It’s not just that Republicans oppose the traditional fiscal remedies that western countries used from the Great Depression until about two years ago, they also want to kill successful jobs programs that already exist:
House Republicans rolled out their plan to fund disaster relief in Majority Leader Eric Cantor’s (R-Va.) district, but at the cost of almost half of remaining loans set aside to help the American auto industry.
[….]Democrats and an auto industry expert warn the funds Cantor picked to pay for disaster aid is currently supporting a successful program that has pulled manufacturing jobs back from other countries and helped keep the industry alive around the eastern Midwest. Taking the money away would jeopardize that program.
[….]One of the direct results was that Ford quit manufacturing their Ford Focus in Mexico.“All of the Focus production is now here in Michigan,” Hill said. “Nissan is building their Leaf in Tennessee. I don’t think that program would’ve happened in the United States if it weren’t for this type of money.”
This is a program that literally on-shored jobs. Eric Cantor wants to end it to get money for a disaster that occurred in his own district. To be clear, I support the disaster spending, but stealing the money for it from an unusually successful jobs program is simply insane.
arguingwithsignposts
can we punch him in the neck?
General Stuck
Oh, those are just yankee union gimme jobs, not real patriotic minimum wage jobs like Perry brought to Texas.
Big Baby DougJ
@General Stuck:
Exactly.
You’re really on it lately Stuck, lots of comments that nail things.
c u n d gulag
If I was Cantor, I’d start to get worried.
Isn’t he the #3 al QaedaRepublican economic terrorist after McConnel and Boehner?
As I recall, being #3 isn’t exactly a great prescription for a long life.
Start looking behind you, asshole!
Also, too – and they accused US of being treasonous traitors because we didn’t support ‘George and Dick’s Less Than Excellent Middle East Adventures’?
We are now rapidly on our way to being a Third World Banana Republic, thanks to banana’s Republicans!
General Stuck
@Big Baby DougJ:
Thank you kind sir!
The Dangerman
Insane? Not at all; they are actively trying to tank the economy (or, at least, not allow it to recover). How is this any different?
Somebody should be dusting off the lawbooks on treason.
schrodinger's cat
@Big Baby DougJ: Did you see Bobo’s NYT column, is more obnoxious and full of untruths than the usual. Shorter Bobo: Economy is too complex lets do nothing, oh and the New Deal did not end the Great Depression, it is just a lie that Democrats cling to.
SenyorDave
The thing to remember is that in Cantor’s mind, these are not real jobs, they are union jobs.
Bobby
Insane is what they do. They do it better than anybody. They know no one will hold them accountable. Especially the press.
Trinity
…unless you are an ultra-partisan sociopath.
Just sayin’.
ppcli
@schrodinger’s cat:
First, the New Deal was a huge factor in pulling out of the great depression, of course, according to every economist except the handful Brooks might want to cherry pick. But even if it wasn’t it was crucial for tens of millions of Americans to avoid desperate, starvation-level poverty during a depression that lasted nearly a decade. Apparently Brooks doesn’t believe that this was a good thing.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Fixt.
As other have pointed out, destroying jobs outside his own district is a feature, not a bug, from Cantor’s point of view, so long as Obama is in the WH. As this point I think we can safely assume that is the default position of every Republican in Congress, in the absence of evidence proving otherwise.
rikryah
this is definitely what they do.
sociopath.
The Ancient Randonneur
My suggestion is to cut the Defense funding for whatever contractor Cantor has in his district. IOW, whatever widgets are built by the defense contractor–THAT program should be cut. (I’m only half joking here.)
ppcli
You could also raise taxes some fraction of a decimal point to pay for this wildly successful jobs program but, Cantor assures us, that would cost jobs.
Dennis SGMM
The Republicans are going overboard in their efforts to trash every last thing that might help our economy to recover. It’s not as if we’re in the middle of an expanding job market and home sales remain moribund. Moves like this one seem more like pure spite than any sort of thought-through tactic. Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Republicans win big in 2012. Then what? They’ll inherit and economy that they purposefully derailed and, as they’re so fond of braying, they’ll own it. They’ll spend plenty of time talking about “the Obama recession” and that will create no jobs. The words “hoist with his own petard” come to mind.
arguingwithsignposts
@ppcli:
This. This. Motherfucking This. We’re all little data points to economists. I’d love if they were the first to lose their jobs. Might lead to them being more accurate in their estimates.
ppcli
@The Ancient Randonneur: Well, I’ll agree with what you said, and I’m not joking at all. Until there is a genuine risk to refusing to cooperate in good faith, Cantor will continue to do it.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Bobby: It’s not actually insane if he keeps getting away with it. He’s a toddler with a bad parent. He steals from the cookie jar and the parents blame all the kids, even though they watched him do it.
Frankensteinbeck
Semi-OT, I am suddenly sanguine about Gohmert Pyle’s asinine stunt. Thinking about how Obama campaigns, this is going to become ‘Republicans have a jobs plan! Here it is: Corporations pay no taxes. That’s it. That’s their whole jobs plan, making sure you pay for everything and rich corporations pay nothing.’. So, thanks Gohmert for making the official Republican position something that sounds so bad!
ppcli
@Frankensteinbeck: Oooh! Good one. I like it. Make it a competing battle of “American Jobs Acts”.
eemom
oh dear, I do so wish that Eric Cantor would die a horrible death in a great big blazing fire. That could not be put out because of cuts to firefighting services. That started from a couple of cigarettes he and Ken Cuccinelli lit up after a session of fast hot sex under Cantor’s desk. And that I could watch on teevee as the flames engulfed them…
What? Why are you all looking at me that way?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Dennis SGMM:
If the GOP gains control of the WH in 2013 they will immediately pivot to passing a massive stimulus bill and deficits be dammed. After all, Reagan proved that deficts don’t matter. And it won’t matter if the Dems control one or both branches of Congress: the Dems will vote in favor of it because the Dems will care more about helping their constituents than they will about the hypocrisy of it all. When Dems pass a stimulus, stimulus = job killing evil. When the GOP passes a stimulus, stimulus = Morning In America. When the GOP and Dems pass a stimulus together, the GOP gets all the credit for the jobs created and the Dems get the resulting deficit hung around their neck like an anvil.
Mino
@Frankensteinbeck: You nailed it.
Mino
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: This. And I pray their credibility is so shot with voters that this possibility doesn’t occur to them.
But they still have th problem of demand. The minimun wage jobs they really want to create won’t create demand much.
Frankensteinbeck
Mino and ppcli:
It’s how he campaigns. He doesn’t do ‘angry’, but he does ‘politely snide’ like a motherfucker.
Judas Escargot
@Dennis SGMM:
If they get the trifecta, the GOP-controlled Senate nixes the filibuster in its first session. Then we get at least two years of rape and pillage that hasn’t been seen on US soil since the 1860s. ACA? Repealed (with nothing to replace it, of course). Unions? Outlawed. Workers rights? Abolished. Civil rights? Roe v. Wade? The Voting act? All overturned. FEMA? EPA? HUD? Disbanded. And that’s just by the summer recess in 2013.
They won’t rest until every state in the union is as shitty and backward as Alabama or Texas. As a bonus, we’ll get at least two more Opus Dei ultracons on the SCOTUS, just to make sure none of the damage gets reversed in our lifetimes.
Uplifting, isn’t it?
Comrade Dread
Well, of course not. Because it magically changed us all from a nation of rugged individualists who would rather see our families starve than take charity or government money and our retirement plan consisted of dropping dead of a heart attack or the flu at 40, into a bunch of liberal pantywaists who used money we stole from productive citizens to fund the opulent lifestyles you find in many rural communities and urban ghettos.
kwAwk
This is why I am beginning to not support disaster relief. At some point we need to hit these southern goons back where it really hurts them, and that is disaster relief.
Davis X. Machina
@Mino: Defense industries generally pay well. They’ll start a war….
Big Baby DougJ
@schrodinger’s cat:
What I don’t get is this…why would anyone listen to Bobo about economics? The guy is quantitatively illiterate.
Samara Morgan
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: i think they cant win the WH.
Obama 46 Perry 39 (rasmussen)
Ben Cisco
In a sane country, Can’tor would be taken down by one of his own for the good of the country.
__
As it is now, he’ll be celebrated for it.
__
I rather actively dislike this man.
Davis X. Machina
@Judas Escargot: Not as uplifting as The Message I Shall Send, for it is A Righteous Message….
Dennis SGMM
@Judas Escargot:
‘Fraid so. I’m whiling away the time before I start drinking by trying to estimate, in seconds, how long it will take a Repub Congress to start howling “Upperdown vote!” I figure that it will be a close tie with bombing Iran.
kindness
Canter is really continuing his 2 1/3 level chess (he’s not up to the 11th dimensional chess Obama is). Canter WANTS to kill jobs here in the US so as to increase Republicans chances on winning elections in 2012.
That is all they care about. Literally (well, that and fluffing their Sugar Daddy gazillionaires)
Sasha
If reallocating money away from the auto industry means that unemployment increases and Obama becomes more vulnerable in the Midwest it’s not insanity for Cantor, it’s just sociopathy.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Judas Escargot:
That won’t happen because (A) they don’t need to, Blue Dog Dems in the Senate will go along with most of what the GOP wants anyway, and (2) as long as the GOP is substantially more ruthless than the Dems at using procedural tricks in the Senate to bring the business of the nation to a grinding halt, the filibuster, holds, etc. are a more valuable tool for blocking progressive legislation during periods of Dem control than they are harmful to passing the GOP’s program. Keeping them in place keeps the Senate as something like a one-way ratchet set to ‘conservative’. I have a hard time seeing them giving up that advantage.
Nemesis
Im just really, really tired of these fuckers like canker.
EconWatcher
@Judas Escargot:
You forgot the scariest thing of all: a thoroughly politicized DOJ, using the powers of its criminal division, heavily staffed with lawyers from Regent University and the like, to go after the wingnut targets of the moment.
This was really the single most chilling trend of the last administraiton, although it was nipped before too much daamge was done.
Imagine if that transformation was taken much further: Smeared by innuendo on Fox News Monday, then indictments by Friday.
Sasha
@Judas Escargot:
And lets not forget all the open judicial positions that the GOP has blocked Obama from filling. Assuming a GOP President and Senate, they can alter the judicial landscape for literally generations.
daveNYC
@Judas Escargot: Yep. If the current GOP gets its hands on all the reins of power, then it might well be game over. They’re quite capable of knocking us back into the stone age, plus they’re more than willing to shred voting rights in order to make sure they stay in power.
eemom
can y’all back off the doomsday scenarios just a tad? It’s Friday, ferfuxsake.
daveNYC
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I disagree. I think what the current crop of GOP office holders want is too much for even the Blue Dogs. Especially since the GOPers have decided that any compromise over anything anywhere is the worst thing ever.
I think the fillibuster goes out the window the first week because the Blue Dogs won’t go along with the full crazy, and the Tea Baggers have zero patience.
EconWatcher
@eemom:
Unfortunately, we live in interesting times.
I don’t think our basic structures could survive Rick Perry as President, egged on by a Tea Party Congress.
They don’t play by the rules, they can’t be appeased, and they seem bent on burning everything to the ground.
Villago Delenda Est
@ppcli:
Even if the New Deal, by its lonesome, did not end the Great Depression, massive government spending on a deficit basis (it’s called WORLD WAR II) did.
No one seems to recall that, amazingly…
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Samara Morgan:
If that poll were from somebody other than those ratfuckers at Rasmussen (who run what are damm close to being push polls right up until just before each election and then miraculously revert to the mean just in time to recover their reputation for accuracy, rinse lather repeat) then I would be very, very worried. Because the polling numbers for a challenger reflect a lack of name recognition and tend to be a floor rather than a ceiling, especially this far out from the actual election, whereas the numbers of a well known incumbent reflect their actual support. Obama needs to poll about 50 percent against poorly known GOP candidates or he is in trouble.
But having said that, in this case forget it Jake, it’s Rasmussen town.
twiffer
why do i feel like the republican plan to patch a flat tire would be to sell the car?
jacy
@twiffer:
Not with the current crop of Republicans: their plan would be to set fire to the car, preferably after filling the trunk with children and poor people, and then complain about how children and poor people were acting like irresponsible leeches by sitting around in the trunk of a burning car.
Valenciennes
I just love the lack of outrage at being forced to choose between two vitally important government services in the first place. We’re so doomed.
bemused
@ppcli:
Brooks needs to face a mob of seniors who lived through the Great Depression willing and able to set him straight, with canes and walkers if necessary.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@daveNYC:
The House GOP and Senate GOP are not the same beast because of their different election cycles. Teabaggers took over the House GOP no question, and we haven’t seen a bunch like this in Congress since 1860. The Senate is a different matter, it takes 6 years to turn over the Senate and the teabaggers lost all of their Senate races except in KY, so they don’t even have a 2 year head start on that project just yet. They may be able to intimidate the GOP Senators with the threat of what will happen in the next election cycle but Senators are notorious over the course of US political history for resisting that sort of pressure because whatever people are riled up about today tends to be yesterday’s news 2, 4 or 6 years down the line and most Senators are very well aware of that.
Cain
@Dennis SGMM:
It is called short term thinking. Once you tank everything, and they gloriously come into power then what? They can spend all their time blaming the previous administration but eventually they need to come up with results. If you already cut everything to the bone, and all you have is military complex spending and low taxes and there are still no jobs.. what next?
I know. perhaps they’ll build coliseums or something and then have endless games. Like the olympics.. and then Perry will bring his death row inmates to fight for their freedom against whatever… TO THE DEATH!
Dennis SGMM
@EconWatcher:
They will burn everything to the ground until they are in power. They’ll blame the Democrats for the cinders and explain to the rest of us how grateful we should be for being able to live under blue plastic tarps. They will then trumpet the idea that with a few more tax cuts we could be living under plastic tarps in our choice of four colors.
Judas Escargot
@Cain:
The teabaggers are a murder of crows: They eye that last pile of seed corn, and want to have one last feast before Winter comes.
They don’t much care what happens afterwards. The old ones will be dead. The rich ones will just fly off and feed elsewhere.
Don
Because that sort of talk is simply NOT acceptable in left-wing circles.
Seriously, what were you thinking when you wrote about tobacco use as if it was okay???
Tone In DC
That Rasmussen poll makes me smile, actually. It’s not as if Perry does not have name recognition. He’s been on TV for a month or so, during the debates and prior. A decent amount of the country knows who he is by now.
Given the current economy and unemployment, seeing Obama at 46-47% right now is not cause for panic. After a few more weeks of “Pass the jobs bill” and more and worse GOP obstruction, we have to hope the public can see (somewhat) who is the problem.
28 Percent
How much money does Cantor think is needed for disaster recovery in his district? I live in his district – about 10 days ago I drove to DC through Mineral, which was the epicenter of the earthquake, and the damage just wasn’t that bad. There were a couple old cement pour buildings that had trouble, and the tops of some chimneys were down, but if the damage in toto was more than a couple of million, I’d be shocked. And the hurricane didn’t do much of anything beyond knock some loose branches into power lines. I’ve heard from a friend-of-a-friend that their next-door neighbor had a tree come down on their house, but it’s not exactly Katrina here. Honestly, tropical storm Gaston did far worse damage because it flooded everything.
Seriously, the disaster relief here could be handled by passing a hat around the Senate dining room. What gives?
xian
@Cain:
War
Nathanael
“And what else is new?” This is what I expect from Republicans. Well, actually, the disaster relief is a bit of a surprise. I’d be looking to see if it’s really disaster relief, because what very rich corporations would benefit from that?
Nathanael
@xian: War, yeah, but the US seem to lose its wars lately…. that particular strategy only works if you actually know how to win wars….
Li
No, loosing wars nets far more money for those people who are really in charge than winning them. Winning takes two to four years at most, while you can loose, essentially, forever.
The fact is that the modern US military has been expertly designed to be the best at one thing; loosing wars as slowly as possible, while spending as much money as possible.
For instance: do you know how many mission hours the F-22 has flown so far? Zero. Its life support system poisons the pilots. Which is great for Lockheed Martin, because now we get to pay them more money to fix the damn thing.