

Economic success came to every income bracket, as the government safety net, including social Security, pulled millions out of poverty.

Unfortunately, beginning in 1976, the share of income going to the top 1% rose again, and once again led directly to a crash of the economy, aka The Great Recession.

While the top 1% chowed-down a bit less in 2008, they still ate 21 of 100 pieces of the American Pie, and got fatter than at any time in U.S. History.

So here we are. The chart disproves many ill-thought-out ideas, including the concept that giving more money to the top income brackets is somehow good for the American economy.

Look at it again.

Twice now the share of income going to the top 1% of the people has risen to almost 25%!

 That's ONE-QUARTER of ALL the money, folks!

It's like taking 100 people, combining all the money they have into one big pile, then giving 1/4th of it to a single person!

After we did exactly that with the US economy,  the US economy has been wiped out.

TWICE.



SUPPLY AND DEMAND ("Demand and Supply" would be more precise).

We can understand why we produce the negative effects of having a large inequality in income by looking at the free-market process of Supply and Demand.  For that system to work, the Demand-side needs to push the Supply-side to manufacture services and products at their most efficient level, to fill the needs of the Demand-side.

As Demand pushes, Supply reacts, and the economy grows.

However, when Demand falls, Supply ends up with a surplus of goods and services. Too much inventory. More stuff than is needed to meet the Demand.  Then the economy slows down and stalls, because Supply doesn't need to make more stuff, and they need fewer people to make or sell the stuff they already have on hand.

When the top 1% takes too great a share of the national income, the rest of the people don't have enough money to buy all the stuff that the businesses owned by the high earners can produce.

So the people with money to invest hold onto their money, because even a tiny % in interest is better than a losing investment in a business because the customers don't have the money to buy the products.

That is what is happening now. There is a lot of money available, but it's not being invested in American commerce, because of the lack of Demand.

With this understanding comes another. It simply makes no sense to give the investor class even more money, if the money they already have is sitting on the sideline, not helping the economy.

Money needs to go to the Demand side, to the middle class and poorer who will use all of the money.

Whether in terms of actual cash, or benefits that free-up cash, when the great majority of Americans can afford to go ahead and buy the products and services the investors make, from hi-tech  to solar panels, kids birthday parties to after-school sports and art programs, the economy grows and Supply reacts and grows to meet the Demand.

The chart also illustrates another important idea.  In order to get the investor class to put the money they already have into action, something needs to 'jump-start' the economy.

It's no coincidence that the small rapid drops in the 80s, 90s and 2000s to the share of income to the 1% are there, that is when government investment went into the general economy to stop previous recessions, providing the middle class with a temporary but slightly larger share of the overall money. 

Economists from both political parties have understood this for years, which is why we have recovered  from every previous recession by investing government money into the economy, putting people to work either directly for the government, or through investment in private industry backed up by government funds.

Once the middle class is employed and investors are making money by investing, the economy rolls right along, and everyone benefits. We then have the money to fund the social safety net, to provide for defense and education, and other things a good government provides for the populace. The middle class thrives, and the top income brackets continue to make a healthy profit.

Looking at these simple facts, it is readily apparent that reducing taxes on the wealthiest Americans will not fix any of the problems we face. The problem is not too little money available to invest, it's too little incentive to entice investment, which comes from people having too little money to provide that incentive.

So we have not only a well-understood Theory of Supply and Demand arguing strongly in favor of government investment in jobs and industry, we have a clear history of the negative effects on the economy when we have such massive income inequality.

All of this makes it pretty obvious that to make American strong again we need to return money to the middle class by a combination of slightly higher taxes on the top income bracket, strong investment in American small business, education and new industries, and increased social benefits to the poor and middle class.

Here's to Stupidity

This one is for all you stupid people out there. You know who you are.

Wait a minute! Maybe you DON'T know who you are!

Let's review.

After the Great Depression, we regulated the banking industry, and had a stable banking system for 70 years.

Then we de-regulated the banking industry, and within a decade the banks failed and wrecked the US economy on a scale not seen since, well, the Great Depression.

Despite high taxes on upper income brackets, we had over 70 years of prosperity, and built the strongest middle class of any nation at any time, and the strongest overall economy in the history of the world.

Then we cut taxes on the higher income brackets, and the result was not only the largest income gap since the Great Depression, but also the transformation of our budget from a surplus of 4 years running into massive and continuous deficits.

We cut taxes, it didn't work.

We de-regulated, it didn't work.

 And the lesson the GOP learned from these mistakes?

Do it again!

Ha ha, you laugh, the voters are too smart for that, they certainly won't elect someone who wants to do more of the very two things that ruined the economy and wiped out millions of people's life savings. No way!

Yes, way.

In fact, almost 40% of Americans think we should get rid of the guy who stopped a second Great Depression and produced 27 straight months of GDP and jobs growth, and instead we should elect the guy who wants to cut more regulations and further reduce taxes for the top income brackets.

America, the home of the free and the land of the brave, has in monetary terms become the home of the greedy and land of the craven.

Ironically, the 40% who think they are the most patriotic are the same ones who support the craven, greedy few who have brought our great country to the brink of ruin.

40% - this one's for you!

The National Lying Program

There is a new Ad out from a Romney Super-pac, once again with a perfect example of why we need full disclosure in our political system, so we know who to hold responsible for outright lies and other misconduct.

A recent ad takes President Obama to task for a failed energy project referred to as "Solyndra", the name of a solar energy startup.

Solyndra was given federal loan guarantees in an attempt to boost the nations' output in solar energy. The company failed, costing the US taxpayer millions of dollars.

These are the broad-strokes. The GOP is now trying to blame the Solyndra project on President Obama, and to spin the story as if the company's private investors were somehow an 'Obama favorite' and so got a 'handout'.

Yet in truth, the Solyndra project was started by President Bush, and handed over to President Obama to either kill or move forward. Far from being "rushed through" to benefit "Obama's favorites", the GOP lawmakers were pushing for the deal, along with many others, to move forward more quickly to get stimulus money into the economy.

It's important to note that it wasn't a bad decision by President Bush, although the company did eventually fail due to the 'Great Recession' and subsequent drop in the price of solar photovoltaic cells (PVs) . Bush certainly had the right idea to subsidize US green and alternate energy technologies, this type of investment often returns far more than their cost in direct dollars to the US economy, not to mention as a way to create jobs in a burgeoning indutry and keep the USA conpetitive n the world energy market.

Here are some excerpts from Think Progress' article of September, 2011.

" Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the Story"

by Stephen Lacey and Richard Caperton
It’s often claimed that the Solyndra loan guarantee was “rushed through” by the Obama Administration for political reasons. In fact, the Solyndra loan guarantee was a multi-year process that the Bush Administration launched in 2007.
You’d never know from the media coverage that:

1. The Bush team tried to conditionally approve the Solyndra loan just before President Obama took office.
2. The company’s backers included private investors who had diverse political interests.
3. The loan comprises just 1.3% of DOE’s overall loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.

Because one of the Solyndra investors, Argonaut Venture Capital, is funded by George Kaiser — a man who donated money to the Obama campaign — the loan guarantee has been attacked as being political in nature. What critics don’t mention is that one of the earliest and largest investors, Madrone Capital Partners, is funded by the family that started Wal-Mart, the Waltons, who have donated millions of dollars to Republican candidates over the years.


To set the record straight, Climate Progress is publishing this timeline — verified by Department of Energy officials — that shows how the loan guarantee came together under both administrations. In fact, rather than rushing the loan for Solyndra through, the Obama Administration restructured the original Bush-era deal to further protect the taxpayers’ investment:

May 2005: Just as a global silicon shortage begins driving up prices of solar photovoltaics [PV], Solyndra is founded to provide a cost-competitive alternative to silicon-based panels.
July 2005: The Bush Administration signs the Energy Policy Act of 2005 into law, creating the 1703 loan guarantee program.
...
December 2006: Solyndra Applies for a Loan Guarantee under the 1703 program.
Late 2007: Loan guarantee program is funded. Solyndra was one of 16 clean-tech companies deemed ready to move forward in the due diligence process. The Bush Administration DOE moves forward to develop a conditional commitment.
October 2008: Then Solyndra CEO Chris Gronet touted reasons for building in Silicon Valley and noted that the “company’s second factory also will be built in Fremont, since a Department of Energy loan guarantee mandates a U.S. location.”
...
January 2009: In an effort to show it has done something to support renewable energy, the Bush Administration tries to take Solyndra before a DOE credit review committee before President Obama is inaugurated...

         March 2009: The credit committee approves the strengthened
          loan application...(with more consumer protections)

June 2009: As more silicon production facilities come online while demand for PV wavers due to the economic slowdown, silicon prices start to drop.Between June of 2009 and August of 2011, PV prices drop more than 50%...

...

November 2010: Solyndra closes an older manufacturing facility and concentrates operations at Fab 2, the plant funded by the $535 million loan guarantee. The Fab 2 plant is completed that same month — on time and on budget — employing around 3,000 construction workers during the build-out, just as the DOE projected.
...
March 2011: Republican Representatives complain that DOE funds are not being spent quickly enough.
House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI): “despite the Administration’s urgency and haste to pass the bill [the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] … billions of dollars have yet to be spent.”
And House Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-FL): “The whole point of the Democrat’s stimulus bill was to spend billions of dollars … most of the money still hasn’t been spent.”

June 2011: ...Solyndra says it has cut costs by 50%, but analysts worry how the company will compete with the dramatic changes in conventional PV.
August 2011: DOE refuses to restructure the loan a second time.

September 2011: Solyndra closes its manufacturing facility, lays off 1,100 workers and files for bankruptcy. The news is touted as a failure of the Obama Administration and the loan guarantee office. However, as of September 12, the DOE loan programs office closed or issued conditional commitments of $37.8 billion to projects around the country. The $535 million loan is only 1.3% of DOE’s loan portfolio. To date, Solyndra is the only loan that’s known to be troubled.
Meanwhile, after complaining about stimulus funds moving too slowly, Congressmen Fred Upton and Cliff Stearns are now claiming that the Administration was pushing funds out the door too quickly: “In the rush to get stimulus cash out the door, despite repeated claims by the Administration to the contrary, some bets were bad from the beginning.”

What critics fail to mention is that the Solyndra deal is more than tfour years old, started under the Bush Administration, which tried to conditionally approve the loan right before Obama took office. Rather than “pushing funds out the door too quickly,” the Obama Administration restructured the original loan when it came into office to further protect the taxpayers’ investment.
Stephen Lacey is a reporter/blogger with Climate Progress and Richard Caperton is a senior policy analyst with the energy team at the Center for American Progress.
 cent ad takes President Ob


Along with 'Obama is a socialist', "Obama raised taxes", "Obama is a Muslim", "Obama's failed economy" and  "Obama is hindering eneergy production", the Solyndra story is a complete fabrication, which, just like those other claims, runs contrary to the actual facts.

It is a highly partisan, unabashed, unbridled batch of GOP Poppycock.

It is also another fine example of how Super-pacs can spread misinformation to our society to prevent people from knowing all the facts prior to voting, without having to tell us who is responsible for spreading this horse manure all over our country.

Super-Pacs might as well be labeled a well-funded "National Lying Program", it would be much more accurate title.

Stop the NLP!!  Speak Truth to Power every chance you get.

Big Asteroid in the Corner Planet...

On Friday, April 13 2029, the asteroid Apophis will pass close enough to Earth to tuck inside the orbit of our communication satellites.

To get an idea of just how close this is, consider that on a standard size globe, our satellites would be 3/8" from the globe surface, and our atmosphere would be about the width of the varnish on the outside of the globe.


That is to say, it will be VERY close!

Worse yet, IF Apophis passes through a small, 1/2 mile Square area known as the "Gravitational Keyhole" in 2029, it will be guaranteed to hit the Earth on it's return trip on April 13, 2036, smacking down somwhere in the Pacific Ocean. 

Apophis is big!  It would sit inside the Rose Bowl in Anaheim like an egg in a cup, if we could convince it to touch down lightly.  Deviled Eggs for 70,000 in Anaheim!

Originally named "2004 MN" when scientists first discovered it in December 2004,  the name was changed  to something slightly more sinister, befitting it's potential disastrous impact on future USC football games (along with the human race and several thousand other species) when observations indicated there was a 2.7% probability that it would strike the Earth in 2029.

In Egyptian mythology, Apep, or Apophis in Greek,  was an Evil God, the deification of Darkness and Chaos. Yes, that sounds about right.

Darkness and Chaos was the exact result when a similarly sized asteroid hit the Yucatan Peninsula at Chicxulub  around sixty-five million years ago, wiping out the dinosaurs and making it possible for mammals to flourish.

Considering it was an close encounter with an asteroid that eventually led to the evolution of Homo sapiens, it would be somewhat fitting if another asteroid cleared out the most recent dominant species and made room for a new wave of evolution to bring forth species unimagined today.

What does this harbinger of impending doom look like?  Here it is ..

It's one of these little white dots. Doesn't look so scary from a few million miles away, does it?


 Here's a diagram which clearly shows a bunch of circles and dots that represent Certain Death cruising through da' hood.

This is no doubt very revealing to some scientist somewhere, but it's nowhere near as scary as this

 When Carl Sagan wrote contact, I don't think this is what he had in mind!

I myself am rooting for it to pass through the keyhole in '29, so long as it misses us in 2036.  Perhaps with the threat of annihilation of the entire human race, the nations of the world would lay down their petty squabbles and religious bickering and work together to save all humanity.

But I doubt it.

From the looks of things lately, we humans aren't likely to realize we're all passengers on the same world in a very harsh universe unless an extra-terrestrial threat forces enemies to become friends.

So I'm rooting for the asteroid!



What will we do???  Only one thing TO DO...   CALL BRUCE!!!

He can bring his drilling crew, an astrophysicist, and a couple of nukes...

And lets' not foget his smokin' hot daughter...

I knbow most every gorl wants a big rock someday, but c'mon....

 Heads Up indeed. Heads up our asses is more like it.

I hope we do get it together and dispose of this giant space dirt clod, so we can all get back to killing our planet ourselves.

Asteroid?  We don't need no stinking asteroid!

We ARE Better Off

In a previous post, I posted several charts that showed, with certainty, that the economy is getting better, and that we are better off now than we were when President Obama took office.

Some commentators or political pundits use statistics from the very first day Obama was sworn in to so they can make the claim that "we haven't added any jobs since Obama took over".  This is so disingenuous it is beneath contempt, and should be ignored by anyone serious about finding solutions to the problems that beset our nation during the disastrous Bush Administration. Those of us who pay attention to facts will understand that this a political mis-direct, a mis-representation of the truth, or, using the technical term favored by ethicists, "a lie".

Obviously, President Obama cannot be held accountable for jobs lost due to the failures of the previous administration, jobs lost as the economy fell into the depths of the Great Recession. It's also unfair, and completely unhelpful in analyzing policy to use numbers from when Obama had been in office for just a few months and his policies had not had a chance to take effect.

The following chart illustrate this fully, as the Great Recession featured job losses in the 500,000-700,000 range for four straight months prior to Obama's term. These losses DID change once Obama took over, but obviously NOT from the first day he was sworn in. The trend, however, is unmistakable.  Fewer and fewer job losses turning to many many consecutive months of positive job growth, all in the face of reduced public sector jobs and an obstinate Congress whose stated mission is to make sure President Obama was "a one-term President", regardless of the effect on the country.

The debt is another area of deceit in the media presentation, especially on the highly partisan Fox News. In fact, independent studies based on the Congressional Budget Office's official figures show that the bulk of the debt incurred in Obama's first year were unavoidable due to the depression-bound economy he was handed.

This information looks at the debt due to policy changes, which clearly shows that fact.

The high level of deficits Obama inherited stand in stark contrast to the way the 'Clinton Surplus' was turned into a huge deficit in Bush's second year, and as we have seen, his policies led directly to the largest part of the high spending under Obama. Note that the deficit actually went down in 2010,  the same is true for 2011, so once again, President Obama has turned the tide.

The proven method for bringing country out of a recession is for the economy to regain it's momentum, which means that the GDP has to rise.  The proven method to use in order to spur GDP growth when the private sector is stalled is for the government to spend stimulus money to provide jobs and other stimuli to replace the missing private sector spending.

Let's look at the GDP growth under President Obama.

One again, we see that under president Obama, things have gotten considerably better. If the recalcitrant opposition congress would stop blocking pro-growth policies and stop insisting on an austerity program(similar to the disastrous austerity that has hammered many European countries) our GDP would be higher still.

A look at the stock market shows the same positive trend, after a serious drop during the Bush Recession, it has climbed steadily under President Obama.

The benefits of compiling actual results from trying various policies should be to inform our current policy decisions, an intelligent government would take what worked and try to repeat it, and would avoid policies that failed. So it's simply ludicrously stupid to want to again shove the nation into recession by using the same policies that hammered our ability to run an efficient government that provides for the common good of the people.

Caveat Venditor

Caveat Venditor.  My Latin-savvy friends will recognize that means "Let the Seller Beware" 

IN this case, the sellers are corporations, and what they need to beware of is the reduced buying power of the middle class, which is stiffling the US economy.

Here are two charts showing how productivity has risen while wages /compensation has stayed flat







this is why the middle class hasn't increased their buying power, and why so many wealthy corporations are sitting on billions of un-invested dollars (more accurately, invested in low interest accounts rather than in creating businesses).


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

From http://www.npr.org/2011/08/17/
139703989/companies-sit-on-cash-reluctant-to-invest-hire

"At the end of last year, Google was sitting on nearly $35 billion in cash."

"In a recent report, Moody's said the 1,600-plus U.S.-based companies it rates had $1.2 trillion in cash at the end of 2010 — 11.2 percent more than they did a year earlier"

" But there's a more basic reason companies are hoarding money: The U.S. economy simply isn't growing enough."

"The labor market is weak, which hampers consumption, notes Charles Biderman, chief executive officer of the research firm TrimTabs. "So without growing income, where's the money to buy more stuff?"


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

These assessments are based on economic facts, and they point to an easy solution to our economic problems.  If the private sector won't pay higher wages, the government needs to step in and tax those record-setting profits and return money to the middle class.