Mainstream Media Conservative Bias

Yesterday, an American Dream Movement rally, demanding a debt deal that “protects seniors and makes corporations and the rich pay [their] fair share,” drew a significantly larger crowd than a Tea Party rally a day earlier.

Both were held on Capitol Hill, both focused on the same ginned-up debt ceiling “crisis,” but you’d be hard-pressed to find the Beltway media noting the difference in crowd size—or even reporting on the progressive rally at all.

Wednesday’s conservative rally, organized by the Tea Party Express, was a bust: only about fifty people showed up...

In contrast, Thursday’s American Dream rally—organized by MoveOn, Rebuild the Dream, AFSCME and AFGE, and featuring speakers like Van Jones and Representatives Keith Ellison and Jan Schakowsky—clocked in an estimated 450–500 people. Neither Politico or CNN mention the progressive American Dream rally.

In fact CNN talked up the Tea Party rally both the day before it took place and afterward—when it spun the measly crowd (and its own pre-event notice) by writing: “Don't be fooled by the tiny turnout at the Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill Wednesday. The conservative movement doesn't much need rallies anymore. November 2010 changed all of that.”

Read the full story in The Nation.

Related:

• The Democratic Strategist: Krugman's Smackdown of Mainstream Media Groveling to GOP 'Extortion'

Krugman: Proposed Debt Deal Will Cost Jobs And Revenue

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman is very disappointed with President Obama and the Democrats for allowing the Republicans to control the messaging frame of the debt debate. Krugman warned during his comments on ABC's This Week Sunday morning that the proposed spending cuts in a deal to raise the nation’s debt ceiling would end up hurting the economy.

“These spending cuts are even going to hurt the long-run fiscal position, let alone cause lots of misery, said Krugman on ABC's This Week Sunday morning. Then on top of that, we’ve got these budget cuts, which are entirely — basically the Republicans [saying], ‘We’ll blow up the world economy unless you give us exactly what you want’ and the president said, ‘Okay.’ That’s what happened . . . We’re having a debate in Washington which is all about, ‘we’re going to make this economy worse, but are we going to make it worse on 90% of the Republican’s terms or 100% of the Republican’s terms?’ And the answer is 100%.”

Krugman insisted, “from the perspective of a rational person, in other words, a progressive on this stuff, we shouldn’t be talking about spending cuts at all now.”

Krugman’s grim forecast, as a result of Democratic “compromises” with Republicans, which focus on spending cuts, is that the American economy will experience worsening unemployment and general misery in the future.

DailyBeast: How Republicans Screwed the Pooch

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said he could explain the problems with the economy in less than 2 minutes, 15 seconds
—and he did it (with illustrations to boot).

Republicans say they want to save the country from Obama’s reckless spending. But as Paul Begala argues in the editorial below, it’s the GOP’s policies that have driven the nation into the ground.

But too few Democrats—and almost no media commentators—have countered the mendacious right-wing storyline.

Politico published a piece outlining the vast disparity in the ad war over the debt ceiling. Republican-aligned groups have run over $21.2 mil lion in attack ads highlighting Democrats as irresponsible drivers of the national debt, and elevating the debt ceiling as a top priority. Meanwhile, groups on the left have spent only about $30,000 on ads calling out Republican responsibility for the debt.

In this case Republicans broke the budget, but they are making Democrats own it - as usual.

"How Republicans Screwed the Pooch,"
By Paul Begala Published: July 30, 2011 Newsweek/Daily Beast

There it sits, lonely and forlorn on my shelf. A leather-bound copy of the 1999 Budget of the United States of America. A gift from President Clinton to the folks on his team, it was the first balanced budget in decades.

But it wasn't supposed to be the last. Indeed, experts projected surpluses as far as the eye could see. $5.7 trillion in surpluses, to be exact. The surpluses were so strong that deep into the future—in 2009—the entire national debt was going to be zero. For the first time since Andy Jackson was president, the United States of America would not owe a dime.

It didn't quite work out that way, did it?

Debt Ceiling Crisis: America Held Hostage by Republican Party Extremists

By PAUL KRUGMAN Published: July 28, 2011 NYTimes

The facts of the crisis over the debt ceiling aren’t complicated. Republicans have, in effect, taken America hostage, threatening to undermine the economy and disrupt the essential business of government unless they get policy concessions they would never have been able to enact through legislation. And Democrats — who would have been justified in rejecting this extortion altogether — have, in fact, gone a long way toward meeting those Republican demands.

Annual Gov. Ann Richards Dinner Next Saturday Aug. 6

The annual dinner honoring Governor Ann Richards, sponsored by the Democratic Party of Collin County, is set for next Saturday August 6, 2011. Click to the DPCC website for details - reservation deadline is Mon. Aug 1, 2011.

Governor Richards is admired as a person who stood up for everyday citizens in Texas throughout her life. A video at the bottom of this article presents Richards speaking at the 1988 Democratic National Convention where, in the first 16 minutes of the speech, she explains why it is important that our elected representatives in government stand up for everyday citizens.

According to Shawn Stevens, Chair of the Democratic Party of Collin County, 'that is why the 2011 Richards Dinner planning committee selected, "Standing Up for Everyday Citizens," as the theme for this year's fund raising dinner.'

In keeping with that theme several people widely regarded for taking a principled stand for everyday citizens have been invited to address Richards Dinner guests this year, according Mr. Stevens. Stevens today announced that several ranking members of the Texas Democratic Party are confirmed to join Wisconsin Democratic State Senator Jon Erpenbach, better known as one of the "Wisconsin 14," next Saturday to speak at the annual fundraising dinner.

Joining Wisc. Sen. Erpenbach at the speaker's podium will be Texas State HD-103 Representative Rafael Anchia, Texas State HD-116 Representative Trey Martinez Fischer and Texas Democratic Party state Chairman Boyd Richie.

Data Shows Deeper Recession, Sharper Slowdown

Reuters - The "Great Recession" was even greater than previously thought, and the U.S. economy has skated uncomfortably close to a new one this year.

New data on Friday showed the 2007-2009 U.S. recession was much more severe than prior measures had found, with economic output declining a cumulative of 5.1 percent instead of 4.1 percent.

The report also showed the current slowdown began earlier and has been deeper than previously thought, with growth in the first quarter advancing at only a 0.4 percent annual pace.

Read the full story @ Reuters

In the weeks after Obama won election in 2008 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he intended to delay Obama's proposed $1 trillion economic stimulus legislation and use his 40 Republican Senator cloture vote filibuster power to block all Democratic legislation.

Within two months of taking the oath of office, Republicans had convinced Pres. Obama to compromise and ask for half the amount of stimulus that his advisers thought necessary and substitute additional massive tax cuts for corporations and the rich in the place of infrastructure spending as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Most economists now say the 2009 stimulus plan was slow to kick in, did little to promote American job growth and unnecessarily added to the deficit because the ARRA indeed provided half the amount of infrastructure stimulus spending needed and the added tax cuts did not enticed corporations to reinvest their massive profit gains in U.S. based business growth and job creation.

Republicans continue to claim only more tax cuts for billionaires and mega-corporations will fix the flagging economy. But, will yet more corporate tax cuts really promote job growth in America? As a share of GDP, the U.S. has the second lowest tax rate, behind only Iceland. This statistic flips on its head the often-repeated Republican charge that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (which is only true on paper). In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4 percent in 1965.

Conservative Think Tank Trys Climate Skeptic Damage Control Over Record-Setting Heat Wave Headlines

As a record heat wave grips the U.S. with new record temperatures set daily this summer the conservative messaging network of think tanks and media outlets continue to try to convince people its all just natural and normal.

Forbes Magazine this month published an OpEd titled, " New NASA Data Blow Gaping Hole In Global Warming Alarmism." This OpEd is now being picked up and reprinted in newspapers around the U.S. as a "new finding," rather than just a republication of old discredited claims.

Why Americans Are So Angry

Wall Street Journal Op-ed - Reposted at Friends of Bernie.Org
Thursday, 28 July 2011
By Senator Bernie Sanders

The rich are getting richer. Their effective tax rate, in recent years, has been reduced to the lowest in modern history. Nurses, teachers and firemen actually pay a higher tax rate than some billionaires. It's no wonder the American people are angry.

Stewart: Tea party is the ‘violent, unstable sociopath’ from ‘The Town’

Watch this video from Comedy Central’s "The Daily Show," broadcast July 28, 2011.

Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart suspected Thursday that House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had not watched the end of “The Town” before trying to use it to convince tea party freshmen to vote for a plan to raise the debt ceiling.

“You went with the Boston-bank-robbers-in-nun-costumes flick?” Stewart asked.

“Let me see if I understand this metaphor. The establishment Republicans are saying to the tea party upstarts, ‘Hey, you know the violent, unstable, borderline sociopath from ‘The Town,’ who’s useful in a pinch but who’s suicidal single-minded mania will ultimately be his downfall? That’s you guys. And the guy who’s stuck in an uneasy alliance with you, but doesn’t really like you and ultimately saves himself by walking away as you are dying? That’s us. So, do we have your vote?’”

“I’m going to assume most of the tea part coalition has not seen the whole movie,” he added.

World Population to Surpass 7 Billion in 2011

Explosive Population Growth Means Challenges for Developing Nations

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Global population is expected to hit 7 billion later this year, up from 6 billion in 1999. Between now and 2050, an estimated 2.3 billion more people will be added -- nearly as many as inhabited the planet as recently as 1950. New estimates from the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations also project that the population will reach 10.1 billion in 2100.

These sizable increases represent an unprecedented global demographic upheaval, according to David Bloom, Clarence James Gamble Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health, in a review article published July 29, 2011 in Science.

Over the next forty years, nearly all (97%) of the 2.3 billion projected increase will be in the less developed regions, with nearly half (49%) in Africa. By contrast, the populations of more developed countries will remain flat, but will age, with fewer working-age adults to support retirees living on social pensions.

Read the full story @ ScienceDaily

ASCE: Old Infrastructure Costs U.S. Billions

Washington Post: As Congress debates how to meet the nation’s long-term transportation needs, decaying roads, bridges, railroads and transit systems are costing the United States $129 billion a year, according to a report issued Wednesday by a professional group whose members are responsible for designing and building such infrastructure.

Complex calculations done for the American Society of Civil Engineers indicate that infrastructure deficiencies add $97  billion a year to the cost of operating vehicles and result in travel delays that cost $32 billion.

Nancy Pelosi: 'We Get The Sacrifice, They Share The Wealth'

Majority Of Americans Oppose Cuts to Medicare or Social Security

Large majorities of Americans oppose even a minor reduction in spending on Medicare or Social Security according to the newest Kaiser Family Foundation poll. Sixty-two percent of the country wants no reductions to Social Security and 59 percent wants no reductions in Medicare spending.

The American people really like their Medicare and Social Security.

They are an important part of the social safety net that prevents millions of seniors from falling into poverty.

Latest Ad by the American Future Fund group. Click this link for the Real TRUTH About Who Really Owns America's Debt.

The common conservative messaging echoed in the mainstream media and by many cable news pundits is that the American people actually want a “grand bargain” or a “super Congress” to cut our entitlement programs has absolutely no basis in reality.

It is purely a conservative messaging fantasy created with lots of billionaire conservative money.

The GOP is winning the debate because they have the know how and bucks to message. Earlier this week, Politico published a piece outlining the vast disparity in the ad war over the debt ceiling. Republican-aligned groups have run over $21.2 mil lion in attack ads highlighting Democrats as irresponsible drivers of the national debt, and elevating the debt ceiling as a top priority. Meanwhile, groups on the left have spent about $30,000 on ads calling out Republicans on the debt, with one hitting lawmakers for “recklessly risking default.” That is why it is so important for grassroots progressives to push their own messaging programs.

And, Think Progress writes about, "How Shadowy Right-Wing Front Groups Engineered Our National Embrace Of Debt Reduction Over Job Creation:"

For the entire year, as a sluggish economy sputters by and states continue to struggle with falling revenue, the conversation in Congress has centered solely on spending reduction. Earlier this year, we witnessed looming government-showdown duels between competing spending reduction plans. Now with the debt ceiling debate, the only two options are a choice between a package of painful cuts and a package of deeply draconian cuts. There has been no lively discussion of new policy ideas for job creation, foreclosure mitigation, or how to spur demand, the key driver of economic recovery.

Gallup: President Obama's Approval Rating Remains High Among Democrats

According to a new Gallup poll, President Obama's over-all approval rating has dropped one point from 44 percent to 43 percent since the previous survey was taken. However, 78 percent of Democrats approve of how the president is doing his job. According to Sam Stein of Huffington Post, President Obama's numbers are the highest any Democratic president has enjoyed at this point in their term since Harry Truman.

President Obama also scored high marks with Liberal Democrats, scoring an 81 percent approval rating, a number surpassed only by his approval among black voters, which held steady at 86 percent.

At this point in his presidency, George W. Bush had a 59 percent approval rating, which was late July of 2003, three months after the invasion of Iraq and two months after he announced"Mission Accomplished" from the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln.

Debt Ceiling Debate: Similarities To FDR's New Deal

As we wrote in the post, "Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address," last Saturday, the current budget debate mirrors the New Deal budget debates through the 1930's.

FDR's The New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run because he listened too much to conservatives of his day telling him to cut New Deal stimulus spending and balance the budget. Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman says, "The New Deal wasn’t as successful in the short run as it was in the long run was the fact ... that his economic policies were initially too cautious."

FDR was swayed by the conservative argument and signed a deep budget cutting budget bill for one Congressional budget cycle during the mid part of his first term. Those cuts pushed the economy back into rapidly contraction. The double-dip recession caused by that "balanced budget" legislation almost derailed FDR's chance to be re-elected for a second term.

Fortunately, the economist John Maynard Keynes convinced FDR to renew his new deal spending push with congress in time win re-election, but it was close. FDR was quick to learn the lesson - will Pres. Obama learn that lesson soon enough to win re-election?

Milton Friedman, a revered figure in right-of-center circles, famously pinned the severity of the Great Depression on contractionary monetary policy. Scott Sumner, a professor of economics at Bentley University who identifies himself as a "neo-monetarist", has argued that Friedman would have supported monetary stimulus. And he has argued, on neo-Friedmanite grounds, that tight monetary policy both precipitated and exacerbated our recent recession. I happen to think Mr Sumner is correct, but his expansionary prescription remains anathema on the right, and now seemingly Pres. Obama.

The comparison of the 1930's economic debate with the current debate continues in a Huffington post article, "Debt Ceiling Debate: Similarities To FDR's New Deal:"

John Maynard Keynes Was Laid To Rest This Week

Whatever the outcome of Thursday's projected House vote on Speaker Boehner's debt plan, this process has already ended the political life of one prominent member of the Washington establishment: John Maynard Keynes.

True, Keynes died in 1946. But his ghost hovered over America's economic debate until pretty much Monday night. In their ostensibly dueling speeches, both President Obama and House Speaker Boehner embraced the language of "austerity" and performed an unwitting exorcism.

In brief, Keynes is the man whose ideas led to 2009's stimulus policy. Looking at the problems of the 1930s, he helped develop FDR's "New Deal" concept that you spend your way out of a recession. [see: Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address]

The Conservative Media Deny It’s A Record-Setting Hot Summer

When the nonpartisan National Academy of Sciences reviewed climate research data last year, it concluded: “A strong, credible body of scientific evidence shows that climate change is occurring, is caused largely by human activities, and poses significant risks for a broad range of human and natural systems.” The summer of 2011 heat wave is again setting new record temperatures.

Monthly ratio of daily high vs low U.S. temperature records for
June 2010 - July 23, 2011, NOAA data


Composite Graph of Data from Four Climate Research Groups prepare by Dr. Richard Muller from University of California and presented to congress during his testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology

Climate change is driven by "global warming," the average recorded temperature of the earth, which has been going up for years. This warming of the globe leads to climate change, which doesn't necessarily mean all areas will become warmer.

Due to the highly variable and interdependent nature of the world's weather patterns, warming in some areas could lead to, for example, much colder winters in others.In much the same role that marriage and abortion played in previous election cycles, denial of climate change has now become a litmus test for the right.

The vast majority of Republicans elected to Congress during the midterm election say they doubt climate science, and senior congressional conservatives have vowed to fight Obama administration efforts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. [GOP Deny The Average Recorded Temperature Of Earth Has Been Going Up For Years]

Even as record temperatures have been set daily across the U.S. this summer the conservative media continues to deny the fact that recorded temperatures are on the increase, as Media Matters documents:

On his radio show yesterday, Rush Limbaugh declared that “almost no temperature records were broken” during the recent heat wave and that media outlets who reported on “record-breaking” heat were telling “a bunch of lies” to “advance a political agenda of liberalism.”

Call To ACTION: No Super Congress!

No Abdication Of Our Representation"

Majority Leader Harry Reid and Speaker of the House John Boehner are proposing to appoint six Senators and six Representatives from the House to meet in behind-closed-doors, non-transparent sessions, to agree to budget and program cuts for the next ten years that will affect all Americans. From Sunday night through today, details have emerged for what some are dubbing the “Super Congress,” otherwise known as the “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction.”

This small, unrepresentative group will decide on these cuts, outside of the normal order of procedures of both Chambers, and the results can neither be amended nor filibustered.

This FDL post and its comments describe what Reid and Boehner propose.

This undemocratic “Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction” is deliberately designed to block the input of every Representative and Senator in Congress other than the 12 members who would be selected by Party leadership to propose changes in any and every category they choose.

We are numbed and appalled at this development. It is an abrogation of the premise of elected representation. Tell congressional leaders, "No more secret backroom deals - deficit reduction deliberation must be held in open public committee meetings!"

Eric Holder: Texas School Suspensions 'Wake-Up Call'

Julianne Hing of ColorLines is reporting that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder believes the data showing that black and Hispanic students in Texas are disproportionately disciplined and suspended is a "wake-up call."

Boehner: ‘A Lot’ Of Republicans Want Default To Create Chaos

John McCain: Tea Party-Backed Lawmakers Making 'Foolish' Demands In Debt Ceiling Debate. Sen. John McCain, at times reading from a Wall Street Journal editorial during a floor speech on Wednesday, called tea party freshmen in Congress "tea party hobbits." The "hobbits" remark came from the Journal editorial, a reference to the little people of Middle-earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.

DNC Chair: How to Stop Voter-ID Laws

In late May Texas Governor Rick Perry (R) signed SB14 into law requiring voters to present unexpired government issued photo identification to qualify to vote in Texas elections. Photo IDs must be current or must have expired within the last 60 days before election day. Starting January 1, 2012 Texas voters must present one of the following photo IDs to election clerks in order to vote:

• Texas DPS driver’s license or personal identification card,
• Personal identification card called an “election identification certificate;”
• US passport;
• US military ID;
• Texas concealed weapons license; and
• US citizenship papers containing a photo.

For those who have none of these unexpired government issued photo IDs the law contains a provision that requires the Texas Driver's License Bureau to issue special "election identification certificates" free of charge to citizens. Of course, a person seeking a free "election identification certificate" at the Driver's License Bureau must present a certified birth certificate. [Read the complete Texas voter photo ID story @ Voter Photo ID Requirement.]

Earlier this month, 16 senators sent a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder calling for DOJ to examine whether the voter ID laws, which are the centerpiece of the GOP’s war on voting, violate the Voting Rights Act. Then, earlier this week, over 100 members of the House of Representatives wrote to Holder echoing this call for the Justice Department to take action to preserve America’s democracy:

Approximately 11 percent of voting-age citizens in the country — or more than 20 million individuals — lack government-issued photo identification. We urge you to protect the voting rights of Americans by using the full power of the Department of Justice to review these voter identification bills and scrutinize their implementation.

The Voting Rights Act vests significant authority in the Department to ensure laws are not implemented in a discriminatory manner. [...] [T]he Department should exercise vigilance in overseeing whether these laws are implemented in a way that discriminates against protected clauses in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

The Voting Rights Act not only forbids state laws that are intended to specifically target minority voters -- it also forbids state laws that have a greater impact on minority voters than on others. Because voter ID laws disproportionately affect minority communities, it is difficult to see how many of the voter ID laws being pushed in GOP-controlled states could survive scrutiny under this law.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 -- signed into law 45 years ago -- was put in place to outlaw discriminatory electoral practices such as poll taxes and literacy tests and other Jim Crow election laws that prevented blacks and other minorities from voting.

It established federal Department of Justice oversight of election laws passed by certain southern states with a history of discrimination. Congress renewed the Voting Rights Act for another 25 years in 2006.

About the Voting Rights Act:

• Voting Rights Act text
  
• Voting Rights Act history
• Frequently Asked Questions

In a speech this week during his organization's annual convention, NAACP President Benjamin Todd Jealous railed against restrictive state voting laws, likening their rise across the country to the days of Jim Crow.

"Our voting rights are under attack because we had a great breakthrough -- the election of a black president," said Jealous to convention attendees in Los Angeles. "It was followed by a great backlash."

71% of Online Adults Regularly View Online Videos

The Pew Research Center has released a new video-sharing study that found 71 percent of online adults say they regularly watch videos on a video-sharing sites such as YouTube or Vimeo.

That represents a five-percentage-point increase from the 66% of online adults who reported being video-sharing site users a year earlier and a 38-point increase from five years ago when the Pew Internet Project took its first reading on use of such sites.

The Pew study further found that non-white adult internet users have higher rates of video-sharing site use than their white counterparts, a consistent finding since 2006.

Overall, 69% of white internet users said they had visited video-sharing sites, 13 points higher than in April 2009, and more than double the 31% reported when the question was first asked in December 2006.

At the same time, 79% of online non-whites -- African-Americans, Hispanics and others -- reported using video-sharing sites. That figure is 12 points higher than April 2009, and 41 points higher than in 2006.

CNN Poll: Obama Losing Support From The Democratic Base

Up until now, signs of any rank-and-file liberal Democratic "base" revolt against Obama have been few and far between. Perhaps that’s why a poll from CNN last week publicized as showing that liberals were the main source of his latest drop in approval ratings got more attention than a random survey normally captures.

After weeks of prolonged negotiations with Republicans around the federal debt and in the wake of the strong push back from Congressional Democrats against a 'grand bargain' to cut Soc. Sec. between the President and the House GOP leadership, a new CNN poll shows that support from the political left flank is starting to leave Obama.

President Obama registered an approval rating in line with other current polls, with 45% of the populace approving of his performance and 54% disapproving, slightly outside the TPM Poll Average of 45.0% approval and 50.1% disapproval.

But the troubling news for the President was within that approval number, where there is a growing number among his base who are disappointed: his rating among self-described liberals in the poll was only 71%, along with 80% self-IDed Democrats in the approval column.

From the CNN report:

"...drill down into that number and you'll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Thirty-eight percent say they disapprove because President Obama has been too liberal, but 13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough - nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama's presidency."

It should also be noted that complaints of the President not being liberal enough were not just relegated to liberals themselves. 14% of self-described moderates who disapproved of Obama cited the same reason, and even 9% of conservatives.

The poll utilized phone interviews with 1,009 adults conducted from July 18th to the 20th. Read the full results here.

Read more @ Salon: Why the liberal base has so little leverage with Obama

The TRUTH About Who Really Owns All Of America's Debt

Who is going to be hurt if the United States doesn't raise the debt ceiling and has to default on paying back those loans?

One answer is clear -- all Americans are going to be hurt because the debt rating of the country will be lowered, and this will make it much harder for the nation to borrow (no matter how critical that need to borrow is). It will be harder to get the money and it will cost a lot more to pay it back.

Conservative folklore is that foreigners hold most of America's debt -- particularly China and Japan. This message has become so pervasive through conservative messaging that people think China now controls America. Not true!

China only holds about 8% of the American debt, and Japan holds about 6.4%. In fact the total part of the American debt held by foreigners, including the United Kingdom, Hong Kong, Brazil Taiwan, Caribbean bankers, the Saudis and other the oil-exporting countries, is about 31.5 percent, or $4.5 trillion. This is enough to cause some worldwide economic problems if we default on that debt, but it is nowhere near the majority of the American debt.

In fact, the majority of the debt-holders are the American people themselves, both by individuals and by government entities. The people that would be hurt the most by a government default on the debt are the Americans themselves, because that is who holds most of the debt -- about 68.5 percent, or $9.8 trillion.

The Social Security Trust Fund holds 19 percent ($2.67 trillion) of the debt. The Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) Trust Funds invest exclusively in special issue bonds that are only available to the Social Security trust fund. These are not publicly traded securities, but they still constitute a huge amount of debt. Congress has been using the Social Security Trust Fund as their piggy bank for deficit spending for years.

According to Business Insider, here is the list of U.S. debt holders:

Krugman: Messing With Medicare

Paul Krugman NYTimes OpEd:

At the time of writing, President Obama’s hoped-for “Grand Bargain” with Republicans is apparently dead. And I say good riddance. I’m no more eager than other rational people (a category that fails to include many Congressional Republicans) to see what happens if the debt limit isn’t raised. But what the president was offering to the G.O.P., especially on Medicare, was a very bad deal for America.

Specifically, according to many reports, the president offered both means-testing of Medicare benefits and a rise in the age of Medicare eligibility. The first would be bad policy; the second would be terrible policy. And it would almost surely be terrible politics, too.

The crucial thing to remember, when we talk about Medicare, is that our goal isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, defined in terms of some arbitrary number. Our goal should be, instead, to give Americans the health care they need at a price the country can afford. And throwing Americans in their mid-60s off Medicare moves us away from that goal, not toward it.

For Medicare, with all its flaws, works better than private insurance. It has less bureaucracy and, hence, lower administrative costs than private insurers. It has been more successful in controlling costs. While Medicare expenses per beneficiary have soared over the past 40 years, they’ve risen significantly less than private insurance premiums. And since Medicare-type systems in other advanced countries have much lower costs than the uniquely privatized U.S. system, there’s good reason to believe that Medicare reform can do a lot to control costs in the future.

In that case, you may ask, why didn’t the 2010 health care reform simply extend Medicare to cover everyone?

Read the full OpEd @ The NYTimes

Gov. Rick Perry To Announce Run In Late August

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is all but certain to launch a presidential campaign and is nearing an announcement set for the second half of August, according to sources familiar with his political team's planning.

For months, Republican activists, donors, elected officials, and even voters have dithered about their choices in the 2012 presidential primary contest.

This is especially true of grass-roots conservatives who have clamored for someone else to enter the fray, only to be disappointed by the likes of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee -- all of whom declared this year they would not be candidates, in that order.

But they may have their man in Rick Perry, a telegenic and booming political presence who boasts executive experience as the nation's longest serving governor, as well as a healthy level of support from the tea party faithful. The governor's wife, Anita, has given him her blessing for a national campaign, and now that anticipation of a Perry candidacy is reaching a fever pitch, he is poised to jump into the race next month.

Potential donors to Perry's presidential effort met Tuesday in Austin, and those familiar with what transpired there told RealClearPolitics that key players in Perry's orbit indicated the 61-year-old Republican will announce a campaign between Aug. 15 and Aug. 31. Perry himself said on Friday that he'll at least make his intentions known within the next three to four weeks.

In the past month Perry's team has moved swiftly to put the parts in place for a campaign.

Read the full story @ RealClearPolitics.com

PEW: GOP Makes Big Gains among White Voters

As the country enters into the 2012 presidential election cycle, the electorate's white voters have shifted significantly toward the Republican Party since Obama won office nearly three years ago, according to a Pew Research Center survey released on Friday. In particular, the Democrats hold a much narrower edge than they did in 2008, particularly when the partisan leanings of independents are taken into account.

Glenn Greenwald: Obama Gutting Core Principles Of Democratic Party

Glenn Greenwald - guardian.co.uk, Thursday 21 July 2011 14.30 BST

The president's attacks on America's social safety net are destroying the soul of the Democratic party's platform.

In 2005, American liberals achieved one of their most significant political victories of the last decade. It occurred with the resounding rejection of George W Bush's campaign to privatize social security.

Bush's scheme would have gutted the crux of that entitlement program by converting it from what it has been since the 1940s – a universal guarantor of minimally decent living conditions for America's elderly – into a Wall Street casino and bonanza.

Barack Obama. Photograph:
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Progressive activists and bloggers relentlessly attacked both the plan and underlying premises (the myth that social security faces a "crisis"), spawning nationwide opposition. Only a few months after he unveiled his scheme to great fanfare, Bush was forced to sheepishly withdraw it, a defeat he described as his biggest failure.

That victory established an important political fact. While there are very few unifying principles for the Democratic party, one (arguably the primary one) is a steadfast defense of basic entitlement programs for the poor and elderly – social security, Medicare and Medicaid – from the wealthy, corporate factions that have long targeted them for cuts.

But in 2009, clear signs emerged that President Obama was eager to achieve what his right-predecessor could not: cut social security. Before he was even inaugurated, Obama echoed the right's manipulative rhetorical tactic: that (along with Medicare) the program was in crisis and producing "red ink as far as the eye can see." President-elect Obama thus vowed that these crown jewels of his party since the New Deal would be, as Politico reported, a "central part" of his efforts to reduce the deficit.

Pres. Obama Pushes "Serious Cuts" In His Weekly Address

George Santayana wrote in his Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol.1, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

As Pres. Obama prepared to take the oath of office in January 2009 his ambitious plans to repair the American economy drew comparison to the New Deal reforms and programs pioneered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Conservative Republicans, unable to intellectually accept or unwilling to honestly admit that thirty years of cutting taxes for the rich and cutting regulatory oversight on the financial sector led to financial calamity twice in a period of 80 years, signaled they were as opposed to President Obama's new "New Deal" legislation as their conservative forefathers were to FDR's New Deal legislation.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the most powerful conservative Republican in Washington, said he intended to delay Obama's proposed $1 trillion economic stimulus legislation and use his 40 Republican Senator cloture vote filibuster power to block all Democratic legislation.

Within two months of taking the oath of office, Republicans had convinced Pres. Obama to push for half the amount of stimulus that his advisers thought necessary and substitute additional massive tax cuts as part of the stimulus plan.

Most economists now say the 2009 stimulus plan was slow to kick in, did little to promote American job growth and unnecessarily added to the deficit because the stimulus plan indeed provided half the amount of spending needed and the added tax cuts have not enticed corporations to reinvest their massive profit gains in U.S. based business growth and job creation.

Republicans continue to claim only more tax cuts for billionaires and mega-corporations will fix the flagging economy. But, will yet more corporate tax cuts really promote job growth in America? As a share of GDP, the U.S. has the second lowest tax rate, behind only Iceland. This statistic flips on its head the often-repeated Republican charge that America has the second highest corporate tax rate in the world (which is only true on paper). In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to only 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4 percent in 1965.

The Republican 2010 mid-term election messaging strategy was to falsely claim Obama's Stimulus Spending and Private Health Insurance Reform legislation is depressing the economy just as Roosevelt's New Deal reforms and programs caused the 1930's economy depression. Republicans continue to use this messaging strategy.

Pres. Obama Friday: Town Hall And Debt Talks With GOP Collapse

President Obama Speaks to Town Hall Meeting at University of Maryland - Jul 22, 2011

Friday morning President Obama told a town hall meeting today at the University of Maryland that he won’t be satisfied “until every American who wants a job can find one, and until workers are getting paychecks that actually pay the bills, until families don’t have to choose between buying groceries and buying medicine, between sending their kids to college and being able to retire in some dignity and some respect.“

Addressing the ongoing deficit negotiations, Pres. Obama told the crowd of students, parents and teachers, “this is actually a debate about you and everybody else in America and the choices that we face. ... Neither party is blameless for the decisions that led to this problem, but both parties have a responsibility to solve it. If we don’t solve it, every American will suffer. Businesses will be less likely to invest and hire in America. Interest rates will rise for people who need money to buy a home or a car, or go to college. We won’t have enough money to invest in things like education and clean energy, or protect important programs like Medicare, because we’ll be paying more and more interest on this national debt and that money just flows overseas instead of being spent here on the things that we need.”

"I’m willing to sign a plan that includes tough choices I would not normally make, and there are a lot of Democrats and Republicans in Congress who I believe are willing to do the same thing, " said Pres. Obama. Stressing that debt default is not an option Pres. Obama said, “The United States of America does not run out without paying the tab. We pay our bills. We meet our obligations. We have never defaulted on our debt. We’re not going to do it now. ”

PBSNewsHour: Watch President Obama's Full News Conference on Debt Talks' Latest Breakdown - Jul 22, 2011

By Friday afternoon President Barack Obama announced the Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, broke off negotiations to raise the U.S. borrowing limit despite the President offering what he called “an extraordinarily fair deal.”

Mr. Obama said it was “hard to understand” why House Speaker John Boehner would “walk away from this kind of deal.” The President said they are now out of time.

He said he has called the top Congressional leadership from both parties to a meeting Saturday at the White House to explain to him how the country will avoid defaulting on its payments after the government runs out of money on August 2.