Month: May 2010

Throwing Everything At The Wall

by digby

According to Republicans, this is government propaganda:

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted the Obama administration Tuesday over a color brochure promoting the benefits of the new health care law that is being mailed to Medicare recipients. The Kentucky Republican held up a copy of the four-page pamphlet from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services while delivering his morning floor remarks. He referred to the mailer as “nothing short of government propaganda paid for by the taxpayer.” McConnell charged the administration with hypocrisy given that it previously ordered private insurance companies to refrain from sending policyholders information that prompted skepticism of the new health care law. “Just yesterday, I came across a recent flier from the Department Health and Human Services that does the very thing the administration didn’t want private companies to do,” McConnell said, just two hours before President Barack Obama was scheduled to join Senate Republicans for lunch. “So this is a complete outrage, and it’s precisely the kind of thing Americans are so angry about at the moment.”

But this is not:

Sixteen years ago, House Republicans put together the “Contract With America” based on polls and focus groups. This year, House GOP leaders are launching the “America Speaking Out” project, in the hopes of crafting a new “contract” based on public feedback and interactive social media. The biggest difference, however, is that this time, American taxpayers are being asked to finance the partisan initiative. Republican officials will kick off the project with an event in D.C. this morning, and it’s been described, accurately, as an initiative intended to help the GOP craft “a set of policy items that Republicans would pursue if they won back control of the House in November.” When asked about this yesterday, GOP Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) was vague about financing. “‘America Speaking Out’ is not a project of the political” campaign arm, Pence said, reluctant to go into further detail. Now we know why. Republicans are claiming that the project will be kept separate from their campaign committees, and can therefore be financed by taxpayers.

This is going to be a seriously stupid campaign.

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Throwing The Tea Party A Bone

by digby

It will never be enough Cosmo, it will never be enough:

Sen. Scott Brown will vote against repealing ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ when it comes up for a vote Thursday in the Senate Armed Services Committee, dealing a blow to gay rights advocates who were hoping the freshman Republican would support efforts to permit gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military, The Globe’s Political Intelligence blog has learned. Brown’s highly anticipated decision, relayed minutes ago by his office, comes after President Obama and Democratic leaders struck a deal Monday night to overcome Pentagon resistance to changing the law before a top level review of how to implement a new policy is completed by Dec. 1. The deal, outlined in a letter to Congress from the White House Office of Management and Budget, stipulates that any congressional repeal would not go into effect until the Pentagon review is completed.

So, you know, it makes no sense. But whatever. Scott Brown has to show his teabag bonafides (something with which he has some very special professional experience) so he’s going to vote against the compromise. What a putz.

This compromise is welcome but it is far from settled and nobody should be sanguine until it’s done. You can get information here about how to get .involved Brown may be out but he isn’t the whole story.

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Here We Go Again

by digby

They just don’t give a damn:

This week Congress will consider legislation to reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for the rest of the year. It’s going to be an epic fight: Republicans in the Senate will likely do everything they can to stand in the way of a bill projected to add $123 billion to the deficit, forcing Dem leadership to round up a supermajority for a last-minute Friday vote before Congress adjourns for its Memorial Day recess. Too bad the jobs crisis, in a big way, has already left this bill in the dust. Hundreds of thousands of people have exhausted their extended unemployment benefits. In some states, laid-off workers can receive checks for 99 weeks — and that’s all they’re going to get. This bill isn’t for the “99ers” and there’s no proposal on deck to give them additional weeks of benefits. “What’s frustrating is that our government doesn’t seem to think this is an important issue,” said Christy Blake, a 35-year-old mother of two in Fruitland, Md. “We didn’t put ourselves here. It wasn’t our choice. I have been diligently looking for work.” Blake told HuffPost she received her last biweekly $618 unemployment check in February. She said she lost her job as an accounting associate with the city of Fruitland in September 2008 (jobless Marylanders can get 73 weeks of benefits). She said she’s three months behind on rent and has no idea how she’ll pay the $205.63 electric bill that came with a May 28 cutoff warning. She said she’s applied for jobs at Walmart, Target and McDonald’s without any luck. She has no idea what to do.

Apparently, DC has bought the noxious notion that people like Blake are all lazy liars:

Meanwhile, members of Congress are losing their appetite even for renewing existing benefits. Several members of the House and Senate have flirted with the idea that unemployment checks make people too lazy to look for work. Most recently, Rep. Kathy Dahlkemper (D-Pa.) told the Washington Post that businesses in her district wanted to start hiring but were getting few applicants because Congress had given the unemployed so many weeks of benefits. “Now, whether that’s true or not, I’m still trying to decipher,” said Dahlkemper. “But I think it’s something we really need to look at.”

Fergawdsake. I thought this guy was run out of town:

Yeah, these tens of millions of our fellow citizens are just a bunch of lazy asses who are living it up on 300 a week. There’s plenty of jobs, these people just refuse to work because they like all this cushy free money.

I just don’t know what to say about this. You have a 10% official unemployment rate which doesn’t count all those who never qualified (small business owners, independent contractors etc.) and it doesn’t count all those who have already fallen off the rolls. And yet politicians are buying this nonsense that there are plenty of jobs but people just won’t work? That’s completely ridiculous. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

I’ve been noticing an uptick in homelessness among people who don’t seem to have mental health or substance abuse problems. I guess living in your car and digging in trash cans is the new safety net. Plus it’s so much better than working.

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Anchors Away

by digby

We’ve been waiting for this to bubble up:

A Phoenix news station (KPHO) is reporting that the state Senator behind Arizona’s new immigration law, Russell Pierce (R), does not intend on stopping at SB-1070. In e-mails obtained by the local CBS affiliate, Pearce said he intends to push for an “anchor baby” bill that would essentially overturn the 14th amendment by no longer granting citizenship to the children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil. “Anchor babies” is a derogatory and “politically charged” term used to refer to the U.S. citizen children of undocumented parents. KPHO obtained a troubling email from one of Pierce’s constituents who is encouraging him to pursue the “anchor baby” legislation. KPHO reports:

One of the e-mails written by someone else but forwarded by Pearce reads: “If we are going to have an effect on the anchor baby racket, we need to target the mother. Call it sexist, but that’s the way nature made it. Men don’t drop anchor babies, illegal alien mothers do.” […] Pearce said his new idea is not only legal but constitutional. “It’s common sense,” Pearce said. “Again – you can’t break into someone’s country and then expect to be rewarded for that. You can’t do it.” When Pearce was shown the e-mail referring to “anchor babies” that he forwarded, he said he didn’t find anything wrong with the language. “It’s somebody’s opinion…What they’re trying to say is it’s wrong. And I agree with them. It’s wrong,” said Pearce.

Howie wrote about how this issue was huge at the tea party rally he attended last summer here in LA.:

I’m not a social anthropologist, but I’m well aware that not all teabaggers are the same. I’ve never been to a tea party in the South or in the Midwest or the Northeast. But I did spend a whole day with the teabaggers of the L.A. area back in August and reported on it here (lots of pictures of me up close and live with actual teabaggers), here and here. What I noticed about the Southern California teabaggers– and I was hanging out with them for hours before the event started and talking with every one of them I could– was that in the end, no matter what confused issues they had foremost in their dim minds, they were all just a bunch of fearful, hate-filled racists. Really, every single one of them.

Every argument they couldn’t defend ended in racial slurs about “anchor babies” and “illegals.” No matter how the discussion began, no matter what the topic– and this was a healthcare town hall– it always ended in bigotry and their anti-Hispanic psychosis. Like I said, I never visited a tea party in Arkansas or Tennessee or Georgia. And it would only be a guess to say that they’re not as obsessed about Hispanics and they might have another group at the bottom of their grievances. Or maybe it’s just the Southern California teabaggers who are racist maniacs, and the ones in the South are just defenders of the constitutional order.

Early in the teabagger media cycle, before Fox had been able to market it fully and cross it over to the mainstream, Cincinnati was on the bandwagon. Poor Steve Dreihaus hardly knew what hit him when a horde of teabaggers descended on his town hall meeting. A friend who was there told me that Cincinnati is more like a Southern city than any other place in the Midwest, and that there were probably more people from Kentucky there than from Ohio. They were shouting the same canned slogans and bromides the well-organized teabaggers were in L.A., but they weren’t concerned about Mexicans in Cincinnati. The President’s skin color, on the other hand, and his Hawaiian birth and “Muslim faith,” of course, bothered them greatly and became the default for any losing position in an argument.

I understand that we are not supposed to use the “R” word when talking about the tea partiers because, well, it’s hurtful and unfair to people who have legitimate grievances. Except this “grievance” about anchor babies is made up in their heads and they are being nativist and racist by pushing it. Children of undocumented workers who are born in America are Americans. They speak English, they pay taxes, they are citizens like anyone else who was born of immigrant parents, which nearly all of us or our ancestors were. The idea that it’s appropriate to punish American children (not one of whom asked to be born) for the fact that their mother gave birth to them in the United States without proper papers is disgusting and cruel. I don’t know why I should respect that.

I’m also told that it’s wrong to ridicule these people because it’s wrong and besides, ridicule never works.

Really?

“A hippie is someone who looks like Tarzan, walks like Jane and smells like Cheetah.”

— Ronald Reagan

A huge part of the (very successful) conservative movement was based upon the ridicule and marginalization of American liberalism. It went on for year after year, decade into decade until people were so indoctrinated that liberals actually had to start calling themselves something else. The most important Republican campaign consultant of the era made a fetish of it. Indeed as the loathed vehicle for social change and destruction of traditional white male privilege, anti-liberalism is the main organizing principle for the conservative movement and now, the tea parties. That’s why when you scratch the surface of their “small government” message, what you usually find is someone who doesn’t like government because it is the institution which enforces the rights guaranteed under the constitution for people they despise.

I understand that people think ridicule makes it difficult to have a reasonable conversation. And if what you want is to make the tea partiers “understand” you, like politicians for instance, you probably shouldn’t engage in it (although, as you can see, Ronald Reagan certainly didn’t have any problem doing it.) But if you are involved in movement politics, as opposed to a specific legislative strategy or some kind of Machiavellian inside game, values, identity and tribalism are necessary organizing principles and that means the right wing should be treated with the only respect you should grant anyone who sees you as their enemy: you take them seriously and do not underestimate their hostility toward you or their strength and commitment to their cause. I certainly grant them that respect. Anyone who lived in the 20th century would be foolish not to. That’s the best I can do.

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What, Me Running?

by digby

While Petraeus portrays himself as removed from politics – noting he has not voted for many years – this foray into the heart of American rightwing ideology to accept an award named after the godfather of neoconservatism, is a striking step for a military leader who is supposed to stay outside the political fray:

The late Mr. Kristol’s son, Bill Kristol, noted in a tribute to the award’s three decades of honorees that none has ever gone on to become president. He then added to applause and laughter, “Perhaps this curious and glaring omission will be rectified.” Rather than simply letting that moment pass, Petraeus said upon taking the podium that in mulling over the theme for his speech, “It never crossed my mind, Bill, to talk about what you were suggesting.” The line was delivered with a smile.

I’m sure these words brought a smile from the audience in return:

Well, needless to say, it’s an enormous honor to be with you this evening especially given the many distinguished guests here this evening–Vice President Cheney, Governor Allen, Members of Congress, Ambassadors, serving and former cabinet officials, and many, many others–including a number of wounded warriors as well.

Indeed, I’m particularly pleased to have this opportunity because it gives me a chance to express my respect for AEI, an organization whose work I know not just by reputation–but also through first-hand experience. One recent AEI effort, of course, stands out in particular. In the fall of 2006, AEI scholars helped develop the concept for what came to be known as “the surge.” Fred and Kim Kagan and their team, which included retired General Jack Keane, prepared a report that made the case for additional troops in Iraq. As all here know, it became one of those rare think tank products that had a truly strategic impact…
“The truth is that ideas are all-important,” Irving Kristol observed over three decades ago. “The massive and seemingly-solid institutions of any society” he continued, “are always at the mercy of the ideas in the heads of the people who populate these institutions.” I couldn’t agree more. And that is why I feel particularly honored to receive an award that bears Irving Kristol’s name and why I welcome the opportunity to talk about ideas before an organization that is devoted to their development. As Bill reminded us earlier, this is the first time the Irving Kristol Award has been presented since his father passed away. And I know that all of us here tonight join me in expressing our sympathy to Bea, Irving’s intellectual companion and best friend for more than sixty years, and to Bill and his sister Elizabeth. But while Irving Kristol may be gone, his influence will be felt for generations to come. He was, of course, one of our Nation’s foremost thinkers on a host of topics, from economics and religion to social welfare and foreign policy. He was a man of staggering intellect who possessed a view of human nature and American politics that has, in many respects, stood the test of time. And, he was a man who loved his country deeply and who served it admirably–in uniform as a combat infantryman in Europe during World War II and, subsequently, as a scholar, editor, founder of journals, and perennial contributor to the most important debates of the day. Again, in all that he did, he was a man who believed deeply in the power of ideas and who contributed enormously to their development.

He’s obviously completely apolitical and has absolutely no intention of running for office. I don’t know why people keep saying he is.

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“We’ll Take You Out, Dude”

by digby

Some people probably need to actually elect somebody before they start throwing their weight around:

Senator Scott Brown yesterday drew scorn from former admirers who had hailed the Massachusetts Republican as a new voice for the conservative cause but now say he has abandoned them by joining Democrats to advance President Obama’s plan to overhaul the financial system.

As quickly as they had latched onto his campaign four months ago, they repudiated him yesterday through a flurry of blog posts, editorials, and Facebook messages.

“His career as a senator of the people lasted slightly longer than the shelf life of milk,’’ said Shelby Blakely, executive director of New Patriot Journal, the media arm of the Tea Party Patriots, which includes various Tea Party groups around the country. “The general mood of the Tea Party is, ‘We put you in, and we’ll take you out in 2012.’ This is not something we will forget.’’

Oh please. He’ll probably lose his seat not because the teabaggers wield their mighty swords, but because he won on a fluke against a bad candidate in an off year with an electorate that was mad at the world. But hey never underestimate the arrogance of opportunists and charlatans. These guys will make a lot of money and help progressives defeat Brown, so I’m all for it.

Update: Speaking of Scott Brown, when Iread Erick Ericksson’s revealing remarks that hot women like Nikki Haley don’t like ugly poor men, it occurred to me that many of the tea party heroes are pin-ups: Brown, Palin, Bachman, Rubio. (Rand Paul is the exception — not that he’s particularly unattractive, but he’s no Cosmo centerfold or beauty pageant winner.) Since Scott Brown was never actually a tea partier and Palin actually hails from the corporate/social conservative wing of the party, I’m guessing that these folks are just suckers for a pretty face.

h/t to bb

A Big Job

by digby

LA-17, a female Loggerhead, has just arrived at Audubon Aquatic Center, a facility of Audubon Nature Institute.Pictured from left to right Amanda Adkins, Jamie Mullins and Melissa Tomingas. photo credit Meghan Calhoun

Yay

h/t to karoli

The Core Mission

by digby

Robert Parry refocuses on the central principle of the libertarian/populist Tea Party “movement:”

After the voting-rights comments, some media pundits, like Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, made excuses for Paul, saying he was just a political novice who hadn’t mastered the skill of packaging his answers in politically neutral ways. In other words, his only sin was believing too sincerely in his ideology and expressing it honestly.

However, what Paul was really doing was explaining what the Tea Party movement is truly about. Though it draws from a variety of political animosities – like white resentment of the nation’s demographic changes and a desire to “take our country back” from the likes of President Barack Obama – the Tea Party’s core mission is to stop the federal government from limiting the power of corporations.

That is why former House Republican Leader Dick Armey has thrown his corporate-backed FreedomWorks behind the Tea Party movement. It’s why Massey president Don Blankenship showed up in Stars-and-Stripes apparel to give a rousing speech to a Tea Party rally.

In essence, Big Corporations are pulling a Big Con on the common folks attracted to the Tea Party movement, getting them to focus their anger at Big Government as a threat to their “liberties” when the federal government is all that stands in the way of total corporate dominance of the United States.

So, instead of pressing for a democratized and energized federal government that could serve as a check on unbridled corporate power, the Tea Partiers are being turned into foot soldiers for “owner rights,” to ensure that corporations are freed from government regulations and accountability.

Funny how right wing populism always seems to do that, isn’t it? Libertarianism is just a modern incarnation of an old political impulse that always rises up when the wealthy feel they need some protection. The racism, xenophobia, fear of progress and anti-government fervor among the followers are all real. But it’s in service of the Big Money Boyz who are smart enough to know that there are quite a few people out there who would rather die of starvation than be forced to share food with someone who isn’t a member of their tribe. They put that to work for their own purposes.

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The Liberal Legacy

by digby

If you’ve ever wondered if the sad truth about our ruling elite is that they are so myopic and cramped that they are intellectually stuck in a groove like one of those figurines in a cuckoo clock? Think no more. They are:

Over the past week, top White House officials have been floating a trial balloon for their strategy on the economy. At its core is a decision to put deficit reduction ahead of job creation.

The premise is that the bond markets and allied deficit hawks are demanding action to cut the budget, that Obama lacks the votes in the Senate for a serious jobs initiative, and that polls show voters care more about deficit reduction than about jobs.

So the plan, modeled closely on the work of the Peter G. Peterson foundation and the anticipated report of the president’s own fiscal commission, is a deal that includes cuts in Social Security plus a new Value Added Tax (VAT), in order to get deep cuts in the deficit. As a sweetener to get Republicans to back the VAT, White House officials would cut the corporate income tax.

It just doesn’t get any better than that does it? So, why do I think they are repeated themselves in a trancelike fashion? Well, everything is going exactly as it was ordained before the election:

The bond vigilantes who’ve been missing in action under George W. Bush may be preparing for a return engagement once Barack Obama or John McCain takes office next year.

Investors and former policy makers predict that the same market forces that torpedoed President Bill Clinton’s “putting people first” spending initiatives at the start of his presidency are gathering again at the prospect of McCain’s tax cuts and Obama’s health-care and education programs.

“Though times are different and a lot of the government spending is necessary, we’re going to see rates rise in a saw- tooth pattern over the next few years,” says E. Craig Coats Jr., the head of Salomon Brothers’ government securities desk when it was the world’s biggest bond trader. Coats considers himself one of the original vigilantes, the bearish traders who drove up long-term interest rates, persuading Clinton to place deficit-reduction above fulfilling his spending promises.

That course-reversal prompted Clinton political adviser James Carville to observe at the time: “I used to think that if there was reincarnation, I wanted to come back as the president or the pope or as a .400 baseball hitter. But now I would like to come back as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.”

[…]

Leon Panetta, Clinton’s first budget director, says that “if we continue to run these large deficits, not only bond traders but the securities markets are suddenly going to awaken with concern about whether or not the administration is doing anything to discipline the budget.”

If that happens, Panetta says, “it’s just a matter of time before they start to put pressure on a new administration.”

Clinton’s experience shows what such pressure can do to a president’s agenda. Promises of spending on education, public works and a middle-class tax cut fell by the wayside as advisers led by Robert Rubin, who later became Treasury secretary, convinced the new president the best thing he could do for the economy was to show investors his resolve on fiscal discipline.

“You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Clinton raged at aides, according to journalist Bob Woodward’s book, “The Agenda.”

Clinton’s deficit-reduction policies resulted in a sustained economic boom that generated budget surpluses from his last four budgets and helped pull 10-year yields, which topped 8 percent in 1994, below 5 percent by the late 1990s.

Just as Bush benefited from the achievements of the Clinton years, gaining room to pursue his initial tax-cut agenda, either McCain or Obama will likely be under immediate pressure to fix the problems left over from Bush.

Golly, I sure do hope there’s also a new once in a lifetime technology revolution waiting in the wings or that fantastic plan to repeat history might have a few holes in it.

For some reason all the creative thinking we were supposed to be getting under our pragmatic technocrat Prez isn’t materializing. Too bad. We really, really could use some creative thinking. And barring that we could at least use some thinking that doesn’t only come out of the Clinton years. We have millenia of human experience to draw on, after all.

Kuttner continues:

The plan is dubious economics and worse politics. You could hardly hand the Republicans a better gift for the fall election. Imagine the GOP TV spots, Fox talking points, and Wall Street Journal editorial: Obama Administration Has Secret Plan to Raise Your Taxes and Cut Your Social Security.

White House officials are working closely with the president’s new fiscal commission in the hope that the bipartisan commissions final report will provide Republican cover for the deal. The commission, due to report by December 1, needs fourteen out of its eighteen members to make an official recommendation. One hope of the deficit hawks is that a super-majority report could steamroll a lame duck session of Congress to act quickly, pending a more Republican Congress in January.

Of the eighteen members, thirteen are fiscal conservatives. Only four are liberals — Reps. Jan Schakowsky and Xavier Becerra, Sen. Dick Durban, and Andy Stern of the SEIU. A swing vote is Sen. Max Baucus, who is something of a deficit hawk, but defends Social Security and doesn’t like automatic fiscal formulas that weaken his jurisdiction as Senate Finance Committee Chair.

Stepping back from the fiscal wonkery, this astonishing White House course is root canal economics as well as political suicide. If the unemployment rate is still close to 10 percent in November, Democrats in the House and Senate face a bloodbath. Yet Larry Summers has ruled out any new large jobs initiative before the election, according to several well placed sources. And if the White House is planning to hit the middle class with a double whammy of increased taxes through a VAT plus Social Security cuts, that’s like handing the Republicans a loaded gun.

The GOP, please recall, came within a whisker of killing health reform because of the diversion of Medicare money. If any program is more sacred to older voters, swing voters, and the Democratic base, it’s Social Security.

What can the smartest guys in the room be thinking?

He goes on the explain that our faith based best and brightest are convinced that they don’t have the votes for anything but advancing the Republican agenda. (That whole “majority” thing? It is inoperative.)

The good news is that we can probably rely on the Republicans to save us:

Finally, it is wildly improbable as a political proposition to think that Republicans, either on the fiscal commission or in the Congress, will vote for a VAT. This version of a grand bargain has been promoted for years by Pete Peterson and Robert Rubin, and has now been embraced by Rubin’s protege, budget director Peter Orszag. The fiscal conservatives who dominate the 18-member presidential commission hope to co-opt the commission’s four liberals.

In the end Republican opposition to a VAT is likely to save the Democrat budget hawks from themselves. But along the way, this politically bizarre fantasy will do real damage — by preventing the White House from embracing a strong recovery program, by frightening both Democratic base and swing voters, and by giving Republicans even more ammunition to use in November.

Read the whole article. Every word is important and it spells out the alternatives that a liberal administration could undertake to reduce the deficits, the first and most logical being to increase revenue by reducing unemployment and then taxing billionaires and corporations instead of cutting their taxes in dubious “grand bargains.” This is going to be an epic battle and one that if we lose will end up directly hurting tens of millions of people.

The plans they envision for cutting social security are harsh, they aren’t tweaks. Raising the retirement age is the least of it. The only way they can really make the kind of dent in the deficit our “bond vigilante” overlords insist upon without raising taxes, is to cut back hard on people who will be living on 30,000 a year or less in retirement. That’s a hell of a legacy for the party of Franklin Roosevelt.

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Wheezy Philosophizing

by tristero

When you think about it, it is simply outrageous that in order to live, I must breathe. The injustice of it all! For instance, if I want to stay underwater for an hour, I can’t because I am forced, whether I like it or not, to breathe every once in a while, or I’ll die.

Oh, sure. I could use scuba gear that lets me breathe underwater. But all I gain are lousy tradeoffs and unintended, dangerous consequences. Anyway all that fancy gear doesn’t address the fundamental issue:

I shouldn’t be forced to breathe in the first place! It is an unwarranted limitation on my freedom to live as I want!

Let’s face it: because I am coerced into it, breathing is a very bad thing.

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O-kay.

Does obsessing over “being forced to breathe,” seem to you like a pretty useless and silly – in fact, borderline insane – thing to get upset about? If all I really want to do is to stay underwater for an hour, wouldn’t a far more sensible discussion focus entirely on the relative merits of the scuba gear available?

I would think so.

Well, arguing about libertarianism is just as useless as arguing over the “freedom to breathe.” It really is that simple. Yet for some reason, it doesn’t stop perfectly reasonable people, like John Holbo, from taking libertarianism far more seriously than it deserves to be, by critiquing it and reaching out to engage them. So, let me briefly go through how incredibly …there’s no other word… stupid libertarianism is and why it is not worth John Holbo’s attention, or yours.

(We won’t discuss here the abundant evidence that for many libertarians, a facade of intellectuality serves to cloak virulent bigotry. Digby, among many others, has written this up.)

Living in society – like breathing! – is unavoidable; we can’t escape it for very long. Every society, no matter how small, has rules, ie, a government. Sometimes the less the government regulates people’s lives, the better, but not always and not in every situation.

Always, the real issue is never whether government per se is a good or bad thing. Government is a given. The real issue is whether a particular action a government takes is producing mostly desirable or undesirable results.

Once libertarians accept the humanly unavoidable, as they surely must – that government exists, must exist, and will always exist as long as there are humans – they then are forced to confront the inevitable fact that all government action, and inaction, has social consequences.

Once again: The real issue is whether the consequences of government behavior are mostly desirable or not.Therefore, libertarians are simply engaged in a project of identifying and advocating desirable government actions (and inactions).

Libertarians claim that, unlike liberals, they privilege some basic human reality – the individual – that predates social organizations. This is completely ludicrous. Social structures – government – are as vital to an individual as breathing. We cannot exist without governments and arguments that claim we can simply can’t be considered serious. Their assertion that their “political philosophy” rests on some fundamental truth that liberalism lacks is baseless.

So… If you seriously believe that libertarians have any remotely original, let alone good, ideas up their sleeve, please consider my advice while you’re waiting:

Don’t hold your breath.