Dave Weigel reviews the new 'Atlas Shrugged' movie

I have to admit, I liked the book when I read it at 21. I ought to try re-reading it. But God that speech was horrendously long. I only have one friend who managed to. Here's Dave Weigle's take on the movie (it's going to be in three parts, Lord of the Rings style. Hmmm...)

It also drives home just how unlike Atlas Shrugged the Obama years have actually been. Rand's dopey bureaucrats are able to talk about anti-ingenuity legislation one day and pass it the next. One bill makes it illegal for anyone to own more than one company; another puts a surtax on the state of Colorado, because it's doing too well. The Obama administration, during the crisis years of 2009 and 2010, had mixed luck with passing legislation, and it never actually raised taxes except on cigarette smokers.

Sure, Atlas Shrugged the novel has worked as a thought experiment. The movie sort of works as a thought experiment. It's an incomplete thought. The federal government's massive bank and auto industry bailouts eroded trust in the government and in companies that took bailouts—this even after the companies staggered back to profit and started paying the money back. These developments don't resemble the novel's plot at all; they were stopgap measures by scared capitalists, who socialized risk to prevent real socialism from taking hold. Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP's fiscal brain, voted for TARP a few months before he phoned the Atlas Society to ask how this movie was coming along.

If this movie breaks big, or even if it gets an afterlife on Netflix, will it make as many converts as the novel? Doubtful; Rand's gospel of selfishness works better on the page than on film. This installment of the movie ends with Dagny hiking up Wyatt's property to see the oil wells he set ablaze when he left to join Galt. He left a sign, daring the bureaucrats to take it over: "I'm leaving it as I found it." But he's not leaving it as he found it. He bought mineral rights, made a profit, and left the land with a lot less oil and a few more towering infernos. This may be a sign that Aglialoro and Kaslow made a successful allegory: It's open to an interpretation that they never intended.

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Endangered sea turtles dying along Mississippi Gulf

The GOP solution would be to simply take them off the endangered list. Read the rest of this post...

First Amendment stops at the TSA line

Unless you want to be searched by the TSA gropers, keep you mouth shut. This is downright pathetic. What's worse is that too many in Washington find this acceptable behavior by the TSA. (And of course, any privatized rent-a-cop solution will be the same since they use the same model as the TSA.) It may not be right to be nasty with TSA employees who are not nasty but to pursue anyone who speaks out against this ridiculous breach of privacy is outrageous. What rights will the defenders of freedom in Congress and the White House strip away next?

Someone or some organization is arrogant here and it's not necessarily air travelers. CNN:

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

Many of the indicators, as characterized in open government reports, are behaviors and appearances that may be indicative of stress, fear or deception. None of them, as the TSA has long said, refer to or suggest race, religion or ethnicity.

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Amazing video—Tornado moving through area near Jackson Miss.

Here's video of that tornado (h/t David Mixner):



The Clarion Ledger:

Tornadoes and high winds whipped through the Jackson metro area today, causing multiple injuries, shutting down I-20, ravaging homes and businesses and knocking out power to thousands.

There have been no deaths, but eight people were hospitalized, one from East Lake in Clinton in critical condition. Of the eight, one was a man on Heatherland in Clinton, who suffered a heart attack. Four of those hospitalized were from Clinton and the other four from Jackson.

In Clinton, a tornado appeared to rake a path from U.S. 80 to Springridge Road, ripping through homes and businesses and toppling trees.

Amazing and scary — those things can turn on a dime.

GP Read the rest of this post...

BREAKING: House Republicans overwhelmingly vote to phase out Medicare

Yikes. They're going for it. Think Progress:

When President Obama proposed ensuring affordable health care to all Americans, Congress spent a year hashing out how best to achieve this goal. Yet when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) decided that he wanted to phase out Medicare, the GOP-controlled House took only two weeks to debate and pass this radical proposal. This afternoon, House Republicans overwhelming endorsed his plan to eliminate Medicare, slash education, and jack up the middle class’ taxes. 235 Republicans supported the Medicare elimination bill, with just 4 GOPers casting a vote to leave Medicare unmolested[.]

The centerpiece of the House Republicans’ plan is a proposal that repeals traditional Medicare and replaces it with a health insurance voucher that loses its value over time. Because the value of the Republicans’ privatized Medicare replacement does not keep up with the cost of health care, their plan will gradually eliminate Medicare because its increasingly worthless vouchers will eventually only cover a very tiny fraction of the cost of a health insurance plan.

On the roll call vote, all Democrats voted No, and all Republicans except Jones, McKinley, Ron Paul, and Rehberg voted Yes.

Think Progress helpfully reminds us of Paul Ryan's hidden tax cut. The Center for American Progress has a nice summary:

Rep. Ryan’s budget simply doesn’t describe exactly how his tax plan would work, instead resorting to broad bullet points that conveniently skip over important details. Nonetheless, the broad outlines of his tax plan are to:

• Maintain the Bush-era tax cuts beyond their expiration in 2012 and cut the top individual tax rate down to 25 percent from 35 percent
• Consolidate the current six tax brackets into some, unspecified, fewer number of brackets
• Keep overall tax revenue levels the same
• Pay for the enormous tax cut for the top by eliminating or curtailing some, unspecified, tax expenditures

No shared sacrifice for you, Middle Class America; unless, of course, we can convince you this is it.

Let the games begin.

GP Read the rest of this post...

Krugman calls Paul Ryan's budget proposal "a sick joke", criticizes Ryan's "hissy fit" following Obama's speech

Paul Krugman:

Then people who actually understand budget numbers went to work, and it became clear that the proposal wasn’t serious at all. In fact, it was a sick joke. The only real things in it were savage cuts in aid to the needy and the uninsured, huge tax cuts for corporations and the rich, and Medicare privatization. All the alleged cost savings were pure fantasy.

On Wednesday, as I said, the president called Mr. Ryan’s bluff: after offering a spirited (and reassuring) defense of social insurance, he declared, “There’s nothing serious about a plan that claims to reduce the deficit by spending a trillion dollars on tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. And I don’t think there’s anything courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.” Actually, the Ryan plan calls for $2.9 trillion in tax cuts, but who’s counting?

And the hissy fit — I mean, criticism — the Obama plan provoked from Mr. Ryan was deeply revealing, as the man who proposes using budget deficits as an excuse to cut taxes on the rich accused the president of being “partisan.” Mr. Ryan also accused the president of being “dramatically inaccurate” — this from someone whose plan included a $200 billion error in its calculation of interest costs and appears to have made an even bigger error on Medicaid costs. He didn’t say what the inaccuracies were.

Does anyone have more info on what calculations Ryan got wrong? Read the rest of this post...

GOP prez hopeful Jon Huntsman seriously hearts Hillary and Obama

It seems some of Huntsman's letters have been unearthed:

“You are a remarkable leader,” Huntsman wrote to Obama in an Aug. 16, 2009 note, underlining the word “remarkable,” “and it has been a great honor getting to know you.”

“I must report that Sec. Clinton has won the hearts and minds of the State Dept. bureaucracy — no easy task. And after watching her in action, I can see why. She is well-read, hard working, personable and has even more charisma than her husband! It’s an honor to work with her,” Huntsman wrote.

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A Tax Day Special—The U.S. is a low-tax country

From the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a few charts to comfort you on Tax Day. More like this here (h/t Paul Krugman):




There are ten of these in this great post, and every one is a gem. Do click through.

Something to think about when the supermarket-tabloid myths get told near you.

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An analysis of Obama vs. Ryan on controlling health care costs

From Jonathan Cohn at TNR:

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., released his budget proposal and included within it radically conservative reforms of the nation's major health care programs. Ryan would repeal altogether the coverage expansions of the health law. He also would increase the eligibility age for Medicare and then turn it into what most of us would call a "voucher scheme," eliminating in 2022 the traditional government-run insurance plan for everybody who retires in that year and replacing it with a fixed financial subsidy that seniors can apply toward the cost of regulated private insurance policies. Last but not least, Ryan would transform Medicaid into a block grant. Instead of guaranteeing federal funds to cover everyone that becomes eligible for the program, Washington would simply give the states a pre-determined, lump sum of money -- and let states figure out how best to use it.

On paper, the Ryan plan saves the government a lot of money, at least in the long run. But upon closer inspection, the savings turn out to be illusory, cruel or some combination of the two. In fact, far from proving the superiority of conservative health reforms, Ryan's plan validates what his political adversaries have said all along. The Affordable Care Act represents a serious and realistic approach to controlling the cost of medicine -- one that would be even more serious and realistic if the long-term budget changes President Barack Obama just recommended become law.

In short, the Republican vision for health care reform, as expressed by Ryan, is to limit federal spending on medical care, at levels far below what we spend today, and then let individuals make the best of the situation. By contrast, the health law calls for more gradual, more shared sacrifice by everybody involved with health care -- with a focus on promoting efficiency so that lower spending needn't result in lesser care. That's not only a more realistic approach to controlling costs. It's also a more humane one.

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Teabagger Rep. Allen West: GOP leaders need "a come-to-Jesus with themselves"

It's barely been four months since the GOP took over the House -- and there's already intra-party trouble brewing. This could be fun to watch.

Yesterday, the budget vote passed because of Democratic votes. John Boehner won't always have the Dems. to carry him over the finish line. The GOP caucus is getting cranky:

Fifty-nine Republicans — nearly a quarter of the new majority — rejected the measure personally negotiated by Mr. Boehner and endorsed by his top lieutenants, Representatives Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, and Kevin McCarthy of California, the party whip. Another lawmaker said he would have opposed the measure but missed the vote.

The outcome amounted to a warning shot to the leadership from its right flank that conservatives are serious when they say they will not support measures that do not meet their fiscal ideals, a position that is not going to make Mr. Boehner’s life any easier as he heads into new showdowns over raising the federal debt limit and deficit reduction. It could also have long-term implications for the speaker politically if he continues to face such internal division.

“I think my leadership needs to probably sit down and have a come-to-Jesus with themselves,” said Representative Allen B. West, a freshman Republican from Florida who derided the budget cuts as a “raindrop in an ocean.”

I'm not one to quote Jesus too often. But, seems to me the entire GOP caucus, many of whom align themselves with right-wing religious extremists, should just heed the actual words of Jesus: "Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me."

Just saying. Read the rest of this post...

Will the DoJ charge Goldman traders who "squeezed" the market in 2007?

Despite the whining on Wall Street, we have yet to see the Obama administration aggressively pursue the bankers who brought down the global economy. Outside of a few side shows (insider trading) the industry has been untouched. The Senate is now releasing details of their own investigation into the crash and found some rather interesting information about a team from Goldman Sachs.

Company documents show traders led by Michael J. Swenson sought to encourage a “short squeeze” by putting artificially low prices on derivatives that would gain in value as mortgage securities fell, according to the report yesterday by the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. The idea, abandoned after market conditions worsened, was to drive holders of such credit-default swaps to sell and help Goldman Sachs traders buy at reduced prices, according to the report.

“We began to encourage this squeeze, with plans of getting very short again,” Deeb Salem, a trader in the structured product group, said in a 2007 self-evaluation excerpted in the report. Swenson, Salem’s supervisor, sent e-mails in May 2007 urging traders to offer prices that will “cause maximum pain” and “have people totally demoralized.” In interviews with the committee, Salem and Swenson denied attempting a short squeeze, the report said.

Salem “claimed that he had wrongly worded his self- evaluation,” the report said. “He said that reading his self- evaluation as a description of an intended short squeeze put too much emphasis on ‘words.’”

Now the question is what will happen next. Senator Levin says that it's up to the Department of Justice to take action. Considering the lack of interest in any cases against Wall Street and the crash plus the new (but really old) attempts by the Obama administration to be friends with Wall Street, this is likely to go nowhere. Why is there so little accountability and why doesn't this administration show any seriousness about the origins of this economic crisis? Read the rest of this post...

Inflation rising in China as economic growth slows

For anyone who goes grocery shopping anywhere in the world, it's easy to see rising food prices. (Another gift from the traders who brought us so much fun in the past.) In China's situation, they are facing substantial increases for both food and housing so it's a mystery how they're managing to keep their overall inflation levels at only 5%. This regime has never been known to be accurate with their numbers so it could be higher. Al Jazeera:

China's economy has grown at a slightly slower-than-normal pace in the first quarter of 2011, while inflation has accelerated, despite attempts to rein in soaring food and property prices, the latest economic data from the country's National Bureau of Statistics shows.

Gross domestic product (GDP) in the world's second-largest economy grew by 9.7 per cent year-on-year in the first three months of 2011, while the politically sensitive consumer price index (CPI) rose by 5.0 per cent.

The CPI had risen by 5.4 per cent year-on-year for March (the fastest pace since July 2008), well above the government's 2011 target of 4.0 per cent. In February, the CPI rose by 4.9 per cent.

GDP, meanwhile, continued apace with recent trends, having grown by 9.8 per cent in the final quarter of 2010, and 10.3 per cent for the entire year.

"The national economy maintained steady and fast development and had a very good beginning [to the year]," Sheng Laiyun, an NBS spokesman, said.

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Police arrest Rupert Murdoch journalists in UK

If Murdoch thought that admitting guilt was going to make it easier, he was wrong. His tabloid team in the UK hacked into the phones of many people from celebrities to politicians. They crossed the line so it's good to see that someone is taking this seriously instead of ignoring it. There could be a lot more problems ahead for Murdoch's newspaper. The Guardian:

Despite the paper having promised that it would co-operate fully with police inquiries, executives descended on the desk of former news editor James Weatherup moments after learning of his arrest. Under the eyes of their legal team, they bagged up notebooks, papers and recording machines and removed them "via our lawyers", a firm whose identity the publisher refused to confirm.

A few hours later, the police arrived and took the bags to Scotland Yard. Detectives also conducted a search in the tabloid newsroom while staff were asked to decamp to a nearby bar.

The unexpected arrest of Weatherup, one of the most senior journalists at the News of the World, at his home leaves little room for doubt that the new police team investigating the phone-hacking scandal is determined to succeed where its much-criticised predecessors failed.

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