Round II Goes Obama. Maybe.

After a dismal and pretty sheepish performance in the first debate, it might be safe to say Obama redeemed himself and took round 2 of the debates. In stark contrast to the first debate, he was in control, confident, and on the attack; adopting a strategy many of us Obama supporters (yes, me too) wanted to see put hadn’t up to that point. On the opposite side of the coin, Romney looked shaken up, especially as Obama laid in to him with the flip flop accusations and the train wreck of a debate regarding the attacks in Libya (for those of you following me on Twitter and/or Facebook), you know I was highly critical of Mittens for that. Obama and Crowley went in hard). Obama clearly let the ring that night victorious.

But did he really? Perhaps the better question would be: he won the debate. Now what?

The fact of the matter is: people are hurting all over. While the latest jobs report is promising, this economy is still a long ways away from being viable again. Yet, what we’ve seen so far at both debates has been nothing but shallow and vacuous rhetoric about the economic problems we face as a nation, without even a modicum of practical solutions.

Gov. Romney droned on about his so-called “five-point plan,” riddled with bullet holes bullet points offering no specific content on how to confront major issues like weak demand, rampant unemployment and an increasing degraded housing market. Meanwhile, Obama continued making the push for manufacturing and green jobs (Solyndra, be damned), almost as if he was suggesting those industries – more than any others – need to be the focal point of government support.

I’m not shocked by any of this. If Obama had a legitimate economic agenda, I’d like to think – GOP obstructionalism aside – he’d be working harder to implement it. Instead, his administration appears resigned to tediously and slowly work toward a pretty tepid attempt at economic recovery that will, at the very best, keep unemployment hovering around 8 percent for the next few years. Romney, on the other hand, claims to have a robut economic agenda..which has been all, but secret to the rest of us. My guess though: based on some of his rhetoric, I suspect this mysterious economic plan is just a redux of the failed Bush policies of the past. Romney isn’t crafty enough to come up with anything different.

I’ll admit: at the end of the day, this slugfest between Obama and Romney has been entertaining. Lord knows I’ve been having my fun on Twitter and Facebook discussing things. But when you get to the subtext of their respective messages, you’ll find similarities: when either one of these guys gets elected, at best we can count on them to sit around hoping things get better. At this point, hope is all we have to run with.

- ACL

47 Percent: Romney vs. The Moochers

This hasn’t been the best couple of weeks for Willard. After getting ripped to shreds by both the left and the right for his poorly timed, poorly delivered attack on Obama after the Libya protests, Mittens put himself in another potentially damaging situation this week after a video was leaked of him bashing the close to 47% of Americans who don’t pay income taxes. As Mittens spoke at an exclusive fundraiser with a roomful of wealthy donors, he openly vented about so-called beneficiaries of entitlement programs and their ostensible devotion to Obama. According to Mitt, these folks “believe they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it.” He continued by saying he’d “…never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.”

This story has become fodder on social media sites and in the news as an indication of Mitt’s out-of-touchness. But in addition to showcasing Romney’s elitism (the $50,000-a-plate dinner didn’t help much), he was factually off in a lot of ways:

(1) Contrary to Willard’s rant, most of the people he’s bashing actually are taxpayers: As Ezra Klein from the Washington Post brilliantly pointed out, of the now infamous 47 percent to whom Romney was referring, 61% of them did pay payroll taxes. Many of whom paid as high as 15.3% in income taxes, which is more than Romney at 13.9%. What Romney also failed to take in to account were all the Americans paying sales taxes and property taxes. Suddenly that 47% all but disappears.

The truth of the matter is: only the very poor neither pay income taxes or payroll taxes.

(2) According to figures provided by the Tax Policy Center, over 10% of Americans not paying federal income tax are retired or elderly. Since Social Security benefits aren’t considered taxable income, elderly citizens who rely on that as their income will obviously pay no tax on it. When you consider how overwhelming elderly folks vote Republican, Romney conflating the line between them and so-called ‘freeloaders’ is dangerous ground.

(3) Of those 47% who apparently will support Obama no matter what, the reality is that a very sizable amount of those people actually live in red states; states which decidedly vote Republican. Of the 10 states with the highest percentage of people who pay no income tax, nine are red states. Clearly, Romney’s team hasn’t done it’s electoral map homework.

(4) Last, but certainly not least, we can’t forget the top 0.1% wealthy people in this country who paid no federal income taxes because of how their incomes were generated from lowly-taxed capital gains. The existence of tax law provisions almost always allows the ultra-wealthy to minimize any tax liability they have.

Thing is: the American electorate has an increasingly short-term memory, matched with a propensity to vote against their interests. So it’s not likely that Romney’s outrageous assertions will be remembered a couple of months from now, much less investigated. But his comments were an eye-opener for me, at least. I guess I can live with that.

- ACL

Obamaville: Be Afraid

According to the Santorum camp, re-electing Obama to a second term will lead us into some kind of post-apocalyptic world that would make the Walking Dead blush. Be afraid, America. Be very afraid:

Whoa. The sound you just heard was me taking a deuce in my pants.

Kidding aside…what the hell was this? The ridiculousness of this clearly exaggerated apocalyptic theme notwithstanding, I can’t help but think Rick “I said BLAH people” Santorum was somehow trying to relay a message specifically to white America about how the policies of the Obama Administration will negatively affect them, and them alone. In fact, the only people of color you see in this commercial are Obama, a subtly superimposed Ahmadinejad, and a group of flag-burning Middle Eastern protestors. Yes, my white brothers and sisters: Obama hates you and he wants you all to suffer and die.

I suppose a lot of this plays in to the Republican strategy: we have no shot at winning the black vote, so forget them. In return, a large contingency of black people will shy away from Republicans. In return, Republicans will ignore black people. In return, black people will shy away from Republicans. In return, Republicans will ignore…wait, have I said all this already?

Rick Santorum is on his last leg and will probably be out of the race by the end of next month. So this is much ado about nothing. But as a cautionary tale to whom I’d suspect will be the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, avoid this strategy. In fact, be afraid of this strategy…almost as afraid as white people were supposed to be of Santorum’s attack ad. While it is true that black Americans generally vote Democrat and an overwhelming number of black Americas will indeed vote for Obama, Romney must do his best to widen the tent if he wants any shot at winning the White House. Bush and his team did a marvelous job of securing a staggering amount of black votes in 2004, and President Obama is beatable due to his vulnerabilities. But if Mitt follows Santorum’s drumbeat and plays the game of exclusionary politics, the clip above might wind up being less of a snapshot of Obamaville in 2014, and more like RomneyCampaignville.

- ACL

Herman Cain’s Fishy Ad

If you haven’t quite gotten enough from Herman Cain, I’m happy to inform you that he’s back in the game again. Herman “Directa yo feetsa to Daddy Cain’s Pizza” Cain has released yet another surreal video, this time featuring a creepy little white girl apparently killing a goldfish. The message (at least one can speculate) supposedly suggests how the economy can’t survive solely based on stimulus spending from the government, using the dying fish as some kind of metaphor. I’m not making this up:

…cue the collective sigh of relief from comedians across the country. They now have job security.

Then again, between the weird smoking ad, and cowboys carrying yellow flowers, maybe the comedians should hold off on this one. After all, mental retardation is no laughing matter.

- ACL

More to the Bailouts

So the intrepid host of this blog has been in a little bit of a funk lately, writer’s block if you will. But what a story to share as a way to get back into the blogging scene. Most of you may have already read about this but given the number of riots that haven’t ensued yet, my guess is: you may not.

Last week, I read a shocking report by Bloomberg News  detailing how the Federal Reserve ran up a massive deficit that gave $1.2 trillion in low-cost loans to the largest banks in America and Europe, as the 2008 financial collapse peaked. Yes, my friends. That’s $1.2 trillion with a T! $1.2 trillion loaned out at below-market rates. To put that figure in some perspective, that sum roughly makes up our entire federal debt and is equivalent to approximately one-third of all the assets owned by the Federal Reserve. One-third. That’s not a typo.

The largest aspect of the bailout, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), dedicated close to half a trillion dollars to support large financial and auto companies. That included billions given to AIG (the crooks financial company responsible for selling mortgage-backed securities) and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the government-backed companies which sold, bought, and insured mortgages). In a report published last year, the Obama administration predicted that the government will lose $17 billion on its TARP investments in car companies, plus another $46 billion on housing programs including the Home Affordable Modification Program. Those losses may be balanced by profits the Treasury made from its loans to financial institutions.

In the case of its secret lending program, the Fed expects to recoup all the money it lent out. Also according to Bloomberg, the Feds have indicated that there were no credit losses on any of its bailout loans and that, in some instances, billions of dollars of profit were generated from interest and fees from the loans. The jury is still out on that, and we will have to see how much recovery the federal government receives from its lending.

Regardless of how much will eventually be repaid, one thing is certain: the amount of money the federal government loaned out (or outright gave away) during the 2008 financial meltdown is mind-blowing and maddening. Before being perverted by corporate interests, this is why the Tea Party was first founded and why the Occupy Wall Street movement is finally getting its legs. The fact that so much taxpayer money was doled out unconditionally and with no accountability is one of, if not the most, outrageous example of robbery we have ever experienced. I’m trying to form a coherent thought, but my efforts are muddled by the shocking nature of this news.

So much for making my triumphant return to the blogosphere. :-/

- ACL