The 2012 Democratic Convention

 

 

 

 

Photo's and images courtesy of "Google Images".

by Felicity Blaze Noodleman

 

Going through Google Images trying to find a good photo of the Democratic convention for this article on day two of the coverage in Charlotte, N. Carolina I am finding so many pic.’s of Bill Clinton.  Is he running again?  I’m starting to think X Presidents should be seen and not heard!  Where is the Obama coverage?  Well maybe I’ll find something tomorrow. 

 

 From the Convention floor.

 

When I was watching television the other night I saw a campaign ad to reelect President Obama only the president was not pictured speaking; it was President Bill Clinton.  Hey wait;  Is this 1992 again?  President Obama seems to need a surrogate or handler to speak on his behalf to get reelected?  If only he had done a better job, he could have run as his own man.  Oh please; no more Bill Clinton!

 

President Clinton makes the pitch, “We need to keep going with President Obama’s economic plan”.  Well if the Obama plan was working wouldn’t we know it without being told that it was working?   Also; this ad asks us to assume that Clinton was a great President, but in reality he was the second President to ever be impeached by Congress and there were a few other problems with the Clinton Presidency.  Problems such as allowing issues in the Middle East to go unchecked.  Attacks on US embassy’s and military installations such as the USS Cole which were not addressed.  Below is an article from "Forbes" on the Clinton Taxes:

The Dangerous Myth

About The Bill Clinton Tax Increase

by Charles Kadlec, Contributor

I cover economic/political issues with liberty as my polar star.

"The real lesson of the Clinton Presidency is the way back to prosperity lies not through increased taxes on “the rich,” but through tax and regulatory reform and a return to a rules based monetary policy that produces a strong and stable dollar".

One of the most dangerous myths that has infected the current debate over the direction of tax policy is the oft repeated claim that the tax increases under President Bill Clinton led to the boom of the 1990s. In their Wall Street Journal Op-Ed last Friday, for example, Clinton campaign manager James Carville and Democratic pollster and Clinton advisor Stanley Greenberg write the increase in the top tax rate to 39.6% “produced the one period of shared prosperity in this past era (since 1980).”

While this myth is now a central part of liberal Democratic folklore, it is contradicted by the political disaster and poor economic results that followed the tax increase. The real lesson of the Clinton Presidency is the way back to prosperity lies not through increased taxes on “the rich,” but through tax and regulatory reform and a return to a rules based monetary policy that produces a strong and stable dollar.

The 1993 Clinton tax increase raised the top two income tax rates to 36% and 39.6%, with the top rate hitting joint returns with incomes above $250,000 ($400,000 in 2012 dollars). In addition, it removed the cap on the 2.9% Medicare payroll tax, raised the corporate tax rate to 35% from 34%, increased the taxable portion of Social Security benefits, and imposed a 4.3 cent per gallon increase in transportation fuel taxes.

If these tax increases were good for the middle class, then they should have been popular. Yet, in the 1994 elections, the Democratic Party suffered historic losses. Even though Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell had declared the unpopular HillaryCare dead in September of that year, the Republican Party gained 54 seats in the House and 8 seats in the Senate to win control of both the House and the Senate for the first time since 1952.

Second, Messrs. Carville and Greenberg are contradicted by their former boss. Speaking at a fund raiser in 1995, President Clinton said: ”Probably there are people in this room still mad at me at that budget because you think I raised your taxes too much. It might surprise you to know that I think I raised them too much, too.”

During the first four years of his Presidency, real GDP growth average 3.2%, respectable relative to today’s economy, but disappointing coming as it did following just one year of recovery from the 1991 recession, the end of the Cold War and the reduction in consumer price inflation below 3% for the first time (with the single exception of 1986) since 1965.

For example, it was a half a percentage point slower than under Reagan during the four years following the first year of the recovery from the 1982 recession.

Employment growth was a respectable 2 million a year. But real hourly wages continued to stagnate, rising only 2 cents to 7.43 an hour in 1996 from $7.41 in 1992. No real gains for the middle class there.

Federal government receipts increased an average of $90 billion a year while the annual increase in federal spending was constrained to $45 billion. That led to a $183 billion, four-year reduction in the budget deficit to $107 billion in 1996.

However, with his masterful 1995 flip-flop on taxes, President Clinton took the first step toward a successful campaign for re-election and a shift in policy that produced the economic boom that occurred during his second term.

• Welfare reform, which he signed in the summer of 1996, led to a massive reduction in the effective tax rates on the poor by ameliorating the rapid phase out of benefits associated with going to work.


• The phased reduction in tariff and non-tariff barriers between the U.S., Mexico and Canada under the North American Free Trade Agreement continued, leading to increased trade.


• In 1997, Clinton signed a reduction in the (audible liberal gasp) capital gains tax rate to 20% from 28%.


• The 1997 tax cuts also included a phased in increase in the death tax exemption to $1 million from $600,000, and established Roth IRAs and increased the limits for deductible IRAs.


• Annual growth in federal spending was kept to below 3%, or $57 billion.


• The Clinton Administration also maintained its policy of a strong and stable dollar. Over his entire second term, consumer price inflation averaged only 2.4% a year.

 

The boom was on. Between the end of 1996 and the end of 2000:

• Economic growth accelerated a full percentage point to 4.2% a year.
• Employment growth nudged higher, to 2.1 million jobs per year as the unemployment rate fell to 4.0% from 5.4%.
• As the tax rate on capital gains came down, real wages made their biggest advance since the implementation of the Reagan tax rate reductions in the mid 1980s. Real average hourly earnings were (in 1982 dollars) $7.43 in 1996, $7.55 in 1997, $7.75 in 1998, $7.86 in 1999, and $7.89 in 2000.
• Millions of Americans shared in the prosperity as the value of their 401(k)s climbed along with the stock market, which saw the price of the S&P 500 index rise 78%.
• Revenue growth accelerated an astounding 59%, increasing on average $143 billion a year. Combined with continued restraint on government spending, that produced a $198 billion budget surplus in 2000.

Shared prosperity indeed! But one created not by raising tax rates on high income but not yet rich middle class families, and certainly not by raising the capital gains tax rate or by imposing the equivalent of the Buffett rule, a new alternative minimum tax of 30% on incomes over $1 million, nor by massively increasing federal spending.

Rather, it was a prosperity produced by freeing America’s poor from a punitive welfare system, lowering tariffs, reducing tax rates on the creators of wealth, limiting the growth of federal government expenditures, and providing a strong and stable dollar to businesses and families in America and throughout the world.

A shared prosperity can be achieved again. But to do so, the American people will have to overcome the envy feeding myth perpetrated by President Barack Obama and the spin-masters and leadership of the Democratic Party that raising tax rates on high incomes will somehow lead to more job creation, more opportunity and increased prosperity and security for the middle-class.

Forbes

 

Another big issue In the Clinton ad was the “regulation” statement.  Government regulation and taxes have run so much industry out of this country.  I remember writing to President Clinton about the country loosing so many jobs and how it was going to adversely affect the nation and how it would create a huge tax deficit not to mention all the pay checks for American workers.  I really believe that Democrats just don’t care about Americans! 

 

 

 



Hey; I've been Impeached for perjury and after all -  two liars are better than one!

 

 

There used to be a thriving electronics and home appliance which built everything from televisions to blenders in our country.  There used to be a thriving steel industry in this country to supply automobiles manufactures and all the other industry in this country.  NOW WE ARE THE LARGEST DEBTOR NATION IN THE WORLD! 

 

General Motors has cut three major brands from their company, Pontiac, Oldsmobile and Saturn.  Buicks and Chevrolets are now built in China because regulation and taxes have made it cheaper.  We used to have a fourth automobile company in the United States known as “American Motors” which was driven out of business in the 1970’s by government regulation and taxes.   All of this has happened because of government regulation and taxation under the Democrats.  These were all good paying American jobs with benefit packages that have been driven out of the country by the Democrats with their regulations and taxes.


 

The "Presidential Approval Tracker" from "USA Today". See how the

President is below the 50% rating for a large part of his first term.

Regulation and taxes have made it cheaper for foreign competition to flood the US market with cheap foreign products which do not have any government regulation nor do these companies pay the same employee wages and benefits which the American workers fought for over decades of collective bargaining.

 

The Democrats have destroyed American industry.  This last decade the Democrats have severely crippled American housing values buy forcing home lenders to make loans to buyers who could not qualify for home loans.  As we all know this led to the so called collapse of the housing bubble.  If you have ever lost a job due to a factory closing, company moving overseas, lost a home or had your home value toppled, the Democrats are the most likely for the blame.  Their house of cards has completely fallen down. 

 

World socialism, the Russians and European Socialists must be
so proud of the American Democratic party!

 

So what is it with the Democrats?  What are they going to destroy next?  If we have to hear anything from the X President, could he please explain how  he, Ted Kennedy, Barny Frank, Chris Dodd, Barrack Obama, Joe Biden and the rest of the Democrats got it so wrong and brought down the whole economy by selling houses to people who could not afford them!

 

Finally;  what have the Democrats been doing for Sr.’s lately?  Have they completely forgotten about Social Security and Medicare?  It would appear so.  Under a Congress with Democrats in charge they have denied Sr.’s their cost of living increases twice.  Oh yea, and there is the $716 Billion President Obama is trying to take from Medicare to fund his “Obama Care” health coverage.



The Noodleman Group has put together some headlines from the convention with their respective contributors from the convention below:

Five Takeaways From The Last Night

Of The Democratic Convention

by Eyder Peralta  npr

If you missed the last night of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., we live blogged it here.

But if you want a quick review, we've compiled five things that struck us about the night:

Times Have Changed, Obama Has Changed, Hope Has Changed: The Obama we saw on Thursday was a more sober and realistic man than the one we saw in 2008, or for that matter than the one we saw in 2004, when he delivered a lyrical ode to American unity.

The Obama we saw today didn't run from the promises of hope and change central to his previous campaign. But he presented a tempered, more serious version of it, one seen through the prism of a man at the tail end of his first term as president. In fact, Obama hardly smiled. He said:

"I recognize that times have changed since I first spoke to this convention. The times have changed — and so have I.

"I'm no longer just a candidate. I'm the President. I know what it means to send young Americans into battle, for I have held in my arms the mothers and fathers of those who didn't return. I've shared the pain of families who've lost their homes, and the frustration of workers who've lost their jobs. If the critics are right that I've made all my decisions based on polls, then I must not be very good at reading them. And while I'm proud of what we've achieved together, I'm far more mindful of my own failings, knowing exactly what Lincoln meant when he said, 'I have been driven to my knees many times by the overwhelming conviction that I had no place else to go.'

"But as I stand here tonight, I have never been more hopeful about America. Not because I think I have all the answers. Not because I'm naïve about the magnitude of our challenges.

"I'm hopeful because of you."

This Was An Obama Love Fest: This wasn't a convention for politicians who wanted to talk about their own accomplishments. In that way, it was very different from the Republican National Convention. It was a convention that embraced President Obama and his policies with a great, big bear hug.

Every speaker, every video, every message said the same thing: President Obama is the man for the job.

Biden Embraced His Tempered Role: Vice President Biden was given a less-than-ideal speaking spot in this convention. Normally, the vice president speaks during prime time, on a different day from the president.

Biden gave up his Wednesday spot in favor of former President Bill Clinton. And tonight he spoke in the 9 p.m. hour. [Correction at 11:30 a.m., Sept. 7: Earlier, we mistakenly said the vice president gave up a Thursday speaking slot. It was a Wednesday slot that he ceded to former President Clinton. We've fixed the mistake.]

The speech he gave was restrained. He certainly sprinkled in some of his typical humor. But mostly that came when he talked about Mitt Romney. When he spoke about Obama, he was very serious; he slowed down his cadence and at times, he almost whispered.

That said, as the man closest to the president's decisions, he served as a character witness.

"Bravery," he said, "resides in the heart of Barack Obama."

The Democrats Were Disciplined With Their Message, Except When They Weren't: This convention was preceded by a big whoops, when Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley was asked whether Americans were better off than they were four years ago. He said, "No."

But after that the Democrats mostly stayed on message. There was the platform dust-up. But day after day, speaker after speaker, Democrats delivered the same talking points about "building the economy from the middle out and not from the top down." And woman after woman said that under Obama, "being a woman is no longer a pre-existing condition."

And, Thursday, Sen. John Kerry delivered the answer Democrats most likely hoped O'Malley had given on Sunday. He said:

"President Obama kept his promises. He promised to end the war in Iraq — and he has — and our heroes have come home. He promised to end the war in Afghanistan responsibly — and he is — and our heroes there are coming home. He promised to focus like a laser on al-Qaeda — and he has — our forces have eliminated more of its leadership in the last three years than in all the eight years that came before. And after more than ten years without justice for thousands of Americans murdered on 9/11, after Mitt Romney said it would be 'naive' to go into Pakistan to pursue the terrorists, it took President Obama, against the advice of many, to give that order to finally rid this earth of Osama bin Laden. Ask Osama bin Laden if he is better off now than he was four years ago."

The Next Big Thing: We're yet to see what the polling repercussions of these back-to-back conventions will be.

But the next big duel will be mano a mano, when Obama and Romney take the stage during the three scheduled debates.

Debates were seen as a weak spot for Romney. But during the GOP primaries, he honed his skills. Still, he spent this week preparing for his debate against Obama.

The first debate is Oct. 3 at the University of Denver. The second is Oct. 16 at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y. The third is Oct. 22 at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla.

The vice presidential debate is Oct. 11 at Centre College in Danville, Ky.

npr

 

Obama team disavows

video comment on government

By David Jackson   USA TODAY

CHARLOTTE -- President Obama's campaign is distancing itself from a Democratic convention video in which a speaker says "government is the only thing that we all belong to."

 

Republicans quickly jumped on the comment, saying it reflects the Democrats' eagerness to impose government on people's lives.

"We don't belong to government, the government belongs to us," tweeted GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney.

Dan Murrey, the executive director of the Charlotte in 2012 Host Committee, said in a statement that it produced the video -- entitled "Welcome to Charlotte" -- that was designed to promote the city and welcome guests to the convention.

"The intent of this video was to tell the story of this region and it is completely unaffiliated with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee," Murrey said.

The website Buzzfeed, which cut the video clip shown above, said it received an e-mail from an Obama for America campaign official it did not identify:

"The video in question was produced and paid for by the host committee of the city of Charlotte. It's neither an OFA nor a DNC (Democratic National Committee) video, despite what the Romney campaign is claiming. It's time for them to find a new target for their faux outrage."

usa Today


According to Thursday nights speeches by President Obama and Vice President Biden, they are now in the job creation business.  "Well isn't that special" is all I can say.  Why haven't they been into creating jobs during their first four years in office?  Why didn't President Clinton do it during his eight years in office?  The Democrats have never to the best of my recollection and everything that I'm able research been in partnership with business or industry.  All Democrats have done is hand down more and more regulation which has time and time again run industry out of the country taking American jobs over seas.

Fact checking Obama’s and Biden’s

speeches at the Democratic convention in

 

Charlotte

Posted by Glenn Kesslerat 06:02 AM ET, 09/07/2012TheWashingtonPost

 

In their defense of the administration’s policies Thursday night, President Obama and Vice President Biden sometimes took license with the facts or left out important information. Here are some highlights.

“Independent analysis shows that my plan would cut our deficits by $4 trillion. Last summer, I worked with Republicans in Congress to cut $1 trillion in spending.”

— Obama

President Obama repeated a claim made by former President Bill Clinton the night before, but even less accurately. Clinton referred to a “plan of $4 trillion in debt reduction over a decade.” Obama leaves off the time line, and makes it sound like the current $1 trillion deficit would be eliminated, resulting in a surplus.

But, while the numbers seem large, the results are unimpressive. At the end of the 10-year budget window, Obama would have the national debt at a 76.5 percent of gross domestic product. That actually would be an increase over the 74.2 percent of GDP in this year. In contrast, the debt reduction plan envisioned by the Simpson-Bowles commission — cited by the president — would reduce the debt-to-GDP ratio close to 60 percent.

Moreover, independent analysts have criticized the administration for claiming some $800 billion in phantom savings from winding down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, even though the administration had long made clear those wars would end. (The Bush administration had started the wars on borrowed funds.) Then, the president proposes to spend a good chunk of the nonexistent money on other spending — as he put it in his speech, “rebuilding roads and bridges; schools and runways.”

The $1 trillion in savings negotiated with Republicans, mentioned by the president, actually accounts for the bulk of his proposed reduction in spending. Indeed, much of the president’s debt reduction would come from tax increases on the wealthy, not spending cuts.

“I’ve signed trade agreements that are helping our companies sell more goods to millions of new customers."

— Obama

Obama did sign into law new trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia, and Panama — which were negotiated by the George W. Bush administration. The trade deals were held up for months by a bitter dispute between the administration and Congress over restoring aid for workers hurt by free trade.

Obama has not negotiated any other free-trade agreements.

“We will keep the promise of Social Security by taking the responsible steps to strengthen it — not by turning it over to Wall Street.”

— Obama

This is a bit of straw man. Obama’s rival, Mitt Romney, briefly supported private accounts as part of Social Security in the 2008 campaign but no longer does.

In his 2010 book, “No Apology,” Romney makes it clear that the 2008 stock market turmoil had changed his thinking on the issue. “The 2008 stock market collapse is proof, however, that we can’t always count on positive returns from these investments,” Romney writes. He said individual accounts could still be considered but would need to be phased in over time. Most important, he added, “I would prefer that individual accounts were added to Social Security, not diverted from it, and that they were voluntary.” (See page 160.)

In other words, Romney has concluded that mandatory private accounts won’t work. The plan he supports now is strikingly similar to what then-Vice President Al Gore proposed in the 2000 presidential campaign, what Gore dubbed “Social Security Plus.” Gore said the accounts would be voluntary and “not be the product of any reduction or diversion of Social Security revenues.”

Meanwhile, Obama’s recent budgets have had limited Social Security reforms.

“Barack, as a young man, they had to sit at the end of his mother’s hospital bed, and watch her fight with their insurance company at the very same time that she was fighting for her life.”

— Biden

This is a carefully worded statement that suggests President Obama’s mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, was fighting for health coverage while she was dying. This is a story that Obama frequently told on the campaign trail, but which was later called into question by Dunham’s biographer. Note that Biden does not specify that Dunham was fighting “health insurance” companies.

During the 2008 campaign, Obama frequently suggested his mother had to fight with her health-insurance company for treatment of her cancer because it considered her disease to be a pre-existing condition.

In one of the presidential debates with GOP rival John McCain, Obama said: “For my mother to die of cancer at the age of 53 and have to spend the last months of her life in the hospital room arguing with insurance companies because they’re saying that this may be a pre-existing condition and they don’t have to pay her treatment, there’s something fundamentally wrong about that.”

But then earlier this year, journalist Janny Scott cast serious doubt on this version of events in her biography, “A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama’s mother.” Scott reviewed letters from Dunham to the CIGNA insurance company, and revealed the dispute was over disability coverage, not health insurance coverage. (See pages 335-339).

Disability coverage will help replace wages lost to an illness. (Dunham received a base pay of $82,500, plus a housing allowance and a car, to work in Indonesia for Development Alternatives Inc. of Bethesda.) But that is different than health insurance coverage denied because of a pre-existing condition, which was a major part of the president’s health care law.

Biden’s remarks were echoed in the film that aired before Obama spoke. The clips were drawn from a film originally narrated by Tom Hanks — this one was by George Clooney — and we had previously given Three Pinocchios to the film for the manipulative way this story is retold.

“He [Romney] was willing to let Detroit go bankrupt.”

— Biden

This statement is drawn from a headline — “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” — on an opinion article written by Romney for The New York Times. But he did not say that in the article. (He repeated the line, however, on television.)

Although “bankrupt” often conjures up images of liquidation, Romney called for a “managed bankruptcy.” This is a process in which the company uses the bankruptcy code to discharge its debts, but emerges from the process a leaner, less leveraged company.

Ultimately, along with getting nearly $80 billion in loans and other assistance from the Bush and Obama administrations, GM and Chrysler did go through a managed bankruptcy. But many independent analysts have concluded that taking the approach recommended by Romney would not have worked in 2008, simply because the credit markets were so frozen that a bankruptcy was not a viable option at the time.

“What they didn’t tell you is what they’re [the Romney campaign] proposing would cause Medicare to go bankrupt by 2016.”

— Biden

It is highly misleading to use the phrase “bankrupt.”

There are different parts of Medicare, much of which is paid from general revenues and premiums. Part A, which pays hospitals, has a “trust fund,” made up of special-issue Treasury bonds, that always seems to be on the edge of running dry, even though it is funded by a payroll tax paid by employees and employers. But even so, the payroll tax could pay most estimated expenditures for decades.

“As a matter of fact, he has a new tax proposal — the territorial tax — that experts say will create 800,000 jobs, all of them overseas.”

— Biden

Biden is quoting from one disputed study.

At issue is a Romney proposal, as part of a corporate tax reform, to allow foreign profits by corporations to be exempt from domestic tax. The Simpson-Bowles deficit-reduction Commission, frequently cited by Democrats and Republicans, recommended such a system in its report. “A territorial tax system should be adopted to help put the U.S. system in line with other countries, leveling the playing field,” the report said.

The study cited by Biden, which appeared in Tax Notes, did not actually study Romney’s plan. Moreover, it said that such a system would create 800,000 jobs overseas, but not necessarily at the expense of U.S. jobs if unemployment rates are low.

“Governor Romney believes that it’s okay to raise taxes on the middle class by $2,000 in order to pay for over a trillion dollars in tax cuts for the very wealthy.”

— Biden

The vice president is referring to an estimate of the impact of Romney’s tax plan by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. Romney has provided few details of his plan, which he says would lower tax rates while eliminating tax loopholes. The Tax Policy Center calculated that the only way to make the plan revenue neutral would be to eliminate tax preferences that also benefit the middle class, but the Romney campaign has fiercely disputed its findings.

Romney has insisted he would not allow a tax increase on the middle class, so if the findings are correct, he would have to scale back his plan to make the math work.

The Washington Post



I'm Felicity and you've been with the Noodleman Group and as we say in the journalism business, that's -30-.

 

My nose isn't getting any longer.

 

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