Increased Corporate Taxes Decreases Unemployment

10%

Increase in the corporate tax rate is associated with a drop of 2.1 percentage points in the unemployment rate, according to a study by Horst Feldmann of the University of Bath in the UK of data on 19 industrial countries. Although raising corporate taxes has been shown to reduce economic growth, it unexpectedly prompts companies to substitute labor for capital and spurs unions to reduce their wage demands to avoid job losses.

Wrong Man: John McCain Doubles Down on Criticism of Administration’s Benghazi Report While Ignoring His Own Record of Misstating Facts

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After U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice met today with her most vocal critics, GOP Sens. John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Kelly Ayotte, to discuss events after the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, the three senators rushed to the microphones to double down on their insistence that Rice had played a role in a conspiracy by the Obama White House to cover up the fact that the attack was a terrorist plot — this in spite of the fact that the president himself labeled it a terror attack within 24 hours after it occurred.

“When Ronald Reagan stood up for workers of Gdansk in Poland, when he stood up for the people of Czechoslovakia in Prague Spring, and America did”
– John McCain, incorrectly ascribing actions to Pres. Reagan, who was governor of California during the Prague Spring

On one of the Sunday shows, Graham compared the conspiracy to the Iran-Contra affair, the Reagan-era scandal in which top Reagan official, including his secretary of defense, only escaped serving time in prison because they were pardoned by their alleged co-conspirator, Reagan’s vice president, George H.W. Bush, after he was elected president. A more realistic assessment came from the Washington Post editorial board, which referred to the Benghazi non-scandal as “bizarre.”

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect — and certainly the most hypocritical part of it — is that it is McCain who is leading the charge against Rice simply because she went on the Sunday shows and said something that proved to be incorrect. No senator has appeared on more Sunday shows than John McCain, and few politicians (who were not currently on the payroll of Fox News) have made as many statements that proved to be wrong.

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Dim Bulbs Light the Way in Secession Movement

I’m not deriding these people because it’s so easy to point out their cluelessness

Great leaders are skilled in strategy and compromise that achieves underlying goals, according to “Lincoln” screenwriter Tony Kushner. Which explains why there will never be any great tea party politicians, whose only strategy is to storm off in a huff if they don’t get their way.

But the secession petition Florida rightwingers recently sent to the White House points up another problem for the tea party: many of these folks are not bright.

Was there really no one on the petition writing squad who made an A in English?

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Military Expert Says He Warned a Fox Producer That He Believed the Network Was Hyping the Benghazi Attacks Before He Said It Live on the Air

A Fox News segment producer is likely out of a job today. This producer greenlighted military affairs expert Tom Ricks appearance on Fox’s air yesterday despite having been warned by Ricks that he was going to disparage Fox’s relentless politicizing of the attacks last September on a U.S. consulate in Benghazi in which the U.S. ambassador and three presumed CIA operatives — officially described as “security contractors” — were killed.

According to right-leaning Politico.com:

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The Liar in Winter: Candid Photos Show Romney Unkempt, Almost Lifelike

Left: Romney pumping gas in La Jolla, Calif.; right, with Ann at Thanksgiving

Still reeling from his failure to win the presidency and save the international plutocracy — despite having gone in front of the American electorte and told a whopping 917 documented lies in a desperate bid for election — Mitt Romney has been hanging out at his home in La Jolla, Calif. — the one with the car elevator, if you’re keeping track — and showing up in public looking decidedly disheveled, almost even human.

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