We had a nice turnout of Elizabeth Warren supporters to this event. Thanks to Don Fairbrother for organizing the sign holders. Matt Maselli and Seth Nadeau made a lot of phone calls to make sure we had a good turnout.

This ad will be appearing on TV next week.

I wonder how many people in the 99% class would prefer to have the banks running rampant and crashing our economy at will?

Current TV has the article Former Congressman Alan Grayson: ‘Obamacare didn’t reduce a single Medicare benefit’. The video in this link may not play with all browsers.  I did finally get it to work with Google Chrome browser.  In case you cannot play the video, here is the transcript provided by Alan Grayson:

STEPHANIE MILLER: Good morning, former and future [Congressman].

ALAN GRAYSON: Good morning. I couldn’t help but say to myself, “What Nonsense,” when I was listening to your preview [about Republicans defending the Ryan Budget] there. It’s getting to be painful [to see] how they twist and turn and try to rationalize what fundamentally is destroying the Medicare program. That’s what we’re talking about there.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Yes, but look at how blue [Paul Ryan’s] eyes are.

ALAN GRAYSON: They are going to replace the actual care that you need: the doctors, the x-rays, the chemotherapy. They are going to replace that with a check that they know isn’t enough to pay for all of that, in fact, [one that is] $6,500 short every year. It’s not even close enough to pay for it. It’s as if you went to McDonalds and ordered a hamburger, and instead of handing you a hamburger they handed you a piece of paper that had the word “hamburger” on it. That’s the con job that they are trying to run on America right now.

CHRIS LAVOIE: Oh my God! You are absolutely right. That is a great analogy.

JIM WARD: Mmmm, this paper is delicious.

STEPHANIE MILLER: This isn’t actually a hamburger. I can’t eat it. You know what, former and future [Congressman], I’m so glad you said that. Listen to Romney yesterday:

[Romney Audio Clip]: There’s only one president that I know of in history that robbed Medicare $716 billion to pay for a new risky program of his own that we call Obamacare. . . .

STEPHANIE MILLER: This is what they are going to keep trying to hammer and Jim you had said this about the amount of money they have to spend to go, “Oh no, no, no, we are the saviors of Medicare and it’s the President [who is trying to destroy it].” Can you explain what the $700 billion is about?

ALAN GRAYSON: “Obamacare” did not reduce a single Medicare benefit for anybody.

STEPHANIE MILLER: That’s right.

ALAN GRAYSON: In fact, what [Obamacare] did was that it closed the donut hole, which means already that seniors pay $600 less each year for their prescription drugs. And by 2014, it will be $1,200 less for every senior who needs any prescription. Not a single benefit was cut. They found other ways to save in the program.

STEPHANIE MILLER: That’s right.

ALAN GRAYSON: And isn’t that what the Republicans are always calling for? They are always calling for more efficiency, less waste, less fraud, less abuse. What [Romney] is describing is the fact that President Obama was able to get $700 billion of waste, fraud and abuse out of the program without changing a single benefit.

JIM WARD: That’s why Romney is pretending not to know what a donut is. He’s trying to avoid the donut hole. I get it now.

ALAN GRAYSON: Maybe he can get Gingrich to come in and explain what a donut is. He certainly knows what a donut is. Or Chris Christie.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Chris Christie. I was going to go there. We almost collided getting to the Chris Christie joke.

ALAN GRAYSON: How pleasant that would have been.

STEPHANIE MILLER: So obviously, you know, you’ve seen all the headlines this morning. Republicans in competitive races distance themselves from Romney’s Medicare plan. So you’re running in Florida. We obviously saw what happened in upstate New York. That was only one race. That is my home district as you know. A Democrat never wins that, and because of Paul Ryan, Kathy Hochul won that seat. What does this mean for people like you in Florida?

ALAN GRAYSON: Well in Florida you have three times the senior vote as the rest of the country does, and seniors are waking up and realizing that, it’s true, the Republicans really do want to take your Social Security money, and hand it over to Wall Street. They really do want to take your Medicare away from you, and destroy that program. All of that is true, and now it’s right in their faces. And, by the way, this exact same Ryan Plan, this exact same Ryan Budget, came up when I was in Congress, in the 111th Congress. The Democrats brought it up for a vote and hardly any Republicans voted for it.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Right.

ALAN GRAYSON: In fact, [Rep. John] Boehner went around and told every conceivable vulnerable Republican, “Don’t vote for that. That’s going to get you lost.” And, in fact, now we’re going to see it happen all over the country. I think, not just at the Presidential level, but at the Senate level, the House level. Every Republican is going to be tarred with that brush.

STEPHANIE MILLER: You know, I was going to say, Alan I don’t know if I’m getting giddy and ahead of myself, but that’s what I feel like. This is a game changer in a bad way for them. I mean were you surprised by this pick?

ALAN GRAYSON: It’s important that we drive the point home. We can’t have weak Democrats nattering, “Well, jeez, maybe Ryan isn’t as good as Simpson-Bowles,” or something like that. No, no, no. No. The Ryan Plan is going to take away your Social Security, your Medicare, your Medicaid. It’s going to throw Grandma from the train.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Yep.

ALAN GRAYSON: And that’s what the Democrats have to say every day between now and November 6th.

We can count on at least one Democrat to keep saying that between now and November 6th – to keep exposing the Republicans and their cruel schemes. We can count on Alan Grayson. And with your help, we can count on him after November 6th, too, as a Member of Congress. Click below, and show your support today for a Congressman With Guts.

I don’t really think it is good to fight Republican lies with Democratic fibs.  As I understand it, part of the money that Romney is talking about comes from getting rid of the 15% subsidy that the government gives to private insurers to take over responsibility for the Medicare client.  I suppose you could claim that the Medicare Advantage program will continue, but just without the subsidy.  Will private insurers still participate after the subsidy is removed?  I guess making this claim is similar to Ryan’s claiming that with vouchers, Medicare clients will be able to buy enough insurance on the private market.  They make this claim despite all historical evidence to the contrary.

The New York Times has this brief item from Paul Krugman, Reasonable Republicans?

It’s kind of the “treason never prospers” argument (“for if it prospers, none dare call it treason”); if someone declares that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves, or that printing money when you’re in a liquidity trap isn’t deeply inflationary, or that fear of Obamacare isn’t holding the economy back, he ceases to be considered a member in good standing of the GOP. There are, therefore, no reasonable Republicans on these issues.

It doesn’t take long for Paul Krugman to explain why there are no reasonable Republics.  The above excerpt is a substantial part of the entire article.

Thanks to RichardH for bringing this to my attention.

From World Of Quotes
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason? Why if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”
Sir John Harrington Quotes
Source: Of Treason–Epigrams (bk. IV, ep. V)

Talking Points Memo has the article Schumer To Democrats: Pound Paul Ryan As A Fiscal ‘Fraud’.

Senate Democrats’ chief policy and messaging strategist is telling his members to hammer Mitt Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan all the way to Election Day, not just as a Medicare slayer but also as a fiscal phony.

I think the Democrats have finally been awakened from their long slumber.  Let’s tell it like it is, and let the chips fall where they may.  Is that enough cliches for one post?

There are some good links in the Talking Points Memo article.

On August 15, 2012 the Southbridge office of the Elizabeth Warren campaign held a Southbridge Women for Warren Phonebank

You can also view these pictures on Facebook

Below is an email I received from Rebuild The Dream. I find this spot on to almost everything I believe. I’ll share one little quibble below the text of the email.

Here is my one quibble that I promised above to mention.

But finding no jobs because big corporations are hoarding profits instead of hiring and Washington D.C. just doesn’t seem to care.

I would not use the pejorative phrase “hoarding profits” to describe what businesses are doing.

If you understand Keynesian economics, what the businesses are doing is best described as holding onto their profits and not investing them in more capacity while there is a shortage of demand from customers. This is about the only rational plan of action for a company that wants to stay in business for the long term and maximize the return to owners.

The rationality of this individual corporate behavior is exactly the reason that, in a depression, the central government has to make up for the missing demand from the private sector. People are both customers, employees, and owners and must protect their own interests. The government is the only entity that has a universal responsibility to all its citizens’ interests and the strength to take the risk of supplying the missing demand. It is essential to note that only governments that are sovereign in their own currency have the ability to take the correct action without the help of an external entity that does have control over the currency.

The Daily Kos has the story Florida newspapers: Romney is in big, big trouble with pictures of the headlines from 7 Florida newspapers.

I was going to use the headline “Paul Ryan, The Gift That Keeps On Giving”, but I don’t want to gloat.  Besides, the Republicans may find a way to get out of this mess yet.

I like The Daily Kos sentence,

It’s a lose-lose situation with Team Obama applying relentless pressure, as they did again today, pushing how Ryan plans to kill Medicare, along with Bubbie and Zayde, on all the Sunday shows.

Maybe you need a last name like Greenberg to really appreciate this.

The article Are Liberals Being Unfair to Paul Ryan? is really kind of blah.

I get nervous when I start feeling too certain about something, and I feel pretty certain that Paul Ryan’s budget is a massive devolution of government responsibility masquerading as fiscal prudence. So I called Alan Viard, a tax and entitlement scholar with the American Enterprise Institute, to ask what was fair and not fair to criticize in the Ryan Roadmap. It was a wide-ranging conversation, but here’s an edited selection:

One response by Alan Viard does create a teachable moment.

But one response to [your claim] is that a strategy that focuses on cutting spending should give you better long-term growth than one that relies on tax increases.

In general and under normal circumstances, tax increases are not good for growth.  However, we are not talking in general and we are not in normal circumstances.  When the wealthy are withholding money that would help stimulate the economy and they are unfairly increasing their share of wealth, then tax increases on the wealthy would spur growth in the short term better than spending cuts would.

When the economy is roaring and inflation is rampant, then spending cuts would be good.  When private demand is insufficient to support full employment, our infrastructure is sorely in need of investment, and construction costs are low, then spending cuts are extremely bad.

No single policy with regard to the economy is always right at all times in all circumstances.  Idealogues of both right and left need to learn this lesson.  Reporters need to be smart enough to ask the right questions.

The Washington Post web site has the piece Economists to Romney campaign: That’s not what our research says.

The article starts with:

On Tuesday, the Romney campaign responded to the fire it’s taking from economic analysts by unleashing some artillery of their own. They released a paper by four decorated economists associated with the campaign — Glenn Hubbard, Greg Mankiw, John Taylor, and Kevin Hassett — that tried to lend some empirical backing to “The Romney Program for Economic Recovery, Growth, and Jobs.”

Hubbard, Mankiw, Taylor and Hassett make three main points: The first is that this recovery has been terribly slow, even by the standards of post-financial crisis recoveries. The second is that the Obama administration made a grievous error by relying on stimulus. And the third is that Romney’s tax and economic plans would usher in an era of rapid growth that would both be good for the country and provide the boost to revenues and employment necessary to make their numbers work out.

Each of these sections include supporting documents from independent economists. And so I contacted some of the named economists to ask what they thought of the Romney campaign’s interpretation of their research. In every case, they responded with a polite version of Marshall McLuhan’s famous riposte. The Romney campaign, they said, knows little of their work. Or of their policy proposals.

The article concludes with:

So even the studies that the Romney campaign’s economists handpicked to bolster their case don’t prove what the Romney campaign says they prove. And some of the key policy recommendations that flow from those studies are anathema to the Romney campaign. And in perhaps the key policy area highlighted by these studies, the Romney campaign doesn’t have a formal policy. If this is the best they can do in support of their economic plan, well, it’s not likely to quiet the critics.

Was the author of this article being generous when he called the Romney economists decorated?  Or was he thinking of something unpleasant with which they were decorated, or at least full of?

This is not the first time on this blog that I have published something about the economist Glenn Hubbard.  See for instance, What Is Republican Economist Glenn Hubbard Thinking Department?

Don’t “respected” institutions of higher learning have any standards for what is written by people they give the title of Professor or Department Head?