The Wonk Monkey is excited today. He gets to go and sit down with Thing #2’s teacher and discuss how he is progressing. For some reason, the Wonk Monkey enjoys finding out how things are and coming up with a plan to make progress.
Yes, Nancy Pelosi is the most unpopular politician in the country. Nate at FiveThirtyEight shows her favorability ratings compared with many of the other politicians working right now.
Robert Reich makes an impassioned plea to extend the jobless benefits for the long term unemployed while at the same time not giving tax cuts to the Rich.
The long-term unemployed can’t get work because there are still five people needing work for every job opening. And the long-term jobless are often at the end of the job line: Either they don’t have the right skills or enough education, or have been out of work so long prospective employers are nervous about hiring them.
Moreover, the top 1 percent spends a small fraction of their income. That’s what it means to be rich — you already have most of what you want. So extending the Bush tax cut to them won’t stimulate the economy.
Yet people without jobs, and their families, are likely to spend every penny of unemployment benefits they receive. That will go back into the economy and save or create jobs.
A Labor Department report shows that for every $1 spent on unemployment insurance, $2 are spent in the economy. If you don’t believe the Labor Department, maybe you’ll believe Goldman Sachs analyst Alec Phillips, who estimates that if unemployment benefits are allowed to expire, the American economy would slow by a half a percent.
For once a politician (President Obama) is governing exactly as he said he would.
Yet Obama is doing exactly what he said he would do. Perhaps the critics should read—or reread—the president’s own books. Dreams From My Father (1995) and The Audacity of Hope (2006) are the most substantial works written by anyone elected president since Woodrow Wilson (who wrote several books before he won election in 1912). In laying out his philosophy, Obama contrasts the GOP’s excessive individualism with the ideal of “ordered liberty” and the rich traditions of civic engagement typical of America in the 18th and 19th centuries. He also criticizes orthodox Democrats for too quickly dismissing market solutions and too often defending failed government programs. Above all, he criticizes the hyperpartisan atmosphere of contemporary public life.
Scientists have been able to trap anti-matter.
There appears there will be little chance of the debt commission being considered.
Congress won't act on their ideas to bring down the deficit unless 14 of the 18 members of their commission sign off on it. And the early reviews of the draft proposal they released last week have not been favorable.
NPR has provided some interesting coverage of the Senate Hearing of Medicare Chief Donald Berwick.
After 18 hearings the START treaty does not look like it is going to be approved by the Senate any time soon. The START treaty limits the number of warheads the US and Russia is allowed to have on hand.
Members of Congress, unlike their constituents, have felt little pain in the economic downturn.
“Few federal lawmakers must grapple with the financial ills -- unemployment, loss of housing, wiped out savings -- that have befallen millions of Americans,” said Sheila Krumholz, the Center for Responsive Politics’ executive director. “Congressional representatives on balance rank among the wealthiest of wealthy Americans and boast financial portfolios that are all but unattainable for most of their constituents.”
In 2009, the median wealth of a U.S. House member stood at $765,010, up from $645,503 in 2008. The median wealth of a U.S. senator was nearly $2.38 million, up from $2.27 million in 2008.
When the Republican members of Congress decided to decline a bi-partisan meeting at the White House I don’t think they expected this.
With Republican leadership asking for, and receiving, a delay in a previously announced bi-partisan meeting at the White House, Democrats have decided to make it a partisan affair.
The odds of Guantanamo being closed have been reduced with the failure of convicting Ahmed Ghailani of all 284 counts.
Roger Ailes (Fox News’ President) loves hyperbole. In a recent interview with the Daily Beast he said.
“They are, of course, Nazis,” Ailes said of NPR. “They have a kind of Nazi attitude. They are the left wing of Nazism. These guys don’t want any other point of view.”
He also doesn’t have kind words to say about John Stewart.
Ailes told Kurtz that Stewart’s free to go after cable news talking heads for the entertainment value, “but don’t give me a social speech on the steps of the Washington Monument. Don’t lapse into non-comedy.”
Democrats will be pressing forward with votes on the DREAM Act and Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
There is an interesting poll about the roll of Religion and Politics.
It is True that the amount of radiation coming from the new TSA body scanners is “equivalent to about three minutes worth of air travel by anybody at 30,000 feet.
It is Half True that 153 businesses have moved from California to Texas.
Still, based on the limited information D&B has shared, it looks like Texas netted 61 business sites from California from January through August, less than half the one-way total that Perry cites. Also, as D&B advised us, not all of the 153 sites that came here from there necessarily reflect whole companies making the move east. Instead, the 153 moves could have involved individual offices or branches of firms that continue to do business in California.
Pants on Fire for the following statement (Michelle Bachmann): “These are people who, who are carpet layers who maybe employ two or three other guys, or a plumber, maybe himself and his brother, and it's $250,000 in gross sales for their business. They're the ones that are looking at massive tax increases."
As Politifact reports:
It wasn't true then, and it isn't true now. Here's why: Plumbers -- or any other small business owner -- get to deduct their business expenses, so they'd have to be bringing in more than $250,000 in gross sales. The tax laws allow small business owners to deduct all kinds of business expenses: employees' pay, supplies, a car or truck, fuel costs, advertising, association dues, utilities, shop repairs, and the list goes on. (For more details, read chapter 8 of the Tax Guide for Small Business published by the IRS.)
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