Month: March 2010

Phobic

by digby

He’s obviously a germophobe so I’ll try to dredge up a little sympathy. But there is no earthly excuse for his bad manners:

h/t Atrios

Claude Rains Award Of The Day

by digby

Who me?

Danville Tea Party leader Nigel Coleman was one of the two activists who posted Bo Perriello’s address online Monday.

“This is Rep. Thomas Stuart Price Perriello’s home address,” Coleman wrote Monday. “… I ain’t holding back anymore!!”

According to the Politico Web site, when Coleman learned that the address actually belonged to the congressman’s brother, he responded on a blog: “Do you mean I posted his brother’s address on my Facebook? Oh well, collateral damage.”

Coleman told The Daily Progress today that he is “shocked” and “almost speechless” at the possibility that someone would sever the propane line to Perriello’s brother’s house.

“I obviously condemn these actions,” he said. “I would hope that people aren’t thinking about doing anything crazy. We just wanted people to get close to the congressman and have their voices heard. Violence is not going to answer anything. I’m a little shocked and amazed.”

Coleman added that he is not certain that the incident is related to the posting of the home’s address. “Of course, we don’t know this is a related event,” he said.

BTW: Dday makes a brilliant observation. Periello is anti-choice as are others like Stupak and Steve Dreihaus, all of whom are enduring these threats from the teeabaggers:

I would say that Driehaus, an anti-choice Democrat who was among the last holdouts of the Stupak bloc, now knows what young women who seek a legal abortion go through when they have to endure threats and intimidation and shouts of “Murderer,” but that’s only tangential to my point. (He should think about it, though. Leadership matters.)

They should all think about it. And think about George Tiller too. The anti-choice people have been terrorizing women and clinic workers like this for decades.

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Now They Tell Us

by digby

CNNs Rick Sanchez was all confused about why so many people might suddenly be in favor of the HCR bill when they thought it was a bad idea before. Blitzer explains:

Well, you know, when people are asked, we did that poll CNN Opinion Research Poll, that said, “you like this health care bill or not like it”, we just assumed, a lot of us, that the people who said they didn’t like it didn’t like it because it was too much interference, or too much taxes or whatever.

But if you take a closer look at people who didn’t like it, about 12% of those people who said they didn’t like it they didn’t like it because they didn’t think it went far enough. They wanted a single payer option, they wanted the so-called public option, they didn’t like not from the right, they didn’t like it because it wasn’t left or liberal enough.

That’s how you got 50% of the American people who said, “we don’t like this plan.” But only about 40 or 38% were the ones who said it was too much government interference.

That’s so interesting, don’t you think? Maybe Blitzer should put something in the suggestion box about that.

All we’ve been hearing for months now is that the “American people” don’t like the bill because it’s a government takeover. The Republicans turned that into their entire rationale for opposition, claiming that the Democrats are going against “the will of the people” and somehow usurped the Democratic process. And here it turns out that it’s only the Republicans and a few conservative “independents”, 38% or so of the country, who think the bill is a government takeover.

That’s quite a different story don’t you think? One that might have been told before now by the news networks? It might have changed the whole damned debate, actually.

Blitzer admits that they just “assumed” that everyone in the country held this wingnut view. After all, the pictures showed a bunch of angry middle aged white people screaming about socialism, and they look like their perception of Real America, so why bother to drill down into the numbers any further?

This is a perfect example of the village advancing its narrative of a great conservative majority that doesn’t exist. It’s a pathology with these people.

Update: To be clear, I was aware of this. I wrote about it. The fact that Blitzer and the gang failed to make this clear to their audience is the problem. It may come as a surprise to people, but I don’t reach as many people as he does.

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Three Ring Binder Of Death

by digby

For your entertainment, my latest wingnut email. This one is written by that noted actuarial genius and political hit man, Dr Jerome Corsi, last seen destroying John Kerry’s reputation:

Think again if you believe Social Security will offer you a secure retirement.

Social Security may have irreversibly become a bankrupt Ponzi scheme. The
Associated Press disclosed the Social Security Administration has finally begun
trying to cash in the $2.5 trillion in IOUs the federal government has placed in
the Social Security “lock box.”

What is clear now is that Social Security has become a Ponzi scheme in which the
payroll taxes of those currently working are applied immediately to pay the
retirement benefits of those already receiving Social Security…

For decades, Congress has routinely raided the Social Security Trust Fund,
taking the cash and leaving behind IOUs in the form of Treasury bonds.

The problem is that with a $1.5 trillion budget deficit already projected by the
Obama administration, the only way Congress has to cash in the $2.5 trillion in
federal IOUs owed the Social Security Administration is to borrow yet more
money.

Curiously, the AP article pointed out the records of the Treasury debt in the
Social Security Trust Fund in a three-ring binder locked in the bottom drawer of
a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg, W.Va., offices of the Bureau of
Public Debt, a division of the Treasury Department.

The AP reported the Treasury Department opened the Parkersburg office in the
1950s as part of a plan to locate government functions outside Washington, D.C.,
to protect the federal government in case of a Cold War nuclear attack…

Huh? Here’s what the AP “reported” (in a nearly equally hysterical screed):

[T]o illustrate the government’s commitment to repaying Social Security, the Treasury Department has been issuing special bonds that earn interest for the retirement program. The bonds are unique because they are actually printed on paper, while other government bonds exist only in electronic form.

They are stored in a three-ring binder, locked in the bottom drawer of a white metal filing cabinet in the Parkersburg offices of Bureau of Public Debt. The agency, which is part of the Treasury Department, opened offices in Parkersburg in the 1950s as part of a plan to locate important government functions away from Washington, D.C., in case of an attack during the Cold War.

One bond is worth a little more than $15.1 billion and another is valued at just under $10.7 billion. In all, the agency has about $2.5 trillion in bonds, all backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government. But don’t bother trying to steal them; they’re nonnegotiable, which means they are worthless on the open market.

That article is nearly as incomprehensible as the wingnut email, which goes on to say that we are all going to be left dying in a ditch unless the government ends social security. ( Which will end up leaving old people dying in a ditch, but perhaps the invisible hand will lift them bodily into heaven so we don’t have to trip over them.) I won’t bother reprinting the rest of it because it’s like watching Glenn Beck and life is short.

But the scariest thing about it isn’t the fact that it’s wrong on nearly every detail. The scariest thing is that in terms of general narrative, it’s not much different than the stale conventional wisdom coming out of the NY Times yesterday:

Next Big Issue? Social Security Pops Up Again

WASHINGTON — Now that landmark legislation overhauling the health insurance system is about to become law, addressing Social Security’s solvency could well become the next big thing for President Obama and Congressional Democrats.

Central to the health care changes are hundreds of billions of dollars in reductions in Medicare spending over time and expansions of Medicaid. As some administration officials acknowledge, that effectively takes those fast-growing entitlement programs off the table for deficit reduction just as Mr. Obama’s bipartisan commission to reduce the mounting national debt gets to work.

That leaves Social Security, the other big entitlement benefits program and one that Mr. Obama has suggested in the past that he is willing to tackle. While its looming problems are not of the scale of those afflicting Medicare, it now stands as the likeliest source of the sort of large savings needed to bring projected annual deficits to sustainable levels, many budget analysts agree.

And, they say, packaging future reductions in the retirement program that Democrats zealously defend with tax increases that Republicans typically oppose would have the makings of a grand compromise to shrink the debt.

Ah yes, the Grand Bargain … now that’s scary.

But keep in mind:

The national debt — the amount of money the government owes its creditors — is about $12.5 trillion, or nearly $42,000 for every man, woman and child in the country. About $8 trillion has been borrowed in public debt markets, much of it from foreign creditors. The rest came from various government trust funds, including retirement funds for civil servants and the military. About $2.5 trillion is owed to Social Security.

Good luck to the politician who reneges on that debt, said Barbara Kennelly, a former Democratic congresswoman from Connecticut who is now president of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare.

“Those bonds are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States of America,” Kennelly said. “They’re as solid as what we owe China and Japan.”

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Comments

by digby

Working again…I think.

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Living In The Gipper’s Shadow

by digby

An awful lot of people think Hillary Clinton is a robot who doesn’t care about anything but herself. And maybe she is. Politicians are all enigmas to me. I don’t know about you, but this picture looks to me like someone who is sincerely happy that health care reform passed:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton congratulates President Barack Obama on the House vote to pass health care reform, prior to a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House, March 22, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

The truth is that, for good or ill, it wouldn’t have happened without the Clinton initiative that came before. I’d imagine that Teddy and Truman and Johnson and all the others who worked to pass a big health care bill would have been happy too. It’s a win for the team, if nothing else.

But it would seem that Democrats finally did something about the biggest economic problem our country faces:

For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.

Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.

Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.

Isn’t it pretty to think so? But I don’t actually believe there is a deliberate effort to end the age of Reagan or he wouldn’t have wasted so much time on the silly idea of post-partisanship. And the gentle dealings with the financial industry tell the tale on that. The beginnings of a reversal of income inequality that HCR represents is more a natural result of a large Democratic majority finally passing major legislation that’s been bottled up for decades, not the intent.

Still, this is a good beginning on a structural problem that has to be dealt with on every level:

A big chunk of the money to pay for the bill comes from lifting payroll taxes on households making more than $250,000. On average, the annual tax bill for households making more than $1 million a year will rise by $46,000 in 2013, according to the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research group. Another major piece of financing would cut Medicare subsidies for private insurers, ultimately affecting their executives and shareholders.

The benefits, meanwhile, flow mostly to households making less than four times the poverty level — $88,200 for a family of four people. Those without insurance in this group will become eligible to receive subsidies or to join Medicaid. (Many of the poor are already covered by Medicaid.) Insurance costs are also likely to drop for higher-income workers at small companies.

[…]

Since 1980, median real household income has risen less than 15 percent. The only period of strong middle-class income growth during this time came in the mid- and late 1990s, which by coincidence was also the one time when taxes on the affluent were rising.

For most of the last three decades, tax rates for the wealthy have been falling, while their pretax pay has been rising rapidly. Real incomes at the 99.99th percentile have jumped more than 300 percent since 1980. At the 99th percentile — about $300,000 today — real pay has roughly doubled.

That was a recipe for a banana republic — or a revolution. And if we define the age of Reagan in those terms then we can say that the Democrats have taken a useful step in ending that epoch of American self-destruction.

But there’s a long way to go. In addition to the epic temper tantrums we are seeing among Republicans, the Masters of the Universe are similarly overwrought:

Health Care Law Signals US Empire Decline?

The passage of the health care law shows that the US empire is declining because it illustrates the fact that people expect the state to take care of them, David Murrin, the co-founder of Emergent Asset Management hedge fund manager, told CNBC.

On Tuesday, US President Barack Obama signed into law health care legislation that expands health coverage for the poor, imposes new taxes on the rich and forbids insurance practices such as refusing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions.

In their expansionary phase, empires force people to go out, seek risks and fend for themselves, Murrin said, reminding of the dismantling of the British empire after the war, when the National Health Service, which ensures universal health coverage in Britain, was created.

“This (empire decline) is actually a dead-set course that societies get into and it will happen very quickly I’m afraid,” he told “Squawk Box Europe.”

Those are the guys who define the Age of Reagan. And until Obama and the Democrats figure out a way to make people understand that their problems aren’t going to be solved by enabling these people to continue to run amock, we’re still going to be living in the Gipper’s shadow.

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Playing Dirty

by digby

Bowers has a full rundown of the Senate reconciliation process. It’s going to be very ugly. There will be only Republican amendments. The Democrats will not be adding a public option. (Why they played the game of saying they might for the past few months is anybody’s guess…)

But here’s the real beaut:

Since Senate Democrats have pledged to vote against any and all amendments, the Republican strategy now focuses on getting Democrats to vote against things like denying Viagra to convicted sex offenders. The goal is to then use these votes for soundbites in attacks ads in November. Brian Beutler:

As the Senate gets closer to voting on a health care reconciliation bill, the Republican strategy to derail the Democrats’ plans is getting creative–and dirty. Their strategy is clear: with Democrats determined to pass a clean bill, Republicans will force them to vote down politically juiced-up amendments, and likely turn them into political ads meant to characterize Dems as sympathetic to sex offenders and fraudsters.

At this point, Republicans are just using the health reform bill as an organizing moment. They are list-building and preparing attack ads. However, Democrats have actually raised more money than Republicans since Sunday.

These are the same people who have been screaming about abusing the rules of the congress.

If people know and understand what they are doing only the veriest teabagger would approve. It’s juvenile and dishonest on a level that’s surprising even for the Republicans. The press has a huge responsibility to explain this right now and pound the point home. Let’s see if they do their jobs or if they are now bored with health care and want to go back to Tiger and Jesse James.

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Sticks And Stones

by digby

As these incidents are reported keep in mind that they say they are upset because these people voted for health care reform. Health care reform.:

Law enforcement authorities are investigating an incident that occurred at the Virginia home of Rep. Tom Perriello’s (D-Va.) brother, whose address was publicized by tea party activists angry at the congressman’s vote for the health care bill.

The FBI would not disclose the details of the incident, but said that they have been to the home.

“This is very preliminary at this point, so we’re not making any comment at this time,” local FBI spokesman M.A. Myers told POLITICO.

A spokesman for the Albemarle County Fire Marshal would not comment on whether they too are investigating the incident.

POLITICO reported on Monday that Mike Troxel, an organizer for the Lynchburg Tea Party, posted on his blog what he thought was the congressman’s address, encouraging tea party activists to “drop by.”

The address has since been posted on websites of at least one other local tea party activist.

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Who Says Republicans Don’t Have Great Ideas?

by tristero

From Scott Brown:

…before I’ve even settled into my new job, the political machine in Massachusetts is looking for someone to run against me. And you’re not going to believe who they are supposedly trying to recruit–liberal MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow.

Alas, like so many things that Republicans do and say, this one is completely unhinged from reality.

An Excellent Description Of The Difference

by tristero

Read this, It’s one of the best short descriptions of the way Republicans differ from the more sensible citizens of this country vis a vis economic issues. Succinct, elegant, and utterly damning:

The main political issue of our time isn’t whether markets are always right but whether they are always good. Adam Smith, in “The Wealth of Nations,” advocated free trade based on his theory that the market’s invisible hand would provide for the greater wealth of nations across the social spectrum. This moral vision was long ago abandoned by free marketeers in favor of another theory from the founding era: the inviolability of property rights. But we know that capitalism has historically followed a pattern of boom and bust, a cycle whose impact has been mitigated—in the spirit of Smith’s moral philosophy, and for economic conditions he could not have foreseen—by civic intervention, otherwise called government regulation and progressive taxation. This is the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans. Democrats tend to believe that, in the light of our long experience with boom and bust, fiscal policy should provide social and economic equity for the American people. Republicans seem to believe that fiscal policy should protect the acquisition of wealth, however skewed the distribution of wealth may become and however small the number of citizens protected. The difference is abundantly apparent in California today, where the Democratic legacy of equitable distribution of wealth, through public education especially, but also in many other areas, was long ago sacrificed on the altar of property rights in Proposition 13.

Dee E. Andrews
Professor of History
California State University, East Bay
San Francisco, Calif.

Professor Andrews, your students are lucky to have you.