MSNBC Republican Debate In 45 Seconds

STEELERS FOOTBALL 09-11-11

STEELERS at RAVENS
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2011
KICKOFF – 1:00 P.M.

This Week: The Steelers kickoff the 2011 regular season when they take on the Baltimore Ravens on Sunday, September 11 at M&T Bank Stadium. Kickoff for the game is 1:00 p.m. on CBS.

Game Information:
Teams: Steelers at Ravens
Date: Sunday, September 11, 2011
Kickoff: 1:00 p.m. ET
Site: M&T Bank Stadium
TV: CBS (KDKA-TV Channel 2 in Pittsburgh)
Radio: WDVE-FM (102.5)/WBGG-AM (970 ESPN)
Bill Hillgrove, Tunch Ilkin and Craig Wolfley

Steelers Notes for Ravens Game - Click for PDF of Game Notes

Media Matters Daily Summary 09-08-11

Just Trying To Help: Right-Wing Media Advise Obama To Use Jobs Speech To Resign
Right-wing commentators have repeatedly claimed that the best thing President Obama could do during his September 8 speech to Congress is tender his resignation. Read More

Right Wing Makes Use Of NY Times' Shoddy Report On Green Jobs
A New York Times/Bay Citizen article cherry-picked statistics from a Brookings Institution report and reportedly misrepresented interviews to call the goal of creating 5 million green jobs in 10 years a "pipe dream." Conservative media have seized upon the Times article to claim that "even" the "left" agrees that investment in green jobs is a "a waste of money and time." Read More

Memo To Gretchen Carlson: Economists Say Cutting Payroll Tax Would Boost Employment, Economy
Fox & Friends co-host Gretchen Carlson suggested cutting payroll taxes has no effect on employment, claiming that she had spoken to "tons" of economists on the subject. In fact, economists agree that cutting the payroll tax would improve the employment situation and benefit the economy. Read More

Right-Wing Media Preview Obama's Jobs Speech By Pushing Myth That Stimulus Failed
In advance of President Obama's speech on job creation, right-wing media have falsely claimed that the stimulus failed. In fact, independent economists agree that the stimulus significantly raised employment and increased GDP, and experts say it is the winding down of stimulus spending that is causing a "fiscal drag" on the economy. Read More

Conservative Media Defend Anti-Consumer, Anti-Jobs AT&T/T-Mobile Merger
The right-wing has labeled the Department of Justice's decision to block the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile as politically motivated and anti-jobs. In fact, experts say the DOJ's decision was based on clear violations of antitrust laws and would both protect consumers and prevent significant job loss. Read More

Social Security Is Not A Ponzi Scheme
Right-wing media outlets have rushed to defend Gov. Rick Perry's false claim that Social Security is a "Ponzi scheme." In fact, experts agree that Social Security's "structure, logic, and mode of operation have nothing in common with Ponzi schemes." Read More

Ann Coulter To Sarah Palin: Fish Or Cut Bait With Your Doomed Presidential Run

You have to admire Sarah Palin's ability to antagonize her allies. A few weeks ago, Karl Rove (not a real ally but he'd probably shut up and play one if she had any real political chops) blasted her on the air for her attention-getting tactics in the 2012 GOP presidential primary. Now Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham strongly suggested it's time for her to get off the stage and let the electable candidates run.

Continue reading »

Media Matters Daily Summary 09-07-11

Fox's Crowley Is "Complete[ly]" Wrong About Balance Of Private, Public Employment Under Obama
Fox News contributor Monica Crowley said that "under this administration, you have had a complete overturning of the balance where the private sector has been the vast majority of American workers and American economic life." In fact, the private sector still employs "the vast majority of American workers" -- about five times more than does government. Read More

Unions Everywhere: Fox Bashes Infrastructure Spending As A "Union Bailout"
Fox News figures have repeatedly decried any spending on infrastructure as a "union bailout" and have suggested that infrastructure spending only benefits organized labor. But economists agree that infrastructure spending helps the economy as a whole and that the country's infrastructure badly needs repair and replacing. Read More

Fox Turns To Coulter To Decry Inflammatory Rhetoric
In Fox News' latest effort to demagogue James Hoffa's Labor Day speech urging supporters to vote out Republican members of Congress, Fox & Friends attempted to get Fox News contributor and right-wing pundit Ann Coulter to decry Hoffa for supposedly using inflammatory rhetoric. Coulter has previously fantasized about poisoning a Supreme Court justice, suggested that Bill Clinton should have been "impeach[ed] or assassinate[d]," and is currently hawking a book in which she paints her political opponents as "demonic." Read More

Romney’s Economic Plan Includes $6.6 Trillion Tax Cut For The Rich And Corporations

THINK PROGRESS

According to our new analysis, the economic plan offered yesterday by GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would deliver a massive $6.6 trillion tax cut that would primarily benefit the very wealthy and corporations. After accounting for the added interest costs that we’ll have to pay, the total cost of Romney’s plan grows to $7.8 trillion over the next 10 years.

Romney lays out several tax policies, all of which primarily benefit the super wealthy.

– Extend all the Bush tax cuts: While everyone got a tax cut from President Bush, the extremely wealthy got the lion’s share of the benefit. In 2010, fully half of the entire benefit from all of the Bush tax cuts flowed to the richest 5 percent of Americans. Extending them all (plus indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax to inflation) will cost nearly $4 trillion, not including interest costs.

– Eliminate capital gains taxes for middle income households: Capital gains tax rates are already extraordinarily low, but middle class Americans don’t enjoy much benefit from that. According to the Tax Policy Center, 67 percent of the entire benefit from lower capital gains tax rates goes to millionaires. Romney’s proposal won’t cost much because it won’t benefit many people.

– Cut corporate taxes: Romney’s proposal to cut the corporate rate by about a third would cost more than $900 billion. Needless to say, this cut would benefit mainly the very rich and corporations.

– Eliminate estate taxes: Right now, only the very biggest, richest fraction of a percent of all estates pay any tax at all. Eliminating even this paltry amount would cost about $175 billion, and would, of course, only benefit a few extremely wealthy heirs and heiresses.

These, along with some other tax changes suggested by Romney (repealing the Affordable Care Act, for example) would result in federal revenue averaging just 16.7 percent of gross domestic product. That’s far below the 20 percent of GDP that Romney says he wants to spend (though, of course, he neglected to lay out what he would cut to get there). It’s even below the levels suggested by House Republican Budget, which abolished Medicare as we know it, slashed Medicaid, and still didn’t balance the budget until 2040.

Taken together, Romney’s fiscal policies would be even worse than the House Budget. His spending levels are the same — though he provides few details as to what he would cut to accomplish this — but his revenue levels are even lower. The result would be continued unsustainable deficits and more debt. In fact, Romney’s plan would yield approximately $6.5 trillion in deficits from 2013 through 2021.

Given these facts, it is odd that Mitt Romney also supports an amendment to the U.S. constitution that would require balanced federal budgets. Romney’s plan doesn’t even come close to balancing the budget, instead resulting in unsustainable deficits and growing debt.

So, how does Romney deal with the fact that his own fiscal plan would be unconstitutional if President Romney got his way? He doesn’t. Either he hasn’t done the math, or he’s hoping you won’t notice his numbers don’t add up. Either way, it doesn’t reflect all that well on him or his economic “plan.”

After 9/11, Perry’s Texas Wasted Homeland Security Money On Sports Cars, Neckties, And A Hog Catcher

THINK PROGRESS

In the years since the Sept. 11 attacks, Texas has received at least $1.7 billion from the Department of Homeland Security, with little accountability over how lawmakers spent the money. Instead of using the federal DHS grants to strengthen the state’s security, officials often used the funds for personal extravagances like sports cars:

[A] Fort Worth Star-Telegram examination of thousands of purchases also found a a $21 fish tank in Seguin, a $24,000 latrine on wheels in Fort Worth, and a real pork project — a hog catcher in Liberty County.

Homeland Security paid for body bags, garbage bags and Ziploc bags.

If taxpayers had a say, they might have gone along with some purchases, such as $24,012 in body armor for the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority. But what about the two 2011 Camaros, each $30,884, used in Kleberg County border enforcement?

A report this year by the inspector general of the U.S. Homeland Security Department criticized the state’s management of Homeland Security grants from 2006 to 2008.

The audit concluded that Texas passed on Homeland Security funds to local governments “without adequately defined goals and objectives to strengthen preparedness and response to attacks or disasters.” Instead of monitoring how local officials were performing their responsibilities, the state asked them to rate their own performance. Predictably, without oversight from the state government, local officials used the money as they saw fit — which included expenses that had nothing to do with making citizens safer.

McClatchy reports that Gov. Rick Perry (R) appointed the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) in 2005 to hold the purse strings for Homeland Security funds. DPS, in turn, evaluated only about 60 recipients a year “with little or no emphasis on program performance.” Embarrassing incidents of waste ensued, like a $250,000 first-responder trailer that was parked and never used after it was purchased, or body armor that expired in 2003. Money was used for expensive and unproven technological gadgets, like an “eye ball camera” and “sprinkler head cameras,” as well as items like hats, neckties, glasses, drinking cups, dry erasers, and a tape measure with listening devices.

There were also no price controls or requirements that officials look for the best rates. The City of Alamo and El Paso county bought the same power binoculars for $220.03 and $369.99 a pair, respectively. Fort Worth used a grant to buy a $24,275 latrine while another city spent just $441 on a collapsible toilet. Liberty County used grants to buy $6,167 worth of animal crates and a hog catcher snare that documents say “will be used to aid in catching and controlling unruly swine at holding sites.”

McClatchy notes that while officials have been abusing DHS funds, “the Congressional Research Service has reported that likely terrorist targets, the nation’s half-million miles of oil and gas pipelines, have been left vulnerable.”

Tea Party group concerned Palin, others using movement for personal gain

THE HILL

Wary that some are joining the grassroots conservative movement merely to sell books and enhance their celebrity status, a Tea Party group is putting the heat on former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin to make her presidential plans clear.

In a Tuesday statement, Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots paints former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin as the prime example of that kind of behavior. The group, which consists of former military members, wants Palin to announce whether she will seek the White House or sit out the 2012 race.“If not we are at risk of having major Tea Party speeches and events used as political rallies for a selected candidate [versus] a citizen based movement that forces the legislative agenda and serves as a fundamental check to the current corrupt culture in Washington, D.C.,” the group said in the statement.

Palin continues to play coy about whether she will enter the 2012 presidential race.

Armed Forces Tea Party Patriots wants potential candidates to “declare their intentions” before tethering their public actions to the Tea Party movement.

“The Tea Party is not a movement to sell books or make news for the sake of attention; we have serious issues facing our country,” the group said. “We can't have a few selected national candidates at major events that may give the impression they are representative of all in the Tea Party as possible candidates.”

The organization notes Palin’s views closely align with those held by members of the conservative movement.

That means the former Alaska governor could become “an instrumental voice going forward helping guide the discussion should she decide not to run,” according to the Tea Party group's statement.

The group said it wants to “keep the playing field level and ensure all candidates declared and hinting are responsible to us in the Tea Party,” according to the statement. That way, “we can maintain our independence and validity as the largest national movement of citizen patriots working to make our country better and more constitutionally centered,” the organization said.............................