Bush Tax Cuts are a 10 Year Economic Disaster

Republicans aren't serious about debt reduction. By now, this should be obvious. We're told that Paul Ryan's Medicare-slaying plan is serious, as well as courageous, but the truth is that it's neither. It's silly and it involves the nation hiding its head in the sand. We've fought two wars, largely off-budget, and engaged in the biggest failure of economic policy since Hoover's performance before the Depression. Republicans shoveled money into a hole for eight years, yet we're supposed to believe that Medicare is our big problem. In 2010, our military spending made up nearly half of all world military spending combined, yet we're supposed to believe our problem is that we spend too much on grandma's heart medication.

It wasn't that long ago that I put up this graph, but let's look at it again:



The Bush tax cuts came with a lot of promises. We would grow our way out of deficits. Kind of looks like we didn't. Deficits are mindblowing and our economy is a fragile wreck in recovery. As I said the last time I posted that graphic, by every measure and on every promise, the Bush tax cuts failed to deliver.

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No Trick Too Low for Wisconsin GOP

Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel blog No Quarter has a piece up about dirty Republican tricks in efforts to recall Republican state senators. Long story short, the GOP is setting up fake Democrats to run primary elections against real Democrats.

Republicans are sending around a couple of letters nominating Democrats. "The [Government Accountability Board] is delaying Democratic elections to give them more time to organize," the letters -- which are identical except for a few names -- say. "A Democratic primary will push the general election back by one month, so that [the GOP candidate] can have more time to organize a campaign against his liberal challenger."


The Government Accountability Board is a non-partisan agency which, among other things, oversees elections. The GAB didn't delay Democratic elections "to give them more time to organize," they delayed them because Republicans used a private firm to collect recall signatures and, as a result, many of those signatures are questionable.

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GOP Eating Their Own Again

David Frum is not happy with media coverage of the GOP presidential campaign. Writing for CNN, the former George W. Bush speechwriter complains that everyone but the party's current frontrunner are getting all the coverage. Turn on the TV and we see Sarah Palin zipping around on the back of a motorcycle or talking heads wondering "when Texas Gov. Rick Perry will join the presidential race and when Newt Gingrich will quit," he says.

Meanwhile, the man who was and is the actual front-runner in the Republican presidential race rates barely a mention in the media commentary.

I'm talking about Mitt Romney of course, the former governor of Massachusetts who has polled first in almost every Republican presidential preference poll since January 2009. Yet somehow the commentariat will not believe it.

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GOP Attempts to Whine Their Way Out of Their Medicare Hole

First things first; Republicans have no moral right to talk about a Democratic "Mediscare" campaign. In a (failed) closed-door meeting to knock out some sort of groundwork for an agreement on the deficit and the debt ceiling, President Obama made that about as clear as he's ever going to:

Republican Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, architect of a Medicare overhaul aimed at slashing the cost of the popular entitlement program by reducing the government's open-ended commitment to seniors, accused Obama of "mis-describing" his proposal and implored the president to ease up on the "demagoguery."

In reply, Obama said he was no stranger to cartoonish depictions, reeling off a list of conservatives' favorite attack points: "I'm the death panel-supporting, socialist, may-not-have-been-born-here president," Obama said, according to people familiar with his remarks.

No word on whether Obama's sentence ended with the words, "so quit whining," but it should've. In fact, it was fearmongering over Medicare that was the Republican strategy to whip up opposition to healthcare reform. The difference between the GOP's take then and Democrats' take now is that the latter is much, much more accurate.

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Despite Outcome of State Supreme Court Race, Democrats Definitely Have the Momentum in Wisconsin

The race for Wisconsin's Supreme Court has finally ended and, after a recount, incumbent Justice David Prosser won over challenger JoAnne Kloppenburg, an assistant district attorney. In an editorial praising Kloppenburg for conceding, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel -- which did not support the recount -- had this to say:

In a normal year, Prosser, a judicial conservative, might not have faced much of a challenge for re-election. But Gov. Scott Walker's efforts to curtail collective bargaining for most public employees bled over into the judicial campaign. While the race was nominally nonpartisan, conservatives tended to support Prosser; liberals tended to support Kloppenburg. A vote against Prosser became, unfairly in our view, a vote by proxy against Walker.

If this is the case, then Gov. Scott Walker lost. Kloppenburg's supporters were outspent by 38% and in a four-way primary, the incumbent took 55% of the vote to Kloppenburg's 25% second place. It was one helluva gap and JoAnne Kloppenburg closed it to less than one half of one percent. If this was a pro- and anti-Walker election, it's not hard to see which side has the momentum. Had the primary results been even fractionally tighter, Kloppenburg would've won in a walk.

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