In my post this morning on Cory Booker, I noted that Mitt Romney’s tax plan would save households taking in more than $1 million per year an average of at least $250,000 ever year. Let us just dwell on this number for a minute.
Earlier this month, Obama claimed the $250,000 figure. Politifact got to work on it. It turns out, says Politifact, that Obama was telling the truth, and in fact if anything could be described as using the more conservative of two ways of looking at the matter, according to an analysis by the Tax Policy Center.
You can read the Politifact description, which is thorough and clear. It comes down to this in plain language. As you know the Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of the year. Let’s say Romney is elected and the Bush cuts are extended, as Romney says he’ll do (and then some). If you don’t credit Romney with extending the Bush cuts–that is, if you just assume they were going to be extended anyhow–then his plan cuts the tax bill for those making more than $1 million a year by $250,000.
But if you credit President Romney with the extension of the Bush cuts, then Romney’s gift to uber-million households come to $390,000 a year. To see how insane this is, let’s add a little perspective: Let’s look at those same Bush tax cuts.
According to this report from Democratic staff in Congress on the impact of Bush cuts that was issued in 2007, households earnings $1 million or more per year received an average cut of $120,000 per year. Let’s think about this.
The Bush tax cuts “accomplished” the following: lowered the tax burden of the very rich to lowest point in 50 years; added $1.8 billion to the deficit; exploded the publicly held debt as a share of GDP; and didn’t really lead to a single net job (depending on how you measure, which will be the topic of a future post).
In other words, they were a disaster for the economy, and brutally inequitable.
And now, Romney’s plan would give the above $1 million per year households twice as much as Bush did, or three times as much. It’s really and truly sad and unbelievable that something like this is even discussed seriously by serious people. This plan makes Bush’s look like a gift to poor people. Of course Romney would say he’s cutting the lower classes’ taxes too, which he is, but that just proves how much more aggressively the Romney plan would deplete the treasury, which again we’ll dig into in detail at other points.
Voters know Bush wrecked the economy. For Romney this deserves to be and can be much a bigger pain than Bain.
By: Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast, May 21, 2012
May 22, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Election 2012 | Bain Capital, Bush Tax Cuts, Debt, Deficits, Jobs, Mitt Romney, Politics |
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With Wisconsin suffering the worst job loss numbers in the nation for the calendar year 2011, Governor Scott Walker promised yesterday that he will reveal newly revised numbers this week that will, effectively, change water into wine on the Wisconsin job front.
And he’s done it just in time for the June 5th recall election.
So, just how is Walker about to turn Wisconsin’s dismal job numbers from lemons to lemonade?
The Governor has simply decided to ignore the system used by the Department of Labor —and every other state in the nation —to measure job growth (or loss) and elected instead to go with a different set of numbers that makes things in Wisconsin look better.
Who knew it could be so easy to solve a jobs crisis?
With Wisconsin’s lagging job growth now driving voter sentiment as the state heads towards the June 5th election, Walker’s Chief Economist, John Koskinen, offered a presentation last week to Walker staff members and state economic officials wherein he made the case for an alternate system of measuring job creation—one that would be ‘unique’ to the Badger State.
The presentation is available for viewing on YouTube, under the title “Challenging The Spot Of The Ball”. For those of you who are not football fans, ‘challenging the spot of the ball’ refers to a football coach’s complaint to the referee when the coach doesn’t think the referee has been fair about where he places the ball on the field after a play.
Koskinen’s essential pitch is that the Establishment Payroll Survey—the Department of Labor (DOL) survey conducted each month to produce the jobs numbers—is an unfair way to go about counting jobs in Wisconsin. Why? Because the numbers look worse for Wisconsin under this method of counting than they would when the state relies upon on a different survey done each month by the DOL entitled the “Current Population Survey.”
The problem is, whether convenient to Wisconsin or not, the Establishment Payroll Survey is the metric used by the DOL —and the system relied upon by every other state in the nation— to measure job growth.
Here’s the difference between the two approaches-
The Establishment Payroll Survey involves the DOL calling workplaces-both private and government- and asking how many people are employed. The results of this survey, on a national basis, is the jobs number reported every month for non-farm employment.
With Wisconsin suffering the worst job loss numbers in the nation for the calendar year 2011, Governor Scott Walker promised yesterday that he will reveal newly revised numbers this week that will, effectively, change water into wine on the Wisconsin job front.
And he’s done it just in time for the June 5th recall election.
So, just how is Walker about to turn Wisconsin’s dismal job numbers from lemons to lemonade?
The Governor has simply decided to ignore the system used by the Department of Labor —and every other state in the nation —to measure job growth (or loss) and elected instead to go with a different set of numbers that makes things in Wisconsin look better.
Who knew it could be so easy to solve a jobs crisis?
With Wisconsin’s lagging job growth now driving voter sentiment as the state heads towards the June 5th election, Walker’s Chief Economist, John Koskinen, offered a presentation last week to Walker staff members and state economic officials wherein he made the case for an alternate system of measuring job creation—one that would be ‘unique’ to the Badger State.
The presentation is available for viewing on YouTube, under the title “Challenging The Spot Of The Ball”. For those of you who are not football fans, ‘challenging the spot of the ball’ refers to a football coach’s complaint to the referee when the coach doesn’t think the referee has been fair about where he places the ball on the field after a play.
Koskinen’s essential pitch is that the Establishment Payroll Survey—the Department of Labor (DOL) survey conducted each month to produce the jobs numbers—is an unfair way to go about counting jobs in Wisconsin. Why? Because the numbers look worse for Wisconsin under this method of counting than they would when the state relies upon on a different survey done each month by the DOL entitled the “Current Population Survey.”
The problem is, whether convenient to Wisconsin or not, the Establishment Payroll Survey is the metric used by the DOL —and the system relied upon by every other state in the nation— to measure job growth.
Here’s the difference between the two approaches-
The Establishment Payroll Survey involves the DOL calling workplaces-both private and government- and asking how many people are employed. The results of this survey, on a national basis, is the jobs number reported every month for non-farm employment.
The Current Population Survey, favored by Governor Walker, involves calling households to ask people if they are working. This is the survey that gives us our monthly unemployment number—the number that is consistently attacked by Obama foes because it is impacted by factors such as how many people have dropped out of the hunt for a job, expiration of unemployment benefits and other events that skew the numbers. In other words, when people give up looking for work, it actually has a positive impact on the unemployment rate because these people are removed from the counting base, allowing for a better ratio of people who are working to those who are not. This produces a more favorable, but far less accurate, measurement of how many people are unemployed.
The Current Population Survey (household survey) is particularly tricky when applied to determining the job numbers for a state because of the many people who live on the ‘edges’ of a state who are employed across the border in a different state. By way of example, someone living in Racine, Wisconsin may be able to answer in the affirmative when asked if she has a job. However, what is not asked is whether the respondent is employed in Wisconsin or driving across the border into Illinois to go to work. This makes such an individual’s response useful in determining how many people are working on a national basis but perverts the numbers when attempting to determine how many people are actually working in Wisconsin.
For these reasons, the Establishment Survey has long been the primary tool for measuring how many jobs exist in a given state rather than the household survey.
Yet, when Scott Walker delivers his ‘good news’ this week using his version of the ‘real’ numbers of job growth in 2011, he will not be using this traditional standard. And should we insist that the Walker Administration stay within the same metrics everyone else uses so as to get a true measure of where Wisconsin ranks vis-a-vis other states?
No worries —The Governor is ready for that one.
In the presentation noted above, Mr. Koskinen argues that were the DOL to use the old benchmarking readjustment standards (the Labor Department uses up-to-date data each year to go back and make adjustments to earlier estimates), involving making corrections to the 2nd quarter job numbers of the previous year rather than the current standards of readjusting the 3rd quarter of the previous year—it would also look better for Wisconsin. Accordingly, Walker is choosing to use the old standards because…well, I think the reason is sufficiently obvious.
Still, every single other state in the union uses the current standards of readjusting 3rd quarter benchmarks and it is that number which is used to compare relative success or failure among the 50 states.
According to Laura Dresser, a labor economist at The Center On Wisconsin Strategy at The University Of Wisconsin, Walker’s new numbers are little more than an incredibly transparent effort to create a false reality just in time to mislead Wisconsin voters who will cast their ballot in a few short weeks. Pointing out just one of the flaws in the ‘new and improved’ Walker method of measuring job growth, Dresser says, “It seems that they’re attributing employment growth in other states to Wisconsin.”
Dresser further points out that even if we were to go along with Walker’s preferred metrics, despite their being completely out of synch with the remainder of the country, we simply end up “dancing around zero.” While the Establishment Survey puts the numbers of jobs lost slightly below zero, the alternative survey preferred by the Walker people puts them just above zero. At the end of the day, we’re talking about zero job growth—even under Walker’s favored, if completely unorthodox, approach.
The numeric wizardry has not gone unnoticed by Governor Walker’s opponent in the coming election, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett who said,””They brought in a fiction writer. They don’t like their numbers. They’re going to make up their own numbers.”
There is always a way to spin bad news and we can always count on politicians-of all stripes-to do their best in this regard. However, when one considers that Governor Walker, for the first 15 months of his term, was content to utilize the same system of measuring job growth accepted by the remaining 49 states and the federal government, it seems stunningly disingenuous to toss the metric aside now that he faces recall.
The question that remains is whether those who support the Governor, and the few remaining Wisconsinites still on the fence, will be willing to forgive so blatant a diversion or will respond to the Administration’s attempt to insult the voters by ‘changing the spot of the ball.’
Should the voters of Wisconsin throw their own red flag on Walker’s ploy and demand a review of the play, it’s a good bet that the people are not going to like Scott Walker’s call on this one.
By: Rick Ungar, Contributing Writer, Forbes, May 15, 2012
May 16, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Wisconsin | Jobs, Recall Walker, Scott Walker, Tom Barrett, U. S. Labor Department, Unemployment, Wisconsin Recall, Wisconsin Republicans |
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Last August, the nation narrowly avoided hittingits debt limit thanks to a last minute deal cut by Congress. House Republicans had threatened to push the country into a default unless Democrats agreed to spending cuts that were larger than the amount of the debt limit increase.
The episode is widely regarded as an embarrassment for good governance and a blow for the economy. Standard & Poor’s, even with the deal, downgraded America’s credit rating, citing the GOP’s complete intransigence regarding revenue increases. But it seems Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is ready to write the sequel, as he will reportedly demand today that the next increase in the debt limit follow the same GOP criteria:
In a speech Tuesday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) plans to address the issue of national debt, which will once again be nearing its legal limit in January, just as the tax hikes and spending cuts are due to hit.
According to advance remarks provided to The Post, Boehner will insist that any increase in the debt limit be accompanied by spending “cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase” — the same demand that pushed the Treasury to the brink of default during last summer’s debt-limit standoff.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the cuts demanded by the GOP in exchange for raising the debt limit will cost the economy 1.8 million jobs this year. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner already pushed back on Boehner’s remarks, saying, “this commitment to meet the obligations of the nation, this commitment to protect the creditworthiness of the country, is a fundamental commitment that you can never call into question or violate.”
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, May 15, 2012
May 16, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Debt Ceiling | Default, Economy, GOP, House Republicans, Jobs, John Boehner, Politics, Spending Cuts, Tax Revenue |
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A favorite conservative attack on President Obama is that his policies — and even his personality — amount to an assault on American businesses. “President Obama himself is the most anti-business presidentin my lifetime. With rhetoric not befitting a president he has attacked oil companies, banks, airplane users, Wall Street and anyone who makes money,” wrote Gary Shapiro, president and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association.
However, according to the latest data, President Obama has been very good for America’s biggest businesses. Last year, in fact, the Fortune 500 made a record $824 billion, topping the previous record set before the Great Recession:
The Fortune 500 generated a total of $824.5 billion in earnings last year, up 16.4% over 2010. That beats the previous record of $785 billion, set in 2006 during a roaring economy. The 2011 profits are outsized based on two key historical metrics. They represent 7% of total sales, vs. an average of 5.14% over the 58-year history of the Fortune 500. Companies are also garnering exceptional returns on their capital. The 500 achieved a return-on-equity of 14.3%, far above the historical norm of 12%.
Of course, that return to pre-recession level earnings hasn’t translated into job or wage growth for America’s workers. In fact, inflation-adjusted wages fell last year. Big companies are also squeezing more productivity out of their workers, with annual revenue generated per worker increasing by more than $40,000 over the last five years. CEO pay, meanwhile, increased 15 percent last year.
This data also puts the lie to the Republican claim that corporate tax cuts will spur businesses to hire. If all it took were extra cash, businesses would be hiring like crazy. However, they are clearly not doing so — and the effective corporate tax rate is already at a forty year low.
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, May 7, 2012
May 8, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Corporations | Business, Conservatives, Fortune 500 Companies, Jobs, Politics, Recession, Tax cuts, Wages, Workers |
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Driving west from Madison, Wisconsin, through the small towns and dairy farm country of western Wisconsin, it quickly becomes clear that the Wisconsin recall election is a statewide phenomenon.
For all the efforts of Governor Walker to convince the hosts on Fox and CNBC that he is a popular governor who is threatened not by angry citizens but by “the left, the radical left, and the big labor union bosses” who are “somehow counting on the idea that they can bring enough money and enough bodies into Wisconsin to dissuade voters,” the message from farm country tells an entirely different story.
Walker has had the overwhelming spending advantage since the recall fight started last November. Walker has had all the benefits of the Republican Party organization that has gone into overdrive to aid his candidacy, while Democrats have faced a multi-candidate primary fight.
Yet, Walker does not have the swing counties of western Wisconsin wrapped up. Not by a long shot.
Along Highway 14, heading out of Dane County and into Iowa and Richland Counties, hundreds of hand-painted signs propose to “Recall Walker.” Most list reasons for the governor’s removal: “Worst Job Losses in US,” “Attacks on Collective Bargaining,” “Cut Education,” “Cut BadgerCare,” “Divided State,” “John Doe.”
Of course, the governor has his supporters.
But there is genuine, broad-based and statewide opposition to this governor in every region of Wisconsin—but especially in the western and northern parts of the state. Even as the governor has spent $21 million so far on the recall campaign, that opposition is growing.
The new Marquette University Law School Poll shows that disapproval of the governor’s performance had moved up to 51 percent. Indeed, the governor’s approval rating has now declined to 47 percent, the lowest point so far this year. And one of the prospective Democratic challengers, Tom Barrett, has now moved ahead of Walker in head-to-head match-ups run by the Marquette pollsters.
What has changed? The polling shows that Wisconsinites, who once felt that Republicans had the right equation for creating jobs (tax cuts for multinational corporations, attacks on public employees and their unions, slashing of education and public-service funding), have soured on the GOP and its poster-boy governor. They’ve been influenced, of course, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics study that reveals that, in the year since Governor Walker implemented his austerity agenda, Wisconsin has suffered the worst job losses in the nation. The Marquette poll shows that Wisconsinites now believe that investments in education, good relations with unions and fair tax policies are more likely to grow the economy than Walker’s “war on workers” approach.
The governor admitted Wednesday that the recall contest on June 5 is “a 50-50 race.” But what’s notable is that his numbers are declining, while numbers for the opposition are rising.
When I spoke at the Arcadia Bookstore in Spring Green the other night, we talked a good deal about the Democratic gubernatorial primary. I suggested, as I will here, that people should take their vote seriously. After all, they are not just choosing a nominee. If the signs in front of the farms are correct, and if the polls are correct, it looks like Democrats may be choosing a governor.
By: John Nichols, The Nation, May 3, 2012
May 4, 2012
Posted by raemd95 |
Wisconsin | Jobs, Public Employees, Recall Walker, Scott Walker, Tom Barrett, Wisconsin Recall, Wisconsin Republicans, Wisconsin Unions |
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