They May Not Like Big Government But...

Take a look at this poll conducted earlier in the year by Gallup.

29 percent of Americans are satisfied with the size and power of government. No surprise there. But only 30 percent are satisfied with the size and power of corporations. Americans may not like Big Government but they don't like Big Corporations either. Take a look at how the numbers break down by political ideology.

A couple of key numbers here...independents distrust corporations nearly as much as the government. And I was fairly shocked to see that Republicans are split on corporations. What do you suppose that means?

Amen

A Bad Week (Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love Harry Reid)

I've been pretty critical when it comes to the subject of Harry Reid. In the past, I've referred to him as several limp noodles on two slices of milk dunked toast.

But his recent indictment of Mitt Romney is a stark contrast to his previous persona. I think the thing I like about it the most is how much in common it has with statements made by the right on a daily basis. In other words, it's about fucking time a Democrat started saying things that may or not may not have any basis in fact but have absolutely everything being pissed off and pulling shit out of one's ass (sort of like how the government forced banks to loan to black people and Hispanics and that's why the economy collapsed).

We really don't know if Romney paid taxes or not but what's great about Reid's statement is how fucked Romney is right now. If he does not release his taxes, the "lie" is out there and people will doubt him. If he does release his taxes and they show that he did pay them over a ten year period, Reid has manipulated Romney (just as the right manipulates the left all the time) into doing something he doesn't want to do: release his taxes...which will undoubtedly show that Romney made a shit ton of money, has hid some of it offshore, was more involved at Bain during their layoffs and outsourcing, and paid less than Warren Buffet's secretary. Heck, even the National Review is calling for Romney to release his returns now. 

Of course, Romney's own tax plan doesn't help him at all. 

But what does the TPC analysis actually tell us–meaning us people who aren’t campaigning to be president–about the Romney tax plan? It’s well summarized by Figure 2 from the paper, above, which decomposes the bottom line conclusion that a revenue-neutral Romney plan would give generous tax cuts to the rich paid for with net tax increases on everyone else, into two parts: (i) how much the tax cuts from the tax rate reductions are skewed toward the rich; and (ii) how much the revenue offsets from (Romney-limited) base broadening are skewed toward lower- and middle-income households. Combined, we would end up with a revenue-neutral (relative to a business-as-usual, policy-extended baseline) and highly “regressive” tax reform, with relative and absolute tax burdens falling for “the rich” (defined here as households with incomes above $200,000–about the top 5%) and increasing for everyone else.

Seriously, are you fucking kidding me? What a massively stupid idea given the current perception of government and the economy. Yes, let's give the wealthy more breaks...that's going to go over well with the middle class, non college educated whites voting in the coming election.

Add all of this in with his stumbles on his recent trip abroad and it's understandable why Romney has lost ground in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Florida.  With less than 100 days to go before the election, Governor Romney is going to have a very difficult time making up that ground. The Obama team has already pulled their ads in Pennsylvania to focus on other key swing states. In short, it's not been a good week for Mitt Romney.

And all of this just before he picks his VP...

Nope. No racism here. Please move along....

On Stiglitz (Part One)

I first heard of Joseph Stiglitz's new book, "The Price of Inequality," from a very conservative friend of mine on Facebook. His comment was...

How about stop focusing on making things "fair" and let the chips fall where they may? Kind of like....oh...I don;t know...OLD SCHOOL AMERICA? No, no, better to listen to the liberal commie fuck professor who never worked in the private sector and wants MORE taxes, rules and regulations to make things "fair." Fucking idiot.

Anytime I see this sort of mouth foaming, I know it must be something worth reading!

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be discussing Stiglitz's book and highlighting the parts of it that I think are important. Each post I put up will more than likely be on one specific point although not always as is the case with this first one.With over 100 pages in sourced information, there is going to be a lot to choose from and I want to make it clear from the outset that there is no way I can get to it all. This would be why I would recommend reading the book for yourself so you can study the full argument from the one who put in all the research that led him to a central and inevitable conclusion: the inequality in this country endangers our future.

Now, before we get started, I want to clear up an issue that came up in comments the last time we talked about inequality. I was tasked to come up with a number of what is too much inequality. As Stiglitz points out in the first chapter in the book, relying solely on a quantitative analysis isn't an accurate way of examining inequality.

On page 23, he discusses the Gini Coefficient and how it is used as a standard measure of inequality. A GC of 0 (in which the bottom 10 percent get 10 percent of the income, the bottom 20 get 20 etc) is the most equal. A GC of one (in which all the income goes to 1 person) would be the most unequal. In between 0 and 1 are where countries are measured. More equal societies have around 0.3 (Sweden, Norway, Germany) and less equal countries have 0.5 or above (African nations and South America). The US stands at .47, up from .4 in 1980. We are more unequal than Iran or Turkey and very much more equal than any country in the EU.

Yet, as Stiglitz notes,

Measures of income inequality don't fully capture critical aspects of inequality. America's inequality may, in fact, be far worse than those number suggest. In other advanced industrial countries, families don't have to worry about how they will pay the doctor's bill, or whether they can afford to pay for their parent's health care. Access to health care is taken as a basic human right. In other countries, the loss of a job is serious, but at least there is a better safety net. In no other country are so many persons worried about the loss of their home. For Americans at the bottom and in the middle, economic insecurity has become a fact of life. It is real, it is important, but it's not captured in these metrics. If it were, the international comparisons would cast what's been happening in America in an even worse light.

So, choosing a number shouldn't be the exclusive focus when you consider the multiple factors (some of which he mentions above) that make each country's economic concerns unique. Obviously, it's a starting point but it needs to be put into context with other, qualitative factors. An example of this would be the current economic situation in the EU. They may have 0 3 on the GC but isn't that equality an illusion considering what they are facing right now?

Further, is the GC even accurate? What are the factors that they use? Why? And why don't they leave out some factors, if any? The answers to these questions illustrate the flaws in focusing on one measure of inequality.

Now that we have gotten that out of the way, let's take a look at the first point Stiglitz makes in Chapter 1: the disparity in income. Stiglitz is quick to point out that he is looking at median, not average income, as that is more of an indicator of how the various income groups are doing. If you look at average income, it might seem like the lower groups are doing well since the upper groups are seeing their wages and wealth rise.

But if you look at median income, you see the following:

Median household income was actually lower in 2010 ($49, 445) than it was in 1997 (adjusted for inflation, $50, 123). Over the longer period (1980-2010), median family income essentially stagnated, growing at an annual rate of only .36 percent. Adjusted for inflation, male median income in 2010 was $32, 137. In 1968, it was $32, 844. (source and source.)

Add in the fact that the top one percent now earns 20 percent of the nation's income with the top 0.1 percent  earning 220 times larger than the average of the bottom 90 percent and the picture of gross inequality is stark and evident.

So, why does this matter? Page 85.

Moving money from the bottom to the top lowers consumption because higher income individuals consume a smaller proportion of their income than do lower income individuals (those at the top save 15 to 25 percent of their income, those at the bottom spend all of their income). The result: until and unless something else happens, such as an increase in investment or exports, total demand in the economy will be less than what the economy is capable of supplying-and that means that there will be unemployment.

Unemployment can be be blamed on a deficiency in aggregate demand; in some sense, the entire shortfall in aggregate demand-and hence the US economy-today can be blamed on the extremes in inequality. 

As we have seen, the top 1 percent earns 20 percent of the national income. If that top 1 percent saves some 20 percent of its income, a shift of just 5 percentage points to the poor or middle who do not save-so the top 1 percent would still get 15 percent of the nation's income-would increase aggregate demand directly by 1 percentage point. But as that money recirculates, output would actually increase by some 1.5 to 2 percentage points.

This kind of shift in income would decrease the unemployment rate from 8.3 percent to 6.3 percent. A broader redistribution, from the top 20 percent to the rest, would have brought down the unemployment further to a more normal 5 or 6 percent. 

This is at the heart of what the president and the Democrats are trying to do because they know it's what must be done in order to get the economy on track. Businesses aren't going to hire more people unless more people start coming through the door and buying their goods and services. We've seen that tax cuts don't spur hiring.

Eventually, the 0.1 percent, the 1 percent, and the top 20 percent are going to realize that if they want to continue to enjoy their wealth in a healthy society, this redistribution is going to have to happen. People like Warren Buffet and Nick Hanauer have already accepted this fact. Whether or not the government "forces" them to do so is irrelevant.

It's no longer a question of "if" but of "when."

Personally, I'd like the wealthy of this country to do it on their own. That way we can leave the sensitivity about the federal government (see: paranoia, hysterical old ladies) behind in the trash heap where it belongs. Obviously, this isn't likely but we have to do it. As Stiglitz puts it,

Countries around the world provide frightening examples of what happens to societies when they reach the level of inequality toward which we are moving. It is not a pretty picture: countries where the rich live in gated communities, waited upon by hordes of low income workers; unstable political systems where populists promise the masses a better life, only to disappoint. Perhaps most importantly, there is an absence of hope. In these countries, the poor know that their prospects of emerging from poverty, let alone making it to the top, are minuscule. This is not something we should be striving for.

An Engineering Solution

Last year Richard Muller, the Berkeley scientist who headed the Koch-funded global warming study, announced that global warming was actually occurring. Now he has completed another study that acknowledges that the warming measured is completely due to carbon dioxide emitted by humans.

Muller was immediately attacked by climate change deniers like Anthony Watts, who released a dueling study claiming that NOAA artificially doubled temperature increases. Note that Watts isn't saying that there's no temperature increase, he's just quibbling over the amount.

We can now see conservatives starting to pivot on climate change. They can't simply deny it any more: climate change is obviously happening, what with the increasingly weird weather we've been having (more tornadoes, more drought), measurably higher sea levels on the east coast, demonstrably earlier springs and later winters, migrating species (resulting in dying forests and rampant wildfires in the west), and the melting of the polar ice caps.

In June Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil, admitted that climate change was happening. He blithely stated that it was "just an engineering problem" and we'll just adapt. Yes, it's true: rebuilding your house after it's destroyed by a hurricane or a tornado is "just a construction problem." Moving millions of people out of Miami and Manhattan after sea levels rise is "just a relocation problem." Rising temperatures and climate shifts that turn America's breadbasket into a dustbowl are "just an agriculture problem."

As we continue to burn so much oil and coal, there will be climate winners and losers. Tillerson's "engineering problems" will cost some people trillions of dollars to fix and displace millions of people. The economies of some states and countries that just happen to be in the wrong end of the climate stick may be completely destroyed. Some island countries will simply cease to exist.

Rex Tillerson profits from the thing that causes climate change, and he wants to stick the rest of us with the bill for fixing the problems that his product causes. This attitude makes him, in engineering parlance, a "dick."

But if we're going to blithely talk about engineering solutions to climate change, the most obvious one is to stop using so much coal and oil and start generating more electricity with wind, solar and other technologies. After all, there's only a finite amount of oil left in the ground, which we will nearly deplete in my lifetime. We'll never really run out because it'll get so expensive no one will ever bother to drill the last drop.

From an engineering perspective, the internal combustion engine is a dying technology, soon to be made obsolete by a lack of fuel. Best to switch sooner than later, since it's got so many other downsides to it. And if we Americans do it, we'll get in on the ground floor and become the providers for the rest of the world. In addition to being an engineering solution, it's also a business opportunity!

Hmm....

They're All above Average

Ever notice that while everyone else's pay is going down, CEO pay is going up? There's a reason for that: they cheat.

When compensation committees (typically made up of other CEOs and their buddies) figure out how much execs should get paid, they typically create a "peer group" of similar companies, and use that information to determine how much their CEO should get paid.

The problem is the compensation committees cherry-pick the companies in the peer group, selecting companies like 3M that pay their execs more:

Indeed, 3M Co. was the most popular "peer group'' company in corporate America in 2011. It was included in the compensation analysis of 62 U.S. firms -- more than any other company, according to Equilar, an executive compensation data firm. 

Although companies use a variety of factors in selecting peers, high CEO pay plays a factor. 

"Why is the company so popular?" asks Carol Bowie, head researcher for the Americas group at Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS), a proxy advisory firm. "There could be a variety of reasons, but it is certainly notable that [former CEO George Buckley's] pay was high relative to other peers.

 I guess CEOs, like the children in Lake Webegon, are all above average.

Indeed

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody Analytics, once and for all has settled (with the help of the CBO) the 500+ comments thread from a while back over at TSM.

Some supporters thought the lower tax rates would spur much stronger economic growth, and a few even hoped there would be so many new, high-paying jobs that tax revenues would actually increase, despite the lower rates. There is no evidence that this happened, however. 

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that the Bush-era tax cuts cost the U.S. Treasury $1.6 trillion during the 2000s. Combined with the $1.2 trillion spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and the $1.8 trillion needed to fight the Great Recession, this put the federal government deeply into the red. The nation's debt load today is as heavy as it has been since the 1940s and getting heavier.

To put it simply, they didn't generate growth nor revenue. Now that that is settled (although I'm nearly certain that the financial wizards at TSM, with their vast experience and day to day work with economics, will disagree:)), how do we solve the problem of the deficit? Well, exactly like I have been saying...one third tax cuts, two thirds spending cuts.

Extend the tax cuts for everyone except high-income taxpayers. The economy isn't great, but it is strong enough to handle higher tax rates on the wealthy. And we need the extra revenue, which under reasonable assumptions would reduce the federal deficit by nearly $1 trillion over the next decade.

Raising tax rates on wealthier households is necessary, but so, too, are more cuts in government spending. Washington last summer agreed to cut $1 trillion over 10 years as part of the deal to raise the Treasury's debt ceiling. Even with $1 trillion in additional tax revenues from affluent households, it will take an additional $2 trillion in cuts, under reasonable assumptions, to get our fiscal house in order. Given how politically difficult this will be, any agreement to raise taxes on the wealthy should also include more cuts in government spending.

And what will the result of all this be?

If policymakers follow this script, federal tax revenues will eventually rise to equal just over 19 percent of the nation's GDP, and government spending will fall to the equivalent of 21.5 percent of GDP. These are roughly the average ratios seen since 1980. In other words, government's role in our economy and our lives will be about what it has been for the last three decades. The deficit will still equal 2.5 percent of GDP (21.5 percent minus 19 percent); while more than ideal, this will be manageable, given the economy's expected growth.

That's right, folks, it's just that simple. Anyone think it will happen?

No Apologies Anywhere

As Mitt Romney travels abroad, it's important to point out his standard line about President Obama apologizing too much for the United States is one gigantic load of bullshit.

The Washington Post has an article detailing where this lie (see: Breaking the 8th Commandment)  originated. More importantly,.the Fact Checker illustrates, in a very complete way,  how this is lie is a four Pinocchio whopper. Example:

The Heritage Foundation list is also a stretch. Again, nothing akin to the word "apology" is ever used by Obama. In most of these cases, Obama is trying to make a clear distinction with his predecessor, much as Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter, or George W. Bush with Clinton. Guantanamo or the war on terrorism figures in four of the so-called apologies -- and it is noteworthy during the 2000 campaign that Obama's GOP opponent, Sen. John McCain, also had said he would close the facility. Obama's comments express a disagreement over policy, not a distaste for the nation.

If one actually pays attention to what the president said as opposed to listening to the greatest propaganda experts since Goebbels, there is nothing close to an apology in any of his speeches.

Of course, he is Barack X, so there's no way that he can possibly be tougher than a Republican so...

I Love My Wife

Unless you live on a desert island and are completely self sufficient, you are part of our society which is, in fact, a collective. Grow the fuck up.
----Mrs. Markadelphia, last week.

Romney Didn't Build That

Last week President Obama gave a speech in which he said:

If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help. There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.

Republicans have gone wild over the speech, intentionally misrepresenting what Obama said. "That" is a collective demonstrative pronoun relating to "roads and bridges." Yes, he could have said "those" or "that infrastructure" to be clearer. If Obama's intention was to say that business owners didn't build their own businesses, he would have said, "If you've got a business -- you didn't build it."

But if Republicans are going to carp about this niggling detail in Obama's speech, it's only fair to look at the niggling details of the business that W. Mitt Romney claims makes him qualified to lead this country, Bain Capital. Did he really build that?

I draw upon information on Romney's biography from this Wikipedia entry.

Romney went to public primary school, then attended a prestigious prep school paid for by his wealthy parents. He went to prestigious Stanford for a year, paid for by his wealthy parents. At age 19, during the height of the Vietnam War when men of the same age were volunteering for service or being drafted, Romney went to France for 30 months, presumably at the expense of his wealthy parents and/or the Mormon Church. Romney used four student deferments and a ministerial deferment to avoid serving in Vietnam (in 1969 his high number in the draft lottery kept him safe).

To be fair, being a missionary isn't necessarily draft dodging: all Mormons are expected to go on a mission. The Mormons I've known personally went on missions long after Vietnam was over. To be equally fair, however, the Mormons I know didn't go to France to live in a castle, eat brie and convert Protestants and Catholics to Mormonism. They went to third-world countries to build houses and feed starving kids.

Romney returned to the US and attended BYU, again presumably on his parents' dime. He then went to Harvard Business School. By all accounts Romney wasn't a stellar student (I have to wonder why all those pundits on Fox News aren't after Romney for his college transcripts).


Afterwards Romney went into management consulting. He was eventually hired by Bill Bain at Bain & Company. When Bain wanted to start a new venture in private equity and asked Romney to run it, Romney initially refused. After Bain restructured the deal so there would be no professional or financial risk to Romney, Mitt took the job. That was Bain Capital, Romney's baby.


Romney then went around trying to convince wealthy people to invest in the company. As detailed on this blog, he got about a third of the capital to start Bain from foreign sources, including many investors who eventually wound up in jail or were associated with Salvadoran death squads. I don't believe in guilt by association myself, but it's something that Republicans apparently value highly, because they constantly bring up Jeremiah Wright and Bill Ayers, two men with whom Obama has only passing association.


Bain Capital's basic business model was explicitly to never do anything on their own: they talked other people into giving them money to perform corporate surgery on troubled companies. Bain bought businesses with borrowed money in highly leveraged buyouts. He then tried to turn them around by changing management practices, reorganizing, firing employees, etc. On several occasions the companies Bain bought went bankrupt after Bain forced them to take out loans in order to pay Bain lots of cash.

Romney never created anything in business from nothing, with his own money, his own ideas and his own initiative. The path for him was always paved by someone else: parents, teachers, professors, the Mormon Church, Bill Bain, wealthy investors, original company founders.

Are there people who do create something from nothing, people who got no help from parents, who got where they are solely through hard work and individual initiative? Yes, but they're extremely rare, and many Republicans would rather these people not be in this country. Take, for example, Harold Fernandez who is now a cardiac surgeon. Originally from Colombia, he entered this country illegally at age 13 on a leaky boat filled with illegal immigrants. He graduated valedictorian of his class and enrolled at Princeton with a fake green card and a stolen Social Security number. But even so, Fernandez didn't do it all alone: he got scholarships that were endowed by wealthy donors who were giving back to Princeton for all that Princeton gave them. Through their generosity, a person of meager means can enjoy the same advantages that Mitt Romney did.

I don't pretend I did it all myself: my parents were borderline poor, so I qualified for about $3,600 dollars in Pell grants over four years. That was almost enough to pay for tuition at a public university at the time. I also had a job and lived at home. My dad often asked to "borrow" a hundred bucks here or there to make ends meet. That small investment the government made in my education resulted in me paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal taxes, a fabulous return on the investment.

My dad, a rabid Tea Partyer, tried 50 years ago to create a business from nothing, but eventually gave up as larger companies squashed him in both building maintenance and real estate. Why? Because to succeed while going truly alone is almost impossible. My dad would hire other guys, but would never partner with them. That doomed him to always staying small. He ultimately went to to work as a bus driver and is now retired on Social Security and a pension from a municipal bus company.


And even the star of Mitt Romney's "You Didn't Build That" ad, Jack Gilchrist, received more than a million dollars worth of government contracts, tax-exempt revenue bonds, and federal Small Business Administration loans.

And, of course, Gilchrist didn't really build that company. His dad did.

The Ebb and Flow of Jobs

The other day my colleague on this blog said that jobs lost in 2008 will never come back. While some jobs may not be coming back in the next few years, he's wrong in the long term: we have seen this kind of job exodus in the past, and lot of jobs have actually returned. But it won't make Americans happy, because when those jobs do come back there may not be as many of them, they may not be in the same place and they will probably pay a lot less.

First, the article Mark referenced about the rising middle class across the world is correct: people in the developing world have been enjoying greater prosperity, in large part because American and European companies have been shipping jobs there for decades. As more people are employed in those countries the demand for their labor goes up, so their wages goes up, so more people are enjoying middle class incomes.

But as a result of these jobs being exported to other countries, competition for workers has decreased in the United States. This, combined with the destruction of labor unions, has resulted in stagnant and/or falling wages for the majority of Americans. American tax policies tilted in favor of multinational corporations have expedited job losses. Not only do Americans lose income when jobs are offshored, they wind up having to pay more taxes (or suffer larger deficits and government interest payments) because companies get a tax break for firing Americans.

Now, there are significant costs with offshoring jobs: relocating manufacturing to China has large transportation costs. For example, the United States exports iron ore to China and imports finished steel back from China. Over time transportation, energy and Chinese labor costs will continue to rise. At some point the cost of the energy required for transportation will exceed the labor cost differential between the US and China, the Chinese government will no longer be able to subsidize production, and it will no longer be cheaper to import Chinese steel. Steel production could then move back to the United States. (It could move somewhere else in the meantime, like Africa, if they have the raw materials and build the infrastructure to make exploiting low-wage workers profitable.)


How do I know this will happen? It already did in the automobile industry.

After WWII a lot of manufacturing was relocated to Japan there because labor was so cheap. "Japanese" became synonymous with "cheap," and not in a good way. Over time Japanese corporations began to expand their operations from the simple to the complex. Honda, for example, started out making motorcycles. Then they started making tiny cars for the Japanese market. In the 70s those cars were small and flimsy, but they were fuel efficient. During the energy crisis a market developed in the United States for those cars. Over time the quality of Japanese cars improved, and their exports grew. Then the Japanese made bigger and fancier cars specifically for the American and European markets. Over time time the Japanese standard of living rose to equal or exceed that of America, which meant that wages increased. Japanese auto manufacturers responded by building robots that reduced the number of employees required.

But Japan is an island with almost no resources: no coal, no iron ore, no oil. They have to import almost everything required for the production of automobiles, and then they have to ship all those heavy cars overseas. It became more and more difficult to make cars profitably in Japan, even with robots.

So Japanese car manufacturers started building factories in the United States. Production of cars used to be located primarily in Detroit at unionized factories, but the new Japanese factories were built in the non-union southern states. Toyota and Honda will build 15 million cars in the United States in 2012. Some German car makers also have plants in the USA. Even Ikea has an American factory.

At some point the same thing will happen with other industries that are currently located in China and India. Certain jobs will return to the United States as the rising price of energy drives up transportation costs. As wages in India rise and wages fall in the United States, even jobs like call center techs may move back here because the wage differential is too small to make up for deficiencies of offshoring customer service jobs: time zone differences, language differences, cultural differences, and the difficulties of managing off-site employees. Anyone whose ever called an offshore tech support line knows what I'm talking about...

In the long haul, sources of energy, the location of raw materials and the attendant costs of moving those raw materials and finished products will ultimately determine where jobs go.

There are, however, some jobs that will never come back due to changes in technology: the need for ferriers and harness makers all but disappeared when cars displaced horse-drawn carriages. The need for typists and typesetters has all but disappeared as computers entered the workplace. In the future, as oil supplies dwindle millions of people will lose their jobs in refineries and oil fields.

New jobs will be created as new sources of energy are developed. Because established business is only concerned about next quarter's profit numbers, they are terrible at investing in revolutionary new technologies.

At the same time Republicans are excoriating President Obama for loan guarantees for Solyndra (guarantees which the Bush administration was pushing for as well), the Chinese government is subsidizing renewable energy technologies, positioning themselves to dominate our energy future.

Well, At Least He Admits It

Not a single case of voter fraud in the state of Pennsylvania which makes me wonder...isn't this one of those needless laws that an over reaching government passes?

Oh well, at least GOP State House leader Mike Turzai admits what the real purpose of the law. All I have to do is let them speak:)

Yeah, seriously, WTF??!??

Be A Man...SUE!

I've always been amused when the right froths at the mouth of about trial lawyers and tort reform....and then turns around and engages in exactly that sort of behavior. 

The former top Senate staffer and key GOP strategist, who was fired after having an affair with Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch, filed a wrongful termination suit Monday against his former employer that could bring allegations of discrimination, sexual affairs and backroom politics into open court. 

His complaint alleges that "similarly situated female legislative employees, from both political parties, were not terminated from their employment positions despite intimate relationships with male legislators."

Oh really? Hee hee hee....

A Severe Disconnect From Reality

This video below demonstrates how truly disconnected the right is from reality.

 

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He's the "Obamamateur, Campaigner in Chief who hates America!"

They simply can't take yes for an answer so they have to invent a fictional person in place of the real one. Correct me if I'm wrong on this one but doesn't that break the 8th Commandment?