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Romney’s focus though came at the cost of a few key things.
He basically tossed aside his own tax plan or said he would if his numbers didn’t add up. But then he insisted that he could find enough loopholes to close to afford a $5 trillion tax cut for upper income earners. These are more numbers on the table. That’s really what most of the debate was about — budget numbers. Romney insisted with a straight face that up was down.
The Obama team isn’t going to try to get into a fight about whether their guy was on his game. There’s no point. (This is what I meant a couple days ago when I said Obama is not a great debater. Not a great night. But I’ve never seen him great at debating.) What I fully expect, what they’ll do if they’re smart is go full court press on Romney’s numbers and press for details about his budget plan.
The numbers simply don’t add up. Over a few news cycles that can build up really fast. He says he’ll push massive upper income tax cuts and those have to come at the cost of much higher deficits or big tax hikes for middle income people. His campaign agenda is based on a massive deception.
That’s the vulnerability Romney brings out of this debate. And it may be bigger than people realize.
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I want to explain why everyone is so excited about what the Federal Reserve did yesterday. But I want to do it without using the words “quantitative easing,” because those words are almost designed to get you to give up and stop paying attention.
Imagine you got a choice of superpowers. You could be invisible, you could fly, you could be really strong, or you could create unlimited amounts of money. You might well choose the money one. The other ones are cool for a bit, but they’re not all that versatile, and they may well get you into trouble.
The best way to think about the Federal Reserve is that it basically has a superpower. It can create as much money as it wants. Real, American money.
And the Fed doesn’t need anybody’s permission. It’s not like when the president says he wants to do something, like the American Jobs Act, and you have to ask, “What does Congress think?” Or when John Boehner wants to pass something, and you have to ask, “Well, what does Harry Reid think?” Once the Board of Governors decides to move forward, they don’t need 60 votes in the Senate — they just do it. And that makes them incredibly powerful.
But, as Spider Man would say, with great power comes great responsibility. And so the Fed is very cautious in using its powers.
By law, it needs to try to keep unemployment and inflation low. Over the past two years or so, inflation has stayed low, and unemployment has been very, very high. But the Fed has not been doing all that much about it. It’s been hoping the situation would turn around of its own accord, or that Congress and the president would stop bickering and unleash more stimulus — anything so that the Fed didn’t have to further unleash its powers.
But it didn’t happen. And so, on Thursday, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said the Fed had finally decided to do something about unemployment. Something big. Something that might actually work.
He said it was going to buy hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of government and housing bonds for as long as it takes to get the recovery back on a solid footing, and then keep buying them for as long as it takes to be absolutely certain the recovery will stay on a solid footing.
The way the Fed’s plan works — if it works — is that buying all these bonds will drive down long-term interest rates, which will give businesses and investors more incentive to spend now as opposed to sitting on their money waiting for later. It will make mortgages even cheaper, which should accelerate the housing market’s recovery.
But the other part of the plan, and this part is really important, is that Bernanke just sent a signal to businesses and investors and the market and everyone else that the Fed is going to use its powers in a big, unusual way to get the economy moving. That’s a hugely important statement to make.
Imagine a business trying to decide whether it should hire more workers. The basic question it needs to answer is whether people will be buying a lot more stuff next year than they’re buying this year. If business owners don’t see any good reason to think the economy will improve, then the answer is probably, “No, people aren’t going to be buying more stuff next year,” so there’s no need to hire more workers.
But if they think the recovery is going to come, if they think people will be buying more stuff, then they need the workers. They don’t want to be caught without enough product — then their competitors would get those sales.
The Fed is trying to influence that decision. Fed officials are saying: “We’re going to use all our power to make sure there are people out there buying your stuff. So go hire. Do it now. We’re behind you.”
Or you can think of it this way. The Federal Reserve is kind of like the economy’s tough, older brother. If the economy is having problems with some kids at school, and the tough, older brother seems distant, or uninterested, then the economy’s in trouble.
But if the tough, older brother makes it clear that he’ll be there to back up the economy, come what may, and even says that he’s going to go have a talk with some of these kids tomorrow, then the economy is going to be a lot more confident walking to school from now on. And right now, what the economy needs, more than anything, is confidence.
Now, as some of us learned when we were young, tough, older brothers aren’t invincible. And few economists believe that the Fed can solve our ongoing economic problems on its own. But it can do more to help then it’s doing now, and with the housing market beginning to come back and Europe appearing to stabilize, there’s a mounting argument that the conditions for a recovery are beginning to look pretty good. If there’s a policy dark spot here, it’s that Congress is still a mess, and there’s no clarity as to how they’ll bridge the fiscal cliff, or even if they’ll bridge the fiscal cliff. And then, of course, there’s the fundamental fact of the economy right now, which is that consumers are still digging out of debt and businesses remain skittish. Sometimes, even a big older brother isn’t enough to make you feel better.
Senior members of the Haqqani network said that the United States' designation of the militant group as terrorists could endanger the life of an American soldier thought to be in their custody and jeopardize peace talks.
"The Obama administration and U.S. military commanders know that their soldier Bowe Bergdahl is in our possession," a Haqqani commander told NBC News in a telephone interview from an undisclosed location on Friday. "He is in our custody, but his government failed to make any sincere effort for his release, and now this new development could add to his woes."
The Haqqanis, a Pashtun tribe with strongholds in southeastern Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan, have been blamed for an attack on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and other high-profile assaults in Afghanistan. The group is also believed to be holding U.S. Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was captured in 2009 in Afghanistan’s Paktika province, bordering Pakistan’s South Waziristan.
When GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney visited an Ohio coal mine this month to promote jobs in the coal industry, workers who appeared with him at the rally lost pay because their mine was shut down.
The Pepper Pike company that owns the Century Mine told workers that attending the Aug. 14 Romney event would be both mandatory and unpaid, a top company official said Monday morning in a West Virginia radio interview.
A group of employees who feared they'd be fired if they didn't attend the campaign rally in Beallsville, Ohio, complained about it to WWVA radio station talk show host David Blomquist. Blomquist discussed their beefs on the air Monday with Murray Energy Chief Financial Officer Rob Moore.
Moore told Blomquist that managers "communicated to our workforce that the attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend." He said the company did not penalize no-shows.
James Bennet notes the following unguarded aside by Karl Rove to the Washington elite's stenographer, Mike Allen. Rove was unsurprisingly comfortable enough to say the following about a chat with Mitch Daniels:
And I said, 'Mitch, is there a white Democrat south of Indianapolis who's supporting Obama who's not a college professor in Bloomington?' [Laughter] And he stopped for a minute over his green beans and says, 'Not that I can think of.'
You know, Indiana's gone.
The simple assumption of racial politics as the driver of campaigns is what's striking. Karl Rove became what he is - a persistent whitehead on the face of American politics - because he learned the art of race-baiting politics in the South. Romney - having given up on Lainos and blacks and gays - is now betting the bank on the white resentment that has been fast losing potency since the 1990s. Which is where Bill Clinton comes in. He is used in that ad. His speech at the DNC should take on this lie aggressively, call Romney personally on it, and demand that the lie end. No one has more cred on this than Clinton. He should punch hard.
In many ways, this is the biggest moment in Bill Clinton's post-presidential life. Killing racial wedge politics would be a fitting finale to his life's work on that subject.
A poll released on Monday from Latino Decisions shows that Latinos registered voters prefer President Barack Obama to presumtpive Republican nominee Mitt Romney 65 percent to 26 percent. The results are in line with previous polls showing Obama ahead amongst the key demographic -- the PollTracker Average shows the President ahead of Romney by a 29.2 percent margin overall.Of course, this poll won't mean anything if Latinos don't show their strength at the polls this November.
The poll also showed that 56 percent of Latinos also believe the GOP is ignoring their concerns, while 21 percent added that they believe the Republican Party is 'hostile' to Latinos.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Republicans can withstand losing the Missouri Senate race, where the party has cut off support for Rep. Todd Akin in his challenge to Democratic Sen. Claire McCaskill, in the wake of Akin's false comment about "legitimate rape" not leading to pregnancy.
"We can take the Senate without Missouri," McConnell USA TODAY. "It'd be a lot easier to take it with Missouri."
As Republicans gather in Tampa to nominate Mitt Romney, Americans can expect to hear tales of how President Obama has failed to work with their party or turn the economy around.
But an element of their party has pitched so far to the extreme right on issues important to women, immigrants, seniors and students that they've proven incapable of governing for the people. Look no further than the inclusion of the Akin amendment in the Republican Party platform, which bans abortion, even for rape victims.
The truth is that the party has failed to demonstrate the kind of leadership or seriousness voters deserve.
Pundits looking to reduce something as big as a statewide election to a single photograph have blamed the result of my 2010 campaign for U.S. Senate on my greeting of President Obama. I didn't stand with our president because of what it could mean politically; I did it because uniting to recover from the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes was more important than party affiliation. I stood with our nation's leader because it was right for my state.
President Obama has a strong record of doing what is best for America and Florida, and he built it by spending more time worrying about what his decisions would mean for the people than for his political fortunes. That's what makes him the right leader for our times, and that's why I'm proud to stand with him today.
Former Republican Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida will speak at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, three Democratic officials confirmed to CNN Monday.
The move follows his endorsement of President Barack Obama on Sunday. Crist cited the president's leadership following the economic collapse and surrounding health care, as well as his disagreements with the GOP platform as reasons for his backing.
Once in a great while, a poll comes along with methodology that is so implausible that it deserves some further comment. The Foster McCollum White Baydoun poll of Florida is one such survey.
The poll was weighted to a demographic estimate that predicts that just 2 percent of Florida voters will be 30 or younger. It’s a decent bet that turnout will be down some among younger voters this year, but that isn’t a realistic estimate. In 2008, according to exit polls, 15 percent of voters in Florida were between 18 and 30.
The poll also assumed that 10 percent of voters will be between the ages of 31 and 50. In 2008, the actual percentage was 36 percent, according to the exit survey.
The poll projected Latinos to be 7 percent of the turnout in Florida, against 14 percent in 2008. And it has African-American turnout at 10 percent, down from 13 percent.
If the turnout numbers look something like that in November, then Mr. Obama will lose Florida badly. He’ll also lose almost every other state; his electoral map might look a lot like Walter Mondale’s.
But the share of voters 50 and younger in Florida is not going to drop all the way from half the electorate to roughly one-tenth of it, as the poll assumed. That is far beyond the range you can get from reasonable disagreement about methods, or from sampling error. It looks like the result from a badly-designed statistical model that never got a sanity check.
Labor and President Obama haven’t always seen to eye. But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he couldn’t be happier with the way the campaign is shaping up.
“I think the president’s making the case right now that he should be making — that this is about two different types of economy,” Trumka told reporters Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.
It wasn’t always this way. After Republicans took over the House in 2010, the White House pivoted to deficit reduction, agreeing to major spending cuts as the GOP threatened to shut down the government — or worse. Trumka and other labor officials were put off by the new emphasis on trimming government and warned it was a political as well as economically dangerous.
But last year, with the recovery unexpectedly slowing down and Democrats convinced there was no overcoming the Republican Party’s anti-tax fervor, Obama launched a new legislative push for the American Jobs Act, a bill designed to stimulate the economy with tax cuts, relief for state government and infrastructure investments.
“I don’t want to say ‘I told you so,’ but last Labor Day he started talking about jobs and the economy and creating jobs and a different vision, and he’s not let up since then,” Trumka said.
There seems to be a Democratic mole inside Mitt Romney’s campaign. Could it be Romney himself? Well, of course not. But considering the campaign’s behavior, it might just as well be. President Obama and his allies have cast Romney as a wealthy fat cat who’s out of touch with everyday Americans and who would use his presidency to enrich the already rich. To counter this damning image, the last thing you’d expect Romney to do is embrace a tax plan favoring the super-rich.Let's get one thing straight, I still think Samuelson's an idiot, and I'd still fire him yesterday for being fundamentally antithetical to his job description (a writer about the Economy who knows nothing about the economy)...
Which is exactly what he has done.
After examining Romney’s proposal, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center concluded that households with incomes exceeding $200,000 would receive tax cuts; meanwhile, taxes would rise for the other 95 percent of the population. Taxpayers making more than $1 million would receive an average cut of $87,000; those making less than $200,000 would pay an average of $500 more. Romney denies that he would raise taxes on the middle class but has provided no evidence that the Tax Policy Center’s analysis is wrong.
What can he be thinking?
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) and Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid have reached a short-term spending deal that would remove the possibility of a government shutdown from the politically sensitive fall campaign season, the two announced Tuesday.
Under the agreement, Congress would agree to fund the government for six months when the fiscal year expires Sept. 30, setting agency spending for the year at $1.047 trillion.
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Mitt Romney’s big international tour got off to a rocky start Thursday morning, as British officials including Prime Minister David Cameron took offense at the Republican candidate’s criticisms over London’s preparedness for the Olympics.
Romney expressed wariness over England’s ability to pull off the Olympics without a hitch, as well as reservations over security.
“You know, it’s hard to know just how well it were turn out — will turn out,” said Romney, who ran the 2002 Winter Olympic Games in Salt Lake City. “There are a few things that were disconcerting, the stories about the — private security firm not having enough people — the supposed strike of the immigration and customs officials, that obviously is not something which is encouraging.”
The comments did not go over well in Britain. Cameron rebuffed Romney’s criticism during a visit to the Olympic Park in Stratford Thursday morning, according to The Telegraph. “You’re going to see beyond doubt that Britain can deliver,” Cameron said.
Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has said he had no active role in Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded, after he exited in February 1999 to take over Salt Lake City's Winter Olympics bid. But according to Bain associates and others familiar with Romney's actions at the time, he stayed in regular contact with his partners over the following months, tending to his partnership interests and negotiating his separation from the company.
Those familiar with Romney's discussions with his Bain partners said the contacts included several meetings in Boston, the company's home base, but were limited to matters that did not affect the firm's investments or other management decisions. Yet Romney continued to oversee his partnership stakes even as he disengaged from the firm, personally signing or approving a series of corporate and legal documents through the spring of 2001, according to financial reports reviewed by The Associated Press.
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“People are not worried about the details as to when Mitt Romney left Bain Capital to save the Olympics or the details about his assets, which are managed by a blind trust for Pete’s sake,” Ryan said on “Face the Nation.” “They’re worried about their jobs and their family’s future.
Like all presidential candidates, Romney has to submit a financial disclosure statement to the Office of Government Ethics. He filed his most recent one last month, and the disclosure contains a very clearly stated footnote:
Mr. Romney retired from Bain Capital on February 11, 1999 to head the Salt Lake [Olympics] Organizing Committee. Since February 11, 1999, Mr. Romney has not had any active role with any Bain Capital entity and has not been involved in the operations of any Bain Capital entity in any way.There's no ambiguity there: not involved in Bain operations in any way. But that's not true.
As I reported, in November 1999, Romney signed a SEC filing that noted he was the "sole shareholder, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President" of several Bain entities that had acquired 22 percent of medical-waste firm Stericycle. The form also stated that Romney shared "voting and dispositive power with respect to" 2,116,588 shares of common stock in Stericycle "in his capacity as sole shareholder" of the Bain entities that were part of this $75 million investment.
To repeat: Romney signed a Bain document pursuant to a $75 million deal. That would appear to qualify as involvement in Bain activity. And according to a Bain spokeswoman, Romney signed such documents more than once. She told me that after February 1999 Romney was a "signatory on certain documents" until his separation agreement with Bain was finalized in 2002.
