Hullabaloo

Sunday, October 14, 2012

 
California leads the way again, this time on climate

by David Atkins

Stories like this make me proud to live in California.

Such audits will be crucial as California embarks on its grand experiment in reining in climate change. On Jan. 1, it will become the first state in the nation to charge industries across the economy for the greenhouse gases they emit. Under the system, known as “cap and trade,” the state will set an overall ceiling on those emissions and assign allowable emission amounts for individual polluters. A portion of these so-called allowances will be allocated to utilities, manufacturers and others; the remainder will be auctioned off.

Over time, the number of allowances issued by the state will be reduced, which should force a reduction in emissions.

To obtain the allowances needed to account for their emissions, companies can buy them at auction or on the carbon market. They can secure offset credits, as they are known, either by buying leftover allowances from emitters that have met their targets or by purchasing them from projects that remove carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gases from the atmosphere, like the woods where Mr. Hrubes was working.

Whether Mitt Romney wins or loses the presidency, California is going to be a leader on climate change, universal healthcare and much else besides. Win or lose, the final electoral map in the U.S. will once again very much resemble the civil war map. And as usual, it will be the blue states dragging everyone else along against their will, with California very much in the lead.


.
thereisnospoon 10/14/2012 07:30:00 AM

Saturday, October 13, 2012

 
Saturday Night At The Movies

I saw a film today, pt. 3: 2 new fab Blus

By Dennis Hartley

The Busby Berkeley acid test: Magical Mystery Tour

So how do you follow up an album like Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (no pressure, right?).  There are a goodly number of otherwise diehard Beatle fans who would prefer to pretend that Magical Mystery Tour (the 1967 film, not the album) never happened. But it did. Right after Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play. And try as we might, we can’t change history. Now, for all you youngsters in the audience this evening, MMT was originally presented as a holiday special on BBC-TV in December of 1967. According to a majority of critics (and puzzled Beatles fans), the Fabs were ringing out the old year on a somewhat sour note with this self-produced project. By the conventions of television fare at the time, the 53-minute film was judged as a self-indulgent and pointlessly obtuse affair; a real psychedelic train wreck. Added up over the years, it’s probably weathered more continuous drubbing than Ishtar and Heaven’s Gate combined.

However, despite the fact that this tragical history lore has become the meme, a newly restored Blu-ray release  that hit shelves earlier this week begs a critical reappraisal (after all, it’s been 45 years). Granted, it remains unencumbered by anything resembling a “plot”, but in certain respects, it has actually held up remarkably well. Borrowing a page (one assumes) from the Merry Pranksters, the Beatles came up with a simple premise. They would gather up a group of friends (actors and non actors alike), load them all on a bus, and take them on a “mystery tour” across the English countryside. Everybody was encouraged to improvise around the, erm, “script” that did exist (sort of). They would just film whatever happened, then sort it all out in the editing suite. The resulting footage provided transitional padding between the (slightly) more choreographed music numbers.

It’s the musical sequences that benefit the most from the audio/video cleanup; those washed out VHS prints with horrendous sound quality that have been floating around for years certainly did no favors for the film’s already tarnished reputation. The luxury of hindsight reveals that several (particularly “Blue Jay Way”, “Fool on the Hill” and “I Am the Walrus”) vibe like harbingers of MTV, which was still well over a decade away. Some of the interstitial vignettes uncannily anticipate Monty Python’s idiosyncratic comic sensibilities; not a stretch when you consider that George Harrison’s future production company HandMade Films was formed to help finance Life of Brian. As for the film’s episodic approach and surrealist touches, it falls right in line with some of the work being done at the time by art house darlings like Fellini and Godard. That being said, MMT is far from what I’d call a work of art, but when taken for what it is (a long-form music video and colorful time capsule of 60s pop culture)-it’s lots of fun. Roll up!

Sir mix-a-lot: Produced by George Martin

While no one can deny the inherent musical genius of the Beatles, it’s worth speculating whether it would have reached the same dizzying heights of creativity and artistic growth (and over the same 7-year period) had the lads never crossed paths with Sir George Martin. It’s a testament to the unique symbiosis between the Fabs and their gifted producer that one can’t think of one without also thinking of the other. Yet there is still much more to Martin than his celebrated association with John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Martin is profiled in an engaging and beautifully crafted 2011 BBC documentary called (funnily enough) Produced by George Martin (now available on Blu-ray ). The film traces his career from the early 50s to present day. His early days at EMI are particularly fascinating; a generous portion of the film focuses on his work there producing classical and comedy recordings (including priceless footage of Peter Sellers from his Goon Show days). Disparate as Martin’s early work appears to be from the rock’n’roll milieu, I think it prepped him for his future collaboration with the Fabs, on a personal and professional level. His experience with comics likely helped the relatively reserved producer acclimate to the Beatles’ irreverent sense of humor, and Martin’s classical training and gift for arrangement certainly helped to guide their creativity to a higher level of sophistication.

The film is a bit of a family affair as well. You get a good sense of the close and loving relationship Martin has with his wife Judy (who he met while working for EMI) and son Giles (who is following in his dad’s footsteps; they collaborated on the remixes of Beatle songs for the LOVE soundtrack album). At 81, Martin is still spry, full of great anecdotes and a class act all the way. He provides some very candid moments; there is visible emotion from the usually unflappable Martin when he admits how deeply hurt and betrayed he felt when John Lennon rather curtly informed him at the 11th hour that his “services would not be needed” for the Let it Be sessions (the band went with the mercurial Phil Spector, who famously overproduced the album). Insightful interviews with artists who have worked with Martin (and admiring peers) round things off nicely.

Previous posts with related themes:

I saw a film today, pt. 1: Confessions of a Beatle fan

I saw a film today, pt. 2: Top 10 Fab 4 Flicks

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

.

Dennis Hartley 10/13/2012 05:00:00 PM

 
Authentic Republican

by digby

From a Romney Ryan rally yesterday in Lancaster, Ohio:

There are no reports of anyone in the crowd having a problem with it and this fine fellow obviously felt perfectly comfortable. Who says Republicans aren't tolerant?


.
digby 10/13/2012 04:00:00 PM

 
Incremental extremism

by digby

Here's a good discussion on Chris Hayes this morning about the abortion question in the VP debate:

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

I think the best point made here is just how extreme the mainstream of the GOP is on the subject today. The fact that banning abortion except in cases of rape, incest and life of the mother is now considered the "moderate" position in the GOP shows that the anti-abortion agitators are making incremental progress. It wasn't that long ago that it was considered barbaric to demand that a woman bear her rapist's child. That's no longer true. In fact, it's being extolled as something which women should feel privileged to do despite the trauma it inflicts on her and the relationship to the child she's bearing. And certainly until recently most people just understood on a gut level that forcing a young teen-ager to give birth to her own sibling was hideously immoral on all levels. Now it's a mainstream conservative position to hold that abortion is wrong in all circumstances, justified by some moral gobbledygook about the innocence of the fetus, the already sentient, breathing human be damned. All over the country state legislatures are voting on "personhood" amendments and other extreme measures that could result in banning abortion in all cases if Roe vs Wade is overturned. Some politicians are proposing that the life of the mother cannot be weighed in favor of the procedure.

These people are in it for the long haul and they will keep pushing the center to the right unless advocates for women's rights are willing to engage this head-on and push back hard. Certainly there has to be an end to Third Way style accommodation. If these people are such fanatics that they are now entertaining the idea that the life of the fetus literally takes precedence over the life of the woman, then this is a battle for the very lives of women.

  This is where it leads:

A pregnant 16-year-old in the Dominican Republic died from complications of leukemia, according to CNN. The young woman was forced to wait nearly three weeks to begin chemotherapy to treat her disease as hospital officials initially refused to treat her fearing it could terminate her pregnancy. In the end she lost her life and the pregnancy, and may have died because of the delay in her treatment. Under an amendment to the Dominican Republic's constitution which declares that "life begins at conception," abortion is banned, effectively for any reason. The girl's leukemia was diagnosed when she was just nine weeks pregnant.

.


digby 10/13/2012 02:00:00 PM

 
A Tale of Two Attack Dogs

by digby

From the paper of record, everything that's wrong with political journalism in three short paragraphs:

Mr. Biden’s smirking, emotional and aggressively sharp approach toward his rival, Representative Paul D. Ryan, prompted cheers from Democrats who had been desperate for the kind of in-your-face political rumble that President Obama did not deliver during his debate with Mitt Romney a week ago.

But Mr. Biden repeatedly mocked and interrupted Mr. Ryan in ways that led Republicans to use words like “unhinged” and “buffoon” and “disrespectful” in the hours after the fast-paced, 90-minute exchange ended.

The question by Friday morning: Did Mr. Biden go too far?

Who was asking that question, I wonder?

Just for comparison, here's the New York Times on the day following Romney-Obama debate:

If Mr. Romney’s goal was to show that he could project equal stature to the president, he succeeded, perhaps offering his campaign the lift that Republicans have been seeking. Mr. Obama often stopped short of challenging his rival’s specific policies and chose not to invoke some of the same arguments that his campaign has been making against Mr. Romney for months.

At one point, Mr. Romney offered an admonishment, saying, “Mr. President, you’re entitled, as the president, to your own airplane and to your own house, but not to your own facts, all right?” He forcefully engaged Mr. Obama throughout the night, while the president often looked down at his lectern and took notes.

And here I thought that theater critics were all liberal elites.

The power of Republican spin is undiminished among the political press. They acknowledged that GOP partisans were happy with the first debate and Dem partisans were happy with the second. But they say that Romney's feisty base pleasing performance lifted his "stature" and made him an equal to the president. But they wonder if Biden's base pleasing performance "went too far." Out of the mouths of GOP operatives.

No matter what, you can depend on the Village rule that any red meat offered to Democrats is clearly embarrassing and counter-productive because Real Americans don't like it. You may parrot nicey-nice platitudes about hope and change and "yes we can", but don't ever disrespect the wingnuts.

It's fine for the GOP challenger to stoke his followers bloodlust by energetically getting in the hated President's face while appealing to inattentive moderates by completely changing his positions. That's just smart politics. Joe Biden treating the overrated Eddie Haskell like the phony overgrown adolescent he is is completely beyond the pale. In other words, treating President Obama disrespectfully is just fine, but treating Paul Ryan disrespectfully goes too far.

Now, I don't happen to think anyone is required to treat their political rivals with seriousness or particular "respect" whether it's the president or some congressional whippersnapper. People disagree and there's no reason that shouldn't be articulated with passion, conviction and aggression. But this lop-sided whine is simply ridiculous. Obama failed to prepare and parry Romney's attacks and he suffered for it. The winsome Ryan deserved to be skewered and Biden did the deed with relish. That's politics. All this Miss Manners pearl clutching by the Republicans and their mouthpieces in the press is idiotic.


Update: Here's Chris Hayes, making a similar point but much, much more elegantly.

Conflict is part of the human condition: there are limited resources, there are differing interests and cultures and tribes and value systems, with different conceptions of the good, vastly different priorities and first principles. Democracy is the system we've come up with to resolve those inevitable conflicts, but there is no such thing as a placid equilibrium in which those conflicts somehow disappear, or are only articulated in the gentlest fashion. That's the point.

Conflict is the underlying constant of human society. The question is what we do with it. It's only a slight exaggeration to say that either we have people killing each other in the streets like dogs, or we have people running attack ads against each other. Bureaucracy, parliamentary procedure, extended multi-lateral talks, the back and forth of campaign ads, are largely glory-less enterprises, in the grand sweep of history, they are beautiful, sublime achievements, they represent nearly unthinkable progress and point the way towards a future of full human flourishing.

Yeah, that.

.
digby 10/13/2012 12:30:00 PM

 
Is kidnapping parasites even a crime?

by digby


To those who think that it's hyperbole to characterize our billionaire overlords as neo-fuedalists, take a look at this:

Billionaire William Koch is facing a lawsuit in federal court from a former top-level employee who claims the energy mogul lured him to a secluded property, where he was imprisoned and interrogated for a period of time, according to a report in Courthouse News.

John Houston Scott, an attorney for Kirby Martenson, a former executive for a number of Koch subsidiaries, confirmed the story to HuffPost, adding that he guessed the case could go to trial in a year.

The case was filed in San Francisco, where the Republican-backing Kochs are not deeply popular.

Martensen alleges that the multiple-day-long incident was set off by an anonymous letter accusing Martensen of mismanaging and stealing from Oxbow Carbon & Minerals International while serving as the company's vice president. That accusation prompted the company's leadership to read Martensen's letters and emails without his knowledge, the suit charges, which led the company to discover that Martensen had deep reservations about the legality of the company's tax avoidance strategies.

Martensen alleges he was told by his superiors that he was transferred overseas to Asia so that the Koch company could avoid paying U.S. taxes on some $200,000,000 in profits.

“Kirby Martensen states in a lawsuit that we investigated him for participating in a wide-ranging scheme to defraud, accepting bribes and diverting business from our company," Brad Goldstein, director of corporate affairs for Oxbow, a Bill Koch company, said in a statement. "He is right. We absolutely investigated Martensen and determined that he did participate in the fraud against the company. We identified who was defrauding us and are pursuing appropriate action to hold them accountable. In fact, several of the wrongdoers have admitted their involvement and one has directly implicated Mr. Martensen in the scheme. ”

Koch, who is David Koch's twin brother, is estimated to be worth $4 billion. He previously made news by reconstructing a replica of an Old West ghost town on the isolated ranch where Martensen and his co-workers were allegedly held.

Martensen had a flight booked from Aspen, but was not permitted to travel to the airport, he claims, as a local sheriff worked with Koch's employees to "make sure you don't wander off," according to the complaint. He says he was subjected to a several-hour interrogation, fired, held against his will on the property, then forced to fly in a private plane to San Francisco, accompanied by a man he believed to be armed.

Some people might call this kidnapping, but billionaires don't have to adhere to such trivialities. (I suppose that may be why this isn't a criminal complaint --- why bother?) To the billionaires, their employees are peasants, subject to their Lord's whims. The "law of the land" is to keep them in line. The nobles are not subject to it.

This should be an interesting story. It does not appear they are disputing the kidnapping. They seem to be going with the defense that he was a bad man and so deserved it. I'll look forward to hearing more about it.


.


digby 10/13/2012 10:30:00 AM

 
Paul Ryan's foreign policy: weakness through strength

by digby

In case you came away confused, Adam Serwer helpfully broke down the two arguments at the VP debate over the Benghazi attacks. Neither side is covered in glory, but then the facts remain somewhat muddied and the Republicans are, as usualy, being particularly hypocritical.

But this I found quite illuminaitng:

Ryan's logic breaks down completely when it comes to his contradictory views on funding for defense and for the State Department. "When we show that we're cutting down on defense, it makes us more weak," he said. "It projects weakness." (Ryan, you'll recall, voted for the sequestration deal that could end in defense cuts. Is he therefore also responsible for the Benghazi attack?) The historical record on attacks on US diplomatic targets shows that Ryan's theory—that Republicans ostensibly "projecting strength" stops terrorist attacks—is nonsense:

We all knew about Bush Sr's "wimp factor" but  it looks to me as if Uncle Ronnie wasn't exactly "projecting" strength either. All that bellicose sabre rattling for naught. What will we tell the children?

.


digby 10/13/2012 09:30:00 AM

 
Don't panic. Organize and fight.

by David Atkins

Here at Hullabaloo we try not to dig too much into the horse race, preferring to focus on the increasing right-wing drive to insanity, and the policy problems that both sides are often ignoring as the climate burns, the slide toward greater economic inequality continues apace, militarism increases unchecked, etc. Many readers couldn't care less whether the Democrat or the Republican wins the presidency.

But for those of you who do care and are fretting nervously about the latest poll numbers showing an increasing probability of a Romney victory, Charlie Cook has a gentle reminder for you:

A postdebate Ohio survey for CNN put Obama ahead in that state by 4 points among likely voters, 51 percent to 47 percent. Before the debate, the incumbent had been leading by 5 to 8 points in private polling, so the debate would appear to have had some impact but possibly not enough. Given how bad both Michigan and Pennsylvania look for Romney, he desperately needs a breakthrough in Ohio; for a Republican to win the White House without Ohio (it’s never been done), Michigan, or Pennsylvania would be the equivalent of drawing a royal flush in poker.

A WMUR/University of New Hampshire poll showed that the swing state had narrowed from a 15-point spread for Obama, 52 percent to 37 percent last month, to 6 points, 47 percent to 41 percent, postdebate. Few pros on either side gave the slightest credence to Obama having a 15-point lead before; it’s difficult to take seriously the suggestion that the president’s lead actually dropped 11 points. My guess is that last month’s WMUR poll was an outlier; that Obama’s lead was probably in the high single digits then; and that the 6-point figure now is probably right, and maybe even a point or two high. A Selzer & Company poll (the same firm also does The Des Moines Register and Bloomberg News surveys) for the University of Denver shows likely Colorado voters giving Obama a 4-point postdebate edge, 47 percent to 43 percent, perhaps a little closer than before but not a collapse.

The problem with state polls is that most are in the extraterrestrial category; robo-polls are often all over the map. Aficionados would be well advised to focus on state-level polling offered by NBC/Wall Street Journal/Marist University; CBS/New York Times/Quinnipiac University; and by ABC, CNN, Fox News, and other brand names that specifically use live interviewers calling voters with landlines as well as the 30 to 40 percent of voters (mostly young people and minorities) who have only cell phones. Although poll aggregators have a good technique in averaging data, be advised that a lot of dubious information goes into those averages; it’s wiser to focus on the brand names with the more traditional (and very costly) methodology.

Assuming the President comes out even or better in the following debates and the race stays fairly stable in its current condition, this entire election is going to hinge on turnout. It's old hat to say it, but it's still true.

Which means that every second spent frantically checking TPM and RCP for the latest numbers; every second commenting on some blog about what the President or Democrats need to do differently now to win the election; every second spent yelling at the TV--all of them are precious seconds not being used to get Democrats to the polls or help sway the few wavering undecideds left.

There are battlegrounds all across the country in races big and small, from the Presidency on down to city council. If the President loses, keeping control of the Senate is crucial to prevent repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Every House seat puts the gavel closer to Nancy Pelosi and weakens Boehner's position. Every statehouse seat claws back Republican gains.

Now is the time to make a difference in the battle that appeals to you most, and modern technology allows access to at least phonebanking in just about any of the big battles going on across the country.

Don't panic. Organize and fight.
thereisnospoon 10/13/2012 07:30:00 AM

Friday, October 12, 2012

 
Take your medicine

by digby

The other day I linked to an study showing that it's good your your mental faculties to look at pictures of cute animals. So I spent the week checking in with these little guys several times a day.

Live Video app for Facebook by Ustream

I feel much clearer and focused every time I do it. And happier, too.


.
digby 10/12/2012 07:00:00 PM

 
QOTW: ‘Just remember, Roger, some girls, they rape so easy. It may be rape the next morning.’

by digby

That's from a Republican office holder and good friend of Paul Ryan's.

The Daily Show had a good segment on the latest in crazy:

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

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

.

digby 10/12/2012 06:00:00 PM

 
The Mayor of the Village proposes to scrap the foreign policy debate

by digby

Mark Halperin helpfully explains to silly voters what's important to them:

This is a proposal that probably won’t be taken up but I’d be for scrapping foreign policy as the topic of the last debate. I think we’ve had a fair amount of foreign policy discussion. The last debate should be all about the Fiscal Cliff. 90 minutes. What are you going to do about taxes? What are you going to do about spending? Because we’re not having the adequate debate if it doesn’t happen in that last debate, which it won’t because it’s now on foreign policy. We’re never going to have them talk about it. It is the issue facing the country. It is the issue for whoever gets elected because, if they don’t deal with it in January, we’re going to have a world of trouble.

Foreign policy is for the birds. Of course, just five years ago it was the only thing worth talking about. When Republicans wanted to talk about it. Now it's all about taxes and spending. Oddly, that's what Repubicans want to talk about now too.

This is not to say that I wouldn't welcome a debate on the economy, jobs, income inequality, education, climate change, immigration and women's rights among a dozen other important topics. But the fiscal cliff? It's a phony crisis that only plays into the hands of the deficit hysterics who are determined to use any excuse they can to cut the hell out of our already tattered safety net. The differences between the two parties are so infinitesimal on this anyway that all we'd have is a hour of bullshit designed to make the voters forget about the fact that they are getting screwed by millionaires and worry instead about fiscal phantoms. No thanks.

And hey, if we get lucky in an hour long foreign policy debate we might even find out that foreign countries exist outside the Middle East and the Indian sub-continent. I'm so old I remember when we used to talk about the Far East and South America once in a while. I'm not holding my breath. I have a feeling it's going to be a truly impressive dick measuring contest with Obam finding ways to mention that he killed bin Laden at every opportunity and Mitt rsponding that if it had been him he'd have killed him twice as hard. (I'm anticipating a major next day hangover.)


.

digby 10/12/2012 04:30:00 PM

 
Banker who stabbed cabbie gets charges dropped at last minute

by David Atkins

The law only applies to the little people:

Charges against William Bryan Jennings, the former Morgan Stanley (MS) U.S. bond-underwriting chief accused of stabbing a New York cab driver over a fare, will be dropped, police said.

“I’m aware that the charges are being dropped,” Detective Chester Perkowski of the Darien, Connecticut, police department said today in an interview. He declined to comment further.

Jennings was accused of attacking the driver, Mohamed Ammar, on Dec. 22 with a 2 1/2-inch blade after a 40-mile (64 kilometer) ride from New York to the banker’s $3.4 million home in Darien. Ammar, a native of Egypt and a U.S. citizen, said Jennings told him, “I’m going to kill you. You should go back to your country,” according to a police report.

Jennings faced assault and hate-crime charges, each of which brings a maximum sentence of five years in prison. He was also charged with not paying the fare, a misdemeanor. He pleaded not guilty March 9.

Eugene Riccio, Jennings’s attorney, wouldn’t confirm that the case had been abandoned.

“All I’m saying is we’re showing up,” he said today in a phone interview. “We have a court date Monday, and we’re going to be there.”

Jennings car service didn't show up after a Christmas party, so he hailed a cab. Jennings says the cab driver agreed to a $204 fare, but the driver asked for $294. Jennings also claims the cab driver changed his story.

It's possible the police are dropping the charges because the driver's testimony wouldn't be considered trustworthy by jurors. But it's also extremely likely that a poor person without good lawyers who had pulled this stunt would be getting the maximum sentence.

A rich banker confronting a cab driver over a fare dispute, attacking him over it after a Christmas party, and then getting the charges dropped at the last minute, is pretty much a microcosm of criminal and economic justice in this country today.


.
thereisnospoon 10/12/2012 03:00:00 PM

 
Does Obama still think his Grand Bargain was smart politics?

by digby


My friend DebCoop reminded me of this interview by Jonathan Singer with then Senator Obama back in 2007:

I asked Obama why he would use the word "crisis", particularly given the fact that the Social Security trust fund will not run out until 2042 or 2052 (depending on who is doing the analysis), and that even then the program will provide greater benefits than it does today, even accounting for inflation.

Barack Obama: I think the point your making is why talk about it right now. Is that right?

Jonathan Singer: Yeah. And why use the term "crisis"?

Obama: It is a long-term problem. I know that people, including you, are very sensitive to the concern that we repeat anything that sounds like George Bush. But I have been very clear in fighting privatization. I have been adamant about the fact that I am opposed to it. What I believe is that it is a long-term problem that we should deal with now. And the sooner the deal with it then the better off it's going to be.

So the notion that somehow because George Bush was trying to drum up fear in order to execute [his] agenda means that Democrats shouldn't talk about it at all I think is a mistake. This is part of what I meant when I said we're constantly reacting to the other side instead of setting our own terms for the debate, but also making sure we are honest and straight forward about the issues that we're concerned about.

By the time he was inaugurated he "set his own terms" by folding this "long term problem" into his Grandiose Bargain:

I asked the president-elect, "At the end of the day, are you really talking about over the course of your presidency some kind of grand bargain? That you have tax reform, healthcare reform, entitlement reform including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice something, accept change for the greater good?"

"Yes," Obama said.

"And when will that get done?" I asked.

"Well, right now, I’m focused on a pretty heavy lift, which is making sure we get that reinvestment and recovery package in place. But what you described is exactly what we’re going to have to do. What we have to do is to take a look at our structural deficit, how are we paying for government? What are we getting for it? And how do we make the system more efficient?"

"And eventually sacrifice from everyone?" I asked.

"Everybody’s going to have to give. Everybody’s going to have to have some skin in the game," Obama said.

A month later they convened the fiscal summit and out Pete Peterson's BFF David Walker was all signed on to the new "terms":

WALKER: You touched on the remarks on the balance sheet. As a former controller, we are $11 trillion in the hole on the balance sheet and the problem's not the balance sheet. It is off balance sheet. $45 trillion in unfunded obligations. You mentioned in January about the need to achieve a Grand Bargain involving budget process, social security, taxes, health care reform. You're 110% right to do that. Question is, how do we do it?

Candidly, I think it takes an extraordinary process that engages the American people, provides for fast track consideration and with your leadership that can happen. But that's what it's going to take.

OBAMA: Okay. Well, I appreciate that. Again, when we distribute the notes coming out of the task forces, I want to make sure that people are responding both in terms of substance and in terms of process. Because we're going need both in order to make some progress on this.

I only bring this up to emphasize, once again, that this desire for a "comprehensive" solution to the "structural deficit" (and every other possible problem for the next 50 years) did not originate with the Republicans. That was the President's vision. And the fact is that the Republicans eagerly signed on. The only real difference between them is the president's insistence that "the rich pay a little bit more."

Somebody should ask the President if, after everything that's happened, he still believes that was a smart political move --- and if he still thinks he's having this debate on his own terms.



.




digby 10/12/2012 01:30:00 PM

 
When candidates go wild

by digby

From the land of fruits and nuts:

Naturally, they're both incumbent Democrats fighting for a newly drawn district in California's new "top-two" election law that can pit members of the same Party against each other in the general election. But who knows? Someday they might even be as aggressive against a Republican.


.
digby 10/12/2012 12:00:00 PM

 
Master Debaters

by digby

I've been struggling to come up with something interesting to say about last night's debate, but I've got nothing. It was fun to watch because I hate Paul Ryan and I enjoyed the contempt and incredulity Biden showed him and his word salad. (Why people assume this guy speaks inscrutably because he has a deep command of the facts eludes me.) What's not to like?

The Republicans are predictably having a case of the vapors over that horrible Joe Biden's terrible manners, which is hilarious from the people who had no problem with Newt Gingrich browbeating the moderators to their faces or audience members screaming out "yeah!" when Wolf Blitzer asking if people who don't have insurance should die. To hear them go on today, fainting couches have sold out all over the country.

I have one little piece of advice for what these delicate Republicans should do when confronted with a Democrat who behaves aggressively:

I thought Raddatz was much better than Lehrer, but so what? She ended the debate with a couple of vapid questions that would have made Barbara Walters cringe. The one asking about these two middle aged men's feeling on abortion from a personal perspective really floored me. Ryan took her seriously and talked about his experience looking at an ultrasound and said that his opposition to abortion stemmed from the "scientific" observation of the "bean" in his wife's uterus as much as his Catholic religion. Wow.

Naturally, he is also far more concerned with an employer's freedom to impose his religious views on his employees than individual workers' freedom to use their compensation and benefits in any way they see fit. He is a Randian through and through and the parasites must be controlled.

Biden gave a good answer, which is the one that most liberal Catholics give, namely that he personally follows his Catholic religion's edicts but doesn't believe he should inflict his religious views on others. The "pro-choice" camp includes many people like him. It would be very nice if the President could make the case on the basis of liberty and personal autonomy, but I'm not holding my breath.

Ryan concluded his statement with this:

We don't think that unelected judges should make this decision; that people through their elected representatives in reaching a consensus in society through the democratic process should make this determination.

Right. Women's neighbors, bosses and state legislators are the ones who should decide when and if she has children. For all of you states' rightists out there who think that basic human rights should be dependent on the superstitions and beliefs of the people who live between arbitrary lines on a map, this will be good news.

Me, I'm just an old fashioned American who believes the individual is far better placed to make such personal and intimate decisions.


As for the rest of the debate, I agree with what C.A. Rottwang writes in an email:

I thought Biden forced some key admissions that ought to have some sustained impact on the campaign. These of course are preserved for all to see:

Romney/Ryan are warlike. They are soft on getting out of Afghanistan, eager to involve the U.S. in risky adventures in Iran and Syria. Relatively speaking, Biden was the peace candidate in a national political climate that is tired of the pushes in the ME.

R/R are ready to outlaw abortion. As others have said, this could have been hammered a bit more, but it's out there.

R/R are hypocrites on spending and the deficit (WI earmarks, votes for wars, Medicare Part D).

R/R have now established their refusal to specify a tax plan as a principle. I think the D's should say they simply have no plan. There is no there there.

R/R are the party that has always hated Medicare and SS, and still want to privatize it. Ryan did not back down from the latter, toxic formulation.

That last is extremely important, I think. And Biden summarized it very well: "Folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this?" Anyone over the age of 40 knows that the Republicans want to privatize Social Security and Medicare. They know this because they've proposed it over and over again. Appealing to gut-level common sense on this is very smart politics.

.
digby 10/12/2012 10:30:00 AM

 
Multiple Choice

by tristero

A man takes a knife and deliberately slices away part of a newborn child's penis. Then he bends over and sucks the blood from the wound with his mouth.

This man is:

A A psychopathic pedophile

B A member in good standing of the Taliban

C An ignorant tribal leader practicing an ancient rural custom

D All of the above

Answer:

None of the above. He's an American.  As a result of this abuse - oh, excuse me, I meant to type "religious ritual" - eleven babies contracted herpes last year and two of them died. 

Something to remember when arguing that insert name of country or religion you hold a grudge against here uniquely encourages violence and brutality.


.

tristero 10/12/2012 09:00:00 AM

 
Debates become a machismo contest in a fact-free environment

by David Atkins

The reviews are in: Joe Biden cleaned Paul Ryan's clock last night in the Vice-Presidential debate. It's unclear just what the impact of that might be for the election, but there's no question that Biden's performance lifted progressive spirits while potentially moving undecided voters, among whom Biden won the debate across many polls.

Those on the left would like to believe that it was Biden's command of the facts and figures that won the day. But that would probably be putting too much faith in the undecided voter, who largely has no idea what the facts are. More likely, it was Biden's commanding personal presence on the stage that did more to sway the debate, just as Romney's display of alpha-dog confidence won him the first debate despite being as devoid of substance as he was full of lies and evasion. In a sense, the two debates were mirror opposites of each other in that polls afterward showed that the loser of each debate (Obama and Ryan) came across as more likeable. But that didn't help their cause.

This isn't always the case. In a reasoned and grounded debate, it's often the more charming yet gaffe-free candidate who winds up the "winner." But these aren't your parents' debates. Romney and Ryan lie so effortlessly and breathlessly that it's difficult to even have a conversation with them, but less a debate. Witness this extraordinary catalog of debate lies from Romney, for instance:



The moderator can only do so much to help with this. Jim Lehrer was totally useless. Martha Raddatz did a much better job, but Ryan still lied and evaded at every turn, making a productive conversation between the two candidates practically impossible.

And that's a big problem. When debaters can't even argue from a single set of facts, the argument ceases to be a debate and becomes a pissing contest instead, with each interlocutor interrupting and shouting the other down. Respect is impossible to maintain. With a female politician the negative effects of this are mitigated somewhat thanks to sexist cultural expectations. But especially in a debate between two men, when factual ground rules disappear the contest goes almost entirely to the alpha dog with the bigger bite, louder bark and broader grin.

Yes, Biden had greater command of the facts, better moral values and greater empathy. But that's not why he won.

And that's a bad sign for our democracy.


.
thereisnospoon 10/12/2012 07:30:00 AM

Thursday, October 11, 2012

 
Paul Ryan: Beck fan and Randroid

by digby

And 80's sitcom star!

In honor of the debate I'm just going to run my favorite Paul Ryan interview with Glenn Beck:

GLENN BECK: Nice to meet you, sir. Tell me, tell me your thoughts on progressivism.

PAUL RYAN: Right. What I have been trying to do, and if you read the entire Oklahoma speech or read my speech to Hillsdale College that they put in there on Primus Magazine, you can get them on my Facebook page, what I've been trying to do is indict the entire vision of progressivism because I see progressivism as the source, the intellectual source for the big government problems that are plaguing us today and so to me it's really important to flush progressives out into the field of open debate.

GLENN: I love you.

PAUL RYAN: So people can actually see what this ideology means and where it's going to lead us and how it attacks the American idea.

GLENN: Okay. Hang on just a second. I ‑‑ did you see my speech at CPAC?

PAUL RYAN: I've read it. I didn't see it. I've read it, a transcript of it.

GLENN: And I think we're saying the same thing. I call it ‑‑

PAUL RYAN: We are saying the same thing.

GLENN: It's a cancer.

PAUL RYAN: Exactly. Look, I come from ‑‑ I'm calling you from Janesville, Wisconsin where I'm born and raised.

GLENN: Holy cow.

PAUL RYAN: Where we raise our family, 35 miles from Madison. I grew up hearing about this stuff. This stuff came from these German intellectuals to Madison‑University of Wisconsin and sort of out there from the beginning of the last century. So this is something we are familiar with where I come from. It never sat right with me. And as I grew up, I learned more about the founders and reading the Austrians and others that this is really a cancer because it basically takes the notion that our rights come from God and nature and turns it on its head and says, no, no, no, no, no, they come from government, and we here in government are here to give you your rights and therefore ration, redistribute and regulate your rights. It's a complete affront of the whole idea of this country and that is to me what we as conservatives, or classical liberals if you want to get technical.

GLENN: Thank you.

He sounds just like the Ayn Rand acolytes I used to debate back in the early days of Usenet. They all turned out to be teenagers in real life.


And wouldn't it be nice if this man were retired from politics altogether? You can help by donating to his congressional opponent Rob Zerban, here.

.
digby 10/11/2012 05:30:00 PM

 
The question of abortion is "simpler" than they think

by digby

Here's another interesting highlight from an interview for the Frontline Choice 2012 program. This one is with Lawrence Tribe, who has known Obama very well since his earliest days at Harvard Law:

Q: Let's go backward just for a second, but I think it informs everything that we've said now. When you were working on the abortion -- was it a book?

It was a book called Abortion: The Clash of Absolutes.

Q: He emerges as centrist, trying to figure it out in a way -- I don't need to put words to it. You can.

It was a book that I cared a great deal about. I believe and believed then -- still believe -- that women need to be able to control their lives and their bodies if they are to be fully equal citizens. On the other hand, I have enormous sympathy for those who think of the helpless unborn as an entity with rights of its own and who find abortion a tragic choice.

And Barack Obama and I, I think, were on the same wavelength in recognizing that there is this important clash of values. It's not simple. And indeed the reasons that people come out one way or the other on this impossible clash of absolutes, those reasons have to do with their comfort or discomfort with modernity, with what is happening to society, with the role of women, but with also the marginalized role of cultural minorities who have views that others mock and don't take seriously.

So it was a struggle, and it was a wonderful project to work with him on, because he saw all sides. He was interested in not necessarily finding a point in the middle of the spectrum, but in finding a line that was sort of perpendicular to the normal access of disagreement, ways of coming to terms. We wouldn't necessarily agree, one side and the other, and we wouldn't each of us individually see ourselves necessarily as on one side or the other of that clash.

But we could find ways of making abortion less necessary, making less people feel desperate enough to feel that they had to end a pregnancy, making contraception more available, making education more widely available, making adoption a more realistic option. And working with him on that clash and on how to resolve it, not find a midpoint but ways of getting beyond it, was a way of seeing a very interesting and all-encompassing mind at work. ...

Notice the assumptions in all that --- that abortions are only "necessary" if women feel desperate or are uneducated or simply can't find a good way to put their children up for adoption. As if the millions and millions of American women who have abortions year after year just need some "services" that will make it so they will be happy to go through pregnancy and childbirth regardless of the circumstances in their own lives at the time or the emotional difficulty of then giving up their own offspring for someone else to raise. (Do these people think that's easy to do if only you have the right phone numbers?)

I know this is Tribe talking and not Obama and I'm not attributing those thoughts to him because of that. But I assume that Tribe does have some insight into the way the President reasons and this doesn't sound all that different from the post-partisan POV he came into office with (combined with the typical technocrat's faith in problem solving by the numbers.) The fallacy, of course, is that these answers would ever fully satisfy the anti-abortion people unless one also agreed to ban the practice. Did they not understand this?

This issue will never be "solved" at least not that way. There will always be unintended pregnancies. That is a function of being human. And there will always be abortion. There always has been. Some people do not agree that women should have the right to do that and they will agitate to outlaw it. But it will not prevent it. Because women do own their own bodies and direct their own lives and some of them will go to extreme lengths to maintain that autonomy, even if it means putting their health and lives in danger. We have centuries of data supporting this.

So when a couple of elite males decide that they will find some sweet spot that will make these women happy as well as those who don't think these women should have the right to make that choice, it's an infuriating denial of women's basic human agency. It is simple. Women are going to have abortions, full stop. The only question is whether or not they are going to be forced to go through hell and possibly die to get them --- and whether society is going to admit that it cannot and should not make that decision for them. Once you accept that reality, the rest is just talk. If religious leaders want to counsel their adherents not to do it, fine. If politicians want to lecture the public that it's wrong, fine. If they want to create programs to help women get access to birth control and afford to raise kids if they want them and all the rest, terrific. If you care about your fellow humans, you should want all of that. But the right to abortion is a fundamental human right and the necessity of it being safe, legal and available is a requirement for a decent society.

The common behavior of everyday women from all walks of life proves that this is a simple question:

INCIDENCE OF ABORTION

• Nearly half of pregnancies among American women are unintended, and about four in 10 of these are terminated by abortion. Twenty-two percent of all pregnancies (excluding miscarriages) end in abortion.

• Forty percent of pregnancies among white women, 67% among blacks and 53% among Hispanics are unintended. • In 2008, 1.21 million abortions were performed, down from 1.31 million in 2000. However, between 2005 and 2008, the long-term decline in abortions stalled. From 1973 through 2008, nearly 50 million legal abortions occurred.

• Each year, two percent of women aged 15–44 have an abortion. Half have had at least one previous abortion.

• At least half of American women will experience an unintended pregnancy by age 45, and, at current rates, one in 10 women will have an abortion by age 20, one in four by age 30 and three in 10 by age 45.

• Eighteen percent of U.S. women obtaining abortions are teenagers; those aged 15–17 obtain 6% of all abortions, teens aged 18–19 obtain 11%, and teens younger than age 15 obtain 0.4%.

• Women in their 20s account for more than half of all abortions; women aged 20–24 obtain 33% of all abortions, and women aged 25–29 obtain 24%.[6]

• Non-Hispanic white women account for 36% of abortions, non-Hispanic black women for 30%, Hispanic women for 25% and women of other races for 9%.

• Thirty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions identify as Protestant and 28% as Catholic.

• Women who have never married and are not cohabiting account for 45% of all abortions

• About 61% of abortions are obtained by women who have one or more children.

• Forty-two percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes below 100% of the federal poverty level ($10,830 for a single woman with no children).

• Twenty-seven percent of women obtaining abortions have incomes between 100–199% of the federal poverty level.*

• The reasons women give for having an abortion underscore their understanding of the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Three-fourths of women cite concern for or responsibility to other individuals; three-fourths say they cannot afford a child; three-fourths say that having a baby would interfere with work, school or the ability to care for dependents; and half say they do not want to be a single parent or are having problems with their husband or partner.

Those numbers tell the story. Unless you want forced contraception, full sexual control or a Handmaid's Tale society it's going to happen.


.
digby 10/11/2012 04:31:00 PM

 
People don't think corporations are people

by David Atkins

With all the politician-vs-politicians poll numbers flying around, it's important to remember that when it comes to most policy questions, Americans are decidedly progressive. That goes especially for core questions of economic law and justice, including the question of corporate personhood. Per a PPP poll of conservative-leaning Montana:

Montana's 'corporations are not people' amendment continues to lead for passage. 52% of voters say they will support it to 22% who are opposed. Democrats (71/12) and independents (59/17) overwhelmingly support it, while Republicans (28/35) are slightly opposed.

Even 28% of Republicans don't think corporations are people. They do seem comfortable voting for corporate shills, though. Closing that gap is the core task ahead of Democrats and progressives.


.
thereisnospoon 10/11/2012 02:55:00 PM

 
How the world works in Romney's bubble

by digby

Once again, Mitt says everybody in America has hunky dory health care even if they don't have insurance:

“We don’t have a setting across this country where if you don’t have insurance, we just say to you, ‘Tough luck, you’re going to die when you have your heart attack,’  ” he said as he offered more hints as to what he would put in place of “Obamacare,” which he has pledged to repeal.

“No, you go to the hospital, you get treated, you get care, and it’s paid for, either by charity, the government or by the hospital. We don’t have people that become ill, who die in their apartment because they don’t have insurance.”
He pointed out that federal law requires hospitals to treat those without health insurance — although hospital officials frequently say that drives up health-care costs.

Uhm:

Sunday, May 20, 2007


The Best Health Care System In The World

by digby

Tale of last 90 minutes of woman's life

In the emergency room at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital, Edith Isabel Rodriguez was seen as a complainer.

"Thanks a lot, officers," an emergency room nurse told Los Angeles County police who brought in Rodriguez early May 9 after finding her in front of the Willowbrook hospital yelling for help. "This is her third time here."

The 43-year-old mother of three had been released from the emergency room hours earlier, her third visit in three days for abdominal pain. She'd been given prescription medication and a doctor's appointment.

Turning to Rodriguez, the nurse said, "You have already been seen, and there is nothing we can do," according to a report by the county office of public safety, which provides security at the hospital.

Parked in the emergency room lobby in a wheelchair after police left, she fell to the floor. She lay on the linoleum, writhing in pain, for 45 minutes, as staffers worked at their desks and numerous patients looked on.

Aside from one patient who briefly checked on her condition, no one helped her. A janitor cleaned the floor around her as if she were a piece of furniture. A closed-circuit camera captured everyone's apparent indifference.

Arriving to find Rodriguez on the floor, her boyfriend unsuccessfully tried to enlist help from the medical staff and county police — even a 911 dispatcher, who balked at sending rescuers to a hospital.

Alerted to the "disturbance" in the lobby, police stepped in — by running Rodriguez's record. They found an outstanding warrant and prepared to take her to jail. She died before she could be put into a squad car.

[...]

The story of Rodriguez's demise began at 12:34 a.m. when two county police officers received a radio call of a "female down" and yelling for help near the front entrance of King-Harbor, according to the police report.

When they approached Rodriguez to ask what was wrong, she responded in a "loud and belligerent voice that her stomach was hurting," the report states. She said she had 10 gallstones and that one of them had burst.

A staff member summoned by the police arrived with a wheelchair and rolled her into the emergency room. Among her belongings, one officer found her latest discharge slip from the hospital, which instructed her to "return to ER if nausea, vomit, more pain or any worse."

When the officers talked to the emergency room nurse, she "did not show any concern" for Rodriguez, the police report said. The report identifies the nurse as Linda Witland, but county officials confirmed that her name is Linda Ruttlen, who began working for the county in July 1992.

Ruttlen could not be reached for comment.

During that initial discussion with Ruttlen, Rodriguez slipped off her wheelchair onto the floor and curled into a fetal position, screaming in pain, the report said.

Ruttlen told her to "get off the floor and onto a chair," the police report said. Two officers and a different nurse helped her back to the wheelchair and brought her close to the reception counter, where a staff member asked her to remain seated.

The officers left and Rodriguez again pitched forward onto the floor, apparently unable to get up, according to people who saw the videotape and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Because the tape does not have sound, it is not possible to determine whether Rodriguez was screaming or what she was saying, the viewers said. Because of the camera's angle, in most scenes, she is but a grainy blob, sometimes obstructed, moving around on the floor.

When Rodriguez's boyfriend, Jose Prado, returned to the hospital after an errand and saw her on the floor, he alerted nurses and then called 911.

According to Sheriff's Capt. Ray Peavy, the dispatcher said, "Look, sir, it indicates you're already in a hospital setting. We cannot send emergency equipment out there to take you to a hospital you're already at."

Prado then knocked on the door of the county police, near the emergency room, and said, "My girlfriend needs help and they don't want to help her," according to the police report. A sergeant told him to consult the medical staff, the report said. Minutes later, Prado came back to the sergeant and said, "They don't want to help her." Again, he was told to see the medical staff.

Within minutes, police began taking Rodriguez into custody. When they told Prado that there was a warrant for Rodriguez's arrest, he asked if she would get medical care wherever she was taken. They assured him that she would. He then kissed her and left, the police report said.

She was wheeled to the patrol vehicle and the door was opened so that she could get into the back. When officers asked her to get up, she did not respond. An officer tried to revive her with an ammonia inhalant, then checked for a pulse and found none. She died in the emergency room after resuscitation efforts failed.

According to preliminary coroner's findings, the cause was a perforated large bowel, which caused an infection. Experts say the condition can bring about death fairly suddenly.

You might think that it was just this one hospital or an isolated incident, but you'd be wrong:

A paraplegic man wearing a soiled hospital gown and a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in a gutter in skid row in Los Angeles on Thursday after allegedly being dumped in the street by a Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center van, police said.

The incident, witnessed by more than two dozen people, was described by police as a particularly outrageous case of "homeless dumping" that has plagued the downtown area.

"I can't think of anything colder than that," said LAPD Det. Russ Long, who called the case the most egregious of its kind that he has seen in his career. "There was no mission around, no services. It's the worst area of skid row."

You know the old saying, "as California goes, so goes the nation?" The health care system in Los Angeles is broken and it's an exciting preview of what's coming to your town next if something isn't done. The population of uninsured is huge here and growing and the hospital system is so strapped that only the richest facilities offer halfway decent care. Get ready America.

If people can live with this, which many can I'm sure, then no problem. Just let paraplegics die in the gutter and women with perforated bowels writhe around in pain on the floor of emergency rooms because people are so hardened that they really don't give a damn anymore. I guess we can all just cross our fingers and hope we get rich and stay very, very lucky so it doesn't happen to us. After all, if worse comes to worse we could win the lottery. (Oh never mind, the Governor wants to "lease" the lottery to private interests so that he can cover his ass long enough to get out of office before the entire state budget blows up.)

The good news is that the one thing we can always rely upon is the warm compassionate conservatives who are very, very religious people and hold some things sacred above all others: the rich shalt never, ever have to pay their fair share of taxes and fetuses and blastocysts shall be protected above living human beings. This is what's known as "the culture 'o life." I do believe it was Jesus who said, "if you aren't entrepreneurial enough to go online and comparison shop for the best emergency room you deserve to be dumped in a gutter to die." Or maybe it was Newt Gingrich. It's so hard to tell the difference.

digby 10/11/2012 01:30:00 PM

 
Poll of pundits

by digby

The Daily Show on polling addiction:

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

"The CNN instapoll poll is polling well among pundits who no longer give a shit."

"That's got to be a big demographic."

"That is the the biggest demographic."

Out of the mouths of babes. (Well, I think Stewart and Jones are babes anyway...)


.
digby 10/11/2012 12:00:00 PM

 
What the tweakers have in mind for you

by digby

Here is a good piece on the Democrats' emerging position on Social Security and what it will meant to you if it happens. The whole thing is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight this one section on the "tweaks":

So how big are these so-called "tweaks"? Let's take them one at a time, keeping in mind that the average monthly retirement benefit under Social Security is $1,230, and most people have little or no other income in retirement. For single persons who do not own homes, benefits are 92 percent of net worth. Hello old people living alone in rental housing, we need you to tighten your belts!

1. Benefits are determined by applying cost-of-living changes to a worker's wages. Explaining exactly how here is boring and unnecessary. All you have to know is that a small change in a factor applied over many years adds up to a big change at the end. Imagine you received a gift of $1,000 at age 21, and you bought some kind of asset that accumulated interest indefinitely. If you made three percent interest after taxes, after 30 years you have $2,427. But suppose it is only two and a half percent? Doesn't sound like much, right? It's only half a percent. After 30 years you have $2,098, a fourteen percent reduction. Imagine living frugally, then needing another fourteen percent of frugal.

Proposals for reduced cost-of-living adjustments, sometimes referred to as a "diet COLA" by people whose own well-being will be unaffected, will be accompanied by arcane commentary to the effect that the factors currently in use are overstated. This commentary will be provided by economists cherry-picked for their advocacy of this view, and we will be told that "all economists" agree, which will of course be a lie. (See Dean Baker's Getting Prices Right: The Debate over the Accuracy of the Consumer Price Index.) And by the way, none of this discourse confronts the likelihood that prices of the things purchased by the elderly do not grow at the same rate as those for the population as a whole.

2. The second favored tweak is an increase in the retirement age. This reform is designed by people who work sitting on their ass. Now your humble correspondent plans to work until age 70, perhaps well over possible retirement age increases. But I'm sitting on my ass too. If I had to pick up Mitt Romney's garbage, I might look forward to an earlier retirement. In fact, I might positively require it. Distinguishing between me and the sanitation worker in practice would entail a complex and error-ridden bureaucratic process, and the current administration of Social Security and Medicare already leaves much to be desired. Try calling them some time. It's fun!

An increase in the retirement age might not look like much to someone just starting out, but it will look quite different to people in their 50's who do not find joy in their daily work. Moreover, a later retirement means less benefits. After all, retiring later doesn't mean you get to die later. A higher retirement age is a benefit cut. How big a cut, you will ask. But first, there is an additional malignant feature of this device: It has a bigger negative impact, the lower one's income. The reason is that those with lower income have shorter life spans on average, so their years of retirement benefits are reduced by a higher proportion than those with higher income. So it is unnecessary and unfair to boot.

It has been estimated that for the lowest 20 percent of couples, their wealth is reduced by 18 percent. The highest comparable income group has a reduction of eight percent. Any higher taxes on the rich or battery plants in Michigan will be cold comfort to those in benighted circumstances absorbing a retirement age tweak.

3. The third celebrated tweak is described as means-testing, which means reducing benefits for those with higher income. First we get regaled with tales of millionaires receiving needless benefits. The problem is that the definition of "rich" undergoes a dramatic transformation, between this sort of propaganda and actual proposals. The reason is that eliminating benefits of the really rich has a negligible effect on total program expenses. So "on Social Security rich" is going to be much less than "rich in the eyes of any fool."

We might note that Social Security is already means-tested -- benefits for those with higher incomes are taxed. If we were absolutely compelled to means-test, the income tax would be the logical tool, since it takes into account family size, other income, dependents, etc. Done on the Social Security side, however, means-testing benefits (= taxing benefits more) is a crude method of economizing. You all can guess why the income tax will not be used for means-testing. Don't make me do all the work here, people.

A long-standing objection to means-testing is political. By increasing the extent of means-testing, the program's universality is diminished and its political support weakened. Universal in this context means there is some systematic relationship between what you pay and what you get, hence the "insurance" part of the general designation "social insurance." Means-testing weakens the link between contributions and benefits. It increases the number of higher income persons who would just as soon have no program at all, since their accumulated foregone payroll taxes would exceed their benefits under the program. The political fallout would magnify the nascent over/under 55 conflict noted previously.

The bottom line is that for the majority of retirees with little or no savings, a benefit tweak IS a slash in benefits.

Keep in mind that this is likely to be done while snowing you into believing that it's "shared sacrifice" because oil companies could be required to end some superfluous subsidies and wealthy people will be "asked to pay a little bit more." You are supposed to feel good about this because "we're all in it together." Except, of course, that's nonsense. The wealthy will feel nothing, will suffer not at all, will not even know it happened. Their lives will go on completely unchanged. And possibly the upper middle class will make some minor adjustment and carry on unscathed as well, assuming they aren't unlucky enough to have a catastrophic illness or some bad luck that makes them lose their financial security. (Keep your fingers crossed, suburban professionals!)

But it will make a difference for the majority of Americans who struggle through life paying their taxes, working at average or low paying jobs and who, for a variety of reasons (mostly because they don't get paid enough money) are unable to save much for their retirement. Those people are going to hurt. A lot. Especially as they get really old.

I certainly hope that you aren't one of them. But unless you are lucky enough to be born to Mitt and Ann Romney and he's leaving his massive tax free "401K" to you, it's a crapshoot. I never planned on being poor in my old age. But it turns out that life throws a lot of curve balls at you and you can't always predict where you're going to be when you're in your 50s and 60s --- or where the economy will be. Plenty of people lost their nest eggs in this recession --- and once you hit a certain age, you don't have time to make it back.

Social Security is all that keeps millions and millions of people from living in abject poverty:

And, by the way, women are particularly impacted:

Because women tend to earn less than men, take more time out of the paid workforce, live longer, accumulate less savings, and receive smaller pensions, Social Security is especially important for them. Women constitute 56 percent of Social Security beneficiaries aged 62 and older and 68 percent of beneficiaries aged 85 and older.

Women pay 40 percent of Social Security payroll taxes but receive 49 percent of Social Security benefits. This is because women benefit disproportionately from the program’s inflation-protected benefits (because women tend to live longer), its progressive formula for computing benefits (because they tend to have lower earnings), and its benefits for non-working spouses and survivors.

Not that we weren't working, mind you. We just didn't get paid a fair wage --- and still don't today! But hey, we're greedy geezers just the same, right?

.
digby 10/11/2012 10:30:00 AM

 
If only life were like this

by digby

Oh wait ... it is!

Naturally, the political press in Australia is pooh-poohing this. her cabinet is in the midst of a bunch of scandals and she's unpopular for a variety of reasons. This is a typical reaction:

"Australians have been listening to this squabbling for the past two or three years and it just goes from one topic of squabbling to another topic of squabbling," said John Wanna, a politics academic at the Australian National University.

You put in bitch in charge and that's bound to happen, amirite?

I don't have an opinion on her politics or her government's efficacy. All I know is that I feel goodthis morning having listened to that speech. Better than I've felt in months, if you want to know the truth. Maybe people don't want to hear a powerful woman confronting a smug, sexist hypocrite head on like that, but goddamn it needed to be said by somebody. Bravo.

.

digby 10/11/2012 09:00:00 AM