Republicans and the Debt

Don’t be fooled by the two giant U.S. National Debt clocks at the Republican convention.  The clocks were as disingenuous as the crazed Right-wings attack dogs, like my new Facebook ‘friend’ I’ll call “Chili”.  Soon after posting a comment on my Facebook page about how New Jersey Governor Chris Christie stated in his convention speech that when it comes to the debt, “It doesn’t matter how we got here”, I pointed out that Republicans have been refusing to talk about “why the debt clock is ticking” and the policies behind the numbers. Soon after, Chili came to my Facebook page for the first time ever and went right into blaming President Obama for the national debt. In the past, I had sent Chili a few links, on a mutual friend’s page, proving that Obama has spent less than any other president in the last 60 years and his policies can attribute to only a small part of the overall national debt. However, Chili dug in his heals and continued to blame Obama for the debt and belittle me with lines like “Man…the fantasy world you live in”, your comment is “crap”, and you “lie”.

However, this article is not about the rabid attacks by folks like Chili used to deflect the debate away from the real issue. This article is about the question I posed on Facebook that invited Chili to attack me. I wrote, “Republicans don’t want to talk about why THEIR national debt clock is ticking. That is because the Republicans created that much of that debt and are now trying to blame it on Obama. Shame on Christie and the Republicans for deflecting their responsibility”. Chili countered my statement with the following comment, “The facts are Obama during his term has put this nation in larger debt th[a]n any other president! PERIOD! None of you[r] excuses rebuttals those are the facts!” Chili’s response is typical of Republicans and clearly the way they want to frame the debate. They claim “Obama has put this nation larger in debt than any other president”.  Really? The fact that Obama actually inherited this massive debt from policies passed by congresses and signed into law by previous presidents doesn’t factor into any of Chili’s response. I find the Right-wing line of attack blatantly dishonest.

According to a published paper analyzing the federal deficit by The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, “Some critics continue to assert that President George W. Bush’s policies bear little responsibility for the deficits the nation faces over the coming decade — that, instead, the new policies of President Barack Obama and the 111th Congress are to blame. Most recently, a Heritage Foundation paper downplayed the role of Bush-era policies (for more on that paper, see p. 4). Nevertheless, the fact remains: Together with the economic downturn, the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq explain virtually the entire deficit over the next ten years”.

The next day at the Republican Convention, Vise Presidential candidate Paul Ryan gave a speech widely denounced for its blatant falsehoods. Included in the speech, Ryan boldly stated when it comes to the debit we should not about “inheritance”. There is a good reason why the Republicans don’t want to talk about inheritance.  According to the Center for American Progress, two-thirds of the national debt can be directly attributed to the legacy of George W. Bush and the Republican polices. In fact, 40% of our current debt is a result of tax cuts for the rich and the unfunded wars the Republican put on American’s credit card. Essentially, W. Bush and the Republicans kicked the cost can for the two previous wars onto Obama’s ledger, and now they perfidiously claim “Obama put the nation into debt”

The Center for American Progress goes on to attribute roughly 16% of the current national debt to Obama’s policies.  This debt mostly came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (otherwise known as Obama’s Stimulus Bill). It is important to note, that in spite of what Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan, and the rest of the rabid Right-wing say, the Stimulus bill helped create around 1.5 million jobs, kept unemployment from exploding into double digits, and is widely agreed by economists to have had a positive effect on the economy.

So, if Obama’s policies created roughly 16% of the deficits, what are the policies that created the bulk of the debt?  As The Center on Budget and Policy Priority points out, the three main reasons why we have the current national debt are, 1) Bush’s tax cuts for the rich. 2) Two unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. 3) The economic downturn.

Chili’s “ultimate point” has been, “Obama had two years with a democratically controlled congress to change the tax cuts to undo the things that “Bush” did. When do we start to hold Obama accountable?” Obama should be held responsible for the policies.  And Obama policies added a total of %16 of the current debt.

Republicans claim they are all about “personal responsibly” until they have to be held responsible and accountable for their own actions. Then, they immediately begin to blame Obama and the Democrats for their own actions. The debate about what policies are actually “responsible” for the current national debt is a perfect example of the Right-wings attempt to deflect responsibility. Republican’s seem to refuse to admit that Obama and the Democrats worked to “undo” the Bush Tax Cuts and the Republicans have worked feverishly to block Obama’s from raising taxes on those making more than $500,000 a year and more.

Even if Obama was successful in ending the Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, according to Noble Economist Joseph Stiglitz, the Republican policy during the W. Bush era was to have China (instead of American tax payers) loan us the money for the last two wars and let the bill come due on Obama’s watch. This ended up adding roughly $3 trillion with interest to our current national debt. That is Trillion with a T.  Yet, Chili and the Right-wing liars continue to underhandedly claim Obama “got” us here?

While we can debate the cause of the economic downturn, one word sums it all up, “deregulation”. It was the deregulation of the banking industry and the complete lack of oversight that created the Great Recession of 2008. In typical Right-wing fantasy world fashion, Chili wants to blame the Democrats and the fact that Bill Clinton signed into the law the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act as the main cause for the economic downturn.  The 1930’s Glass-Steagall Act prevented banks from getting involved with risky investment banking/brokerage house schemes. This was, after a hard lesson learned from the Great Depression.

While the repeal of Glass-Steagall was one important deregulatory factors that led to the economic collapse during the last year of the W. Bush administration, it was in no way the only factor. The use of credit default swaps and derivatives greatly expanded during the W. Bush administration.  Bush’s hands off approach to regulating the banks, essentially allowed the banks to engage in often illegal and outright fraudulent behavior, turned our entire economy into a house of cards.  As we all know, according to most economists, as a result of this perfect storm of deregulatory factors, in 2008 our national economy collapsed and our national debt grew by roughly 20%.

Republicans and the rabid far Right don’t want Americans to have an honest conversation about the national debt. They don’t want to talk about the debt Obama inherited or how we got here to begin with. If we did, we would have to talk about fact that the Bush’s tax cuts for the rich has added more to the national debt than any other factor. In fact, Republicans would have to admit that nearly all the national debt was created by Republican policies. The very same policies the Republicans are now campaigning on, more tax cuts for the rich and more deregulation of the banks.  As the Center for American Progress has pointed out, “As for the deficit’s cause, the single most important factor is the legacy of President George W. Bush’s legislative agenda”. The Republicans 2012 political platform calls for more of the same failed policies that created this whopping national debt in the first place.

It has been widely reported that according to the  Congressional Budget Office  the Romney/Ryan budget plan will add another 3.127 trillion to the national debt. The Republican scheme relies heavily on more Bush tax cuts for the rich, far more than Obama’s proposed budget plans. Romney’s and the Republicans insistence on ever greater tax cuts for the rich is actually the number one cause for the current national deficit.

Speaking on DemocracyNow! last week, Matt Taibbi explained how Mitt Romney made his personal fortune by helping put our nation in debt, “So, when Mitt Romney or Bain Capital, when they want to go take over a company like KB Toys and they borrow $300 million to do it, and that new debt becomes the debt of KB Toys, when KB pays the debt service, the monthly service on that debt, that service is deductible. And if that were not true, if they did not have that deduction, these deals would not be economically feasible. They wouldn’t be possible. I spoke to one former regulator from the SEC, who worked both in the SEC and as an accountant at a Big Four accounting firm, and he reviewed a number of these deals in both a public and private capacity. And he said, without that deduction, he’s never seen a deal that would have been economically—a private equity deal that would have been economically feasible. So, this entire business model depends upon a tax break”

In other words, while Romney and company have been amassing great personal fortunes, they have been sticking the bill to the American taxpayers. No wonder Romney and the Republican want to expand tax cuts for their billionaire sponsors. This also explains why the Republicans don’t want us to have a national dialogue on the facts underlying the debt. As one Republican/Romney pollster declared “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” The Republican’s political strategy has clearly been to avoid the facts and deny the nation an honest debate as how “how we got here”. Instead, their strategy has simply been to blame Obama.

Palestinian Statehood: The Bid

 Originally published at the Daily Censored for Project Censored.

This past week, President Barack Obama gave a speech at the 66^th gathering of United Nations General Assembly. In part, the speech focused on his attempt to deny the Palestinians their right to U.N recognized statehood. Obama stated, “I am convinced that there is no shortcut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations. If it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians, not us, who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them, on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.”

What Obama didn’t mention is that Israel was created by the United Nations. Repeatedly, Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have voiced disapproval of Palestian’s bid for U.N. recognition of statehood. There essential argument has been, only through negotiations can there be a peaceful resolution to the ongoing conflict. While that might be true, why block the Palestinian’s bid for U.N. recognition of statehood? (More on this question later in the series).

Prime Minster Netanyahu repeated Obama’s point about negotiations during his recent General Assembly speech: “The status of the settlements will be decided only in negotiations.  But we must also be honest.  So I am saying today something that should be said publicly by anyone serious about peace.  In any peace agreement that ends the conflict, some settlements will end up beyond Israel’s borders.  The precise delineation of those borders must be negotiated.  We will be very generous on the size of a future Palestinian state. But as President Obama said, the border will be different than the one that existed on June 4, 1967.”

While I agree negotiations will eventually bring this conflict to an end, haven’t the Palestinians and Israeli’s been negotiating, all be it on and off, for decades now? Why has peace been so allusive? Netanyahu asks that same question in his speech: “So why has peace not been achieved?  Because so far, the Palestinians have been unwilling to accept a Palestinian state, if it meant accepting a Jewish state alongside it.

You see, our conflict has never been about the establishment of a Palestinian state. It has always been about the existence of the Jewish state. This is what this conflict is about.  In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition the land into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews said yes.  The Palestinians said no.  In recent years, the Palestinians twice refused generous offers by Israeli Prime Ministers, to establish a Palestinian state on virtually all the territory won by Israel in the Six Day War”.

Not surprisingly, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas believes there is a different reason for the ongoing conflict. Here is an excerpt from Abbas’ General Assembly speech as he explains why peace has remained allusive: “The core issue here is that the Israeli government refuses to commit to terms of reference for the negotiations that are based on international law and United Nations resolutions, and that it frantically continues to intensify building of settlements on the territory of the State of Palestine.

Settlement activities embody the core of the policy of colonial military occupation of the land of the Palestinian people and all of the brutality of aggression and racial discrimination against our people that this policy entails.”

So to summarize, Netanyahu claims peace has been allusive because the Palestinians refuse Israel’s right to exist and have “refused generous offers” to negotiate a peace settlement. Abbas, on the other than, states Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference” and “continues to intensify building of settlements.”

Unfortunately for Netanyahu, both of his points fail to hold up under close inspection. First of all, ever since 1988, the PLO and the Palestinian Authority have recognized Israel’s right to exist. The fact is, the Palestinian Authority, with Abbas as President, is the official representatives of the Palestinians living in the Occupied Territory. Therefore, the Palestinian government has recognized Israel’s right to exists.

Certainly, the shamefully militant religious and political Islamic organizations like Hamas have openly questioned Israel’s right to exist. That said, there are militant religious and political Jewish organizations, living in illegal settlements, that do not believe the Palestinians Arabs have a right to exist. Neither Hamas nor the racist illegal settlements are recognized as the legitimate governments of Palestine and Israel respectively.

The second point is a little trickier. Who is telling the truth? Netanyahu claims Israel have made “generous offers” and the Palestinians have refused. All the while Abbas claims Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference.”

For decades now, Netanyahu and the pro-Israeli lobby have claimed they have made concession after concession and the Palestinians keep walking away from the table. The truth is, over the last twenty plus years, the U.S. and Israel has done everything they can to stall the “peace process” (which had not resulted in peace) and prevent a two-state solution (which would establish Palestinian statehood).

For example, in 1989, the UN General Assembly resolution titled Question of Palestine, called for “the withdrawal of Israel to the 1967 borders” passed by a vote of 153 to 3. The only dissenting were the U.S., Israel, and the island state of Dominica. Then, in 2004, the General Assembly resolution titled Peaceful Settlement of the Question of Palestine called for “the necessity for a commitment to the vision of the two-State solution” and “the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967.” This passed by a vote of 160 to 6. This time the dissenting votes came from the U.S., Israel, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Uganda.

Besides the fact that the U.S. and Israel has blocked every General Assembly resolution calling for a two-State solution, the whistle-blowing site WikiLeaks and the Guardian have revealed a treasure trove of classified U.S. State Department and Palestinian documents that have exposed an astonishing amount of concessions the Palestinians have offered, over the last twenty plus years. According to the Guardian, the extraordinary concessions the PLO were willing to make included:

“As well as the annexation of all East Jerusalem settlements except Har Homa, the Palestine papers show PLO leaders privately suggested swapping part of the flashpoint East Jerusalem Arab neighbourhood of Sheikh Jarrah for land elsewhere.

Most controversially, they also proposed a joint committee to take over the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount holy sites in Jerusalem’s Old City – the neuralgic issue that helped sink the Camp David talks in 2000 after Yasser Arafat refused to concede sovereignty around the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques.

The offers were made in 2008-9, in the wake of George Bush’s Annapolis conference, and were privately hailed by the chief Palestinian negotiator, Saeb Erekat, as giving Israel “the biggest Yerushalayim [the Hebrew name for Jerusalem] in history” in order to resolve the world’s most intractable conflict. Israeli leaders, backed by the US government, said the offers were inadequate.”

The Palestine papers expose a vast contradiction in what Netanyahu and the pro-Israeli lobby has been saying, and what has actually been going on behind closed doors at the negotiating table. However, the Palestine papers support Abbas’ assertion that Israel “refuses to commit to terms of reference”.

Last week, the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, declared, “I support … the statehood of Palestinians, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine. It has been long overdue”. This position seems to be overwhelmingly supported by the general public in both Israel and Palestine.

According to a joint Israeli/Palestinian poll published in the Jerusalem Post, nearly 70% of Israeli’s believe Israel should support the Palestinians bid for U.N. recognition of statehood. In the Occupied Territories of Palestine the support for statehood shoots up to over 80%.

This week, the U.S. is putting pressure on fellow U.N Security Council members to reject the Palestinians bid for U.N. recognitions of statehood. The U.S. Congress has been working on several pieces of legislation to punish nations that support Palestinian recognition of statehood. However, a Security Council veto will not prevent the Palestinians from moving forward in their bid for statehood. Going through the motions, if a problem (like a veto) occurs in the Security Council, the Palestinians can evoke the “Uniting for Peace Resolution” which will bring the vote for Palestinian statehood to the full General Assembly. According to a number of polls, including one from the Financial Times, the Palestinians have roughly 170 votes in the General Assembly. This is more than enough to achieve the two-thirds votes needed to win approval.

Texas Miracle or Kabuki Theater?

Anytime I hear the word “miracle” I become suspicious. I know the word appeals to highly religious folks. However, as far as I can tell, behind every so called “miracle” there is a con man.

Now that Texas Governor Rick Perry is the GOP frontrunner for the presidency, the media is flooding the airwaves with Perry-mania. Perry’s support is mostly based on his so called “Texas Miracle”. Perry wants Americans to believe that through his leadership and job creating record he is qualified for the presidency.

Perry points to the fact that since 2009, 38% of all jobs created in the U.S. were created in Texas. This is a true. However, the reason for the job growth in Texas has nothing to do with Rick Perry and his approach to the economy. In fact, Rick Perry should be thanking President Obama for the economic “miracle” in Texas.

Consider this, Rick Perry claims, “I know how to create jobs … You let the private sector [free from] over taxation, free them up from over regulation, free them up from over litigation.” Perry sums up his economic strategy in six predictable words, “Government, get out of the way.”

Perry says his business friendly policies have invited entrepreneurs to the state, which he claims is the key to Texas’ recent success. However, U.S. News and World Report recently investigated Perry’s claims about private sector growth in Texas. What they discovered was Rick Perry and his right-wing supporters have been lying through their teeth. (What a surprise!)

According to U.S News and World Report, “Since the recession began, Texas has added about 75,000 jobs, one of the few states with any job creation at all. Overall, the U.S. economy has lost about 5.6 million jobs since then. But net job gains in Texas have come entirely from government hiring, which accounts for 115,000 new jobs over the past three years. The private sector in Texas shed about 40,000 jobs during that time.”

That’s right, since the recession, under Rick Perry’s leadership, the private sector shed 40,000 jobs. What you also won’t hear from Rick Perry and Fox News is that Texas receives more than $200 billion per year from the Federal government. Texas hosts several large Army bases and NASA has a presence in the state.

In addition, Rick Perry accepted $6.4 billion in the much maligned Obama stimulus money, which according to the Washington Post, Texas used to support education, health care, and help run other parts of both the state and local government. However, the funds are now mostly dried up and Perry is planning on cutting $15 billion out of the state budget by slashing, as you might guess, education and health care. This will inevitably lead to the loss of jobs.

While Rick Perry has been in office, unemployment went from 4.4 to 8.4. Likewise, according to Bureau of Labor and Statistics, when George W. Bush became president, unemployment was at a similar 4.2. By the time Bush left office in 2009, U.S. unemployment shot up to 8.1. In Bush’s last months the nation was shedding nearly 800,000 jobs per month. Within months of becoming president, Obama signed into law the stimulus bill, which put an end to the Republican created freefall in unemployment. Since the stimulus bill, unemployment leveled out at 9.1, with real unemployment numbers considerably higher.

While Obama has been in office, Texas has been one of the nation’s biggest benefactors of Federal funds. Rick Perry used Obama’s stimulus money to create the Texas Miracle. Now Perry is on the campaign trail touting his economic success. However, what Perry and the screaming right-wing crazies won’t tell you is that Texas Miracle has more to do with rising oil prices (which the Repugs falsely blame on Obama) and Obama’s stimulus bill. Perry’s claim that, since the recession, his pro-business policies of low taxes and limited regulations helped create jobs in Texas is simply false. Like most claims about miracles, once you take a closer look, the so called “miracle” turns out to be nothing more than a cheap magic trick or Kabuki Theater.