Hullabaloo

Friday, September 28, 2012

 
Innocent Life

by digby

This will be said to be a sign that the system worked. But it's not:

A man who has been on death row for 15 years for the rape and murder of his 14-year-old step cousin was exonerated with the help of DNA evidence on Friday, according to the Innocence Project. He is the 300th person to be released due to this type of evidence.

He was convicted on the basis of a false confession. And it took years of volunteer effort on the part of top flight forensic scientists to prove he didn't. It also took a DA who was willing to look at the evidence and act, which is not always the case.

We don't know how many innocent people have been executed or how many more will be. But every exoneration like this proves that we are employing a barbaric form of punishment that quite easily ensnares the innocent as well as the guilty. It's a moral travesty.

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digby 9/28/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
"The wealthy are people too"

by digby

I've been chronicling the psychological breakdown among the sad, put-upon 1% since the beginning of the financial crisis and I'm thrilled to see that it's become obvious to everyone else. I think we owe Mitt Romney a big thank you for that:

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

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digby 9/28/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
Todd Akin, irrational cult leader

by digby

Back in the glory days of impeachment and penis talk, Kelly Ann Conway was a constant presence on TV and a big wheel in GOP circles. She was up there with Victoria Toensing, Barbara Olsen and Ann Coulter on the prosecutorial blond wingnut circuit. Look what she's been reduced to:

Perkins: The distance between them is narrowing, Todd Akin has bounced back up, and the evidence of that is pretty clear because now you see other Republicans who abandoned him are now taking a second look at the race and realizing just how important this seat is.

Conway: They are and they’re following your lead Tony. You saw former speaker Gingrich there on Todd’s behalf at a fundraiser on Monday, saying it’s just “conventional idiocy” that’s preventing people from backing Todd, and he predicts that come mid-October everyone will be following yours and his lead back to Missouri, with their money. Of course, former senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum and Senator Jim DeMint came out just yesterday to support Todd.

I believe that the establishment will have to look at this race and they will have to hold their nose because the first days—and I've expressed this to Todd as my client for a while now, I’ve expressed it to him directly—the first day or two where it was like the Waco with David Koresh situation where they’re trying to smoke him out with the SWAT teams and the helicopters and the bad Nancy Sinatra records. Then here comes day two and you realize the guy’s not coming out of the bunker. Listen, Todd has shown his principle to the voters.

I suppose in wingnutland comparing your Senate candidate to David Koresh is good politics. But doesn't she remember what happened in the end? Not a good metaphor I'm afraid.

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digby 9/28/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Coming Together. Not.

by tristero

My cynicism about Republicans runs so deep that it really borders on paranoia, my friends said when I claimed, several weeks after the 9/11 attacks, that if Gore had been in the White House, he would have been impeached and forced to resign.

"No!" My friends said, "that's crazy talk." Of course the country would have come together around whomever was president in the face of an attack on our shores. Republicans, too, would have rallied around Gore for sure.

Yeah, right.

Adding: As I've mentioned before, I was astounded then, and remain astounded, that Bush wasn't forced to resign within hours of 9/11. So it makes sense to talk about the level of responsibility Obama and his administration should take for this recent incident. But I'll be goddammed if I'll do so as long as Michael Huckabee's greasy, corrupt, opportunistic thumb is a'tippin' the scales.



tristero 9/28/2012 12:00:00 PM |

 
There but for the grace of ...

by digby

Jonathan Cohn:

Like all good public intellectuals, Harold is a policy omnivore—as comfortable discussing the latest thinking on anti-poverty efforts as he is talking about the intricacies of Medicare. But Harold offers some truly unique insights, because he knows the social welfare state as a user, as well as a scholar.

Several years ago, he and his wife became custodians for his adult brother-in-law, who is intellectually disabled and has various medical problems. Harold has written about this experience before, movingly—and what it’s taught him about the value of programs like Medicaid. Now he’s decided to put his thoughts on a video.

It's quite a contrast to this, isn't it? Both ideas are as American as apple pie, but one is decent and one isn't.

Read this piece by Pollack too, about a young 18 year old mother who was suddenly homeless and trying to figure her way through the system to get some emergency help. It's terrifying.


(Oh, and by the way, imagine illegal immigrants traversing that byzantine system. It just doesn't happen.)

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digby 9/28/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Punitive austerity

by digby

Krugman today:

So much for complacency. Just a few days ago, the conventional wisdom was that Europe finally had things under control. The European Central Bank, by promising to buy the bonds of troubled governments if necessary, had soothed markets. All that debtor nations had to do, the story went, was agree to more and deeper austerity — the condition for central bank loans — and all would be well.

But the purveyors of conventional wisdom forgot that people were involved. Suddenly, Spain and Greece are being racked by strikes and huge demonstrations. The public in these countries is, in effect, saying that it has reached its limit: With unemployment at Great Depression levels and with erstwhile middle-class workers reduced to picking through garbage in search of food, austerity has already gone too far. And this means that there may not be a deal after all.

Much commentary suggests that the citizens of Spain and Greece are just delaying the inevitable, protesting against sacrifices that must, in fact, be made. But the truth is that the protesters are right. More austerity serves no useful purpose; the truly irrational players here are the allegedly serious politicians and officials demanding ever more pain.

He goes on to explain. once again, that Spain had no budget deficit until the crash and that while there is no way to escape a period of hard times without leaving the Euro (which hes says nobody wants) the cruel austerity measures the bankers and European officials are insisting upon are purely punitive --- and unnecessary. In fact, because they are putting such stress on the populace, which is understandably agitated, the country is having trouble borrowing to pay its bills --- because bankers are worried about the political instability they are causing.

It's a mess.

Why, then, are there demands for ever more pain?

Part of the explanation is that in Europe, as in America, far too many Very Serious People have been taken in by the cult of austerity, by the belief that budget deficits, not mass unemployment, are the clear and present danger, and that deficit reduction will somehow solve a problem brought on by private sector excess.

It sounds as though if you were to compare the US to Europe in this matter (always a very dicey proposition) you would call the Germans the Villagers:

Beyond that, a significant part of public opinion in Europe’s core — above all, in Germany — is deeply committed to a false view of the situation. Talk to German officials and they will portray the euro crisis as a morality play, a tale of countries that lived high and now face the inevitable reckoning. Never mind the fact that this isn’t at all what happened — and the equally inconvenient fact that German banks played a large role in inflating Spain’s housing bubble. Sin and its consequences is their story, and they’re sticking to it.

Worse yet, this is also what many German voters believe, largely because it’s what politicians have told them. And fear of a backlash from voters who believe, wrongly, that they’re being put on the hook for the consequences of southern European irresponsibility leaves German politicians unwilling to approve essential emergency lending to Spain and other troubled nations unless the borrowers are punished first.

Of course, that’s not the way these demands are portrayed. But that’s what it really comes down to. And it’s long past time to put an end to this cruel nonsense.

All of our political and financial elite believe this garbage too. And they are selling this 47% trope as a way to divide this country in similar ways. Keep in mind that the Grand Bargain is predicated these days on "avoiding Europe." You know, we'll avoid it by doing it.

And if we aren't lucky enough to avoid another recession, they'll do the same thing that the Europeans are doing to Spain. This is a global illness and we've got it too.

But it'll all turn out ok in the long run, so no worries. The wealthy will maintain their fortunes, which is the most important thing. And as Andrew Mellon told Herbert Hoover:

"liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate… it will purge the rottenness out of the system. High costs of living and high living will come down. People will work harder, live a more moral life. Values will be adjusted, and enterprising people will pick up from less competent people."

See? It's all good.

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digby 9/28/2012 09:20:00 AM |

 
50 shades of wrong

by David Atkins

Remember back when the weak August jobs report was supposed to be the death knell of the Obama campaign? It turns out that, as many intelligent people noted at the time but were drowned out by many on both the right and the left, those numbers had yet to be revised. And it turns out that those figured underestimated actual job growth by about 400,000 jobs.

Here what John Boehner had said at the time, wrongly attempting to capitalize on incomplete data:

We need a president and a Senate with the courage to let go of the failed ‘stimulus’-style policies of the past and work with Republicans on proven pro-growth measures to tackle our debt, address high prices, and create a better environment for jobs.

A beautifully performed, poll-tested pile of meaningless gobbledygook. Also, wrong.

And Mitt Romney, arguing that the Fed could no longer do anything to help the economy:

“What we really need is to have policies coming from Washington that are fiscally sound and that get America back on track to having the kind of financial stability and foundation of economic growth that puts people to work.”

Is there a universe in which a statement like this can be taken seriously by reasonable people?

There isn't a single economist or politician who can make a persuasive case for why that statement makes any sense. Yet such things are continually said by economists and conservative politicians as an almost religious mantra.

The national debt isn't hurting the American economy at all. Unemployment and low economic demand is. If corporations aren't investing in American jobs, it's because there is no reason for them to. If there's an uncertainty problem, it has much more to do with the stupidly imposed "fiscal cliff" than anything having to do with U.S. debt.

That's not to say that debt can't become a problem. It can become a problem if debt drives up borrowing costs. But it hasn't done that by a long shot. Treasury bonds are still incredibly cheap. Debt can become a problem if paying down the interest on the debt starts to squeeze out spending on needed programs. But we aren't there yet, either. And that itself is only a problem if there is danger of printing more currency leading to an inflation crisis--which as Paul Krugman incessantly notes is a baseless worry at this time. Besides, if the debt is a real concern, by far the easiest and best way to reduce the deficit is to put Americans back to work while leveling the tax playing field, as the People's Budget does. Ending needless overseas wars and Pentagon spending would help as well.

Destroying the safety net and enacting austerity policies, on the other hand, will do nothing but increase economic pain, while shrinking the economy and increasing the debt--for whatever that's worth.

So there were Mitt Romney and John Boehner, sitting there in early August shortly after the Democratic National Convention, spewing wrong nonsense about jobs numbers that had yet to be revised, arguing for bizarrely wrong economic policies based on bizarrely wrong economic assumptions.

The press has actually done a good job this year of calling out the Romney campaign and its allies for their lies and its ineptitude. But it would be nice if the press, especially the oh-so-serious economic and financial press, would also point out just how many prismatic variations on wrong they are as well. Of course, it would also help if the President and the neoliberals didn't buy into so many of those wrongheaded assumptions on their own account.


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thereisnospoon 9/28/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Thursday, September 27, 2012

 
Just don't call it an endorsement

by digby

And pay no attention to the parasite thing:

In a column and video posted by the official newspaper of the Diocese of Springfield in Illinois and obtained by Right Wing Watch on Wednesday, Bishop Thomas John Paprocki called out the Democratic Party for temporarily removing God from their platform, supporting abortion and recognizing that “gay rights are human rights.”

“There are many positive and beneficial planks in the Democratic Party Platform, but I am pointing out those that explicitly endorse intrinsic evils,” the bishop explained. “My job is not to tell you for whom you should vote. But I do have a duty to speak out on moral issues. I would be abdicating this duty if I remained silent out of fear of sounding ‘political’ and didn’t say anything about the morality of these issues. People of faith object to these platform positions that promote serious sins.”


“So what about the Republicans? I have read the Republican Party Platform and there is nothing in it that supports or promotes an intrinsic evil or a serious sin,” Paprocki added. “One might argue for different methods in the platform to address the needs of the poor, to feed the hungry and to solve the challenges of immigration, but these are prudential judgments about the most effective means of achieving morally desirable ends, not intrinsic evils.”

“Again, I am not telling you which party or which candidates to vote for or against,” he concluded, “but I am saying that you need to think and pray very carefully about your vote, because a vote for a candidate who promotes actions or behaviors that are intrinsically evil and gravely sinful makes you morally complicit and places the eternal salvation of your own soul in serious jeopardy.”

This man is either stupid or evil if he doesn't understand the human suffering that the Republican Party Platform will cause. He doesn't sound stupid.

digby 9/27/2012 07:12:00 PM |

 
Let his people go

by digby

I was wondering when someone on the right was going to pipe up about this:

Limbaugh Advises Romney Campaign To Say "We Do Have Victims In This Country, And They Are Victims Of Barack Obama"

If there's one thing the right wing will.not.have is anyone claiming more victimhood they have. Conservatives are the most oppressed people in history.


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digby 9/27/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
Let my people vote

by digby

A lot of celebrities get in involved in politics, but none do it with Sarah Silverman's panache:

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digby 9/27/2012 04:30:00 PM |

 
Proud to be an American

by David Atkins

America gets a lot of things wrong when it comes to public policy. But at least we can be grateful for our free speech laws which prevent things like this from happening:

France's Catholic Church has won a court injunction to ban a clothing advertisement based on Leonardo da Vinci's Christ's Last Supper.

The display was ruled "a gratuitous and aggressive act of intrusion on people's innermost beliefs", by a judge.

The church objected to the female version of the fresco, which includes a female Christ, used by clothing designers Marithe et Francois Girbaud.

The authorities in the Italian city of Milan banned the poster last month.

The French judge in the case ordered that all posters on display should be taken down within three days.

The association which represented the church was also awarded costs.

The designers are said to be planning an appeal, saying they did not intend to offend anyone with the campaign.

This is the image in question:


If that's "illegal", there's a big problem.


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thereisnospoon 9/27/2012 03:00:00 PM |

 
Harvesting defeat

by digby

Everybody's talking about Romney saying that Bain "harvested" profits from companies it took over, which is a very evocative image. He said:

Bain Capital is an investment partnership which was formed to invest in startup companies and ongoing companies, then to take an active hand in managing them and hopefully, five to eight years later, to harvest them at a significant profit…

But David Corn makes what I think is the bigger point at the end of his article about it:

In this clip, Romney mentioned that it would routinely take up to eight years to turn around a firm—though he now slams the president for failing to revive the entire US economy in half that time.

I suppose they could try to make the argument hat "fixing" a company is more complicates than turning around the economy of the richest country in the world.

This isn't to say that the administration did everything it could to get that job done. But I think we can all agree that it was a very big job. Maybe even bigger than getting Staples in shape for profit harvesting. In fact, it is so much bigger that I would guess Mitt's "experience" in turning around Staples is completely irrelevant to the qualifications for president. In fact, at this point, I'm willing to say that anyone who's run a Vulture Capital firm might automatically be disqualified.


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digby 9/27/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Priorities

by digby

The libertarian vote:

Among likely libertarian voters, the presidential horserace currently stands:

Romney 77%
Obama 20%
Other 3%

Romney’s share of the libertarian vote represents a high water mark for Republican presidential candidates in recent elections.

I'm not going to argue that on civil liberties, drugs and military adventurism that Obama isn't something less than a libertarian hero. But if those issues were your priority, you certainly wouldn't vote for Romney, who is advised by some of the most repressive, warmongering nutballs America has produced in the last hundred years.

Nutballs who would reinstitute torture:

Mr. Romney’s advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign memorandum...

“We’ll use enhanced interrogation techniques which go beyond those that are in the military handbook right now,” he said at a news conference in Charleston, S.C., in December.

Whatever. Romney wants to slash taxes for rich people and cut off help for the half of America that are parasites, moochers and looters. That's what makes him so darned attractive to these highly principled folks.

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digby 9/27/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
It's harder to work when you're poor

by digby

I flagged a piece by Ezra the other day talking about how much effort it takes to get through life when you're poor (and how clueless he rich are when they assume otherwise.) Here's a politician who decided to see for himself, at least with respect to what it's like to live on very little money for food:

When local activist groups challenged Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton to live on a food stamp budget for a week to mark Hunger Awareness Month, he took them up on the offer and found out just how hard it was. Stanton kept a diary on the challenge, which allotted him roughly $29 a week, the same amount 1.1 million Arizonans receive from the Supplemental Assistance Nutrition Program (SNAP) each week.

By day four, Stanton noted that he was “tired” and “it’s hard to focus” after leaving the house for work without time to scramble eggs or eat a decent breakfast:

OK- ran out the door today with no time to scramble eggs or even make a sandwich. So I’m surviving on an apple and handful of peanuts, and the coffee I took to the office until dinner. I’m tired, and it’s hard to focus. I can’t go buy a sandwich because that would be cheating- even the dollar menu at Taco Bell is cheating. You can’t use SNAP benefits at any restaurants, fast food or otherwise. I’m facing a long, hungry day and an even longer night getting dinner on the table, which requires making EVERYTHING from scratch on this budget. It’s only for a week, so I’ve got a decent attitude. If I were doing this with no end in sight, I probably wouldn’t be so pleasant.

Oh suck it up whiner. 29 dollars a week should be plenty. Just ask multi-millionaire Sean Hannity:

I don't believe people are going to bed hungry. Do you know how much, do you ever go shopping? I go sometimes but I hate it. Do you ever go? ... you can get, for instance I have friends of mine who eat rice and beans all the time. Beans protein, rice. Inexpensive. You can make a big pot of this for a week for negligible amounts of money and you can feed your whole family.

Look, you should have vegetables and fruit in there as well, but if you need to survive you can survive off it. It's not ideal but you could get some cheap meat and throw in there as well for protein. There are ways to live really, really cheaply.

See? 29 bucks will certainly buy you a big pot of beans and rice. You can throw in a couple of onions and some canned corn and couple of chicken feet or something and then just eat a bowl a day. Why you might even be able to afford an apple and a banana if you're really frugal. What are these people complaining about?

And hey, if you happen to be a parasite who's lolling about on dialysis all day, I'm afraid that's not our problem either. There must be something you can do to insure you're paying your fair share of taxes right along with the decent hard-working people. There's just no excuse for all this dependency.

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digby 9/27/2012 11:30:00 AM |

 
Florida

by digby


Just .... Florida:

When I knocked on Justin Lamar Sternad’s door Wednesday, I noticed a sign warning, “Trespassers leave -- or get wet.” I didn’t leave and got wet.

When a woman in her 30’s, presumably Mrs. Sternad, opened the door, she splashed a pitcher of water on me and then slammed the door shut.

I went to the home hoping to get some answers from Justin Lamar Sternad, who ran for the Democratic nomination to Congress last August in the 26th District. That’s where Republican David Rivera is the incumbent.

But Democratic candidate Joe Garcia, who won the primary, suspected early on that Sternad was a straw candidate put into the race by Rivera.

Sternad, a political neophyte with little money, sent out at least a dozen sophisticated campaign mailers to voters in the congressional district. The printer and mail facility that handled the mailers have been used in the past by Rivera and at least one owner says Rivera was involved in Sternad’s campaign. Rivera has consistently denied ever knowing Sternad or helping in his campaign.

The apparent go-between was political consultant Ana Sol Alliegro, who has had both a personal and professional relationship with Rivera, including posting pictures of the two on her Facebook page. She managed Sternad’s campaign.

Alliegro was scheduled to speak with FBI agents investigating the Sternad campaign and its alleged link to Rivera, but she has disappeared. The FBI began a probe into Sternad's campaign funding last month.

Howie's been on this Rivera story (and others) for years. He is, among other things, very close to Marco Rubio.


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digby 9/27/2012 10:31:00 AM |

 
Doesn't every teenager drive a BMW convertible?

by David Atkins

Larissa Faw, Forbes Contributor, and the latest exhibit of elite wealth bubble cluelessness, attacks the Millennial generation for having too high expectations of motor vehicles. After all, she and her friends wouldn't touch anything less than a BMW and a convertible for their 16th birthday.

Today's teens and Millennials are often called the entitled generation for a reason. They expect to drive their very own fully-loaded luxury vehicle with retractable roof and multi-speaker audio system. If they can’t have their specific dream car, then they don’t want anything and won’t waste time getting a driver’s license. Past generations of young drivers, by comparison, were satisfied with any piece of metal that moved.

My brother and I, like many other Millennials, weren’t willing to downgrade, compromise, or to be forced to drive a parent’s vehicle. I received my license at age seventeen only after I had my red convertible sitting in the driveway. My brother refused to even look at the driver’s manual until he received his BMW at age eighteen. It is this sense of entitlement that is reshaping how automakers market and develop vehicles to appeal to Millennials. “It’s an entire soup-to-nuts makeover. The old recipe isn’t going to work,” says Hubert.

Cluess, spoiled rich kid has entitlement complex. Therefore everyone in her whole generation must have one. Sharp deduction skills there, and all too typical of the wealth bubble in the country. Still, it's hard to believe that she believes 16-year-olds driving convertibles and BMWs amounts to a generational problem. That goes beyond a bubble mentality to cluelessness on an epic scale.

But beyond that, Faw then goes on to blame Millennials for expecting too much of the cars on the market, insisting that we still care a great deal about cars. Needless to say, that too is wrong.

As someone who has actually done interviews and focus groups with Millennials about cars (unlike Ms. Faw), I can attest that what's actually going on with Millennials and cars is pretty simple: most of us can barely afford one, and especially among urban young adults, many of us would prefer not to have to drive one most of the time if we can afford not to. Having a car available is a good thing and necessary for freedom, but we don't invest ourselves and our identities in our cars. On a personal level, I want a self-driving car yesterday so that I don't have to waste productive time playing the world's most boring and potentially deadly videogame. I'd rather be getting work done on my Droid.

But if we are going to drive a car, we expect it to be as streamlined, efficient and technologically savvy as our electronic devices. We expect it to have the same decent set of "apps" that we have in our pockets every day. We expect it to perform the task of driving down the road decently well. And we expect it not to cost an arm and a leg. What we don't need? Unnecessary size and performance. We expect a car to do its job and not have to think about it so that we can go about living lives more of meaning than of pointless acquisition.

Larissa Faw, spoiled princess at Forbes magazine, takes her own warped, consumerist upbringing and uses it to accuse Millennials of being unrealistic consumers. The reality is that for us, owning a car is less an opportunity than an unfortunate necessity. When we must have one (and we usually must), we want it to work as well as our smartphones.

Perhaps the greatest tragedy for those like Ms. Faw who have grown up insulated from the realities of the rest of us is that they are missing out on the real cultural transformation that is occurring as this generation reacts and adapts to the reality of a future that will create less consumer wealth for them than existed for their parents.

That cultural transformation is a positive one, being among other things a move away from vulgar consumerism and the taking of self-identity from one's material possessions or employment. It's the sort of thing that a convertible-driving writer for Forbes will never fully understand.


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thereisnospoon 9/27/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

 
What, no references to pimps and and Colt 45?

by digby

Here's Newtie totally not being a racist piece of work:

“[Obama] really is like the substitute [National Football League] referees in the sense that he’s not a real president,” Gingrich told Greta Van Susteren on Fox News Tuesday night. “He doesn’t do anything that presidents do, he doesn’t worry about any of the things the presidents do, but he has the White House, he has enormous power, and he’ll go down in history as the president, and I suspect that he’s pretty contemptuous of the rest of us.

This is a man who in an age of false celebrity-hood is sort of the perfect president, because he’s a false president,” he said. “He’s a guy that doesn’t do the president’s job.”


You have to wonder what he’s doing. I’m assuming that there’s some rhythm to Barack Obama that the rest of us don’t understand. Whether he needs large amounts of rest, whether he needs to go play basketball for a while or watch ESPN, I mean, I don’t quite know what his rhythm is, but this is a guy that is a brilliant performer as an orator, who may very well get reelected at the present date, and who, frankly, he happens to be a partial, part-time president.”

I hear he's a good dancer too.

Unsurprising coming from the guy who coined the phrase "food stamp president" I suppose. But I honestly haven't heard anyone of national stature talk this way since Jesse Helms shuffled off his mortal coil.

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digby 9/26/2012 05:30:00 PM |

 
QOTD: President Obama

by digby

According to Bob Woodward:

“I’m a blue dog. I want fiscal restraint and order.”

Woodward says he also tells people " “I don’t want to cut entitlements in any way that would hurt vulnerable populations.” So that's good. He'll only cut "entitlements" a bit. I feel so much better.

Read the whole interview (published in Pete Peterson's Financial Times, by the way) if you want to see some Village conventional wisdom. I particularly like this:

TFT : Americans are still “left with a struggling economy,” you conclude, because things could not be worked out. We’re approaching the fiscal cliff –

BW: Not just the fiscal cliff. We are approaching a time when the congressional authorization to borrow more money will be exhausted. We’re going to be back in the soup with the same problem of not having enough money to pay the bills.

Both the question and the answer are 100% prime cut bullshit. But you knew that, right?

And for those who still wonder if the President is serious about a Grand Bargain, this might clear that up for you:

TFT: So it’s your belief that Obama was sincerely looking for that commission to produce ideas and solutions that could be implemented?

BW: Yes, I think so. He told me he’d “willingly lose an election” if he could solve these fiscal and spending and tax issues in the right way.

If Boehner hadn't balked and the cuts to Social Security and medicare had passed in the summer of 2011, we might be seeing that willingness tested. He's just lucky the Tea Party saved him.

The only good news in the article is that Woodward doesn't think the Democrats will go along with "entitlement" cuts. Unfortunately, so far, we only have 28 Democratic Senators willing to stand up and say no. That's not enough. It will all hinge on Reid and I'm not sure he'll defy his newly elected president. The Republicans will still control the House in the lame duck session (and probably beyond.) Let's hope the Tea Party doesn't wise up in the meantime.




h/t to ms
digby 9/26/2012 04:25:00 PM |

 
Mitt Romney, liar

by David Atkins

The DNC comes out swinging and lands a punch:



I would applaud--and this is quite well done--but Mitt makes it just a bit too easy. It's hard to believe the Republicans thought this was their most viable candidate.


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thereisnospoon 9/26/2012 03:38:00 PM |

 
Pandering to the Tea Party

by digby

These politicians really need to stop watching Fox News:

Already down almost 10 points in the PollTracker Average, Tommy Thompson has now shown up in a video from a Tea Party meeting in June bragging that who better than him to “do away with the Medicare and Medicaid”.

The good news is that if he's defeated (and it looks good) we will have a true blue progressive in the Senate in Tammy Baldwin. She will also be the first openly gay Senator (unless one of the closeted ones decide to beat her to the punch.)

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digby 9/26/2012 01:38:00 PM |

 
The most successful "rights " movement in America

by digby

Not that this information will cause even the slightest change in policy, but it's interesting nonetheless:

In the fierce debate that always follows the latest mass shooting, it's an argument you hear frequently from gun rights promoters: If only more people were armed, there would be a better chance of stopping these terrible events. This has plausibility problems—what are the odds that, say, a moviegoer with a pack of Twizzlers in one pocket and a Glock in the other would be mentally prepared, properly positioned, and skilled enough to take out a body-armored assailant in a smoke- and panic-filled theater? But whether you believe that would happen is ultimately a matter of theory and speculation. Instead, let's look at some facts gathered in a two-month investigation by Mother Jones.

In the wake of the slaughters this summer at a Colorado movie theater and a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, we set out to track mass shootings in the United States over the last 30 years. We identified and analyzed 60 of them, and one striking pattern in the data is this: In not a single case was the killing stopped by a civilian using a gun. Moreover, we found that the rate of mass shootings has increased in recent years—at a time when America has been flooded with millions of additional firearms and a barrage of new laws has made it easier than ever to carry them in public. And in recent rampages in which armed civilians attempted to intervene, they not only failed to stop the shooter but also were gravely wounded or killed.

This has become a taboo subject in America. Mass shootings are now considered an act of God and there's just nothing we can do about it but hope to hell we aren't caught in the crossfire.

People are always studying successful political movements in America hoping to learn how to make it happen for their own cause. For my money, there is nobody who has done it better than the NRA. They've made mass murder as common as the weather and they're so powerful they've completely dismantled any opposition. Who else can claim such success?


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digby 9/26/2012 12:30:00 PM |

 
Conning Mr Moneybags

by digby

Politico did a profile of Mr Moneybags Sheldon Adelson the other day and it's a real doozy. For the first time, Adelson talked in detail about his top five reasons for spending millions to defeat Obama:

1) Self-defense: Adelson said a second Obama term would bring government “vilification of people that were against him.” He thinks he would be at the top of that list and contends that he already has been targeted for his political activity.

Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. is being scrutinized by federal investigators looking into possible money-laundering in Vegas, and possible violation of bribery laws by the company’s ventures in China, including four casinos in the gambling mecca of Macau. (Amazingly, 90 percent of the corporation’s revenue is now from Asia, including properties in Macau and Singapore.)

The country’s leading megadonor is irritated by the leaks. “When I see what’s happening to me and this company, about accusations that are unfounded, that kind of behavior … has to stop,” he said.

Adelson gave the interview in part to signal that he intends to fight back in increasingly visible ways. Articles about the investigations appeared last month on the front pages of The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. He maintains that after his family became heavily involved in the election, the government began leaking information about federal inquiries that involve old events, and with which the company has been cooperating.

The aim of the leaks, he argued, is “making me toxic so that they can make the argument to the Republicans, ‘This guy is toxic. Don’t do business with him. Don’t take his money.’ Not all government employees are leakers, but most of the leakers are government employees.”

Asked to response to Adelson’s comments, the Justice Department said it does not comment on, or confirm, investigations.

So, he's openly trying to buy himself out of a legal jam. But that's not the only reason. He loves Israel, of course. We knew that. But he also hates unions:

2) Friends in high places: If Romney were elected, Adelson would have a powerful ally on the two issues he cares most about: the security and prosperity of Israel, and opposition to unions, including the so-called card-check proposal that would make it easier for workers to organize. Adelson runs the only nonunion casino on the Strip – a status he says he has retained by lavishing workers with benefits, including subsidized child care.

Like all other painfully misinformed wingnuts he watches too much Fox News:

3) Loathes Obama: For all his wealth and worldliness (models of each of his personal airplanes hang from his office ceiling), Adelson is driven in part by the concerns of everyday conservatives. He recently read “The Amateur,” the anti-Obama bestseller by Edward Klein. And Adelson complained about Obama’s “czars,” a conservative preoccupation early in Obama’s term.

And he's very, very sensitive:

Like many other businesspeople who depend on tourism, Adelson holds a grudge from just three weeks after Obama’s inauguration, when the new president said financiers receiving bailouts shouldn’t “go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayers’ dime.”

“From that point on, Vegas started to go down,” Adelson said. “And he’s got the nerve, the chutzpah, to come here and raise money here. He should follow his own advice and not come to Vegas. He hurt me. He hurt 200,000 people working in the hospitality industry in this town.”

If that's the level of analysis this man uses to understand economic issues, it proves that all you need to become a zillionaire is luck and timing.

He also says he prefers the efficiency of the right because he doesn't want to see his money wasted. (Says the man who spent over 10 million on Newt Gingrich's campaign ...) And then, for some reason, he's supposed to care about small business because he started out with nothing.

The portrait of Adelson is of a flinty, myopic, defensive multi-billionaire who spends far too much time listening to the cranks and the clowns of the far right. The only rational reason he has for supporting Romney is the first --- he's trying to buy himself a get out of jail free card.

It's almost sad that he doesn't realize that Romney is not going to protect him if he wins. Even sadder that he doesn't realize that nobody would. When you're out on a limb as shaky as his is, all politicians will saw it off in a heartbeat rather than go down with it. But it's not that sad. He's got more money than God and he could use it to do good. Instead he's listening to Glenn Beck and fulminating about Obama and his "Czars."

But hey, Karl Rove and Haley Barbour and all the other right wing con men are getting very, very rich off his money so there's that.

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digby 9/26/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Demonizing the poor: it's what's for dinner

by digby

This is awful, but I expect it happens every day and is only getting worse with the GOP assault on the "parasites":

Cindy Nerger of Warner Robins, Ga., said she and her husband aren't proud when they use their food stamp debit card to buy groceries. "I felt shy when I used them and my husband does, too," Nerger, 28, told The Huffington Post. "I would try to hide the card."

But Nerger said she never expected to be deliberately humiliated. That's what she said happened last week after she argued with a manager over her bill at a Kroger grocery store. The cashier told her she owed $10, which Nerger said could not be possible because she knew food stamps covered the items in her cart. A manager eventually let her go, but not before giving Nerger a piece of his mind. "He finally just said, 'Okay, just give it to her.' I said, 'See, I told you it was covered by food stamps,' and he said, 'Excuse me for working for a living and not relying on food stamps!'"

By that time, Nerger said, several people had been waiting in line behind her, and other customers had started watching the exchange. It was too much. "I turned around and saw everyone beyond me and I just burst into tears," she said.

I've seen some incidents at the store, usually it's over some item that isn't "allowed" which sparks a conversation in the line about why the state allows poor people to buy steak when they should be forced to hamburger or some such creepy judgement. But, as I said, this is only going to get worse.

And, by the way, it's not because the president is being "divisive" by calling some Wall Street billionaire a "fat cat." It's because people like Erick Ericksson and Mitt Romney are going out of their way to demonize the most vulnerable people in our society as lazy "takers."

People like this:

Nerger said she started receiving food stamps, formally known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, when she became eligible for Medicare and Social Security Supplemental Income because of kidney failure in 2008. While she waits for a kidney transplant, she cannot work because of daily 12-hour dialysis treatments. Her husband runs a carpentry business. "If he doesn't get a call [for a job] we don't have any extra money for the month," she said.

If they had their way she wouldn't have health care either. But I'm sure we can count on the billionaires to be generous and give more than enough money to hospitals for the poor to adequately care for them. And gruel. I'm sure there would be gruel.


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digby 9/26/2012 09:00:00 AM |

 
It's only 100 million dead people. No big deal.

by David Atkins

Yes, the world is still burning. And yes, catastrophic impacts will be felt in our lifetimes:

More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA.

It calculated that five million deaths occur each year from air pollution, hunger and disease as a result of climate change and carbon-intensive economies, and that toll would likely rise to six million a year by 2030 if current patterns of fossil fuel use continue.

More than 90 percent of those deaths will occur in developing countries, said the report that calculated the human and economic impact of climate change on 184 countries in 2010 and 2030. It was commissioned by the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a partnership of 20 developing countries threatened by climate change.

No big deal, though. It's mostly just the irrelevant people in developing countries. Nothing Americans need to worry about for now. Unless, of course, there's instability leading to nuclear weapons falling into the wrong heads, or mass migrations causing riots and economic collapse, or famines and droughts that threaten the food and water supply. Those sorts of things.

But nothing to worry about here. Minor alterations to our tax code, protests against drone strikes, and implementation of punitive nation-state tariffs will totally solve the biggest collective moral crisis facing the human species in centuries. I'm sure of it.


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thereisnospoon 9/26/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

 
Makers, takers and delusions of individualism

by digby

Political scientists Suzanne Mettler and John Sides blow the lid off the conceit of the hard working, individualistic 53%:

What the data reveal is striking: nearly all Americans — 96 percent — have relied on the federal government to assist them. Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.

On average, people reported that they had used five social policies at some point in their lives. An individual typically had received two direct social benefits in the form of checks, goods or services paid for by government, like Social Security or unemployment insurance. Most had also benefited from three policies in which government’s role was “submerged,” meaning that it was channeled through the tax code or private organizations, like the home mortgage-interest deduction and the tax-free status of the employer contribution to employees’ health insurance. The design of these policies camouflages the fact that they are social benefits, too, just like the direct benefits that help Americans pay for housing, health care, retirement and college.

The use of government social policies cuts across partisan divides. Some policies were used more often by members of one party or the other. Republicans were more likely to have used the G.I. Bill and Social Security retirement and survivors’ benefits, while more Democrats had taken advantage of Medicaid and unemployment insurance. Overall, 82 percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans acknowledged receipt of at least one direct social benefit. More Republicans (92 percent) than Democrats (86 percent) had taken advantage of submerged policies. Once we take both types of policies into account, the seeming distinction between makers and takers vanishes: 97 percent of Republicans and 98 percent of Democrats report that they have used at least one government social policy.

The majority of individuals from households at every income level have used at least one direct social policy. Low-income people have used more of the direct policies than have the affluent: the average household with income under $10,000 per year used four of them, compared to only one by the households at $150,000 and above. But the proportions were reversed in the case of the submerged policies: wealthy families had typically used three of them, and the poor just one.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans are far more likely to insist that they have never taken one thin dime from the government and all they do is give and give and give. But that doesn't make it true. As David points out in his earlier post, we have a culture that has always been divided along pretty strong fault lines. It has far more to do with social status than money and it's infected with white privilege and the myth of American individualism. That's what animates this huge disagreement, not any reality based assessment of who gets what. We all make and we all take.

Mettler and Sides conclude their piece with this:

Mr. Romney’s remarks may resonate with those who think of themselves as “producers” rather than “moochers” — to use Ayn Rand’s distinction. But this distinction fails to capture the way Americans really experience government. Instead of dividing us, our experiences as both makers and takers ought to bind us in a community of shared sacrifice and mutual support.

Isn't it pretty to think so? And yet, with the exception of wartime, it almost never happens.

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digby 9/25/2012 06:00:00 PM |

 
Let them eat garbage

by digby

Spain erupted today. And this is why:

On a recent evening, a hip-looking young woman was sorting through a stack of crates outside a fruit and vegetable store here in the working-class neighborhood of Vallecas as it shut down for the night.

At first glance, she looked as if she might be a store employee. But no. The young woman was looking through the day’s trash for her next meal. Already, she had found a dozen aging potatoes she deemed edible and loaded them onto a luggage cart parked nearby.

“When you don’t have enough money,” she said, declining to give her name, “this is what there is.”

The woman, 33, said that she had once worked at the post office but that her unemployment benefits had run out and she was living now on 400 euros a month, about $520. She was squatting with some friends in a building that still had water and electricity, while collecting “a little of everything” from the garbage after stores closed and the streets were dark and quiet.

Such survival tactics are becoming increasingly commonplace here, with an unemployment rate over 50 percent among young people and more and more households having adults without jobs. So pervasive is the problem of scavenging that one Spanish city has resorted to installing locks on supermarket trash bins as a public health precaution.

A report this year by a Catholic charity, Caritas, said that it had fed nearly one million hungry Spaniards in 2010, more than twice as many as in 2007. That number rose again in 2011 by 65,000.

As Spain tries desperately to meet its budget targets, it has been forced to embark on the same path as Greece, introducing one austerity measure after another, cutting jobs, salaries, pensions and benefits, even as the economy continues to shrink.

Most recently, the government raised the value-added tax three percentage points, to 21 percent, on most goods, and two percentage points on many food items, making life just that much harder for those on the edge. Little relief is in sight as the country’s regional governments, facing their own budget crisis, are chipping away at a range of previously free services, including school lunches for low-income families.

For a growing number, the food in garbage bins helps make ends meet.

At the huge wholesale fruit and vegetable market on the outskirts of this city recently, workers bustled, loading crates onto trucks. But in virtually every bay, there were men and women furtively collecting items that had rolled into the gutter.

“It’s against the dignity of these people to have to look for food in this manner,” said Eduardo Berloso, an official in Girona, the city that padlocked its supermarket trash bins.

Mr. Berloso proposed the measure last month after hearing from social workers and seeing for himself one evening “the humiliating gesture of a mother with children looking around before digging into the bins.”

The Caritas report also found that 22 percent of Spanish households were living in poverty and that about 600,000 had no income whatsoever. All these numbers are expected to continue to get worse in the coming months.

Now the plutocrats will all insist that this is because all these people have been living high on the hog for far too long and it's time for them to pay the piper. But that isn't true. (Certainly Americans shouldn't feel that when politicians say they are the hardest workers in the world that it means this won't happen to them. These Europeans work too -- when there's work to be had.)

It's starting to unravel:

Police used batons to push back some protesters at the front of the march as tempers flared.

The demonstration, organized with an "Occupy Congress" slogan, drew protesters weary of nine straight months of painful measures imposed by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy.

Thousands of angry marchers yelled toward parliament, 250 meters (yards) away, "Get out!, Get out! They don't represent us! Fire them!"
"The only solution is that we should put everyone in Parliament out on the street so they know what it's like," said one of the protesters, civil servant Maria Pilar Lopez.

Lopez and others are calling for fresh elections, claiming the government's hard-hitting austerity measures are proof that the ruling Popular Party misled voters to get elected last November.

While Rajoy has said he has no plans to cut pensions for Spaniards, Lopez fears her retirement age could be raised from 65 to as much as 70. Three of her seven nieces and nephews have been laid off since Rajoy took office, and she said the prospect of them finding jobs "is very bleak."

The US has escaped this level of desperation but only because of its different circumstances. You can be sure that if we were in the same position our rulers would have made the same decisions. In fact, if they have it their way, they will do their best to make sure that we get ourselves a good taste of it. The 47% is getting just a little bit too uppity.

I think this spells out what's happening quite succinctly:

Mr. Rajoy has been debating whether to tap into a new bond-buying program proposed by the European Central Bank on Sept. 6. While such additional European help would considerably alleviate Spain’s debt financing problems, Mr. Rajoy finds himself in an increasingly tight bind between Spanish voters who oppose further austerity cuts and investors and European finance officials demanding reassurance that Spain can meet budget deficit targets.

digby 9/25/2012 04:29:00 PM |

 
Is it the media, or is that which shall not be named?

by David Atkins

There's an interesting story out today showing a dramatic increase in the number of Americans who don't want their children marrying a member of the opposite political party:

A pair of surveys asked Americans a more concrete question: in 1960, whether they would be “displeased” if their child married someone outside their political party, and, in 2010, would be “upset” if their child married someone of the other party. In 1960, about 5 percent of Americans expressed a negative reaction to party intermarriage; in 2010, about 40 percent did (Republicans about 50 percent, Democrats about 30 percent).

A note of caution: This party animosity is not historically new, just new to last several decades. At least partisans today are not brawling with and killing one another, as was true in the 19th century. But something seems to have changed since the less polarized era of the mid-20th century.

This isn't surprising. I'd certainly be appalled if any child of mine married a Republican. But when pressed for the causes, the researchers jump to the conclusion that since American stances on the issues haven't changed much in the last 50 years, and since many Americans cannot reliably state which Party holds what positions on issues, that the entire problem lies with a fragmented media environment and negative advertising.

But that would be vastly underselling the cultural dynamics at play. There was something crucial that changed all of American politics after 1960: the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement and its aftershocks had a dramatic impact on the country that would not be reflected in most issues polling. One of those impacts was on political partisanship. I've noted in the past that it was largely the impact of the Civil Rights Movement (combined with the power of big money to lobby the racist vote) that gradually killed bipartisanship in the United States:

But by far the biggest is that the bipartisanship of the mid-20th century was a special artifact of the uneasy alliance between traditional urban liberal tribes and religious Dixiecratic populists in the South and Midwest. As I've written before, FDR was quite able to aggressively take on the financial and corporate interests of his time with a broad coalition. But he couldn't pass an anti-lynching law without destroying his support base, and he was all too willing to institute the Japanese internment camps. In other words, FDR could take on the power of big money with ease, but he couldn't take on the power of Big Racism.

The result of this dynamic was an uneasy bipartisanship between otherwise competing interests. Men like Strom Thurmond would vote for "socialist" policies as long as only whites got the benefits.

The advent of the Civil Rights movement marked the beginning of the end of bipartisanship. As tax dollars were increasingly seen as going toward non-whites, Dixiecrats became Republicans and allies of big business interests. Similar dynamics occurred with anti-Hispanic sentiment in the West. All the religious fervor that had been reserved for progressive social justice issues by the "Progressive" movement in the late 19th century (which included, by the way, quite conservative ideas like the prohibition of alcohol: late 19th century progressives would have strongly opposed modern liberals on issues like marijuana legalization alone...) flipped to socially conservative issues. The women's equality movement only added further fuel to the socially conservative patriarchal fire.

At this point it was easy and natural for the racist culture warriors to align completely with the corporatists. The need for uneasy alliances disappeared. The rationale for men like Strom Thurmond to support New Deal policies and chat about them at cozy cocktail parties disappeared. The battle lines were set.

I'm sure the fractured media environment is partly to blame for the increased partisan fervor. But that's not all. It's also a largely cultural phenomenon driven by a difference between the legacy of those who favor expanded rights for women and minorities, and those who don't. That in turn affects cultural issues of urbanism versus suburbanism and a host of other touchstones that are merely reflections of that same divide, but wouldn't show up on most issues-based polling that is the bread and butter of political scientists and media analysts.

Increased partisan fervor, in other words, is a real cultural phenomenon, not a media-driven tribal epiphenomenon. But to call out why that is would be hurtful to some people's feelings and cultural heritage, and thus cannot be said in polite discourse.

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thereisnospoon 9/25/2012 03:12:00 PM |

 
Back to Ohio

by digby

I recall getting a little bit agitated over the Corey Booker and Bill Clinton "gaffes" about private equity and asking someone I knew would know if the Obama campaign was going to back off its clearly effective Bain line. I was told in no uncertain terms that they were not. All the data showed it was a devastating attack.

And it worked, in Ohio at least:

This article in TNR goes into all the other factors, which include a fired up Democratic base in the wake of the oddball John Kasich's missteps with unions and the auto bailout among other things. But I have to believe this non-stop attack on Romney's Bain background was the real put away.

And the right wingers really can't complain. They've spend decades trying to pry the white working class away from the Democrats and largely succeeded using cultural wedge issues. But this time they blew it. They nominated the little man on the Monopoly box for president at a time of serious economic angst. I still can't believe they did it.

Apparently they forgot that these guys may not like hippies and feminazis (and a lot of them don't much care for blacks either) but if there's one type they really, really don't like it's the wealthy owner who looks down on them. And that's Mitt. He oozes it. After years and years of those guys coming to town and shutting down the plant and the factory and the warehouse and shipping the jobs overseas, there's just no way they're going to vote for one.

It's not as if the Republicans had a lot to choose from, to be sure. But picking a vulture capitalist and expecting white working class voters to enthusiastically vote for him was plain old hubris.

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digby 9/25/2012 01:30:00 PM |

 
Trolling for the meathead vote

by digby

Wow. Scott Brown's going all out to attract the lowest common denominator:

Staffers for Sen. Scott Brown chanted Indian "war whoops" and made "tomahawk chops" during a rally for the Republican senator this week in Boston.

Brown's Deputy Chief of Staff Greg Casey and Constituent Service Counsel Jack Richard, State Director Jerry McDermott, special assistant Jennifer Franks and GOP operative Brad Garrett are pictured in the video, NewsCenter 5's Janet Wu confirmed.

"It is certainly something that I don't condone," said Brown when asked about the video. "The real offense is that (Warren) said she was white and then checked the box saying she is Native American, and then she changed her profile in the law directory once she made her tenure."

Right that's the "real" offense. His staffers putting on a Native American minstrel show in the street is just good fun.


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digby 9/25/2012 12:08:00 PM |

 
Gate-gate reverberations

by digby

I am so loving this British "gate-gate" scandal. It shows just how commonplace these top 1% whines are, even among those who've been dealing with class consciousness a lot longer than Americans have. It would appear that the ruling elites are starting to unravel a bit.

The British politician who screamed at the cops last week continues to be in the news with revelations that the police logs back up the police testimony:

The police log records that Mitchell demanded to be allowed to cycle through the Downing Street security gates. A female police officer told Mitchell, who insisted that he always cycled through the gates, that it was not policy to open the gates for cyclists.

A colleague of the female PC wrote: "After several refusals Mr Mitchell got off his bike and walked to the pedestrian gate with me after I again offered to open that for him.

"There were several members of public present as is the norm opposite the pedestrian gate and as we neared it, Mr Mitchell said: 'Best you learn your fucking place … you don't run this fucking government … You're fucking plebs'."

The officer who wrote the log said he told Mitchell he would have to arrest him if he continued to swear at him. The log reports Mitchell as saying "you haven't heard the last of this" as he left on his bike.

Somebody's been watching a little too much Downton Abbey.

But really, how different is that from this little tirade by John Kasich?

I'm as critical of the police as anyone, but if that's what a privileged politician considers "disrespect" he's living in a very different world from most Americans. Maybe he should get tasered a time or two for looking at the cop sideways and see what "disrespect" really is. (And I doubt very much that Kasich would have had such a problem with the police rousting one of "those people" for exactly the same infraction.)

And Romney's little tantrum about people who deign to take their votes to politicians who look out for their interests is similarly disdainful of the "plebs":

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.

Apparently, they don't "know their place" either.

These are just three examples of comments from the ruling class over the past few years that have betrayed their enormous privilege and downright comtempt for the masses. The just can't stop complaining about how hard they work and how terrible it is when they don't get their million dollar bonuses and how terrible it is that poor people aren't paying enough in income taxes. It's so stereotypical of out of touch aristocrats that you have to wonder about their basic intelligence.

It might be silly to focus on these verbal outbursts, but they are completely in line with their policies. And when the people hear what they are saying they understand that instinctively. It's a very foolish thing for them to do.

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digby 9/25/2012 10:30:00 AM |

 
Ralph Reed's big plans

by digby

The NY Times belatedly reported the Ralph Reed electoral machine story over the week-end -- the same story Adele Stan at Alternet has been on for months. (Too bad they didn't credit her.) She's got an update and a warning today: don't get too cocky. Reed's operation is formidable. She talks at length about the operations mechanics and it's impressive. (It's based on the Obama 08 model.)

But this is really the key, in my book:

For all of the grousing that right-wingers do about the power of labor unions in elections, there is no parallel liberal infrastructure to the network of evangelical churches that Reed has been organizing since his salad days at the Christian Coalition. Just name a labor group that meets weekly, always on the same day, and enjoys most of its members showing up for the meeting. Churches, with their homey bulletins ripe for the insertion of a purportedly non-partisan Faith and Freedom Coalition voter guide to the candidates' positions on hot-button issues, are nearly ideal as organizational cells.

At a recent the workshop conducted by the Faith and Freedom Coalition at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., it was suggested that voter registration forms be placed in the pews.

For the most part, people the unions target for voter turnout operations are their own members. But unlike the churches of the Christian right, the ideological and cultural make-up of unions is hardly homogenous: only 51 percent of white union members identify as Democrats, compared with the 65 percent of white Christian evangelicals who identified with the Republican party in 2008. (That number has since climbed to 70 percent according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life.)

Christian evangelicals comprise 26 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, while union members make up 12 percent of all wage and salary workers, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and a still-smaller percentage of the general population.

Liberal pundits often make the mistake of comparing the GOTV efforts of competing Democratic and Republican campaigns, as conducted by the parties and their candidates, concluding that the Democratic efforts are far superior. At the party and candidate levels that may be true, but the Republican turnout operation exists largely outside of the party structure, through organizations such as Reed's, and the Koch-backed Tea Party group, Americans For Prosperity. Unlike unions, whose budgets are limited by the size and scope of their membership, FFC and AFP could have access to however much money they need to get the job done.

I think it's incredibly foolish to understimate the possibility that the right could pull it off, despite Romney's lame performance. I agree that it's unlikely, but it is possible due to the fact that organizations like Reeds have unlimited money (in fact, everyone on the right has unlimited money) and they have the infrastructure. They are also making it as hard as possible for Democrats to vote. That combination is fairly lethal in a close election.

I also don't think you can underrate the right's hatred for Obama. Stan spells out why:

As important as the particulars of Reed’s turnout operation may be, perhaps the most important data point about the constituency he seeks to organize is the temperament of its voters.

Let’s say that 60 percent of likely voters in a given state lean left or liberal, and 40 percent lean right.

“Likely voters,” as the name implies, are not guaranteed to vote. In election 2012, Obama doesn’t enjoy nearly the level of enthusiasm among key constituencies -- the very young or the very progressive, for example -- that he did in 2008. A bad economy and the heartbreak of drone warfare have taken their toll. And you can shake your finger in the face of a disheartened progressive all you want while you tell them to vote, but for someone with fond memories of her “Question Authority” bumper sticker, that’s not a winning strategy.

But right-wingers, particularly members of the Tea Party and the religious right, the instructions of their leaders matter. According to social psychologist Bob Altemeyer, the Yale-trained author of The Authoritarians, right-wing followers place an undue level of faith in their leaders.

“The followers have a great desire to submit to established authority,” Altemeyer explained in an interview with John Dean. “They're also highly conventional, and they have a lot of aggression in them, which studies show comes primarily from being fearful. One of the classic reactions to fear is to fight, and the followers will attack when their authorities tell them to.”

So while members of the the Tea Party and the religious right may not love the ideologically bendy, Mormon Mitt Romney, they’re ginned up and ready for an attack on Obama, whom they’e been taught to fear, via all manner of tropes, ranging from the birther conspiracy theory to the lie of the so-called “death panels.”

If, in eight of those nine battleground states, Reed and his allies manage to turn out 90 percent of the right-wing base, and Obama turns out only 60 percent of his, Romney wins.

Add to that formula the concerted efforts in states throughout the nation to disenfranchise voters who are inclined to vote Democratic, and you have a recipe for a Romney victory.

I have always thought that Obama was likely to win. But I would never underestimate a combination of wealthy plutocrats, churches, right wingers with an ax to grind and a willingness among all of them to cheat their way to victory. That's an American success story in the making.

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digby 9/25/2012 09:07:00 AM |

 
Whistling Past Dixie

by David Atkins

Dave Weigel gives an important reminder about the "white working class voter."

National polls don't tell us the whole story about white voters. Outside the South, since 2008, the white working class has edged away from the Democratic Party. But it remains open to the Democrats. That's why the rest of the country's so competitive! Take the example of Minnesota, where 90 percent of the 2008 electorate was white. Barack Obama split that vote, 49-49, with John McCain. He narrowly lost whites between the ages of 30 and 44, but won all other ages, and won elderly whites by a 17-point landslide.

Compare that to Georgia, where Obama did better than any Democrat since 1996. He won a measly 23 percent of the white vote. He lost elderly whites, aged 65 and over, by 56 points.

This might be obvious, but I think it gets lost in our daily culture war dialogues. To win the election in a squeaker, Barack Obama needs to win around 39 percent of the white vote. But outside the South, if he's winning, he'll be basically tying Romney with whites or losing them by 2-5 points. He's the first Democrat to win national elections in the post-Dixiecrat era. For generations, the Democratic attitudes of the South made it easier for the party to hold Congress, even as ticket-splitters were voting Republican for president -- Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes. Now it's reversed. A Democrat can lose the deep South in a landslide, but win the presidency, as southern conservatives send a massive crop of Republicans back to the Capitol.

Modern Republicanism is a largely older, Southern white phenomenon. Nationalized politics is allowing that culture to creep somewhat into the midwest (Missouri being a prime example), while states in the Mormon triangle and the plains are also deeply conservative for similar reasons, but lack the population prevents them from doing much damage outside of the undemocratic Senate.

By and large, though, the cultural divide that has plagued this nation since its founding remains with us today. We fought a war over it that cost many lives, but should have been decisive. In the end, it will be demographic changes that draw the 250-year-old simmering battle to a close not with a bang but with a whimper. And I hope to be there when Texas votes Democratic for President in 2024, playing the world's smallest violin for a peculiar culture that at last can do little further damage to America and the world.

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thereisnospoon 9/25/2012 07:30:00 AM |

Monday, September 24, 2012

 
QOTD: Tory whip Andrew Mitchell

by digby

It's from a couple of days ago, actually:

British Prime Minister David Cameron's new chief whip, Andrew Mitchell, yelled at police because they wouldn't let him pedal his bike out of Downing Street, The Sun reports.

Said Mitchell: "Best you learn your fucking place. You don't run this fucking government. You're fucking plebs."

An eyewitness said Mitchell also branded them "morons".

The elites' inner Marie Antoinette is just bursting out all over, isn't it? He denies using the word "pleb" but there were a bunch of witnesses. Apparently the "best you learn your fucking place" is undeniable.

In case you were wondering:

Right-winger and keen cyclist Mr Mitchell is a former shadow police minister and was until recently International Development Secretary.

A former investment banker, he is worth at least £2.2million and owns a number of swanky homes.

He lives in one of the most fashionable squares in Islington, North London, with his GP wife Sharon and their two daughters.

He also has a house in his Sutton Coldfield constituency in Birmingham and a property in the French ski resort of Val d’Isere.

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digby 9/24/2012 06:30:00 PM |

 
Remember the ladies

by digby

Also known as the moochers, looters and parasites:

National polling averages, like Huffington Post's own model, show a 3-point race. Other polls show a wider race, and in some, like Gallup's tracking in swing states, the race is tighter. Individual swing states, like Virginia and Ohio, also show a clear Obama lead.

Most of this movement has come from women voters. The chart below shows Obama's margin over Romney broken out by gender in public polls from August 20 through today (all telephone or IVR public polls I could easily find are included; none were left out). Not only do women consistently give Obama the edge, the gender gap in Obama's performance seems to be widening.

According to the article it's possible that this may end up being the biggest gender gap in history.

I suppose you can swagger around talking about people being victims and refusing to take personal responsibility, but to a whole lot of women that's a myopic view of how daily life is actually lived in this country. Many of them are caring for kids and ageing parents while working at shit jobs and trying to make ends meet in this dead economy and the idea that they are parasites is ridiculously insulting. They tend to be much more involved in the day to day struggles of the vulnerable people in our society and know intimately what the stakes are. (And a whole lot of them would dearly love to take personal responsibility for their reproduction, but these people won't let them!)

I'm sure many women have all the same qualms about the Democrats as the men do and wish they had more choices. But on virtually every level, there is simply no doubt that given free rein, the Republicans will make their lives demonstrably worse than they already are.

It's just a practical choice. When you see a presidential ticket bragging that they want to cut off every level of support that many of these women, regardless of their economic status, understand is necessary to keep the young, the old and the disabled from total penury, it's not surprising. Most of them don't have time to listen to Rush and watch Fox News to learn how this offends their sense of personal freedom. They're too busy working, cleaning, caregiving and otherwise exhausting themselves.

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digby 9/24/2012 05:30:00 PM |

 
No, underpaying progressive campaign workers isn't a good thing

by David Atkins

A bunch of people in left-leaning circles are passing this around, as if it were good news:

One of the big challenges Mitt Romney faced after effectively clinching the GOP presidential nomination in late April was ramping up his campaign to match the behemoth operation President Obama already had in place across the country.

The Republican challenger finally caught up last month – at least when measured by money.

The Romney campaign spent $4.04 million on payroll in August -- nearly twice as much as it spent in July -- while the Obama campaign spent $4.37 million, according to campaign finance disclosures filed last week with the Federal Election Commission.

But the president appears to be getting a much bigger bang for his buck.

So the Obama campaign is getting the same level of commitment from staff while saving $330,000 dollars money. So celebrate, right? Well, maybe not.

According to an analysis by the Times Data Desk, part of the Los Angeles Times, the Obama campaign had 901 people on its payroll last month, and paid them a median salary of $3,074 a month, or $36,886 a year.

The Romney campaign, in contrast, had 403 people on its payroll, and paid them a median salary of $6,437 in August, which would mean $77,250 a year.

This isn't a good thing. First, Democrats are supposed to be about helping regular workers and the middle class. But more importantly, one of the key challenges that progressives face is a high level of burnout from our core volunteers and activists. People have to be able to make a living, and passion for the issues only goes so far. Republicans and conservatives are able to train and keep their best and brightest because they pay them enough to stay in the fold. Democrats and progressive organizations expect talent to work for peanuts.

Eventually, what happens is that good people burn out and quit when it comes time to build for retirement and raise a family.

Is it really worth it for the Obama campaign to underpay its staff to save $330,000 a few million in election expenses, just to buy a few more TV ads and be lauded as a better businessperson than Mitt Romney? No, it isn't. Not even for the campaign itself, and certainly not for the future of the progressive movement. Of course, left-leaning organizations aren't as well funded as right-leaning ones. But there's more than enough money there to pay good workers a decent wage.

But don't just jump on Barack Obama. This is a chronic culture problem within the entire Democratic infrastructure. Young people lean progressive, and the politically interested are often desperate to work in Democratic campaigns. Limousine liberals are able to send their kids to work for free on "internships." And then there is a huge swath of Democrats and progressives who believe that payment for political services is somehow unclean, and that if any payment is granted for working on progressive politics, it should be at a minimum subsistence level.

This foolishness has to be fixed for the sake of the future of the movement. And it certainly shouldn't be celebrated.

Update: Obviously, I got my math wrong through a clumsy reading of the details. The President's campaign is saving millions of dollars in staff expenses, not $330,000. But the general point remains the same.

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thereisnospoon 9/24/2012 04:12:00 PM |

 
Chained CPI of fools

by digby

A good friend questioned my cynicism the other day about Obama's newly aggressive defense of Social Security at the AARP meeting and I thought hard about that. I've been extremely hard on the administration for their stated desire for a Grand Bargain long before the fiscal cliff was even hatched -- in fact, since the beginning of the first term. And I guess I just tend to be suspicious any time a President suggests early on that he has a grandiose plan for his legacy and then uses "problems" that come along later to justify it. If Obama hadn't said straight out that he wanted to solve all the problems of the world with his Grand Bargain I might not be so cynical.

Well it turns out that I'm not the only one. This guy is cynical too:

One of the most progressive voices in the caucus, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), said he was heartened to hear Obama tell the AARP last week that he'd be open to raising the cap on income that's taxed for purposes of paying into the Social Security trust fund. Sanders also applauded the president for taking off of the table any reform language that resulted in the "slashing" of benefits (several Social Security advocates, disagreeing with Sanders, said they were worried such language was counterproductive, as it opens the door for cuts that could be deemed minor).

But the Vermont Independent worried that all of this could be posturing for the lame-duck session immediately after the election, when lawmakers are expected to rush to find another "grand bargain" on tax and entitlement reform to stave off the so-called fiscal cliff.

"That's exactly what's going to happen," Sanders said of Social Security being on the proverbial table, "Unless someone of us stops it -- and a number of us are working very hard on this -- that's exactly what will happen. Everything being equal, unless we stop it, what will happen is there will be a quote-unquote grand bargain after the election in which the White House, some Democrats will sit down with Republicans, they will move to a chained CPI."

If he's worried, I'm worried. The Chained CPI is a benefits cut. And it's one that will hurt those who remain on Social Security the longest, usually elderly women in their 80s and 90s. I suppose they can try to go out and get a job to augment their inadequate incomes, but I can't think of who will hire them. This is a prescription for catfood for these very old people.

Sanders asked Huffington Post to get the president on the record saying that he would not do this. And this, predictably, was the result:

By Monday morning, the Obama campaign had moved slightly in the opposite direction, with top adviser David Axelrod refusing to unveil any specifics about what the president had planned for Social Security reform.

"[T]he approach has to be a balanced one," Axelrod told MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We've had discussions in the past. And the question is, can you raise the cap some? Right now Social Security cuts off at a lower point. Can you raise the cap so people in the upper incomes are paying a little more into the program? And do you adjust the growth of the program? That's a discussion worth having. But again, we have to approach it in a balanced way. We're not going to cut our way to prosperity. We're not going to cut our way to more secure entitlement programs -- Social Security and Medicare. We have to have a balance."

So what is the president's proposal, asked Time magazine's Mark Halperin.

"Mark, I'll tell you what: When you get elected to the United States Senate and sit at that table -- this is not the time," replied Axelrod.

I love how it's always this "pay a little bit more" like we couldn't possibly ask these job creating Galtish heroes to kick in more than a pittance lest something really terrible happen.

Feeling optimistic? I didn't think so. After all, it's not as if the Republicans aren't going to demand their pound of elderly flesh so they can run against the Democrats for cutting Social Security. (Their adoption of Mediscare should finally relieve the Democrats of any assurance they won't.)

No, the best case scenario for a "balanced approach" on Social Security is a tiny raise in the cap for the tiny percentage of zillionaires who own this country in exchange for catfood eating old women. That's the "balanced approach"." they're seeking.

The only thing we can hope for is that either the left or the right wings of the congress --- perhaps both --- say no. It will be a lot more likely if they have a chance to organize in the new congress than if this is all done at lightening speed to avoid going over the fictional fiscal cliff in the lame duck.

Lame duck gridlock is in out best interest in so many ways. This is definitely one of them.


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digby 9/24/2012 02:30:00 PM |

 
Depends on what the meaning of "hide" is

by digby

It looks like Paul Ryan let the cat out of the bag:



As we all know, Romney has parked a boatload of money in the Cayman's although they claim it's not personal, it's strictly business. Not that it matters. Either way, it saves the Romney fortune a fortune.

But yeah, one way or the other, he's hiding money from the IRS. And there was a time when Paul Ryan pretended to be against it.

But I'd be willing to bet one of Mitt's millions that he doesn't actually give a damn.

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digby 9/24/2012 01:35:00 PM |

 
Emergency medicine

by digby


So Mitt Romney now believes that everyone should use the emergency room for their health care needs if they don't have insurance. Or, at least, it sounded that way. (Bold Progressives caught him saying something quite different back in 2007, before health care became a dirty word to conservatives.)

Remember when Alan Grayson was vilified for saying that the Republican plan was "Don't get sick and if you do get sick, die quickly"? Well, that sounds an awful lot like Mitt's new program to me.

Allow me to share a personal story that shed some light on emergency care --- for the insured. We have a high deductible plan, because it's all we can afford. And since we're decrepit baby boomers, it's ridiculously expensive even so. It's our second highest monthly bill after housing. Luckily, we're both in surprisingly good health and we're just hoping against hope that it stays that way until we can reach Medicare age.

However, my husband was traveling recently and had to go to the emergency room with a kidney stone. The "out of network" hospital billed us nearly $5,000. Since we have insurance, they were kind enough to bill them directly instead of requiring the payment up front, but since our deductible is so high, we will end up paying the whole bill anyway.

Here's the rub. We would have been better off saying we were uninsured and negotiating with the hospital directly for a lower rate. Our insurance company has no interest in negotiating a lower rate because we have a high deductible. So, they just paid the bill and are now passing the whole ridiculously high charges on to us. It's almost at the end of our policy year and unless we both have heart attacks in the next month, it's unlikely that we'll be able to "take advantage" of the fact that our deductible is met. So we're stuck.

Insurance companies only help themselves. They do nothing that doesn't benefit their bottom line unless they are required to do so. And even under Obama care, (which will be an improvement for us in the preventive care realm) we'll be paying about the same, with the same deductible and the same profit motive for the insurance company. In fact, I'm guessing they'll be even greedier wherever they can get away with it. Greed is like water --- it always finds a way.

Medicare for all would solve this problem since it would cover you no matter where you get sick. But we don't have that. And if the political establishment in both parties has their way, we won't have Medicare much longer either at least in any recognizable form. Sure, their fabulous, Rube Goldberg "market solution" will probably be fixed up in the long run, piece by agonizing piece. Unfortunately, in the long run, a whole lot of American guinea pigs will be dead before their time while they work out the kinks.


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digby 9/24/2012 11:00:00 AM |