Corporate Tax Cuts Don't Create Jobs.

If tax cuts are the most stimulative approach to rebooting the economy, as Republicans claim in rejecting Obama's jobs stimulus plan, then the economy should already be racing, given the trillions of dollars in tax cuts President Bush and Republicans already gave the nation over the past eight years. Right? Wrong!

Unfortunately, Reagan's "supply-side" mythology that "tax cut stimulus works best" is alive and well and still promoted by conservatives today, despite all evidence to the contrary. The outcome of Pres. Bush's 2001 tax cuts was "the weakest employment growth in decades." Republican tax cuts in 2004 didn't fare much better, with resulting job creation well below historical averages. When Bush's White House proposed more tax cuts in 2003, Republicans promised that it would add 5.5 million new jobs between June 2003 and the end of 2004. But "by the end of 2004, there were only 2.6 million more jobs than in June 2003." And, remember President Bush's February 2008 promise that his $168 billion tax cut/rebate economic stimulus plan would stave off economic recession and job losses? Wrong again! All these broken Republican promises stem from a broken understanding of how the world really works.

Corporate Tax Cuts vs. Corp. Job Creation
Source: U.S. Dept. of Commerce: Federal Reserve; U.S. Dept. of Labor; Federal Reserve Bank of St Louis; Wall Street Journal

American corporations are holding more cash on their balance sheets than at any time in nearly a half century, as they continue to save instead of investing or hiring workers, according to a Federal Reserve report released last Friday.

At the same time, Republican presidential candidates and corporate leaders continue to lobby for lower corporate tax rates and huge corporate tax giveaways under the guise that they will lead to higher rates of job creation.

According to the report, non-financial corporations held more than $2 trillion in cash at the end of June, a $88 billion jump since the end of March. Cash holdings made up 7.1 percent of all company assets, the highest level since 1963.

And the report doesn’t even include foreign cash holdings, though 11 companies — including Apple, Microsoft, and Cisco — have foreign cash holdings of at least $10 billion.

Republican Moderates Cower From ‘Alternative-Reality Right'

OpEd by Paul Fanlund, editor of The Capital Times of Madison Wisconsin

Like many 1970s-era college students who took part in anti-Vietnam War protests and wore George McGovern buttons, I watched with fascination as Richard Nixon's presidency unraveled during Watergate.

But now, I'm here to admit, I miss Richard Nixon.

Not the paranoid and crooked part, but I do miss Nixon's intelligence and, by 2011's standards, his squishy centrism.

Nixon opened relations with China and effectively negotiated arms limits with the Soviet Union. And Nixon's record on the economy, as well as on the environmental and regulatory front, would look intrusive and soft to the tea partiers of today. In fact, long after his defeat in the 1972 election, McGovern said Nixon, other than on Vietnam, would ultimately get high marks from historians.

Politicians like Rick Perry make me miss Nixon.

The governor of Texas has vaulted ahead in polls for the Republican presidential nomination in recent days by taking positions like these:

• Evolution is "just a theory that's out there."
• Scientific consensus on climate change is "all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight."
• All top jobs in his administration would be filled by abortion foes.
• It's time to "turn America over to God" for Him to fix.
• Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme" and it and Medicare are unconstitutional.
• Gay Americans are "part of Satan."
• Actions by the Bush-appointed chairman of the Federal Reserve are "treasonous."
• President Obama is not sufficiently American or does not necessarily love his country.

Who knows whether Perry actually believes this stuff. He was, after all, once a Democrat who worked for Al Gore.

David Brooks, the New York Times columnist, warns that Perry could actually become president. Brooks notes Perry does especially well with what he calls the "alternative-reality right," those who do not believe in evolution, global warning or that Obama was born in the United States.

But here's my question: Where is the "reality right?"

Drought Spawning La Niña Continues To Next Year - Could Pose Problems for Texas Power Plants

La Niña, which contributed to extreme weather around the globe during late 2010 and 2011, has re-emerged in the tropical Pacific Ocean and is forecast to gradually strengthen and continue into winter and next spring.

Forecasters with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center have now upgraded last month’s La Niña Watch to a La Niña Advisory indicating there will be a continuation of warmer and drier than normal conditions across the southern tier of the United States and wetter than normal conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Ohio Valley from now through at least late spring 2012.

“This means drought is likely to continue in the drought-stricken states of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico,” according to Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center. “La Niña also often brings colder winters to the Pacific Northwest and the northern Plains, and warmer temperatures to the southern states.”

The strong 2010-11 La Niña contributed to record winter snowfall, spring flooding, the record shattering heat wave and extreme drought across the United States during late 2010 and 2011 to date, as well as other extreme weather events throughout the world, such as heavy rain in Australia and an extremely dry equatorial eastern Africa.

La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon located over the tropical Pacific Ocean and results from interactions between the ocean surface and the atmosphere. During La Niña, cooler-than-average Pacific Ocean temperatures influence global weather patterns. La Niña typically occurs every three-to-five years, and back-to-back episodes occur about 50 percent of the time. Current conditions reflect a re-development of the June 2010-May 2011 La Niña episode. While La Niña is a naturally occurring climate phenomenon climatologists believe global warm has enhanced weather extremes associated with this climate cycle.

If the La Niña drought in Texas continues well into next spring and summer, some power plants could be forced to stop operating according to a statement from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state's electric grid operator.

Politics & Global Warming

Source: LiveScience

A survey report, “Politics & Global Warming”, by George Mason University and The Yale Project on Climate Change Communication details how Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and members of the Tea Party respond to the issue of global warming.

The Tea Party has become an important new player in American politics, so this report for the first time separates their views on global warming from the traditional political categories of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.

The wide accord on energy research, incentives for efficient vehicles and renewable electricity — and expanded domestic oil and gas production — identified by this survey is particularly noteworthy.

Here are some key findings of the survey:

Global Warming Beliefs

Majorities of Democrats (78%), Independents (71%) and Republicans (53%) believe that global warming is happening. By contrast, only 34 percent of Tea Party members believe global warming is happening, while 53 percent say it is not happening.

While 62 percent of Democrats say that global warming is caused mostly by human activities, most Tea Party members say it is either naturally caused (50%) or isn’t happening at all (21%).

The GOP's Genius Plan to Beat Obama in 2012

If Pennsylvania Republicans and their buddies in other states execute a plan to change election rules, Obama has a one-way ticket to Losertown — Nick Baumann

Global Warming Amplifying Texas Drought, Wildfires, Scientists Say

Reprinted from Climate Central

This year has been the state's hottest and driest summer in recorded history, with many parts of the state smashing all-time records by wide margins. Texas state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon announced this was the hottest summer on record for Texas — and the hottest summer ever for any U.S. state, based on preliminary numbers — and last month he declared Texas is in the midst of its worst one-year drought on record.

The blend of hot weather and parched land has made for perfect fire conditions, and this has been the worst year for Texas wildfires in over a decade. Nearly 3.6 million acres of the "Lone Star State" have burned so far this year, an area roughly the size of Connecticut.

The heat and drought are record-breaking, but how unusual are they? According to Nielsen-Gammon’s own blog, it’s in a category unto itself:

"The year 2011 continues the recent trend of being much warmer than the historical precipitation-temperature relationship would indicate, although with no previous points so dry it’s hard to say exactly what history would say about a summer such as this one. Except that this summer is way beyond the previous envelope of summer temperature and precipitation," Nielson-Gammon wrote.

Crunch Time for U.S. Science Funding

This op-ed appears in Nature magazine.

September 2011
By Jay Gulledge

The current U.S. debt crisis sets the stage for a potential tipping point in federal science spending. The ideology that government-sponsored science is crucial to the well-being of society has eroded along with the cold-war security agenda, which embraced and fortified science for decades. Meanwhile, science has been pulled repeatedly into political clashes on cultural issues. Against this backdrop, the global economic crisis portends a decade-long reduction in federal budgets. To avoid a permanent retraction of government support for research, the science community must be more strategic and aggressive in conveying the value of its work to society and in gaining robust support from politicians.

US federal science spending has long been rooted in the national security agenda. The National Science Foundation (NSF) was established shortly after the Second World War “to promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare; to secure the national defense”. NASA was established less than 10 months after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1 in 1957, in a frenzied response to the Soviets’ early lead in developing ballistic missiles. Through the decades of the cold war, support for science straddled party lines.

But, after the fall of the Berlin wall, the United States stood as the sole great power and shifted its strategic emphasis from establishing scientific superiority to cultivating democratic movements in the developing world.

Hot Summer of 2011 Rewrites Record Books

Dallas Texas set another weather record today, according to the National Weather Service (NWS), with an unprecedented number of 100-degree-or-above days. The temperature hit at least 100 degrees Fahrenheit 70 times this year, a new record for most 100 F days in a year for the city. The city tied its 1980 record of 69 days at 100°F yesterday.

Dallas-Fort Worth became the 15th metropolitan area among 19 around Texas to break a record for triple-digit days this year with several Texas cities nearly doubling their records. The high temperature at Dallas today was 107°, smashing the old daily record by 7°.

Pres. Obama To Congress: Pass The American Jobs Act Now!

Photo: White House/Chuck Kennedy

President Barack Obama addresses a joint session of Congress on jobs and the economy - video & fact sheet

Open Questions: The American Jobs Act - Join senior White House officials as they field your questions on the American Jobs Act on Thursday, September 15th at 4:00p.m. EDT.

by Beverly Bandler

“We do know how to generate growth and create jobs. As a large and growing body of research shows, we just have to spend money...The economy needs additional stimulus to get back to normal rates of unemployment. The Republicans may block this path, but at least then the public might understand that people are unemployed or underemployed because of a political decision, not an act of God.”
- Economist Dean Baker

“The answer from economics is: There is plenty we can do to create jobs and promote growth.”
- Economist Joseph E. Stiglitz

“The time-honored principle, backed by economists right and left, is that temporary bursts of spending — which usually arise when there’s a war to fight, but can also arise from other causes, including financial crises and natural disasters — are a good reason to run temporary budget deficits. Rather than imposing sharp cuts in other spending or sharply raising taxes, governments can and should spread the burden over time, borrowing now and repaying gradually via a combination of lower spending and higher taxes.”
- Economist Paul Krugman.

“Playing it safe is not going to cut it. Not proposing anything bold and not trying to do something to definitively deal with our problems would mean that we’re going to have another year and a half like the last year and a half...”
- Economist Christina Romer

GOP Candidates Opposed To The Idea Of Public Sector Medicare and Medicaid

Former Florida Rep. Alan Grayson delivering his famously charged 2009 House floor speech saying, "The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick."

Near the end of the GOP Presidential debate last night CNN's Wolf Blitzer, the event's moderator, posed the hypothetical question to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas):

What do you tell a guy who is sick, goes into a coma and doesn't have health insurance? Who pays for his coverage? "Are you saying society should just let him die?"

In immediate response to Blitzer's question several people in the Tea Party audience shouted an enthusiastic "Yeah!" cheering the death of that hypothetical uninsured man.