House “Republicans” STILL don’t give a s*** about anyone but their fellow millionaires.

And here is the proof. House Speaker John Boehner once again said “no” to providing insurance benefits to the unemployed: people who became unemployed because of Repub policies, mind you. So no, they do not give a single sheep raisin for you or I.

As it says in the above-linked article,

Two weeks ago, a bipartisan group of senators announced a deal on legislation that would extend benefits through the end of May. Under the bill, people who’ve missed benefits would receive retroactive payments. Given the additional 70,000 who have been dropped from long-term unemployment benefits each week since they expired in December, that number has reached roughly 2 million.

But House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) suggested Wednesday the House wouldn’t consider the Senate bill to extend federal long-term unemployment insurance unless the Senate works to pass jobs proposals offered by Republicans.

Got it? The House Repubs won’t do anything for the majority of Americans unless they can throw more of our tax dollars to their über-rich buddies. So, says the House majority, AMFYOYO to all of the working Americans that the GOP dejobbed via their idiotic economic policies.

As the woman who was quoted in the linked article asked about Boehner and his cronies, “Don’t they care about the irreversible damage they are doing to millions?” The answer, dear lady, is clear:

No. They don’t care. They didn’t before, they don’t now, and they won’t tomorrow. No matter if you starve, live in a box, die, they do not care.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Screw the Catholic Church, but the Pope is speaking some truths.

This writer has been trickling all over supply-side economics for quite some time now, going back to the Reagan era when the idiotic notion first reared its ugly-assed head. And so have many others. But Pope Francis has outdone us all.

Here is Francis taking the academic approach:

“Some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” Francis wrote in the papal statement. “This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naive trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacra­lized workings of the prevailing economic system.”

“Meanwhile,” he added, “the excluded are still waiting.”

And here he is with the killer phrase, offering a perfect summation of Voodoo Economics:

“The promise was that when the glass was full, it would overflow, benefiting the poor. But what happens instead, is that when the glass is full, it magically gets bigger, and nothing ever comes out for the poor”.

Being a descendant of Huguenot refugees who fled from the terrors and crimes of Rome, Mr. B & C has long felt (and continues to feel) a huge antipathy towards the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Screw that organization with a rusty chain saw. They have done immense damage to Jews, Protestants, women, and the LGBT community over the centuries, and continue to to wreak havoc today, bringing misery and death to untold millions. And they rarely (if ever) apologize or make recompense for their crimes. So, again, screw that organization.

But let’s give credit where it’s due: Pope Francis has revealed the Laffer-Curve Emperor to be naked. He has brilliantly summed up the con job that was foisted upon the world by a bunch of fake “Republicans”, starting in the late 70’s. He has linked the cause (Supply-Side Economics) to its effect: the historically unprecedented inequality that plagues our planet. He has, in short, truly done God’s work this time.

It may be nothing more than the leader of one criminal organization calling out another: but it is truth. It is a truth that the world needs to hear. So, bless you, Pope Francis. Just for today, and thank you.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Trickle-Down Economics is Dead: Yes, Mitt, it’s Official

Mr. Blunt and Cranky has been saying that the Supply-Side Voodoo Economics theory that “Republicans” have been pushing for the past few decades is a bunch of mule muffins, and has further challenged adherents thereof to provide impartial proof otherwise. Thus far, no Pro-Trickle proof has been presented.

Meanwhile, the Congressional Research Service (said Congress being under the effective control of the Repubs, mind you) has just put out a report saying that the Reagan/Bush/Romney plan does not work, and has never worked. The first link is a summary news story; the second is the actual report, suitable for OCD data freaks like your humble correspondent.

http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/tax-cuts-wealthiest-don-t-stimulate-economy-report-160714639.html

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/news/business/0915taxesandeconomy.pdf

Here’s the money quote from the Congressional Research Service:

“The results of the analysis suggest that changes over the past 65 years in the top marginal tax rate and the top capital gains tax rate do not appear correlated with economic growth. The reduction in the top tax rates appears to be uncorrelated with saving, investment, and productivity growth. The top tax rates appear to have little or no relation to the size of the economic pie.

However, the top tax rate reductions appear to be associated with the increasing concentration of income at the top of the income distribution”.

All y’all got that? The Romney/Ryan plan will do nothing to create jobs or boost the economy. It WILL, however, make those two rich f***s even richer, along with their cronies. They are pushing a plan that will screw us all, while lining their own pockets.

You might not call that criminal behavior –  politicians running on a platform that enriches themselves at the expense of the nation they profess to “serve”. This writer does. And if you vote for them, you’re just as guilty as they are.

Mr. B & C

Hellz NO, Romney’s Plan Won’t Work

It won’t work because it has been tried before and has never, repeat NEVER worked. Not once. (If you think you can argue the point, please submit a peer-reviewed economic paper showing where Supply-Side has actually worked for more than a year or so before it came crashing down. Pardon us for not holding our breath.) All the Romney/Ryan plan boils down is to Bush The Dumber’s plan, minus the compassion. And the Shrub’s Economic record was a cluster-f***ing train-wreck of thermonuclear proportions.

As we did yesterday, here are some actual numbers from the Feds and Wall Street to back Mr. Blunt and Cranky’s thesis statement (oh, and Congress changed control a number of times during the past 20 years, so don’t try blaming one party or the other over there):

Date:	Day One of Bubba 1/20/1993	Day One of Dubya    1/20/2001	Inauguration Day (End of Dubya’s Reign) 1/20/2009	Today (3 + Years of Obama) 9/5/2012
Unemployment Rate	7.3%	4.2%	7.8 % (rising)	8.3 % (fluctuating, down from 10.0 % in 2009)
Dow Jones	3,241.95	10,578.24	7,949.09	13,045.46
Nasdaq	697.44	2757.91	1440.86	3069.27
Stanford &   Poor’s	433.37	1432.90	805.22	1403.45
Inflation Rate	2.7%	1.6%	0.1 %	1.4%
National Debt	$4.1 Trillion	$5.7 trillion	$10.6 Trillion	$15.9 Trillion
Budget Deficit	$255 Billion (4.4% of   GDP)	-$128 Billion (3.0%   of GDP) (IOW, a Surplus)	$1.2 Trillion (8.3 %   of GDP)	$1.1 Trillion (7.6 % of GDP)
Job Expansion/ Contraction	63,000 added in 1/94   (Earliest available from BLS)	268,000 added in   1/2001	527,000 Jobs   lost  from 1/1/09 to 1/20/09	163,000 Jobs added in 6/12 (latest figures available from   BLS)

 

 

Please note that during Bubba’s time in office, things got better – Hell, even the national debt slowed its growth. That is because practicality trumped ideology. The Reagan/Bush The Smarter years were ideological, yes, but at least tempered with reality-based thinking and actions, so Clinton did not have as big of a mess to clean up. But clean it up he did, along with the adults in the Legislative Branch who managed to keep the ideologues in check part of the time.

Then along came Bush The Dumber. All ideology and whack-a-doodle theories, all the time, nary a pragmatist in the White House to utter a discouraging word. The result: each and every economic indicator went to Hell in a handbasket, and we are still trying to dig our way out of the resulting crisis that the Shrub and his crew of Supply-Siders caused.

Now we have Obama. Not this writer’s fave Prexy, but he’s done a darned good job of crisis management and even started addressing some of the underlying causes of the Bush Economic Collapse. His plan is to keep doing what has been proven to work, and do it for another four years. Kind of hard to argue with success, innit?

So, here’s the choice: Pick one or the other, there is no third option:

Number A: Romney, doing what has always failed before.

Letter 2: Obama, doing what always works.

(Hint: If you pick A, then you really ARE a stupid f***.)

Mr. B & C

Rule One of Holes: When You’re In One, Stop Digging

A few hundred years ago, some slick-talking, amoral scumbuckets conned a lot of gullible people into believing that people of African descent were subnormal, subhuman creatures that could be used as slave labor. Even as it became obvious that this was an enormous, steaming heap of honkey bollocks, the racists doubled down on their flawed ideology.  “We need to be tougher on them, then it’ll work. Honest.”  So various idiots and greedheads tried to beat, shoot, and pummel black folk into “place”, and of course failed miserably.

About a hundred years ago, a disgruntled academic and his pet pamphleteer invented Communism, and some countries decided it was gospel truth and proceeded to implement it. Even as the people realized that Marxism/Leninism was an enormous, steaming heap of reindeer bollocks, the governments doubled down on their flawed ideology.  “We need to be better Communists, and then it will work. Honest.” The commies tried to beat, shoot, and pummel the proletariat into “place”, and in all but a few cases failed miserably.

Thus proving Rule One of Holes. In each of the above examples, people started digging a “hole” without at first realizing it, and then continued on even when it became clear that things were not working as planned. Sensible people would agree that further digging would deepen the hole and so one should stop, put the dirt back, and do something else instead of enabling the entombing of one’s self by digging ever deeper. Alas, many people are not sensible.

Starting in the late 1970’s and since then enthusiastically promoted by the Reagan/Bush/Clinton/Bush administrations, the Hole Du Jour has been “Supply-Side Economics”: the idea that redistributing tax breaks and benefits towards the already wealthy will create a stronger and more prosperous economy for everyone. It seemed (like racism and Communism, once) plausible to many; at least, at first it did.  But as it turns out, this idea has been proven to be an enormous, steaming heap of bison bollocks, and one that has dug us all into one helluva deep hole at that. Trillions of dollars deep, and deepening by the day.

So how does your friendly neighborhood supply-sider react to the news? Why, just like the racists and commies did: they are doubling down on their flawed ideology. “We need to cut even more, spend even less, give even more to the rich, then it’ll work. Honest.” Sounds familiar, eh?

Continuing to dig will work just as well as it did in the past: that is to say, not at all. It’s time to stop digging, climb out, and try another approach that does not involve the digging of our own fiscal grave. Rule One of Holes, folks. Learn it. Love it. Live it.

Mr. B & C