The GOP 'War on the 20th Century'

Lets recap, only two weeks ago, Rush Limbaugh though that Daryl Issa's War on Contraception was going so well that he decided to up the ante and turn it into a War on Women. His advertisers have deserted him and we will soon find out how many stations have pulled the trigger on the 90 day notice period his standard contract requires to drop him..

We have come to expect atrocities like the 'mechanical rape' ultrasound bill from states like Texas and Virginia. But now we have the Governor of Pennsylvania trying to get in on the act, telling women to 'just shut their eyes' if they don't want to see the pictures produced by his own mandatory rape law.

Just how far does the GOP want to wind the clock back, 1970s? 1960s? Just how old is the base that all these wars are intended to pander to?

Rick Santorum seems to be thinking 1930s would suit him fine and has launched a Comstock style War on Porn with the usual gang of hate groups (Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, etc). He is confident of success too, "Together we will prevail".

Is there any positive development of the 20th Century that the GOP has not declared war on yet? Read the rest of this post...

Video: When big dogs think they're little dogs

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Millennials have little interest in environment or politics

This is a major problem, considering the size of the Millennial generation. In 2008 the Obama campaign did a reasonably good job reaching out to younger voters but then fell flat on their face with the same old politics that we've seen for decades. Failing to connect with this generation (or anyone who helped propel Obama to victory) could not have helped much either. Regardless of what complaints older generations have about the Millennials (some true, some false) they still need to be engaged and brought into the process.

They have a reputation for being environmentally minded do-gooders. But an academic analysis of surveys spanning more than 40 years has found that today's young Americans are less interested in the environment and in conserving resources — and often less civic-minded overall — than their elders were when they were young. The findings go against the widespread belief that environmental issues have hit home with today's young adults, known as Millennials, who have grown up amid climate change discussion and the mantra "reduce, reuse, recycle." The environment is often listed among top concerns of young voters. "I was shocked," said Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University who is one of the study's authors. "We have the perception that we're getting through to people. But at least compared to previous eras, we're not."

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Afghan parliamentary probe: Up to 20 U.S. troops involved in massacre

We asked earlier, "How many shooters were involved in the Afghan killings?" Afghan lawmakers are asking the same question, and have settled on an answer — as many as twenty.

The Kabul-based Pajhwok Afghan News agency — Afghanistan's largest independent news service — is reporting on an Afghan parliamentary probe into the murder of 16 civilians by one or more U.S. soldiers over the weekend. According to the report (h/t Steve Hynd via Twitter; my emphasis and reparagraphing):

A parliamentary probe team on Thursday said up to 20 American troops were involved in Sunday’s killing of 16 civilians in southern Kandahar province.

The probing delegation includes lawmakers [eight MPs listed]. ... The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidences at the site in Panjwai district. Hamizai Lali told Pajhwok Afghan News their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers, who executed the brutal killings.

“We closely examined the site of the incident, talked to the families who lost their beloved ones, the injured people and tribal elders,” he said. He added the attack lasted one hour involving two groups of American soldiers in the middle of the night on Sunday.

“The villages are one and a half kilometre from the American military base. We are convinced that one soldier cannot kill so many people in two villages within one hour at the same time, and the 16 civilians, most of them children and women, have been killed by the two groups.”

A stunning development, if true. The U.S. military is holding to the "lone gunman" theory, and has flown the soldier who has reportedly confessed out of the country. Some of the lawmakers wanted the perpetrator(s) tried in Afghanistan.

There are several implications to this report. Just a few:

1. Will it get near-term media traction? Let's see if the British independent press picks it up, or some prime American source. These are critical hours for the story in the U.S.; the fruit is still unripe, still vulnerable to the frosty stare of the next missing news-blonde.

2. In the U.S. what will be the response? At some point there will be a trial. That in itself could rekindle awareness. After all, if one or more people had gone on a midnight killing spree of 16 women and children in Kansas, we'd be inundated with it, drowning in it.

3. In Afghanistan, this could change the political equation. Yes, we're talking about maybe exiting the war. But there's now more on the table for honor-focused tribal leaders than just our leaving. The report includes this:

The lawmaker said the Wolesi Jirga would not sit silent until the killers were prosecuted in Afghanistan. "If the international community does not play its role in punishing the perpetrators, the Wolesi Jirga would declare foreign troops as occupying forces, like the Russians," Lali warned.

The Wolesi Jirga is the lower house of the Afghan parliament. Declaring U.S. troops an occupying force would have an effect. Lali, by the way, is Chairman of the Parliamentary National Security and Internal Affairs Commission. Not nobody.

As Rachel Maddow reported, our troops are already being "fragged" by their Afghan "partners." This could turn into a very different war than we asked for, and the Afghans seem determined to follow this through.

Stay tuned.

UPDATES: 1. More thoughts on this at the Agonist.

2. And here at emptywheel.net.

3. Informative additions by commenter hauksdottir here. This is a good comment thread. Thanks to all.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Just close your eyes - the GOP assault on women continues

If you watched The Daily Show the other night, you got a solid chuckle out of this: What's the difference between a fertilized egg, a corporation and a woman? One of them isn't considered a person in Oklahoma!

But seriously, folks.

The Republican establishment has seemed more concerned with de-humanizing women than it does with winning the fall election. After Virginia passed its modified ultrasound requirement for abortion access, Republican-controlled state governments in Arizona and Pennsylvania put forward a set of absurd invasions of privacy that smack of the same big-government tyranny that they claim to be so aggressively opposed to.

In Arizona, a bill working its way through the state legislature would require women to prove to their employer that they were taking contraceptives for the purpose of treating a medical condition if they want insurance to cover the cost, potentially allowing the employer to fire women who take birth control for the purpose of preventing pregnancy. In Pennsylvania, Republicans are pushing a measure that would require doctors to perform an ultrasound, provide two copies of the image, and play and describe the fetus' heartbeat in detail before a woman can have an abortion.

While the furor over mandated trans-vaginal ultrasounds led the Virginia bill to specify that the requirement was only for the less invasive "jelly on the belly" ultrasound, the Pennsylvania bill does not make such a specification. This is notable because in the early stages of pregnancy a trans-vaginal ultrasound is required to obtain an image. Despite opening the door for state-mandated rape, the Republican governor of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, explained why the requirement isn't that big of a deal: "You just have to close your eyes."

According to Governor Corbett, if you aren't looking when you become a second-class citizen it doesn't count.

Unfortunately, it does. Read the rest of this post...

Rutgers undergrad found guilty of bias-related cyberspying that led gay roomie to suicide

It's a horrible story that appears to be reaching a surprisingly just conclusion. Read the rest of this post...

Will Limbaugh, with the help of Romney's Bain Capital, bring down Clear Channel?

Three weeks ago Rush Limbaugh was the undisputed king of talk radio. Not only did he have the most stations and the best broadcast slots, the audiences he attracted meant that he could actually charge stations for his show. Most talk radio shows are provided to the stations for free, bartering space on the dial for a half share of the advertising slots.

Limbaugh's show is distributed by Premiere, which is in turn owned by Clear Channel, a company with a balance sheet that has been running red ink for some time as the outdoor advertising market went sour during the recession. The Motley Fool has an interesting analysis of Clear Channel's attractiveness as a stock pick, scoring the company a mere 2 out of 10 on its investment screen. Forbes reports that the company has $19.2 billion in debt.

But wait, it gets worse (or better).

Clear Channel's stock has just jumped after the company announced that it would borrow $2.2 billion to pay a special dividend of $6 to shareholders. Regular readers of this blog will remember the special dividend as one of the tricks used by Mitt Romney to make his fortune at Bain Capital. The crew would buy a company with money borrowed against the value of the company then borrow even more money to fund a special dividend that would mean a huge profit for them and likely bankruptcy for the company. And, hey, lookee here [Matt Koppenheffer, my emphasis]:

In a press release today, Clear Channel, which is largely controlled by Bain Capital, announced that it will be raising $2.2 billion via two debt offerings. The company will then turn around and use $2.17 billion of the proceeds to pay a $6.08-per-share special cash dividend to shareholders on record as of March 12. As the big jump in the stock suggests, the move was well received by investors.

Forbes states that Bain Capital paid $17.2 billion to acquire the company. The huge debt load suggests that what Bain really did was to put in as little of their own money as possible and the rest makes up the lions share of that $19.2 billion in debt. Matt is not too impressed by this:

You'll have to excuse me if I throw up in my mouth just a little bit. Maybe I'm just a sissy when it comes to debt, but the idea of a company practically doubling its indebtedness in order to pay out a massive dividend just doesn't sit well with me.

The only reason I can see that the stock would jump $1.50 on the news of the special dividend is a short squeeze. When a company pays a dividend, a short seller has to cover it. So an investor short 1,000 shares in Clear Channel would be facing a $6,000 charge to their account.

The Limbaugh crisis leaves Clear Channel paying $38 million a year for a broadcaster who has recently lost a good deal of his paid advertisers and has driven many advertisers away from talk radio completely. And this comes when their competitor, Cumulus Media Networks, is preparing to launch Mike Huckabee's new show. Cumulus owns many of Limbaugh's highest profile stations, and even before the Fluke crisis, the launch of the Huckabee show was seen as a move intended to recapture the younger and female listeners that Limbaugh has been hemorrhaging in recent years.

As anyone who has seen the Golf Channel knows, a channel does not need to attract a large audience if it attracts the right audience. Limbaugh attracts large numbers of the elderly white low income demographic that few advertisers are interested in. Huckabee attracts younger listeners and female listeners that advertisers are most interested in.

So lets recap, Clear Channel is losing a large slice of advertising revenue for a broadcaster they are paying $38 million a year. The company has a market cap of $5.5 billion, and $19 billion in debt. Despite a junk bond rating, the company is planning to borrow another $2.2 billion to pay a $2 billion dividend to Bain Capital. That will leave the company with a market cap of $3.3 billion, and $21.2 billion in debt with $4 billion due in 2014 and another $12 billion up to 2016.

And don't forget that in the increasingly likely case that these Vampire Capital tactics put Clear Channel into bankruptcy, Chapter 11 will allow the same management team who engineered it to stay in control and later find a new clutch of investors to bilk.

So the answer to my question in the subject line turns out to be "no": Mitt Romney's Bain capital looks like it was doing a fine job of destroying Clear Channel all on its own. But Limbaugh's bigotry and the advertiser boycott he brought on himself might well turn out to be the final straw.

Update: A lawsuit brought on behalf of the minority shareholders in Clear Channel Outdoor alleges that Clear Channel Corporation (holder of the 89% controlling interest in CCC) forced CCO to make a $1 billion loan to CCC on unfavorable terms.

Update 2: And there is an investigation into whether an unexplained 11% price movement in the CCO stock ahead of the news was caused by insiders front-running the trade. Read the rest of this post...

What is "Pink Slime"? You eat it in your burgers

I've been wanting to write a food post, and this is it. Yes, "Pink Slime" (my capitals) is an actual food product, or at least an additive. Consider:

  ▪ It's productized beef scrap, and as bad as the name implies.
  ▪ Its source is the lowest of the low beef by-products, the last to be salvaged. Ammonia-treated. Dog food fodder.
  ▪ And the food-industrial complex, via their retainers in the USDA, are using poor children in the lunch program as forced (by poverty) consumers for this stuff.

Poverty; see, it works just like unemployment — keeps the supply-side economy humming.

All of this information comes thanks to a small aggregator blog that's well worth checking out, anotheroldwoman. (By the way, that picture up there? That's the Cuisinart version, not the factory product. Just saying. [Edit: Pic deleted.])

■ What is "pink slime?" ABC News (my emphasis and some reparagraphing everywhere):

Gerald Zirnstein grinds his own hamburger these days. Why? Because this former United States Department of Agriculture scientist and, now, whistleblower, knows that 70 percent of the ground beef we buy at the supermarket contains something he calls “pink slime.” ...

According to [USDA scientist] Custer, the product is not really beef, but “a salvage product” ... made by gathering waste trimmings [beef "waste" is everything you think it is], simmering them at low heat so the fat separates easily from the muscle, and spinning the trimmings using a centrifuge to complete the separation. Next, the mixture is sent through pipes where it is sprayed with ammonia gas to kill bacteria ... [then packaged] into bricks [and] frozen and shipped to grocery stores and meat packers, where it is added to most ground beef.

The beauty isn't just in the salvage operation. There's genius in the political operation — by which I mean the labeling:

The “pink slime” [additive] does not have to appear on the label because, over objections of its own scientists, USDA officials with links to the beef industry labeled it meat. “The under secretary said, ‘it’s pink, therefore it’s meat,’” Custer told ABC News.

■ About those USDA retainers I mentioned above. Think I'm joking? The Food Bigs really do own their own USDA. ABC again:

[T]he woman who made the decision to OK the mix is a former undersecretary of agriculture, Joann Smith. ... [I]n 1993, BPI’s principal major supplier appointed her to its board of directors, where she made at least $1.2 million over 17 years.

BPI is Beef Products Inc., manufacturers of Pink Slime. They made "hundred of millions of dollars" from the stuff, all thanks to Ms. Smith. Again, it's nice to own your own USDA.

Side question — Did she know she was going to ThankYou Street (that million-dollars-over-time board job) before or after she overruled the USDA's own scientists? Three guesses why I'm asking.

■ And now, suffer the children for the profits of their Betters. Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice quotes the LA Times:

The USDA, however, says the additive is safe to eat. The department is so satisfied with the stuff that it plans to buy 7 million pounds of ground beef containing “pink slime” in coming months for the national school lunch program, the Daily reported on Monday. And that’s created a whole new stink…

Then adds her own comment:

And why would the USDA be so satisfied with the stuff”? Well, school nutrition programs are chronically underfunded—it’s only kids who eat the stuff, mostly poor kids whose parents have no political power—so frugality is important.

Can't argue with that. "'Lean beef trimmings' for thee; the fat of the land for me and my friends." The old old story.

■ Last item, note that cute, industry-created phrase "lean beef trimmings" that turns up in all these stories (click through; it's everywhere). So here's your market-manipulation lesson for the day.

Each of those words — "lean" and "beef" and "trimmings" — they all sound wonderfully positive. And the mind almost magically re-assembles them into a related phrase, the even-better "trimmed lean beef." Yum.

But go back to the description in the first quote above. Pink slime is "lean" because the fat is centrifuged off. It's "beef" only because it's the unsalable leftover of cow, not mouse or turtle. And it's "trimmings" in the sense of "here's what fell to the bottom" after they removed everything English has a word for, like "steak" or "intestine."

The triumph of marketing, folks. Those of you in grad school studying this twisted field, Uncle Straight Talk says, "Don't drop out. There will always be work for you."

(This is the video from which the above product shot [Edit: Deleted] was taken. "Product shot" — see, we can do it too.)

Updates: 1. Clarified some "ThankYou Street" prose. 2. Pic deleted.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius) Read the rest of this post...

"Selling out pays"—When a Congressman becomes a lobbyist, he gets an average 1,400% raise

Lee Fang at Republic Report is on fire. The Jimmy Olsen Award for best incoming investigator is his for the asking.

We featured his work here (our "buying Buck McKeon" piece) and here (our "why you can't smoke nice things" piece).

Next up, what ThankYou Street is offering at the going rate. I'll give you a taste of Fang's great prologue, and then just one of his many examples. Our intrepid reporter writes (my emphasis; some reparagraphing):

Selling out pays. If you’re a corporation or lobbyist, what’s the best way to “buy” a member of Congress? Secretly promise them a million dollars or more in pay if they come to work for you after they leave office.

Once a public official makes a deal to go to work for a lobbying firm or corporation after leaving office, he or she becomes loyal to the future employer. And since those deals are done in secret, legislators are largely free to pass laws, special tax cuts, or earmarks that benefit their future employer with little or no accountability to the public.

While campaign contributions and super PACS are a big problem, the every day bribery of the revolving door may be the most pernicious form of corruption today. (See our post on Monday about current members of Congress already negotiating for jobs on K Street).

That last link is worth clicking, by the way. (Just helping out.)

This is exactly why I call Congress the "House of Retainers" — because that's what they are. Literally, employees on retainer.

All of the money is in a small number of hands, so the Greek slaves who administer the empire (sorry, well-heeled public officials who administer our laws) can only be bribed from one set of sources — Our Betters.

If money were more widely distributed, you and I could get a piece of that. No more.

Now a sample from the perps gallery, the rogues parade:

Republic Report combed through the few disclosures that are out there to find out how much lawmakers make when they sell out ... Republic Report’s investigation found that lawmakers increased their salary by 1452% on average from the last year they were in office[.] ...

Former Congressman Billy Tauzin (R-LA) made $19,359,927 as a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies between 2006 and 2010. Tauzin retired from Congress in 2005, shortly after leading the passage of President Bush’s prescription drug expansion. He was recruited to lead PhRMA, a lobbying association for Pfizer, Bayer, and other top drug companies.

During the [Obama] health reform debate, the former congressman helped his association block a proposal to allow Medicare to negotiate for drug prices, a major concession that extended the policies enacted in Tauzin’s original Medicare drug-purchasing scheme.

Tauzin left PhRMA in late 2010. He was paid over $11 million in his last year at the trade group. Comparing Tauzin’s salary during his last year as congressman and his last year as head of PhRMA, his salary went up 7110%.

Consider this:

■ Tauzen's RIO on selling out the public interest is 70:1. Not bad.

■ PhRMA's ROI on Tauzen's last year is easily 1000:1 or more, since the difference between the current cost of all drugs sold and what they would cost if negotiated — that must be in the billions, maybe hundreds of billions. That increased revenue, compared to Tauzen's measly $11 million — peanuts.

And don't forget the key role Tauzen (as noted above) had in shaping Obama's Health Care "Reform" Act. It's a bipartisan corruption scheme; they do both do it.

Read the rest. The phrases "Chris Dodd" and "Tom Daschle" (an Obama-associated name early on) comes up, as do a number of others.

I'll leave you with a phrase of my own — "House of Retainers" — and I do mean that literally. This is definitely not your daddy's U.S.A. For starters, we now have our king back.

GP

(To follow on Twitter or to send links: @Gaius_Publius)
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Gingrich: Left doesn't believe the Wright Brothers invented flying

Newt Gingrich via the Huffington Post:

"The Left has believed for at least forty years now in a concept called Peak Oil that says 'gee, we're about to run out.' Well, it turns out that our reserves in the U.S., because of new technology, which is something that the Left rejects - they don't believe the Wright Brothers invented flying, they don't believe Edison invented electric light, and they don't believe we're about to invent the next generation of interesting things.

I don't think I have met anyone on 'the Left' who seriously disputes the notion that the Wright brothers were the first to succeed at powered flight but as everyone knows, the Montgolfier brothers beat them to 'flight' by more than a century.

Nor have I met anyone who disputes the fact that Thomas Edison made enormous contributions to the development of electric light. But the fact remains that he did not invent electric light. The British inventor Joseph Swan began working on the problem in 1850 and developed a recognizable lightbulb back in 1860. Swan was the first person to live in a house lit by electricity (1880). And even though Edison and Swan both made substantial contributions to making the first practical systems for electric light, there were 22 other people working on incandescent electric lamps before them.

This might seem pedantic, but Gingrich is a professor of history. If he can't make an argument about historical facts with accuracy and precision, then just what is he good for?

It is almost as if Gingrich told someone that the Wright brothers invented 'flight', someone attempted to correct his error, and rather than check the facts for himself Gingrich deduced they were a leftist hater of America. Later on someone must have tried to correct Gingrich on the history of electric light, a second observation that proved the existence of a vast left wing conspiracy. Read the rest of this post...

'Anonymous' allegedly launches Operating System (be careful)

Via Boing Boing:

A group working under the Anonymous banner has release Anonymosus-OS, a derivative of the Ubuntu GNU/Linux distribution optimized for doing Anonymous-style stuff, with a bunch of "security testing" tools included in the distro. Given recent revelations about the infected version of the Low-Orbit Ion Cannon, it would be prudent to manually verify all the package checksums before using this.

Having worked in Internet security for over 20 years, this does not surprise me.

The mere fact that someone claims to be releasing the program is not proof that the 'real' Anonymous did this (whatever that might mean). It is quite possible, likely even, that this particular bundle of malware is the work of another group that just thought it would be a clever idea to hijack the Anonymous brand to promote it.

Update: Some people seem to be upset that I attributed the attack to 'Anonymous'. But that is precisely what the rules of the group allow any cracker to do. Either anyone who wants to use the anonymous brand can use it for any purpose they choose or there are rules. If people preach anarchy they have to stand accountable for all the acts they incite and not just the ones that prove popular.

Update2: Subsequent reports of the behavior of the system suggest that the system may not be so much 'infected' as loaded up with hacking tools that have some 'interesting' default settings. The default setting for Low Orbit Ion Canon for example is to launch a Denial of Service attack on the host machine. So now the 'real' Anonymous (whatever that might mean) is denying authorship as the product is lame rather than because it is malicious. Read the rest of this post...