As this chart demonstrates, only 1.9 percent of tax filers with small business income in 2009 fell in the top 2 income brackets, those affected by the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.
Let's say that again. Of all the small business income filers in 2009, only 1.9 percent were in the top two tiers which would be hit by the Obama tax plan.
--David Kurtz
As auto blog Jalopnik reports, the plant recently held a ceremony to welcome back the new workers to begin production of the Ecotec engines. Attending the ceremony were three local Republican legislators, Sens. Bob Corker, Lamar Alexander, and Rep. Marsha Blackburn. Ironically, all three of these lawmakers opposed the plans to save General Motors and other U.S. auto companies. This didn’t stop Corker from taking credit for the federal rescue, anyway. At the event he claimed he “contributed to strengthening the auto industry in this country.” Jalopnik reports that “irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker”:
Happy days came back Friday to Spring Hill, Tenn., when General Motors announced it would rehire 483 laid-off workers to build four-cylinder engines. On hand to cheer the news: Three Republican lawmakers who opposed the bailout that saved GM.
As part of its $50 billion bankruptcy arranged by the Obama administration, GM shuttered the Spring Hill plant’s assembly line last year, shedding 2,000 jobs in the process, but kept building four-cylinder engines. The new plan calls for $483 million in spending to upgrade the engine line, pending a deal on state incentives.
The irony of the Republican lawmakers’ presence wasn’t lost on the workers who attended the ceremony; they booed Tennessee Republican Bob Corker, and one UAW official made clear from the stage that the union still remembered which politicians had voted to rescue Wall Street but opposed an auto industry bailout.
Jalopnik goes on to note that when the auto industry rescue was being negotiated, Corker was speaking very differently about federal efforts to revive GM. At the time, Corker said that the Obama administration “has decided they know better than our courts and our free market process how to deal with these companies. … This is a major power grab.”
With his recent criticisms of Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell on Fox News, Karl Rove kicked up a controversy. His critique of O'Donnell was granular and well-informed. Having worked with Karl for a number of years, I know that he is nothing if not detail-oriented. Rove has taken O'Donnell to task for her checkered financial past, her history of litigiousness and paranoia, her misleading statements about her educational background. These facts may not be disqualifying for office, but they indicate a flawed, inexperienced, perennial candidate on the model of Alan Keyes.
While Rove's critique was tough, the reaction in parts of the conservative blogosphere has been unhinged. Michelle Malkin wrote that it "might as well have been Olbermann on MSNBC." Mark Levin pronounced Rove at "war against the Tea Party movement and conservatives." "In terms of the conservative movement," wrote Dan Riehl, "we should not simply ignore him, but proactively work to undermine Rove in whatever ways we can, given his obvious willingness to undermine us."
This reaction is revealing -- and disturbing -- for a number of reasons.
First, it shows how some conservatives view the business of political commentary. Rove obviously has strong views on O'Donnell, based on personal experience with the candidate. But deviations from the party line are not permitted. It is not enough to dispute Rove's critique; Rove himself must be punished. The message is clear: The facts do not matter. Politics is war carried on by other means. Anyone who doesn't consistently take one side is a traitor.
This attitude can be found on right and left. But a serious commentator cannot think this way. He owes his readers or viewers his best judgment -- which means he cannot simply be a tool of someone else's ideological agenda. Some conservatives have adopted the Bolshevik approach to information and the media: Every personal feeling, every independent thought, every inconvenient fact, must be subordinated to the party line -- the Tea Party line.
Second, the ferocity of this criticism indicates a growing arrogance. Tea Party purists, on the Internet and elsewhere, clearly believe their ascendance makes other elements of the conservative movement unnecessary. But victory in a Republican primary electorate of 60,000 is Delaware does not make the Tea Party movement predominant in the Republican Party, or even in the conservative movement. If Tea Party activists believe they can win in a political coalition so pure that it doesn't include strong, mainstream conservatives such as Karl Rove, they are delusional. And they are hurting their own cause.
Third, some conservatives seem to display special venom for those who are "compromised" by the experience of actually winning and governing. Rove, according to Malkin, is an "establishment Beltway strategist." Actually, he is a former high-level policy aid to the president of the United States and the primary author of two presidential victories. This does not make him always right. But it means he has had responsibilities bigger than running a Web site. This is an advantage for a commentator, not a drawback.
In Tea Party theory, inexperience is itself seen as a kind of qualification. People like O'Donnell are actually preferable to people like Rove, because they haven't been tainted by public trust or actual achievement. This is the attitude of the adolescent -- the belief that the world began on their thirteenth birthday. It is also a sign of childish political thought.
Joe Miller isn't moving to the middle following his nomination as Alaska Republican candidate for Senate.
Appearing on Fox News Sunday, the Tea Party favorite stuck to his position that unemployment benefits aren't constitutional.
"Why are unemployment benefits unconstitutional?" Fox News' Chris Wallace asked Miller.
"The Constitution provides enumerated powers," answered Miller. "I guess my challenge is to anybody that asks, show me the enumerated power. And then look at the 10th Amendment that says if it's not done in the Constitution, it's a power that belongs to the state and the people."
Miller said, "I think we as a people need to stop being disingenuous about what the Constitution provides for. It does not provide for this all-encompassing power that we've seen exercised for last several decades."..............................
MAYBE THEY'LL WORK ON 'TEA PARTY UNITY' SOME OTHER TIME....
Way back in February, a right-wing group called Tea Party Nation organized its first national event, hosting a convention in Nashville. It wasn't especially well attended -- despite paying former half-term Gov. Sarah Palin (R) a reported $100,000, only about 600 people showed up.
So, organizers decided to give it another shot, scheduling the National Tea Party Unity convention for July. Just two weeks before its kickoff, organizers announced that the Unity event had been postponed until October 14.
Of course, that's less than a month away. How's the event shaping up? As Raven Brooks discovered, it's not.
[M]y first stop was a Google search to find their web site. I found it, but this link should speak for itself. Check out nationalteapartyconvention.com. Oh you got a page not found error? Well there's nothing wrong with your browser, the site doesn't exist anymore. And there's absolutely zero media or blog coverage of the event since they announced the dates were changing. Not really what you'd expect for an event featuring Sharron Angle, Lou Dobbs, Joseph Farah, and Andrew Breitbart is it?
Well it gets better. I wanted to make sure the convention really was canceled and they weren't just having web issues or neglected to do any PR for their event. So I put in a call to the Mirage hotel and asked if I could book a room in their block for the event. Turns out the room block had been canceled and the Mirage had no record of the event.
In other words, it's another bust. Tea Party Nation has now tried three times to organize a national convention for activists, and it's failed three times.
I think the larger lesson here is that there is such a thing as too many gatherings. This so-called "movement" has no formal leadership, structure, agenda, or membership -- which in turn makes organizing kind of tricky -- but it keeps scheduling event after event. Some are billed as Tea Party rallies, while others are just rallies for Tea Partiers, but looking back over the last 17 months or so, the number of get-togethers intended to be national in scope has to be well over a dozen.
Is it any wonder that gathering fatigue has set in? I've never even heard of a movement trying to organize so many national events in such close proximity to one another, and actually expecting folks to show up.
