Drudge Retort: Tonyroma's blog

CED: Poor Pay Up to 6x Higher State Tax Rates Than Top 1%

tonyroma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 17:51:51 -0500

The Corporation for Enterprise Development recently released a scorecard for all 50 states...that includes overall tax rates. Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows that in the median state (Mississippi, as it turns out) the poorest 20 percent pay twice the tax rate of the top 1 percent. In the worst states, the poorest 20 percent pay five to six times the rate of the richest 1 percent.... There's not one single state with a tax system that's progressive.

243,000 Jobs Added in January

tonyroma — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:30:17 -0500

In the most impressive job surge since the middle of last decade, the United States added 243,000 jobs in January. The job gains dropped the unemployment rate to 8.3 percent, the lowest it has been in three years. "The stock market is already off to its fastest start in 15 years as more investors start to believe the economic recovery is finally for real and will only get stronger," AP reports.

Schweber: Newt Gingrich and the Politics of Resentment

tonyroma — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 23:15:41 -0500

Howard Schweber---George W. Bush shared their values. Newt Gingrich shares their resentments....So what is going on? Simple. Gingrich does not share the evangelical or the Tea Party voter's values -- he shares their resentments. He resents the media, "elites," the rich, the leadership of his own party, the Democrats, educated people, people who live in big cities, liberals, and of course, Obama, just as they do. Gingrich and his supporters do not oppose Obama, they resent the fact of his existence. He will speak for his constituents by articulating their resentments in more strident, more combative, more articulate terms than they can themselves, which is why they find him brilliant.

Catholics Slam Gingrich, Santorum on Race

tonyroma — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 17:32:29 -0500

More than 40 Catholic leaders and theologians across the country are calling on Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop using divisive rhetoric about race and poverty on the presidential campaign trail. "We challenge our fellow Catholics Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum to stop perpetuating ugly racial stereotypes on the campaign trail," they state in an open letter. "Labeling our nation's first African-American president with a title that evokes the past myth of 'welfare queens' and inflaming other racist caricatures is irresponsible, immoral and unworthy of political leaders."

ABC/WP: Obama Approval Rebounds (49%) as Congress Tanks

tonyroma — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 11:01:20 -0500

Aided by comparison to the vastly unpopular Congress, Barack Obama has advanced to a 49 percent job approval rating in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll - his best showing since spring, and one that, if it holds, that may put his re-election prospects back within reach.

Obama's rating, while still (barely) under 50 percent, is up from his career-low 42 percent in October, and back at the level at which he could run competitively for a second term. George W. Bush had 47 percent approval as close as three months before he won re-election in 2004.

Daniel Larison: Why Does Romney Lie?

tonyroma — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 11:47:46 -0500

Why does Romney ever tell bald-faced lies? After all, this is a man who has made the non-existent "apology tour" the rhetorical centerpiece of his presidential campaign. For some reason, he even managed to say something untrue about his real first name during the national security debate last month. It's tempting to say that he has reinvented himself so thoroughly that he can no longer remember what is true and what isn't, and he has absorbed and appropriated so many new positions over the years that it all gets jumbled together and re-mixed according to whatever the political need of the moment happens to be. It's easy to lose track after the fourth or fifth incarnation. More likely, he is so contemptuous of the people he tells these lies to that he never thinks he will be found out.

das Spiegel: GOP-- A Club of Liars, Demagogues, and Fools

tonyroma — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 21:01:37 -0500

The German newsweekly Spiegel takes the latest disclosures concerning Herman Cain and the rise of Newt Gingrich as an opportunity to offer a foreign bird's-eye view of the current Republican Party and the American media froth around it.

Iran-Contra Scandal 25 Years Later

tonyroma — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 19:33:40 -0500

It has been 25 years since President Ronald Reagan stepped up to the microphone in the White House press room and made the announcement that launched one of the greatest scandals in modern American politics.