Tonight I will be live blogging my responses to the state of the union and the responses by the GOP and tea party.
There are already excerpts being given out on what President Obama is going to say. It seems a major theme is going to be developing the middle class. The proposals he will be giving tonight are supposed to be budget neutral. Regardless of if true or not, I am sure the GOP will deny it.
On national defense, President Obama is expected to discuss reducing nuclear weapons and bringing troops home from Afghanistan. I am sure the tea party response, if not the main GOP response, will be critical of the reduction of nuclear weapons (even though we have more than enough to take out everyone else on Earth).
There is also a suggestion that President Obama will announce a free trade agreement with Europe. I am ok with “free trade” as long as it is “fair trade”. The American worker cannot compete with workers in other countries where labor laws are not equivalent.
Of course, excerpts of the official GOP response is also available. (What an amazing time we live in where we can debate excerpts from two speeches before they even happen.) Rubio looks like he will rest his middle class argument on having a “free economy”. This usually means an economy with less governmental regulation. Of course, it is competition and not a free economy that is good for consumers. The “free economy” supported by Rubio and the GOP (as well as the tea party) allows for large corporations to consolidate power and provide barriers to entry, including economies of scale, that prevent upward mobility for individuals and make it harder for competition to do its job in keeping prices down.
Rubio blames President Obama and government for businesses not giving raises and reducing benefits. It is amazing how Conservatives think. It is not the greed of the business owners that are to blame for this in their eyes. Forget the fact that Wall Street is doing amazingly well. Forget the fact that the disparity between the wealthy and the poor is the highest it has ever been in years. No, to the GOP the reason that these business owners are not sharing in their personal successes is because of taxes and required benefits. I guarantee you that many of these businesses, if they didn’t have their higher tax rates and if they didn’t have to cover health insurance, that the additional revenue gained would not be going into the pockets of the employees. That money would just go into the pockets of the employers.
If the GOP gets its way, no additional employees will be hired, no additional wages would be paid, and no additional benefits will be earned. Most employers are not altruistic. Most employers will not just give away their profits. Unless labor can force them to pay more money, the employers will keep as much as possible. But it has been the main goal of the GOP recently to take power away from labor. And that is why the GOP plans are bad for the economy because they are bad for the worker. They take power away from employees and give it to the employer. And when the employer has that upper hand, the employee gets stuck having to take whatever he/she can get.
Rubio wants growth in the economy. But growth wont happen until we stop making it profitable for US jobs to be shipped overseas. Growth wont happen if we sign free trade agreements with other countries that lack the employee protections that we currently have.
The Tea Party response from Rand Paul is also available online. Unfortunately it is full of straw man arguments and is really not worthy of comment at this time. I will wait until the full speech is given to see if he gets into details or if he is just full of hot air.
Interesting: SCOTUS stood up and applauded something President Obama said.
“None of us will get 100% of what we want” — President Obama. Hopefully the GOP will listen to that.
I am sure the GOP will claim that it was a coincidence, or God, that we have had all these drastic weather events.
And oh lord, the Conservatives are going to go nuts about how the President is trying to usurp more power with executive orders. It is like they don’t understand what an executive order is…
Will the GOP oppose fixing infrastructure? If they do, will that finally be enough to claim that the GOP will have jumped the shark?
Who was the woman shaking her head at the Paycheck Fairness Act?
Obama promised more transparency on their actions against terrorism (read drone strikes). I will have to see more about what he means to be satisfied with that comment.
At least Marco Rubio started better than Bobby Jindal…
I don’t think Marco Rubio understands economics. A business is not going to reduce worker hours because of insurance costs. They will do it for two reasons.
1) Because they are already hiring too many people to satisfy current demand
2) Because demand has decreased causing #1.
Had to take a break to take care of the kids. The idea that Rubio wants to avoid safer and greener energies for drilling just shows that he is not a new voice, but someone who will parrot old rhetoric.
Ugh, Rubio again repeats a lie that uncertainty causes a lack of hiring. A business will hire if demand increases for their goods and services.
Rand Paul’s response just shows he is dishonest: Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=8POlWwFbn4E#t=404s:
He repeats the lie that Democrats didn’t vote for Obama’s budget. That is not true. Democrats voted no on the GOP bill that included the spending parts of the budget but not the other parts. You know, the mechanisms to implement the spending.
It is a stupid trick that parties on both sides of the aisle have done. And for him to repeat the lie shows that he is no different than all the other hacks up there.
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