UH OH...EVEN FORBES THINKS PRES. OBAMA WAS CORRECT

I am referring to the President's remarks about business owners relying in part on others for their success.

This is by a regular Forbes Magazine contributor:

The Impact of Mentors
Entrepreneurs 8/17/2012 @ 4:58PM |1,210 views
Eli Portnoy, Contributor

Life and Business are hard and even the smallest measure of success requires the help of lots of mentors, friends, and family. For many of us, there is a very small number of people who have the most impact; that professor in college, that mentor during the first job, or that CEO who took an interest. When I reflect on my own career, it is easy to identify the two or three people who had the biggest impact for me. One of them is David Tisch who co-founded TechStars NYC and played an instrumental role in helping us develop and build ThinkNear from the very beginning.

MADDOW SCORES ON MITTEN$

I'm beginning to think that Mitten$ is a sociopath, a condition not uncommon among MOTU.

Maddow: Romney’s history shows he’s willing to lie about his taxes
By David Ferguson
Saturday, August 18, 2012 13:29 EDT
The Raw Story

Romney said that when he looked back over his tax returns from the last ten years, he found that he had never paid less than 13 percent of his earnings and that we’re just going to have to trust him on that. However, Maddow said, in 2002 when Romney was running for governor of Massachusetts, it was demanded of him that he release tax returns to demonstrate a residency in that state of at least seven years. Romney refused and insisted that the public take his word for it.

Eventually it came out that Romney had lied. He was forced to pay Massachusetts taxes retroactively, because when he said that the public would have to take his word that he had paid taxes for seven years as a Massachusetts resident, it simply wasn’t true.

MARK LEVIN CLAIMS PAPAL INFALLIBILITY

In this call, Mark Levin asserts that he doesn't need credible sources because he is his own source.

TALK RADIO RATINGS IN TUCSON

David Hatfield of INSIDE Tucson Business provides some "secret stuff":

UPDATE:

More Information

HOW WE DID IT
Audience estimates calculated from Arbitron ratings data of weekday hour-by-hour listeners ages 12 and older and averaged over the hours the personality is on the air. Only data from 6 a.m. to midnight was used in the calculations. Ratings period was conducted March 29 - June 20, 2012, versus April 1 - June 23, 2010.

ANOTHER MITTEN$ FAIL

I found this linked to at Buzzflash...

Republican Senator Calls Romney a "Stupid Back Stabber" (Updated)
by Billionaires for Wealthcare

Responding to Romney's plan to kill energy production and thousands of jobs in Iowa, long time conservative Senator Chuck Grassley called Romney "stupid" and a "back stabber" at two town hall meetings.

Grassley concluded by saying,

"I don't know who's behind it and I'm going to find out who's behind it, and expose them and tell them how stupid their policy is." Source.

READING TIP

I caught a bit of this BBC interview with Philip Auger (podcast) and I thought Auger might have something useful to say about the banksters.  His website lists three books:

The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism 2001
The Greed Merchants  2005
Chasing Alpha 2009

PROF. MITTEN$ == FAIL

Mitt Romney needs a few lessons in self-awareness.  Pic from ABC News:

KAROLI RESPONDS TO QUEEN ANNE

karoli of Crooks & Liars has a good post rebutting Queen Anne's refusal to share more tax returns and I liked this point best:

Ordinary people endure far more invasive inquiries for minimum wage jobs. You can get all high and mighty with us, but to get an $8.50 per hour job, many ordinary people have to endure (and authorize) a credit check, and in the case of government jobs, a background check. In many cases, they have to submit to a drug test, too. That drug test requirement isn't because their potential employer believes every applicant is a drug addict. It's because they want to make sure this applicant isn't one.

GEKKO/GALT == LOSERS

Why do these two even bother?

(h/t Daily Beast)

In 2010, Paul Ryan denied making appeals for stimulus funds

08/16/2012 4:37 PM
By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff
BOSTON GLOBE

WASHINGTON _ After seeking millions of dollars from a federal stimulus program he opposed on grounds it would not help the economy, Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan then appeared on a Boston talk radio program and denied he lobbied the Obama administration for the home state aid.

But beginning in the fall of 2009, the Globe first reported on Tuesday, he sent the first of a series of letters to the Department of Energy on behalf of a pair of Wisconsin energy conservation groups, insisting the funds would help create jobs.

CHANGING TIMES

(h/t Atrios)

I remember when "ignorance of the law is no excuse" but now flat-out incompetence is an excuse:

No Criminal Case Is Likely in Loss at MF Global
By AZAM AHMED and BEN PROTESS
DEALBOOK, NY TIMES
August 15, 2012, 10:00 pm

A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives.

After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.

THIS DIDN'T TAKE LONG

(h/t Mediaite)

Paul "Galt" Ryan is now running away from his Medicare lies:

...[Brit] Hume asks Ryan “Doesn’t your budget contemplate major savings on Medicare on something of the same amount (as the President’s)?”

Ryan tried his first bit of sophistry, responding (emphasis mine) “Only President Obama raids $716 billion from the Medicare program, cut $716 billion from the Medicare program to pay for Obamacare. We don’t do that.”

See what he did there? The Ryan budget uses the same savings, but spends it on tax cuts for Mitt Romney and friends.

Hume was too sharp, though, and pressed him, asking “You make savings, how much?”

Ryan parried with The Subject Change. After a pause, he said “I joined the Romney ticket. What Mitt Romney is proposing to do is repeal all of Obamacare.”

Hume kept advancing on Ryan like a hockey-masked killer. “You’re not saying, though, that you don’t contemplate in your budget plan significant savings in Medicare, are you?”

Here’s Paul Ryan’s really long way of saying yes: “We can get into the complicated baseline issues, but that’s the current law. We keep with the current law in our budget.”

EVEN MOVEMENT CONSERVATIVES HAVE SOME LIMITS

On August 10th, Aviva Shen and Adam Peck of Think Progress revealed that the Ohio GOP are rigging the early voting schedule against Democratic counties and in favor of GOP counties.

On August 14th, the NY Times ran an editorial against this blatant attempt to rig the vote.

Today, the NYT reports that we have won:

Update: On Wednesday afternoon, Jon Husted, the Ohio Secretary of State, announced that all Ohio counties would follow a uniform early-voting policy. The policy would extend early-voting hours to 7 p.m. on weekdays during the last two weeks before the election, though all early voting is banned during the final three days of the campaign.

PROBABLY NOT AN ORIGINAL POST

But after reading this...

Paul Ryan to Obama on Medicare debate: Bring it on

I almost immediately thought of a Monty Python & the Holy Grail scene (IMDB & here):

King Arthur: [after Arthur's cut off both of the Black Knight's arms] Look, you stupid Bastard. You've got no arms left.
Black Knight: Yes I have.
King Arthur: *Look*!
Black Knight: It's just a flesh wound.
ARTHUR: Look, stop that.
BLACK KNIGHT: Chicken! Chicken!
ARTHUR: Look, I'll have your leg. Right!
[whop]
BLACK KNIGHT: Right, I'll do you for that!
ARTHUR: You'll what?
BLACK KNIGHT: Come 'ere!
ARTHUR: What are you going to do, bleed on me?
BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!
ARTHUR: You're a loony.
BLACK KNIGHT: The Black Knight always triumphs!
Have at you! Come on then.
[whop]
[ARTHUR chops the BLACK KNIGHT's other leg off]
BLACK KNIGHT: All right; we'll call it a draw.

INTERPRETIVE HINT: Pres. Obama is King Arthur

HELP STATE REP. BEN WAIDE OF KENTUCKY

According to this McClatchy article, he is terribly misinformed:

Another committee member, Rep. Ben Waide, R-Madisonville, said he had a problem with evolution being an important part of biology standards.

"The theory of evolution is a theory, and essentially the theory of evolution is not science — Darwin made it up," Waide said. "My objection is they should ensure whatever scientific material is being put forth as a standard should at least stand up to scientific method. Under the most rudimentary, basic scientific examination, the theory of evolution has never stood up to scientific scrutiny."

His web mail address is:

http://www.lrc.ky.gov/Messages/H010.aspx

UPDATE: The web mail I sent bounced.

A WHOLE LOTTA RUNNING GOING ON

Paul Ryan is trying to run away from Ayn Rand and many House Baggers are running away from Paul Ryan.

DAN BALZ IS ANOTHER WORTHLESS VILLAGER

He's whining about the presidential campaigns ("A most poisonous campaign") but it seems that he's mostly upset with the Democrats for pushing back against the GOP Noise Machine.

Back in 2008, Glenn Greenwald also noted that Balz was just another clueless Villager.

THANK YOU, DAVID STOCKMAN

Raygun's former OMB Director has more integrity than either Mitten$ or Paul Ryan.

Paul Ryan’s Fairy-Tale Budget Plan
By DAVID A. STOCKMAN
Published: August 13, 2012
NY Times

Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to “job creators” (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse.

Mr. Ryan showed his conservative mettle in 2008 when he folded like a lawn chair on the auto bailout and the Wall Street bailout.

Like his new boss, Mr. Ryan has no serious plan to create jobs.

In short, Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices. And it couldn’t pass even if Republicans were to take the presidency and both houses of Congress. Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan have no plan to take on Wall Street, the Fed, the military-industrial complex, social insurance or the nation’s fiscal calamity and no plan to revive capitalist prosperity — just empty sermons.

BIDEN BROUGHT UP A VERY IMPORTANT POINT

Romney/Ryan AKA Gekko/Galt want to eliminate Dodd-Frank so the banksters will have more freedom to skim off the top of the world's economies.

RADIO TIDBITS

I was shocked to hear on War Whore Laura Ingraham's show the racist pig Pat Buchanan.  They had the gall to discuss how Pres. Obama is dividing the country.

Jed Babbin subbed for Michael Savage and put in his usual irrational performance.  He claimed that Israel was facing an existential threat from Iran AND that so was America.

A QUESTION FOR PAUL RYAN...

Are you still in favor of privatizing Social Security?

If he says "yes" after all the harm the banksters have done, then it's OVER.

BEFORE THE PENCIL, THERE WERE THE BEES

Milton Friedman has gained some fame because he used Leonard Read's "I, Pencil" in his TV show "Free to Choose."  The story is supposed to show that Adam Smith was correct in The Wealth of Nations about the wonders of the Invisible Hand.

In fact, Smith got this idea from Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees (1714 & 1723).  In volume 1, Mandeville writes about the production of a scarlet cloth:

What a Bustle is there to be made in several Parts of the World, before a fine Scarlet or crimson Cloth can be produced, what Multiplicity of Trades and Artificers must be employ’d! Not only such as are obvious, as Wool-combers, Spinners, the Weaver, the Cloth-[412]worker, the Scourer, the Dyer, the Setter, the Drawer and the Packer; but others that are more remote and might seem foreign to it; as the Millwright, the Pewterer and the Chymist, which yet are all necessary as well as a great Number of other Handicrafts to have the Tools, Utensils and other Implements belonging to the Trades already named: But all these things are done at home, and may be perform’d without extraordinary Fatigue or Danger; the most frightful Prospect is left behind, when we reflect on the Toil and Hazard that are to be undergone abroad, the vast Seas we are to go over, the different Climates we are to endure, and the several Nations we must be obliged to for their Assistance. Spain alone it is true might furnish us with Wool to make the finest Cloth; but what Skill and Pains, what Experience and Ingenuity are required to Dye it of those Beautiful Colours! How widely are the Drugs and other Ingredients dispers’d thro’ the Universe that are to meet in one Kettle! Allum indeed we have of our own; Argol we might have from the Rhine, and Vitriol from Hungary; all this is in Europe; but then for Saltpetre in quantity we are forc’d to go as far as the East-Indies. Cochenille, unknown to the Ancients, is not much nearer to us, tho’ in a quite different part of the Earth: we buy it ’tis true from the Spaniards; but not being their Product they are forc’d to fetch it for us from the remotest Corner of the New World in the West-Indies.a While [413]so many Sailors are broiling in the Sun and sweltered with Heat in the East and West of us, another set of them are freezing in the North to fetch Potashes from Russia.

WHY PAUL RYAN IS GOOD NEWS FOR LIBERALS

Glenda Beck and Fats Limbaugh think that unlike Mitten$, Ryan is a real conservative.  This only serves to highlight the fact that Mitten$ isn't what their listeners prefer.

GERALDO IS A CARTOON CHARACTER...

so it makes sense that he would replace a rodeo clown:

Geraldo Rivera’s Radio Show Goes National, Bumping Glenn Beck Off Dozen Stations
by Meenal Vamburkar | 2:01 pm, August 12th, 2012
MEDIAITE

A WEEK OFF

For my vacation, I stopped listening to national conservative radio gasbags for a week although I did manage to listen to a couple of hours of the local talent.   I listened instead to NPR - News, Jazz, Classical - and the emotional contrast was striking.  It's as if I woke up from a bad dream to a nice morning.

LOCAL RADIO GASBAG UPDATE

The Franzi/Lewis foodfight continued on Saturday with Emil pushing back on his Sat. afternoon show.  In addition, Bruce Ash, a regular advertiser on Franzi's show and an extremist, cut a new ad accusing Garrett Lewis of just being in this fight for the ratings and sliming fellow Republican Randy Graf.

WHERE THE MONEY IS & HOW TO GET SOME OF IT

David Cay Johnston has provided great analyses of the American economy and in the process has uncovered many "little know facts." In a recent column, he discussed the amount of cash US companies have been hoarding:

But newly released IRS figures show that in 2009 these companies held $4.8 trillion in liquid assets, which equals $5.1 trillion in today’s dollars, triple the Fed figure. ... The IRS reports the worldwide holdings of U.S. companies, which I think is the more revealing measure.

This isn't because corporations are trying to get through hard times:

Given the enduring hard times, you might think that corporations have used up their cash since 2009. But real pretax corporate profits have soared, from less than $1.5 trillion in 2009 to $1.9 trillion in 2010 and almost $2 trillion in 2011, data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis shows.

What to do? The corporations want to be given a HUGE (85%) tax cut on the profits they repatriate, falsely claiming that this will help the economy. Johnston has found another way:

A business holding more cash than its operations reasonably require can be hit with a 15 percent levy under Section 531 of the Internal Revenue Code, on top of the 35 percent corporate income tax. The Tax Court even devised a mechanical test in 1965 for how much is too much.

Historically the IRS has levied only privately owned firms or publicly traded companies with few shareholders. But Internal Revenue Code Section 531 applies to all corporations. President Ronald Reagan signed Section 532 (c), which made that explicit, though with an exception for untaxed offshore profits.

After reviewing decades of literature on these code sections, I cannot fathom any rational basis for giving multinational companies an exception to the cash hoarding rules, which discriminates against purely domestic firms.

Call 1-202-224-3121 and tell your senator or representative you want Section 531 vigorously enforced – now – and the offshore loophole closed immediately.

YOU DIDN'T BUILD THAT

On one level, Bernard Mandeville's The Fable of the Bees is the direct precursor of Adam Smith's Invisible Hand, on a more thorough level, it is also a justification for Pres. Obama's "you didn't build that" statement.

In volume II of the work, Mandeville not only justifies extensive government regulation:

If you will give yourself this Trouble, you will find the Number of Clauses and Proviso’s, to govern a large flourishing City well, to be prodigious beyond Imagination; and yet every one of them tending to the same [386]Purpose, the curbing, restraining and disappointing the inordinate Passions, and hurtful Frailties of Man. You will find moreover, which is still more to be admired, the greater part of the Articles, in this vast Multitude of Regulations, when well understood, to be the Result of consummate Wisdom.

He also reduces the role of the individual to its proper size:

Among the things I hint at, there are very few, that are the Work of one Man, or of one Generation; the greatest part of them are the Product, the joynt Labour of several Ages. Remember, what in our third Conversation I told you, concerning the Arts of Ship-building and Politeness.1 The Wisdom I speak of, is not the Offspring of a fine Understanding, or intense Thinking, but of sound and deliberate Judgment, acquired from a long Experience in Business, and a Multiplicity of Observations. By this sort of Wisdom, and Length of Time, it may be brought about, that there shall be no greater Difficulty in governing a large City, than (pardon the Lowness of the Simile) there is in weaving of Stockings.