Leaving the base behind

President Obama is just going way too far afield, making way too many concessions to right-wingers in the Democratic Party Caucus.

And speaking of going too far afield and leaving folks behind, Rush Limbaugh is convinced that America was  prosperous under Reagan and both the elder Bush and the younger Bush! Actually, income inequality took a serious jump upwards in the mid-1980s and got even worse under the younger Bush and when one asks the "Reagan Question," i.e., "Are you better off now than you were [before this last guy took office]?" The answer for the younger Bush is a resounding NO!

The urgent priorities

With the recession coming to an end, Democrats need to get their priorities in order. As I've stated over and over already, deficit reduction has to take last place. The deficit hawks need to siddown and shuddup. The nation desperately needs a large-scale jobs program and it needs one now!!! Will such a program make a serious difference in the unemployment rate by next November? Probably not, but if the public doesn't get the impression that the Democrats are putting a 110% effort into job creation, that could leave a political opening for the teabagging right wingers to make gains at the expense of Democrats. That would truly be a tragedy!

As to the idea that Obama could take money from TARP (Unspent money plus money paid back equals a large bucket of available cash) for job creation. Would it help? Eh, six of one, half-dozen of the other.  Go ahead and do it if it's politically easier, but money is money.

Recession appears to be coming to an end

Thankfully, the employment graph for the "Great Recession" appears to be at last curving upward!!! Do we owe the Republican Party any thanks whatsoever? No.

According to Digby:

And in the meantime you have the deficit fetishists taking the opportunity to pimp debt as the cause of the economic crisis and shock doctrine their way into the destruction of entitlements. They are doing that by conflating the short term need for stimulus etc with the Wall Street bailouts and the deficit. And now they think that those are the things that caused the recession. Now, whether the Democratic congress will allow the deficit scolds to push through a cat food commission is unknown, although there's plenty of reason to believe that the political establishment sees this as a "go to China" moment that needs to be done under a Democratic president.

Couple of good questions about taxes and who should pay them.

People are getting wa-a-ay too excitable about deficit

Look, $1.4 trillion is a lot of money, but it's still, as a percentage of GDP, far short of US deficit spending in World War II.  President Obama inherited this problem, caused by the last president initiating "tax cuts during a time of war and a floundering economy."

Previewing the next fight

NY Times economics columnist Paul Krugman looks at how Republicans intend to fight climate change legislation. Essentially, they'll lie like there just ain't no tomorrow. The cost of combating climate change by 2050 is projected to barely make a discernible dent in economic growth, but the right wing is going to be attempting to convince the American people that fighting climate change will bankrupt the country.

Is there cause for concern? Ehh, to some extent yes, but note the impact of right-wingers yelling and screaming at town halls all summer.

"Nationally," the memo reads, "voters oppose a mandate to purchase private insurance by 64% to 34% but support a mandate with a choice of private or public insurance by 60% to 37%." (Emphasis added)

also,

"Most Americans trust Mr. Obama more than Republicans to make the right decisions on the issue; 76 percent said Republicans had not even laid out a clear health care plan."

As, of course, Republicans have not "laid out [any sort of a] clear health care plan," it does make one wonder about the people who say Republicans have done so. But anyway, Republicans not only failed to move the needle their way, it went the other way! It went towards the Democrats.

The verdict is in

The younger Bush's two terms, economically characterized by two massive tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, were a complete, absolute and unmitigated failure. Every single important category of economic well-being saw a decline. When Bill Clinton left office in 2000, the median income was $52,500. When Bush left in 2009, that had fallen to $50,303.

"What is phenomenal about the years under Bush is that through the entire business cycle from 2000 through 2007, even before this recession...working families were worse off at the end of the recovery, in the best of times during that period, than they were in 2000 before he took office."

More people were in poverty, more children were in poverty, many, many fewer people had health care insurance coverage at the end of Bush's term than at the end of Clinton's. What's truly amazing about this record is that Republicans are under the impression that voters should reward them for such utter, absolute failure.

A rather important point

If doctors were forced by a public health care plan to accept Medicare rates, they'd be very unhappy, of course. But there's really not a whole lot they could do about it. They're unlikely to find work being doctors to the rich as the rich are already well-served and they're not likely to find a job that pays anywhere near what they make as doctors, whether getting Medicare-level pay or not.

So they'd most likely grumble, but that's about all they could do.