Monday, April 28, 2014

Modern racists just repeat conservative talking points

 

 

Donald Sterling, Cliven Bundy and the ugly face of GOP policies

Sterling and Bundy aren't vestiges of another time. They are the embodiment of Paul Ryan & Michele Bachmann's ideas 

 http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/modern_racists_just_repeat_conservative_talking_points_donald_sterling_cliven_bundy_and_the_ugly_face_of_gop_policies/

Donald Trump: Donald Sterling was “set up” by his “very, very bad” “girlfriend from hell”

 

 

 

 


 

Paul Krugman: Cliven Bundy is proof conservatives are dumber than ever

 

The New York Times columnist argues the right embraced Bundy out of a crude and short-sighted anti-intellectualism 

 

 

In his latest column for the New York Times, best-selling author and award-winning economist claims that the right’s recent, unfortunate embrace of Cliven Bundy, the Nevada renegade rancher who has revealed himself to be extremely racist, is the consequence of a larger, troubling shift on the right: the “dumbing down” of American conservatism.


After noting how unconscious or unspoken views on race likely influenced conservatives’ embrace of the tax-avoiding Bundy — who is a white cowboy, not a resident of the “inner city” — Krugman writes that, fundamentally, the Bundy story is about conservatism becoming, well, kind of dumb. ”[T]he Bundy fiasco,” Krugman writes, “was a byproduct of the dumbing down that seems ever more central to the way America’s right operates.”

“American conservatism used to have room for fairly sophisticated views about the role of government,” Krugman laments. “Its economic patron saint used to be Milton Friedman, who advocated aggressive money-printing, if necessary, to avoid depressions. It used to include environmentalists who took pollution seriously but advocated market-based solutions like cap-and-trade or emissions taxes rather than rigid rules.”

But that day, Krugman says, is over: “[T]oday’s conservative leaders were raised on Ayn Rand’s novels and Ronald Reagan’s speeches … They insist that the rights of private property are absolute, and that government is always the problem, never the solution.”

 

 http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/paul_krugman_cliven_bundy_is_proof_conservatives_are_dumber_than_ever/

 

 

 

25 comments:

  1. Rush Limbaugh: Donald Sterling is in trouble because “he did not give enough money to Obama”

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  2. Right-wing pundit: Donald Sterling proves there’s no real anti-black racism in America

    http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/right_wing_pundit_donald_sterling_proves_theres_no_real_anti_black_racism_in_america/

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    Replies
    1. Bill Kristol: Criticism of Donald Sterling is “hysterical”


      The influential neoconservative and GOP advisor doesn't see why an NBA owner's being super-racist is so importan

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    2. http://www.salon.com/2014/04/28/bill_kristol_criticism_of_donald_sterling_is_%E2%80%9Chysterical%E2%80%9D/

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  3. One of the most preposterous ideas in all of economics-- the Laffer Curve:

    http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/4065

    "We don't have a 99 percent marginal tax rate. Or 70 percent. Or even 50 percent. We start with low marginal tax rates relative to the rest of the developed world.

    "So cutting the tax rate from 36 percent to 33 percent is not going to give you the same kind of economic jolt as slashing a tax rate from 90 percent to 50 percent. There's no huge black market to be shut down, no big supply of skilled workers to be lured back into the labor market, and so on."

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  4. When will tax cuts become enemy #1 of the deficit?

    They have been for years now. The filthy rich say if they have tax cuts they will create jobs.


    Where are the jobs?

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  5. While some talk show blowhards, politicians and editorial page / op-ed writers persist in contending that the Bush tax cuts have had a net positive impact on revenues, the strong, broad consensus among economists -- including conservative economists and Bush's own current and former top economists -- is to the contrary: The Bush tax cuts have had a net negative impact on revenues (i.e., revenues would have been higher, and would be higher today, if the Bush tax cuts had not taken place)."

    http://swordscrossed.org/node/1671

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  6. I know nobody likes taxes, including me, but if our nation has entered two wars but didn't commit to funding them from year to year, shouldn't we now pay for those wars?

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  7. This is the final chapter of the Reagan Republicans "Starve the Beast" strategy to bankrupt the Federal Government in order to force the dismantling of FDR'S New Deal. Massive defense spending coupled with steadily reducing taxes for the most affluent has done the job and allowed the richest to make a pile of money at the same time. If more people don't start learning how to vote to protect their interests they are going to get what they deserve.

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  8. People seem to conveniently forget that the country was running a annual budget surplus and paying down the debt when George W Bush came into office. Then he went and started two wars with out taxing anyone to pay for them and at the same time gave a tax break to the top 2% plunging us into a historical deficit. By the time he left office the country was in shambles and going into a depression with bank collapsing and unemployment spiking.

    When will people wake up from their FAUX NOISE induced coma and see what the Republicans are doing to this country? The right wing spin doctors have done a great disservice to average working Americans. Now their new budget plan is another take from the poor and give to the rich scheme. They want to cut more taxes for the rich while cutting Medicare and social security.

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    Replies
    1. I have this question. What have we asked the rich to sacrifice in the last decade? Capital gains down to 15%. The upper end tax brackets the lowest they've been in 50 years. Regulatory capture dressed up as deregulation. Where do most of you get your information from? You get your information from corporations who own and sponsor your news, a collection of think tanks who use their pliant media to create a false reality where the poor rich are barely able to maintain their 3rd and 4th estates or can barely afford their shadow yachts, while the middle and lower class shuffle out to their new lower paying jobs, all the fault of unions, mind you.

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    2. And if we would just let rich off this leash we've put them on, well the powers of the free market would be released and all of us will be millionaires. Right wing fantasy needs to be called out for what it is; business propaganda. And now answer me this: what TV and radio stations do unions own?

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  9. If you decide to reduce your revenue by 50%, by staying home from work - do you still call that a spending problem, or is it a revenue problem?

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  10. If a business cut out a big slice of it's income, over time would things get better or worse? Conservatives say run the government like a business but under Bush they did not.

    If all of Clinton's spending cuts and the 4% tax increase were kept in place, it was projected that we would have a 2 trillion dollar surplus in 2010 instead of a 12 trillion dollar deficit. Bush did neither. Why?

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  11. Supply-side economics is little more than rolling your taxes onto the backs of your children. Yet this has been the Republican position for 30 years, and it still is. It should be called what it is: child abuse.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "unfunded tax cuts are not tax cuts at all, they are tax increases on your children because someone has to pay back the money." - Austan Dean Goolsbee is an American economist and the Robert P. Gwinn Professor of Economics at The University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

      Delete
  12. Annualized Growth Rates, Before and After TAX CUTS

    Clinton

    1993 to 1996 Real GDP = 3.44%
    1993 to 1996 Real GDP per capita = 2.22%

    1997 to 2000 Real GDP = 4.44%
    1997 to 2000 Real GDP per capita = 3.26%

    1993 to 2000 Real GDP = 4.01%
    1993 to 2000 Real GDP per capita = 2.81%

    Bush

    2001 to 2004 Real GDP = 2.62%
    2001 to 2004 Real GDP per capita = 1.68%

    2005 to 2008 Real GDP = 1.75%
    2005 to 2008 Real GDP per capita = 0.79%

    2001 to 2008 Real GDP = 2.31%
    2001 to 2008 Real GDP per capita = 1.36%



    The wealthy and corporatio­­­ns just take the money out of the country… That is why economic growth shrinks after each tax cut.



    http://investmentwatchblog.com/the-wealthy-and-corporatio%C2%AD%C2%AD%C2%ADns-just-take-the-money-out-of-the-country-that-is-why-economic-growth-shrinks-after-each-tax-cut/

    ReplyDelete
  13. JC did not raise or lower taxes. Inherited inflation from Nixon/Ford (Wage & price controls, WIN buttons) 10 million jobs in four years

    Reagan 14 million jobs, Trillions in debt

    Clinton: 22 million jobs, budget surplus

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  14. The money "saved" in tax cuts over 250K is NOT spent (returned to the economy). That is the failing of trickle-down economics

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  15. Where are the good pay'n jobs, all those rich people were go'n to create if we just extended the tax cuts?

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  16. Republicans where never any good in math and economics. What they are good at is coddling to big business and big money and lying through their teeth.

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  17. Hey lets go to war and cut tax's and keep up with the CONservative's spin, maybe someone out their will buy it .


    Now let blame grandma she is the reason even if Social Security has surplus for the next 35 years or more, so lets use it, and give a corporate donor another tax cut. Hey lets kill Medicare by privatizing it for or corporate donors, lets call It the Ryan Republican path to prosperity

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  18. Sean Hannity Confronted Over His Relationship With Neo-Nazi Hal Turner

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  19. Capitalism is three men sitting at a table with a dozen cookies on a plate in the center: One rich man, one poor man, and one middle-class man. The rich man grabs 11 of the 12 cookies and shovels them into his mouth as fast as he possibly can. He then turns to the middle-class man and says: "Hey! You better watch out, or that poor guy will steal your cookie!"

    ReplyDelete