A Crisis made worse by Religious Nuts and Political Dunces
Posted: September 12, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections, Egypt, Libya | Tags: ambassador Chris Stevens, Benjamin Netanyahu, NeoCons, Religious whackos, right wing religious extremism, Terry Jones 93 CommentsWe’re all still trying to unravel the reasons and events unfolding in Cairo and Libya. The basics point to religious fundamentalism here and abroad fueled by irrational hate that’s being cynically exploited by politicians 
riding religious zealotry and bigotry to headlines. We have a nexus of religions that hate and politicians that thrive on hate. It’s beyond disturbing.
First, we have a two religious extremists in the United States that produced and/or promoted a “movie” that shows a competitor religion in such an offensive light that it sets off the religious extremists in the other religion. Florida Christian whack job Terry Jones is well know for his adventures in Koran-burning.He’s been promoting a movie that vilifies Egyptian Muslims. You can see bits and pieces of it at The Atlantic and read about some of the highly offensive content.
The movie is called Innocence of Muslims, although some Egyptian media have reported its title as Mohammed Nabi al-Muslimin, or Mohammed, Prophet of the Muslims. If you’ve never heard of it, that’s because most of the few clips circulating online are dubbed in Arabic. The above clip, which is allegedly from the film (update: Kurt Werthmuller, a Coptic specialist at the Hudson Institute, says he’s confirmed the clip’s authenticity) is one of the only in English.* That’s also because it’s associated with Florida Pastor Terry Jones (yes, the asshole who burnt the Koran despite Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates’ pleas) and two Egyptians living in the U.S., according to Egyptian press accounts.* The Egyptians are allegedly Coptic, the Christian minority that makes up about a tenth of Egypt.
Obviously, there’s a lot to this story that’s still unclear. What we do know is that some members of Egypt’s sometimes-raucous, often rumor-heavy media have been playing highly offensive clips from the highly offensive film, stressing its U.S. and Coptic connections. In the clip below, controversial TV host Sheikh Khaled Abdallah (known for such statements as “Iran is more dangerous to us than the Jews” and that Tehran had engineered a deadly soccer riot in Port Said) hypes the film as an American-Coptic plot and introduces what he says is its opening scene.
As the fervor has built, both the Coptic Church and the U.S. embassy to Egypt issued formal condemnations of the film. The latter, made just this morning, began, “The Embassy of the United States in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims.” The statement also noted the September 11 anniversary, adding, “Respect for religious beliefs is a cornerstone of American democracy.”
I won’t print the descriptions of some of the most offensive things, you can go read it at the link. This is what set off the riots at the Cairo Embassy and has now led to the death of a US ambassador and 3 other diplomats in Libya.
Libya, J. Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three of his staff members in a fiery and furious attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi on Tuesday night by an armed mob angry over a short American-made video mocking Islam’s founding prophet, the White House and Libyan officials said on Wednesday.
President Obama strongly condemned the killings and ordered increased security at American diplomatic posts around the world. American defense officials said 50 Marines were en route to Libya to strengthen security at United States diplomatic facilities.
The death of Ambassador Stevens was the first of an American envoy abroad in more than two decades.
“These four Americans stood up for freedom and human dignity,” Mr. Obama said in a televised statement from the White House Rose Garden where he stood side-by-side with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. “Make no mistake: we will work with the Libyan government to bring to justice the killers who attacked our people.”
Mr. Obama also offered praise for the Libyan government, noting that Libyan security forces fought back against the mob, helped protect American diplomats and took Mr. Stevens’s body to the hospital. “This attack will not break the bonds between the United States and Libya,” he said.
Enter the right wing kooks and we now see how extremely offensive and extremely connected to religious extremists that some of our own politicians can be. We’re seeing this from two sources of extremely unhelpful people. The first is Netanyahu who is under increasing criticism from the opposition in Israel for “wagging the dog” and being more interested in ‘regime change’ in the US than in Iran. (“Who are you trying to replace?” Shaul Mofaz asked Bibi Netanyahu. “The Administration in Washington or in Tehran?”) Netanyahu has invented a snub by Obama out of whole cloth and seems to be pressing the case for Romney who has pretty much guaranteed he’d join in a war against Iran and who knows else in the Middle east.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the White House had declined the Israeli government’s request for a meeting on the sidelines of a U.N. confab later this month in New York City. The White House cited a scheduling problem, but denied reports that they had refused to meet with Netanyahu in New York.
“Contrary to reports in the press, there was never a request for Prime Minister Netanyahu to meet with President Obama in Washington, nor was a request for a meeting ever denied,” the White House said.
The US and Israeli right wing press has gone crazy-go-nuts over another complete fabrication about Obama’s love of Muslim countries and distaste for poor little Israel and its leader’s lust for all out war in the middle east. Read this analysis of NeoCon Benjamin Netanyahu at The New Yorker.
In his first term as Prime Minister, in the nineties, Netanyahu used to behave in such a high-handed way with White House officials that Bill Clinton left meetings with him bewildered and bemused, wondering who, in their relationship, was the leader of a superpower. But Netanyahu’s arrogance, in the guise of Churchillian prescience, has hardly receded over the years. Obama, in an attempt to cool the latest crisis, called Netanyahu last night and spent an hour talking with him.
Adding to the outrage is the fact that Netanyahu is performing not just for his allies on the Israeli right but for those he perceives as his allies on the American right, including those in the Jewish community. His performance is in the same neocon voice as the one adopted by the Romney campaign and in its opportunistic reaction to the attacks on the U.S. diplomatic outposts in Cairo and Benghazi, which left our Ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, and three other consular employees dead. Unbelievably, the Republican National Committee chairman, Reince Priebus, took to Twitter and wrote, “Obama sympathizes with attackers in Egypt. Sad and pathetic.” Romney himself accused Obama of sympathizing with the attackers in Libya.
The neocon strategy, in both Israel and the U.S., is to paint Obama as naïve in the extreme. In this, Netanyahu and Romney are united—and profoundly cynical.
Meanwhile, enter our Republican whack jobs and the completely feckless and worthless bubble boy, Netanyahu fan boi, Mitt Romney. How can one person have so much money and be so clueless about so many things? This analysis is by Josh Marshall at TPM.
As noted, we have two simultaneous crises washing over Washington tonight from the Middle East. First, the US-Israel blow up, which I discussed below. Next, riots which escalated into full-scale attacks on US embassies in Cairo and Benghazi, triggered by another stunt by Quran-burning ‘pastor’ Terry Jones down in Florida.
A State Department officer was actually killed in the attack on the compound in Benghazi.
In the midst of this, the Romney campaign put out this statement …
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi. It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”So Romney jumps to politicize a genuine crisis in which a Foreign Service Officer has been killed. And the attack itself is based on a falsehood. The reference is to a statement released by the Embassy in Egypt which in fact came out before the attacks took place. The entire thing is based on a lie. Here’s our full story.
In a statement Tuesday night, Mitt Romney accused the Obama administration of sympathizing with the Libyan protesters who attacked a consulate in Benghazi, killing the U.S. ambassador and three other American diplomats.
“I’m outraged by the attacks on American diplomatic missions in Libya and Egypt and by the death of an American consulate worker in Benghazi,” Romney said. “It’s disgraceful that the Obama Administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.”
Romney’s remarks came before the White House confirmed Wednesday morning that U.S. ambassador to Libya, John Christopher Stevens, was among those killed in the Benghazi attack.
Romney foreign policy adviser Rich Williamson told Foreign Policy magazine Tuesday evening, before the deaths were reported, that the attacks were related to Obama’s “failure to be an effective leader for U.S. interests in the Middle East.”
Romney has often tried to sharpen the contrast between his foreign policy and Obama’s by arguing that the president is apologetic towards America’s enemies.
Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt responded a few hours later that it was Romney who was out of line. “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack,” he said
I guess Romney doesn’t consider SOS Hillary Clinton to be a part of the Obama administration or something. This is the next paragraph in the WAPO article cited above.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attack “in the strongest terms,” adding that while the United States “deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others … there is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.” Wednesday morning, Obama released his own statement condemning “the outrageous attack.”
On the longer-term temperamental politics, this is a very vivid example of what people mean when they talk about “the 3 a.m. phone call.” In these next few hours let us look very carefully at the first-reaction quick responses, and then the considered second-take positions, by the two candidates.* One or the other of them will be in charge of U.S. response to similar inevitable-surprise episodes in the next four years.
His article also reviews some of the various media responses to Romney’s stupid comments. This one is on the Fox Propaganda Network.
Have just seen Jeffrey Goldberg’s report on an immediate response from the Romney camp. That is revealing and not encouraging. On the other hand, I am watching Fox & Friends right now to see how they are presenting things. They’ve just finished with a foreign-policy expert who urged Romney to stand down for a day or so. She says, “I am a hawk, but this is not the time to politicize the issue.”
Update-update. Here is the New York Times report on the Romney response Jeff Goldberg is referring to. Read this carefully. It is a “midnight phone call” rather than 3 am, but this tells me something:
Bracing for trouble before the start of the protests here and in Libya, the American Embassy released a statement shortly after noon that appeared to refer to Mr. Jones [the idiotic Koran-burning “pastor” Terry Jones]: “The United States Embassy in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” It later denounced the “unjustified breach of our embassy.”Apparently unaware of the timing of the first embassy statement, the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, put out a statement just before midnight Tuesday saying, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” Mr. Romney also said he was “outraged” at the attacks on the embassy and consulate.
I’m sure we’ll be hearing more about all of this for some time. I know two things. I’m rooting for the Israeli Opposition and our State Department. The last thing we need is for a bunch of lying war thumping neocons to start pushing lies again and drag us into the Religious Fantastic’s wet dream of the so-called ‘end times’. Pray that the cooler minds prevail and the others STFU. The last thing we need is shameless exploitation of religious bigotry by folks whose voting base is filled with folks who would like to rid the world of all religions but their own.
Killing Democracy Harshly
Posted: September 11, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: Republican voter suppression 13 Comments
It isn’t just coincidence that Republicans in swing states are scrambling to disenfranchise voters. This is the first punch in a one-two punch that could dismantle our democratic process. The second punch will come in October when billionaires and their SuperPacs drop ads that the Romney campaign will not be able to afford. The longest lasting legacy of republican desperation to keep the electorate white male will definitely be their voter suppression efforts. You need to be aware of the tactics and how this could impact your right to vote.
The nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law says that since the start of 2011, 16 states — which account for 214 electoral votes—have passedrestrictive voting laws. Each law is different: some curb voter registration drives; others require new and costly forms of identification; and still others insist that voters produce government-issued photo IDs at the polls. The Brennan Center also points out that:
“[T]he scope of the suppression movement and its potential impact are staggering … as many as 11 percent of eligible voters — roughly 21 million Americans—lack current, unexpired government-issued photo IDs. The percentages are even higher among seniors, African Americans and other minorities, the working poor, the disabled and students — constituencies that traditionally skew Democratic and whose disenfranchisement could prove decisive in any close election.”
The American Civil Liberties Union and other civil rights groups have been trying to gain injunctions against laws passed by Republican-dominated state legislatures, but with mixed success.
The Republicans argue they are preventing voter fraud. But is there a significant amount of voter fraud? Or is this a partisan effort to find a solution to a problem that doesn’t exist? The Bush administration spent five years (2002 to 2007) searching for voter fraud and found only 86 cases. The Brennan Center for Justice, as well as the ACLU, have also found infinitesimal instances of voter fraud.
The sudden need for unexpired passports, the demand for government-issued photo identification, is simply a flagrant way of suppressing the votes of those who are more likely to vote Obama. The new identification requirements make it difficult, if not impossible, for some citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote. In some states poll hours have been expanded for likely Republican voters and decreased for probable Democratic voters. Many elderly people no longer have their birth certificates. Many minorities and young people don’t own cars and therefore don’t have driving licenses. Young people often don’t have access to any of these records when they live far away from their parents. But those who vote by absentee ballot — suburban voters who tend to be independents or Republicans — are not required to have photo IDs. Ironically, this from a country that has consistently — in the name of liberty and freedom — refused to force its citizens to carry identifications cards.
What few critics seem to realize is that women — who constitute at least half of all these targeted groups and who vote more often than men — will be even more disenfranchised. Ever since 1980, African American women have been decisive in creating a gender gap that has helped elect Democratic presidents. And in 2012, these women — in addition to single and elderly women — may be prevented from protecting Obama’s signature health care program, women’s reproductive rights, the right to abortion, funds for Planned Parenthood, and Social Security and Medicare — the very safety net that the Romney/Ryan Republican ticket has campaigned to eliminate or change in fundamental ways.
Maddow covered the attempts in Iowa to declare a ‘state’ emergency so that voter rolls there could be purged. She also pointed to a lawyer that appears to be travelling around the country helping with the effort.
Maddow interviewed the lawyer who has written what sounds like a fascinating book on Voting Wars.
Rick Hasen, professor of Law and Political Science at UC Irvine, and author of “The Voting Wars: From Florida 2000 to the Next Election Meltdown,” talks with Rachel Maddow about Republican tactics to make voting more difficult, particularly in the few states who will most likely determine the outcome of the presidential election.
Five of the nine states targeted by Romney have Republican Secretaries of State who are purging voting rolls, cutting hours of voting, and stopping most forms of flexible voting.
Here’s some information from Iowa on the sudden urge to purge.
The revelation this week of Secretary of State Matt Schultz’s move to drop ineligible names from the state’s voter rolls and change the process for voter-fraud investigations ushers Iowa into a national debate over ballot security and voter suppression.
The rules enacted by Schultz, a Republican, lay out a process for his office to compare the names of Iowa’s 2.1 million registered voters to state and federal lists of foreign nationals who live in Iowa, with the goal of singling out those ineligible to vote. They also add procedures for filing voter fraud complaints that critics say remove a requirement in Iowa law that the person complaining must file a sworn statement.
In a statement, Schultz said the new rules would strengthen ballot integrity in Iowa and improve due process for voters suspected of being ineligible.
Still, his actions move Iowa into the latest battle of what election law expert Richard L. Hasen calls the “Voting Wars.” Republicans and Democrats have been fighting for the last several years over changes to election law requiring more scrutiny on registration and more stringent proof of identity at the ballot box.
“This fits into a broader struggle that has accelerated since the contested 2000 election, where the rules for our elections are … up for grabs and being implemented along party lines,” said Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California-Irvine.
Republicans — who are generally driving the changes — say they’re all about ensuring integrity and battling fraud. Democrats, meanwhile, contend the efforts are intended to curtail access and suppress turnout among groups more likely to vote for Democrats.
The debate has long played out in state legislative debates over photo-identification requirements for voting. Thirty states in recent years have added ID requirements in one form or another, according to the National Conference on State Legislatures. (Iowa isn’t among them, although the Republican-controlled House approved a voter-ID bill in 2011, and Schultz proposed another earlier this year.
Any one that lives in any of these states should be come very aware of how this could impact your right to vote. This should especially concern you if you have elderly relatives.
Here’s one new story from Colorado which is another key state.
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R) has decided not to pursue a voter purge he initiated by sending letters asking almost 4,000 voters to prove their citizenship. After 482 people responded with proof and almost 90 percent of the suspected non-citizens were verified through a federal database, Gessler planned to challenge 141 names still in question, but does not have enough time to handle the hearings before Election Day. Instead, he is handing over the names to county clerks who may challenge them at the polls or when they receive absentee ballots. So far, one person has voluntarily come forward as a non-citizen in Larimer County.
Be prepared to be challenged if you live in a highly republican area of a swing state.
Does Romney Actually Stand for Anything?
Posted: September 9, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections | Tags: Obamacare, Romney Flip Flops 99 Comments
I had to laugh at Brad DeLong’s post on Romney’s repositioning on “Obamacare”. Go take a look at “Why Oh Why Did the Republicans Nominate This Clown?” So first he was for it, then he was against it, then he’s sorta kinda for it again.
ObamaCare allows parents to keep their young-adult children on their insurance, requires insurers to offer guaranteed issue and community rates, and imposes an individual mandate to purchase insurance on individuals.
Now comes Mitt Romney:
Romney says he won’t repeal all of Obamacare: Mitt Romney says his pledge to repeal President Barack Obama’s health law doesn’t mean that young adults and those with medical conditions would no longer be guaranteed health care.
So there we have it: Romney will keep the parts of ObamaCare that are young-adult coverage, and guaranteed issue and community rates.
It continues:
The Republican presidential nominee says he’ll replace the law with his own plan. He tells NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the plan he worked to pass while governor of Massachusetts…
So there we have it: Romney will keep the parts of ObamaCare thatimposes on individual mandate to purchase insurance.
So what’s left?
Romney says he doesn’t plan to repeal of all of Obama’s signature health care plan. He says there are a number of initiatives he likes in the Affordable Care Act that he would keep in place if elected president…
Like: the whole thing. Duh.
There is something very wrong with anybody working for, contributing to, or arguing for Ryan-Romney right now.
So, isn’t the repeal of Obamacare the holy grail of republicans and teabaggers right now? They’ve voted to repeal it over 30 times.
Since the start of this Congress, Republicans have taken 30 votes to repeal, defund or dismantle the Affordable Care Act. When they vote to repeal the health law later this week that will make 31. House Republicans will then have had as many health-repeal votes as Baskin Robbins has ice cream flavors.
As we’ve seen 30 times before, the health-care-repeal votes aren’t going anywhere. Repeal bills passed in the House are dead-on-arrival in the Democratic-controlled Senate. So why do they keep going?
To start, there’s a lot of support in the Republican base for a repeal. Kaiser Family Foundation asked voters, shortly after the Supreme Court decision, whether they wanted legislators to continue blocking the health law — or move on and implement it.
Overall, 65 percent sided with the latter option. But dig deeper into the numbers, and you’ll find widespread support among Republicans to continue blocking the law. There’s significant support among Independents to keep fighting, too
Mark Thoma really has some good points on this.
I won’t complain about “a major fold” on healthcare, but it does bring up a question. Does Romney stand for anything? He seems to know how to set his principles aside and submit to the highest bidder — something his touted business experience taught him I suppose. But with all of the flip-flops, Etch-a-Sketch moments, his refusal to take a stand on budget cuts, his dishonest campaigning, etc., etc., is there any principle that Romney won’t conveniently overlook if it looks like there’s a few votes to be gained?
I’ve said this over and over, but I honestly can’t figure out why this guy keeps running for president. What on earth is his reason? To do something Daddy couldn’t do? I’m open for suggestions.
You can call this an open thread!!!
Bring on the Real Economists
Posted: September 7, 2012 Filed under: 2012 elections, U.S. Economy | Tags: Democratic economic record, income equality, jobs, joseph stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Romney/Ryan Soak the Middle Class Plan 18 Comments
I really loved the line in Obama’s acceptance speech on the Republican’s apple vinegar cure-all for everything that ails you. Take two tax cuts, throw out a few regulations, and call us in the morning! Here’s a great read. The NYT book review looks at the new books of Nobel prize winning economists Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. These out spoken economists speak truth to power. I just wish the current powers-that-be would listen.
…Washington is stuck in neutral. Worse than neutral; it is in reverse. As the last elements of the 2009 stimulus phase out, the initial flood of federal aid has slowed to a trickle. If no agreement is reached before early next year, the trickle will become a huge backward flow, as President Obama’s payroll tax cut and all the Bush tax cuts expire while automatic spending cuts agreed to in previous legislative sessions kick in. Already, Republican leaders are threatening to replay last year’s standoff over the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, state and local governments—prohibited from running sustained deficits, increasingly dominated by anti-spending forces—continue to cut aid to those out of work and slash programs that invest in the nation’s future while laying off teachers and other public workers. Without those layoffs, the current unemployment rate would probably be around 7 percent.
Against this backdrop, no book could be more timely than Paul Krugman’s End This Depression Now! Since the crisis began, Krugman has argued with consistency and increasing frustration that the United States has become caught not in a normal recession, but in a “liquidity trap.” Since interest rates are already at rock bottom, normal measures, such as easy credit, won’t work, and expanded government expenditures must play a central part in boosting anemic demand. Otherwise, the efforts of private citizens to pay down debts laid bare by the financial crisis will continue to hold the economy back.
We continue to see Republicans blame the current Democratic administration for an economy they wrecked and a lackluster recovery that they actively work to prevent from becoming better. Today’s job report is not what it should or could be. But, it’s not what the Republicans make it out to be either. History shows us that the Democrats have been the job creators.
In the eighteen months from the beginning of 2008 through the middle of 2009, a period fully shaped by the Bush economic program to which Republicans now want to return, (but before the Obama stimulus had a chance to take effect), approximately 7.5 million jobs were lost.
Over the most recent 18 months of the Obama administration, approximately 2.8 million jobs have been added.
That means that the average monthly job loss during the “difficult situation” before Obama’s policies took effect was 417,000. Over the last year-and-a-half, the average monthly job gain has been 155,000.
If Rep. Ryan and Gov. Romney see that as making a bad situation worse, it should tell us something about their “vision.”
Joseph Stiglitz has been focused on the huge income gap created by policies that funnel money to the highest income earners. His concern is of the US as a Banana Republic.
We may be the richest nation in the world, but poverty is higher and social mobility between generations lower than in other rich nations. In other respects, our model is bloated: we release far more carbon dioxide and use far more water on a per capita basis; and we spend far more on health care, while leaving tens of millions uninsured and achieving health outcomes that are mediocre at best.
The reason, according to Stiglitz, is that the vaunted American market is broken. And the reason for that, he argues, is that our economy is being overwhelmed by politically engineered market advantages—special deals that Stiglitz labels with a term familiar to economists: “rent-seeking.” By this, he means economic returns above normal market levels that are derived from favorable political treatment. In the most powerful parts of The Price of Inequality, Stiglitz chronicles the blatant tax and spending giveaways to big agriculture, big energy, and countless other sectors. Yet he also pointedly argues that much of the rent-seeking that plagues our economy takes a more subtle form, also familiar to economists: “negative externalities,” or costs that economic producers impose on society for which they don’t pay.
The spectacular profits of the energy industry, for example, rely heavily on the failure of regulation to incorporate fully the social and economic costs associated with environmental degradation, including climate change. Similarly, the increasingly aggressive activities of Wall Street—whether in the marketing of unsound mortgages, the use of excessive leverage, or the irresponsible use of derivatives—create huge risks for the economy as a whole. Yet these risks are largely not taken into account in the prices paid in financial markets. Without effective regulation, the costs are borne by all of us—most acutely by the struggling millions who have been pushed out of jobs.
Weeding out these and other forms of rent-seeking would thus promote both efficiency and equity, and Stiglitz provides a broad list of reform ideas, ranging from strict regulation of financial markets to more effective anti-trust laws. Yet he is most passionate about the need for political reform. Either those at the top will realize that things must change, or, he suggests, the kinds of popular revolts sweeping Middle Eastern nations will come to the United States.
Clinton has some intriguing facts on his side. Aside from a rounding error, his historical numbers are accurate (figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that the tally under Democrats since 1961 rounds to 41 million, not 42 million). I crunched the numbers a few different ways to see if Clinton was cherry-picking the best numbers. His figures measure job gains from the month a president took office until the month he left. Since it takes a year or so for any president’s policies to go into effect, I also measured job gains from one year after each president took office till one year after he left. Here’s the score by that measure: Democrats: 38 million new jobs, Republicans, 27 million.
Clinton only mentioned private-sector jobs, so I pulled the data for all jobs, including government. Again, the Dems have a big edge, accounting for 48 million new jobs, compared with 31 million for Republicans. If you push the boundaries out one year for each president, the gap narrows to 44 million new jobs under Democrats, and 34 million under Republicans.
Other measures also show that the economy performs better under Democratic presidents. Sam Stovall, chief equity strategist for S&P Capital IQ, conducted an analysis recently showing that GDP, stock prices, and corporate earnings have all increased more under Democratic presidents than under Republicans.
The S&P 500 stock index, for example, has risen 12.1 percent per year under Democratic presidents since 1900, and just 5.1 percent under Republicans. Since 1949, GDP has grown 4.2 percent per year under Democrats and 2.6 percent per year under Republicans. The same trend extends to corporate profits, which have grown 10.5 percent under Dems and 8.9 percent under Republicans.
The irony is obvious, since Republicans are considered the business-friendly party, while “tax and spend” Democrats are regarded as redistributionists eager to transfer wealth from those who have it to those who don’t.
We need to hold the Republicans responsible for all the evil they have done recently. I’m rejecting them all up and down the ticket this fall because I want a healthy economy and they never really deliver that.
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