From a recent Fox News show.
This is why we can’t have nice things. And why we can never find a common ground. You can’t negotiate with someone who really doesn’t care about anyone but themselves.
Economics
A more imperfect union
You don’t have to search hard to find lots of quotes from conservative politicians about how important it is for government to not get involved with the business world.
You also don’t have to search hard to find quotes from these exact same conservative politicians ranting and raving about how government should get involved to tell unions they shouldn’t form.
Volkswagen opened a new plant in the south and thanks to lots of lobbying from these same hypocrites, the workers voted not to unionize even though Volkswagen wanted the union. It may have been because Senator Corker said that if the union was passed, then VW would not open more factories in the south. In other words, he said the exact opposite of the truth. Let’s see, what do we call that again? Oh yes. A LIE. (Republicans have that as their motto lately.)
Unions help keep the peace between workers and management and keep employees happier. Volkswagen knows that happy employees are good and loyal employees. Volkswagen wanted the union. They made it perfectly clear.
“Ha ha!” these conservatives yell, not caring once again about facts. “We showed them! We support businesses!”
Except they don’t. This didn’t help businesses at all, and Volkswagen has now announced that any new factories they build will not be in the south.
Yeah, good job shooting yourselves in the foot there, geniuses.
As if facts mattered…
Next time your conservative friend talks about how much Obama has destroyed the economy, point out:
The Dow was at 7,949 when Obama took office. It’s now at 16,130.* 
Under Obama, the Dow keeps setting new records.
Unemployment was at 7.8%. It’s now at 6.6%.
GDP growth is harder to quantify. I am not sure where the image here got its numbers. From what I can tell, it averaged around negative 3.1 under the last year of Bush and has averaged around 1.7 under Obama. Not great numbers, but certainly an improvement. (There was one quarter where it was 4.1% but using the best number and ignoring the others is misleading.)
The fiscal deficit, which is the gap between expenditure and revenue, was at 9.8% of the GDP under Bush, and was 4.9% for last year.
Consumer confidence under Bush was at 40.0% when Obama took over. It is now at 80.7%.
So anyone who tells you things are going downhill is just plain wrong.
Then again, anyone who tells you were are doing great is also just plain wrong. Almost all of that economic gain has gone to the 1%. The rest of us are still floundering, and the middle class is dying. Unemployment is still too high and wages are still too low. And the debt keeps rising.
Bottom line: Obama is not destroying the economy. You’re thinking of Bush. However, he has not solved everything either, so Obama supporters who try to sugar coat things are exaggerating.
Had the Republicans passed a jobs bill, maybe we would be in better shape. Our infrastructure is falling apart, and we could be hiring millions of people to fix roads and bridges for a fraction of what we give away to the 1% in tax breaks and subsidies they don’t need. Investing in people as well as our infrastructure is wise and pays off dividends in the long run. If we had a Republican President, there is no doubt in my mind we would be doing this now. However, the Republicans have repeatedly said that they will stand in the way of anything Obama wants. They don’t want him to claim successes for anything. The interests of the party outweigh the country’s needs, after all.
That’s the real economic scandal.
* all numbers are as of February 18, 2013, updated from the illustration accompanying this, to the best of my ability. (Some sources were difficult to interpret and I am not an economist.)
Regulations Schmegulations
Can’t help it, I think regulations are a good thing.
I like the fact that our government regulates our food to make sure it’s not filled with e coli. 
I like knowing what ingredients are in the food. I like restaurants to not have rats. I think regulations to make sure our cars are safe are a good idea. I like having doctors and lawyers and electricians certified by the government and subject to regulations about what they can do. I like requiring only adults to buy alcohol and cigarettes. I like regulations about workplace safety, and prohibitions against discrimination, and housing restrictions that prevent someone from putting a pig farm next door to me.
Some people, however, think that the “regulation” is a bad word. They will use some example where a regulation has gone too far and then say “See? Therefore, we should get rid of them all.”
Both extremes are bad. “No regulations” is anarchy. “Complete regulation” is tyranny. Usually we’re pretty good about finding a reasonable spot between the two, but anyone who says “all regulation is bad” or “all regulation is good” is deluded.
Take financial regulations. From the time of the founding of the United States, we had a recession or financial crisis on the average of once every seventeen years. There was the Panic of 1819, the 1837 Crisis, the Panic of 1873, the Panic of 1893, the 1907 Banker’s Panic, and so on up to the Great Depression. Then Franklin Roosevelt put in controls and restrictions on Wall Street and banking and lo and behold, no depressions and no recessions for fifty years. Reagan comes in and removes those and bang! The S&L crisis, the 2001 recession, the 2007 Mortgage crisis, and the 2008 Bush collapse.
Regulations can be good things.
So no, you won’t get me jumping on your libertarian view that all regulations are bad, any more than you’ll get me jumping on a communist view that everything must be regulated.
Not all charities are equal
Libertarians don’t like welfare because they think the free market can solve all our problems even though that has never been the case anywhere in the world at any time. I guess it gives them the ability to say no to things like unemployment benefits, food stamps, and social security disability without feeling guilty or selfish when they say “But private charity can solve all those problems” even though that has never been the case anywhere in the world at any time.
No, what really bugs me is when they say, all superior-like, that conservatives give more to charity than liberals. While that is true, the key question is who the charity benefits.
Conservatives give more to religious-based charities. If you only count non-religious-based charities, then liberals give much more. New York state jumps from #18th most generous to #2, and Pennsylvania goes from #40 to #4.
While some religious-based charities certainly help the poor (soup kitchens and homeless shelters are a great use of charity funds), churches also spend a lot of money on churches. Take the Mormons.
The Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City
And then the Mormons (and the Knights of Columbus and other religious groups) spent millions over the last few years in politics — filing lawsuits, buying ads, and campaigning against gay marriage. All of that was considered tax-free “charity” (while those of us on the other side had to consider our contributions as “political” which the IRS does not consider “charity”).
Not all charity is equal, and no one should say, “I give to charity so therefore I don’t have to worry about homeless children.” Your contributions may protect the kids against the horrors of two people in love getting married, but it won’t protect them against starvation.
Minimum Wage! Hyahhh! (whip crack)
Your tax dollars are being put to good use, allowing the 1% to get even richer on the backs of the poor. By refusing to raise the minimum wage to even meet the rising costs of living, there are people in America who work full-time and yet cannot make ends meet.
People who work full time should not be relying on welfare and food stamps to make ends meet when corporate profits are at their highest they have ever been. (This is not an exaggeration.) Because the businesses aren’t paying a working wage, you and I are picking up the extra costs. Well, you wouldn’t expect those CEOs to give up their third homes in Bermuda now, would you?
Raising the minimum wage also helps the overall economy. Duh. If people have more money, they spend it, which means businesses improve and then they need new employees, which stimulates the economy even more. Money trickles up, not down. You help those at the bottom improve their lot and it helps everyone, not just those at the top.
And yet, every time someone suggests raising the minimum wage, businesses whine that it will destroy the economy. They said the same thing about getting rid of child labor. And imposing a 40-hour work week. And having work safety regulations. And getting rid of discriminatory hiring practices. And so on and so on. Somehow, we’ve survived.
This post could fill a book talking about the economy, but mostly I just wanted to rant a bit and present the graphic above. And also this great They Might Be Giants song:
Join the fight against affluenza
by Guest Blogger Jesse Hendrix
Much attention has been paid to the recent tragedy in Texas, where a wealthy teenager who killed 4 people while driving drunk and was given a sentence of probation and treatment instead of jail time. 
The teen’s lawyer argued that he was suffering from Affluenza, an inability to understand the consequences of his actions brought on by wealth and privilege.
While this case is a tragedy and a miscarriage of justice, it may finally bring attention to the dangerous epidemic of Affluenza. Affluenza effects thousands of wealthy Americans and it’s more virulent cousin, Affluenza-by-proxy is suffered by millions more.
There are many possible symptoms of Affluenza including:
Belief that you are immune to the consequences of your actions;
Belief that your personal wealth is more important than the lives and fortunes of others;
Paranoia that the poor, unions, or the government are coming to steal all your wealth;
The belief that Ayn Rand was a genuine philosopher, and that selfishness is a virtue; and
Immunity to factual information.
The widespread prevalence of Affulenza among the richest members of society is responsible for hardship throughout the country. When CEOs triple their own pay while refusing to raise wages for low-paid workers, that’s Affulenza in action. When Republicans in Congress refuse to extend unemployment benefits and insist on food stamp cuts, that’s Affulenza as well. When Donald Trump turns tragedy into insanebirther conspiracy theories, that is a mind completely ravaged by this disease.
What makes Affulenza so dangerous is that its sufferers are driven to spread it. Affluenza is spread through audio-visual means via vectors such as Fox News and talk radio. This allows the disease to spread to non-wealthy people in the form known as Affuenza-by-proxy. Sufferers of this variant demonstrate the symptoms above combined with a delusional belief that wealthy sufferers have the best interests of the country at heart.
Unfortunately there is no cure for Affuenza. But there is treatment available. If someone you know might be suffering from this condition, it is important to separate them from the causes. Exposure to non-biased news sources can ease early cases of Affluenza-by-proxy, but full blown cases take more intensive treatment. Those with a fully developed case of wealth-driven Affluenza can only be treated by forcing them to confront the consequences of their actions. This requires a careful balance of popular and government pressure.
While fighting other diseases requires funding, fighting Affluenza can only be accomplished by keeping the money away. As a concerned member of the public your most potent tool is carefully deciding where to spend your money. If a business is demonstrating signs of being run by a sufferer, take your business elsewhere. The only way to help sufferers of this disease is reduce their access to the wealth and power that cause it.
Together we can put an end to Affluenza.
Reproduced from Politlcal Moll and used with permission.
Jesse Hendrix writes political satire at http://www.stoptellingliesaboutliberals.com. Questions, comments, good jokes and job offers can be sent to him at jessemhendrix@gmail.com
Can the Pope change American politics?
American conservative leaders have often argued that greed is good, and controls on capitalism are ungodly. The logic is thus: Stalin was an atheist. Stalin liked socialist policies. Ergo, socialism is against religion.
This, of course, makes no logical sense whatsoever but the Powers That Be in the economic world gladly used it in the same way Stalin used communist promises to keep the people in their place. The right used religion to further its aims. People who believed that abortion and gay rights were against God could easily be swayed to also believe that welfare and controls on capitalism were also evil, since look, the same people who are on God’s side are also on the side of the bankers and billionaires. 
Clearly, therefore, all bankers and billionaires were Godlike.
Well, this new Pope is throwing all that out the window, and boy, is the right wing up in arms. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh are now attacking religion with a fervor never before seen, and are apparently claiming that they have more authority than the Pope about what Jesus would want. (You remember Jesus — that guy who threw the moneylenders out of the temple and said that the rich could not get into heaven?)
For years, the right has proclaimed that we are a “Christian nation” (despite all evidence to the contrary) and yet now, when the leader of the largest Christian organization in the world tells us what we should be doing, suddenly Christian values are not important to us.
“As long as the problems of the poor are not radically resolved by rejecting the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation and by attacking the structural causes of inequality, no solution will be found for the world’s problems or, for that matter, to any problems,” the Pope said. He’s talking about uncontrolled capitalism, about markets that crash and hurt the poor because the rich are gambling with our future, about the ridiculous idea that money “trickles down” to improve everyone’s lot.
Maybe it’s time that the Christian right started acting like Christians.
In defense of Wal-Mart
No, I’m not forgiving them for paying their employees minimum wage when they could easily pay them $11 an hour and give them all health insurance and still make a hefty profit. Not only would that be the right thing to do, it would also help the economy (money trickles up, after all — if people have money, they spend it. Amazing, but true). Instead, Wal-Mart admits their employees are basically living in poverty, and some stores are even holding food donation drives for the employees. 
However, instead of criticizing them for that (which is well deserved), today I want to defend them against the “closing on Thanksgiving” thing. There is a boycott proposed against them (and other stores) for making their employees work on Thursday.
Lots of places are still open on Thanksgiving, because we the people want them to be open. Someone always remembers a last minute thing they need and they run down to the grocery store and are happy when it’s there. (Remember: Wal-Mart has groceries, too.) Many gas stations remain open (which you will be thankful for when you get halfway to grandma’s and realize the tank is empty). And of course, some people never get holidays off (hospital workers, police, emergency services).
But really, we’re the ones to blame. If we didn’t create the demand, they wouldn’t be filling it.
So the protests I see now asking people not to shop on Thanksgiving are good — because it puts the onus on us. We’re the ones ultimately responsible for stores opening on holidays and at 12 am on Black Friday and so on.
Of course, one of the reasons for the protests is that Wal-Mart treats their employees terrible. If they paid them well and gave them overtime for working holidays, you probably wouldn’t be seeing these protests. So while we can blame ourselves for wanting these places open, we also need to keep in mind that the companies themselves can soften the blow to the point where employees will want to work on the holidays for all the extra benefits and money.
Trimming the budget from the neediest
Today is the day that the United States starts cutting food stamps for the most needy among us.
Most people on food stamps are not lazy moochers — most work full time for minimum wage. 
That’s right — you and I are subsidizing McDonald’s. Not only do we pay subsidies to meat producers to keep the cost of meat cheaper than the cost of a salad, but we also are helping McDonald’s make record profits by picking up the slack for people who cannot afford basic necessities on a McDonald’s salary. (Note: I am using McDonald’s as an example; feel free to plug in whichever minimum wage place you wish.)
Republicans, who just spent billions on the government shutdown, feel that we just can’t afford it. So instead of cutting corporate subsidies, they attack those who actually need our taxpayer money. Instead of raising dollars by increasing the tax burden on the super-rich who can afford it, we’ll instead cut a few pennies from the super-poor.
And of course many Democrats also take the blame, because they don’t want to cut the corporate subsidies either — after all, that’s where their campaign money comes from. None of those McDonald’s workers help them get elected, but McDonald’s Super PAC can make a big difference at election time.
ventrellaquest.com 