Ever notice that when Lawrence has outstanding guests, that the entire segment is precise, informative and fantastic. The conversation, within the referenced segment, was an example of such.

What a refreshing articulation of reality I witnessed on Lawrence tonight. Both Nick Hanauer and Ezra Kline summed up in simple terms what is so intuitively obvious -- that the job creation hoax put out by Romney and the Republicans is just that -- a hoax, a bunch of lies, a way to get middle class voters to vote against their best interests. Essentially they want you to believe that if you decrease the taxes among the wealthiest Americans that these people will hire people. This is at its core stupid stuff.

Why do the masses of people fall for this duplicity? It frustrates me to think so many people are ignorant of the really obvious points that were made by Hanauer.

1. The large middle class is responsible for job creation. When people demand goods and services, companies create the jobs to deliver those goods and services.

2. Companies hire as a last resort. This is so ridiculously obvious that I wonder why so many people don't get this. As a responsible owner or manager of a company, you don't want to hire any more people than you need to get the job done. When consumer demand rises, you need to hire in order to take advantage of these sales opportunities. When consumer demand falls, as it has over the past three years, you lay people off. This has nothing to do with the owner's marginal tax rate, and it's pure stupidity when John Q. Voter buys these silly, contrived arguments.

3. As was demonstrated especially by Ezra Kline, there has been no correlation between the marginal tax rate and job creation. Au contraire, it is especially true that marginal tax rates were at the 80-90% levels when we had some of the most robust boom times. Again, there is no logic that can support that letting the wealthiest Americans keep more of their earnings through lower taxes somehow leads to hiring people.

4. If we subscribe to Obama's thrust, again, to push for continuing the tax cuts for the under-$250,000 while not for the top 1 or 2%, this will have the effect of stimulating -- or at least not dampening -- demand for goods and services by the job creating middle class. We don't have the money to throw away by continuing the tax cuts for the top 1 or 2%. But you can be sure that we will all be inundated with the illogical Romney, Boener, and other arguments that we are stifling job creation if we "raise taxes" on the wealthy. (They don't say the wealthy -- they just deceive you by saying "raise taxes". C'mon. Why doesn't everyone see through this? It's intuitively obvious.

I agree with the above comments. I keep asking myself, where has common sense gone that we could have so many people believing the things that are repeated by Mitt Romney and the GOP. They are like freaking robots, they never present logical and factual arguments, they only repeat buzzwords given to them by Frank Luntz. I can watch a whole day of CSPAN and I see all the GOP use the same exact words, the Tea Party included. It infuriates me that supposedly intelligent people act this way. It's a pleasure to be able to watch shows like Lawrence's and Rachel's where at least there is substantive discussions. I love Ezra Klein too, he explains things in terms that are easy to understand and he is very very detailed in his examinations of things.

I printed most of this on Ed's Radio blog and I am adding this paragraph because I think we need to be reminded of our past to get incite into where our future is heading. I blog an awful lot about wealth inequality because both the 1929 Great Depression and the 2008 Great Recession have similar circumstances that when the initial stock bubble or real estate bubble bursts and the market collapses recessions will result. However, when you have huge wealth inequality you depressions or depression like events. In 2007, the richest one percent of American households owned 34.6% of the total net worth and 42.7% of the financial wealth (Domhoff 2010). The richest quintuple of households or upper twenty percent of households owned 85% of the total net worth and 93% of the financial wealth in America in 2007. These trends are dangerously similar to the levels of inequality seen during the 1920's. The American middle class is dying and you need to have a serious conversation about what we can do to revive it. I support a $3 trillion worth of infrastructure spending and human capital investments (education, college etc) over the next tens years.

We need to read our history about the terrible strikes in the 19th and early 20th century. This could well be what creative writing professors in drama class call "foreshadowing". The history of the Molly Maguires in Pennsylvania of the 1870's, the 1877 Great Rail Road strike, the 1886 Haymarket Affair in Chicago, the 1892 Homestead steel mill strike, the 1894 Pullman Strike, and the the 1914 Ludlow mine massacre in Colorado. There were some of these bloody strikes that actually turned into armed military conflicts such as the long series of coal mine strikes in West Virginia. These coal mine strikes were vicious affairs culminating in an all out war in Logan County, West Virgina in 1921 after the cold blooded murder of union leaders by agents employed by the mine owners. The Battle of Blair mountain saw nearly 15,000 miners and 30,000 lawmen, strike breakers and federal troops fighting it out for a week. Some estimate say this was the worst violence in America since the end of the Civil War about one million rounds of ammunition were believed to be fired during this battle/strike. The Army used WW I bombers against the miners who were dug in on the mountain top. About 100 miners were killed and 30 lawmen and soldiers died in this strike. Nearly one thousand miners were arrested but the mine owners ended up losing big when the federal government recognized the rights of miners to unionize in the 1930's.

Does anyone remember Massey Coal Company and CEO Don Blankenship? There was of course the mine disaster in 2010 when Upper Branch Mine disaster that killed 38 miners in an explosion. The mines run by Massey Coal have a long history of killing its miners by working them hard under dangerous conditions. NPR did a story about black lung disease striking young coal miners in very large numbers. The journalist reported that increasing amounts of machinery are creating more coal dust because the mine owners want more coal out faster so they can make maximum profits. It seems as if we are again approaching the bad old days of American labor history. Go check out the December, 1907 Monogah, West Virginia mine disaster where nearly 500 miners were killed in a mine explosion. This is the worst industrial accident in American history. Is this the type of history that we want to relive? The federal government and the mine owners are failing to keep working conditions in modern coal mines safe because dust levels created by machinery are too high for human safety..

Our public schools do a poor job of talking about these historical events. Our colleges still go over them but these types of events are not talked about in the right perspective. The truth is that the American form of capitalism is often bitch hard brutal on its workers. Our corporations are mostly autocratic where its hard to get hired and keep your job but very easy to get fired even if you are productive. All that matters is that you work as fast as possible at all times. America maybe the land of opportunity for the Andrew Carnegies, the Steve Jobs, and Mitt Romney's of the world but how about everyone else that has to work for these people?

A Frenchman was asked by a British journalist back in the 1990's about comparing his country's form of capitalism to America's system. The Frenchman was well aware of his country's problems with the high costs of job creation, the high unemployment levels, and the high taxes paid by everyone in France for their social welfare system. But he said vehemently, no matter what we have to do in France to overcome our problems, we will NEVER adopt the American form of capitalism. The Frenchman described the American corporate system as the "land of the big boss" where the workers were treated almost like subhuman slaves. The Frenchman who said this has more accurately described the American system better than most college professors and certainly better than conservative politicians.

What ever became of our anti-trust laws? Does anyone remember when ATT was forced to break up into smaller pieces, known as Baby Bells? Now, we have already monolithic oil companies merging with other giants to form corporations whose wealth and power exceeds that of most governments. The same is true of financial institutions. Banks used to be restricted from operating across state lines. Now they spread across the nation and internationally. This is how people become multimillionaires and billionaires. Money is power, and money has bought our government. It would take far less time to name the members of Congress who aren't corrupted by money than to list those who are bought and paid for.

The corruption of the democratic process began with Richard Nixon and the people who worked for him. That was the sleaziest administration in history until Bush and Cheney arrived on the scene. Ronald Reagan gave us the current system of deregulation of the financial system, and you can see where that got us. (It was actually Don Regan and Nancy who ran the country. Ronnie was starting to slip when he was elected the first time.)

As anyone who is paying attention can see, the Conservatives managed to buy themselves a Supreme Court, and that court has allowed the obscenely wealthy to run wild. They aren't even trying to be subtle about buying the government. The only thing us 'peasants' have going for us is our vote, and right wingers are doing everything they can to suppress that one remaining privilege. Elections have consequences (such as the Supreme Court appointments), and if people can't see what is going on right in front of them, then I fear for those of us who are still clinging to the idea of freedom and democracy. People need to get out and vote, not just for Obama but for senators and representatives who aren't owned by the corporations