Month: May 2012
Traitors to Their Country: After Crashing the Economy in 2008, GOP Leaders Conspired to Obstruct Recovery in January 2009
On hand were disgraced former GOP Speaker, Newt Gingrich, Republican pollster/propagandist Frank Lutz, GOP propagandist Fred Barnes as well as senior Republican elected officials, including Sens. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, John Ensign of Nevada and Bob Corker of Tennessee, as well as Reps. Eric Cantor of Virginia, Kevin McCarthy of California, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Dan Lungren of California and others. (Then-Minority Leader John Boehner was not there — he and Luntz are not speaking.)
Four months earlier, the financial markets had melted down plunging the U.S. economy into its worst freefall since 1929. As they were meeting in January, the United States was suffering its worst job losses in a month in 34 years. Over 3.5 million jobs had been lost in 2008, nearly 2 million of those losses had occurred in the three months prior to the GOP fatcats’ elegant dinner meeting. And there was no end to it in sight.
Election to Be Decided in Nine Battleground States
9
Number of battleground states idetified by The New York Times — Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin — where the presidential election is likely to be decided. The Times noted, “All nine voted for Mr. Obama in 2008, only to see Republicans make big gains since then.”
Schwarzenegger Calls Out GOP’s Right Wing
Being a Republican used to mean finding solutions for the American people that worked for everyone. It used to mean having big ideas that moved the country forward. It can mean that again, but big ideas don’t often come from small tents.
— Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R), writing in the Los Angeles Times, saying the “extreme right wing of the party is targeting anyone who doesn’t meet its strict criteria.”
Ayotte Claims She’s Plenty Experienced to Be Romney’s Veep Choice
I have, some would say, better experience than Barack Obama had when he was a senator and ran.
— Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), quoted by NBC News, making the case for potentially being chosen as Mitt Romney’s running mate.
Gingrich Says It’s’Inconceivable’ Romney Would Choose Him as Running Mate
Would you pick me? I am so much my own agent, it would be — it’s inconceivable.
— Newt Gingrich, quoted by CBS News, on being Mitt Romney’s running mate.
Housing Prices Rising
<h3>$141,300</h3>
<h2>Median price of a home in the South Florida counties of Palm Beach, Broward, and Dade, where Zillow.com says the market has bottomed out and prices are starting to rise. The area was one of the hardest hit by the housing bubble, but Zillow says prices are up 1% over last year and are expected to rise 6% in the next.</h2>
Romney’s Call for 500,000 Jobs Per Month is Pure Bluster
On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney added another rhetorical superlative to his record when he criticized the slow but steady employment improvement by saying, “We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month.” In fact, such a figure would be an aberration.
Although the most recent employment numbers reflected 19 months straight of growth, the 115,000 jobs figure from March, 2012 is one everyone would like to see go higher. But Romney’s half-million jobs a month figure has never been consistently maintained, and has in fact only been reached a few times, according to the New York Times’ Peter Baker.
Baker looked at the past 50 years and found only five instances where job growth reached 500,000 in a month. First, the following presidents never attained Romney’s ideal:
- John F. Kennedy (1961 – 1963)
- Lyndon B. Johnson (1963 – 1969)
- Richard M. Nixon (1969 – 1974)
- Gerald R. Ford (1974 – 1977)
- George H.W. Bush (1989 – 1993
- George W. Bush (2001 – 2009)
The list of presidents who did see that rate of growth is short, and to some, surprising.
Both Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton saw the creation of 500,000 jobs once each during their eight years in office.
The only president in the last 50 years to see it happen twice (and in only four years at that) was…Jimmy Carter.
The final president to see that level of employment growth was Barack Obama in 2010. No doubt Obama will meet — and break — fellow Democrat Carter’s record in his second term.
More Proof Romney Doesn’t Have a Clue What a ‘Normal’ Economy Is
We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs created per month. This is way, way off from what should happen in a normal recovery.
— Mitt Romney, blasting President Obama on Fox News after the jobs report released this morning showed anemic growth of just 115,000 jobs last month.
Think Progress: “That sort of growth, however, is hardly “normal,” as Romney claims … there have only been 16 months since 1939 — and only four in the last 50 years — in which the economy added 500,000 jobs or more.”
