Mitt Romney Raises More Money Than Obama In May: $76.8 Million To Obama's $60 Million! (NO Jobs!)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Immediately after the Recession, from January 2009 to January 2011 if Democrats had focused on stopping widespread Employment Discrimination & passed a WPA type JOBS Program instead of wasting Money on Egg Head Think Tanks & Political Favors, many BLACK & Latino Obama Supporters would have more Money to Donate for Pres. Obama's re-election in 2012.

Instead as it stands Millions of BLACK & Latinos are now Jobless and BROKE!
Thus Mitt Romney's Supporters (Regular Donors) are able to Donate More to his Grassroots Campaign Coffers than Pres. Obama's Supporters. (Regular Donors)

Thanks for Nothing Congressional Democrats!






Mitt Romney raises more money in one month than Obama for first time in race for White House


Mitt Romney pulled in more money than President Obama in May, further shaking a White House race that is shaping up to be a nail-biter.

Romney and the Republicans hauled in $76.8 million last month, far more than the $60 million raised by Obama and the Democrats.

This is the first time that Romney has outraised the incumbent and it comes as national polls show the race tightening dramatically as the economy continues to sputter.

Both men’s May total significantly outpaced what they raised in April.

For Romney, it was the first month when - as the clear GOP nominee - he was able to jointly raise money with the Republican National Committee.

"Our strong fundraising is a sign that Americans are tired of President Obama’s broken promises and want a change of direction in the White House," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said.

Obama’s haul - a significant jump from the $43.6 million he and the Democrats raised last month - was in large part attributed in part to his support of same-sex marriage.

Obama announced the total over Twitter.

“The campaign raised more than $60 million across committees in May,” the President said. “Thanks to everyone who chipped in.”

Obama’s total including donations came from 572,000 people and 147,000 first-time donors - many of whom opened their wallets after the President became the first occupant of the White House to endorse same-sex marriage.

The total was also boosted by a record $15 million raised at a fundraiser at George Clooney’s Los Angeles home.

The average donation to the President’s re-election bid during May was $54.94, continuing the Obama campaign’s success of wooing small donors.

By the end of April, 43% of Obama’s donors gave $200 or less, according to a study by the Campaign Finance Institute, a Washington research group.

Meanwhile, only 10% of those who gave to Romney during that period made donations of less than $200, pointing to the Republican’s reliance on fat-cat donors.

However, Romney had more success with the small donors in May, as his campaign boasted that 93% of gifts received that month were less than $250.

Obama now has raised approximately $277 million so far this year while Romney has totaled about $175 million. However, Romney is also expected to wield a significant advantage in money raised by the parties’ respective Super PACs.

Both men have aggressively hit the fundraising circuit in recent weeks, stockpiling cash in advance of what will likely be the most expensive election in history.

Obama and Romney have each criss-crossed the country, venturing into friendly and enemy territory alike to raise money.

Romney just completed a two-day trek through Texas that was expected to rake in $15 million.

Meanwhile, Obama hit four fundraisers in California - including one with a gay group - Wednesday and has one more scheduled for Thursday morning before he departs for Las Vegas to give a speech on jobs.

The fundraising totals continues a difficult stretch for Obama, who has been left reeling by a series of disappointing economic news.


Sources: MSNBC, NY Daily News, Youtube

Franklin D. Roosevelt & Obama On JOBS, Taxes & Social Security: "The New Deal" (Videos)

New Deal

The New Deal was a series of economic programs implemented in the United States between 1933 and 1936. They were passed by the U.S. Congress during the first term of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. The programs were responses to the Great Depression, and focused on what historians call the "3 Rs": Relief, Recovery, and Reform. That is, Relief for the unemployed and poor; Recovery of the economy to normal levels; and Reform of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression. The New Deal produced a political realignment, making the Democratic Party the majority (as well as the party which held the White House for seven out of nine Presidential terms from 1933 to 1969), with its base in liberal ideas, big city machines, and newly empowered labor unions, ethnic minorities, and the white South. The Republicans were split, either opposing the entire New Deal as an enemy of business and growth, or accepting some of it and promising to make it more efficient. The realignment crystallized into the New Deal Coalition that dominated most American elections into the 1960s, while the opposition Conservative Coalition largely controlled Congress from 1938 to 1964.

Historians distinguish a "First New Deal" (1933) and a "Second New Deal" (1934–36). Some programs were declared unconstitutional, and others were repealed during World War II. The "First New Deal" (1933) dealt with diverse groups, from banking and railroads to industry and farming, all of which demanded help for economic recovery. A "Second New Deal" in 1934–36 included the Wagner Act to promote labor unions, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) relief program, the Social Security Act, and new programs to aid tenant farmers and migrant workers. The final major items of New Deal legislation were the creation of the United States Housing Authority and Farm Security Administration, both in 1937, then the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which set maximum hours and minimum wages for most categories of workers[1] and the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938.

Despite Roosevelt campaigning heavily against anti-New Deal Republicans and anti-New Deal Democrats, Republicans gained many seats in Congress in the 1938 midterm elections and the Democrats opponents of the New Deal retained their seats, resulting in the WPA, CCC and other relief programs being shut down during World War II by the Conservative Coalition (i.e., the opponents of the New Deal in Congress); they argued the return of full employment made them superfluous. As a Republican President in the 1950s, Dwight D. Eisenhower left the New Deal largely intact.

In the 1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society took New Deal policies further. After 1974, laissez faire views grew in support, calling for deregulation of the economy and ending New Deal regulation of transportation, banking and communications in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[3] Several New Deal programs remain active, with some still operating under the original names, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC), the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA). The largest programs still in existence today are the Social Security System and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Sources: White House, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

WPA Jobs Program Needed For 2010, 2011 & 2012

Job Creation Idea No. 8: Time For A New WPA


There is, of course, a precedent for the country facing a massive, sustained unemployment crisis.

There is also a precedent for solving it.

So why won't President Obama at least try to do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did during the great Depression?

Back then, of course, the federal government directly employed millions of Americans, most notably through the Works Progress Administration (WPA) and the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC). Government paychecks went to men and women who planted trees, constructed state parks, created great works of art and built bridges, dams and other structures that remain to this day among the nation's finest and most inspiring public works

Today's WPA could do some of that -- as well as turn abandoned neighborhoods into urban parks, clean up the Gulf region, care for senior citizens and young children, bury utility lines, kill kudzu and tutor students.

Anecdotally, at least, there seem to be plenty of people who would relish the opportunity to get back to work doing something -- maybe even anything -- for a government paycheck.

Given today's deadly political dynamics, of course, such a plan would face dim prospects in Congress. But Obama hasn't even tried. He hasn't proposed anything remotely that ambitious. Nor has he put much effort into changing those political dynamics.

By contrast, the scale of the problem is simply immense.

In a previous installment of my America Needs Jobs series, I wrote about ideas for putting young people to work. There are 4 million people ages 16 to 24 who are considered officially unemployed -- plus another 1.5 million or so who have given up the job hunt entirely. That's a total of 5.5 million. Americorps, the closest thing we have to the CCC right now, only has room for 75,000.

When you include older workers, the total number of unemployed rises to nearly 15 million, plus another nearly 11 million too discouraged to even look for work.

That's a lot of jobs that need creating.

So, as Yale economist Robert J. Shiller writes in the New York Times:

Why not use government policy to directly create jobs -- labor-intensive service jobs in fields like education, public health and safety, urban infrastructure maintenance, youth programs, elder care, conservation, arts and letters, and scientific research?


Would this be an effective use of resources? From the standpoint of economic theory, government expenditures in such areas often provide benefits that are not being produced by the market economy.

"If the private sector can't put people back to work, then the public sector must," reasons the Economic Policy Institute. As part of its five-point plan to stem the unemployment crisis, the progressive group calls for spending $40 billion per year for three years on a public service jobs that would put one million people back to work. Among the details:

During the first six to nine months, the program would fund fast-track jobs. Projects would be limited to a discrete list of activities in order to allow for quick implementation and large-scale employment. This fast-track authority should be carefully defined to prevent abuses. It should be limited to four areas that reflect national priorities and demonstrate a high potential impact for aggregate job creation: neighborhood/community improvement, child health and development, access to public services, and public safety.


Fast-track jobs might include, for example:

• cleaning up of abandoned and vacant properties to alleviate blight in distressed and foreclosure-affected neighborhoods;
• staffing emergency food programs to reduce hunger and promote family stability;
• working in Head Start, child care, and other early childhood education programs to promote school readiness and early literacy;
• renovating and maintaining parks, playgrounds, and other public spaces.

University of Texas economist James Galbraith favors "a Neighborhood Corps to protect, maintain and revitalize (or as necessary demolish) distressed housing, and a Home Care corps to provide services to the elderly in their own homes." Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America's Future, likes the Neighborhood Corps idea because "you get young people to work, you give them some skills, and your raise housing values in neighborhoods that are getting hammered" by the financial crisis.

Former CEO Leo Hindery argues on behalf of "community-based job creation programs for restoring the environment, providing child care and tutoring, cleaning up abandoned buildings, and maintaining parks and public spaces." He also wants to create a "Teacher's Aid Corps."

A New Policy Institute working paper calls for a "series of big, aspirational regional projects." The massive, still-nascent Gulf recovery plan "offers a working laboratory to think and work at this scale," the report suggests.

And speaking of scale, architecture critic Justin Davidson calls for "a Calatrava over the Hudson" -- by which he means some sort of stunning structure designed by Santiago Calatrava. Davidson argues:

In 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt took office, much of the country was making do with Victorian bridges, horse-and-buggy roads, and improvised sanitation. FDR began binding the country together with sinews of concrete and cable. We need to do for the 21st century what FDR did for the twentieth--invest in worn-out highways, our frail electrical grid, our public transit, brittle bridges, and water supplies. A new New Deal, equipped with an Obama-era version of the Works Progress Administration, could put millions back to work, modernize the country, nudge the economy towards recovery, and produce a barrage of working monuments.

HuffPost readers, who have been emailing me in droves, seem particularly enamored of the idea of New Deal-style direct government employment.

Reader John Rings writes: "A very quick way to get Americans back to work is to clean up America. Throughout this country there are structures that are vacant and will never be used again but they are abandoned. There are old factories and storefronts and city block after block of uninhabitable houses.... We could put people to work right away doing demolition of these structures."

Greg Tompkins of Portland, Oregon, writes: "Put young and old alike on projects like eradicating invasive species, replanting native species in their place and making trails! Maybe even put the masses to work laying out the smart grid and placing solar panels atop every large building in America? Put the older folks to manage projects so they don't have to do something too physical. Can you imagine how great it would be to make a huge dent in the invasive species problem alone? I'm unemployed myself and am 35. I wouldn't mind at all to help in such an endeavor."

Reader Patrick Kubin writes: "The depression did not end until the government made jobs; think CCC. Do the same thing now: how about Noxious Weed Eradication programs? Every state has a weed problem: kudzu in the south, blackberries and scotch broom in the NW, saltcedar in the SW. This is unskilled labor.

"The fed gov pays $10 per hour, 40 hours per week to employ people to chop, dig and spray weeds. The REAL incentive is that the whole family of the worker gets Medicare health coverage. They will line up for miles for these jobs. And lots of new college grads will be employed mapping weed eradication locations. Only US made tools may be used."

J. William Thomas of Hartford, NY, writes: "The government can also start a huge program of placing all utilities underground. This will create jobs and reduce the exposure of our utilities to the elements during storms. That will also reduce cost to corporations ultimately and we should realize those savings over the years."

Nick Taylor, the author of American-Made: The Enduring Legacy of the WPA: When FDR Put the Nation to Work, writes in a recent Los Angeles Times op-ed that Obama truly does face an FDR moment.

"Obama's experience so far resembles FDR's first uneven stabs at job creation," Taylor writes. Soon after Roosevelt took office, with the unemployment rate at 24.9%, he created the Civilian Conservation Corps, his first jobs program -- but it wasn't nearly enough.

His critics accused him of socialism and fretted publicly that large deficits would ruin the country. They insisted that workers would grow so accustomed to public jobs that they could never be weaned off the government's largesse.


But despite his vocal opponents, in January 1935, FDR announced his intention to launch the massive jobs program that became the Works Progress Administration.

The president's promise that the country would "see the dirt fly" was realized that fall, more than two years after he took office. The WPA addressed a range of long-standing infrastructure needs, including roads and bridges, hospitals and water treatment plants, and airports. Its workers fought floods and forest fires and cleaned up after hurricanes. Its sewing rooms made clothing and blankets that went out to disaster victims. The WPA also employed nurses, doctors, teachers, librarians and artists. By the fall of 1936, 3.3 million people were on the WPA payroll. The stimulus provided by those jobs buoyed the economy. By the spring of 1937, after Roosevelt's landslide reelection, the country's unemployment rate had dropped to 14%.....

The WPA helped create a modern country and produced physical and cultural legacies that are still appreciated. Obama could use his considerable eloquence to re-create that vision. An America prepared today to meet the future will be applauded long after this recession is consigned to the history books. It's a vision he hasn't given us so far.


View Larger Map


Sources: Huffington Post, Wikipedia, Youtube, Google Maps

Pres. Obama Likely To Use TARP Funds For Job Growth Programs...Wise Choice

WPA Part I: We Work Again is a US government civic-minded film aimed specifically at the unemployed African American population in the wake of the Great Depression.




WPA Part II: A clip from a short government film about the the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs started during the Great Depression. This clip shows road, bridge, and airport construction, as well as water and sewer projects. Posted by David Burns for the Fasttrack American History Project.







Pres. Obama likely to endorse using bailout funds to create jobs, Gibbs says


President Obama is likely to endorse using a portion of the government's $700 billion financial bailout for a new jobs creation program during a speech about the economy next week, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters Friday morning.

"The president thinks we should and must do everything in our power to create an environment for job growth and job creation," Gibbs said. When asked whether Obama will talk about the use of TARP funds on Tuesday, Gibbs said, "I think that's likely."

About $139 billion of the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, remains unallocated and available to the administration. Banks have paid another $10 billion in interest and dividends to the Treasury and returned about $71 billion in aid, the Treasury reported in November. This week, Bank of America announced it would repay its $45 billion package.

As recently as this week, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner has said he wants to dedicate much of the unspent TARP money to reduce the national debt. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Cal.) and other top Democrats have been crafting a jobs bill that would tap the bailout program. The size of the repayments from once shaky banks may make it possible to accomplish both goals.

White House officials would not provide details of the president's plans ahead of the speech. When asked whether the president endorses Pelosi's ideas to use a portion of the bailout money, Gibbs said: "It's certainly being looked at, yes."

Gibbs said the president is likely to talk about multiple ideas for job creation, some of which would require congressional approval. The Tuesday speech at the Brookings Institution follows a day-long jobs summit Thursday and a trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania on Friday to highlight the plight of workers. The unemployment rate is near a 26-year high, though the Labor Department reported Friday that the rate actually fell to 10 percent from 10.2 percent in November.

A senior Democratic aide said House Democrats are still mulling the shape of a jobs bill, but that its parameters came into sharper focus this week, particularly at a meeting of the rank-and-file on Thursday. The package is likely to include another extension of safety-net programs, such as unemployment insurance, health benefits for jobless workers and food stamps. Because those provisions respond to the economic downturn, they would be considered emergency spending, the aide said.

As soon as this month, House Democrats also hope to vote on a package targeted directly at job creation. That package, which would be financed with unused TARP money, could include as much as $70 billion in transportation and infrastructure projects, as well as new tax credits aimed at encouraging small businesses to hire new workers. Democrats are also considering additional aid to state governments, which face massive deficits over the next few years, to preserve public sector jobs and avert state tax hikes, which could hamper the economic recovery.

The aide said Pelosi has yet to decide the size of the overall package and how much of it would be paid for.

TARP remains hugely unpopular. Many lawmakers have decried the initiative -- proposed by the Bush administration and continued under Obama -- for using tax dollars to aid big financial firms that triggered the crisis in the first place. A firestorm erupted when the administration revealed that multimillion-dollar bonuses were being paid to executives of firms such as American International Group that got massive bailouts.

Some Republicans agree with Geithner's proposal to use the unspent funds for debt reduction. Other lawmakers want to kill the program altogether. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) introduced a bill that would end TARP altogether on Dec. 31.

The Treasury, however, is all but certain to extend TARP for another year since it is still in the process of rolling out programs to help community banks, small business lenders and homeowners who are struggling to keep up with their mortgage payments. The original legislation grants the Treasury secretary the power to extend the program until October of 2010, two years after TARP was signed into law.


Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Wikipedia, Youtube

Democrats Want Pres. Obama To Focus On Job Creation...Like WPA Programs Not Copenhagen!

Economy key voting issue in Virginia. Former Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder talks about what went wrong for the Democrats in Tuesday’s elections.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Decision 2009 bodes ill for Dems. A day after watching his party suffer its first bad November election night since 2004, President Barack Obama got nostalgic for his own election exactly one year ago Wednesday. NBC's Chuck Todd reports.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

(A clip from a short government film about the the Works Progress Administration, one of the New Deal programs started during the Great Depression. This clip shows road, bridge, and airport construction, as well as water and sewer projects. Posted by David Burns for the Fasttrack American History Project. Part II)






Contests serve as warning to Democrats: It's not 2008 anymore

Off-year elections can be notoriously unreliable as predictors of the future, but as a window on how the political landscape may have changed in the year since President Obama won the White House, Tuesday's Republican victories in Virginia and New Jersey delivered clear warnings for the Democrats.

But the Republicans' celebration was marred by the surprise loss of a House seat in upstate New York that had been in GOP hands for more than a century. The race that underscored the consequences of the ideological warfare that now grips the party and threatens its ability to rebuild itself as a broad-based coalition.

Neither gubernatorial election amounted to a referendum on the president, but the changing shape of the electorate in both states and the shifts among key constituencies revealed cracks in the Obama 2008 faction and demonstrated that, at this point, Republicans have the more energized constituency heading into next year's midterm elections.

The most significant change came among independent voters, who solidly backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008 but moved decisively to the Republicans on Tuesday, according to exit polls. In Virginia, independents strongly supported Republican Robert F. McDonnell in his victory over Democrat R. Creigh Deeds, while in New Jersey, they supported Republican Chris Christie in his win over Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine.

For months, polls have shown that independents were increasingly disaffected with some of Obama's domestic policies. They have expressed reservations about the president's health-care efforts and have shown concerns about the growth in government spending and the federal deficit under his leadership.

Tuesday's elections provided the first tangible evidence that Republicans can win their support with the right kind of candidates and the right messages. That is an ominous development for Democrats if it continues unabated into next year. But Republicans could squander that opportunity if they demand candidates who are too conservative to appeal to the middle.

McDonnell pitched his campaign toward the center of the electorate, offering Republicans a model for how to reach independents. But the uproar in New York's 23rd Congressional District, where a populist conservative uprising drove the hand-picked Republican nominee out of the race, showed that ideological warfare still threatens the party.

Age gap re-emerges

Beyond the shift among independents, there were other worrisome indicators that the coalition Obama attracted last year is a shrunken force, at least for the time being. One question all year has been whether, without Obama on the ballot, Democrats could attract the new voters who went to the polls in 2008. In New Jersey and Virginia, the answer was no.

Many of the young voters who came out in big numbers in 2008 and strongly backed Obama stayed home Tuesday. In Virginia, voters under age 30 accounted for 10 percent of the electorate, half the share they represented last year. In New Jersey, their turnout also was halved.

Meanwhile, the percentage of voters age 65 and older jumped significantly in Virginia and rose measurably in New Jersey. In both states, these voters tilted slightly more Republican than they did a year ago.

A surge among black voters was another key to Obama's victory in Virginia last year. They were no less Democratic in their balloting Tuesday but turned out in somewhat smaller numbers.

Democrats also saw erosion compared with last year among suburban voters, voters without college degrees and those with family incomes below $50,000. Suburban voters had narrowly backed Obama in Virginia but went solidly for McDonnell on Tuesday; in New Jersey they had voted even more strongly for Obama but were going narrowly for Christie. Non-college graduates voted in roughly the same percentages as a year ago but were decisively more Republican this year -- a roughly 30-point shift in Virginia and about a 15-point shift in New Jersey.

Another major shift came on the economy. Polls have shown through much of the year that Americans blame former president George W. Bush more than Obama for the recession. But if the economic collapse was a powerful force working for Obama and the Democrats last year, it clearly helped Republicans on Tuesday.

Just over half the electorate in both states said they were very worried about the economy, according to the exit polls, percentages almost identical to a year ago. But last year Obama carried those voters by 59 to 40 percent in Virginia and by 61 to 38 percent in New Jersey. On Tuesday, McDonnell won three in four of those voters, while Christie won about three in five.

A blip or a warning for 2010?

White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Tuesday's races were in no way a reflection of public opinion about the president or his agenda. "Whatever's driving these voters, it wasn't attitudes toward the president," he said, noting that local issues and attitudes toward the candidates on the ballots were the major influences.

Axelrod warned against extrapolating into the future the shift among independents. He said he believed that many people who called themselves Republicans in the past now call themselves independents but are still voting for Republican candidates. "I don't think they portend long-term trends," he said.

He said the only race with real national implications was the congressional contest in Upstate New York. "It's more significant because of the message it sends to moderate Republicans that there's no room at the inn," he said.

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said he agreed that Tuesday's races were not a referendum on the president. But he argued that Obama's policies were creating anxiety among voters that was helping Republican candidates.

"It's not about the president personally. The president's not unpopular. Americans want our presidents to succeed. But the president's policies are very unpopular, and they are hurting Democrats in Virginia, New Jersey, New York," Barbour said.

The party holding the White House has now lost nine consecutive gubernatorial elections in Virginia. In addition, Deeds proved to be a weak and ineffective candidate and got into a public spat with the White House by saying that Obama's policies were hurting him in the race. But McDonnell's big victory Tuesday was nonetheless a setback for the White House.

Obama was the first Democratic nominee to win Virginia since 1964, and in many ways, the state was emblematic of his "expand the map" electoral strategy nationally and the new coalition he attracted. Obama had other important victories -- in Colorado, North Carolina, Indiana -- but few were as satisfying to his team as that in Virginia.

On Tuesday, Virginia moved back in the direction of Republicans, a reminder that the political landscape is far more fluid than it appeared to be a year ago -- and a challenge for the White House and the Democrats as they look toward 2010.



View Larger Map


Sources: Washington Post, MSNBC, Youtube, Google Maps