Monday Mashup (5/9/11)

Lurita Doan is back to inflict the following here at clownhall.com today…

It's déjà vu all over again. Democrats in congress have re-introduced a small business –jobs bill that has no hope of helping small business. Pandering to labor union interests, filled with Democrats’ flawed understanding of what creates private sector jobs, and crammed full of recycled regulations from the failed Waxman-Markey Energy bill, H.R. 870 is dangerous legislation that uses buzz words rather than sound business principles to encourage small business growth and job creation.

And here is more “buzzword bingo” from Doan, as long as she “went there”…”tired, failed policies of Democrats’ left-wing, extremist base,” “failed Democrat legislation” (typical for a “Republic” Party flunky like Doan), “socialism” (of course), “ACORN” (of course), “hubris and delusions of innovation,” etc., etc. (and by the way, nice touch for Doan, an African American, to accuse Obama of “enslaving” a younger generation and their children – to what, it is not made clear).

As Doan notes, the subject of her ugly (and typically incorrect) rhetoric is indeed H.R. 870, a bill sponsored by Dem John Conyers of Michigan, as noted here; the Common Dreams article also tells us the following…

We can create a society with plentiful jobs and equitable taxation. And H.R. 870 is a good place to start. But we need more members of Congress to cosponsor and loudly endorse the bill.

Unlikely to get through Congress? Sure -- if we don’t fundamentally reframe the national debate. That means going where few elected officials, especially President Obama, have dared to tread.

Jobs are a human right . . . and no one has a right to rip off our society to make themselves filthy rich through speculation and fraud. It’s time for Wall Street to pay.

“If this financial crisis taught us anything,” Obama declared on the night he was elected president, “it’s that we cannot have a thriving Wall Street while Main Street suffers.” But in 2011 we have a thriving, even bloated Wall Street -- while many can’t find a job.

As Doan snidely notes, the bill is paid for by “a modest tax on Wall Street stock and bond transactions,” which makes it deficit neutral (of course, Doan would still complain if the bill did not contain the tax, accusing the “Democrat” Party of running up the deficit – the Conyers bill, by the way, is an update to the Humphrey-Hawkins bill signed into law by President Carter in 1978).

For Doan to yammer about good government anyway is beyond a joke, considering how she politicized the GSA when she ran it under our prior ruling cabal (here). And besides, somebody in government has to act like adults and try to pass a jobs bill (the Dems by default), because, as noted here…

And continuing with jobs and the economy, former Bushco econ “guru” N. Gregory Mankiw of the New York Times opined here yesterday as follows on the economy (and three guesses who gets blamed)…

Economists will long debate whether President Obama’s policies are to blame or the patient was just sicker than his economists realized. But there is no doubt that the pace of this recovery will come nowhere close to matching the one achieved after the last deep recession, when President Ronald Reagan presided over a fall in the unemployment rate from 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.3 percent two years later.

Looking ahead, an open issue is whether the recession will leave scars that prevent a return to jobless rates that were considered normal just a few years ago. A striking feature of today’s labor market is the rise of long-term joblessness. The average duration of unemployment is now almost 40 weeks, about twice what it reached in previous recessions. The long-term unemployed may well lose job skills and find their future prospects permanently impaired. But because we are in uncharted waters, it is hard for anyone to be sure.

Yes, we are in “uncharted waters.” And a big part of the reason why is because of the accelerated pace of offshoring, which Mankiw once called "just a new way to do international trade” here and “a plus for the economy in the long run” (I wonder, then, if telling all of our corporate media know-it-alls like Mankiw that opinion columns will now be published only from Mumbai, Bangalore and Guangzhou would be “just a new way to do corporate media punditry”?).

And as noted here…

…if one averages the total 2.9 million jobs lost in the U.S. over 10 years, and assumes an average pay of $43,000 a year over the decade, assuming further an average 20 percent personal income tax rate, the 2.9 job loss equates to an average annual loss in total income in the US Treasury of around $25 billion a year. That’s a total revenue loss of about $250 billion over the past decade alone.

That total does not include the loss of additional state and local tax revenue, or the additional federal revenue sharing with the states that was required the past decade by the federal government to make up for the state-local tax revenue loss.

For the coming decade, 2010-2019, the ‘lost tax revenue tab’ for the U.S. Treasury would be significantly greater still, as even more jobs will likely be offshored and the average annual money income will be slightly higher than $43,000. The amount for the decade ahead would be easily in excess of $300 billion more.

And what did Mankiw say, by the way, when he was busted for his crass endorsement of wrecking our economy, as Brad DeLong tells us above?

"I wish I had been more clear at the press conference; any loss of jobs is regrettable. If I suggested otherwise, I failed to communicate."

Gosh, I could’ve figured out that one, and I don’t even have a Ph.D. from MIT (God forbid that a Bushie would apologize for anything).

Finally, former Repug Senator Judd Gregg has too much time on his hands, I guess, and concocted the following here…

Class warfare as leadership is a hard sell. It seems that this fact has not yet found resonance in the Obama White House.

In a historical context, there have been governments formed on the basis of class warfare. Their success rate as a form of governance, however, is highly suspect. It is simply difficult to build prosperity based on envy.

Of course, if you are conditioned to the ideology of the left and especially to the experiences and purposes of a community-organizer mentality, class warfare is perfectly justifiable not only as a political tool but as an actual purpose.

Oh blah blah blah freaking blah, former Senator.

To the extent that Gregg actually has a point to try and make, I suppose it is to strut his “deficit peacock” bona fides, though he really intends of course to layer on more red meat about that “Kenyan socialist Muslim” and “wealth redistributor.”

Besides, I don’t know what supposedly makes Gregg an expert on anything, really, when you consider the following:

He basically said, “We’re not Europe; let the unemployed suffer” here.

He had a meltdown when asked by two MSNBC hosts what he would cut from the budget here.

He opposed reconciliation for HCR when, as Ezra Klein tells us, Gregg voted for it every time it was used while Dubya was president here (second bullet).

He lobbied for the job of commerce secretary, received an offer from Obama, then bailed on it, and in the process, made himself look like a traitor to his own party, and he’s been trying to worm his way back into their good graces ever since here.

He falsely compared debt levels in the U.S. and the E.U. here.

He falsely claimed that Obama’s tax proposals would increase taxes on small business here.

I suppose the reason why people like Gregg and Lurita Doan feel particularly compelled to lay on the invective concerning Obama is to make absolutely sure that whatever “bounce” Obama receives for the killing of bin Laden is minimized as much as possible (I suppose it’s Obama’s fault that he didn’t “follow the script” and went out and got the bastard instead of letting a Repug president do it, who no doubt would be honored with congressional resolutions by now, to say nothing of someone trying to pass a bill enshrining a federal holiday in his honor, or maybe renaming an airport; hey, if someone can come up with the idea of trying to chisel the face of The Sainted Ronnie R. onto Mount Rushmore…).

And by the way, as long as we’re on the subject of Obama getting bin Laden, can we please dispense with “analysis” of this photo? I mean, really people, who the @#!$ cares??!!

Update 5/11/11: You know, if Cantor doesn't want to praise Obama, that's one thing. But to not praise the Navy SEALs who got bin Laden is something wholly other (here).