Our evil government at work

Quote, unquote, from Michael Lind in Salon:

In fact industrial policy is as American as domestically produced apple pie. George Washington supported Alexander Hamilton’s plan for promoting American manufacturing by means of subsidies and tariffs, and Hamilton’s opponents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison eventually reconciled themselves to federal support for American manufacturing. Henry Clay proposed a similar “American system” of infant-industry protection and federal support for infrastructure. During the Civil War, Clay’s disciple Abraham Lincoln presided over the enactment of a version of the American System, based on high tariffs to protect strategic industries and federal land grants and financial subsidies for transcontinental railroads.

Industrial policy was even more successful in the 20th century U.S. After the Wright brothers invented the airplane, the federal government used airmail to subsidize the infant American civil aviation industry. The U.S. Navy worked with American companies to create the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), which spun off the NBC and ABC radio and TV networks. During World War II the government built vast numbers of factories, which were turned over at low prices to private companies after 1945.

The most innovative entrepreneur in the 20th century was the U.S. government. The federal government invented or developed nuclear energy, computers, the Internet and the jet engine. And it built the interstate highway system and completed the national electric grid, creating a continental market based on the technologies of the second industrial revolution.

To be sure, the government has sometimes backed failures, usually in the fad-driven energy field, like Solyndra or synfuels back during the Carter years. But few private venture capitalists can match the remarkable record of success of Uncle Sam. Indeed, venture capitalists in IT and social networking have exploited and commercialized technologies from the transistor to the Internet that were originally developed by America’s home-grown version of state capitalism.

Economic growth measure revision: GUOP (Gross Upper One Percent Product)

A salient quote from CATHERINE RAMPELL in “Growth Accelerates, but U.S. Has Lots of Ground to Make Up” NYT, January 27, 2012

"Corporate success has not translated into big benefits for American workers and consumers so far in this recovery. Today, the nation produces more than it did when the recession began in 2007, but it manages to do so with six million fewer jobs. Companies seem reluctant to use their mounting profits to invest in new workers. “Businesses have been holding much higher levels of cash than they have in past,”

Comment: That’s 6 million less consumers with the remaining experiencing declining real income. No surprise that the engine of the US economy-Consumption is not increasing fast enough to drive an acceptable GDP growth rate of 5-6% compared to the current 2-3%. Failure of banks to lend their obscene level of excess reserves that is retarding investment is no small factor in this anemic growth (slowest recovery out of the last 14), but policy makers seem in denial of the role of the banking system is dragging down the recovery or are scared of bank lobbyists. Time to make the 99% exponentially more scary than bank lobbyists.

Right Wing Misinformation from GOP Front Foundations

From the DC underground:

Checked this out on Snopes. It is all a lie. There is a guy at the Heritage Foundation/AEI whose job it is to generate one of these lies every day and start circulating it through the viewers of Fox Noise. He gets paid over $200,000 a year to do this and lives in a mansion in Potomac next to the Avenel Country Club.

The three who brought down Wall Street.

Here's a quick look into the three former Fannie Mae executives who brought down Wall Street.

Franklin Raines was a Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Fannie Mae.
Raines was forced to retire from his position with Fannie Mae when auditing discovered severe irregularities in Fannie Mae's accounting activities.Raines left with a "golden parachute valued at $240 Million in benefits.
> The Government filed suit against Raines when the depth of the accounting scandal became clear.

Tim Howard - was the Chief Financial Officer of Fannie Mae. Howard "was a strong internal proponent of using accounting strategies that would ensure a "stable pattern of earnings" at Fannie. Investigations by federal regulators and the company's board of directors since concluded that management did manipulate 1998 earnings to trigger bonuses. Raines and Howard resigned under pressure in late 2004. Howard's Golden Parachute was estimated at $20 Million!

Jim Johnson - A former executive at Lehman Brothers and who was later forced from his position as Fannie Mae CEO. Investigators found that Fannie Mae had hidden a substantial amount of Johnson's 1998 compensation
from the public, reporting that it was between $6 million and $7 million when it fact it was $21 million." Johnson is currently under investigation for taking illegal loans from Countrywide while serving as CEO of FannieMae.
Johnson's Golden Parachute was estimated at $28 Million.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Raines works for the Obama Campaign as his Chief Economic Advisor.
Howard is a Chief Economic Advisor to Obama under Franklin Raines.
Johnson was hired as a Senior Obama Finance Advisor and was selected to run Obama's Vice Presidential Search Committee.

Our government is rotten to the core ! Are we stupid or what? Vote in 2012..it is the most important election of our lives.

Hobson Choice of Candidates:

Sen. Boxer of CA asks how you could vote for either GOP candidate (Romney-MT or Gingrich-NG) based on their following statements:

"Corporations are people, my friend... of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to the people. Where do you think it goes? Whose pockets? People's pockets. Human beings, my friend." —MR

"I was not a lobbyist, I was never a lobbyist, I never did any lobbying. Don't try to mix these things up. The fact is I was an adviser strategically." —NG describing his $1.2 million contract with Freddie Mac

"I like to be able to fire people." —MR

"Over here you have a policy which, with Reagan and me as speaker, created millions of jobs — it's called paychecks. Over here you have the most successful food stamp president in American history, Barack Obama." —NG

"I should tell my story. I'm also unemployed." —MR

"There's no question at times of my life, partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country, that I worked far too hard and things happened in my life that were not appropriate." —NG explaining why he cheated on his first two wives

"PETA is not happy that my dog likes fresh air." —MR retelling the story of strapping the family dog to the roof of the car

"We don't do — you know, we don't do elaborate things. ... Well, go, you go talk to Tiffany's. All I'm telling you is we — we are very frugal." —NG in response to the revelation that he and his wife once owed between $250,000 and $500,000 in a credit account to the jeweler Tiffany's

"President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial." —MR

"I think that my ability to organize and orchestrate things would be vastly greater than a normal politician." —NG

"I get speaker's fees from time to time, but not very much." —MR describing the $360,000 in speaking fees he received over a one-year period

"I have two grandchildren; Maggie is 11, Robert is 9. I am convinced that if we do not decisively win the struggle over the nature of America, by the time they're my age they will be in a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American." —NG

"Go get a job after you take a bath." —NG speaking about Occupy Wall Street protesters

"Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday." —NG

Typical GOP Rebuttal to President's SOU Address

My comments are in CAPS annotated into the original report from Yahoo news, 1/24/12. As usual the arguments are hypocritical and factually inaccurate.

In the Republican response to State of the Union address Tuesday night, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels took aim at Obama for "efforts to divide" the American people and accused the president of obstructing economic growth in the United States. The president spent much of his speech touting his administration's economic achievements and announcing initiatives related to trade." Anyone who tells you that America is in decline or that our influence has waned, doesn't know what they're talking about," the president said at one point in his address .But Daniels, former budget director for George W. Bush, sharply countered that glowing perspective in his response." The president did not cause the economic and fiscal crises that continue in America tonight," . "But he was elected on a promise to fix them, and he cannot claim that the last three years have made things anything but worse: the percentage of Americans with a job is at the lowest in decades BECAUSE GOP BLOCKED JOB CREATION AND WITH GOP POLICIES WOULD BE MUCH WORSE.." Daniels castigated the president for his tactics--saying under the Obama administration the government has "held back" economic recovery BECAUSE GOP BLOCKED FURTHER STIMULUS AND TRIED TO BLOCK QE2 WHICH WHY 2-3% GDP GROWTH OCCURRED . The governor criticized the administration's attempts to build a middle class using "borrowed dollars" and reckless "In three short years, an unprecedented explosion of spending, with borrowed money, has added trillions to an already unaffordable national debt," spending GOP CREATED 12.5 T OF THE 14 T IN US DEBT Daniels said. "And yet, the president has put us on a course to make it radically worse in the years ahead GOP BLOCKING EXPIRATION OF TAX CUTS FOR RICH IS LARGELY WHAT IS MAKING IT WORSE. "Daniels criticized the president for rejecting the Keystone XL pipeline project and other energy-related measures Daniels labeled as "extremism" by the Obama administration.GOP RUNS OVER ENVIRONMENTAL REGULATION AND CAN’T WAIT 6-9 MO. FOR RESPONSIBLE DECISION ON APPROVAL. After advocating a simplified tax system and lower regulations, Daniels stood up for Republicans in Washington, in contrast to Obama, who RIGHTLY blamed the GOP for obstruction in Washington (though Obama also called out Democrats.)"It's not fair and it's not true for the president to attack Republicans in Congress as obstacles on these questions IT IS TRUE," "They and they alone have passed bills to reduce borrowing, reform MEANING ELIMINATE PER KISSWEB entitlements, and encourage new job creation NO GOP BILLS OFFERED THAT WOULD CREATE JOBS, ONLY PROFITS AND INCOME FOR THE 1%, only to be shot down nearly time and again by the president and his Democrat Senate allies. "Daniels characterized Republicans as the party able to pave a better future for the country.VIA SAME FAILED POLICIES OF GREAT RECESSION. Accusing the president of stoking class warfare has been a hallmark of Republican talking points in recent months, prompted by Democrats' unsuccessful efforts to remove tax loopholes for the country's wealthiest earners last year--ONLY CLASS WARFARE IS THE 1% RIPPING OFF THE 99% AIDED BY THE GOP POLICIES something which Obama doubled down on during his address Tuesday night .Daniels hit that point home:No feature of the Obama presidency has been sadder than its constant efforts to divide us,BY ASKING 1% FAIR SHARE to curry favor with some THE 99% Americans by castigating others. As in previous moments of national danger, we Americans are all in the same boat. ONLY THE 1% ARE IN A DIFFERENT BOAT.