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The threat to the recovery is Washington.

There is more truth in those seven words than in the entire 11.5 hours of Sunday news programming we monitor put together.

We were at the precipice of a global economic catastrophe, thanks directly to Republican policies, at the time that Barack Obama was inaugurated. While it's difficult to gauge success from the absence of devastation, there is no argument that the preemptory measures taken in the early days of the first Obama term did slowly turn the economy around. There's far to go still, especially when it come to jobs, but we're at least moving away from the cliff.

But...

If Republicans still take their marching orders from deep thinkers like Rush that could change. And Carly Fiorina shows the same fundamental understanding of the drivers of the economy that enabled her as a CEO to drive two major American corporations into the ground. For her, we have to keep cutting federal spending because...bureaucrats!

FIORINA: I think it's important to remember when we talk about the economy that a private-sector job and a public-sector job are not the same things. They're not equivalent. I'm not saying public-sector jobs aren't important, but a private sector job pays for itself. A private-sector job creates other jobs. A public-sector job is paid for by taxpayers.

The government does not spend and invest money as efficiently as the private sector. There's all kinds of data to support that. So it isn't simply a matter of saying, well, whatever job is created out there, if it's a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C., or a small-business owner hiring another employer, those are not equivalent thing.

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: ... when you say public-sector jobs, it is not a bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.

FIORINA: Oh, it is, actually.

KRUGMAN: When we talk about public-sector jobs, we look at the public-sector jobs that have been lost in large numbers in this, it's basically school teachers. Don't think about bureaucrats. It's school teachers. What we've laid off is hundreds of thousands of school teachers.

And we talk about the cuts in public spending that have happened, they are not, you know, some god-awful who-knows-what. It's actually public investment. It's largely fixing potholes and repairing bridges. So, you know, you have this image of these wasteful bureaucrats doing god knows what. What we've actually seen is an incredible drought of basic infrastructure...

FIORINA: And it is a fact...

KRUGMAN: ... and -- and laying off hundreds of thousands of school teachers.

FIORINA: It is a fact that virtually every department in every organization in Washington, D.C., has seen its budget increase for the last 40 years. That money is being paid to hire people. The number of people who are -- of course there are some teachers...

KRUGMAN: Almost -- almost no...

FIORINA: Of course there are some police officers. I'm not saying that.

KRUGMAN: ... the vast bulk of -- the vast bulk of public-sector employees are at the state and local level. They are largely school teachers, plus police officers, plus firefighters.

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: And your notion that it's all these bureaucrats, that's a myth that is used to...

(CROSSTALK)

FIORINA: It's a fact. It's not a myth. It's a fact.

Words have meanings. Fiorina needs to understand that the word "fact" has a specific definition which is not "partisan talking point" or "my opinion". There is little question that there is bloat in the bureacracies of federal offices. But that isn't where the cutting is happening.

A notable aspect of the July employment report is the decline in public-sector employment. In fact, public-sector employment (i.e. federal, state, and local government jobs) declined in 10 of the past 12 months, in sharp contrast to 29 consecutive months of private-sector job growth. Indeed, falling public employment has been among the largest contributors to unemployment in the United States since the end of the Great Recession.

In this month’s employment analysis, The Hamilton Project examines public-sector employment trends over the last three decades and finds that government employment contracted, both in absolute numbers and as a share of the population, during the Great Recession and throughout the current recovery.

Additionally, we report on the results of a new analysis that finds that the cuts in public school teachers are projected to reduce the future earnings of today’s students by more than five times as much as the current budget savings.[..]

Total government (i.e., the sum of state, local, and federal) employment has decreased by over 580,000 jobs since the end of the recession, the largest decrease in any sector since the recovery began in July 2009. State and local governments, faced with tough choices imposed by the confluence of balanced-budget requirements, falling tax revenues, and greater demand for public services, have been forced to lay off teachers, police officers, and other workers.

[..]In raw numbers, the largest cuts were to teachers, but of these occupations, the largest percentage decline was among emergency responders.

Transcripts below the fold:

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Dancin' David Gregory had on his favorite washed-up politico on his roundtable: Newt Gingrich. Again.

And Newt is doing his damnedest to put a good spin on the inexcusable fact that the House delayed voting on the Hurricane Sandy relief bill. It wasn't that they didn't care about the good people of New York and New Jersey, mind you, it was because the bill was laden with pork, donchaknow?

I think it's, this will clearly distinguish the two parties. That bill, 64% of it did not spend out in the next two years. 31% of it had nothing, nothing, zero, to do. The train came through and the boys said, "Let's throw the pork on the train." It came out of the Senate as-- exactly why the country's now sick. This is not emergency spending.

[..]

E.J. DIONNE:

--four states, who said they needed that bill--

NEWT GINGRICH:

Yeah, they of course they want any bill. They don't care how much extra the rest of the country spends as long as they get what they want. I understand that. That's local politics in a crisis. I think the House should have passed a purely stripped down reform bill that met everything for Sandy and nothing for the pork. Now the country would have understood clearly doing that. And I think the House is not moving at the speed it needs to.

Well, sure the country would absolutely understand stripping pork out of the bill. I mean, that bill was intended to help the victims of Hurricane Sandy and it would be unconscionable for some Senator to throw some unrelated spending project on top of it, delaying the relief so desperately needed.

Except....

Fox News is continuing its hunt for "pork" in a Hurricane Sandy relief bill blocked by House Speaker John Boehner, claiming that the bill included $600 million for the Environmental Protection Agency to address climate change. But the funds in question actually focused on ensuring affected states' access to clean water, a crucial issue in the wake of the storm - and emblematic of future consequences of climate change.

Rep. Boehner recently canceled a vote on a Sandy relief bill, prompting heavy criticism from some members of his own party. He later reversed course and called for a vote on $9 billion for the National Flood Insurance Program, with another $51 billion in relief spending to be voted on later.

Let's be clear, just because Republicans can't understand why improving wastewater systems or Amtrak lines (heavily used along the Eastern seaboard hit hard by Sandy), doesn't necessarily make it pork. There were undoubtedly extraneous spending projects in the bill (as there are in EVERY bill and one of the few bipartisan actions Congress is capable of), but that's not why Boehner didn't put the bill up for a vote and every single person at that table knew that. But delaying relief for victims who are now dealing with mold and other potentially life-threatening issues because Boehner is afraid of the extreme fringe of his own party is absolutely a dereliction of his duties.

Man, the traditional media really wants their consumers to believe that this horse race is neck and neck and the just overwhelming misogyny in the words and actions of the Republican Party isn't hurting them with women.

Because, it's all about jobs and the economy to the Republican Party, completely eliding the fact to these 'small government' fetishists who actively want the government getting into women's uteri, that this is absolutely an economic and jobs-related issue for women. Being unable to control when a woman has a child will play a major role in her economic future: what education she can complete, what jobs she can apply for, how much she will get paid, whether she and her child can break through multi-generational poverty cycles.

But that doesn't help the narrative that the tradmed wants to perpetuate that this is a close race and that the gender gap has closed for Mitt Romney, at best, an arguable position, though you wouldn't know that from the confident assertions made by David Gregory and Chuck Todd.

Carly Fiorina, speaking officially as a Romney spokesperson, had the unenviable job of trying to distinguish Romney from the crazies in his party. Now Gregory is game to let her, but it's a hard row to hoe when you consider that Romney hasn't pulled his ad for Mourdock. Fiorina bemoans the "bad timing" of Mourdock's statement, which begs the question left unasked by Gregory, when exactly would have been a good time to say that a pregnancy as a result of rape is God's will? But more importantly, as Rachel Maddow points out, it's hard to disavow the crazy extremism when Romney put crazy extremist Paul Ryan on his ticket:

MS. MADDOW: Right. But then, he picked Paul Ryan. They have the fight over forced ultrasounds, the government telling you that you need to have a medically unnecessary procedure at the order of the state regardless of what you want and regardless of what your doctor says. And then he picked a guy, who picked a forced ultrasound bill for the country, Paul Ryan was onboard with that. Paul Ryan was a cosponsor with Todd Akin with bill to redefine rape. Paul Ryan was a cosponsor with bill to have personhood federally, which would not only ban all abortion it would ban in vitro fertilization. It would ban most hormonal forms of birth control. If you wanted to avoid this fight, don’t put Paul Ryan on the ticket. There’s a reason that Paul Ryan has been in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina…

(Cross talk)

GREGORY: And the Republican platform talked about you should be able to do in vitro fertilization. That was in the Republican platform…

Oops...Rachel Maddow has hit on an uncomfortable spot for Romney's campaign. For all his alleged moderation, he chose one of the most extreme pro-life members in Congress for his running mate. Time for David Gregory to throw this conversation to Chuck Todd to direct back to the economy, a much safer discussion.

All I can say is that at this point, if women are voting for Romney, they ought to be willing to let their GOP flag fly free. I'm thinking this one is appropriate:

Just sayin'...

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Being one of the Villager Elite means never having to account for your failures. And Carly Fiorina has had a lot of failures in her life.

Her star power rose with her meteoric rise to the head of Lucent Technologies. But even as Fortune Magazine was touting her as one of the most powerful women in the country, Lucent's own books reflected the same fast and loose accounting and reckless leveraging that characterized the elites' trashing of the economy. But you know what the Villagers paid attention to: her $65 million paycheck.

Her record at HP is a little better known, although equally ignored by the media. But what do the Villagers care about? That $45 million golden parachute to exit the former Fortune 500 company she ran into the ground.

Since exiting HP, Fiorina has dabbled in politics, advising the failed John McCain campaign on economics (an area in which voters distinctly distrusted the candidate) before launching her own failed campaign to unseat Barbara Boxer (though she did win the distinction of one of the ugliest and most incomprehensible campaign ads).

So let's recap, shall we? Failed running of two major corporations, failed political campaigns, elite disregard of responsible economic growth, lay offs and big money payoffs for a distinct lack of success.

So tell me, what about her track record would cause CNN to go to Carly Fiorina for her take on the economy?

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On Sunday's "This Week," Carly Fiorina feebly trotted out an old GOP canard: that the "highest corporate tax rate in the world" is to blame for our stubbornly-high unemployment. In fact, the effective tax US corporations pay is much lower than most industrial nations. This is how a corporation like GE paid effectively no taxes in 2010.

Well, Paul Krugman would have none of it.

FIORINA: ...I said there were three structural issues in the economy. One is small business. There are two others.

The rest of the world has also changed. And the two other structural problems in our economy are we now have the single highest business tax rate in the world. Guess what?

With the highest tax rate in the world, we see the same thing around the world that we see in states -- states with lower tax rates have more jobs, more people. People leave states with higher tax rates. The data is crystal clear. [...]

KRUGMAN: Just..

FIORINA: -- a robust recovery.

(CROSSTALK)

KRUGMAN: Nothing you said about business taxes is actually true.

FIORINA: Everything I said...

(CROSSTALK)

FIORINA: -- about business taxes...

KRUGMAN: -- we can have that discussion (INAUDIBLE) place...

FIORINA: -- is true.

KRUGMAN: But -- but it's not true. If you look at the actual tax collections...

FIORINA: This isn't an academic discussion. It's clear it's true.

KRUGMAN: If you look at the actual tax collections in the United States on business, they're lower than -- than other advanced countries. And if you look at the alleged finding that high business taxes cause job losses in states, it -- it goes away -- on even the kick the tires, even slightly and the whole thing falls apart. It's just not true.

Beautiful.

I really don't know why Republicans think they can get away with spouting falsehoods when Krugman's on the show, but I hope they keep doing it.

There are so few people I actually admire these days, and one of them continues to be Paul Krugman. Put him on a panel with a bunch of right-wing talking heads, and he's usually going to be the only person who nails them on their zombie talking points. Like this morning, on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, when he put corporatist robot Carly Fiorina, George "His Hair Was Perfect" Will, and David "If Only We Could Slash Social Security" Walker in their places.

If you watch, you'll see Krugman's trademark move: He looks off to one side as if he's so exasperated, he can't even bring himself to look at someone who's so stupid - or so careless with the truth.

Today, he did three very important things. He called out Caroly Fiorina on her made-up "data shows" that people leave states with high taxes, firmly rebutted David Walker's contention that the new Social Security report proves the program is in trouble and need of overhaul, and he completely destroys George Will's vastly uninformed and careless recommendation that Social Security be indexed to life expectancy.

Obviously, he doesn't take Fiorina seriously - and neither should you. She keeps making sh*t up: She says "data shows" and then lies. Krugman just batted her away, like a cat with a mourse. Then he explained to Walker (as if Walker didn't already know) that all the Social Security report showed is that, like the rest of the country, the bad economy is affecting Social Security. (Walker, in case you didn't know it, is Pete Peterson's chief lackey and the person "centrists" keep pushing as a third-party candidate for president. His latest vehicle, Comeback America, is another version of America's Townhall, whose purpose was to build popular support for cutting Social Security and Medicare.)

And then, after prissy blueblood Will lectured that Social Security was created during a time when retirement averaged two years, and now it was closer to 20, proving that since people were living much longer and we needed to index payments to life expectancy, Krugman just knocked it out of the park.

No, it's only the upper income population that's living longer, he said. And this just goes back to the issues of income inequality.

Game, match, set.

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Here's a test for you. I'm going to post two quotes from Howard Kurtz, and you tell me which one refers to Rush Limbaugh:

"A lot of broadcasters might have lost their jobs by saying something so stupid, offensive, and misogynistic."

or

"I mean, this is part of what he does. He likes to stoke outrage and draw attention by saying things that are a bit over the line."

Ok, you get five seconds. I'll give you the answer below the fold.

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It's a start. But where is Meg Whitman? She's sending big money off to the Republican party but has nothing to say about the de facto leader of her party trashing a law student as a "slut," or calling for her to make sex tapes to prove she needs contraceptives? Really?

And what of Sarah Palin, who should really be furious that her Fearless Leader called her daughter a slut and contraceptive payments "thievery"? Bristol, after all, could have saved Palin some embarrassment if she'd bothered to use birth control back in 2008. I'm betting that Alaska-paid health insurance helped Bristol (and Sarah) out with the expenses of her baby's birth, but of course, that's not thievery. Right?

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Record-breaking amounts of money were spent this year vying for seats in the mid-terms here in California. Meg Whitman reportedly spent $160 million of her own money--or roughly $42 per vote--to not win the California governorship. Carly Fiorina spent $5.5 million of her own money (along with more than $10 million in donations and $4.8 from the Republicans) to launch an unsuccessful challenge to Barbara Boxer's Senate seat. Add Linda McMahon's unsuccessful run for Chris Dodd's seat in Connecticut and you have an astounding $217 million spent to not win an election. That's a hell of a lot of money . Gail Sheehy looks at what could have been done with that money instead:

Instead of laying out a combined $217 million to run for office, Whitman, Fiorina, and McMahon could have saved America’s commuters some serious cash. They could have footed the toll bill for half of the 52.1 million vehicles that cross the George Washington Bridge yearly, or one-third of the 102.2 million vehicles that cross the Bay Bridge.

Whitman’s spending could have bought full tuition for 23,553 California residents at the University of California-Berkeley, which would almost double current undergraduate enrollment. She could have made 95,764 connections for at-risk youth through Big Brothers Big Sisters of Greater Los Angeles. Or, if she wanted to be known as the Savior of San Jose, she could have wiped out the megalopolis’ budget deficit twice over.
..
Fiorina('s) [..] total campaign spending could have doubled the total assets of Goodwill of Southern California. It could have fully funded Pajaro Valley Unified School District for a year, saving the schools’ sports programs. Or, if Fiorina wanted to befriend folks closer to her mansion in Northern California, she could have increased the budget eight-fold of Raphael House, which provides low-income family services and shelter in San Francisco. Maybe she would have earned more headlines if she’d used her campaign budget to go global and purchase one million bed nets to combat malaria in Africa or provide micro-loans to more than 350,000 small businesses in South Africa, most of them to poor women.

McMahon, who laid out $41 million during her run for senator of Connecticut, and her partner-husband had amassed a net worth estimated at at least $1.1 billion as of 10 years ago. Each of the 498,306 votes cast in her favor cost $84.08. That would have covered a full year’s worth of salary and benefits for 802 state employees facing furloughs because of the state’s budget shortfall. It could have provided heating assistance to Connecticut families in need for seven years. It could have paid for 15 million school lunches across the whole country, or paid for two years of enhanced security for our troops in Iraq.

The numbers we're talking about are hard to wrap your brain around...and its expenditure hardly seems like fiscal responsibility (nor does the spending on the Democratic side). It's clear we need to re-prioritize the way we run elections, especially in a post-Citizens United country, because I promise you these numbers will look like a pittance compared to the amounts spent for 2012's election.

The only real answer is to publicly finance elections. No one can talk about fiscal responsibility or curtailing unnecessary government spending until we do.

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The first (and likely only) debate between Barbara Boxer and Carly Fiorina took place tonight. From the first question to the last closing statements, Boxer was fully in control. Despite a format that was difficult -- timed responses and rebuttals -- Fiorina could not escape her past record at the helm of Hewlett-Packard, or her tired Republican ideas. One of the finest moments came with the first question to Fiorina about opposition to the small business jobs bill and teachers bill. Here it is:

How do you justify immediate help for the wealthiest Americans but not for average Californians who might be out of a job and listening to this debate tonight?

Fiorina's response is predictable and rambly. The one thing she did well all night was deflect the actual question asked of her.

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