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Government Report Contradicts GOP On Dire Situation

Wed, 23 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - May. 23 (News Report) - A new government report said spending cuts scheduled to go into effect in 2013, coupled with the simultaneous expiration of Bush-era tax cuts, will shrink the U.S. economy and raise unemployment -- contradicting the Republican claim that reducing the federal budget deficit will spur economic growth.

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Mitt Romney's flip-flops

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Bill Adair , Louis Jacobson - May. 18 (Fact Check) - For the 2012 presidential campaign, we're using the Flip O-Meter to assess the statements of President Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. This article includes links to the Flip-O-Meter items we've published on Romney. We'll update it as we publish more in the future.

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Obama says Romney would cut his own taxes while raising others’

Sun, 13 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Molly Moorhead - May. 13 (Fact Check) - President Barack Obama says Mitt Romney is the anti-Robin Hood. In a campaign speech in Columbus, Ohio, on May 5, 2012, Obama said the Romney's economic plan would raise taxes for millions of low-income Americans while cutting them for the wealthy.

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Paul Krugman: Austerity Is So Wrong!

Tue, 08 May 2012 00:00:00 -0700

readersupportednews.org - By Paul Krugman - May. 08 (News Analysis) - a funny thing happened in 2010: Much of the world's policy elite - the bankers and financial officials who define conventional wisdom - decided to throw out the textbooks and the lessons of history, and declare that down is up.

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Who to blame for the price at the pump? Tough to say

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

PolitiFact - By Molly Moorhead - Apr. 29 (Fact Check) - The price of gas is determined by a litany of complex and shifting factors (Brent derivatives, anyone?), few of which you’ll hear mentioned in :30-second political ads. But politicians are interested less in cause, more in effect. The effect in this case: your anger.

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U.S. GDP Growth Q1 2012: Economic Growth Slowed To 2.2 Percent On Cutbacks In Government, Business Spending

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Aul Wiseman, Christopher S. Rugaber - Apr. 27 (News Report) - Government spending cuts are weighing on the U.S. economy in a way that hasn't been seen in generations. Those cuts have reduced growth for six straight quarters – the longest stretch since 1955. Reduced government spending subtracted 0.6 percentage point from the first quarter's growth.

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Murder, Suicide and Financial Ruin: How the Class War Is Destroying Americans' Lives

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Mark Ames - Apr. 18 (News Report) - This past Thursday, a Modesto, California, man whose house was in foreclosure shot and killed the Sheriff’s deputy and the locksmith who came to evict him from his condominium unit. Modesto authorities responded by sending 100 police and SWAT snipers to counter-attack, and it ended Waco-style, with the fourplex structure burning to the ground with the shooter inside.

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Women's Jobs Axed By State Austerity Policies

Fri, 13 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

Huffington Post - By Matt Sledge - Apr. 13 (Special Report) - This is a nationwide scenario. At a lopsided rate, women like Akbari are losing their government jobs -- including teaching, executive administrator and child-care posts -- and finding it harder than men to find new work in the private sector. While reports a couple years ago talked about a "mancession," the picture has now dramatically shifted -- and not to women's advantage.

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Romney Fundraising Pitch Skews Stats

Sat, 07 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0700

FactCheck - By Ben Finley - Apr. 07 (News) - In a March fundraising letter to Floridians, Mitt Romney skews economic statistics under President Barack Obama. Among the letter’s claims: Romney says the numbers for unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures are “soaring.” That’s simply not true. They all started rising sharply under Bush, continued to rise for a time under Obama ...

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Goldman Sachs Takeaway: Fix Our Financial System or Get Ready for the Next Horrific Collapse

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0700

AlterNet - By Marshall Auerback - Mar. 18 (Special Report) - Only an overhaul in our broken banking and financial system will prevent the next collapse. Goldman Sachs' misdeeds are merely a symptom of a much bigger problem.

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Banks Repaid Fed Bailout With Other Fed Money: Government Report

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - By Mark Gongloff - Mar. 09 (News Report) - Though lots of people grumble about the government bailing out banks in the financial crisis, we have at least taken some comfort in the idea that the government has turned a profit on that bailout. Only problem is, that profit comes from taxpayer money -- money that was meant to spur banks to develop communities and help small businesses. Instead they've used it to develop and help themselves.

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Super Tuesday guide: Finding truth in the attacks

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Becky Bowers - Mar. 04 (Fact Check) - As 10 states prepare to vote on Super Tuesday, here’s PolitiFact’s guide to the multimillion-dollar ad blitz. With the field down to four Republican contenders, campaigns and super PACs are attacking their opponents with hot-button allegations about supporting Planned Parenthood, Obamacare and even Nancy Pelosi that are designed to strike fear in the hearts of Republican voters. There's been some piling on. We've seen several examples where two (or more) candidates have made the same attack. The one candidate who hasn't been attacked much: Ron Paul. He's has been busy attacking others — but we didn’t find ads attacking him. ... >>More

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Iraq War And Afghan Conflict Harmed The Economy, Study Says

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Huffington Post - Mar. 01 (Special Report) - "Defense cuts are certainly a path to job loss, especially among our high-skilled workforces," the House Armed Service Committee's chairman, Howard "Buck" McKeon, has said. WASHINGTON -- Defense spending has boomed in the post-9/11 era, creating new jobs

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Why the GOP Is Trying to Pin High Gas Prices on Obama (and Gullible Americans Are Falling for It)

Tue, 28 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Dean Baker - Feb. 28 (News Analysis) - research shows that voters tend to focus primarily on the direction of change. This means that if the unemployment rate is falling and the economy is creating jobs at a respectable pace throughout the year, President Obama stands a very good chance of being re-elected in November. This explains the decision of the Republican Party to focus on the price of gas.

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Fact-Mauling in Mesa

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Lori Robertson, Brooks Jackson - Feb. 23 (Fact Check) - The four remaining GOP presidential candidates met in Mesa, Ariz., for another debate, and mauled a few facts. Rick Santorum claimed earmarks were done in an “open” process during his time in Congress. Mitt Romney said dispensing morning-after pills to rape victims was “entirely voluntary” for Catholic hospitals in Massachusetts. … More >>

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John Boehner says Bush tax cuts created 8 million jobs over 10 years

Mon, 20 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

PolitiFact - By Louis Jacobson - Feb. 20 (Fact Check) - During an interview on NBC’s Today show, House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, offered some job-creation statistics to cast a favorable light on the tax cuts passed under President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003. Host Matt Lauer said to Boehner, "You talk about creating jobs. When the Bush era tax cuts were passed in 2001, unemployment in this country was 4.5 percent. Today it's at 9 percent, just down from 10 percent. So why are the Bush era tax cuts creating jobs?" Boehner responded that the tax cuts "created about 8 million jobs over the first 10 years that they were in existence. We've lost about 5 million of those jobs during this recession."

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Taibbi: Mortgage Fraud Settlement is More Like a Bailout Than Justice

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:00:00 -0800

AlterNet - By Kristen Gwynne - Feb. 10 (News Analysis) - Tabbi says that as more of the banks' bad behavior is exposed, it will become obvious that they must shut down to pay for their crimes, because the reparations necessary would bleed them dry. This settlement, he says, is a "kewpie doll" for victims of banker greed, and won't "stem the tide or turn the tables for these people."

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Ford may post best year since 1998

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Louisville Courier-Journal - By Bloomberg News - Jan. 26 (News Report) - Ford Motor Co., boosted by a one-time tax gain, may report its most profitable year since 1998, while weakness in Europe and Asia cut fourth-quarter earnings.

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The State of Obama’s Facts

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By Brooks Jackson, D’Angelo Gore, Eugene Kiely, Robert Farley, Ben Finley, Lori Robertson - Jan. 25 (Fact Check) - The president’s State of the Union address got the facts right — mostly. Obama said “the Taliban’s momentum has been broken” in Afghanistan. But targeted assassinations continue, and at least one independent foreign policy expert says the enemy may just be waiting until the U.S. leaves. The president said a get-tough tariff on tire imports from China has saved more than 1,000 U.S. jobs. But tire industry officials say Chinese imports have simply been replaced by imports from other countries. He took credit for putting “more boots on the border than ever before.” That’s true, but the big increase was under George W. Bush. And a decrease in illegal border crossings is due mainly to the lack of jobs in the U.S., experts say. Often the president’s facts and figures were accurate — but not the whole story. It’s true (barely) that Bush issued more new regulations than Obama at the same point in their presidencies — but Obama didn’t mention that his cost more. The president pointed proudly to increased oil drilling, increased U.S. oil production, and declining dependence on imports. But understandably he passed over any mention of chronically high gasoline prices, which hit a record of sorts last year. And he boasted of recent increases in jobs — which still number nearly 1.7 million fewer than when he took office.

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Fmr. Obama Adviser: Focus on U.S. Inequality in Election-Year SOTU Has Occupy Wall Street's Imprint

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 25 (News Analysis) - In his last State of the Union speech before the November election, President Obama defended his record addressing the financial crisis and called for greater economic fairness. He warned that Wall Street would no longer be allowed to play by its own set of rules. But the bulk of the speech dealt with the economy. We get reaction from Jared Bernstein, former chief economist and economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden and past member of President Obama’s economic team.

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Laid-Off Steelworker: Mitt Romney and Bain Capital Profited by Shutting Down Kansas Steel Plant

Tue, 10 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0800

Democracy Now - By Amy Goodman - Jan. 10 (News Report) - As Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney comes under fire in New Hampshire for touting his business experience, we look at how his private equity firm, Bain Capital, drove a Kansas City steel plant into bankruptcy, leading to some 750 layoffs and a federal bailout. Bain still walked away with millions of dollars in profits. We speak with Reuters reporter Andy Sullivan, who covered the story, and with Joe Soptic, a steelworker who lost his job at Kansas City's Worldwide Grinding Systems steel mill after 28 years. "The first thing I noticed after the company was bought out ... they became very union non-friendly. They started looking for ways to eliminate jobs," says Soptic. "In my department, they actually offered to buy our jobs out from underneath us. They cut back on safety equipment." Regarding Romney's business acumen, Soptic adds, "If he runs the country the way he ran our business, I would not want him as president." [Rush transcript to come. Check back soon.]

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President Obama’s view of fraud “from 40,000 feet” (without an oxygen mask)

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

New Economic Perspectives - By William K. Black - Dec. 20 (Fact Check) - Hallucinations occur at high altitude when you become oxygen deprived. Let’s review the bidding on the Bush/Obama record in prosecuting the elite control frauds that drove the ongoing crisis. There are no convictions of the Wall Street elites that made, purchased, packaged, and sold millions of fraudulent liar’s loans. There are no federal prosecutions of the major banks that committed over 100,000 fraudulent foreclosures. There are a few settlements that sound like large dollar amounts, but are merely what even Obama concedes to be the (deeply inadequate) “cost of doing (fraudulent) business.” Fraud pays – it pays enormously and our elites now commit it with impunity as a means of becoming wealthy. We have just witnessed the travesty of Wachovia admitting to criminal conduct in their (grotesquely weak) settlement with the Department of Justice (which has a policy of no longer prosecuting large corporations that commit crimes) – and having the SEC refuse to require Wachovia to make similar admissions in its settlement. All this, the President implicitly or even explicitly concedes.

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Fed Report Finds Speculators Played Big Role in Housing Collapse

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

consumeraffairs.com - Dec. 17 (News) -

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SEC sues 6 former executives of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, including Richard Syron

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

bostonglobe.com - Dec. 16 (News) -

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Suspect Claims from Obama’s ’60 Minutes’ Interview

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800

FactCheck - By D'Angelo Gore - Dec. 13 (Fact Check) - President Barack Obama made a couple of questionable claims during a recent interview with Steve Kroft of CBS’ “60 Minutes.” Obama said that “John McCain’s former economist” said that the stimulus “created or saved 3 millions jobs.” Mark Zandi did say that the stimulus created about that many jobs, but … More >>

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