The Rude Awakening

I certainly had my own thoughts on what happened last night, but what about the people who were actually there?

[Delegate Laurie Haley from Reno] said she is anxious to go home and start making phone calls and knocking on doors for Obama and for U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley, D-Las Vegas, who is running for U.S. Senate.

“I’m ready to go home and make a difference,” she said. “I’m so energized that my husband probably won’t be able to live with me for the next 60 days until the election.”

Haley said she is better off than she was before Obama took office, in part because of his support for the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for women to sue employers for paying them less than men for the same jobs. The law was the first that Obama signed after taking office.

“It means that women like me won’t be paid 23 cents less than men for doing the same work,” Haley said. “That adds up to a lot of money per week,per month, per year and over the course of a career. It affects the quality of our lives.”

And this is exactly what the Democratic Convention was aimed to accomplish. With all the pundits' talk of "enthusiasm gaps" and "disillusionment", Democrats wanted to dispel that talk and show how Democrats are still fired up and ready to go. This week's convention in Charlotte went a long way in doing this.

But today, it looks like the economy is chiming in... And frankly, it isn't sounding all that great. However, we can't forget that exactly one year ago, President Obama offered a solution.

The American electorate was clamoring for action on jobs; the Obama White House crafted a credible plan that would be helping enormously right now; and congressional Republicans reflexively killed the Americans Jobs Act for partisan and ideological reasons.

With this recent history in mind, how are we to assign responsibility for high unemployment? Should we condemn the person who threw the job market a life preserver, or those who pushed it away? Or put another way, are we better off now as a result of Republican obstructionism and intransigence, or would we have been better off if the popular and effective job-creation measures had been approved?

By any reasonable measure, the GOP argument, which will be trumpeted loudly today, is completely incoherent -- they were wrong a year ago and now we're paying the price.

When we really think about it, we're lucky the economy created 96,000 jobs last month. Despite the constant G-O-TEA obstruction and economic sabotage, we're still seeing some kind of economic recovery.

However, it can be better. That's precisely why President Obama proposed the American Jobs Act last September. It would have created 1.9 million more jobs and an extra 2% worth of GDP growth this year. Yet instead of working with President Obama to speed up economic recovery, G-O-TEA politicians just kept obstructing.

Oh, and some G-O-TEA acolytes actually went further in proposing legislation to worsen our economic problems and throw America into depression! In fact, Nevada's own Dean Heller and Joe Heck both proposed bills last November aimed at slashing public investment in our economy precisely when our economy needed that investment the most.

Again, when taking this into consideration, it's actually a bit of a minor miracle that our economy is still growing and creating jobs. And it's become increasingly clear that our economy needs more investment, NOT LESS. This is what we started to hear from President Obama last night in Charlotte, and this is what we need to hear more from him about next Wednesday here in Las Vegas.

But let's face it, we still won't see enough progress if we don't see significant change in Congress. And this is the case President Obama and Congressional Democrats must make in order to sweep away the austerity nonsense and work on delivering real economic growth.

Heller's Unbalanced Agenda on Capitol Hill

Right now, people are getting frustrated. Voters are angry. Occupiers are marching all over the country. Americans are looking for real solutions on the issue most on our minds: JOBS (and how to create more of them).

Considering all this, what is our junior Senator doing in Washington? This. And why is he doing it?

Senator Dean Heller (R-NV) would very much like to have the so-called Balanced Budget Amendment emerge as a major topic in the 2012 elections. One reason to call reporters and ask, “How does my opponent stand on the Balanced Budget Amendment?” is to enroll the press in the campaign by getting members of the media to ask the question of said opponent, and then get the results into print or on the air. It’s a game everyone plays. Some more subtly than others.

Another reason to launch the topic is that it polls well. Polling nationwide supposedly shows significant support for the idea, although few seem to appreciate the implications of this political gimmick. The air might be taken out of this trial balloon if proponents like Senator Heller were asked, “Do you favor the following cuts to federal programs?”

Yep, just as I was saying yesterday. And just as I was saying yesterday, beneath the surface the BBA is not really all that popular. Greg Sargent pointed this out earlier this week.

* The public opposes the supercommittee “making hundreds of millions of dollars in spending cuts to Medicare and Medicare through increasing beneficiary costs,” 76-19. A majority, 52 percent, strongly opposes these cuts.

* The public supports the supercommittee “increasing taxes on wealthy Americans and corporations,” 66-31. A majority, 52 percent, strongly support these tax increases. [...]

But again, on the hot button issue of entitlements cuts, the public has said No. Indeed, the poll also finds opposition to changing the calculation of Social Security to lower benefits, 56-38.

I’m not sure how else to put this. The super committee is likely to fail. But it won’t be because the American people haven’t made their preferences on how to reduce the deficit very, very clear. They have. If deficit reduction comes down to a choice between who sacrifices — the wealthy and corporations on the one hand, or Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security beneficiaries on the other — Americans think the sacrifice should be made by the former, not the latter.

And there we have it. The Supercommittee that we were all forced into when the G-O-TEA held the nation hostage is set to fall apart because that very G-O-TEA faction can't get its act together on taxes. It's obvious to all the rest of us that tax reform needs to happen in order to fix the budget, but that just isn't acceptable in "Tea Party Fantasyland".

So G-O-TEA leaders in Congress are now trying to save face by bringing back the "Balanced Budget Amendment". Of course, what they don't want us to know is that they have no real interest in doing that. Not even their own Republican budget proposals meet BBA standards! And considering they want no new tax revenue, instead they would have to rely upon Social Security cuts, Medicare cuts, Medicaid cuts, student aid cuts, and even more devastating slashing and burning of the American social safety net to even get close to BBA standards.

Again, if Dean Heller cared so much about balancing the budget, why won't he tell his fellow Congressional Republicans to let the Bush tax rates expire? And why won't he support closing the many "billionaire bailouts" found in our corporate tax code? Why does he keep wanting to attack seniors, the disabled, and college students in the name of "balancing the budget"?

Oh, and why are we even talking about this crap when people are still out of work? Where are the JOBS? If Heller cared so much about what's really bothering Nevadans, why won't he even allow an up or down vote on President Obama's American Jobs Act?

Are You Kidding Me?

That's really the reaction I had after first seeing this.

A large group of Senate Republicans unveiled a jobs bill Thursday, saying they were tired of hearing President Obama assert they had not put forward a plan to spur hiring and jump-start the economy.

The bill is something of a greatest hits of Republican economic proposals. It calls for tax reform that lowers tax rates, repeal of the new healthcare law, a balance budget amendment to the Constitution and expansion of offshore oil drilling.

Seriously? Seriously? Where do I even begin? Perhaps with a quick debunk from Greg Sargent?

The Associated Press recently did a bracing fact check and concluded that Labor Department data show that under Obama, just two-tenths of 1 percent of layoffs have been due to government regulation. McClatchy recently canvassed small businesses across the country and found little evidence that it’s a factor.

And Bruce Bartlett, a top policy adviser in the administrations of Reagan and the elder Bush, recently concluded that worry about regulatory uncertainty “is a canard invented by Republicans” and “not a serious effort to deal with high unemployment.” Bartlett argued that the focus on regulation is rooted in the GOP’s lack of any real ideas to create jobs.

So for all the G-O-TEA talk of "SOE-SHUL-IZM!!!!" destroying any and every job in sight, the facts say otherwise. Actually, government regulation is needed to prevent a market economy from falling apart on its own... As it nearly did in 2008 after the first wave of financial industry turmoil.

And are Republicans serious about using the old Balanced Budget Amendment (BBA) trick again? Seriously? Not even Paul Ryan's teabagger fantasy of a budget would be legal under it! No fewer than five Nobel Prize winning economists have begged Congress not to pass it and risk sending America into an even worse recession! The BBA game is really getting old and tiresome. We all know it won't pass, and we all know it would harm, not help, the fragile economy in need of more investment if passed.

And really, another cry for "Drill, Baby, Drill!!!"? What on earth are they thinking?! Desert Beacon explained quite well on Tuesday that future prospects for more and better job creation lie with small and mid-sized renewable energy firms, not with big, fat cat fossil fuel corporations that have misused current subsidies from us the taxpayers for far too long.

“…start-ups across a variety of areas — solar power, biofuels and energy conservation among them — are getting increased financing from venture capitalists and lenders at a time when other small companies are cutting back and being turned away by investors. And many are hiring more staff, boosting marketing efforts and expanding geographically.

Alternative energy “has been the brightest sector in venture capital over the last year,” says Brian Fan, research director at Cleantech Group, an industry trade organization in San Francisco. “Everyone is thinking it’s going to be a big priority of the incoming administration.”

While the overall volume of venture-capital deals sank last year, investments in clean-technology companies totaled $8.4 billion, up nearly 40% from 2007, according to Cleantech Group. In the third quarter alone, venture capitalists poured $2.6 billion into clean technology, a quarterly record. In the fourth quarter, they invested $1.7 billion.]

So what exactly is this "new" "jobs bill" from Senate Republicans held captive by the "tea party" fringe? Well, it just sounds to me like the same old s--t we're used to hearing from them. It's just presented in a "new" shiny package in hopes of distracting us from the increasingly popular American Jobs Act that Senate Republicans voted to kill this week.

Two-to-one. That's the margin by which Americans are united behind the president's ideas to create jobs - and specifically, to the progressive economic policies. While in last night's debate, Republican candidates did their best to groan and moan and whine that increasing taxes on the rich is a bad idea and we should instead abandon our social compacts, they are demonstrably fighting for the votes of the 30 percent. President Obama and his team has only turned up the heat on the Republican members of Congress, forcing them to choose between a political gamble to intentionally undermine the economy in the hopes that it would hurt the president in 2012 and actually doing something about jobs now.

So why again is anyone taking as "serious" any of the same old lame excuses for "ideas" coming out of the G-O-TEA? When will they agree to any sort of jobs bill that will... You know, create jobs?

While Sandoval & G-O-TEA Play Political Games, President Obama Wants Us to "Get Going"

As we've learned more about President Obama's American Jobs Act, we see all sorts of desperately needed aid that can give our economy a badly needed boost. Just read the plan yourself and see what's in there.

But you know who isn't even interested in reading the plan? Do I even have to remind you who calls the shots over there?

President Barack Obama’s recently proposed jobs bill puts Gov. Brian Sandoval in a bit of a pickle.

The $447 billion package, which has been likened to a mini-stimulus, includes significant funding for cash-strapped states; much of it is targeted for Nevada’s economic trouble spots: unemployment benefits, construction jobs and education funding.

But Sandoval, a darling of the national Republicans who is expected to dabble in presidential politics this cycle, has generally supported the GOP line of creating jobs through deregulation, not spending.

Perhaps that’s why Sandoval has taken his typically careful path of declining to voice an opinion on the bill that has yet to make an appearance in Congress.

Of course. Brian Sandoval is being "careful" by "declining to voice an opinion" on a bill that would help Nevada's schools stay open and functioning while improving our aging and insufficient infrastructure and providing real jobs for those who need them. How again is that being "careful"?

According to a fact sheet put out by the White House, Nevada could see:

• $258 million to pay for teachers and emergency responders, jobs that have been put at risk by budget shortfalls at the state and local levels.

• $168 million to refurbish old schools and $251 million in infrastructure funding, which could be a significant boost to Nevada’s decimated construction industry.

• Funding to continue emergency unemployment benefits being collected by 44,000 Nevadans who will lose their unemployment checks if Congress doesn’t extend the program.

I'm still missing it. What's so "careful" about denying Nevada these benefits?

And really, what's so "careful" about staying mum on both the American Jobs Act and the G-O-TEA double standard of piling on more federal debt to rebuild Iraq's schools while demanding that we must force ourselves to kill more jobs and harm our own economy before we can rebuild America's schools?

"It's embarrassing," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said. "The Senate is saying ... in effect why should we rebuild schools in Iraq on the credit card but expect that schools in Joplin, Missouri, at this moment in time have to be paid for in a way that in any of the previous disaster assistance we've put out paid for."

Even Republicans, like Presidential Candidate and Florida P5 Straw Poll winner Herman Cain, are telling their fellow Republicans in Congress to cut the crap and pass a budget with appropriate disaster relief. As usual, House Republicans are holding everything up and threatening government shutdown yet again if they don't get everything they want. I really don't see anything "careful" about this.

This is what irks me. Slick politicians like Brian Sandoval claim to be "careful" by saying nothing about something which could really help our people, but at the same time they're also saying nothing about bad behavior by folks in their own party which may very well harm our people (again). How is this madness reflective of who we are?

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,” [President Obama] said, to applause. “It’s true. You’ve got audiences cheering at the prospect of somebody dying because they don’t have health care and booing a service member in Iraq because they’re gay.” “That’s not reflective of who we are,” he added. “This is a choice about the fundamental direction of our country. 2008 was an important direction. 2012 is a more important election.”

I'm glad Obama is now taking a stand on Republicans' dysfunction junction. Now, it's our turn. We need to make sure Congress actually passes a sensible budget this time... And does something to help our economy for a change.

Can 2011 Special Elections Predict 2012? Not Really.

While the corporate media obsess over a special election in a district that has more in common with Appalachia than "Middle America", and over another special election where no Democrat was running in Republican leaning turf, another story is developing that the media are not paying as much attention to. Here, take a look.

Within the [new CNN and Bloomberg] polls there were bad numbers for the President on the economy more generally, which has been the case for months. Obama's approval on this handling of the economy is 36 percent in the CNN poll and 33 percent in the Bloomberg, which matches Gallup, NBC/WSJ, ABC/WaPo and others in the last week or so.

But CNN also asked about the choice between President Obama and Congressional Republicans, who have sustained a huge hit themselves after the debt ceiling fight. 46 percent still say they prefer the President, to 37 percent who prefer Congressional Republicans. 15 percent say they prefer neither. The Bloomberg poll showed a tighter split, but still chose Obama 43 percent of the time to the GOP's 41.

Within the CNN question there are some interesting results. Those under 50, a group more likely to be unemployed, went for Obama by a 51 - 33 split. Even a quarter of self-described conservatives choose Obama over the Congressional GOPers, along with 50 percent of moderates and 78 percent of liberals.

Economic pessimism continues to infiltrate the thinking of American voters, and you don't have to look hard for an answer as to why. When CNN asked whether respondents feel they are better off today than they were three years ago, 58 percent no. It's not surprising given a previous CNN poll that showed 8 in 10 people think we are still in a recession, which means that many voters think we have been in a downturn since the President was elected. Gallup showed that there's been little help from the actual economic indicators, so there are many legitimate reasons for Americans to remain upset. But has the data shows, the GOP hasn't provided a silver bullet on the economy either, and voters are yet to embrace them as economic stewards. The jobs plan, which is enjoying initial support, is unlikely to change that view.

And if you want to dig deeper to see this story for yourself, look at the CNN internals and the Bloomberg internals. Even in the worst case scenario (Bloomberg's), Republicans can't beat President Obama on the issue the Beltway media pundits have all concluded should be Obama's political anvil sinking him next year. And according to CNN, American voters yet again proclaim that they want more focus on job creation than deficit reduction, and that they much prefer Democratic job creation ideas (such as aid to state and local governments, and infrastructure programs) than the Republicans' pandering to crazed teabaggers (in wanting to slash Social Security and Medicare to death).

Of course, last night's special election results weren't good for Obama or Congressional Democrats, but on the other hand many in DC are forgetting the local dynamics of both races. Here in Nevada, Kate Marshall positioned herself to essentially run against Obama, which demoralized the Democratic base and caused the entire election to be played on the Nevada GOP's turf. And in New York, Orthodox Jews and older white "Reagan Democrats" turned hard Republicans made that election into a referendum on Israel, social issues, and internal Brooklyn & Queens political drama. And while special elections tend to produce dramatic results as of late, they rarely provide a clear forecast of the political climate of the following election cycle.

What will be far more telling in the coming weeks and months, however, is what happens to the economy next, how politicians and political parties react to the state of the economy, and how voters respond to the politicians' reactions. Greg Sargent and Kevin Drum correctly point out that most Americans' view of Obama pretty much hinges on the state of the economy.

People who aren't pure partisans really do vote mostly based on the state of the economy, and they don't seem to care much why the economy is bad. When times are tough, they throw the bums out. It doesn't much matter if the bums have been trying hard.

But is it possible to overcome this dynamic if you barnstorm the country making it clear that your opposition has been working day and night to keep the economy in a ditch? The historical evidence doesn't provide much hope on that score, but then again, I'm not sure an incumbent in recent memory has really tried very hard to make something like this stick. Certainly Obama hasn't given it much of a go yet. But there's still time before next November.

Actually on that last part, Drum misses something... Something that we Nevadans saw for ourselves last year when the same Beltway media pundits were writing Harry Reid's political obituary long before Election Day.





While I agree that the state of the economy very much drives voters' decisions, the ultimate destination doesn't have to be "throw the bums out", especially when the replacement of "the bum" is someone whose agenda goes directly against what the voters want. Again, Reid proved this strategy works when he clearly demonstrated the consequences Nevada would have faced had we replaced him with Sharron Angle. Don't underestimate President Obama's ability to pivot like this and place the blame for economic turmoil exactly where it belongs.



And considering what Republican primary voters seem increasingly likely to do, this is exactly what Obama needs to be doing. How Obama and Republicans address American concerns about the economy will have much more of an effect on next year's election than a couple special election results from last night.

Why "The J Word" Matters

Yesterday, US Labor Secretary Hilda Solis came here to Las Vegas to explain how the American Jobs Act will make an impact on Nevada's beleaguered economy once passed.

President Obama’s jobs plan would have a significant positive effect on Southern Nevada’s economy by putting construction laborers back to work, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said today in Las Vegas.

Solis met with the Las Vegas Sun editorial board following an appearance before the Laborers’ International Union of North America at Paris Las Vegas.

Solis said she expects Obama’s $447 billion jobs plan, unveiled to a joint session of Congress on Thursday and detailed in a bill sent to legislators today, to garner bipartisan support because it uses ideas from both sides of the political aisle.

“Economists say anywhere from 1 million to 1.9 million workers in the construction industry (would be put to work),” Solis said. “That would have an immediate impact on places like Nevada, particularly here (in Las Vegas) where the housing boom was the hardest hit.”

Obama’s proposal includes tax breaks for small businesses, economic stimulus programs and a national infrastructure “bank” to fund roads, bridges, airports, seaports, railways, refineries and to upgrade schools. The president has proposed reducing tax deductions, modifying entitlement programs and increasing taxes on the most wealthy to pay for those programs.

It's a broad ranging piece of legislation that tackles job creation from multiple angles...



Yet House Republicans are already set to reject it and start another possible government shutdown melodrama, even as some progressive Democrats in the House are complaining that it isn't enough. However, one prominent voice in DC rose to say something that Congressional Republicans really did not want to hear.

"If policymakers want to achieve both a short-term economic boost and long-term fiscal sustainability the combination of policies that would be most effective according to our analysis would be changes in taxes and spending that would widen the deficit today, but narrow it in the coming decade," [Congressional Budget Office chief Doug] Elmendorf told the panel's 12 Democrats and Republicans. "The combination of fiscal policies that would be most effective would be policies that cut taxes or increase spending in the near-term, but over the medium and longer-term move in the opposite direction."

This is a generalized version of precisely what President Obama is proposing -- a $447 billion jobs bill that will increase spending on hiring programs, and reduce payroll taxes; accompanied by deficit reduction measures that take effect in 2013, to more than cover the cost of the jobs bill.

As we've talked about before, "austerity" does nothing but harm fragile economies in need of investment to recover and grow again. Yet even as top IMF economists point this out to the world, this is what we hear from the Republicans seeking to defeat President Obama next year.





Cheering on the deaths of the uninsured? Arguing over the value of Social Security? And while the Republicans keep playing in "Tea Party Fantasyland", a record 46.2 million Americans were hit by poverty last year. If there is ever a time to shift into overdrive to focus on job creation and put money in people's pockets again, it's now. But instead of offering any credible ideas on that, Rick Perry, Mitt Romney, and their enablers on Capitol Hill would rather obsess over "Tea Party" fantasies that would further destroy America's middle class, like ending Social Security and scrapping health care reform. (No wonder why Perry's and Romney's poll numbers are dropping like rocks!)

This is the great disconnect. For far too long, it seemed like far too many policy makers in The Beltway were obsessing over issues that "Middle America" couldn't care less about while they were out of work and asking where the jobs are. But while President Obama is reaching out to "Middle America" to explain what the American Jobs Act will do to help them get the work they need to rejoin the middle class, Republicans yet again seem to care more about pleasing teabaggers than actually doing their job.

In Case Anyone Was Wondering...

Why it's so hard for Congress to agree to do anything to help economic recovery, here's why.

Public policy is not a zero-sum competition between “Republican ideas” and “Democratic ideas,” but electoral competition is a zero-sum battle for office. In a paradigm where the passage of major legislation counts as a “win” for President Obama then anyone who wants to see President Obama go down to defeat, then no major legislation can pass on a bipartisan basis. This is exactly the problem the White House had in trying to overcome GOP filibusters during the 111th Congress and the main problem they face in trying to reach bipartisan accords with the Republican-led House of Representatives in the 112th Congress. This is the fundamental reality of American politics today, but far too few people put it at the center of their accounts of what’s happening.

Today, Obama presented Congress with his jobs legislation. In his remarks, Obama noted, “There are some in Washington who’d rather settle our differences through politics and the elections than try to resolve them now. In fact, Joe [Biden] and I, as we were walking out here, we were looking at one of the Washington newspapers and it was quoting a Republican aide saying, ‘I don’t know why we’d want to cooperate with Obama right now. It’s not good for our politics.’ That was very explicit.”

Congressional Republicans are just too petty to "hand him a win", even if it means helping their unemployed constituents get jobs and survive. GOP leadership want to appear "conciliatory" by just passing pieces they like instead of nuking the entire package, but even that may be too much for teabagger rank-and-file, as they're dead set against anything and everything Obama proposes. And of course, the 2012 "clown car candidates" are likely to go along with whatever the teabaggers wants.

They just can't stand that President Obama sent them a bill that they can't have an easy time saying no to, especially since he's making the case directly to the American people. Good. I hope Obama keeps the heat on them, since I doubt they can actually handle it.

"Real Life Concerns" As We "Scrape By"... Or How Obama Finally Gets It

In case you missed it last night...



And here's the full text. And here are some additional facts on "The American Jobs Act".

So what's actually in it? Take a glimpse.

President Obama tonight laid out a $450 billion job creation plan before a joint session of Congress, challenging lawmakers to repeatedly to “pass this jobs bill.” “Regardless of the arguments we’ve had in the past, regardless of the arguments we’ll have in the future, this plan is the right thing to do right now. You should pass it. And I intend to take that message to every corner of this country,” he said.

Obama called for a reduction in the payroll tax, investments in infrastructure, a plan to modernize up to 35,000 schools, as well as tax breaks for new hires and a plan to reform the corporate tax code that currently “stands as a monument to special interest influence in Washington.” Obama emphasized that many of these ideas have, in the past, garnered bipartisan support and he threw in some Republican favorites, such as approving pending free trade agreements.

The Recovery Act was a start in creating badly needed jobs, and this new American Jobs Act has the potential to create 1.9 million jobs and add 2% in GDP growth. This is what we desperately need...

Especially for us in Nevada, as yet another Brookings Institution report found that our lack of public education leads to lack of economic diversification that continues to hinder Nevada's economic recovery. This proposal from President Obama will invest in modernizing public schools, beefing up public works programs, and offering companies real incentives to hire the long-term unemployed.

I hope this is the start of President Obama shifting to a more aggressive and relentless focus on reviving the economy. We all know what the teabaggers want to do. Now, it's up to Democrats to provide a real alternative.