WWW: The Latest Democracy To Fall Victim To The Rich And Powerful

If I asked you what it takes to get a popular web site onto the internet, what would you say? If you’re like most people, you’d probably say something about creating a site, then sprinkling relevant keywords strategically throughout (a.k.a. “Search Engine Optimization” (SEO)), and then, as people discover the site, and your audience & traffic builds, your site will move up to the top of the search page rankings making you a popular web site.

• • •

Boilerplate Republican: It Will Kill Jobs

Republicans say no to many things, like a minimum wage increase, or increased taxes, or sensible regulations to safeguard the public (I’m talking to you West Virginia), on the premise that it will hurt businesses, therefore resulting in job losses. But they need not prove these claims, its good enough for Republicans to simply posit them as truths. Of course this is all boilerplate stuff for Republicans. Good at coming up with “common sense” excuses for why we can’t do something or why something is bad, not so good with coming up with the evidence to support the claim.

• • •

Economic Uncertainty? You Can Thank Mitt Romney and Republicans

Robert Reich says Mitt Romney offers a question-mark when it comes to his plans for the economy. We’ve heard Romney and Republicans say that businesses are uncertain because of Obama’s big government agenda, but Reich posits that it is Romney who is offering uncertainty. Whether it’s his promise to repeal Obamacare (with no details on what he would replace it with) or his $5 trillion tax cut (with no details on which loopholes he will eliminate), Romney comes up short on specifics.

• • •

Conservatives continue the Obama “you didn’t build that” nonsense, because lies come naturally

When you have nothing to run on, nothing to cite as success and you are all out of ideas, you can always fall back on lying. You can always take someone’s words out of context so that you can extract meaning to match up with a preexisting narrative. This is what conservatives are good at. This is what they do. So it’s not a surprise that conservatives are still citing Obama’s “you didn’t build that” line out of context over two weeks later.

• • •

Mitt Romney’s ‘you didn’t build that’ moment

President Obama accurately explained in a recent speech (used out of context by the right for political gain) that the people who start businesses rely on the infrastructure that “We the People” have built. In a civil and democratic society, we collectively build the roads, bridges, schools and employ the teachers that make it possible for anyone with a dream to pursue it and start a business. Remove politics from the equation and you won’t find many who would disagree with this, but there are many who forget it when they say government is the problem, not the solution. This is not a zero sum game. The success of business, the economy and capitalism itself can be achieved through hard work in both the public and private sectors.

• • •