The Republican Media- No. 33


GOP TV's Brett Baier, on April 3 grilling White House Press Secretary Jay Carney, claimed “Senate Democrats have not passed a budget resolution in 1,070 days” and pointed to a 414-0 House vote against President Obama's budget.

The next day, Mitt Romney charged of the current presidential term, "President Obama has failed to even pass a budget."   The same day, Rush Limbaugh, intentionally or otherwise, misled his audience for the 72,313th time, claiming

What you need to know is Obama submitted a budget back in February. It went down to defeat 414 to nothing. The Democrats control the Senate. They could pass a budget today. Republicans couldn't stop them because you only need 51 votes to pass a budget.

You don't need 60, and the Democrats have 53 or 54 seats. They could pass it whenever they want. They haven't advanced a budget in three years, the Democrats haven't, because they don't want anything on paper for which they will be held accountable.

Finally (probably not, unfortunately) it was Corporate News Network's Maria Bartiromo, one of its reputed financial experts, on April 10 rhetorically asking chief White House economist Gene Sperling

“How tough has it been operating without a budget?     This administration has not had a budget in 3,000 days. Why is it that the president puts forth the budget and not even one Democrat bought into it? Was it so reckless in terms of spending that your party actually couldn’t even buy into it?”

Bartiromo has faithfully repeated GOP talking points before.     Still, as the late Carlton Fredericks often noted, ignorance is understandable; opinionated ignorance is not.      And each of these three ideologues (Romney, an opportunist) should have more of a clue than they have.

The Washington Post's Fact Checker explains that every year, the President proposes a budget, which is not a legislative package Congress is expected to vote on.        Instead, the proposals therein take effect only if (and when) both chambers

pass a budget resolution, which also does not have the force of law but guides the amount of money avaliable to the Appropriations Committees, in addition to setting parameters for tax and entitlement legislation.    The Appropriations Committees actually determine how much money each discretionary federal program will receive; that's the source of real budget power.

Failure to pass a budget resolution, reconciling differences between the House and the Senate, is not unprecedented.      A Democratic Senate failed to pass one for the 2011 fiscal year, just as a GOP Congress declined to pass one in 1999, 2005, and 2007.    

In each case, the Appropriations Committee still approved the revenues needed for government programs.

This year, Republicans put to a vote the President's most recent budget, which they knew they themselves would vote against unanimously.     Even so, they included little but final figures for revenue and spending.    As Sperling put it, "Republicans tried to put up a mock budget of ours, which was not our budget, it was not our specifics, it was not our details."  No doubt the GOP realized that most (all, as it turned out) Democrats also would vote against it, inasmuch as, in its abbreviated form, it did not include references to specific, popular programs, such as spending for highways, law enforcement, and education.

Instead, Sperling explains, "we told House Democrats to vote for... the budget that most closely resembled our budget," a plan authored by Chris Van Hollen, the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, and "it got overwhelming support."     Of course, Republicans rose en masse to oppose that proposal, soon thereafter opting for the proposal of House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan.

Mitt Romney, throwing whatever he has against the wall in hope that something sticks, seems not to understand Congress does not pass an actual budget and that the President does not "pass" anything.           A prime-time Fox News broadcaster did not find it unusual that all Democrats in the House would vote against a budget he attributes to President Obama, one which was introduced by Republicans solely to embarrass Democrats.  

Rush Limbaugh spreads the most fertilizer.     He says  Democrats "don't want anything on paper for which they will be held accountable" while Republicans put up for a vote a (Democratic) budget, choosing to do so with few details.     It is the GOP's own wunderkind, Paul Ryan, who does not want to be "held accountable."     He boasts of a budget which (as a budget resolution) claims to close loopholes- but they are unspecified because they probably include, as Chuck Schumer argues, "eliminating or greatly reducing the mortgage deduction, the charitable deduction, the child tax care credit, the health care deductions that employers pay."    Only those things benefiting the middle class and the poor get sacrificed.

Limbaugh and Fox News are party propagandists and Romney will be its presidential nominee.    As a business reporter for CNN, however, Maria Bartiromo is expected not simply to recite GOP talking points.       And with her expertise in economics, hence a facility with arithmetic, she might be expected to realize that the "3,000 days" in which "this administration has not had a budget" would take us back roughly to January of 2004.


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Shill At CNBC

You would have thought that after Jon Stewart humiliated Jim Cramer (video below), the network Cramer represents would have gained a little humility, engaged in a little circumspection. Apparently, though, you would have been wrong.

Thanks to Rush Limbaugh (I won't often say that) for playing on his May 15 program a portion of the discussion between CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo and a man Rush identified as the executive directive of the American Labor Association, Jonathan Tasini. Corporate apologist Limbaugh, as you would guess, believed that corporate apologist Bartiromo got the better of the labor advocate, though without hearing the entire exchange it's impossible to discern. And Limbaugh's special brand of partisan extremism does not come with a fetish for context or completeness.

Here, though, is the relevant portion of Friday's program broadcast by the head of the Republican Party:

"When you look at the number of industries dominated by unions --" I made this point yesterday, by the way -- "When you look at the number of industries dominated by unions, the performance is not that great, right? Airlines, autos, teachers. Why is that? Is there a connection to a business or an industry being heavily unionized and the industry being in the toilet?"

TASINI: You cannot blame unionized workers for the state of the auto industry. That was pure mismanagement, not the least of which is continuing to refuse to have a single payer Medicare for all health care system which would have relieved ten of billions of dollars of health care costs from the auto industry and the steel industry. The problem of much of the industry in America, the industry you're talking about, has nothing to do with wages, nothing to do with union workers. UAW --

BARTIROMO: What are you talking about? The autos had all those legacy costs in place. They're paying people who are putting their feet up and just relaxing at home on the sofa, and they're not on the assembly line.

TASINI: -- the way you solve the problem of the auto industry and the steel industry, many industries, is you have a national health care system.

TASINI: There are two reasons states are in trouble in terms of their budget. One is the overall collapse of the economy, thanks to Bernie Madoff, Wall Street, AIG, and all your other friends. If we went back to more progressive taxation system and taxed just the top 1%, we would have about eight or nine billion dollars more, which would solve the crisis here in the states.

BARTIROMO: I can't allow you --

TASINI: That's a fact.

BARTIROMO: -- to fan the flames of class warfare on this program, okay? You said --you said --

TASINI: Class warfare.

BARTIROMO: -- Wall Street and all your other friends, who is "they"?

TASINI: Are you telling me you don't think there's class warfare in this country? We have the biggest gap between rich and poor that we've ever had probably in a hundred years, productivity in the last 30 years has skyrocketed, and workers have gotten no benefit of that. That is the definition of class warfare.

You'll notice immediately Bartiromo's descent into the the tag line of "class warfare." Conservative Repubs have three options to counteract the charge that the strength of the middle class has been undermined by policies that favor the wealthiest 1% of the American population. Cry "socialism," "class warfare," or rely upon facts. Well, realistically, they cannot, and do not, rely on facts, a wise strategy given that in the economic sphere they have virtually none which could buttress their argument.

The failure of CNBC to undergo any self-introspection after its evisceration by Stewart really isn't surprising. The mainstream media, of course, largely ignored Stewart's charges about the bias of the business network, focusing on the humiliation of one man rather than analyzing the arguments (video way below) about a media little interested in questioning financial institutions, insurance companies, the pharmaceutical industry, the energy industry and any other corporate interests in which it's entangled. (Fortunately, the left-leaning alternative media did have a clue; video way, way below).

But Bartiromo's recitation of Repub talking points about "class warfare" should not obscure the vacuousness of her other remark- that the airline, auto, and teacher "industries" are "in the toilet" (quite elegant, that Bartiromo) because of unionization. She might have noticed that the decline in the airline industry has mirrored the rise in energy prices, for which organized labor cannot be held responsible, except perhaps in the CNBC fantasyland.

Admittedly, profits of automobile companies have suffered while they have helped build the American middle class with middle class wages and health care benefits which should otherwise would have been provided by a universal health care system, as Tasini tried to explain to Bartiromo with his reference to Medicare and single payer. The American automobile industry would have profited if it had built more models which appealed to the American consumer and reacted more quickly decades ago to rising oil prices- even so, it now would be in little danger of collapse if the financial institutions apparently held blameless by Bartiromo had nor restricted credit and, having received taxpayer funding, restricted credit further.... to the industry and to the American consumer.

I am not sure what Bartiromo meant when referring to the teacher "industry" and perhaps neither did she. If she were aware, she might have meant layoffs of teachers common throughout the nation, and even more ubiquitous, teachers paying for their own school supplies. Those, clearly, are a direct result of teachers being scapegoated for the problems of the communities they serve and for insufficient support from taxpayers, school boards, and elected officials. And not coincidentally, the decline of public education has coincided with the intrusion of the private, for-profit market in the education of American schoolchildren.

Fortunately, given Bill O'Reilly's penchant for attacking NBC, MSNBC, and their owner, General Electric, we soon will hear Fox News' top talker criticize Maria Bartiromo's performance on CNBC. Or not.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1
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Debate Reflections- No. 3

I don't mean to be an advocate for Fred Thompson, but what was Chris Matthews thinking when he objected to Thompson's response to a question about domestic automakers? It appears that he was offended that Thompson added some detail to his answer. As indicated in this transcript, the exchange began with Maria Bartimoro:


MS. BARTIROMO: Senator Thompson, quick follow-up there. Thirty seconds, please. (Applause.) Chrysler is facing a possible walkout on Wednesday. Should the government step in and help Chrysler and the other automakers?

MR. THOMPSON: No.

MS. BARTIROMO: Why?

MR. THOMPSON: Well, I think the government has to have a good reason to step in. I think it has to be something that drastically affects our economy. It might a little bit later on -- you'd have to cross that bridge when you came to it -- as something that affects our economy or our national security.

But I don't think the government ought to step in and have people know that the government will step in if they walk out an create that kind of situation.

MS. BARTIROMO: Even if they say that they are at a disadvantage to foreign automakers.

MR. THOMPSON: Well, of course, they are. But that has nothing to do with the government stepping in. The government ought to relieve that disdavantage that we've got as far as foreign automakers are concerned, make them open up their markets and make certain markets quit devaluing their currency. That's where the pressure needs to be applied.

MR. MATTHEWS: It took a long time. He said no; he should've stopped there. (Laughs.)

What prompted Matthews' laughter? That nations should open their markets to U.S. goods? That nations (such as mainland China) should stop devaluing their currency?


Or perhaps Matthews was engaged in an effort to demonstrate his tireless wit. Here, he has another chit-chat with Giuliani:

MR. GIULIANI: Sure, I think unions have made a positive contribution. My grandmother was an early member of the United Ladies Garment Workers Union, and I don't know that our family would have gotten out of poverty without that. So I have a great appreciation --

MR. MATTHEWS: Can you sing that song, Mr. Mayor?

MR. GIULIANI: However -- pardon me?

MR. MATTHEWS: Can you sing that song?

MR. GIULIANI: Can I sing the song? You don't want me to --

MS. BARTIROMO: (Laughs.)

MR. GIULIANI: -- you don't want me to sing --

MR. MATTHEWS: Work for the union label.

MS. BARTIROMO: (Laughs.)

MR. GIULIANI: You do not want me to sing a song. Everybody will run out of this auditorium if I begin singing a song. I have a terrible voice.


Given his earlier repartee with Giuliani over Yankees' manager Joe Torre and this effort to get Giuliani to sing, it appears we have a member of the media striving mightily to humanize

Debate Reflections- No. 2


I might seem to dislike Rudolph Giuliani. So in the interest of fair play, I'll try to help him here- by answering one of his questions at the 10/09/07 Repub Presidential debate in Dearborn, Michigan. Asked by co-host Maria Bartiromo of CNBC about drilling for oil off the coasts of Florida and of California, Rudolph replied in part "why the heck haven't we licensed a nuclear plant in thirty years?"

We haven't licensed a nuclear plant in thirty years, mayor, because there has been no application in thirty years. And why is that? Because when it comes to sucking up (money), the nuclear industry is better than Hoover. According to the Christian Science Monitor, Doug Koplow, president of Earth Track,a Massachusetts firm that analyzes subsidies for all forms of energy, estimates the nuclear energy industry receives approximately $9 billion annually in federal subsidies. Major cost overruns were common for nuclear facilities and nuclear power plants are far more expensive to build than coal- or gas- powered facilities.

Add energy policy to the list of subjects about which Rudolph Giuliani is defiantly ignorant.