In the past few days, presidential contender Michele Bachmann has pushed back against the idea that the rich are to blame for the country’s unhealthy economy.

“President Obama joined with the Occupy Wall Street protestors who believe that the problem we face is capitalism, the free markets and job creators,” Bachmann said in a statement Friday. “It’s not.”

Instead, Bachmann says the problem is “crony capitalism,” which she defined in a speech at Iowa State University earlier this week as “forcefully taking your money for the purpose of paying off a politician’s political friends.”

“The problem is one set of standards for individual Americans and another set of standards for those who make political donations to candidates,” she said. “If we are ever to get out of this ditch, President Obama, the Democrats and Occupy Wall Street need to wake up and stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians.”

While Bachmann briefly touches on the issue of campaign finance reform, saying that American and “Occupy Wall Street in particular, needs to wake up and stop blaming job creators for the failures created by selfish politicians who wink at their political donors,” she eventually settles blame for the faltering economy on the corporate tax rate and regulatory burdens.

The tax code “contains loopholes that are exploited by companies large enough to hire an army of lawyers,” she said in Iowa. “The United States remains stuck since 1986 in an out of date high corporate tax rate that sent companies fleeing America for a more competitive tax climate.”

Bachmann’s campaign didn’t immediately respond to the Minnesota Independent’s request for comment on Bachmann’s stance on the Citizens United Supreme Court decision or campaign finance reform (this post will be updated if we do hear back).

Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich leveled particularly harsh criticism at Obama, saying he’s personally hurt the economy by attacking job creators.

“This country has been maniacally anti-jobs,” Gingrich said. “Obama is a left-wing radical who believes in class warfare and then he’s surprised that everybody who he’s attacking doesn’t create jobs.”

Gingrich then asked, “what did he think was going to happen?”

“You can’t go around the country and blame everybody who creates jobs and then say now gee, why didn’t you go out and take risk with your capital and spend the next five years of your lives creating jobs so I can attack you even more?” Gingrich said.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry offered a similar evaluation, saying people have lost confidence in the federal government and are not willing to risk capital to invest in potential job-creating ventures.

“Let’s quit penalizing Americans for making money, quit fighting this fight that we’re fighting on divisions between those that have money and those that don’t,” he said. “I want everybody to have more money.”

And Former U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) also stuck the country’s economic woes on Obama, saying repealing federal health care reform legislation he championed would be a major step toward recovery.

“I think one of the biggest things we can do is repeal Obamacare,” he said. “That is a job crusher that is creating all sorts of uncertainty.”

Santorum called for eliminating the corporate income tax and allowing for tax-free repatriation of corporate profits being held overseas – estimated at more than $1 trillion – if the money is used to invest in job creation.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also called for no taxes on repatriated profits, but said companies should be able to use them however they want.

Bachmann said the biggest problem businesses have right now is uncertainty. She wants a moratorium on regulations, and to see health care reform repealed.

“That’s the biggest problem business has right now,” Bachmann said. “They have no idea what’s going to come out of Washington, D.C. when they wake up in the morning. And that’s why we need to have an immediate moratorium on regulations. It’s killing us.”

U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said he’d like to see no taxes on repatriated profits and a 15 percent corporate tax rate.

“I want it very low because in many ways, they think…if you lower corporate taxes only the executive is going to benefit,” Paul said. “But the consumer benefits too. Corporate taxes are a form of a sales tax, and if they’re competitive they have to pass this on.”

But Organizing for America, a project of the Democratic National Committee, says the Republican candidates have it wrong. The group claims Obama has worked hard to get rid of undue regulations, and the regulations that have been put in place are meant to protect taxpayers and close loopholes.

A recent review from Bloomberg found Obama has put in place fewer regulations than former President George W. Bush had at this point in his tenure.

National frontrunners Herman Cain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney did not attend the forum, held in Pella.

In a sign that the campaign season has truly started, Pres. Barack Obama’s campaign will open an office just outside the University of Minnesota campus Monday.

The office will be located at 2722 University Avenue S.E., in Minneapolis. An invitation sent to supporters invites them to meet fellow activists and learn about the campaign’s “grassroots strategy for re-electing the president.”

“One year isn’t so far away, and we have to build for the long term and strengthen this movement today. Come on Monday to see how you can be involved and how together we will re-elect the President and reclaim the basic values that make our country great.”

Obama’s Republican rivals are currently focusing their resources on early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Our sister site, the Colorado Independent, reported that Obama was in full campaign mode as he told a Denver crowd that he intends to relieve economic distress without going through the gridlocked Congress.

Obama’s plan is for speeding up student loan repayment reforms passed last year but wasn’t scheduled to take effect until 2014. His executive order will lower the maximum percentage of income students will have to pay toward their student loans to 10 percent. After 20 years, the remaining debt will be forgiven. There is also a loan consolidation component to the plan.

The plan would help 1.6 million borrowers reduce their monthly payments, according to the White House. Another 5.8 million could benefit from the loan consolidation program. But the conditions of the plan are restricted. The Education Finance Council told Reuters that they were disappointed by the limited scope of the proposal.

“President Obama’s proposal, available to a limited group of students for a limited amount of time, does not address the real student loan problem: rising tuition and the lack of well-paying jobs,” a statement from Education Finance Council said.

Student advocacy groups told the Chronicle of Higher Education that they were thankful, considering the gridlocked political scene, for the new measures.

“The president is doing what he can with a paralyzed Congress,” said Richard T. Williams, a lobbyist with the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “It might be a limp when we need a leap, but we need Congress to provide that leap.”

Sen. Al Franken commended the President on the proposal.

“I’ve traveled around Minnesota and have heard how much families are struggling to make ends meet, and I’m glad the president recognizes that people need this kind of relief now,” Franken said in a statement. “The cost of a college education shouldn’t bankrupt a family, and with our struggling economy, these reforms couldn’t come at a better time.”

U.S. Student loan debt has recently overtaken credit card debt. There is roughly $1 trillion in outstanding loans and this year’s crop of university graduates holds the highest average debt to date, the Colorado Independent reported.

Obama also touched on the economic impact of student loan debt.

“Other countries are hustling to out-educate us so they can out-compete us tomorrow. They want the jobs of the future. I want you to have those jobs. I want Americans to have those jobs. I want us to win the future. That means we should be doing everything we can to put a college education within reach for every American,” Obama said. “It’s never been more important, but let’s face it, it’s also never been more expensive.”

The president spoke about the debt he and his wife Michelle racked up as students. He said together they owed in excess of $100,000 in student loans when they married.

“We combined liabilities, not assets,” he joked.

John Tomasic contributed to this report.

President Obama’s 2012 campaign has a new senior adviser — a former lobbyist for the company pushing the Keystone XL pipeline, who also lobbied for Comcast throughout the period that the media conglomerate was seeking approval for its merger with NBC-Universal.

The campaign hired Broderick Johnson of the lobbying firm Bryan Cave LLP this week. According to U.S. House of Representatives records, Johnson lobbied to “support submission of a presidential permit for Keystone XL pipeline” in the final quarter of 2010.

Environmentalists are upset with the pipeline and with Pres. Barack Obama’s unwillingness to reconsider the project.

According to Friends of the Earth campaigner Kim Huynh:

“President Obama ran for office in 2008 promising that the days of lobbyists setting the agenda in Washington were over, yet now he’s hired a top oil pipeline lobbyist into his campaign,” Huynh said. “This is a deeply troubling development. A lobbyist who has taken corporate cash to shill for this dirty and dangerous pipeline now has even more opportunity to whisper into the President’s ear.”

On Oct. 6, Friends of the Earth and the Center for International Environmental Law and Corporate Ethics International amended (pdf) a Freedom of Information Act request to include a request for State Department documents involving Johnson and other pipeline lobbyists.

Bryan Cave earned more than $1 million from 2009-2011 from its lobbying activities on behalf of TransCanada.

Johnson was also a lobbyist in Comcast’s massive effort to influence the Federal Communications Commission to approve a merger with NBC-Universal, which made it one of the biggest media conglomerates in American history, as the Minnesota Independent reported. Sen. Al Franken was a prominent critic of the merger, which consumer advocates said would reduce options and increase costs for customers.

Brian Cave LLP received at least $440,000 in lobbying income from Comcast from 2009-2011, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Johnson is listed on the House disclosure forms throughout the period, some of the forms disclose his role as “advocacy work regarding Comcast/NBC-U transaction.”

The Comcast merger was approved in early 2011. Later this year, Comcast snapped up FCC Commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who supported the merger, as the new Comcast vice president for government affairs, what’s known in Capitol circles as the “revolving door.”

Johnson himself has held a number of official and lobbying positions, including deputy assistant to the President for legislative affairs in the Clinton White House. Johnson was also an informal advisor for Obama’s 2008 election, according to his bio on another firm’s website.

Ed Brayton contributed to this report.

Bachmann focused on familiar themes, slamming “Obamacare” and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms while touting the need for fewer regulations to create jobs.

“I am a mother of 28 kids, 23 foster kids, 5 biological kids. I get how difficult it is for young people right now to get jobs right out of college. The business world is looking at $1.8 trillion every year in compliance costs, with government regulations. That has to go,” Bachmann said. ”But the number one reason that employers say that they are not hiring today is Obamacare, and I was the leading critic for President Obama in Washington, D.C. against Obamacare, that’s why I was the first member of Congress to introduce that bill to repeal Obamacare. I understand that’s what’s inhibiting job creation and job growth.”

The statement blaming health care reform for job loss was labelled “misleading” by CNN’s fact-checkers.

She also insisted during the debate that health care reform spearheaded by Pres. Barack Obama would create a 15-member panel that would “make all the major health care decisions for over 300 million Americans.” CNN fact-checked that statement and found it false.

The Associated Press also found that a Bachmann statement blaming the economic crisis on availability of affordable housing loans ignored the role of unregulated mortgage lenders in rolling those loans into securities that Wall Street then snapped up.

But despite some of Bachmann’s questionable statements, she was heralded for her performance Tuesday, with Politico saying she delivered a “solid performance” as “the Michele Bachmann conservatives fell in love with during the campaign’s early debates.”

Bachmann largely focused on content that would appeal to social conservatives, many of whom first abandoned her for Rick Perry and now Herman Cain. She criticized Cain’s 9-9-9 economic plan as yet another possible revenue stream for government to use.

“When you take the 9-9-9 plan and you turn it upside down, I think the devil is in the details,” Bachmann said.

Bachmann’s campaign touted her performance to reporters in a press release after the debate titled “Bachmann dominates at economic debate.”

Bachmann started a campaign swing this week through New Hampshire, where she’s mostly been absent. Her campaign is largely focused on Iowa, where she hopes to gain the support of the conservatives that dominate the state’s GOP.

“Just like Jimmy Carter in the 1970s didn’t have the back of the Shah of Iran, we saw the Shah fall and the rise of the Ayatollah, and we saw the rise and the beginnings of radical jihad, which have changed this world and changed this nation,” Bachmann said, according to a video posted by MSNBC. “So too under Barack Obama, we saw him put a lot of daylight between our relationship with our ally Israel.”

Bachmann linked the Arab Spring, which has resulted in pro-democracy uprisings in countries like Egypt, Syria and Libya, to the President’s earlier stance that negotiations between Israel and Palestine should begin at the 1967 boundaries.

“And when he called upon Israel to retreat to its indefensible 1967 borders, don’t think that message wasn’t lost to Israel’s 26 hostile neighbors,” Bachmann said. “You want to know why we have an Arab Spring. Barack Obama has laid the table for Arab Spring by demonstrating weakness from the United States of America.”

Earlier this morning, President Obama announced a set of criteria for states to opt out of the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) law following a long period of dissatisfaction with the 9-year-old national education policy.

During the indoor media event, the president said, “despite the good intentions of some, Congress has not been able to fix these laws so far…Our kids only get one shot at a decent education. So given that Congress isn’t acting, I am acting.”

The president stood with U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and various state government and education leaders. Underlying the bipartisan collaboration the administration has fostered on the state level, Gov. Bill Haslam (R-Tenn.) introduced Obama, stating he looks forward “to the federal government narrowing its role in education.” Haslam added: “Education decisions are best made at the state and local level.

Under the 2002 legislation, students are permitted to transfer to new schools if their current schools fail to meet state proficiency two years in a row. Even more costly, 20 percent of an under-performing school’s federal dollars is redirected to fund tutoring services for low-income students after three years of missing state standards. The build up of high-stakes testing that determine whether the state is meeting proficiency benchmarks — called Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) — was established by the federal law but allowed for states to craft the specifics.

Though the president’s remarks were light on the details — having his administration staff lay out the terms in a closed session with journalists Thursday — education policy analyst Ulrich Boser of Center for American Progress said the live event demonstrates his commitment to education policy.

“The president has the bully pulpit … in light of the impending United Nations vote on Palestinian statehood and a looming government shutdown,” Boser said,” this is significant from a policy and political perspective that he did speak about it.”

During a briefing to reporters Thursday, senior administration officials laid out the White House’s expectations before granting states the option to opt out of the punitive portions of NCLB, calling it the “flexibility package.”

Broadly, states would need to develop a set of instructional standards that are college- and career-ready. They asked to adopt School Improvement Grant provisions like turning around the bottom five percent of schools in terms of performance while having plans in place to improve schools with low graduation rates and subsets of the student body that are considerably behind their peers.

Kristen Amundson, head of communications at education think tank Education Sector based in Washington, D.C., said the emphasis on flexibility, and by extension, the dearth of expected quantifiable outputs, is intentional. “The department seems very sincere in laying out general parameters for improving systems without hard numbers. I would be surprised if they did,” she said.

For a full look at what the White House is asking from states in exchange for issuing waivers from the federal education law, read The American Independent’s breakdown here.

President Obama’s decision early this month to side with anti-regulation business interests against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to stop a plan to tighten smog regulations comes during an election cycle in which Obama has received campaign donations from top polluters, and only weeks after his chief of staff met with anti-regulation industry trade associations.

According to the Hill, on August 15, White House Chief of Staff William M. Daley met with the heads of several business groups with a history of spending big bucks on legislative outcomes: the American Chemistry Council, American Petroleum Institute, the Business Roundtable, National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

Since July 2009, the five trade groups collectively gave over $215 million to the major parties, political action committees and candidates, and 60 percent of lobbyists hired by the groups have worked in a federal agency or Congress, according to Open Secrets.

Meanwhile, Obama for America, the president’s reelection group, received money from a range of heavy polluters, according to his July quarterly campaign disclosure.

Of the top twenty air polluters, according to the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, seven donated to the campaign.

Exxon Mobil, the second-worst air polluter, donated a total of $3,025 to Obama for America under four different company names (Exxon Mobil, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Exxonmobile, Exxonmobile Chemical). General Electric and the General Electric Company gave $2,575; Conoco Phillips gave $1,000 and Dow Chemical, BASF, Alco and Eastman Kodak all gave $1,000 or under.

The Business Roundtable, one of the most vocal opponents of the smog regulations bill, also represents four of Obama’s top ten donors. The Goldman Sachs Group, Time Warner, Microsoft, General Electric and his biggest donor, the Comcast Corporation (which donated $79,955 for the 2012 election cycle), are all members of the Business Roundtable.

In fact, the language used by Obama when he announced his opposition to the bill echoes that of the Roundtable’s against it: they urged “swift action by both the Administration and Congress to relieve U.S. companies of burdensome regulations that threaten economic recovery and throttle job creation.”

In a short written statement announcing that he’d decided against making the smog rule stronger, Obama said “it would put too big a burden on business in a tough economic time.”

Johanna Schneider, executive director of external relations for the Business Roundtable, applauded the administration’s hands-on approach to negotiation with business leaders.“We saw that as a positive … [Daley] weighing in on this issue within the administration,”

Johanna Schneider, executive director of external relations for the Business Roundtable, told The Hill. “I think it’s emblematic of his role in the administration as part of the outreach to the business community.”

Health impacts
But environmental groups and health advocates were not so pleased with Obama’s announcement. Gene Karpinski, head of the League of Conservation Voters, called the decision “a huge win for corporate polluters and a huge loss for public health.”

Ground-level smog is blamed for a variety of health problems, according to the EPA, including “chest pain, coughing, throat irritation and congestion. It can worsen bronchitis, emphysema, and asthma.

Ground-level ozone also can reduce lung function and inflame the linings of the lungs. Repeated exposure may permanently scar lung tissue.”The strengthened smog standards were expected to save up to 4,300 lives and avoid as many as 2,200 heart attacks, according to the National Resources Defense Council.

In addition, the ruling would have cleared the air for the 24 million Americans suffering from asthma.

Environmental groups have also donated money to Democrats and, in particular, Obama’s reelection campaign, but their donations pale in comparison to those given by industry giants.

The Sierra Club, for example, donated $828,748 in the 2012 election cycle, according to Open Secrets, while the anti-regulation U.S. Chamber of Commerce donated $32,851,997 in the same period.

Preacher Bradlee Dean expressed disappointment about Pres. Barack Obama’s first term in an open letter to the President posted last week on his You Can Run But You Cannot Hide ministry’s website.

Dean said that Obama has moved away from the country’s founding principles.

“Sadly, our posterity, who is the apple of my eye, has been reaping the disastrous consequences of the older generation’s lack of responsibility,” Dean wrote. “They have been the target—there is no doubt about that. It is our duty (and one I take seriously) to protect our posterity from those who have been attacking them incessantly.”

Dean criticized the hiring of former safe schools czar Kevin Jennings—who Dean said is an “admitted radical homosexual activist”—expressed disappointment over Obama’s support of repealing the Defense of Marriage Act and accused the government of ignoring thousands of defense and intelligence employees who Dean says downloaded child pornography.

“Your grave decisions dishonor everything our forefathers gave us when they laid down their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. I, for one, will not and cannot stand down on this issue,” Dean wrote. “You, Sir, are to magnify the laws in which the Son of God (in the spiritual) our our veterans (in the natural) died to give us, not desecrate them. Mr. President, God is watching, and so is America.”

Dean has been connected to a number of controversial issues and statements, including criticisms of President Barack Obama at an opening prayer at the Minnesota Legislature, for which Republican leaders who invited Dean apologized.

Dean recently filed a libel lawsuit against the Minnesota Independent, as well as MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow and her show, contending that he was defamed by news reports of statements made by Dean on his radio show last year.