Monday, January 02, 2012

Cantor refuses to admit Reagan raised taxes


By Andrew Jones/Raw Story

Appearing on the CBS News program 60 Minutes on Sunday night, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) experienced an awkward moment when he was challenged to admit that his hero, President Ronald Reagan, did in fact raise taxes.
Cantor was speaking with interviewer Lesley Stahl, who asked if he was ready to start compromising with Democrats on taxes. Cantor said he was indeed “ready to cooperate,” but then hedged his response.
“But what’s the difference between compromise and cooperate?” Stahl asked.
“I would say cooperate is ‘Let’s look to where we can move things forward to where we agree,” Cantor said. “Compromising principles, you don’t want to ask anybody to do that. That’s who they are as their core being.”
Stahl then mentioned to Cantor how his “idol” Reagan compromised his principles by raising taxes during his presidency. Cantor tried to deflect the focus by mentioning that Reagan cut taxes, but Stahl reiterated her point.
Upset at the reporter, Cantor’s press secretary yelled off camera, “That’s not true, and I don’t want to let that stand.”
No matter if Cantor, his staff or conservatives at-large want to deny that Reagan raised taxes, what Stahl said is completely true.
After his huge tax cut in 1981 slashed all tax rates to 23 percent, sparking a budget crisis, Reagan realized he’d also have to raise taxes in the years that followed. He raised taxes four times between 1982 to 1984, increasing the payroll tax, broadening the base of Social Security payees, applying the income tax to higher earners and rolling back corporate and individual tax breaks.
Reagan’s historic tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, whose rate went from 70 percent to 28 percent during his administration, ultimately forced the president to raise taxes on more people than any other U.S. president during a time of peace, according to New York Times columnist Paul Krugman.
In total, Reagan raised taxes 12 times during his two terms in office.
WATCH: Video from CBS, which was broadcast on January 1, 2012. (Selected mark starts at 10:27.)


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Santorum tells Iowans: ‘I don’t want to make black people’s lives better’

By Stephen C. Webster/Raw Story




Speaking to Republicans in Iowa on Monday, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) said his administration would reform welfare to the point that it would offer no welfare at all.
After suggesting that an expansion of Medicare is really just a plot to make voters more “dependent” on Washington, Santorum added: ”I don’t want to make black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money.”
“I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families,” he added. “The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling.”
One thing he likely overlooked: white Americans account for the largest percentage of welfare payments each month, mostly because they make up the largest sector of the population.
Welfare is defined by the government as benefits funded by tax dollars, meaning that programs like Social Security, food stamps, veterans benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment and corporate bailouts all fall under that term.
What Santorum seemed to focus on, as many conservatives do, is that black people are disproportionately represented in welfare statistics, along with Latinos, as both populations have much higher rates of poverty than whites.
According to the University of Michigan’s National Poverty Center, 27.4 percent of blacks and 26.6 percent of Hispanics were living in poverty in 2010, compared to 9.9 percent of whites. Unemployment statistics between the racial demographics are similarly skewed.
Despite the factually flawed nature of Santorum’s pitch on Monday, the underlying logic of his pitch is abundantly clear: census data shows that over 91 percent of Iowans are white, a community Santorum must desperately appeal to if he wants a win in Tuesday’s caucuses.
This video is from CBS News, broadcast Monday, January 2, 2012.

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WORKER LAID OFF UNDER BAIN CAPITAL: ROMNEY ‘DIDN’T CARE ABOUT THE WORKERS,’ PUT ‘PROFIT OVER PEOPLE’

By Josh Dorner /Think Progress


Speaking to reporters tonight in Des Moines, Iowa, a worker laid off by a company owned by Bain Capital accused former Bain Capital CEO and current Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of being “out of touch” with the concerns of average Americans.  Randy Johnson and more than 250 of his fellow workers at a Marion, Indiana American Pad and Paper (AMPAD) facility lost their jobs after Bain decided to close the plant amid a labor dispute.  Johnson, who noted that he personally reached out to Romney during the labor dispute, said, “I really think [Romney] didn’t care about the workers. It was all about profit over people.”  In addition to the layoffs and eventual bankrupting of AMPAD, Bain Capital under Romney’s leadership drove several other firms into bankruptcy and caused thousands of layoffs.
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Election Day Registration, No Photo ID Requirement Will Help Boost Turnout In Tomorrow’s Iowa Caucuses


By Scott Keyes/Think Progress 

Tomorrow, when Iowa Republicans gather across the state to vote on their party’s presidential nominee, one important tool will be available to boost turnout: election day voter registration.
Though Iowa, unlike most states, permits those who haven’t registered (or just need to update their file after a move, for instance) before election day to do so when they show up at their precinct during regular elections, the Huffington Post notes that the Iowa GOP is in charge of setting the rules for its own caucuses.
Despite nationwide efforts to make voting more difficult, the Republican Party of Iowa decided to buck the trend and allow for on-site registration. In doing so, however, they necessarily undercut the argument being made by GOPers in many other states that election day registration (EDR) invites fraud. (Of course, voters are 39 times more likely to be struck by lightning than commit fraud at the polls, and EDR actually helps prevent already-miniscule levels of fraud.)
Residents of just nine states currently enjoy EDR: Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Montana, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. However, in a number of these states, the GOP-led war on voting has targeted EDR for repeal, most notably in Maine. Republicans in the Maine legislature passed a bill ridding the state of EDR, only to see the popular program reinstated by referendum in November by an overwhelming 61%-39% margin.
Election day registration will certainly help boost participation in tomorrow’s Iowa caucuses. A 2001 study found that states which employ election day registration (EDR) boost their voter turnout rate by 7 percentage points, without partisan gain for either side. The study found that poorer and less educated voters benefited the most from EDR. ThinkProgress spoke with a number of Maine voters who also lauded the ability to update their registration if they’ve recently moved, particularly because most residents are at work during the day and unable to visit the election clerk during normal business hours.
Had the Iowa GOP followed the lead of their brethren in Maine and elsewhere, thousands of Iowans who will cast their vote tomorrow with the help of election day registration could have been turned away from the polls.
UPDATE
Brad Friedman also points out that the Republican caucuses will not require voters to present a photo ID in order to cast their ballot, a requirement GOPers around the country pushed vigorously in 2011.
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REPORT: The Republican Candidates’ Economic Agenda For The 1 Percent


By Josh Dorner/Think Progress

This Tuesday, Iowans will officially kick off the process to nominate the Republican candidate for president.  A close examination of all of the GOP candidates’ records and policy positions reveals that Mitt Romney is not the only candidate who “represents the one percent.” All of the Republican candidates share at least one thing in common: an economic agenda that will benefit the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans at the expense of the other 99 percent.
Each and every Republican candidate has called for trillions of dollars in new tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and corporations — all while calling for ending Medicare as we know it and dramatic cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and countless other programs and services that Americans depend on each day.
All of the candidates would take us back to the Bush-era policies that increased income inequality, resulted in the worst job growth in decades, exploded the deficit and national debt, and ultimately crashed the economy.  Indeed, the policies proposed by the candidates would not only embrace this failed economic agenda, they would take it even further.

 

Sources

Supports new tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans
Supports new tax cuts for corporations
Supports ending Medicare as we know it
Supports cuts to Social Security
Supports repealing Wall Street Reform Law (Dodd-Frank)
Opposes “Buffett Rule” to make sure millionaires pay at least the same tax rate as middle class workers
Opposes ending tax breaks for Big Oil
Perry: Grover Norquist Americans for Tax Reform pledge signer. Perry’s plan would merely eliminate energy subsidies as they come up for expiration — over a period as long as 20 years.  Most of the billions of dollars in annual tax subsidies for oil and gas companies — unlike those for clean energy, energy efficiency, and cleaner vehicles — are written permanently into the tax code (including some that have persisted for nearly a century). Eliminating these provisions would fall outside the scope of the Perry plan, as they would require an affirmative action to repeal and would thus violate the Grover Norquist ATR pledge.
Opposes ending tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas
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