Great Recession

I stopped by a corporate chain bookstore this week and checked out the "Current Affairs" section. I was a little surprised to discover that according to a dozen or more books dominating the display we are all under a vicious life-and-death assault from a raving, drooling mob of communist devils led by that well-known pinko guerrilla Barack Obama.

As the global economy grinds to a halt, progressive "pundits" are driving me crazy by equating a Keynesian "stimulus" with jobs.

They are not the same thing.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was a $787 billion "stimulus." It was not a jobs bill. 

It was supposed to save and create millions of jobs through trickle-down policies of tax cuts, unemployment benefits, aid to state and local governments, and "shovel-ready" construction projects.

According to Congressional Budget Office estimates, in its peak year of 2010, it increased the number of people employed by between 1.3 million and 3.3 million. Most of those jobs were saved, not created.

This Saturday we're drawing a line in the sand. The entire progressive movement is putting everything we have into one massive display of progressive solidarity nationwide.

We won't let Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker - or any other billionaire-bought TeaParty Governor - break the unions. Unions created America's middle class and if they disappear we'll all end up as corporate slaves.

The entire progressive movement - Netroots, unions, environmentalists, and community groups - will hold solidarity rallies in major cities, including every state capital, this Saturday around noon.

Whether or not one recklessly and misleadingly includes Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid in discussions of the federal discretionary budget, the fact remains that over half of the discretionary budget (of everything other than Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid) is military. The primary talking point coming out of the White House is the need to freeze all non-military discretionary spending. And yet it is difficult to find a progressive analysis of the budget President Obama proposed on Monday that even mentions the existence of the military.

In December, Republicans demanded - and won - an extension of Bush's tax cuts for the rich costing $858 billion over two years.

Amazingly, that same $858 billion could create jobs for all 14.5 million unemployed Americans paying nearly $30,000 per year!

The rich don't need more tax breaks. But 14.5 million unemployed Americans desperately need jobs.

Tell Congress: Create Jobs Now!
http://democrats.com/create-jobs-now

The new Tea Party Republican Congress wants to slash jobs to give more tax cuts to the rich.

They won't create jobs unless we build a powerful nationwide grassroots movement to demand them.

That's exactly why we're launching the Job Party - to create a movement more powerful than the Tea Party. Here's our plan:

Wow - ThinkProgress found three Teaparty Republicans who are publicly willing to default on America's debt in order to stop the government from borrowing any more money.

The first is Rep. Andrew Harris (R-MD), who gained fame today for demanding government-funded healthcare 6 weeks before his swearing-in. The second is Senator Mike Lee (R-UT), who beat establishment conservative incumbent Bob Bennett at last year's Utah Republican convention. The third, Reid Ribble (R-WI), told ThinkProgress off-camera he would also vote against raising the debt ceiling.