No Tea For Me 

It's ashame more women don't see or realize this.

Link Yvette Clarke, New York Rep., Notifies Police After Video Of Her Surfaces On Breitbart, Beck Sites. Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-N.Y.) notified the Capitol Police Thursday after receiving threatening phone calls, after a video of her appearing to criticize the Tea Party was posted on several conservative websites, according to a release from her office.

Politicians are like Diapers, they both need to be changed often, and for the same reasons.

Mark Twain

Link Eric Fehrnstrom: Auto Bailout Was Mitt Romney's Idea

Let’s just say it: The Republicans are the problem.

By Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, Published: April 27

Rep. Allen West, a Florida Republican, was recently captured on video asserting that there are “78 to 81” Democrats in Congress who are members of the Communist Party. Of course, it’s not unusual for some renegade lawmaker from either side of the aisle to say something outrageous. What made West’s comment — right out of the McCarthyite playbook of the 1950s — so striking was the almost complete lack of condemnation from Republican congressional leaders or other major party figures, including the remaining presidential candidates.

It’s not that the GOP leadership agrees with West; it is that such extreme remarks and views are now taken for granted.

We have been studying Washington politics and Congress for more than 40 years, and never have we seen them this dysfunctional. In our past writings, we have criticized both parties when we believed it was warranted. Today, however, we have no choice but to acknowledge that the core of the problem lies with the Republican Party.

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.

When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

“Both sides do it” or “There is plenty of blame to go around” are the traditional refuges for an American news media intent on proving its lack of bias, while political scientists prefer generality and neutrality when discussing partisan polarization. Many self-styled bipartisan groups, in their search for common ground, propose solutions that move both sides to the center, a strategy that is simply untenable when one side is so far out of reach.

It is clear that the center of gravity in the Republican Party has shifted sharply to the right. Its once-legendary moderate and center-right legislators in the House and the Senate — think Bob Michel, Mickey Edwards, John Danforth, Chuck Hagel — are virtually extinct.

The post-McGovern Democratic Party, by contrast, while losing the bulk of its conservative Dixiecrat contingent in the decades after the civil rights revolution, has retained a more diverse base. Since the Clinton presidency, it has hewed to the center-left on issues from welfare reform to fiscal policy. While the Democrats may have moved from their 40-yard line to their 25, the Republicans have gone from their 40 to somewhere behind their goal post.

What happened? Of course, there were larger forces at work beyond the realignment of the South. They included the mobilization of social conservatives after the 1973Roe v. Wade decision, the anti-tax movement launched in 1978 by California’s Proposition 13, the rise of conservative talk radio after a congressional pay raise in 1989, and the emergence of Fox News and right-wing blogs. But the real move to the bedrock right starts with two names: Newt Gingrich and Grover Norquist.

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Link Far-Right Conservatives Invent New Language.I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve been having trouble figuring out what many conservatives are saying lately. In one breath they tell me President Obama is a Muslim. The next moment they nod grimly and warn: “He’s a communist.” Occasionally, they insists that he’s both at once; and on the nutty fringes it’s not hard to find those who say the president is a Nazi, a communist, a socialist, a fascist and the Antichrist all wrapped up in one.

Link Some of the most dangerous words in politics today are, “I’m a businessman, and I’m here to help.”

I don’t have to introduce you to “businessman” and “business friendly” Republican Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin; his reputation precedes him. However, he has jumped the crazy shark with his latest claim that Wisconsin’s worst job losses in the nation are the fault of … wait for it….

The protesters.

Yes, it is the protesters of Walker’s policies who are to blame for the result of his policies.

Sunday on UpFront With Mike Gousha Scott Walker blamed protesters for scaring off businesses (this argument is predicated on the premise that the record breaking job losses in Wisconsin were all in the private sector, but of course, that’s not true either.)

WiscPolitics reports:

Walker warned that job losses might again ramp up in Wisconsin if either Barrett or Falk are elected in the June 5 recall because “they will rehash the collective bargaining issue,” scaring off potential employers.
“They don’t want to see the positive foundation reversed for us to go back in time not only to the Doyle days … but even back to what we see in Illinois right now,” Walker said on Sunday’s show, produced in conjunction with WisPolitics.com. “That’s where Tom Barrett, that’s where Kathleen Falk would to take us.”
Walker said Wisconsin’s job picture was improving in January and February of last year, shortly after he took office, only to deteriorate when concern over his budget repair bill led to prolonged massive protests at the state Capitol.
Walker says the political uproar that has continued in the state has contributed to employers being afraid to add jobs.
Walker concluded with the usual Republican fear tactic of telling voters that if they vote Democrat, more jobs will be lost. Weapons of Mass Destruction and Terror Alerts, oh my!

Those jobs added “right after he took office”? Those are not attributed to his policies, because in fact they were added in December of 2010 before he took office. It is only the luck of the way the DWD tabulates the numbers that allows Walker to mislead the public by taking credit for those jobs.

Excluding thousands of jobs added in December 2010 but included in Walker’s total because of the way DWD tabulates numbers, the latest revisions show the state gained only 900 private-sector jobs since January 2011. It actually lost 12,500 total non-farm jobs, a number that includes public jobs.
In March, Walker announced that job numbers were “going in the right direction”, “(T)he jobs numbers and falling unemployment statistics released today show Wisconsin is headed in the right direction.”

In April, Wisconsin was humiliated by being the only state in the nation with statistically significant job losses.

“Wisconsin job losses highest in nation for last 12 months, federal report says”:

Wisconsin saw the largest percentage decrease in employment in the nation during the 12 months ending in March, a new report by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics said.
During that time period, while 27 states and the District of Columbia saw significant job increases, only Wisconsin saw “statistically significant” job losses, the report said.
From March 2011 to March 2012, the state lost 23,900 jobs, for the country’s largest percentage decrease, at 0.9 percent.
Of the 23,900 jobs lost in Wisconsin in that period, 17,900 were from the public sector and 6,000 were from the private sector, according to the BLS.


Walker cites some survey he did of businesses, but it seems that this survey may have simply been phone calls made to business people he knows. Perhaps campaign donors who are not presently in jail, just released from jail, convicted, or under investigation? Or, maybe he included those too.

Wisconsin could have had all of the jobs from the high speed rail system, but Walker turned that project down and instead used some of the federal money (he turned down the high speed rail system because of evil federal money – go figure) to improve the existing rail, which benefited one of his campaign donors who was convicted of felony counts of violating campaign finance laws. To add insult to injury, when Walker turned down those funds, the state had already spent millions on the system and owed millions in cancellation fees, which Walker assured them would be reimbursed by the feds (but with no new rail system). You haven’t truly seen waste and debauchery until you watch a post-Reagan “fiscal conservative” in office.

Later in the interview, Walker claims he has conducted himself with “high integrity.” If this were true, then it would be a first for the man who dropped out of college (where he maintained a C average according to his campaign, but he refused to release his transcripts) after he was found guilty of illegal campaigning, and who left the Milwaukee County Executive position by taking almost every file with him and around whom the John Doe investigation into campaign violations centers. Maybe “integrity” means “systemic corruption” to Walker.

Walker isn’t even smart enough to know what a Koch tool he is, or that laws, procedures and rules exist for a reason, and there’s really no excuse for his ignorance because one needn’t go to college to have an open, willing mind. He has made the choice to remain ignorant.

Walker is taking credit for jobs added under the previous administration, while fear mongering the public to vote for him because if they don’t, things could get worse. Gosh, it brings me warm Bush fuzzies of 2004, “Vote for Bush otherwise we’re going to get attacked again and you don’t want to die!” Nothing like a little fear-mongering to duck and dodge policy debates. No matter, Republicans figure most people won’t pay attention. All they have to do is keep lying and scaring people.

If you want to know what a “businessman” Mitt Romney presidency would look like, just take a look into Wisconsin under Scott Walker. It is the only state with statistically significant job losses. Like Michigan and other Republican-controlled states, Wisconsin now also has discrete higher taxes on the poor and middle-class (taxes come from places other than income taxes, but Republicans don’t like to talk about the ways they inflict their “shared sacrifices” only on the serfs). Walker’s wars on working people and corporate agenda have decimated a great state.

This is Wisconsin under the “business friendly” polices endorsed by Mitt Romney. Wisconsin might be “open for business”, but it’s not open for jobs. It’s just like a Republican to blame the people he’s hurting the most for the predictable ramifications of his bad policies.

Did I mention how much money Walker wasted pushing legislation that is now being held up in various courts? Millions of taxpayer dollars.

When you hear these words, “I’m a businessman and I’m here to help,” run. Just run.

Link Scott Walker's Austerity Agenda Yields 'Worst Job Losses in US'