Raise Taxes on Rich to Reward True Job Creators

by Nick Hanauer
Founder of the Second Avenue Partners
Venture Capital Company

It is a tenet of American economic beliefs, and an article of faith for Republicans that is seldom contested by Democrats: If taxes are raised on the rich, job creation will stop.

Trouble is, sometimes the things that we know to be true are dead wrong. For the larger part of human history, for example, people were sure that the sun circles the Earth and that we are at the center of the universe. It doesn’t, and we aren’t. The conventional wisdom that the rich and businesses are our nation’s “job creators” is every bit as false.

I’m a very rich person. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, I’ve started or helped get off the ground dozens of companies in industries including manufacturing, retail, medical services, the Internet and software. I founded the Internet media company aQuantive Inc., which was acquired by Microsoft Corp. in 2007 for $6.4 billion. I was also the first non-family investor in Amazon.com Inc.

Even so, I’ve never been a “job creator.” I can start a business based on a great idea, and initially hire dozens or hundreds of people. But if no one can afford to buy what I have to sell, my business will soon fail and all those jobs will evaporate.

That’s why I can say with confidence that rich people don’t create jobs, nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is the feedback loop between customers and businesses. And only consumers can set in motion a virtuous cycle that allows companies to survive and thrive and business owners to hire. An ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of a job creator than I ever have been or ever will be.

End Welfare For The Wealthy

Excepts from an Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Every year, politicians on both sides engage in a process of reverse Robin Hood in which they steal $30 billion from low- and middle-income Americans and provide handouts to the rich and famous.

Millionaires receive tax earmarks and deductions crafted by both parties that allow them to write off billions each year. These write-offs include mortgage interest deductions on second homes and luxury yachts, gambling losses, business expenses, electric vehicle credits and even child care tax credits.

Meanwhile, direct handouts for millionaires have included $74 million in unemployment checks, $316 million in farm subsidies, $http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif89 million for preservation of ranches and estates, $9 billion in retirement checks and $7.5 million to compensate for damages caused by emergencies to property that should have been insured. Millionaires have even borrowed $16 million in government-backed education loans to attend college since 2007.

The goal of highlighting these excesses is not to demonize those who are successful. Instead, by highlighting the sheer stupidity of pampering the wealthy with lavish benefits through our safety net and tax code, I hope to make a moral and economic argument for real entitlement and tax reform...

Families are struggling to make ends meet and are making painful economic choices as politicians in Washington borrow billions to provide welfare to the wealthy. Politicians on both sides refuse to fix big problems and defend stupid policies because changing those policies would involve upending a comfortable political status quo.

It's important for taxpayers to understand that these distortions are not accidental loopholes in the law. To the contrary, these provisions are intentional efforts to get all Americans to buy into a system where everyone appears to benefit while the poor and middle class are being robbed.

In the case of entitlements such as Social Security, progressives have argued for decades that a program for poor people will be a poor program. Yet, Warren Buffett hardly needs the same retirement check as his secretary. Ending welfare handouts to millionaires will strengthen, not undermine, the safety net for people who need it most.

Even Canada has adopted means testing in its retirement program by limiting benefits for high-earners. That fact is we can't afford the system we have today. Only by adopting common-sense reforms can we sustain a safety net for those who truly need assistance.

On the tax side, both parties have been reluctant to alter tax earmarks and deductions, such as the mortgage interest deduction. These are considered sacrosanct.

Yet, it's hard to understand how limiting the mortgage interest deductions for yachts will hurt working families. Defending spending in the tax code is not conservative. Providing tax earmarks and deductions to millionaires is a tax increase on everyone who doesn't receive the benefit. The only way we will enact real tax reform, and grow the economy, is by lowering tax rates and broadening the base by scaling back these egregious handouts. This is precisely what President Ronald Reagan did in 1986.

Even though the super committee failed to reach an agreement on broad deficit reduction, there is no reason why the other super committee -- Congress -- should drag its feet. Change in Washington tends to start with small steps. There is no better place to start than scaling back ludicrous handouts to millionaires that expose an entitlement system and tax code that desperately need to be reformed.

Read the complete Op Ed by Tom, Coburn (R-Oklahoma), @ CNN.com.

Religion-Related Lobbying Increase Fivefold

The number of organizations engaged in religious lobbying or religion-related advocacy in Washington, D.C., has increased roughly fivefold in the past four decades, from fewer than 40 in 1970 to more than 200 today.

A new study by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life examines the agendas, strategies, affiliations and structures of 212 religion-related advocacy groups operating in the capital.

As a whole, religious advocacy organizations work on about 300 policy issues. For most of the past century, religious advocacy groups in Washington focused mainly on domestic affairs.

Today, however, roughly as many groups work only on international issues as work only on domestic issues, and nearly two-thirds of the groups work on both.

Read the full report @ Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life

Frank Luntz: I'm So Scared Of This Anti-Wall Street Effort

The Republican Governors Association met this week in Florida to give GOP state executives a chance to network and plan political strategy for 2012. During a plenary session on Wednesday, Republican Governors discussed how to defend GOP talking points against the growing political and economic grievances sited by Occupy Wall Street movement, which 80 percent of Americans also agrees is a problem.

"I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share."

Yahoo News sat in on the session, and counted 10 do's and don'ts from Luntz covering how Republicans should fight back by changing the way they discuss the movement:

The GOP's War on Voting Goes to Washington

Republicans in state legislatures across the country have spent the past year mounting an all-out assault on voting rights, pushing a slew of voter ID and redistricting measures that are widely expected to dilute the power of minority and low-income voters in next November's elections. Now that effort has come to Capitol Hill, where the House passed a bill (235-190 on a mostly party-line vote) to eviscerate the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) — the last line of defense against fraud and tampering in electronic voting systems around the country.

The bill doesn't have much of a future since it isn't likely to come up in the Democrat-controlled Senate, and the White House has released a strongly worded statement against it. But that didn't stop the House from spending hours on it anyway -- and it led to Democrats charging Republicans with trying to chip away at voter protections for disenfranchised groups.

Rep. William Lacy Clay (D-Mo.), a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said, "the only reason" anyone would want to eliminate the programs altogether would be to suppress votes among minorities.

"The voters are the same groups who were targeted by Jim Crow laws decades ago," Clay said. "The votes are the same groups who are now targeted by inactive voter lists, and voter ID laws and all of the other new tactics designed for a single goal: voter suppression."

The EAC was created in the wake of 2000's controversial presidential election as a means of improving the quality standards for electronic voting systems. Its four commissioners (two Republicans and two Democrats) are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The commission tests voting equipment for states and localities, distributes grants to help improve voting standards, and offers helpful guidance on proofing ballots to some 4,600 local election jurisdictions. It also collects information on overseas and military voters and tracks the return rate for absentee ballots sent to these voters.

Read the full story @ Mother Jones

NH GOP Speaker Discourages Students From Voting Because They’ll Vote ‘Liberal’

Think Progress

As ThinkProgress has been reporting, the slew of unnecessary voter ID laws passed by Republicans in many states this year are a transparent attempt to disenfranchise core Democratic voters, especially college students, the poor and minorities. But Republicans usually claim these laws are passed for the sake of curbing nonexistent voter fraud — it’s rare to have one admit their intention is to stop Democrats from getting to the polls.

But that’s exactly what New Hampshire Speaker William O’Brien (R) told a Tea Party crowd recently. As the new laws are already stifling students’ efforts to participate politically, O’Brien confessed that he wanted to make it more difficult for students to vote because they “vote their feelings” — i.e. vote as liberals:

A New Hampshire measure that ultimately failed earlier this year stoked Democratic concerns about the law’s true intentions. The law would have ended same-day registration and prohibited most college students from voting from their school addresses.

New Hampshire House Speaker William O’Brien, a Republican, told a tea party group that allowing people to register and vote on Election Day led to “the kids coming out of the schools and basically doing what I did when I was a kid, which is voting as a liberal. That’s what kids do — they don’t have life experience, and they just vote their feelings.”

New Hampshire’s voter ID bill failed to pass, but illegal signs nevertheless appeared on the door of a polling station in O’Brien’s own district, demanding that voters show ID before they could vote.

Under many state’s voter ID laws, student IDs and even government-issued veterans identification cards are unacceptable for use at polling stations.

Rick Perry Has Three Strikes Against Him

Rick Perry’s already lackluster presidential bid went on a deathwatch after his debate debacle. In talking to the many who have known Perry over the years, fellow Texan Bryan Burrough discovers the surprising reasons behind the campaign’s train wreck and how Perry, with an unbroken string of nine political victories, might yet stage a comeback—despite his shocking backroom dealings with big campaign donors, the rumors about gay affairs and painkiller use, and the nasty bullying tactics he has used to implement a truly radical agenda.

(Pay-to-play cronyism. Roughshod, right-wing politics. And . . . Oops, read on @ Vanity Fair)

Warren Leads Brown For Massachusetts' U.S. Senate Seat

Elizabeth Warren explains the need to hold financial institutions accountable, and responds to accusations that banking regulations are "socialism."

A new poll by the University of Massachusetts at Amherst finds Warren leading Brown 43 percent to 39 percent -- just within the poll's 4.4 percent margin of error -- in the race for the Massachusetts U.S. Senate seat.

Scott Brown's approval remains below 50 percent, which usually means difficulty for an incumbent, especially this far out from Election Day.

While Brown leads Warren among independents by 18 points that is likely not enough to make up for the state's overwhelming number of registered Democratic voters.

Warren leads heavily among women and among people earning under $100,000, which the pollsters say is evidence that Warren's appeal to the working and middle class is resonating.

Read the entire survey here.

Newt Is The GOP's Newest Not-Romney Presidential Candidate

As Herman Cain ponders whether he will have to drop his bid for the GOP presidential nomination, and Rick Perry continues to stumble, Newt Gingrich find himself breaking away from the pack.

In the most recent national Quinnipiac University poll of 1,039 Republican primary voters conducted in mid-November Newt Gingrich leads (26 percent) second place Mitt Romney (22 percent), with Herman Cain trailing (14 percent) in third place. The other Republicans found support only in the mid to low single digits.

But in a later question about a hypothetical match-up between Gingrich and Romney, Cain supporters break for Gingrich over Romney by a 49 to 35 percent margin, with 16 percent uncertain, according to results provided to HuffPost by the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute. Among all Republicans, Gingrich tops Romney on the two-way match-up by a slightly narrower margin, 49 to 39 percent.

A just-released Economist/YouGov online survey of 326 likely Republican primary voters conducted Nov. 26-29 produced similar results.

The initial vote question shows Gingrich leading Romney by a slightly wider margin (25 to 17 percent) than the Quinnipiac University poll, with Cain running third (at 15 percent) and the other candidates receiving single digit support.

But the survey also asks Republicans for their second choices. When the vote preference is recalculated, reassigning Cain's supporters based on their second choices, Gingrich has an even wider lead over Romney (32 percent to 19 percent).

In other words, Cain's departure would increase Gingrich's support by 7 percentage points, but increase Romney's by only 2.

GOP Presidential Candidates Say Anything

Everyone agrees: Newt Gingrich may be polling strong now, but the man has a lot of “baggage.”

But former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the GOP's now leading "not Romney" candidate, and Mitt Romney have a lot of baggage in common.

One of the most common gripes about Mitt Romney — if not the most common one — is that he lacks core values, and chooses positions based on political expediency, not sincere beliefs. A place to keep up with Mitt Romney's flip-flopping.

Mitt Romney Serial Flip Flops



Newt Gingrich Serial Flip Flops

The DNC put out a video (left) with a website MittvMitt.com to tell the Romney story - "two men trapped in one body."

The GOP's anti-Romney candidate, you might expect, would be someone of pronounced non-flip-flopping consistency.

Asked recently by Fox News why conservatives should prefer him over Romney, Gingrich tried to play up that image. "First of all, I have a lifetime record of being a consistent conservative," he said. Except that ... he doesn't.

Through the years, Gingrich has demonstrated a willingness to cravenly flip-flop in ways that might make Romney blush, as the video (left) put out by Ron Paul's campaign illustrates.

And as our own Joan Walsh put it, even his baggage has baggage.

Here are some of the most notable examples of Newt's flip flops:

Baggage-Beset Newt Gingrich

Salon

It’s not just the loony leftists who think the former speaker is baggage-beset. Conservative professor John J. Pitney wrote of Newt Gingrich’s baggage yesterday at the National Review’s The Corner. But there seem to be two very different definitions of what’s Newt’s baggage.

Here’s what Joan Walsh described as his baggage: Newt Gingrich served his first wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, he left the woman he left his first wife for for another mistress (he then converted to Catholicism in order to ask the church to annul his second marriage), he petulantly shut down the government in 1995 in part because he was upset that President Clinton sat him in the back of Air Force One, he gleefully led the Clinton impeachment drive while cheating on his (second) wife, and he had, for some reason, a $500,000 line of credit at fancy jeweler Tiffany and Co. And he blamed Susan Smith’s horrific murder of her children, and the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres, on Democrats. And he says racist stuff.

When Did The GOP Lose Touch With Reality?

A Commentary by Marc Pitzke

The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation.

Africa is a country. In Libya, the Taliban reigns. Muslims are terrorists; most immigrants are criminal; all Occupy protesters are dirty. And women who feel sexually harassed -- well, they shouldn't make such a big deal about it.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns.

For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world.

As it turns out, there are no limits to how far they will stoop.