August 17, 2012
5 Issues That Reveal Mitt Romney Is Bad For America
Mitt Romney has some bad ideas and some worse ideas for America. Here are 5 broad issues where Mitt Romney has it all wrong.
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August 16, 2012
Republicans Say Tax Cuts Do Not Stimulate The Economy
Did that get your attention? Good, stay with me for a moment. — So we all know Mitt Romney, Paul Ryan and every other beltway Republican is on record as saying the “stimulus” didn’t work. When we say stimulus, we are talking about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This piece of legislation, passed in the first months of the Obama administration, contained tax incentives for companies, tax breaks for individuals, infrastructure investment, education funding, and more. Fully one-third of the “stimulus” was in the form of tax cuts.
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August 16, 2012
We Can’t Have Medicare-for-All Because Conservatives Need a Bogeyman
Health care costs keep rising rapidly, and even when the Affordable Care Act fully kicks in (2014), the expectation is that cost increases, while tempered, will still be unsustainable. There are many ideas, solutions and hybrid solutions to tackle rising health care costs, but at its most fundamental level there are two approaches, and only one makes sense in the long run.
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August 16, 2012
The Left Call: A Brief Celebration and Review of Year One
It was a year ago today that I founded leftcall.com, and coincidentally this is the 600th post on this blog. Well, I guess there’s nothing really special about that number other than we humans like nice round numbers to celebrate. The Left Call was born as a re-launch of an existing blog, but this time with a full-time focus on political analysis with a liberal edge. The intention was and is to inject liberal values into important political and social issues. The launch of The Left Call coincided with the start of the 2012 election season and over the past year I’ve covered dozens, even hundreds of 2012 election stories, and it likely will only intensify with less than 3 months to go until election day.
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August 16, 2012
There Are No Reasonable Republicans In Washington D.C.
Paul Krugman has a short piece titled “Reasonable Republicans?” where he makes a point that I’ve made in the past, that there are no reasonable Republicans serving in office. That’s not to say there are no reasonable Republicans at all, just that they all exist outside the beltway. They might be former aids to past Republican presidential administrations or they could be ex-congressman, but they all have one thing in common, they are no longer serving, and they are no longer considered part of the Republican establishment.
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August 15, 2012
Another Depressing Voting Story – 90 Million Americans Won’t Vote This November
Earlier today we learned that Pennsylvania’s discriminatory voter ID law was upheld by Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson. Now we learn from USA Today that 90 million Americans won’t vote this November despite being eligible to do so.
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August 15, 2012
Pennsylvania Voter ID Law Lives, Judge Refuses to Block It
Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Simpson says he will not halt Pennsylvania’s voter ID law. Everyone else is calling the law “tough” but I call it “discriminatory,” and it matters little to me what one particular judge has ruled because I know what’s right and what’s wrong. It turns out that the reason Republicans stated we needed this law played little role in the judge’s decision.
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August 15, 2012
Paul Ryan is NOT a fiscal conservative
If you vote for massive spending increases (Medicare Part D) without corresponding revenue increases, you are not a fiscal conservative.
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August 14, 2012
New Poll Shows Atheism Up, Religiosity Down
A new poll called “Global Index of Religion and Atheism” shows atheism is gaining ground around the globe and in the United States. The same poll shows that the percentage of people identifying as religious is on the decline. To be clear, religion still rules the day with 59% of the world identifying as religious. The percentage of the world identifying as not religious was 23% and as atheist, 13%. The poll was conducted in 57 countries with interviews of 50,000 people.
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August 13, 2012
Paul Ryan: Member of the Republican Obstructionist Party Controlling the House
Congress’ approval rating is lower than that of former Vice President Dick Cheney, and that’s really hard to pull off! Yet this didn’t stop Mitt Romney from choosing Paul Ryan, a member of congress, more specifically, a member of the majority obstructionist party controlling the House. In the era of the Obama administration, obstructionist is just another way of saying Republican. Mitt Romney didn’t have to choose a current member of congress, but that is exactly what he did, and so the low approval rating of congress will be part of the critique of the Romney-Ryan campaign. And President Obama wasted no time making this connection in a speech on Monday in Iowa:
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