Boo Hoo Wisconsin! You did not remove one of the most inane, toxic governors out to destroy the middle class with nonsensical economic agendas. Regardless of party, Walker's attack on collective bargaining was simply an attack on working people. Yet somehow envy that some workers have managed to hang onto pensions and health care which won't send them into poverty enrages others who do not have wages, pensions and benefits. So angry Wisconsin, instead of demanding higher wages, pensions and better health care for themselves gave the very people was are out to destroy them, carte blanche, a mandate to continue to do just that! Why not, let's destroy pensions, worker rights, wages and jobs, instead of being outraged that our financial livelihoods are under attack! Just today Republicans blocked a bill to address equal pay for women, yet will those Senators be recalled? Nope, and they probably won't lose their elections over it either.
How did this all happen? Back in March of last year, Wisconsin did the nasty against labor. Unions tried to stop it and literally Governor Walker sic'ed the state police on some state Democratic Senators who were trying to stop the railroading of workers.
Bloomberg has yet another stunning revelation that Tea Party Congressional members are being funded heavily by the Banksters.
Tea Party favorites such as Stephen Fincher of Tennessee were swept into Congress on a wave of anger over government-funded bailouts of banks.
Now those incumbents are collecting thousands of dollars for re-election campaigns from the same Wall Street firms whose excesses they criticized. They have taken no significant steps to curb them or prevent future taxpayer-financed rescues.
Bloomberg has one whooper story. It seems the Koch Brothers made sales to Iran:
A Bloomberg Markets investigation has found that Koch Industries -- in addition to being involved in improper payments to win business in Africa, India and the Middle East -- has sold millions of dollars of petrochemical equipment to Iran, a country the U.S. identifies as a sponsor of global terrorism.
In case you've been dead, the Koch Brothers are the uber-rich guys out to destroy your social security, health care and, oh yeah, government as we know it.
No wonder they hate regulations and government. Doesn't help when you're doing something probably illegal, like making sales to a government under sanctions for being a terrorist state.
Beyond getting into the international bribes business, a crime the Koch Brothers are assuredly not alone in (see this Frontline documentary on how common international business bribes are), we have them losing one of the biggest civil wrongful death suits:
In 1999, a Texas jury imposed a $296 million verdict on a Koch pipeline unit -- the largest compensatory damages judgment in a wrongful death case against a corporation in U.S. history. The jury found that the company’s negligence had led to a butane pipeline rupture that fueled an explosion that killed two teenagers.
Iowa has joined the ranks of crazy, putting first in a straw poll someone out to destroy social security and medicare. This agenda would lead to the biggest increase in abject poverty the United States has ever seen. Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry is being touted as the new savior of the radical right, proof positive all economic theory comes from God.
This fundamentalist radical right is nothing new. The Tea party is simply the moral majority, wrapped in a new bow.
What is new is the bold faced economic fiction being spun right, left and center. It's like the idea that Creationism is equal to Evolution and the biological sciences has invaded the world of Economics, Mathematics and Statistics.
We are re-entering the dark ages. Down is up, left is right and if you float in water, you must be a witch. Most economists know in a severe recession increasing government spending to take up the slack in demand is a good thing to do. Yet, a group of crazies have kidnapped the national discourse and demanded public policy to cut government spending in a time of very weak economic demand. Once again, up is down and down is up.
Wisconsin Just Showed Us. You can call a do over on your reactionary votes from 2010. Hate your representative? Completely upset with the jobs crisis, now projected to continue ad infinitum?
Have a recall!
In the largest clustered recall ever, six Wisconsin State Senate Republicans faced a recall election and special interest money poured into the State:
Spending on the nine elections had reached $33 million, most of it from outside special interest groups. Interest group spending has far eclipsed the Wisconsin record of about $20 million set in 2008 elections that covered half the state Senate and all Assembly members.
Welcome to the weekly roundup of great articles, facts and figures. These are the weekly finds that made our eyes pop. This week the fur is flying over the never ending economic absurdity spewing from our government representatives.
Did the GOP Play Math Hooky?
Scarecrow calls it on how the press doesn't even challenge outrageous economic fiction being spewed by politicians in did the GOP miss third grade math?
Compared to laying siege to government, hurting millions, and putting the economy at risk, it’s only a minor irritant, I suppose, one of the dozens of little misrepresentations that we are so used to hearing from the right wing that we just shrug our shoulders and wait for something new. But the fact the media almost never pushes back suggests that letting it slide is a mistake. And it’s just fractions!
Remember third grade math? Sure you do. It’s when you probably first learned fractions. Numerators! Denominators? Percentages! Pies! Well, it seems many right wingers skipped that year, because they can’t recall that a fraction has both a numerator and a denominator, so the size of the fraction depends on both.
So night after night, apparent third grade dropouts tell news anchors and talk show hosts, none of whom even sighs (sigh), that government spending has exploded under Socialist Obama. Before Obama, it was about 19 percent of GDP or 1/5th. But now its almost 1/4th, or 24 percent of GDP.
Tom Coburn said that on my public tv. Boehner and McConnell and Kyl say that. Every Tea-GOP and rightwinger has it tatooed on their foreheads, and Sarah Palin has is written on her palm. From 19 to 24 percent! Yikes!
It’s hard to say if the Tea Party has an acknowledged leader, but someone who professes to be just that has chosen a very opportune moment to trash Speaker John Boehner’s attempts to craft legislation that would allow an increase in the debt ceiling. Judson Phillips, the CEO of Tea Party Nation, is the self-acknowledged head of the Tea Party, and in an editorial this morning in The Washington Post, he attacks Boehner’s legislation for providing “almost non-existent budget cuts.”
Phillips says:
As the founder of Tea Party Nation, I feel confident in saying that the Tea Party understands what so many in Washington seem to have forgotten: We do not have a debt crisis. We have a spending crisis. There is only one way you get to a debt crisis — you spend too much money.
Here is what is fundamentally wrong and dangerous with the core assumption of the Tea Party: There are two ways to get to a debt crisis – you either spend too much money or you don’t take in enough revenue. Anyone who has done a family budget or a business budget understands there are two sides to every discussion of cash flow: cash flow in, and cash flow out. In government terms, this equates to taxes received and expenditures made.
It seems President Obama knows how to crash a party as well as a server. The House of Representatives website is crashed after Obama went on prime time television asking Americans to contact their representatives. In visiting John Boehner's website 15 minutes ago this error message was displayed.
Bad Request (Invalid Hostname)
About sums up the insane budget crisis doesn't it?
When Obama told Americans to contact their representatives to show support for his debt-ceiling plan, the response was so strong it overwhelmed some House telephone lines and websites.
On Tuesday morning, House officials said calls to telephone circuits there are hitting near capacity, with many callers getting busy signals. An alert advised members' offices to provide important contacts with alternative numbers, adding that outbound calls are unaffected.
In addition, Monday night and Tuesday morning checks of the websites of House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio and Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., showed a "Server is too busy" response on an otherwise blank screen, as did the House Ways and Means Committee website on Tuesday morning.
This author is more horrified at our government in general and believes every representative should be required to pass an economics class before being sworn into office. Kind of like requiring bad driving school for repeat traffic offenders. With that, what are others saying?
The below video interviews Yves Smith pointing to the entire debt ceiling crisis being manufactured.
Is Gold money? Apparently not according to Ben. While technically correct, all of those gold bugs hording their physical gold for the impending Global Economic Armageddon, round 3, are jumping at the ready.
Boo Hoo Wisconsin! You did not remove one of the most inane, toxic governors out to destroy the middle class with nonsensical economic agendas. Regardless of party, Walker's attack on collective bargaining was simply an attack on working people. Yet somehow envy that some workers have managed to hang onto pensions and health care which won't send them into poverty enrages others who do not have wages, pensions and benefits. So angry Wisconsin, instead of demanding higher wages, pensions and better health care for themselves gave the very people was are out to destroy them, carte blanche, a mandate to continue to do just that! Why not, let's destroy pensions, worker rights, wages and jobs, instead of being outraged that our financial livelihoods are under attack! Just today Republicans 
Bloomberg has one whooper story. It seems the Koch Brothers made 
Iowa has joined the ranks of crazy, putting first in a straw poll someone out to destroy 
Let the word go forth from Washington! The corporate rulers occupying our nation's capital have declared war on just about every citizen.
Is Gold money? Apparently not according to Ben. While technically correct, all of those gold bugs hording their physical gold for the impending Global Economic Armageddon, round 3, are jumping at the ready.
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