Warren Buffett says he won't donate to Obama super PACs

Source:

Despite his public backing of President Obama, billionaire investor Warren Buffett won't be donating money to any of the outside groups supporting the president's bid for re-election.

"I don't want to see democracy go in that direction," the Berkshire Hathaway chairman and chief executive officer said over the weekend at his company's annual shareholders meeting, according to Bloomberg News. "You have to take a stand some place."

Analysis: Murdoch's Fox TV licenses seen surviving UK scandal

Analysis: Murdoch's Fox TV licenses seen surviving UK scandal

- We saw that coming. It will be business as usual before too long. Murdoch should be going to jail but instead gets a slap on the wrist.

Paul LePage, Maine Governor, Tells Unemployed Americans To 'Get Off The Couch' And Get A Job

Source:

At the Maine GOP convention on Sunday, Gov. Paul LePage (R) received an enthusiastic standing ovation from his fellow Republicans for saying that all able-bodied out-of-work Americans need to "get off the couch" and go find employment.

LePage called on the state legislature to pass structural changes to welfare, saying, "Maine's welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job."

Transcript: 'Occupy Wall Street' organizer slings insults during heated debate on 'Hannity'

Yeah, baby. Hannity got back a little of his own medicine:

HANNITY: So anarchy is not easy and more radical alternatives are being explored. Well, from the look of these new pictures from May Day, well, they seem to be pretty radical alternatives to me.
Now the protest quickly turned into a violent and dangerous scene of smashing store windows, attacking police, defacing bank and store fronts.
Joining me now to explain what the motives of this group really are, "Occupy Wall Street" organizer, Harrison Schultz. Thanks for being here.
SCHULTZ: Thanks for having me, Sean.
HANNITY: Appreciate it.
SCHULTZ: Let me start by saying, thank you for letting a dirty hippie come in and explain his views --
HANNITY: You're dirty? You don't take a shower?
SCHULTZ: Well, no, this is the way your news network is portraying us.
HANNITY: Did I ever say you are dirty or a hippie? Did I say any of that?
SCHULTZ: Yes, in August. You were making fun of my friends.
HANNITY: You mean the ones having sex in public, doing drugs and defecating on cars and those who are in other cities that were actually being violent breaking store windows, cursing out police and all of that? You mean those guys, those guys? Because I have tapes of all of that.
SCHULTZ: No, no, no. Those were the people that the NYPD was sending to the park to discredit us and make us look bad. And actually give your network something to focus on.
HANNITY: So you are in Zuccotti Park.
SCHULTZ: I stopped hanging out right around the NYPD --
HANNITY: Zuccotti Park, "yes" or "no." Were you at Zuccotti Park?
SCHULTZ: Yes.
HANNITY: Why did they have set up a special, protective rape-free zone tent because of the rapes that took place in Zuccotti Park.
SCHULTZ: The NYPD was sending rapists down to the park.
HANNITY: So the NYPD -- do you have any evidence about this?
SCHULTZ: This was in the NY Times, New York Times.
HANNITY: I asked you a question -- the New York Times said that the police sent rapists to rape women down there?
SCHULTZ: They sent alcoholics. They sent offenders. They sent people who were convicted of rapes.
HANNITY: Do you have any evidence to back it up --
SCHULTZ: I can give testimony. I didn't bring my files with me, but you can check this out --
HANNITY: The New York Police Department brought rapists in and as a result women were raped so a special rape protective zone was set up?
SCHULTZ: You got to admit, it was a really cynical, really effective tactic on the part of the authorities. They knew that we wouldn't turn people away because we like to help people, like Christians should -- even though most of us are not Christian.
HANNITY: You sound paranoid.
SCHULTZ: They definitely exploited a lot of our values and turned it against us and sent people that we tried to help --
HANNITY: What about the violence that took place in other cities and the broken store windows and the sex in public and drug use in public and defecating on a police car, was that a police conspiracy too?
SCHULTZ: I don't think there is anything particularly radical --
HANNITY: About taking a on a car?

UN chief: Killings in Syria "Intolerable"

UN chief: killings in Syria "intolerable"

The 14 months of bloodshed in Syria that has continued despite an April 12 ceasefire and claimed more than 9000 lives is a "totally unacceptable and intolerable situation" that must stop so political dialogue can begin, ...

Video: Massive May Day March in NYC

Video: U.S. Corporations Post Record Profits in 2011

Feinstein, Rogers Agree the Taliban is Stronger

So tell me why we are still in Afghanistan again? Oh, yeah, It's an election year:

The heads of the Senate and House intelligence committees said Sunday the Taliban was gaining ground, just days after President Barack Obama made a surprise trip to Afghanistan and touted the progress made in the war on terror.

“I think we'd both say that what we found is that the Taliban is stronger,” said Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein on CNN’s “State of the Union,” while sitting with Republican Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan.

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'Meet The Press' Transcript (5-6-12)

Full Transcript. Excerpt below:

DAVID GREGORY:

But the net jobs are down, in terms of job created.  You've lost a ton of jobs over the course of this administration, because of the financial crisis.  And there is this idea of some stagnation out there.  That what was economic recovery seems to have flat lined.  Is that not a concern?
                                                
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:

No, it's not a concern.  There-- it's not stagnation.  Look, as you pointed out, there were four million jobs lost in the six months or so before we came to office.  Before I lowered my right hand on-- on January the 20th, we lost 700,000 jobs that month.  And before we got out first major economic initiative passed, we lost another 3.5 million jobs.  Since that point, it's been steady growth, not enough.  There's still a lot of people in trouble.  But there's no stagnation.                                             

DAVID GREGORY:

Are people discouraged is the question.  And this presidential campaign, which is kicking off in a big way this weekend with the president making his official kickoff.  Mitt Romney is saying, "Look, we need a different path.  We need a different president to turn this around."  And this is how he reacted on Friday to the jobs report.

[...]DAVID GREGORY:

And the discouragement is real.  Recent polling showing three-- three fourths, 76% of Americans still believe the country's in recession.                                                
VICE PRESIDENT BIDEN:

Well, you know, for the people who are unemployed, it-- they there you are still in recession.  For the people whose wages are stagnant, it feels like a recession.  I come from a household where whenever there was a massive recession, somebody around that table was going to lose their job.  And-- but here's the deal.  What is Romney proposing?  He's proposing, as to quote Bill Clinton, "going back to the last policy of the last administration on steroids."  I mean, what is he talking about?
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Is he talking about-- how is he going to create jobs?  He talks about another $2 trillion in tax cuts for the very wealthy?  You're going to create jobs?  Is that how he's going to do it?  Is he going to create jobs by continuing to undercut getting people to college and helping them get there by undercutting education?  Is he going to continue to create jobs by eliminating investments in-- in-- research and development?  I mean, what-- what-- what's the plan?

Transcript: Fareed Zakaria GPS (5-6-12)

Full transcript. Excerpt below:

ZAKARIA: My next guest is the author of what some are saying will be the most controversial, perhaps even hated book of the year. "Unintended Consequences" goes against the grain in arguing that the rise of the 1 percent is actually good for the 99 percent.

The author says that contrary to what the Occupy Movement might say, inequality does have its benefits. Ed Conard is here to explain. He is a former managing director at Bain Capital. Yes, he worked closely with Mitt Romney and is now one of his top donors. He joins me now.

So, Ed, let's start by just -- explain to me why is the rise of the 1 percent good for the economy?

ED CONARD, AUTHOR, FORMER MANAGING DIRECTOR, BAIN CAPITAL: It's not really the essential focus of the book. The book is about how to get the economy to grow faster. That growth, in the long run, is powered by innovation and risk-taking.

And part of what the book argues is that the pay-offs for risk- taking are essentially to getting more risk-taking in this economy and that that's good for the middle class and the worker poor.

ZAKARIA: So you want people to invest, take risks with their capital so that you spur innovation?

CONARD: Yes, although I think the economy has changed significantly from where it was in the 1950s, when capital investment to build an automotive industry and a highway system were essential to growth, to one today were 13 guys on a computer can create Instagram and a billion dollars of value in two years.

It's now much more powered by risk-taking than it is by the funding of investment.

Elections are Rigged in Favor of Incumbents

John Fund gets it right except for his conclusion. We need less money in politics not more:

More Americans approve of polygamy than of Congress. A February CBS News/New York Times poll found just 10 percent of respondents approved of Congress’s job performance. A recent poll from the same source found 11 percent of respondents thought polygamy “morally acceptable.” Other polls have found that the “U.S. going communist” has 11 percent support—meaning that concept has more fans than Congress has.

But here’s the paradox: While the approval rating for Congress has hit an all-time low, well over 90 percent of incumbent House members routinely win re-election. Even in the Tea Party election of 2010, 86 percent of House incumbents were returned to office. How can this be? It’s because the game is rigged in favor of incumbents, with more than four out of five congressional districts a lock for one party or another. Incumbent gerrymandering and enormous campaign contributions from Washington lobbyists make it nearly impossible to dislodge members short of major scandal. The general elections in which they cruise to victory time and time again are really fake fights, like the ones in pro wrestling.

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Transcript: Obama Re-election Campaign Kick-off Speech (5-5-12)

Nothing has changed since 2008:

"We came together in 2008 because our country had strayed from these basic values.  A record surplus was squandered on tax cuts for people who didn’t need them and weren’t even asking for them.  Two wars were being waged on a credit card.  Wall Street speculators reaped huge profits by making bets with other people’s money.  Manufacturing left our shores.  A shrinking number of Americans did fantastically well, while most people struggled with falling incomes, rising costs, the slowest job growth in half a century. 

"It was a house of cards that collapsed in the most destructive crisis since the Great Depression.  In the last six months of 2008, even as we were campaigning, nearly three million of our neighbors lost their jobs.  Over 800,000 more were lost in the month I took office alone.

But he is forced to admit his failure. No sense lying a woeful record:

 OBAMA: "Of course not.  Too many of our friends and family are still out there looking for work.  The housing market is still weak, deficits are still too high, and states are still laying off teachers, first responders.  This crisis took years to develop, and the economy is still facing headwinds.  And it will take sustained, persistent effort -- yours and mine -- for America to fully recover.  That’s the truth.  We all know it.

Full Transcript

Paul Krugman: Income Inequality is impeding Economic Recovery

The famous economist is confirming what Occupy Wall Street has been saying:

 Before the Great Recession, I would sometimes give lectures in which I would talk about rising inequality, making the point that the concentration of income at the top had reached levels not seen since 1929. Often, someone in the audience would ask whether this meant that another depression was imminent.

Well, whaddya know?

Did the rise of the 1 percent (or, better yet, the 0.01 percent) cause the Lesser Depression we're now living through? It probably contributed. But the more important point is that inequality is a major reason the economy is still so depressed and unemployment so high. For we have responded to the crisis with a mix of paralysis and confusion - both of which have a lot to do with the distorting effects of great wealth on our society.

But other learned individuals have made the same argument:

"Countries where income was more equally distributed tended to have longer growth spells," says economist Andrew Berg, whose study appears in the current issue of Finance & Development, the quarterly magazine of the International Monetary Fund. Comparing six major economic variables across the world's economies, Berg found that equality of incomes was the most important factor in preventing a major downturn.

But you don't have to be a scholar to figure this out. Less disposable income means less consumption thus a weaker economy:

But it should be obvious to anyone that if all of the income that results from increases in economic output flow to the top one percent of the population, then the rest of us won't have that income to buy the increasing number of products and services that result from the increased productivity.

What happens, then, is simple: economic growth stalls. Companies won't hire people to produce more products and services if no one has the money to buy them, so they lay people off. Taken as a whole, the economy then has even fewer people with the money to buy new goods and services.

Debt to Income Ratio Top 5% vs. Bottom 95%

Debt for the bottom 95% is now greater than their incomes by 150%.

Governor Romney's Job Growth Record -- Worse than Obama and Carter's

Source:

Mitt Romney's sole claim to the presidency is that his business experience will enable him to accelerate job growth in America.

The GOP debates revealed that Romney was a failure as governor, with Massachusetts 47th in the nation in job growth, and only one of the four states that did not recover to pre-2001 recession job levels before the Bush/Cheney economic collapse hit.

But, let us talk less about rankings, and more about actual jobs.

What is that story? Again, for Romney it is dismal.

During Romney's four years as Governor of Massachusetts, he added 61,000 new jobs. At the time, Massachusetts had 2.5 percent of the nation's population. Thus, extrapolated to the nation as a whole, Romney would have added 2.4 million jobs. 

Economist James Galbraith Calls for Raising of Minimum Wage Rate

Here we hear from a respected Economist, James Galbraith. If you want to save the economy raise the minimum wage. We are still waiting for Obama and the Democrats to propose the increase:

Obama administration urges freer access to cellphone records

This President has as bad or worse record on civil liberties as George W. Bush:

The U.S. Congress should pass a law to give investigators freer access to certain cellphone records, an Obama administration official said on Thursday, in remarks that raised concern among advocates of civil liberties and privacy.

[...]Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon and Republican House of Representatives member Jason Chaffetz of Utah proposed a bill last year trying to detail a legal framework, including requiring a warrant for acquiring location information for a person; however the legislation has not advanced.

SPIN METER: Lawmakers' talk of cuts is just talk

Ross Perot used to talk about government buying votes with your money. That's what it's all about. And that is why members of Congress get re-elected perpetually:

If there's one thing Republicans and Democrats in Washington say they agree on, it's the need to reduce federal spending. And it's something they almost never do, as recent events have proved again.

[...]And so it goes, program by program, year after year, no matter which party controls the White House or Congress.

Lawmakers talk in grand, abstract terms of cutting vast sums from the budget. Even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose Democratic Party traditionally is less fretful about spending than is the GOP, has proposed a whopping $1.2 trillion cut in discretionary spending.

But when given the chance to actually cut a few billion dollars from a particular program, lawmakers routinely bow to ardent defenders, and their lobbyists, and pull back. When these lawmakers get re-elected, term after term, the lesson to aspiring politicians is clear.

Impatient gay-rights groups keep pressure on Obama

Obama knows in the end the gay rights groups will come back running to him:

The refrain sounded by his aides is accurate: Barack Obama has done more for the cause of gay rights than any president before him.

Nonetheless, gay-rights activists and organizations are on the president's case these days, pressing him for further steps on two fronts and suggesting that political timidity is holding him back.

One source of frustration is Obama's stance on same-sex marriage - he has yet to endorse it even though he advocates equal rights for gay and lesbian couples. Tensions may mount as activists and many leading Democrats call for the Democratic National Convention to support marriage equality in the platform it will adopt in September.

The other dispute involves a months-long campaign by gay-rights advocates urging Obama to issue an executive order barring federal contractors from discriminating against employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.

Congress Revolts On Obama Plan That Would Ban 'Buy American'

This President proves once again that he has no loyalty to American workers. And still unions plan supporting this anti-labor administration. It is astonishing that Obama continues spit in the eye of working people and the poor and we still just keep buying his lies. He has betrayed his supporters and party. WAKE-UP. Don't be conned any further. Think for yourself. Barack Obama is a fraud:

A group of 68 House Democrats and one Republican sent a letter to President Barack Obama on Thursday urging him to reconsider an element of the controversial free trade agreement currently being negotiated by the administration. If approved in its current form, the pact would effectively ban "Buy American" policies in government contracting.

Although the deal, known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, has received relatively little media attention in the United States, it has sparked international friction among consumer groups and environmental activists who worry that terms demanded by the Obama administration will eliminate important public protections. Domestically, however, the deal's primary source of political tension is from a portion that could ban "Buy American" provisions -- a restriction that opponents emphasize would crimp U.S. jobs.

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