Blog Archive: September, 2012

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been all bluster and no action on China's cheating on trade, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan said today, and the proof is in a bill that would address China's cheating that is currently languishing in the House despite broad, bipartisan support.

House Republican leaders are opposed to bringing the Currency Reform for Fair Trade Act to the House floor even though the bill has 234 cosponsors and is similar to a bill that passed the Senate handily last October and one that passed the House by a substantial margin in 2010.

Ryan said in a call organized by the Alliance for American Manufacturing and the Campaign for America's Future that Romney has done nothing to break the legislative logjam, which makes his criticism of President Obama "laughable," he said. "They have zero credibility on this issue," he said of Romney and House Republican leaders.

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So Mitt Romney now believes that everyone should use the emergency room for their health care needs if they don't have insurance. Or, at least, it sounded that way. (Bold Progressives caught him saying something quite different back in 2007, before health care became a dirty word to conservatives.)

Remember when Alan Grayson was vilified for saying that the Republican plan was "Don't get sick and if you do get sick, die quickly"? Well, that sounds an awful lot like Mitt's new program to me.

Allow me to share a personal story that shed some light on emergency care --- for the insured. We have a high deductible plan, because it's all we can afford. And since we're decrepit baby boomers, it's ridiculously expensive even so. It's our second highest monthly bill after housing. Luckily, we're both in surprisingly good health and we're just hoping against hope that it stays that way until we can reach Medicare age. more »

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Originally posted at Capital Gains and Games.

I've come to the conclusion that House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) is going to have a very difficult time making any deal with the Democrats during the lame duck session on taxes and spending – that is, on preventing the fiscal cliff – and still remain as speaker in the next Congress. That means that avoiding the fiscal cliff will be far harder than any analysis of the situation has dared to conclude.

Yes, this assumes that Republicans will keep the majority in the House next year and, therefore, that the GOP will be picking one of its own as speaker. But just consider what would happen if the following occurs.

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GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, son of an American Motors CEO, naturally says he loves American cars. more »

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MORNING MESSAGE: Death By Austerity

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Americans now stand a greater chance of dying from the effects of austerity than being killed in a car crash. At least that's what a new report suggests, if you read between the lines. The study, authored by a West Virginia University professor and published in the American Journal of Public Health last week, says that suicide now kills more Americans than car crashes. While the study doesn't draw a direct connection between the recession and the spike in suicides over the last ten years, it really doesn't have to.

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In California there is a dangerous, deceptive proposition on the ballot that promises to get "special interest" money out of our elections, and is being sold as a way to stop the flood of corporate money. But actually this proposition doesn't stop corporate money at all -- it only stops political activity by unions. more »

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Krugman points out in his column today that Mitt Romney declared himself to be the confidence fairy in his Boca remarks, saying that he really didn't need to have an economic program, his election would be enough to lift all those boats without breaking a sweat. more »

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With Mitt Romney once again caught trying to defend his low tax rate, the booing of Paul Ryan at the AARP convention has become a bit overlooked. But it raises a two big questions: more »

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