“Republican President Dwight Eisenhower’s idea of a significant marginal rate cut was to push the top rate down to 91 percent from 92 percent. Corporate taxes hit 50 percent. Jobs proliferated, wages rose, and the economy prospered.”

1950s Tax Fantasy Is a Republican Nightmare - Bloomberg (via brooklynmutt)

(via brooklynmutt)

“Let`s start with fat cat. I`m glad he [Pres. Obama] used the word fat cat. It helped me go on a diet, I lost 30 pounds.

Let`s be blunt here. We had been called a lot of different things by a lot of different people. Whether he used that term or another term, it`s really meaningless, and what we have accomplished over the last four years, which now segues right into the Lehman weekend. No disrespect to everyone who talks about the Lehman weekend. I was one of the 12 individuals sitting there for the three days of the Lehman weekend. When Governor Romney or Congressman Ryan say, are we different than four years ago? I mean, come on. January 2009, we lost 800,000 jobs. The most in 60 years. OK? The stock market`s up since the president took office almost 100 percent. We have 500,000 more manufacturing jobs than we`ve had. That`s the best since the `90s. Our exports as a percent of GDP have been gaining double digits ever since he`s been in office. …

They all give the president grief about clarity. This is very straightforward. We could pass right now tax relief for 98 — the extension for 98 percent of this country. Let`s do it. Then let`s have the argument on the last 2 percent and see which way it goes, but let`s bring clarity to 98 percent of this country.”

Robert Wolf, former president of UBS Bank on “Up with Chris Hayes” Sunday.  (via brooklynmutt)

“That’s because for many Latter-day Saint women, staying at home to raise children is less a lifestyle choice than religious one — a divinely-appreciated sacrifice that brings with it blessings, empowerment, and spiritual prestige.

These doctrinally-defined gender roles aren’t entirely unique — they’ve been preached by various sects for centuries — but Mormons have proven uniquely unwilling to bend them to fit modern times. The Church took heat in the ’70s for waging a high-profile campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment; and even today, Mormon women remain twice as likely to be homemakers as non-Mormons, regardless of income levels.”

- Excert from Why Ann Stayed Home by McKay Coppins via Buzzfeed

So, you would think that Mitt might listen to his own faith and be willing to help more mothers be able to make the choice that Ann did, but apparently not.  That’s kind of troubling.  Do we even know who is pulling Mitt’s strings, or is there some complicated diagram centered on which audience he is speaking to.  He’s even worse than W at this point. 

“It’s not the arrests that convinced me that “Occupy Wall Street” was worth covering seriously. Nor was it their press strategy, which largely consisted of tweeting journalists to cover a small protest that couldn’t say what, exactly, it hoped to achieve. It was a Tumblr called, “We Are The 99 Percent,” and all it’s doing is posting grainy pictures of people holding handwritten signs telling their stories, one after the other…These are not rants against the system. They’re not anarchist manifestos. They’re not calls for a revolution. They’re small stories of people who played by the rules, did what they were told, and now have nothing to show for it. Or, worse, they have tens of thousands in debt to show for it.”

Ezra Klein, Who are the 99 percent?  “We Are The 99 Percent” Tumblr here. (via ilyagerner)

That blog breaks my heart… with every.single.post.  The American people deserve better.  

(via brooklynmutt)

“The central tension for the Tea Party grass roots isn’t between the Big Brother state and the freedom-loving individual, or between inefficient government spending and effective free markets. Instead, Ms. Skocpol and her fellow investigators argue that “Tea Partiers judge entitlement programs not in terms of abstract free-market orthodoxy, but according to the perceived deservingness of recipients.” The fundamental distinction for them is not state vs. individual, it is the division of the United States into “workers” vs. “people who don’t work.” Some of those “people who don’t work” are the young. Deficit hawks on the think tank circuit like to talk about ballooning government spending on Social Security and Medicare— programs that benefit the elderly — as “generational theft.” But the Tea Party rank and file, 70 percent to 75 percent of whom are over 45, are concerned about a very different generational struggle. This is a revolt of the grandparents’ generation — at least the conservative grandparents — and they are worried the feckless youth are taking over the country and emptying the state’s coffers. These young “freeloaders” include the Tea Partiers’ own relatives. “Charles” told the researchers, “My grandson, he’s 14 and he asked, ‘Why should I work, why can’t I just get free money?”’ “Nancy” complained about a nephew who had “been on welfare his whole life.” “The conditions for young adults to establish themselves have changed radically,” Ms. Skocpol told me. “It is harder for young adults. They may live at home longer. And that manifests itself in ways that are easy to condemn morally. The older generation is having a little trouble understanding what is happening to their children and especially grandchildren.”

Chrystia Freeland, on some fascinating research into what the Tea Party people want.  (via markcoatney)

(via brooklynmutt)