independentsforkerry.org

When he negotiated the renewal of the Bush tax cuts in 2010, why didn’t he get himself an increase in the debt ceiling at the same time?      The tax cuts expanded the deficit beyond what it otherwise would have been.     Republicans dearly wanted the tax cuts extended and would have paid for them.     But Obama didn’t negotiate it because he doesn’t know how.   Obama has no respect for the base of the Democratic Party and downright distaste for Union People.     Obama is uninformed, thinking if he does the Republicans a favor it will get returned.     Republicans have told him to his face that they will destroy him yet he continues to live in la-la land.     What do we have to do to wake up this arrogrant flip-flop choke and fold fool.    All Obama does is talk, nothing more and he has proved that he is an empty suit for almost 3 years now.    I have zero faith in Barack Obama’s ability to get the job done.

In this round of debt negotiations, the president drew red lines.    He threatened to veto a small increase in the debt ceiling, one that would force him to return to the argument before the election in 2012.   By contrast, he has not threatened to veto debt-ceiling measures that cut too deeply into social programs.    His red lines are drawn for his political advantage — not to protect his core supporters’ or the Democratic Parties values and interests.    His red lines are not ours.    Obama deals purely for himself.   Clearing up matters for his re-election were clearly job one in Obama’s mind.

Whether its health care or the deficit or now the debt ceiling, direct encounters between Obama and his Republican opposite numbers have always ended badly for the president.    Yes, the president faces unusually extreme and intransigent opposition.    But that’s a description of the difficulty, not an excuse for failure.    Presidents win negotiations when they can mobilize the public behind them.    That was Ronald Reagan’s secret weapon in 1981.     It has never been Barack Obama’s.   And the results are as we all see.   Obama can’t seem to make proper use of the bully pulpit.    Obama seems transfixed by the sound of his own voice.

Obama has proven himself to be a terrible negotiator, time and again starting from a position way too near what his opponents want.    It started with health care reform, when he himself ruled out nationalization and single payer from the very start so that what he ended up with was close to what the Republicans themselves were
proposing in 1993.  

If Obama refuses to learn how to negotiate then he should stay completely out of it and let a professional on his staff handle it.     Either way quit embarrising the Democratic Party.
  
Naturally the Republicans will do everything possible to get to deal with a patsy like Obama.    If you lose everytime out of the gate you should give up on that particular rodeo.   I don’t care how smart you think you are you may lack this skill.   Part of Obama’s problem is he does not respect people who have the skill to negotiate.
  
Beyond that he does not even know the simple rules of the game and yes just like politics it is a game and there are rules.   Rule one, go slow.   Rule two, don’t give anything away unless you get somehing for it preferably something you want.    Rule three don’t talk about the negotiations in public, do your talking at the table.   Rule four, wrap your ego in coming out ahead and remember nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.   If the other side renegs on any part of the deal jerk the entire deal off the table and start over from the begining.   Be curteous and remain firm.    Prepare ahead of time and know what your objectives are and what your moves mean to the scope of where you are taking the deal.    

If it ends 50-50 you didn’t win or lose, you held your own. 
   Holding your own would be a dramatic improvement for
Obama.    If you get the big end of any other number set you have some level of win.   When the Republicans get 98% and you get 2% that is an embarrisment.     Obama needs to realize that he mucked this process up beyond repair and to commit himself to learning how to negotiate.      Learn or quit the game, there is no in between.    If you get in get in all the way.

The negotiations over the Bush tax cuts ended up giving the Republicans nearly everything they wanted, making the debt far worse while still allowing the opponents to blame Obama for it.    His opening move seems to be along the lines of,   “Okay, I’ll give you 80% of what you want.”     And then he ends up settling for 90% of what they want.    After Obama ceeded the 80% before the negotiations started he held his own splitting the remaining 20%
and that gave the Republicans 90 and Obama 10.  

Obama lost this negotiations before it even started.      Worse, he leaned nothing about negotiating and was just as dumb the next time at bat.

One of the clear differences between Republicans and Democrats is how they wield power once they get it.    The Republicans get into power, as they did in many states this January, and they go for broke.   They push their agenda through swiftly and strongly and they don’t care what the polls say.    They know they have a limited
window in which to work before the backlash begins and they slash and burn to get it done.    Republicans don’t even have to control the legislature to control the agenda; one chamber of Congress will do just fine.   Obama has let them control the agenda from the start.    It is Obama’s fault that he is a pushover.    As Democrats it is our fault that we elected a pushover who can’t do the job.   If we lie to ourselves and say everything is OK that will be our fault also.   It is time to let Obama know we are tired of his do nothing, accomplish nothing way of conducting business.

And here’s the thing that makes it all make no sense at all:  The public is on his side.   On the policy issues, the public was strongly against the Republican position on the Bush tax cuts and strongly on Obama’s side.   On the debt ceiling issue, the public is strongly against the Republican position and strongly on Obama’s side.  
And yet he still comes out of it looking like a weak bystander and the GOP still gets nearly everything they want.     Even with the people on his side he could not plot a straight line to a win.

Obama is likeable but he lacks the skills to do the job and that’s sad for him and sad for America.       There are so many talented people who could help Obama govern but his eye is fixed on that old Chicago bunch who have failed to adequately protect the President so far.      The President needs to clean house and get a team together who can do the job.     He needs to do it right away.

I was asked today if I will be going to Obama’s birthday party tommorow?    The answer is NO.    Obama doesn’t have a birthday this year.    The Republicans took it away from him in the debt ceiling negotiations.

Amherst County Virginia Democratic News

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ACV Democratic News

A conference call with reporters Wednesday revealed more details about the Obama administration’s plan to roll out a program for student debt relief.

Wednesday’s White House proposal is casting a wide net to help more debt holders. A fact sheet provided to reporters indicates the White House expects college loan holders to save “hundreds” of dollars per month through this relief package. During the press call, Duncan said a nurse earning ,000 a year with ,000 in loans can expect a 1 reduction in monthly payments.

A summary of the call:

· Starting in January of next year, allow individuals to consolidate their Federal Direct loans with subsidized loans. The White House says this move can tack off half a percentage point in the interest debtors pay. Barnes told reporters submitting payments to two different loan services increases the risk of default.

· Expanding the IBR program through a pay as you earn service that caps the discretionary income considered to 10 percent that will also go into effect January of next year. While the president had Congress approve a similar IBR measure that lowers the percentage of income considered, that rule won’t go into effect until 2014. White House numbers project the move will help 1.6 million student borrowers. Today’s proposal also excuses all unpaid debt after 20 years of successful minimum payments, rather than the 25 years originally legislated. Discretionary income is calculated by subtracting150 percent of the poverty line from a person’s adjusted gross income–that dollar figure at the end of one’s tax return.

· The CFBP, less than 100 days old an a product of last year’s big bank regulation law known as Dodd-Frank, is in the finishing stages of a simple Financial Aid Shopping Sheet, which would de-jargon the language on college award letter and scholarship documents. “The form would also make the total costs — and risks — of the student loans clear before they enroll by outlining their total estimated student loan debt, monthly loan payments after graduation and additional costs not covered by federal aid,” indicates a White House press release.

Present on the call were Education Secretary Arne Duncan, Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council Melody Barnes and Raj Date, Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFBP).

Tackling student debt is part of the administration’s larger effort to circumvent policy changes that need Congressional approval. “We simply can’t wait for Congressional Republicans to act,” said Duncan, who highlighted portions of the plan.

While Congress in 2009 approved a measure called Income Based Repayment, which went into effect last year, only 450,000 college loan holders have signed on out of the over 30 million Americans juggling higher education debt. That program caps the amount college debt holders pay on federally-backed loans to 15 percent of their discretionary income.

Perhaps coincidentally, College Board released a report today showing college tuition and fees rose this year by more than 8 percent from last year for public four- and two-year colleges. Still, more students are entering college, the report noted, as an additional 2.8 million students enrolled in school between 2007 and 2010.

Higher education has been under a microscope as job prospects are low for many and additional education is sought after. The swell of new students is forcing campuses to find new revenue streams to keep up with services, often resulting in admitting students who pay higher tuition. The trend is most visible at public universities that have set their sights on out-of-state candidates who pay considerably more than local students — at times three times as much.

Taking into account a student’s ability to weather the financial burden of higher education is an increasingly ethical dilemma. Student default rates, as determined by the two-year cohort rate calculated by the U.S. Department of Education, is at a 12-year high, with 8.8 percent of graduates not paying their college loans for 270 days or more. Using a more comprehensive metric, a report issued (PDF) by the New America Foundation found that 15 percent of graduates defaulted, while 21 percent were delinquent on their payments.

But despite the costs and risks of falling behind in payments, arguments college is still worth it abound.

Individuals possessing a college-equivalent degree can expect to earn 80 percent more than a person with a high school degree. In an earlier study from researchers at Georgetown University, a college degree holder can expect to make .4 million more than one witha high school degree. And owning a college degree goes a long way to having a job: while the unemployment rate in this country is 9.1 percent, only 4.3 percent of college degree holders are jobless.

The Colorado Independent

An IVA, or Individual Voluntary Arrangement, is a program that cancels a portion of your debt so you do not have to pay it back. This legal agreement between you, the creditors and a Licensed Insolvency Practitioner will cancel up to 75 percent of your total debt in a legal process requires you to apply and [...]
Best News & Politics

Wow.  This is really funny.  I guess the Chinese have no choice but to believe Biden.  But it’s kind of like a guy who maxed out all his credit cards saying he will still make payments on them.  At some point the credit card companies will just quick sending them new cards.  I think the [...]
Best News & Politics

Thom Hartmann points out what you’re not hearing in the media about the S&P downgrade:

Have you seen, anywhere, in any media, or even heard reported or repeated on NPR, the following sentence? “We have changed our assumption on this because the majority of Republicans in Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues, a position we believe Congress reinforced by passing the act.”

It’s right there on Page 4 of the official Standard & Poors “Research Update” – the actual report on what they did and why – published on August 5th as the explanation for why they believe Congress – and even the Gang of Twelve – will be unable to actually deal with the US debt crisis.

Perhaps it’s just lazy – the bullet points at the beginning of the report don’t mention the Republicans or taxes, but instead just say, for example (part of one of six quick bullet-points): “[T]he downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges…”

In order to figure out that one of the reasons why is that “Republicans in the Congress continue to resist any measure that would raise revenues,” a hard-working reporter would have to read to page four of the eight-page report. It’s just too much effort for most reporters?

Although they do also mention this in the very first sentence of the report: “We lowered our long-term rating on the U.S. because we believe that the prolonged controversy over raising the statutory debt ceiling and the related fiscal policy debate indicate that further near-term progress containing the growth in public spending, especially on entitlements, or on reaching an agreement on raising revenues is less likely than we previously assumed and will remain a contentious and fitful process.” (Italics mine)

Or could it be that many reporters – and virtually all of the television talking heads – are themselves relatively high income-earners who don’t relish the idea of higher taxes?

Or could it be that reporters are afraid that if they report the actual language of the S&P Research Report, then Republicans will punish them by denying them “access” – i.e. refusing to show up on their programs – which is the career and show kiss-of-death for radio and TV programs that rely on big-name politicians to work?

Democratic Blog – News

INDEPENDENT VOTERS

• Independent Voices in Debt Debate (Don Lemon, CNN) Joe Gandelman, Nicole Neily, and Omar H. Ali. “If President Obama wants to attract independent voters, he has to take a firm stance in favor of issues that will open up the political process. Right now we have 80% of Americans who are unhappy and don’t trust the government and 9.8% unemployment–that’s a crisis. There is a connection between the political process and the economy.”  VIDEO
• Independents More Likely Than Others To Say The U.S. Is In Decline (Ricky Kreitner, Business Insider) 48% of non-affiliated voters said the U.S. is in decline… The most optimistic voters, it seems, are Democrats, blacks, and young people. Over half of respondents in each group said they believed America’s best days were yet to come.
• The Hill Poll: One in 3 voters say the US has passed its peak (By Elise Viebeck, The Hill) Blacks and whites differed markedly on economic questions, with 78 percent of blacks saying their situations had either stayed the same or improved since Obama took office. Among whites, an overwhelming proportion (87 percent) said their situations had stayed the same or gotten worse.
• Pew survey analyzes Independent, Democratic, and Republican voter trends (by Christopher A. Guzman, CAIVN) Overall, partisan affiliation with the Democratic party has fallen from a quarter century high in 2008. From 1990 to 2011, Independents have grown steadily from 28% to 34%. This outpaces the percentage of Republicans, whose current identification of voters matches the 28% that Independents had a few times in the past eleven years.

The Hankster

by R. Lee Wrights

BURNET, Texas (June 26) – There are several times in my life, more than I care to remember, that I have gone into debt. Who hasn’t? Sometimes I just made bad decisions. But every time I went into debt I alone was responsible for getting myself out of the hole. If you find yourself in a hole that is already too deep and you want to get out, the first thing any sane person does is stop digging. If you’re deep in debt, the first thing to do is — stop spending. That’s what responsible people do.

Apparently however, when someone is elected to office they forget or disregard this simple fact of life. They don’t remember what it’s like to live within their means and to balance a budget. They forget that the simplest, surest and only real way to get out of debt is to stop spending. The spectacle of the Republican and Democratic leaders in Washington D.C. purportedly struggling over the seemingly monumental issue of raising the debt ceiling illustrates just how far out of touch the president and Congressional leaders are with the basic economic realities faced by average Americans every day.

Even the name they use to identify the issue, “debt ceiling,” is an example of the way politicians manipulate words to mask reality. The debt ceiling is merely an artificial cap set by Congress on the amount of money the federal government can legally borrow. It was first set in 1917, but has been raised more than 100 times since then, proving that it’s really not a ceiling at all, not even a glass ceiling, but actually as “high as the sky.”

Amazingly, for nearly a century and a half, the United States survived and thrived without a debt ceiling. The federal government lived within its means; Congress had to approve every instance of government debt case-by-case. If the president wanted to spend more money than the federal government collected in taxes, he had to ask Congress for permission. In other words, the government operated just like any business or family.

Sadly, the same politicians who have bankrupted our county are morally and intellectually bankrupt as well. Not only do they lack the courage needed to repair the damage they’ve inflicted on our nation, both parties act like spoiled children each blaming the other for breaking open the cookie jar. In typical fashion, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has attempted to frighten the American people by telling Congress that raising the debt ceiling was essential “to protect the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid catastrophic economic consequences for citizens.”

The truth is we are heading into economic catastrophe anyway precisely because of the irresponsible actions and spending addiction of both Democrats and Republicans, and their unwillingness to address the real problem — unlimited, unrealistic and unsustainable spending for defense and entitlements. Trying to cure our economic ails by raising the debt ceiling is like trying to deal with an opiate addiction by prescribing more morphine. Borrowing more money will only make the problem worse. Remember, when you’re already too deep in a hole, stop digging!

The United States does not have to raise our debt ceiling. We simply must stop spending money. The truth is we cannot even begin to reduce our debt by slowing spending, lowering spending or even cutting spending. Nor can we “nickel-and-dime” our way out of the problem. We must stop the spending.

It’s easy and popular to go after programs like earmarks, subsidies, tax credits and foreign aid, but these are only a small part of the federal budget. We must stop spending on items that make up 60 to 75 percent of the federal budget — defense and entitlements. Until we elect leaders with the courage to address spending in these areas we’ll never be able to get the debt under control, let alone reduce it. One thing is certain, both for individuals and for our nation, we will never solve our debt problem by going even deeper into debt.

R. Lee Wrights, 53, a libertarian writer and political activist, is seeking the presidential nomination because he believes the Libertarian message in 2012 must be a loud, clear and unequivocal call to stop all war. To that end he has pledged that 10 percent of all donations to his campaign will be spent for ballot access so that the stop all war message can be heard in all 50 states. Wrights is a lifetime member of the Libertarian Party and co-founder and editor of of the free speech online magazine Liberty For All. Born in Winston-Salem, N.C., he now lives and works in Texas.

Lee Wrights for President
Contact: Brian Irving, press secretary
press@wrights2012.com
919.538.4548

Independent Political Report

According to a USA Today/Gallup national poll released Monday, 61 percent of self-described Tea Party movement supporters say that the federal government’s debt is an extremely serious threat to the country, with only 29 percent of those who do not identify with the Tea Party movement saying that the debt is an extremely serious threat.

Leading conservative economist Bruce Bartlett says that those who blame Democrats and Obama for the huge national debt have it wrong—the person they should be angry with left the White House a year and a half ago.

Forty-nine percent of Tea Party supporters say the size and power of the federal government is an extremely serious threat, with only 12 percent of those who do not identify with the Tea Party movement agreeing.

Tea Party activists say one of the aims of their movement is to reduce the size of the federal government. Eight out of 10 Tea Party supporters questioned say that the government is doing too much that should be left to individuals and business. That drops to 27 percent among those who do not identify with the Tea Party movement. Only 17 percent of Tea Party activists say the government should be doing more to solve the nation’s problems. That figure jumps to 64 percent among those who do not identify with the Tea Party movement.

The survey also indicates that the concerns of Tea Party supporters align with the Republican Party. Gallup published another poll last week that found most tea party supporters are right wing Republicans. “Their similar ideological makeup and views suggest that the Tea Party movement is more a rebranding of core Republicanism than a new or distinct entity on the American political scene,” Gallup Poll director Frank Newport wrote in an analysis of the results. Newport adds: “Republican leaders who worry about the Tea Party’s impact on their races may in fact (and more simply) be defined as largely worrying about their party’s core base.”

The Daily Beast:

Where is the evidence that everything would be better if Republicans were in charge? Does anyone believe the economy would be growing faster or that unemployment would be lower today if John McCain had won the election? I know of no economist who holds that view. The economy is like an ocean liner that turns only very slowly. The gross domestic product and the level of employment would be pretty much the same today under any conceivable set of policies enacted since Barack Obama’s inauguration.

Until conservatives once again hold Republicans to the same standard they hold Democrats, they will have no credibility and deserve no respect.

In January, the Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit this year of .2 trillion before Obama took office, with no estimate for actions he might take. To a large extent, the CBO’s estimate simply represented the 2 billion deficit projected by the Bush administration in last summer’s budget review, plus the 0 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, which George W. Bush rammed through Congress in September over strenuous conservative objections. Thus the vast bulk of this year’s currently estimated .8 trillion deficit was determined by Bush’s policies, not Obama’s.

I think conservative anger is misplaced. To a large extent, Obama is only cleaning up messes created by Bush. This is not to say Obama hasn’t made mistakes himself, but even they can be blamed on Bush insofar as Bush’s incompetence led to the election of a Democrat. If he had done half as good a job as most Republicans have talked themselves into believing he did, McCain would have won easily.

Conservative protesters should remember that the recession, which led to so many of the policies they oppose, is almost entirely the result of Bush’s policies. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, the recession began in December 2007—long before Obama was even nominated. And the previous recession ended in November 2001, so the current recession cannot be blamed on cyclical forces that Bush inherited.In a larger sense, the extremely poor economic performance of the Bush years really set the stage for the current recession. This is apparent when we compare Bush’s two terms to Bill Clinton’s eight years. Since both took office close to a business cycle trough and left office close to a cyclical peak, this is a reasonable comparison.

the economy performed very, very badly under Bush, and the best efforts of his cheerleaders cannot change that fact because the data don’t lie. Consider these comparisons between Bush and Clinton:

• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real GDP grew 34.7 percent. Between the fourth quarter of 2000 and the fourth quarter of 2008, it grew 15.9 percent, less than half as much.
• Between the fourth quarter of 1992 and the fourth quarter of 2000, real gross private domestic investment almost doubled. By the fourth quarter of 2008, real investment was 6.5 percent lower than it was when Bush was elected.
• Between December 1992 and December 2000, payroll employment increased by more than 23 million jobs, an increase of 21.1 percent. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it rose by a little more than 2.5 million, an increase of 1.9 percent. In short, about 10 percent as many jobs were created on Bush’s watch as were created on Clinton’s.
• During the Bush years, conservative economists often dismissed the dismal performance of the economy by pointing to a rising stock market. But the stock market was lackluster during the Bush years, especially compared to the previous eight. Between December 1992 and December 2000, the S&P 500 Index more than doubled. Between December 2000 and December 2008, it fell 34 percent. People would have been better off putting all their investments into cash under a mattress the day Bush took office.
• Finally, conservatives have an absurdly unjustified view that Republicans have a better record on federal finances. It is well-known that Clinton left office with a budget surplus and Bush left with the largest deficit in history. Less well-known is Clinton’s cutting of spending on his watch, reducing federal outlays from 22.1 percent of GDP to 18.4 percent of GDP. Bush, by contrast, increased spending to 20.9 percent of GDP. Clinton abolished a federal entitlement program, Welfare, for the first time in American history, while Bush established a new one for prescription drugs.

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