Hullabaloo

Wednesday, September 21, 2011

 
The Tea Party Alliance

by digby

The House Tea Partiers just helped the Democrats vote down the continuing resolution even though Cantor and the boys got all kinds of hideous cuts in exchange for emergency disaster relief. This isn't about "the budget" to these guys, they just hate anything that helps people in need for any reason.

Now House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and his leadership team must decide whether to acquiesce to the Democrats, or to cut discretionary spending below the level provided for in this bill. Neither option is good from Boehner's perspective. Appeasing Democrats will cost him support in his caucus, further weakening his standing in his party. But bowing to his own members by cutting spending even further would violate an agreement he struck with Democrats during the debt limit fight, and poison an already sour relationship between leaders of both parties.

GOP leadership is now debating whether to seek a new, less controversial offset, to scrap the idea of offsetting altogether, or to disentangle the disaster aid from the government funding bill altogether -- to essentially admit that yoking the two together in the first place was an error. Democrats say it's plausible there's another, hypothetical offset they can live with -- the only bright line they're drawing now is that further cuts to the budget, below the level Republicans agreed to in July, are unacceptable.

I wish I believed that Boehner would choose not to violate the debt limit agreement rather than give in to his loonies, but I don't think that's a safe bet. Still, it's a good day for the American people when once more those loonies wouldn't take yes for an answer. They are very useful at times.

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digby 9/21/2011 05:07:00 PM |

 
Spreading the Free Market Around
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Rick Santorum has a well-known Google problem. Offended by little Rick's signature homophobia, sex columnist Dan Savage used internet activism to essentially redefine Santorum as, well, a less-than-sanitary potential byproduct of gay sex that now comes up as the top link on when searching for Rick Santorum on Google.

Little Rick contacted Google about fixing the problem, which in itself just made the problem worse through increased press coverage. For its own part, Google has responded:

A Google spokesperson responded to Santorum by advising that users who want "content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly."

"Google’s search results are a reflection of the content and information that is available on the web. Users who want content removed from the Internet should contact the webmaster of the page directly," the spokesperson said. "Once the webmaster takes the page down from the web, it will be removed from Google’s search results through our usual crawling process."

The spokesperson said that Google does not "remove content from our search results, except in very limited cases such as illegal content and violations of our webmaster guidelines."

I don't know what Rick is complaining about. A private individual used individual initiative to redefine a word in the American lexicon. A very successful private company (dare I say "job creator?") with a very successful search engine formula has reflected that definition in its listings. It would be bad for Google's business to make an exception for Little Rick. If Mr. Santorum doesn't like how a private company orders its search listings, perhaps he can pull himself up by his bootstraps and build a web activist army to defeat Dan Savage's website by generating more links to his own campaign page. It's the American Way!


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thereisnospoon 9/21/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
Ritualized Injustice

by digby


I haven't written about the Troy Davis execution but I've been reading about it. And it's heartbreaking:

Troy Davis is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday for the 1989 killing of a police officer in Savannah, Ga. The Georgia pardon and parole board’s refusal to grant him clemency is appalling in light of developments after his conviction: reports about police misconduct, the recantation of testimony by a string of eyewitnesses and reports from other witnesses that another person had confessed to the crime.

This case has attracted worldwide attention, but it is, in essence, no different from other capital cases. Across the country, the legal process for the death penalty has shown itself to be discriminatory, unjust and incapable of being fixed. Just last week, the Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for Duane Buck, an African-American, hours before he was to die in Texas because a psychologist testified during his sentencing that Mr. Buck’s race increased the chances of future dangerousness. Case after case adds to the many reasons why the death penalty must be abolished.

The grievous errors in the Davis case were numerous, and many arose out of eyewitness identification. The Savannah police contaminated the memories of four witnesses by re-enacting the crime with them present so that their individual perceptions were turned into a group one. The police showed some of the witnesses Mr. Davis’s photograph even before the lineup. His lineup picture was set apart by a different background. The lineup was also administered by a police officer involved in the investigation, increasing the potential for influencing the witnesses. ... Studies of the hundreds of felony cases overturned because of DNA evidence have found that misidentifications accounted for between 75 percent and 85 percent of the wrongful convictions. The Davis case offers egregious examples of this kind of error.

Anyone who had read this blog for any length of time knows that I have an aversion to the death penalty across the board. It's cold blooded, premeditated, ritualized killing that does nothing but offer a faux catharsis and illusion of safety and justice. But nothing is more horrifying to me than the state executing an innocent man.

This is not the first time that the US is executing an innocent man, although to hear conservatives tell it, this is the one the thing the government does absolutely perfectly. (I've also heard people say it doesn't matter if we execute some innocent people --- price of freedom and all that. Those people suffer from a lack of empathy so strong that it borders on sociopathy. And there are a lot of them.)Our multi-tiered, crude system of law, the endemic racism, the imperfection of human beings and America's death culture guarantee that this ultimate state power is dispensed unjustly. Today, it looks like we are going to watch it happen before our eyes.

According to Greg Mitchell, we're also going to see the white supremacist who dragged James Byrd to his death in Texas in 1998 executed today. I think I'm supposed to be conflicted here and see this as some kind of moral dilemma, but I don't. This fellow has admitted to his crime and he's a putrid piece of human garbage. But killing him isn't justice either. It's just revenge and revenge just perpetuates more violence. Obviously, he's a dangerous killer and should be kept away from other humans for the rest of his life. But kill him? It only validates a system that's unjustifiable.

For a very slight bit of hope in the Davis case, read this at emptywheel, via Gaius Publius. It seems that even the most conservative "originalists" are having some second thoughts about killing innocent people.


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digby 9/21/2011 02:00:00 PM |

 
Chart 'O the Day

by digby

From Think Progress:



They can steal a lot of elections with that money.

If you're curious about why their wealth has grown so much so fast, it's apparently because of speculation on the energy markets. Lot's and lots of job creation right there.


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digby 9/21/2011 01:00:00 PM |

 
Bozos, Bangles and Beads

by digby


I've got some American exceptionalism for you right here:

A Pennsylvania school district has decided not to stage a Tony Award-winning musical about a Muslim street poet after community members complained about the timing so soon after the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Richland School District in Johnstown had planned to stage "Kismet" in February, but Superintendent Thomas Fleming said Tuesday that it was scrapped to avoid controversy.

"We're not saying there's anything bad about the musical. We may potentially produce it in the future," Fleming told The Associated Press. The Tribune-Democrat of Johnstown first reported on the district's decision.

Music director Scott Miller said the district, not far from where hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 crashed, last performed "Kismet" in 1983 — to sold-out audiences.

The play has no inappropriate content, Miller said, but he and other members of the performing arts committee decided to switch to "Oklahoma!" after hearing complaints.

"Kismet" is an Aladdin-style love story set in Baghdad more than 1,000 years ago. It won the Tony for best musical in 1954, and a Hollywood movie was made the next year.

We are exceptionally stupid and we're getting stupider every day. This is a school, after all.

What I want to know is why we haven't banned "I Dream of Jeanie"? It's not just disrespectful to the victims of 9/11, it's disrespectful to our military as well.

And pita bread also, too.




h/t to bb
digby 9/21/2011 10:45:00 AM |

 
Colbert, Rocket Scientist

by digby

Stephen explains why we can't tax the job creators:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

If I thought that conservatives were capable of understanding satire, I'd recommend this for them. But I'm quite sure they'd take it seriously.


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digby 9/21/2011 09:45:00 AM |

 
Elizabeth Warren the Magnificent
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

This should be enough to put a smile on the face of even the grouchiest, most cynical progressive sourpuss out there. Ladies and gentlemen, meet the next senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren:

We got into this whole...we got in this hole one billion dollars, uh, one trillion dollars on tax cuts for the rich under George Bush. We got into this hole 2 trillion dollars on two wars we put on a credit card for our children and grandchildren to pay off. And we got into this hole one trillion dollars on a Medicare drug program that A) was not paid for, and B) was 40% more expensive than it needs to be because it was a giveaway to the drug companies. Which is four trillion right there! Applause. So part of the way you fix this problem is, like, don't do those things! Laughter, applause.

...

I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.” No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that maurauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Changing the system won't come from dropping out and voting third party, nor will it come from blindly defending the Administration and hoping a Republican never holds the White House again in our lifetime. Changing the system will come from voting people like Elizabeth Warren into office all across the country, proving that they can win using this sort of rhetoric, and then holding them accountable to their campaign promises.

And here's the little secret the Democratic consultant class either doesn't understand or willfully refuses to understand: this sort of rhetoric won't just win in Massachusetts. It will win in Omaha, too. It will win the day from Annapolis to Anchorage, from Kalamazoo to Kailua-Kona.

Will there be places this message won't win, and voters whose heartstrings it won't touch? Yes, of course. Most of those places will be heavily rural or bastions of the Bible Belt and the Deep South. But those places were unwinnable and those people unreachable anyway without destroying everything the Democratic Party is supposed to stand for.

The amount of contortion necessary for Democrats to win in places Warren's message won't work means those places aren't worth winning in the first place.

The Democratic Party would be far, far better off maximizing voter turnout in places where this message does work, than in weakening its message so much that its support becomes a mile wide but an inch deep.

Most importantly, if the Democratic Party were to elect a bevy of candidates who talked this talk and then walked the walk while in office, the Party would actually succeed in moving economic policy significantly to the left while in power, and in stopping the Rightist juggernaut when eventually forced into the minority. It would actually do the job not just of getting elected, but of actually doing the things they were elected to do, which is the whole point of politics. Yes, it might lose some Wall St. cash in the process. But if that's the overriding concern, it's only a matter of time before violent revolution or totalitarian takeover anyway. So there's not much to lose, anyway.

And the good news? Warren is up by two points over Scott Brown in the latest poll.

Help Elizabeth Warren win in 2012 by donating and/or volunteering. From there, 2016 is right around the corner. Ms. Warren would be a formidable candidate.


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thereisnospoon 9/21/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

 
War on pleasure

by digby

Think Progress:

“This is not a war against women,” said Republican founder of WomanTrend Kellyanne Conway.

Texas Rep. Wayne Christian (R), however, begs to differ. With Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) at the helm, Texas Republicans have passed an “emergency” law forcing women to view a sonogram before an abortion, threatened a poor women’s health care program over Planned Parenthood funding, are seeking to restrict hospitals and physicians over abortion procedures, and has cut funding for family planning clinics by two-thirds.
When asked whether Texas’s anti-family planning efforts were “a war on birth control,” Christian replied, “Well of course this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything”:

The goal is to get government money out of the abortion process and if contraceptive services have to suffer a bit of collateral damage in the process, so be it. When The Texas Tribune asked state Rep. Wayne Christian (R-Nacogdoches), a supporter of the family planning cuts, if this was a war on birth control, he said “yes.”

“Well of course this is a war on birth control and abortions and everything, that’s what family planning is supposed to be about,” Christian said.

That's actually not quite true. It's a war on pleasure. Anything that promotes human happiness other than the ecstasy of counting money and prayer must be stopped.


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digby 9/20/2011 06:00:00 PM |

 

"He sure was a lot more generous with me..."

by digby

Jonathan Alter is on television today, predictably flogging his boring book that nobody read as being superior to Suskind's, particularly taking issue with the claims that the White House wasn't exactly friendly to women:

Alter: there was concern that there was a boys club and the president reacted to that concern. This dinner which Ron Suskind has been talking about, and I named all the women at the dinner in my book, and they had their gripes.

But there's a big difference between it being a boy's club and it being a hostile work environment even if one of the women is on tape sort of saying that, who now says she didn't mean it that way.

Bashir: you're referring to Anita Dunn who is now saying to Ron Suskind it was a hostile work environment.

Alter: The question so far has been, "did Anita Dunn say it, did she not say it" that's not the issue. The issue is, was that a hostile work environment and the answer to that is no.

I've talkied to a lot of women about this. It was a hostile work environment for both men and women because they thought that Larry Summers and Rahm Emmanuel were very tough to work for.

And that's what they agreed to at this dinner with the President. It was a gripe session about Larry and Rahm.

Bashir: So it wasn't the president setting this tone and environment it was Larry Summers

Alter: no not at all. And in fact if you read Suskind's book you can see that it's not the president. But the shorthand and the way it's come across in the media it's conveyed an impression ...

I had some very tough things to say about the WH in my book but it needs to be accurate. In other words, the impression people are getting now that this was an anti-woman White House is just not so.

Right, And the privileged white guy would know that better than anyone, right?

Alter basically said that it's very hard to work in the White House for everyone and these women who banded together to confront the president with their "gripes" aren't as tough as the boys and can't handle the pressure. Why else wouldn't it have been representatives of both genders in this meeting? He made this point more than once.

Lord knows it's not the first time I've heard this either. If a man doesn't recognize sexism it didn't actually happen. (Witness Howard Dean having his consciousness raised.) This is the most common (and infuriating) reaction women, particularly executives, in the workplace get from men when the subject is brought up. "Toughen up, sweetie. It's not personal. If you can't stand the heat ...."

In my experience this stuff just doesn't come out of nowhere. This passage that Delong relates about Romer does not let the President off the hook in any way. (Click on each image to read them)




There's a reason why she talked with Dunn and Jarrett about this incident and it isn't because Rahm and Larry were so hard to work for.

I don't know if the White House boys club is sexist. But I do know that listening to people like Jonathan Alter "explain" why it isn't doesn't reassure me. I've heard that fatuous crap for decades and I can't believe these guys will actually go on television and spout it as if it isn't insulting as hell. Even today. In 2011. We haven't come that far, baby.


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digby 9/20/2011 04:30:00 PM |

 
Killing Credibility
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

The IMF has moved to downgrade growth prospects in the U.S. and Europe. The Times has the details:

The International Monetary Fund sharply downgraded its outlook for the United States economy through 2012 because of weak growth and concern that Europe won’t be able to solve its debt crisis, the organization said in its economic outlook Tuesday.

The fund said it expected the American economy to grow just 1.5 percent this year and 1.8 percent in 2012. That’s down from its June forecast of 2.5 percent in 2011 and 2.7 percent next year.

The International Monetary Fund also lowered its outlook for the 17 European Union countries that use the euro. It predicted 1.6 percent growth this year and 1.1 percent next year, down from its June projections of 2 percent and 1.7 percent, respectively.

The gloomier forecast for Europe was based on worries that Greece would default on its debt and destabilize the region.

“Fear of the unknown is high,” said Olivier Blanchard, the organization’s chief economist. “Strong policies are urgently needed to improve the outlook and reduce the risks.”

Not a surprise. The move to austerity has been an utter disaster since the economic collapse, with most governments attempting to bail out their banks at the expense of their citizens, leading to a growth-killing decrease in demand. So logically the IMF has seen the error its ways and is pushing pro-growth policies. Or maybe not:

American and European policy makers need to act more decisively to cut budget deficits, the report said, and European officials need to ensure that the region’s banks have enough capital to withstand the debt crisis...

Budget cuts “cannot be too fast or it will kill growth,” Mr. Blanchard said in a statement. “It cannot be too slow or it will kill credibility.”

Kill credibility with whom, exactly? With the bankers and finance wizards who caused the crisis? With hedge fund managers? The Chinese, whose sharp undervaluation of their own currency is the the least credibility-inducing policy on the world economic stage? Just who are these masters of the universe before whose nervous moods entire nations must tremble, discarding their sick, elderly and poor to the whims of fate? Are they willing to go on the record? Do they have a street address? Who are these parole officers of world finance who determine if the world's economy gets to leave jail pending adequate repentance for nonexistent sins? Who are these gods to whom the middle classes of the world must be sacrificed at the altar?

Whoever they are, conservatives here in the U.S. have found a new way to placate them: bashing Dodd-Frank, that wholly inadequate piece of legislation, most of which has not gone into effect or even been written, but which is designed to put even the smallest of curbs of the sorts of excesses that caused the crisis. In the conservative world, Dodd-Frank is the cause of the continued crisis:

Republicans say Dodd-Frank is the root of some of today’s economic problems. It has stopped banks from lending to “job creators,” they contend, and is a direct cause of high unemployment. “It created such uncertainty that the bankers, instead of making loans, pulled back,” said Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, speaking at a South Carolina rally over Labor Day weekend where he again called for the law’s repeal.

“I think part of that flows from the fact that the people who were putting that together, Dodd and Frank,” he continued, referring to Democratic lawmakers former Senator Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut and Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, “as much as anyone I know in this country were responsible for the meltdown that we had...”

Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has also called for the repeal of Dodd-Frank. “We have to end it right now,” he said, on the same weekend in the same state as Mr. Romney. Newt Gingrich said it is “a devastatingly bad bill” that is “killing small banks, killing small business, killing the housing industry.” Representative Michele Bachmann regularly reminds voters that she introduced the first Dodd-Frank repeal bill this year.

Former Gov. Jon Huntsman of Utah agrees, but he wouldn’t stop there. He would also eliminate the Sarbanes-Oxley law passed in 2002, which set standards for corporate accountability in the wake of the Enron scandal.

But of course, the problem--as always--is lack of demand, not lending restrictions on bloated banks:

Community bankers worry about Dodd-Frank rules setting limits on how much banks can charge for debit-card transactions. Those rules have yet to go into effect. In the meantime, the bankers say, they have plenty of money to lend, but small-business owners are not asking for loans.

“There are a lot of qualified borrowers who don’t want to borrow, because they are not sure what is going to happen with the economy,” said R. Todd Price, president of the First State Bank of Mesquite, Tex. “I don’t know if that can be directly associated with Dodd-Frank,” he added. While the law “will put a whole lot more regulations especially on community bankers,” he said, “I think they’re yet to come.”

It's easy to see why so many in this country on the left and the right tend toward conspiracy theories. In the absence of any sort of political and economic reporting that actually makes sense, voters are left to trust pre-defined political narratives. Political leadership from the Democratic Party has been far too reluctant to finger Wall St. as the villain it is, but the biggest problem with the narratives on both sides is that economics is treated as a religion in which hidden priests serving as economic doctors must be placated by appropriate policies to "gain confidence" and "heal" the economy. There is a massive air of mystery and clandestine actors at whose mercy sovereign nations tremble.

Reality is far simpler: the economy is like a engine. Demand fuels it. A strong middle class is the best way to ensure that the fuel level stays high. Credit via lending is a lubricant, sort of like motor oil. In exchange for providing that lubricant, financiers are allowed to skim off the top and make out like bandits even in times of relative equality. Lately, however, the financiers have been playing radical games to suck economy-killing amounts out of the tank, while the economy sputters to a stop due to lack of demand. In this situation, it would seem that government would be best suited to shunt the vampire financiers off to the side, provide a fuel injection of demand and oil up the engine itself on behalf of the people. The only problem is that the vampire financiers have too tight a control on government policy through corruption, and aren't about to be pushed aside. It really isn't much more complicated than that.

One might think that even the global captains of finance would realize that killing the middle classes in America and Europe would be bad for them long-term. But the golden key to all of this is contained in one little sentence in the IMF article:

Over all, the International Monetary Fund predicted global growth of 4 percent for both years. Stronger growth in China, India, Brazil and other developing countries should offset weaker output in the United States and Europe, it said.

Ultimately, global financiers would love nothing better than to destroy the middle classes in Europe and America while using labor arbitrage to maximize corporate profits through hiring and selling to the developing world. The BRIC countries are the future of investment, and to them, lazy middle class fatcats with nice unemployment, maternity leave and other social welfare benefits are just dragging down worldwide economic progress. All the money that's tied up in Social Security and European pensions could be much better invested in companies maximizing shareholder profits by destroying Brazilian rainforests at $2/hour.

This is the reality of the class war today. Since attempting to pursue economic credibility with these villains is a fool's errand, the only way the Left will achieve credibility with the voters is to expose the reality of what's going on and run on a desperately needed populist message.


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thereisnospoon 9/20/2011 03:00:00 PM |

 
True believer

by digby


I have just received the new Suskind book and so haven't read it. But Brad Delong is excerpting the economic passages for everyone to read and they are fascinating.

There's a lot to say, not the least of which is the fact that the president seems to have been remarkably hostile to any discussion of trying to do another stimulus when it was obvious the first wasn't doing what was needed. (And evidently he particularly didn't want to hear any more about it from someone who didn't have a penis in her pocket.)

In the excerpt about the "jobless recovery" Suskind reports that when the administration was informed of the potential for unemployment at 9.8% in 2010, Obama was pensive, knowing that the midterms could be a bloodbath and he asked for some input. (Apparently he prefers "pro and con" lists rather than detailed analysis or charts, which seems oddly Bushian.) In any case, he was apparently unmoved by the various scenarios, passively saying he hoped the rosier scenarios came to pass and that was that.

It certainly does clear up any thought we might have had about whether or not the president is a real fiscal conservative or whether he was just flogging this deficit obsession for political effect. He's a true believer. And we know this because of his reliance on other deficit hawks and because when the political bloodbath the jobless recovery had predicted came true, his first move was to validate the Republicans' manufactured narrative about what had motivated their voters and launch his program of budget cuts and deficit reduction.

I have thought that his fetish for a Grand Bargain was mostly born of a delusional belief that he was someone who could bridge unbridgeable differences and be remembered as the man who brought cats and dogs together. But it looks as though he was just as motivated by the fact that he's a true blue, Concord Coalition, Pete Peterson deficit hawk.


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digby 9/20/2011 01:30:00 PM |

 
What's the matter with Teabags?

by digby

Has there ever been a bigger group of suckers than the far right of the Republican Party?

Rick Perry minces no words in declaring what he thinks of the 2008 TARP bailout of big banks, saying in his book that such programs “turn America upside down, totally undermining the idea of limited government, free markets and federalism.”

But on Tuesday, Mr. Perry will be the guest of honor at a high-dollar, New York fund-raiser thrown by Maurice R. Greenberg, also known as Hank, the former chief executive of the American International Group, a company whose spectacular collapse helped set the stage for the bailouts that Mr. Perry dislikes.

Mr. Greenberg led A.I.G. for decades and was accused of fraud by the New York State attorney general before leaving his post in 2005. The company ended up taking more than $180 billion in federal aid, including more than $40 billion from the TARP program.

The bailout is not, of course, mentioned on the invitation to Tuesday evening’s reception, which is billed as part of Mr. Perry’s “Big Apple Kickoff.” The reception will be at The Lotus Club and is listed as requiring a contribution of $2,500 per person.

If the Tea Partiers wren't so mean I'd almost feel sorry for them.


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digby 9/20/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
It's the only plan they've got

by digby

The privatization zombie never dies:

As the AP reports, most of the top Republicans running are reviving President George W. Bush’s unpopular plan to create private investment accounts for young workers — believing that “workers could get a better return from investing in publicly traded securities.” Indeed, the idea of risking retirement funds in the stock market — three years after the financial crash on Wall Street — is finding a champion in almost ever Republican candidate:

MITT ROMNEY: The former Massachusetts governor has a well-worn record of advocating to privatize Social Security. In 2007, when Romney was also running for president, he pushed for the creation of Social Security personal accountsthree separate times. When a town hall attendee told him such a plan was “privatization,” Romney replied, “you call it privatization. I call it a private account.” He enshrined this position in his 2010 book No Apology, stating “individual retirement accounts would encourage more Americans to invest in the private sector that powers our economy.”

MICHELE BACHMANN: In an interview last year, the Minnesota congresswoman insisted young workers “need to have some options in their life, so that going forward they can have ownership for their own Social Security, their own retirement, something they can pass on to the beneficiary of their choice.” When asked in 2008 how Republicans could promote privatization without frightening seniors, she responded, “I believe that we should ensure that those currently receiving Social Security should continue to do so in its current form, but also give a new generation of workers the right to invest some of their money into accounts of their own.” In 2006, she pledged to vote for “regulated individual retirement accounts.”

RON PAUL: During last week’s presidential debate, Rep. Paul (TX) drew applause for stating, “What I would like to do is to allow all the young people to get out of Social Security and go on their own!” He told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer last year that he’d support “turn[ing] this money over and give the individual money like an investment retirement fund that they manage.”

RICK SANTORUM: After writing an op-ed calling to “establish personal retirement accounts” in 2005, the former Pennsylvania senator actually launched his 2012 presidential campaign by reminding everyone that he supports these President George W. Bush-style private accounts. He hedged last month on calling for the immediate creation of accounts, but only because having to additionally pay for Social Security benefits while financing such accounts “is to me just something that we can’t do right now.” “I’d love to be able to do it,” he added.

HERMAN CAIN: In the Tea Party debate last week, the pizza mogul declared, “I support a personal retirement system option in order to phase [out] the current system. We know that this works.”

NEWT GINGRICH: Last year, the former House Speaker endorsed House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) plan to create personal accounts. He believed such a plan would “triple the earnings” for future retirees. He has touted such a plan since 2007.

Jon Huntsman has not specifically called for private accounts but he did say at the Tea Party debate that “I don’t think anything should be off the table.”

Logic would suggest that it's pretty unlikely they can ever pass this plan, but after the last few years of bipartisan demagogueing the alleged social security crisis (and the character of this era's Democrats) I'm not sure that a GOP president with a Republican congress won't get it done this time. They're just that nuts and the Democrats are just that feckless.

But we live in hope that this, at least, will be fresh enough in everyone's mind that the people will fight back:

Three years ago, if Bush had succeeded in creating private accounts, an American worker would have lost $26,000 on the market. As ThinkProgress’ Travis Waldron notes, millions of Americans who did have a private account like a 401(k) lost nearly everything in the crisis, and Social Security is the only source of retirement funds they have left. Thevolatility of market behavior in large industrialized economies like ours “illustrates the real potential for decades-long declines that could erode the value of a private retirement account invested in stocks.”

People invest retirement savings in the stock market because they need their money to grow over time to make up for inflation and provide a little return. And while I realize that the new vogue in capitalism is absolute certainty in all things, the reality is that such growth entails risk and there is always a chance that you're going to lose money in the markets. That's why government backed Social Security is such an important part of everyone's retirement, not just those who are too poor to save any money. It's the backstop against bad luck and risks gone wrong.

These people want to take away that secure part of everyone's retirement and put them at risk of losing everything when assholes on Wall Street decide they've got a great new way to scam people out of their money. Hopefully, the stock market crash and ensuing volatility are recent enough to make even these nutcase Republicans leery of trying to do this, but I wouldn't bet on it. It's the only plan they've got.


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digby 9/20/2011 11:00:00 AM |

 
Bill O'Reilly Is A Moron

by digby

Via Steve Benen:

O’Reilly is so concerned about his potential tax burden under the “Buffett Rule,” he told his television audience last night he might just quit workingaltogether.

“I must tell you I want the feds to get more revenue. I don’t want to starve them as some people do. We need a robust military, a good transportation system and protections all over the place.

“But if you tax achievement, some of the achievers are going to pack it in. Again, let’s take me. My corporations employ scores of people. They depend on me to do what I do so they can make a nice salary. If Barack Obama begins taxing me more than 50 percent, which is very possible, I don’t know how much longer I’m going to do this. I like my job but there comes a point when taxation becomes oppressive. Is the country really entitled to half a person’s income?”

That's the best reason I've yet heard for raising taxes on these creeps. What's funny is that O'Reilly is under the illusion that he's one of the big job creators in our culture who can't be asked to give up even one penny of his massive income lest he lose all reason to wake up in the morning. Well sorry -- he's one of the entertainers, not one of the producers. He may be irreplaceable to curmudgeonly old FOX News, but it won't make a bit of difference to the economy. So, buh bye.

But that's not why I say he's a moron. He's a moron because he doesn't know how marginal tax rates work and when you make the ridiculous sums of money he makes, you really ought to. On the other hand, if he's so dumb that he thinks Obama is actually proposing a 50% tax rate and then whines publicly to a country full of poor people about it, then maybe we should just take his money.


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digby 9/20/2011 09:30:00 AM |

 
Wasting Away
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

Gallup brings news that Americans now believe that over half of all dollars spent by the federal government are "wasted":

Americans estimate that the federal government wastes 51 cents of every dollar it spends, a new high in a Gallup trend question first asked in 1979.

The current estimate of 51 cents wasted on the dollar is similar to what Gallup measured in 2009, but marks the first time Americans believe more than half of federal spending is wasted. The low point in the trend is 38 cents wasted on the dollar, in 1986.

Americans are less likely to believe state and local governments waste money they spend than they are to believe this about the federal government, with the state estimate at 42 cents on the dollar and the local at 38 cents.

Americans have viewed the federal government as being the most wasteful of tax dollars -- and local government the least -- each time Gallup has asked these questions. That pattern is consistent with Americans' greater trust in state and local government than in the federal government.

Over time, though, Americans have become increasingly likely to see all levels of government as being wasteful of tax dollars. Americans now believe all levels of government waste at least 11 cents more on the dollar compared with 1979.

Perhaps most interesting about Gallup's graph is this: from 1979 to 1981, the percentage the number of cents on the dollar that Americans figured was wasted by the federal government rose from 40 cents to 45 cents. That's a big jump considering the trendline, and fairly clearly reflects the power of Ronald Reagan's rhetoric to change public opinion about government spending. Even those who lately claim that the Presidential and campaign speeches accomplish nothing in the realm of public opinion would be hard-pressed to deny it in this case. But also problematic for progressives is that from around 1981 to 1986, the waste figure shrinks to just 38 cents on the dollar by 1986. Assuming that this isn't all statistical noise, these numbers suggest that Americans figured that the Reagan Administration really was cutting "wasteful" spending, or at least that Reagan was providing a better bang for the public's buck.

But then something curious happens starting in 1986: the number of cents on the dollar Americans perceive as wasted starts a slow, gradual ascent trending all the way to the present day. The slow upward climb transcends Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

The likeliest culprit? Increased partisanship and gridlock. After all, perceptions of wasteful spending have trended upward even as the ideological makeup of those who believe the spending is wasted shifts based on which political party is in power:

The ideological differences observed this year were not apparent in 2001, when Republican George W. Bush was president. At that time, liberals estimated a larger share of federal spending was wasted than conservatives did, 48 cents to 44. Thus, one's perceptions of how much federal spending is wasted depend partly on the match between a person's ideological preferences and the prevailing power structure in Washington.

Which means that as each side blames the other for waste even as the plight of the middle class increases, a growing number on both sides are apt to say that Washington is wasting their tax dollars.

Ironically but predictably, the slice of voters likeliest to see waste is elderly conservatives (most of whom are likely to be on wasteful federal Medicare money):

Senior citizens' estimate of wasted federal dollars ranks with conservatives' as one of the highest, and is significantly greater than that of Americans aged 18 to 29.

Additionally, those with more formal education estimate proportionately less federal government waste than do Americans with less education.

What does it all add up to? Well, it's fairly clear that as the Democratic Party shifted away from middle-class concerns in the 1990s and the Republicans ballooned the deficit on pointless war and tax cuts for the rich while making it impossible for Democrats to accomplish much of anything, the public's trust in government has eroded gradually and significantly. Meanwhile, older conservatives have become increasingly radicalized.

That works out very nicely for conservatives in the short term. Destroying the public's faith in the power of government to do good is their calling card.

If Democrats want to reverse the trend, they would do well to communicate their commitment to addressing middle-class concerns, and to giving the public the best possible bang for their tax dollar in the form of jobs and highly visible infrastructure building. Overseas commitments should be scaled back, as should tax cuts for the wealthy and unpopular conservative boondoggles like No Child Left Behind.

The Obama Administration's new plan is hitting on most of these themes, which is a welcome change. But to convince the public, those promises would have to be backed up by action. Time will tell if Democrats can restore the public's faith, should they be fortunate enough to hold onto the White House and win back the Speaker's gavel.

One thing is for sure, though: the Obama Administration's second term would need to look, act and feel significantly more aggressive on all these fronts than its first term has been heretofore. President Obama still has the power to use the rhetorical command of the Presidency to be a progressive Ronald Reagan and restore America's confidence in its government. If everyone plays their cards right, Democrats should be able to make a dent in Gallup's rising trendline on waste.


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thereisnospoon 9/20/2011 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, September 19, 2011

 
Watching the detectives

by digby

Oh fergawdsakes:

Judge Richard A. Posner isn't known for his genteel treatment of parties whose arguments he doesn't agree with. When an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union began to make his opening statement at a Tuesday oral argument, Posner cut him off after 14 words. "Yeah, I know," he said dismissively. "But I'm not interested, really, in what you want to do with these recordings of peoples' encounters with the police."

The topic was the constitutionality of the unusually strict Illinois wiretapping law, which makes it illegal to record someone without his consent even if the recording is done openly and in a public place. The ACLU was asking a panel of three judges from the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit to strike down the law on First Amendment grounds.

But Judge Posner wasn't having it. "Once all this stuff can be recorded, there's going to be a lot more of this snooping around by reporters and bloggers," he said.

He was particularly worried that allowing recording would impact police work. "I'm always suspicious when the civil liberties people start telling the police how to do their business," he said. He speculated that gangs would love the ACLU's argument because recordings would make it easier to discover and retaliate against informants.

Do you ever get the feeling that conservatives aren't even trying to make a cogent argument anymore?

The article goes on to say that the other judges on the panel were a little less hostile to the idea that the police should not be afraid to have their public behavior on the job recorded.

But this is an ongoing argument that doesn't even seem to phase most people: apparently it's too much to ask that the police follow the law because it makes their jobs so much harder.

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digby 9/19/2011 05:00:00 PM |

 
Sign of the Times
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

The middle class is disappearing, and big business is taking notice:

For generations, Procter & Gamble Co.'s growth strategy was focused on developing household staples for the vast American middle class.Now, P&G; executives say many of its former middle-market shoppers are trading down to lower-priced goods—widening the pools of have and have-not consumers at the expense of the middle.

That's forced P&G;, which estimates it has at least one product in 98% of American households, to fundamentally change the way it develops and sells its goods. For the first time in 38 years, for example, the company launched a new dish soap in the U.S. at a bargain price.

P&G;'s roll out of Gain dish soap says a lot about the health of the American middle class: The world's largest maker of consumer products is now betting that the squeeze on middle America will be long lasting.

"It's required us to think differently about our product portfolio and how to please the high-end and lower-end markets," says Melanie Healey, group president of P&G;'s North America business. "That's frankly where a lot of the growth is happening."

In the wake of the worst recession in 50 years, there's little doubt that the American middle class—the 40% of households with annual incomes between $50,000 and $140,000 a year—is in distress. Even before the recession, incomes of American middle-class families weren't keeping up with inflation, especially with the rising costs of what are considered the essential ingredients of middle-class life—college education, health care and housing. In 2009, the income of the median family, the one smack in the middle of the middle, was lower, adjusted for inflation, than in 1998, the Census Bureau says.

I'm sure the answer lies in more cuts to Medicaid, and in firing more government workers. That will solve the problem.

Assuming, of course, that our policymakers think this is a problem, as opposed to an adjustment to bring the "spoiled" American middle class more in line with the median standard of living in the BRIC countries that are all the rage with Wall Street Journal-reading MBAs.


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thereisnospoon 9/19/2011 02:57:00 PM |

 
Doomed then and now

by digby

John Judis has written an amazing article in TNR called DOOM! Our economic nightmare is just beginning about follies past and present. I'll just quote a little piece of it here, which puts our current situation into an important historical context:

Politicians today might not want to remember, but, in the first phase of the Great Depression, the major economies, oblivious to the paradox of thrift, took steps that made things much worse. In the United States, Hoover, who was a Republican progressive in the tradition of William Howard Taft rather than Calvin Coolidge, responded initially to the stock market crash and the drop in employment by proposing a tax cut and a modest public works program. He also tried to bring industry together to agree to invest and to maintain wages and prices. But, when firms continued to cut back, unemployment continued to rise, and tax revenues dropped—creating a budget deficit—Hoover and the Republicans turned to cutting government spending and raising taxes on the assumption that a government, like a business, should not respond to hard times by going further into debt. In a news conference in December 1930, Hoover declared, “Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the Public Treasury.” In fiscal year 1933 (which began in June 1932), federal spending actually decreased. By March 1933, when Franklin Roosevelt took office, the unemployment rate had climbed to 24.9 percent from 3.2 percent in 1929.

In Great Britain, the economy had begun to decline after 1925, when the Tory government, rejecting Keynes’s advice, decided to go back on the original pre-World War I gold standard. By raising the price of the pound in dollars or francs, the Tories priced British exports out of the world market. In May 1929, the Labour Party ousted the Conservative Party, whom voters blamed for the downturn. But Labour Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald pursued many of the same policies as the conservatives. MacDonald was a socialist and blamed a “breakdown” in world capitalism for Britain’s ills, but he thought that as the head of capitalist Britain, he had to adhere to the gold standard and free trade, while cutting the budget.

Keynes’s Liberal Party, led by former Prime Minister Lloyd George, advocated massive public works, but Labour leaders branded the Liberal proposals “madcap finance.” They rejected any idea of a third way between laissez-faire capitalism and socialism. As unemployment soared in Britain, MacDonald proposed raising taxes and cutting spending on unemployment insurance in order to balance the budget. MacDonald had always been averse to partisanship and had earlier urged the parties to put their “ideas in a common pool.” When Labour’s trade union members balked at his cuts, MacDonald created a national unity government with the Tories in 1931 and passed spending cuts and tax increases. By the next year, unemployment in Britain had risen to 22.1 percent from 10.4 percent of the wage-earning workforce in 1929.

In Germany, where the slump had begun in 1928, a coalition led by a Social Democratic prime minister held sway. Both the Social Democrats and their conservative coalition partners were committed to reducing Germany’s rising budget deficits, but the Socialists wanted to do so by borrowing money overseas, while the center-right parties advocated cutting the budget by slashing unemployment insurance. The government split and, in an election in 1930, a center-right coalition led by the Catholic Centre Party’s Heinrich Brüning took power. Brüning drastically cut spending and raised taxes, and, by 1932, when the next elections occurred, the German economy was in ruins. Production was at 40 percent of what it had been in 1929, and unemployment had risen to 33 percent.

In all these cases, the lesson was clear: Cutting spending and raising taxes to balance the budget had made things much worse. And, as these governments discovered, there was a political price to be paid. In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt and the Democrats turned out Hoover and his party by a landslide. The Republicans would not win the presidency again for 20 years and would remain the de facto minority party for almost 50 years. In the October 1931 elections in Britain, the Labour Party suffered its worst defeat. MacDonald would be expelled from the party, and Labour would not regain power until 1945. In Germany, Adolf Hitler’s National Socialist Party would best the other parties in the 1932 elections. And, in January 1933, Hitler would become chancellor.

Keep reading ... He talks about how and why our political leaders seem to be doing the same thing all over again and how current leaders have missed their opportunities:

Charismatic leaders can reshape and even defy their nation’s political culture. Franklin Roosevelt did so during his first term. But Roosevelt inherited a situation so desperate that the public was willing to tolerate any kind of experimentation. Obama entered office with some of the preconditions for radical reform. Crisis was in the air. Wall Street was in disfavor. Voters blamed the downturn on his Republican predecessor, George W. Bush. And he had the rudiments of a political movement. But the country was not in as desperate shape as it was in 1933, and the opposition was still functioning. To have put in place a program that might have spurred at least the beginnings of a recovery, Obama would have had to be both extraordinarily bold and fiercely combative. And he was neither.

In dealing with the downturn and financial crisis, the president was cautious—as evidenced by his choice of Geithner, who had presided over the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during the crash. Like MacDonald, Obama harbored a dream of bringing the parties and interest groups together behind his program. As The Financial Times’s Martin Wolf put it, “Mr. Obama wishes to be President of a country that does not exist. In his fantasy US, politicians bury differences in bipartisan harmony.” After the bruising battle over the debt ceiling, Obama may have finally put his dream of a post-partisan politics to rest and adopted a more aggressive political style. But the narrow opening for dramatic change that existed in early 2009 has probably closed.

So what happens now? read on ... This one's going to give me some nightsweats.


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digby 9/19/2011 02:00:00 PM |

 
The Politics of the President's Plan

by digby

I've had some time to digest the president's deficit plan and watch his speech. As to the specifics, there are lots of wonkish articles out there breaking down the details, so I'll leave it to you to find them. I'm just going to discuss how I think this works politically, since the likelihood of anything resembling this plan getting out of the Super Committee is highly unlikely. This is a political document not a negotiation.

My first thought is that it appears the administration has finally decided that there's nothing to be gained with exclusively delivering post-partisan pablum. It certainly sounds as though he's thrown down the gauntlet. Unfortunately, the President appears to want to have two fights going into this election, one over job creation and one over whose plan to cut the deficit is better, which I think is a confusing waste of time. (Focus like a laser beam on jobs and tell the Republicans they'll have to go through you to get to the safety net and I think people would instinctively understand that he's on their side.) But that isn't this president's style and perhaps it wouldn't be believable if he did it. So, this is at least a change of tactics, more confrontational in tone, which is his best hope for reelection since it turns out people aren't really all that impressed that he's the most reasonable guy in the room if it appears that he gets punk'd every time.

Unfortunately, I think the decision to include Medicare cuts (even though they seem to be provider based and means tested) is a big mistake politically. The Democrats needed to run against Ryan, and it was clean and simple before, now it's muddled and incoherent. Those provider cuts, if they were absolutely necessary, could certainly have waited until after the election. (And opening up the can of worms of military retirement benefits is daft. I don't know why anyone would dream of doing such a thing in an election year.)But the president is in a tough position having bought into austerity a long time ago and now it's hung around his neck, impeding his available solutions. Still, he shouldn't have touched one of the best arguments the Democrats have. I'm fairly surprised they did it.

Threatening a veto is good stuff. He should do more of it. But he frames it as a "shared sacrifice" so that people still believe it's right to trade essential middle class benefits for millionaire chump change. I hate that formulation and I think it's a mistake to perpetuate it. However, just making any threat is a good thing -- sounds like he's drawing lines in the sand and considering the political dynamics in the congress I think it makes it less likely that any of these cuts will actually happen.

Overall, I think the obvious takeaway is that the White House isn't looking to make any more deals to please Wall Street and burnish its "post-partisan" image before the election. To that, I can only say "thank God." The country could really use a working government right now, but since we don't have one the best we an hope for is one that that does no harm. If this speech signals gridlock --- and I think it does --- breathe a sigh of relief. The country can't take too much more of these austerity deals.


Update: Ezra Klein has a piece up about the administration's change of course to a more confrontational approach.

As it happens this is what the much loathed, allegedly unreasonable left, knowing the opposition as it did, have been desperately begging them to do for two years. The White House's strategic rigidity and unwillingness to pivot from their post-partisan stance and chasing a big austerity "deal" in the face of an unbending right wing(even as everybody was always jabbering about how they were pivoting when they weren't) has been one of my pet peeves from the beginning. The quixotic pursuit of a Grand Bargain in a time of immediate economic hardship was always an inappropriate goal on both political and policy grounds.

Like I said, better late than never, but it would appear that once again the left is relegated to premature anti-fascist status instead of being granted the respect of being right. Plus ca change ...



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digby 9/19/2011 12:30:00 PM |

 
Gitcher Vote Suppression History Right Here

by digby

I have a piece up about GOP vote suppression at Al Jazeera today:

In the 1964 presidential elections, a young political operative named Bill guarded a largely African-American polling place in South Phoenix, Arizona like a bull mastiff.

Bill was a legal whiz who knew the ins and outs of voting law and insisted that every obscure provision be applied, no matter what. He even made those who spoke accented English interpret parts of the constitution to prove that they understood it. The lines were long, people fought, got tired or had to go to work, and many of them left without voting. It was a notorious episode long remembered in Phoenix political circles.

It turned out that it was part of a Republican Party strategy known as "Operation Eagle Eye", and "Bill" was future Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist. He was confronted with his intimidation tactics in his confirmation hearings years later, and characterised his behaviour as simple arbitration of polling place disputes. In doing so, he set a standard for GOP dishonesty and obfuscation surrounding voting rights that continues to this day.

read on ...


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digby 9/19/2011 10:30:00 AM |

 
The rich are different from you and me

by digby

Representative John Fleming is very much against class warfare:

Fleming is himself a businesses owner, so Jansing asked, “If you have to pay more in taxes, you would get rid of some of those employees?” Fleming responded by saying that while his businesses made $6.3 million last year, after you “pay 500 employees, you pay rent, you pay equipment, and food,” his profits “a mere fraction of that” — “by the time I feed my family, I have maybe $400,000 left over.”

And how hard does the congressman work to make the equivalent of eight median household incomes? Fleming told the Wall Street Journal that “he spends very little time on day-to-day management, though he weighs in on broad strategy decisions.” “I monitor the reports. I’m certainly in communication with the managers,” he told the paper.

But he's worth every penny of the money he collects because well ... he just is.

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digby 9/19/2011 09:15:00 AM |

 
Why not do this all the time?
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")

One would think the Obama Administration would want to see articles like this from the New York Times frontpage every day of the year. First, the press gives Obama credit for a balanced approach to deficit reduction:

President Obama will unveil a deficit-reduction plan on Monday that uses entitlement cuts, tax increases and war savings to reduce government spending by more than $3 trillion over the next 10 years, administration officials said.

Credit for popular proposals including tax increases on the wealthy and drawdowns of unpopular wars:

Mr. Obama will call for $1.5 trillion in tax increases, primarily on the wealthy, through a combination of closing loopholes and limiting the amount that high earners can deduct...Senior administration officials who briefed reporters on some of the details of Mr. Obama’s proposal said that the plan also counts a savings of $1.1 trillion from the ending of the American combat mission in Iraq and the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

Props for not increasing the Medicare eligibility age:

Administration officials said that the Medicare cuts would not come from an increase in the Medicare eligibility age.

A show of strength by the President; no "weakness" or "capitulation" talk:

In laying out his proposal, aides said, Mr. Obama will expressly promise to veto any legislation that seeks to cut the deficit through spending cuts alone and does not include revenue increases in the form of tax increases on the wealthy.

After positive discussion of the Buffett Rule, hilarious defensive whining from Republicans that voters will see right through:

Representative Paul D. Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee and a leading proponent of cutting spending on benefit programs like Medicare, said the proposal would weigh heavily on a stagnating economy.

On “Fox News Sunday,” Mr. Ryan said it would add “further instability to our system, more uncertainty, and it punishes job creation.”

“Class warfare,” he said, “may make for really good politics, but it makes for rotten economics.”

And go figure: actual full-throated support from progressive groups, too:

Liberal-leaning organizations were rallying behind Mr. Obama’s proposals on Sunday.

“The report that the president is planning to ask millionaires and billionaires to pay taxes at a higher rate than their secretaries pay is welcome news that will be wildly popular with voters,” said Roger Hickey, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a progressive center, in a statement. “We applaud the president for heeding the advice from progressives that he go big on his jobs plan.”

One wonders why the Administration ever did business any other way. Isn't this sort of coverage much better than what they've been getting for the last 18 months?

Oh, and one last bit: it appears progressives aren't so powerless after all, and that Administration critics have had a positive effect not only on policy, but on the Administration's approach to politics:

The Obama proposal has little chance of becoming law unless Republican lawmakers bend. But by focusing on the wealthiest Americans, the president is sharpening the contrast between Republicans and Democrats with a theme he can carry into his bid for re-election in 2012.

Mr. Obama’s proposal is also an effort to reassure Democrats who had feared that he would agree to changes in programs like Medicare without forcing Republicans to compromise on taxes. Indeed, Mr. Hickey warned in his statement that the president should not raise the Medicare eligibility age, advice that Mr. Obama, so far, seems to have heeded.

Let's be clear: the President's approach to politics over the previous 18 months has been just short of disastrous. If negative pressure from progressive groups was responsible for the President's spine, then progressive critics will have saved the day and perhaps the 2012 election.


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thereisnospoon 9/19/2011 07:30:00 AM |