Hullabaloo

Wednesday, September 19, 2012

 

Suppressing the right lucky duckies

by digby

Tim Noah makes an important point about the Republican vote suppression efforts, namely that it's informed by the belief that there exists a large number of people (some say 47%!) who are so hooked on the government teat that they won't vote for anyone who'll make 'em get out and get a job. So they just have to stop them from voting:

If “there are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what” because they are “dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims” who “are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it,” and if the only sensible thing for Romney to do is “not to worry about those people” because “I’ll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives”—if all that is true, then ignoring them really isn’t going to be enough. Not if they constitute fully 47 percent of the electorate. You need to block their path to the polls. Nothing too overt here—just a little petty harassment. They aren’t the best-organized people to begin with, so all you have to do is shut down their ministers’ souls-to-polls bus operations on Sundays, require a driver’s license and maybe even proof of citizenship. That sort of thing.

That's true. But let's not kid ourselves about who they're really talking about. After all, there's a long history of suppressing the vote of certain people who have reason to vote against those who rail against such things as the right to vote and "welfare queens" and "anchor babies" and the like. It's not that the Democratic Party wasn't guilty of all that back in the day, but it's been half a century now and things have changed. It's pretty clear who's on which side today.

The Republicans certainly need a bunch of white "lucky duckies" to vote for them. They aren't talking about them. They're talking about the other lucky duckies --- the ones who don't work hard and play by the rules and deserve every benefit they can get. You know, these people:

I guess I really actually feel we shouldn’t contort the voting process to accommodate the urban—read African-American—voter-turnout machine --- Doug Preisse, a top adviser to Governor Kasich and a Franklin County elections official.

The problem is that Romney's such a clod that he can't figure out how to cleverly make the distinction and ends up insulting half of his own base. Of course, it is true that for most of the wealthy creeps like Romney and his pals at the fundraiser (and their sadly deluded useful idiots), there is no distinction. They really do believe that anyone who isn't rich is a parasite, regardless of color. Most GOP politicians are smart enough to walk that line. Mitt isn't one of them.

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digby 9/19/2012 05:00:00 PM |

 
"I've worked hard my entire life, nobody gave me a handout. But Romney just insulted me and treated me like I'm nothing."

by David Atkins

Digby noted earlier that Romney's derogatory statements about the "47%" may hurt him substantially by lowering his support among the demographics he most needs to win the election, especially seniors and lower-income whites. I think she's right.

One always wants to be careful about making broader judgments based on personal anecdotes, but anecdotes can nonetheless help exemplify trends that may be occurring among the broader electorate. If the story I'm sharing today is any indication of a trend in the broader electorate, Romney is in some serious trouble.

As a County Democratic Party Chairman (in Ventura County, CA), I get a lot of phone calls throughout the day from voters and volunteers with various complaints and requests, usually about minor details. But one call from yesterday struck me in particular. A man who sounded like a caucasian in his 60s or 70s had called our field organizer but wanted to speak to me directly about picking up as much swag and material for President Obama as he could, from lawn signs to bumper stickers. Curiously, he wanted to let me know that he was not a Democrat and not particularly political. But, he said (and I paraphrase based on my best memory of the conversation):

"I just couldn't believe he said that. I was shocked when I heard it. I can't believe someone in either Party would say something like that about Americans. Let me tell you something. I've worked hard my entire life, never took a handout from anybody. But Romney just insulted me and treated me like I'm nothing. Like I'm less than nothing. I'm one of the 47% that he's talking about. I'm retired on a modest income after a lifetime of working to support myself and my family. That guy has no idea what he's talking about. But I just wanted to tell you personally that I'm not a big fan of either Party, but I want to buy as many different kinds of Obama stuff as you can give me, because that just isn't right. I'm pretty upset."

Ben Domenech and other conservatives have been consoling themselves that most of Romney's voters, even if they're in the 47%, don't actually see themselves that way (they work for their handouts, of course):

Here’s the thing: gaffes of this nature have to have real victims in order to be workable. What helps Romney in this situation is that no one thinks they’re in the 47%. Even if they are! No one who was thinking of voting for Romney yesterday is standing up today saying “he’s criticizing me!” here.

Maybe. But I'm not so sure. I think there may be a lot of people out there like the one who called me yesterday: conservative-leaning independents and working-class whites and seniors who hear Mitt Romney and do understand that he's talking about them.

That's ultimately the biggest problem with the 47% meme for Republicans. It's just too big a number to work well as a dog whistle to stand in for minorities and various "others." When the plutocrats and their enablers spout that statistic, it shows even white, older Americans that the plutocrats despise them, too, and have just been playing them for dupes and fools the entire time.


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thereisnospoon 9/19/2012 03:30:00 PM |

 
Trust him, he cares

by digby

Trying to recover, Romney says he is poor Americans' best bet

That's from Reuters, not the Onion:

"The question in this campaign is not who cares about the poor and the middle class. I do, he does," Romney said, jabbing the podium with his index finger and his voice rising with emotion.

"The question is who can help the poor and the middle class. I can, he can't and he's proven it in four years," he said.

Yeah, if there's one thing about Mitt, it's that he cares. And his wife will vouch for it:

"Speaking from a perspective from a wife and a mother and from the things that I know that I care about, I want to know what motivates the guy, the person that I would be voting for, and I would say that what motivates Mitt is that he cares,” she said. “That this is a guy that is — doesn't, obviously, need to do this for a job.

Obviously.

Mitt understands. After all, he's been there. He learned all about being poor from his time toiling among the downtrodden in ... France:

Mitt Romney attended Stanford University for one year after graduating from the elite Cranbrook School for boys. He then went to France for 2 1/2 years as a Mormon missionary, completing a ritual that generations of his family, including his two oldest sons, have followed.

Romney points to the experience now as an encounter with poverty. He lived in a hotel in LeHavre that had no toilets, and had $100 a month to live on. He knocked on doors seeking converts with little success.

"That's a very humbling experience - no, humiliating - experience, people shutting doors in your face," he said

No toilets even! Sacre bleu!

But that wasn't exactly the the whole story:

Last weekend, Romney explained was "living on no more than $110 a month in France" during those austere times. And the hardships were especially difficult when the call of nature could not be deferred:

"You're not living high on the hog at that level. A number of the apartments that I lived in when I was there didn't have toilets - we had instead the little pads on the ground - OK, you know how that works, pull - there was a chain behind you with kind of a bucket, bucket affair. I had not experienced one of those in the United States."

But when Mitt claimed that "I lived in a way that people of lower middle income in France lived and I said to myself, 'Wow. I sure am lucky to be born in the United States of America,'" he was luckier than he let on. As the Boston Globe documented in 2007, when France was paralyzed by strikes in 1968 "Romney led a group of missionaries into Spain to find an open bank" to cash "checks sent from their parents."

As the Globe also reported, "In spring 1968, Romney moved to the French mission headquarters, a grand building in the tony 16th arrondissement of Paris. The building is now the embassy of the United Arab Emirates." Yesterday, the Telegraph detailed just how tony:

"It was a house built by and for rich people," said Richard Anderson, the son of the mission president at the time of Mr Romney's stay. "I would describe it as a palace"...

"They were very big rooms," said Christian Euvrard, the 72-year-old director of the Mormon-run Institute of Religion in Paris, who knew Mr Romney. "Very comfortable. The building had beautiful gilded interiors, a magnificent staircase in cast iron, and an immense hall"...

Mr Anderson said that as well as a refrigerator, the mansion had "a Spanish chef called Pardo and a house boy, who prepared lunch and supper five days a week".

Now that's more like it.

America had plenty of poverty at the time. He didn't need to go all the way to Europe to find it. And lord knows, he could have gone to a really poor country in South America or Africa --- or even to Vietnam. But he went to France and lived better than Hemingway in A Moveable Feast(as every co-ed in America was dreaming of doing at the time) and called it a terrible, humiliating experience.

The man is simply has no empathy for anyone who isn't of his own class. It's obvious. Some rich people are just like that.

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digby 9/19/2012 02:00:00 PM |

 
"Can you imagine what he'd say if he were shitfaced?"

by digby

Daily Show on Romney:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And on the poor rich, white male:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Moment of zen:

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

And the piece de resistance: Colbert delivering Mitt's core message elegantly

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

The liberal hounds went after Romney like a poor person going after a basic need...

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digby 9/19/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
Innovations of the blogging ghetto

by digby

Felix Salmon wrote an interesting, wide-ranging piece today about journalism and blogging which offers a very good definition of what blogs bring to the table, I think:

[T]he biggest thing that’s missing in the journalistic establishment is people who are good at finding all that great material, and collating it, curating it, adding value to it, linking to it, presenting it to their readers. It’s a function which has historically been pushed into a blog ghetto, and which newspapers and old media generally have been pretty bad at. And of course old media doesn’t understand blogs in the first place, let alone have the confidence or the ability to incorporate such thinking into everything they do.

Think about it this way: reading is to writing as listening is to talking — and someone who talks without listening is both a boor and a bore. If you can’t read, I don’t want you in my newsroom. Because you aren’t taking part in the conversation which is all around you.

When journalists apply for jobs today, they’re usually given some kind of writing test. Certainly the people hiring them will look at their clips. Everybody cares about how good a writer you are. So long as you write well, it seems, that’s all that matters.

But if I were hiring, the first thing I’d look at would be the prospective employee’s Twitter feed. What are they linking to? What are they reading? If they’re linking to great stuff from a disparate range of sources, if they’re following smart people on Twitter, if they’re engaged in the conversation — that’s hugely valuable. More valuable, in fact, than being able to put together an artfully-constructed lede.

Independent blogging isn't very important anymore, if it ever was. But what it invented -- culling and synthesizing disparate pieces of information, engaging in the conversation, adding value and passing it on --- is still a necessary function. Indeed, I think it grew out of the natural human desire for people to gather together and talk about the world at large (as opposed to their immediate personal lives)and a need for someone they trust to put the vast amount of information available on the internet in some context. We live in a social media world now and the way information is being exchanged is redefined on a daily basis. Whether old country bloggers like me are the ones to "curate" it or professional journalists do it isn't as important as the fact that somebody who understands how to hold this conversation in a way that engages people does it.

Anyway, as they say in the blog trade, "read the whole thing."

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digby 9/19/2012 11:01:00 AM |

 
The plebes don't like Richie Rich

by digby

Jamelle Bouie at the Plumline makes an excellent point about the dangers for Romney in his dismissive 47% claim:

Romney’s path to victory depends on an outstanding performance among white voters. Assuming an electorate like 2008’s — 74% white, 26% nonwhite — Romney needs 61% of whites to eke out a victory in the popular vote. As Ron Brownstein points out, this would equal the best performance ever for a Republican challenger among this group of voters. In other words, not an easy mark to hit.

Romney’s best bet for reaching this target has always been working-class whites. Hit hard by the sluggish economy, these voters were the first to leave the Obama coalition — Democrats lost them by 18 points in 2008, and 30 points by 2010. Romney’s goal has always been to consolidate those voters and erode Obama’s already-tenuous support among whites as a whole. Likewise, on the other end of things, the Obama camp has been devoted to making Romney as toxic as possible to working-class whites, and blocking any gains he might make...

But the 47% remarks strike at the heart of Romney’s strategy. The 47% of Americans who don’t pay income tax are those who either don’t make enough money to qualify, or receive tax credits that offset their liability. This group includes students, the elderly, the poor and a large number of working-class families. Yes, some will not see themselves as belonging to the 47%. But when a politician disparages half the country as unwilling to “take responsibility for their lives,” at least some will see these comments as an attack on their livelihoods.

I think that's right. He had a problem with some of these folks even before this thing happened. This piece from last week spelled it out:

Sheryl Harris, a voluble 52-year-old with a Virginia drawl, voted twice for George W. Bush. Raised Baptist, she is convinced -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- that President Barack Obama, a practicing Christian, is Muslim.

So in this year's presidential election, will she support Mitt Romney? Not a chance.
"Romney's going to help the upper class," said Harris, who earns $28,000 a year as activities director of a Lynchburg senior center. "He doesn't know everyday people, except maybe the person who cleans his house."

She'll vote for Obama, she said: "At least he wasn't brought up filthy rich."
White lower- and middle-income voters such as Harris are wild cards in this vituperative presidential campaign. With only a sliver of the electorate in play nationwide, they could be a deciding factor in two southern swing states, Virginia and North Carolina.

Reuters/Ipsos polling data compiled over the past several months shows that, across the Bible Belt, 38 percent of these voters said they would be less likely to vote for a candidate who is "very wealthy" than one who isn't. This is well above the 20 percent who said they would be less likely to vote for an African-American.

There was a reason why the Republican Party --- always thought of as the party of the plutocrats --- learned to nominate everyman types who spoke the rubes' language and didn't reek of vast wealth. It's the reason why George Bush Sr went to Texas and started eating pork rinds and why his silver spoon son wore the Southern identity as a talisman. Their base doesn't really trust rich yankees who don't have the common touch. This was something everybody knew at one time and somehow forgot. Just like the rest of the filthy rich have forgotten to play it cool and let the rubes think they have it under control, even to the extent of allowing a little mild regulation and taxation when necessary.

It's hubris. The conservatives' fatal flaw.


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digby 9/19/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Why the Romney revelation will matter

by David Atkins

It's true that there has been altogether too much schadenfreude over Romney's video denigrating half of Americans as freeloaders. Pundits across the spectrum have pre-emptively declared the campaign dead, when the evidence shows that "gaffes" tend not to have much impact.

Indeed, this election should be less susceptible to movement based on these sorts of slips and revelations than most, given the very static electorate this cycle. So will it matter? Probably not much for this election. If Romney were going to win the election, he probably would have been able to do so regardless. The video's existence doubtless makes his road harder, but one or two good debates against the President could theoretically even the score. Is Romney likely to win? I think not. But it's certainly possible.

But where the controversy matters is in the conversation that the election will take over the next month, and the impact that conversation is likely to have after the election. The "47% vs 53%" meme has been simmering on the right for a long time now (remember this guy?), and simmering just under the insincere media discourse about "entitlements."

Americans everywhere assume that there are a bunch of other people in the country on the take. And why not? Most Americans are seeing their own standards of living decline even as the country goes further into debt and even basic governance has become impossible. It's natural for them to assume that someone is on the take. It's just a question of who. And this, of course, is where the failure of the press comes into play. With people confused and seeking answers, it should be the job of the media to supply accurate information about who is benefiting from the suffering of the middle class. But since the press has failed to do its job, Americans have been left to turn to their instincts about how the world works. Liberals rightly assume--and the facts back us up--that the wealthy and the corporate sector have hoovered up all the losses of the middle class. Conservatives, meanwhile, assume that various "others" are to blame.

Without a direct and honest conversation about who exactly is taking the benefits, this mass confusion will continue to persist, making it easier for the Very Serious People to cut Medicaid and Social Security out of "necessity."

That's why images like this will be so valuable:



It could well be that Mitt Romney's insensitive and erroneous comments will save all of us from the nightmare of Simpson-Bowles by forcing an enlightening conversation into the open prior to November.


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thereisnospoon 9/19/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

 
Gangnam Style looks good in uniform

by digby

h/t to Nick Bauman

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digby 9/18/2012 08:00:00 PM |

 
Mainstream Republican discourse

by digby

There's been a lot of Randian rhetoric being thrown about these last couple of days, what with the GOP standard bearer dismissing half he country as a bunch of freeloaders. But at least we don't have to deal with crazy religious lunatics in high levels of American politics.

Oh wait:

This separation of church and state, which has been driven by the secularists to remove those people of faith from the public arena, there is nothing farther from the truth.

When you think about our founding fathers, they created this country, our Constitution, the foundation of America upon Judeo-Christian values, biblical values and this narrative that has been going on, particularly since the ’60s, that somehow or another there’s this steel wall, this iron curtain or whatever you want to call it between the church and people of faith and this separation of church and state is just false on its face.

We have a biblical responsibility to be involved in the public arena proclaiming God’s truth. You know, are we going to get up and say ‘you are going to vote for X’? No, but we’re going to talk about Christian values. When you think about the issue of life and protecting life, it’s so important that we as Christians put legislation into place, that we elect women that defend life.

The idea that we should be sent to the sidelines I would suggest to you is very driven by those who are not truthful, Satan runs across the world with his doubt and with his untruths and what have you and one of the untruths out there is driven—is that people of faith should not be involved in the public arena.

You think about what has gone here in the last few days around the world and never has there been a time that I think we need more spiritual courage, that we need more moral fiber if you will.

The American family is under seize, traditional values are somehow exclusionary, a simple prayer in our public schools is the basis for these secular attacks; you think about this spiritual warfare that’s going on and [inaudible] going strong as President Obama and his cronies in Washington continue their efforts to remove any trace of religion from American life.

It falls on us, we truly are Christian warriors, Christian soldiers, and for us as Americans to stand our ground and to firmly send a message to Washington that our nation is about more than just some secular laws. Activist courts, we see them chipping away from our values and remove so much that is very special and unique about the United States.

I don’t want to get too far off course here but when you think about what’s going on in the Middle East and the president stood up in Cairo in 09 and either incredible naïve or very unschooled in the ways of these radical Islamists, and four American lives were lost in Libya.

It is our founding fathers knew and understood the importance of the role of our Creator in public discourse and they didn’t shy away from referencing Him, using the values he brought and the message of his son Jesus Christ to build the system that we as a society have e enjoyed for more than 200 years.

Securing that system, rebuilding our nation is what these 40 Days to Save America is really all about. It’s about saving our nation, it’s about preserving the values that make us special, about rejecting the concept that freedom of religion means freedom from religion, about turning away from this growing tide of secularism and atheism, the way they preach tolerance and diversity while they engage in oppression and bullying tactics.

If you thought that was some fiery conservative preacher, think again. That's erstwhile presidential candidate and Governor of one of the biggest states in the nation, Rick Perry.

I don't know about you, but that's just as frightening as Mitt's Randroid rage.


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digby 9/18/2012 06:30:00 PM |

 
Republicans *work* for their handouts

by digby


Well, at least Mitt has brought out the GOP's full Randroid extremism now, at least rhetorically:

"There are makers and takers, there are producers and there are parasites," she said. "Americans can distinguish between those who have produced and paid in through no fault of their own and because of Obama's horrible policies who cannot get a job or are underemployed. That's what the campaign is about."

That's speaking directly to the "I deserve my benefits but those you-know-whos don't" crowd. You know, the Republican base. Apparently, the Republicans are going to turn all their throwbacks into John Galt in their own minds. I think it'll work too.

That's why they love Mitt:

h/t to Watertiger

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digby 9/18/2012 05:30:00 PM |

 
The right problem and the right solution

by digby

A smart writer makes an important argument about Social Security:

For decades, the burden of retirement saving and planning has been shifted onto individuals, having them accumulate money in 401(k) plans and Individual Retirement Accounts (IRAs), instead of the defined benefit programs which were common only a couple decades ago. The results have not been good. People fail to save enough, and one crisis, such as spell of unemployment or bad health, can lead them to empty out their retirement accounts, despite the significant penalties for doing so.
This reality has inspired proposals for new forms of retirement accounts, with various means of funding and varying degrees to which the programs are mandatory, but we're missing the simple answer.

We already have an excellent, if not especially generous, program in place. Workers contribute during their working lives in exchange for a promised benefit level during their retirement years. This program is called Social Security.

Instead of considering some exciting new program to try to encourage workers into saving more, another Rube Goldberg incentive contraption designed to nudge individual behavior in the right direction, we should increase the level of retirement benefits in the existing Social Security program.

That sounds like blasphemy because we've all been fed the myth that Social Security is bankrupt. It is almost universally accepted in policy circles and in the pundit class that strengthening Social Security involves cutting future benefits relative to what current law promises because according to current projections, Social Security only has the ability to pay promised benefits in full until 2033, and then 75% of them thereafter. The basic thinking is that we must promise to cut benefits now so that we won't necessarily have to cut them 22 years from now. What?

Imagine if that is how we treated defense spending. Since it appears budgets will be tight in the 2030s, best to mothball all those aircraft carriers today. Who would buy that argument?

The reality is that we will make our defense decisions about the 2030s in the 2030s. That's just how we should treat federally financed retirement programs. We never actually have to cut benefits if we make the policy choice to keep funding them.
Social security is only bankrupt to the extent that our political leaders lose the will to invest in a decent retirement for American workers.

In addition to its own editorials, USA TODAY publishes a variety of opinions from outside writers. On political and policy matters, we publish opinions from across the political spectrum.

Roughly half of our columns come from our Board of Contributors, a group whose interests range from education to religion to sports to the economy. Their charge is to chronicle American culture by telling the stories, large and small, that collectively make us what we are.

We also publish weekly columns by Al Neuharth, USA TODAY's founder, and DeWayne Wickham, who writes primarily on matters of race but on other subjects as well. That leaves plenty of room for other views from across the nation by well-known and lesser-known names alike.

As the system exists, large numbers of Americans nearing retirement will have little more than fairly meager Social Security benefits (the average benefit for retired workers is currently $1230) to survive on in their old age. We can doom them to a life of insecurity and relative poverty or we can take the obvious step to improve their lives: Increase Social Security benefits.

Seriously, if it weren't for the radical wingnut faction in this country we'd just do the simple thing and raise the cap and raise social security benefits so they're adequate for people to live decently in their retirement years. It's not brain surgery.

Oh, and by the way, the smart writer is a guy named Duncan Black. And he's scored a weekly column! (They're taking over I tells yah ...)


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digby 9/18/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
This is what a campaign with no answer looks like

by David Atkins

Yeah, right:

A top advisor to Mitt Romney said Tuesday that the controversy over the GOP nominee’s comments about President Obama’s supporters as dependent on government and not paying income taxes would blow over.

“It has to,” said senior advisor Kevin Madden, though he said that whether the dust-up would subside was partly dependent on the media. “I think we’ve put in context the focus of the voters out there. And the voters I think are really focused on the big issues related on the economy and the direction of the country. And if we keep our focus on that, then I think ultimately we’re going to be in a better position to win on election day as a result.”

When a campaign's only answer is to a horrible controversy is to simply say "it'll go away. It has to, right?" That's when you know it's a bigger problem than they can handle.

The 47% Mitt Romney insulted includes seniors, military personnel, and poor hardworking Americans of every race and creed. Count on the Obama campaign to hammer that fact home as we approach election day, and for every Democratic campaign in the country to force their Republican opponents to stand with Mitt, or against the 47% of America struggling to get by.

It's not going away.


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thereisnospoon 9/18/2012 03:50:00 PM |

 
QOTD: Rich Lowry

by digby

After saying that Mitt foolishly conflated several different themes with his 47% gaffe, Lowry says:

The overall impression of Romney at this event is of someone who overheard some conservative cocktail chatter and maybe read a conservative blog or two, and is thoughtlessly repeating back what he heard and read.

Well yeah. You'd have to be an idiot to thoughtlessly repeat anything you read or hear from conservatives.


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digby 9/18/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
The American aristocrat's persecution complex

by digby

"My job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives." Mitt Romney

"Let them eat cake" -Marie Antoinette

h/t to Howie Klein

Based on what Greg Sargent points out in this post, most Americans don't feel the poor are the problem:

In July, Pew asked Americans what they think about the amount lower income people pay in taxes. Only 20 percent think they pay too little, versus 34 percent who say they pay a fair amount and 37 percent who say they pay too much — a total of 71 percent.

Pew also tells me that only 23 percent of independents, and 18 percent of moderates, say low income people pay too little in taxes, while big majorities of both say they pay a fair amount or too much.

Are these numbers skewed by the large number of respondents who pay low federal income taxes or none at all? Guess what: Only 22 percent of self-described middle class people think lower income folks pay too little, versus 69 percent who say they pay their fair share or too much.

Meanwhile, the reverse is true about rich people. A majority, 58 percent, say the wealthy pay too little in taxes, while only 26 percent say they pay their fair share. Fifty six percent of independents, and 69 percent of moderates, say the rich pay too little.

What about the broader debate over the role of government and the safety net? As Jim Tankersly points out, polling suggests that swing voters actually disagree with the fundamental ideological case underlying Romney’s videotaped remarks.

In that donor meeting, Romney was very loose, very casual and very colloquial. He was among his own. And "his own" believes itself to be the newest oppressed minority in the United States. Here's David Frum:

The background to so much of the politics of the past four years is the mood of apocalyptic terror that has gripped so much of the American upper class.

Hucksters of all kinds have battened on this terror. They tell them that free enterprise is under attack; that Obama is a socialist, a Marxist, a fascist, an anti-colonialist. Only by donating to my think tank, buying my book, watching my network, going to my movie, can you - can we - stop him before he seizes everything to give to his base of "bums," as Charles Murray memorably called them.

And what makes it all both so heart-rending and so outrageous is that all this is occurring at a time when economically disadvantaged Americans have never been so demoralized and passive, never exerted less political clout. No Coxey's army is marching on Washington, no sit-down strikes are paralyzing factories, no squatters are moving onto farmer's fields. Occupy Wall Street immediately fizzled, there is no protest party of the political left.

The only radical mass movement in this country is the Tea Party, a movement to defend the interests of elderly incumbent beneficiaries of the existing welfare state. Against that movement is a government of liberal technocrats dependent on campaign donations from a different faction of the American super-rich than that which backs Mitt Romney himself.

From the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s, the rights and perquisites of wealth have emerged undiminished - and the central issue in this election is whether those rights and perquisites shall be enhanced still more, or whether they should be allowed to slip back to the level that prevailed during the dot.com boom.

Yet even so, the rich and the old are scared witless! Watch the trailer of Dinesh D'Souza's new movie to glimpse into their mental universe: chanting swarthy mobs, churches and banks under attack, angry black people grabbing at other people's houses.

Watch the D'Souza trailer with the sound off for the full effect:

This also ties into Mitt's throwback comment about how if would be easier for a Mexican to be elected President (instead of a wealthy, white male with a famous political father.) This delusion of being an oppressed class is becoming pathological. When you've got people of vast, vast wealth acting as though the poorest and least of society have huge advantages, you know they've gone down the rabbit hole and may not be able to find their way back.

This isn't about Mitt Romney. He just happens to be the perfect symbol of the American aristocrat's persecution complex.


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digby 9/18/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 

Blue America chat with Beto O'Rourke TX-16

by digby

Howie says:

At the end of May, progressives and reformers had a big win in Texas to celebrate. Texas? Well... sort of sure. El Paso is its own unique little corner of Texas, closer, some people like to say, to Los Angeles than to Houston. And in a different time zone from the rest of the state. The big victory was undeniable-- an entirely grassroots campaign by a reform-Democrat on the El Paso City Council, Beto O'Rourke, that swept away longtime Congressman and Machine Democrat Silvestre Reyes, a cog in the Military Industrial Complex wheel.

When I asked Beto what topic he would most like to discuss at our Blue America chat at Crooks and Liars today (noon, El Paso time, 11am, PT) he didn't hesitate for a moment, although it's a topic a lot of Democrats shy away from: immigration. Beto, 39 years old and the father of 3 small children, is a 4th-generation El Pasoan, a graduate of Columbia University who returned to El Paso and started a technology and media company downtown--not to mention the band, Foss with Cedric Bixler-Zavala who went on to play in At the Drive-In and The Mars Volta. Cedric went on to other bands-- and Beto went on to City Hall, winning 3 elections as a no-nonsense reformer, where he opposed vigilante Minutemen groups on the border, opposed the wasteful and failed so-called "war on drugs," and pushed through a forward-looking downtown revitalization plan. He was effective and controversial and his enemies kept trying to recall him... but readers of El Paso's biggest weekly voted him the city's Best Elected Official-- beating both Mayor John Cook and, ominously, Congressman Silvestre Reyes.

TX-16, Beto's district, is one of the bluest in Texas. When most of the state was giving McCain a 55-44% landslide over Obama, El Paso voters gave Obama a solid two-thirds victory. Both Gore and Kerry also won in TX-16 while most of the state rallied around its former governor. Beto's victory in the primary stunned DC insiders. They saw a business-as-usual member of their own corrupt little club fall to a steely-eyed reformer. For Party bosses that's scarier than the opposite party winning a seat, which probably explains why the DCCC is completely ignoring Beto's race. That has a lot to do with why Blue America is stepping in with a fill throttle endorsement and why we're asking you to help us make sure he beats the Republican candidate who hopes to flood the district with corporate money.

Beto's adamantly pro-Choice, pro-marriage equality, pro-immigrant stands have angered the haters and bigots and they're determined to defeat him. The DCCC is uninterested in helping. You think they want to hear things like this?

"El Paso and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua are home to over 2.5 million people from all over the hemisphere, and together we form the largest bi-national community in the world. This is where Latin America and North America meet, where cultures, economies, families and histories come together.

"The numbers alone are staggering: $80 billion in trade and millions of pedestrians and automobiles cross the five international bridges that connect our two countries annually.

"But our imprint on history is incalculable.

"It was in this bi-national community that the Mexican revolution was planned and launched; it’s here that millions of immigrants first experienced this country as they made their way deeper into the United States, making El Paso the Ellis Island for those coming from Latin America; and it’s El Paso’s history of tolerance and progressiveness that has broken so many national barriers when it comes to race and ethnicity (we elected the first Mexican-American mayor of a major city in 1957; we won the NCAA basketball championships in 1966 with the first all-black starting five; and we were the first city in the former Confederacy to desegregate places of public accommodation).

"Our connection to each other and our isolation from the centers of power, in Washington D.C. and Mexico City D.F., have made us stronger, more self reliant, and less influenced by the conventional wisdom from our respective country’s capitals.

"It means that when we look at the issues related to the border-- issues like immigration, security, trade or Plan Merida-- we understand them better than any community in America, because we live them.

"When D.C. wants to build billion-dollar walls to keep people out, we know it’s money wasted that could be better spent connecting our two countries. When we invest in military helicopters and drug war materiel in Mexico, instead of in schools and social infrastructure, we know that we are condemning our neighbor to more violence and failed policies.

"We see immigration as a huge benefit to this country-- one that fuels our economy, enriches our culture and helps positively define who we are, both to this country and to others around the world.

"We know that we’re offered a false choice when asked to decide between security and mobility. We understand that cities like ours, with large immigrant populations, are the safest in the country.

"Whether you look at it through the prism of economics, demographics or culture-- we are the future of this country. I look forward to sharing a positive vision of the U.S./Mexico border and helping ensure that the best values of our party and our country are reflected in our national policy."

Beto is part of the future of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, part of the future of a new Texas and part of the future of our dynamic country. Please help him write history in November.

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digby 9/18/2012 10:43:00 AM |

 

Unsolicited spin advice from the peanut gallery

by digby

I have to love the Fox wingnuts this morning doubling down on Mitt's disdain and trying to explain why the Obama administration is once again playing class warfare by disagreeing with his comments. This is par for the course, but it's always fun to see them spin so hard they look like they might upchuck right on TV.

Still, I think the Democrats have not yet figured out the best way to use Mitt's repulsive comments. In order to maximize the impact of this --- and hopefully kill this disgusting meme once and for all --- they need to personalize the 47% for the American people. And this is because, as Jonathan Chait says this morning, there's a cleverness to it:

The federal income tax is, by design, one of the most progressive elements of the American tax system, but well over 80 percent of non-retired adults pay federal taxes. But most people hear “income taxes” and think “taxes,” which is why the trick of using one phrase to make audiences think of the other is a standard GOP trick when discussing taxes. For that very reason, it won’t strike many voters as an insult: Most people who don’t pay income taxes do pay other taxes, and fail to distinguish between them, and thus don’t consider themselves among the 47 percent scorned by Romney.

So, the obvious approach is to point out who exactly he was talking about --- disabled people, veterans and senior citizens particularly. After all, they do represent a large portion of the 47%. In fact, one could make a very lugubrious ad about Mitt threatening the larger senior standard deduction.

But honestly, I think the real fat pitch right over the plate is the fact that Mitt is complaining about people failing to pay taxes when he refuses to release his tax returns. The idea that the man is complaining about Americans being freeloaders when there's an excellent chance he's one of them, despite being worth nearly half a billion dollars, is just too juicy to pass up. it's the most arrogant thing he's done --- and there have been a lot of them --- and he deserves to have this used as a cudgel.

Maybe it's also time to start highlighting some of the millionaires who pay no income tax. There are a lot of them.

Anyway, enough "they oughtta" for the day. It's easy pickings right now and a lot of fun. But it's got a life of its own at this point and there's no way of knowing where it's going to go. Still, if I had my druthers, some 501c or Super PAC would make it its mission to take this sick 47% meme and repeatedly slap these Randroids in the face with it.

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digby 9/18/2012 09:15:00 AM |

 
Killing the Bush tax cuts--for the middle class

by David Atkins

Annie Lowrey explains where those 47% (really, 46%) of Americans who don't pay federal income tax come from. Answer? Seniors, and the working poor, and beneficiaries of the Bush tax cuts:

[A]bout half of the households that do not pay federal income tax do not pay it because they are simply too poor. The Tax Policy Center gives as an example a couple with two children earning less than $26,400 a year: The household would pay no federal income tax because its standard deduction and other exemptions would simply erase its liability.

The other half, the Tax Policy Center found, consists of households taking advantage of tax credits and other provisions, mostly support for senior citizens and low-income working families.

Put bluntly, these are not households shirking their tax liabilities. The pool consists mostly of the poor, of relatively low-income working families and of old people. The tax code is specifically designed to reduce the burden on them.

Indeed, the recession and its aftermath have left tens of millions of workers out of a job or underemployed, removing more households from payment of federal income taxes. Moreover, the Bush tax cuts – the signature Republican economic policy of the 2000s, which doubled the child tax credit, increased a number of other deductions and exemptions, and lowered marginal tax rates – erased millions of families’ federal income tax liabilities.

It is also worth noting that though tens of millions of families do not pay federal income taxes, there are virtually no families that do not pay any taxes – between payroll taxes, sales taxes, state and local taxes, and on and on.

Especially interesting is the fact that the Bush tax cuts for the middle class, including and especially the doubling of the child tax credit, are largely responsible for the situation Mitt Romney and his plutocratic friends so deplore.

So in this election we have a battle between those who want to kill the Bush tax cuts for rich while keeping the ones for the middle class, and those who want to increase the Bush tax cuts for the rich, while eliminating the ones on the middle class.

There's no question now that this is class warfare by the rich against the rest of us. At least it's being waged out in the open where everyone can fight it.


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thereisnospoon 9/18/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, September 17, 2012

 

Ye Olde Illegitimate Rape

by digby

Wow, I knew the English tax collectors had pissed off the American colonists but I had no idea they were running around raping their wives and daughters:

Lulli Akin [Mrs Todd Akin] said that efforts to push her husband out of the race threaten to replace elections “by the people and for the people” with “tyranny, a top-down approach.” She added, “Party bosses dictating who is allowed to advance through the party and make all the decisions—it’s just like 1776 in that way.”

She cited colonists who “rose up and said, ‘Not in my home, you don’t come and rape my daughters and my … wife. But that is where we are again. There has been a freedom of elections, not tyranny of selections since way back. Why are we going to roll over and let them steamroll us, be it Democrats or Republicans or whomever?”

Well no wonder they declared their independence! And to think Jefferson didn't even mention this in the Declaration.

I have to wonder, however, if we can count on the fact that these were really legitimate rape. You know how women are about these things ..

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digby 9/17/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
What's a fair share?

by digby

When this issue of the 47% not paying any federal income taxes (who also, apparently are the only ones voting for Barack Obama) came up in the GOP primary, Romney complained that "everyone needs to pay their fair share." Coming from a man who refuses to tell the American people whether he's paid his fair share is pretty rich.

Here's a good chart that explains how this breaks down:



When reporters inquired of the campaigns what should be done about these tax expenditures (which they all agreed were a encouraging all these parasites to slack off ... and vote for the Democrats so they could keep their cushy existences at the expense of everyone else) here's how they responded:

Pressed on how they would bring more people into the tax system, none of the top three campaigns offered details. Alice Stewart, a spokeswoman for Mrs. Bachmann, said the Minnesotan "believes that the tax code is too complicated and must be reformed to be fairer and flatter."

Campaign spokeswoman Gail Gitcho said Mr. Romney "is opposed to tax increases," adding he would produce his economic plan in the fall.

"Governor Perry wants more people on the tax rolls not by raising taxes or expanding the tax base, but by putting people to work," said Perry spokesman Mark Miner.

Profiles in courage, there. It would seem that the Republicans are using this purely as a divisive tactic. Even some of their own intellectuals disagree with it:

Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the GOP candidates were wrong to assume that working-class voters support government programs because they are free.

Poorer households pay disproportionate shares of what Mr. Hassett calls stealth taxes on gasoline, alcohol and cigarette, even lottery tickets. They may get back in Social Security and Medicare benefits more than they pay in payroll taxes, but that is cold comfort for struggling young workers trying to buy a house, he said.

Well, that's crazy.They're so bad, they don't even deserve representation in the government. Especially the kids and old people. They're just a bunch of losers who need to stop being "takers" and give something back to the "makers." This is just as it was in the good old days. Of feudalism. They used to call it "tribute" but we can modernize it a bit and call it"paying their fair share."

Also too, this:

Low-income households as a group do, in fact, pay federal taxes. Congressional Budget Office data show that the poorest fifth of households paid an average of 4.0 percent of their incomes in federal taxes in 2007, the latest year for which these data are available — not an insignificant amount given how modest these households’ incomes are; the poorest fifth of households had average income of $18,400 in 2007. The next-to-the bottom fifth — those with incomes between $20,500 and $34,300 in 2007 — paid an average of 10.6 percent of their incomes in federal taxes.

Moreover, even these figures greatly understate low-income households’ total tax burden because these households also pay substantial state and local taxes. Data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy show that the poorest fifth of households paid a stunning 12.3 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes in 2011.

When all federal, state, and local taxes are taken into account, the bottom fifth of households pays about 16 percent of their incomes in taxes, on average. The second-poorest fifth pays about 21 percent

We don't know what Mitt's been paying in taxes all these years, but we do know what he paid in 2010: 13.9%

Update: This is just pathetically funny

digby 9/17/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
Parasites R Us

by digby

We knew that Paul Ryan believed this country was made up of "the takers vs the makers" but we hadn't heard Mitt Romney explicitly make that case until now. David Corn has obtained the full video (pieces have been floating around on Youtube for a while) of Romney talking to a bunch of his fellow one percenters. This pretty much lays it all out:

Fielding a question from a donor about how he could triumph in November, Romney replied:

There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.

Romney went on: "[M]y job is is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives."

You realize that he's talking about around a hundred and fifty million people, don't you? He's literally saying that nearly half the country is a bunch of parasites.

This is not a slip of the tongue. As Greg Sargent explains, it's just another iteration of his dogwhistling welfare queen campaign:

[H]is explanation veers into a truly extreme version of a theory that’s widespread on the right: Democrats are trying to encourage dependency on government for the explicit purpose of enlarging the pool of voters who can be relied upon to vote Democratic for the rest of their lives, in order to preserve the government handouts they enjoy.

In Romney’s telling, all of these 47 percent of voters are complicit in this arrangement. As a result, there is no hope of ever persuading them to take personal responsibility for their lives. He seems to be conflating the government-dependency conspiracy theory with another right wing meme — the complaint that only 47 percent of Americans pay no income taxes. Put those together and you arrive at Romney’s formulation.

In a sense, this is an extreme version of a narrative Romney has adopted on multiple fronts. He has charged that Obama is taking away hard won Medicare benefits from seniors to redistribute them to other people; he claims Obama is gutting welfare reform to send welfare checks to those who don’t work; and has even suggested Obama is doing the latter to appeal to his “base.” The attacks on Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech are of a piece with this, pushing the notion that Obama demeans your hard work and individual initiative because he thinks only government-sponsored success constitues real achievement and wants to expand government over every part of our lives, forever increasing government dependency and perpetually eroding good old fashioned self reliance.

I don't know that I've ever seen a presidential candidate with more contempt for the American people than Mitt Romney. It's one thing for a candidate to attack his opponent, but to attack half the country as a bunch of losers you don't have to care about is just unprecedented. He's obviously as much a believer in twisted Randroid tropes as his chosen VP.

And as I'm listening to Chris Matthews and his panel go on about how Romney is a captive of his base and doesn't really believe what he's saying (not regarding this video specifically) I can't help but wonder why he'd say the following in private amongst a bunch of rich donors like himself if he didn't believe it:

Describing his family background, he quipped about his father, "Had he been born of Mexican parents, I'd have a better shot of winning this."

Because the minorities get all the breaks in this damned country, dontcha know?

There has been a tendency to believe that Romney might really be a moderate underneath it all and that he's just playing to the wingnuts. It sounds to me like he's very fluent in wingnut ideology in private. So much so, that I would have to say that it's far more likely he conned the people of Massachusetts all those years ago that that he's conning all the wingnuts now.

And so do his rich Republican donors. Anyone who's still waiting for the Big Money Boyz to pull the plug on these wacky weirdos on the right is going to be waiting a long time. They are the wacky weirdos on the right. And Mitt's certainly King of the Weirdos.

Here's one of the videos, more at the link:

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digby 9/17/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 
The truth is not a core issue

by digby

If you want to see a perfect example of how reporters can get so lost in journalistic process that they lose sight of the truth, reality even, read this NY Times public editor column from yesterday on the "he said/she said" convention:

Readers are quick to cite examples. Several who wrote to me thought there was an element of false balance in a recent front-page article in The Times on the legal battles over allegations of voter fraud and vote suppression — hot topics that may affect the presidential race.

In his article, which led last Monday’s paper, the national reporter Ethan Bronner made every effort to provide balance. Some readers say the piece, in so doing, wrongly suggested that there was enough voter fraud to justify strict voter identification requirements — rules that some Democrats believe amount to vote suppression. Ben Somberg of the Center for Progressive Reform said The Times itself had established in multiple stories that there was little evidence of voter fraud.

“I hope it’s not The Times’s policy to move this matter back into the ‘he said she said’ realm,” he wrote.

The national editor, Sam Sifton, rejected the argument. “There’s a lot of reasonable disagreement on both sides,” he said. One side says there’s not significant voter fraud; the other side says there’s not significant voter suppression.

“It’s not our job to litigate it in the paper,” Mr. Sifton said. “We need to state what each side says.”

Mr. Bronner agreed. “Both sides have become very angry and very suspicious about the other,” he said. “The purpose of this story was to step back and look at both sides, to lay it out.” While he agreed that there was “no known evidence of in-person voter fraud,” and that could have been included in this story, “I don’t think that’s the core issue here.”

I just don't know what to say at this point. How can you possibly believe you've "laid it out" if you didn't include the most salient fact that there is no evidence of in-person voter fraud? It's completely inexplicable unless you realize that if you say that, you are simultaneously raising the question of why the Republicans would be passing laws to prevent it. That's when it gets dicey --- the only reasonable conclusion is that these people don't believe the evidence and are passing these laws out of some form of mass paranoia. Or they are trying to suppress the vote, the success or failure of which is nearly impossible to measure.

That's the "core issue," whether you're reporting about the two sides being at odds or whether you're trying to educate the public about the issue itself (or, hopefully, doing both ...) I suppose it's understandable that a reporter could get so mired in the weeds that he could no longer see that he was actually misleading his readers by reporting on the dispute without offering all the context and evidence that would lead the reader to understand the entirely of the issue. I guess I just assumed it would be an editors job to make sure he did. Apparently this editor didn't think so and others obviously remain confused which I find truly depressing.

The public editor did weigh in on that in a frank and refreshing way, I thought:

It ought to go without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway: Journalists need to make every effort to get beyond the spin and help readers know what to believe, to help them make their way through complicated and contentious subjects.

The more news organizations can state established truths and stand by them, the better off the readership — and the democracy — will be.

Yes, it certainly ought to go without saying but I'm glad somebody in that job finally said it.


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digby 9/17/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Today's right wing victimization and whining

by digby

Brought to you by Right Wing Watch:

The former Susan G. Komen for the Cure executive who orchestrated the organization’s controversial and short-lived break from Planned Parenthood earlier this year, is out with a new book claiming that the funding dispute was all Planned Parenthood’s fault. In “Planned Bullyhood,” Karen Handel claims that Planned Parenthood turned its back on a “gentlewomen’s agreement” to not discuss the fact that Komen was withdrawing $680,000 a year in grants for breast cancer screenings through the organization’s clinics and then turned on Komen in a PR blitz.

Handel, an anti-choice activist and former GOP candidate who reportedly pushed the move within Komen, resigned shortly after the news of the break caused a national firestorm.

In interviews with right-wing radio hosts Janet Mefferd and Janet Parshall last week, Handel portrays herself as the victim of bullying by the “vicious” Planned Parenthood. She tells Mefferd that Planned Parenthood launched “a mafia-style attack” and that “Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000.” She sees a double standard in the fact that President Obama didn’t call her after she was criticized, “like he did Sandra Fluke."

Oh, boo hoo hoo.

I love the "Komen was held hostage for a mere $680,000." And I can't help but wonder when the Planned Parenthood bullies called her a slut in the national media and insisted that she had so much sex she could hardly walk? I must have missed all that.

On the other hand, if fighting for funding to help women with breast cancer is what she means by bullying, then bully for them.

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digby 9/17/2012 12:45:00 PM |

 
Thank you, Robert Kuttner

by digby

... for this:

Two years ago, the Democrats handed the Republicans their two crown jewels -- Social Security and Medicare. By targeting Medicare for budget "savings" that could be used to finance what the Republicans called Obamacare, the White House gave the GOP ammunition to contend that the Democrats were taking benefits away from seniors.

Expanding health coverage for the young and defense of Medicare for the elderly got depicted as a zero sum game. Republicans made huge gains in 2010 with seniors. Instead of the political winner it should have been, Obamacare became an epithet.

Then, in the aborted grand budget bargain of 2011, Obama was so eager to achieve a compromise on mostly Republican terms that he very nearly agreed to needless cuts in Social Security. Only Republican intransigence on any kind of tax hikes saved the president from himself -- or more precisely from his deficit-hawk advisers.

Now, however, Republicans have given Social Security and Medicare back to the Democrats (where they belong.) Polls show that Medicare is no longer a winner for the Republicans, and the Democrats have embraced the term, "Obamacare" as positive label.

The reason, of course, is Paul Ryan.

That's right. In order to run against his program they had to ... run against his program. But as Kuttner says, this is not time to be complacent:

But never underestimate the Democrats' capacity for snatching defeat out of the jaws of victory.

Lurking in the wings is the latest reincarnation of Bowles-Simpson, the bipartisan zombie that refuses to die. A "Fix the Debt" campaign," chaired by none other than Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, has become the darling of the centrist media and of Wall Street.

The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, the National Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, several leading Democratic deficit hawks, and some 70 corporate CEOs have pledged to raise $50 to 100 million dollars in corporate money for this latest campaign, which promotes yet another a grand bargain of tax increases and cuts in Social Security and other social spending.

Bowles continues to be touted as Obama's next Treasury Secretary when Tim Geithner finally (mercifully!) calls it a day. Other Democrats who are part of this effort are former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, who was chair of the Democratic National Committee in 2000, and former Democratic Congressman Vic Fazio, who once headed the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Rounding out this group of Democrats doing Republicans' bidding on fiscal issues are former Georgia Senator Samm Nunn and Wall Streeter and former Obama official Steve Rattner.

Shame!

I did not watch Meet the Press this week, so I mercifully missed the Simpson-Bowles circus. I'm glad I did. I don't need the heartburn. This alone is sickening:

Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, co-chairs of the president's fiscal commission and widely hailed as serious thought leaders on dealing with the country's economic problem, had strong criticisms for both men vying to be President of the United States for the next four years.

As Kuttner points out, they are hailed as "serious thought leaders" by the corporate media (and wealthy celebrity villagers who will benefit from their agenda.) The rest of us, not so much.

Everyone loves Simpson, by the way, for taking the Republicans to task for not agreeing to raise taxes. But that leaves off the other half of his critique which is against the greedy geezers who don't want to wait until their in the grave to get Social Security and Medicare.

Once again we see the real divide: it's between people who want to cut the hell out of vital government services in the middle of an epic economic slump and people who want to cut the hell out of vital government services in the middle of an economic slump but are willing to kick in some tip money to appease the rubes. The desires of the people -- much less the needs of the economy --- simply aren't on the table.


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digby 9/17/2012 11:00:00 AM |

 
Jeffrey Goldberg Tries To Slither Off Topic

by tristero

This is bullshit and Goldberg knows it. The real issue is that Romney and Ryan are listening to neocons and the neocons are crazy. Goldberg's just trying to slither away from  the subject. (Read MoDo's column to learn who actually used that ominous word "slither" - and about a member of which ethnic group.)

If anything, Goldberg himself is being anti-Semitic by assuming that Jews as a group have anything whatsoever to do with the obnoxious and deeply disturbed worldview of the slithery neo-cons. To assume every Jew sympathizes or feels even the remotest solidarity with Jewish neocons merely because of a common ethnic/religious heritage is deeply insulting.

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tristero 9/17/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
Boy scout leaders and Catholic priests. Oh my.

by David Atkins

This should be shocking to absolutely no one:

Over two decades, the Boy Scouts of America failed to report hundreds of alleged child molesters to police and often hid the allegations from parents and the public - including cases in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

A Los Angeles Times review of 1,600 confidential files dating from 1970 to 1991 has found that Scouting officials frequently urged admitted offenders to quietly resign - and helped many cover their tracks.

Volunteers and employees suspected of abuse were allowed to leave citing bogus reasons such as business demands, "chronic brain dysfunction," and duties at a Shakespeare festival.

The details are contained in the organization's confidential "perversion files," a blacklist of alleged molesters, that the Scouts have used internally since 1919. Scouts' lawyers around the country have been fighting in court to keep the files from public view.

As the L.A. Times reported last month, the blacklist often didn't work: Men expelled for alleged abuses slipped back into the program, only to be accused of molesting again. Now, a more extensive review has shown that Scouts sometimes abetted molesters by keeping allegations under wraps.

In the majority of cases, the Scouts learned of alleged abuse after it had been reported to authorities. But in more than 500 instances, the Scouts learned about it from victims, parents, staff members, or anonymous tips.

In about 400 of those cases - 80 percent - there is no record of Scouting officials' reporting the allegations to police. In more than 100 of the cases, officials actively sought to conceal the alleged abuse or allowed the suspects to hide it, the newspaper found.

Is it any surprise that this sort of thing invariably happens in the most right-wing, homophobic organizations? It shouldn't be.

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thereisnospoon 9/17/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Sunday, September 16, 2012

 
Headline 'o the day

by digby

Mayor's reputation tarnished in teachers union dust-up

The measure of who won and lost in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's showdown with the Chicago Teachers Union won't be clear until the details of the new contract emerge, but last week's strike took some of the luster off the mayor's self-portrait as an innovative leader brimming with new ways to solve the city's most vexing challenges.

The long, stressful path to getting a contract in place offered a glimpse that Emanuel perhaps is not as multidimensional as he tries to appear. Repeatedly, the mayor turned to one tool: the attack.

That singular approach contributed to the first teachers strike in 25 years and served to heighten organized labor's suspicions of the new mayor, whose union bashing kept him from playing a hands-on role at the negotiating table.

I don't know what the Villagers are going to do with that. It's almost as if they don't know what the hell they're talking about:

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

John Heileman should be forced to eat crow for this spectacularly embarrassing performance, but I'm sure he won't be. We'll just have to settle for Rahm being publicly humiliated. And that's pretty good.


h/t to RP
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digby 9/16/2012 05:00:00 PM |

 
Cruel Britannia

by digby

Larry Summers on Britain's impending lost decade, via Brad Delong:

It is the mark of science and perhaps rational thought to operate with a falsifiable understanding of how the world works. So it is fair to ask economists… what could happen that would cause you to… acknowledge that the model you had been using was flawed? As a vigorous advocate of fiscal expansion… I have for the past several years suggested that if the British economy – with its major attempts at fiscal consolidation – were to enjoy a rapid recovery, it would force me to substantially revise my views….

Unfortunately for the British economy, nothing in the past several years compels me revise my views….

The cumulative output loss from this British downturn in its first five years exceeds even that experienced during the 1930s… a decade or more of Japan-style stagnation [is] emerging as a real risk.

An effective policy approach to Britain’s economic problems must start with the recognition that the principle factor holding back the British economy over both the short and medium term is the lack of demand…. [A] car might have many infirmities, but if its electrical system did not work the car would not go. If that was fixed, the car would run, even with other problems. So it is today. Moreover, to a greatly under-appreciated extent in the policy debate, short-run increases in demand and output would have medium to long-term benefits…. A stronger economy means more capital investment and fewer cuts to corporate research and development. It means fewer people lose their connection to good jobs and become addicted to living without work. It means that more young people get first jobs and it means more businesses choose leaders oriented to expansion rather than cost-cutting. The most important structural programme for raising Britain’s potential output in the future is raising its output today.

The objection to this… is profoundly flawed….[T]he behaviour of financial markets suggests that economic weakness rather than profligacy is the main source of concern… the costs of buying credit insurance on the UK to rise when overall interest rates fall… it is evolving optimism and pessimism about the future, not changing views about fiscal policy driving markets… the primary determinant of fiscal health in both the US and UK over the medium term will be the rate of growth… austerity policies that slowed growth could even backfire in the narrow sense of raising debt-to-GDP ratios and turning debt unsustainability into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Britain must change the pace of fiscal consolidation to stand a chance of avoiding a lost decade… hen demand is needed for growth and the private sector is hanging back, the first priority must be for the public sector to stop exacerbating the contraction.

But hey, it isn't just Britain and it isn't just conservative Republicans. Just listen to Ed Rendell, mainstream American Democrat:

Ed Rendell: I'm the co-chair of the campaign to fix the debt with Judd Gregg and we've got now 2,000 of the 5,000 major corporations signed on to the campaign we've raised 26 million dolars for a PR campaign right after the election to try to get peopel to focus. I think the American business community is going to weigh in with Republicans and say "enough, we want this done."

Alex Wagner: that would be a bold strike by the business community

[More stupid irrelevant cross talk about nothing ... see below]

Wagner: Luke, before we let you go, the president talks a lot about the fever breaking. I know you just gave us a sort of pessimistic view of the next couple months. But do you think the fever could break inside the Republican party come next year if in fact he is re-elected?

Luke Russert: well, it's a question we talked about a few days ago on your show which is if Mitt Romney loses, what is the catharsis within the Republican party? Do they become more conservative and say, "you know what we nominated a guy who was way to liberal, way too moderate" or do they say "we need to reform ourselves and not be so rigid." And that's honestly a question which I think is very hard to fathom which direction they'll go this far out ...

Rendell: Don't you think if the president's re-elected, he can frame the issue by saying I want to do Simpson-Bowles, some form of it, I want to do it now, let's all get in and do our jobs. Then the Republicans have a real Hobson's Choice..

Russert: If both sides agree to jump in the deep end holding hands. But you've seen, is there the impetus to get to that magic number 217 votes in the House, it's hard to say...

Rendell: if the president and the Democrats are on board, and the Republicans say no

Russert: If they're on board in terms of raising the Medicare age

Rendell: uh huh, uh huh

Russert: possibly, possibly. Then you could say the Republicans will be out in the woods for the 2014 midterms. It's tough, it's tough. We all thought this would happen in the summer of 2011 and you saw that that deal died. Mr Woodward wrote a whole book about it.

Hey, why should Britain be the only nation to have a lost generation?


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digby 9/16/2012 03:30:00 PM |

 
Corey Robin to the white courtesy telephone please

by digby

Reactionaries are calling:

Former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum openly criticized libertarians in his speech to the audience, saying that “economic conservatism — libertarian types can say, oh, well, we don’t want to talk about the social issues. Without the church and the family, there is no conservative movement. There is no basic values in America in force, and there is no future for our country.”

Later, Santorum told BuzzFeed and a reporter from Reason that libertarianism could be “very positive, but you have to understand I’m conservative and not libertarian.”
His patience wore thin for the kinds of libertarians who might not vote for Mitt Romney. He encouraged those who might vote for Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson to “vote for Barack Obama” instead.

Perkins rejected the idea that conservatives might have difficulty forging an alliance with libertarians and identified Santorum, however improbably, as the key link between the two factions.

“His candidacy was a large part of that by making the economic argument for marriage,” Perkins said.

“If you look at the libertarian viewpoint which I share in terms of I want a smaller government, I want less government, well how do you do that?” Perkins asked rhetorically. “You strengthen the American family. Because if you look at the government that has expanded, it has expanded to make up for the family which is in decline.”

“Right there is a good starting point for libertarians and social conservatives together.”

Uh huh. If you doubt it, read this book:

Also too, this.

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digby 9/16/2012 01:30:00 PM |