Day: July 20, 2012

Bloomberg Asks What Obama and Romney Propose to Do About Guns

Buck Banks

You know, soothing words are nice, but maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country. And everybody always says, ‘Isn’t it tragic,’ and you know, we look for was the guy, as you said, maybe trying to recreate Batman. I mean, there are so many murders with guns every day, it’s just got to stop. And instead of the two people — President Obama and Governor Romney — talking in broad things about they want to make the world a better place, okay, tell us how. And this is a real problem. No matter where you stand on the Second Amendment, no matter where you stand on guns, we have a right to hear from both of them concretely, not just in generalities — specifically what are they going to do about guns?

— New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in an interview with the New York Observer, regarding the candidates’ responses to the massacre in Colorado early this morning.

Pres. Obama’s Top 50 Accomplishments

Jon Ponder

The fact that Washington Note writers Paul Glastris, Ryan Cooper, and Siyu Hu felt it was important to come up with a list of Pres. Obama’s top 50 accomplishments is emblematic of two countervailing political factors in the Obama era.

Taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years, and the rate of spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like Reagan and the Bushes.

First, it is demonstrates how adept the right wing message machine has become at rewriting history in real time as it happens. For example, Fox viewers are outraged at the “fact” that Obama has raised taxes while simultaneously accelerating government spending at a rate unparalleled in history.

Both of these two seemingly indisputable Fox News talking points are false. In fact, taxes are the lowest they have been in 30 years and spending growth is radically slower under Obama than it was under Big Government Republicans like the Bushes and Reagan. (Politifact: Obama has overseen “the lowest annual increases in spending of any president in 60 years.”)

But some of the responsibility for Republican propagandists’ success in distorting the president’s record lies with Obama, his top aides and, especially, the White House political shop. If Team Obama had been telling their story effectively all along, there would be no need for this list.

In any case, you’ll find the list of the president’s top 50 accomplishments at the Washington Note website. Here are the top 10:

[…]

Republicans Kill Bill That Would End Tax Advantages for Shipping U.S. Jobs Overseas

Jon Ponder

Republicans in Congress prove once again that they are in power to push the interests of their corporate sponsors and billionaire benefactors, not their unemployed, about-to-be-foreclosed-upon constituents:

Senate Republicans on Thursday killed a measure backed by President Barack Obama that would encourage companies to bring overseas jobs back to the United States.

The measure being pressed by Obama’s Democratic allies is rich with political symbolism, but whether it would have had much practical impact on decisions by companies to “outsource” jobs to lower-wage countries is open to question.

Democrats brought the measure to the Senate floor in concert with political attacks on Mitt Romney, whose private equity firm, Bain Capital, promoted the practice of outsourcing jobs to countries like China and India.

The bill would forbid companies from deducting the expenses of moving workers or operations overseas from the U.S., and would offer a 20 percent credit for the costs of shifting workers back home.