Month: September 2010

Don’t Kill Growth And Jobs In The Name Of Deficit Reduction

by digby

Listening to our new intellectual leaders at the Values Voters Summit talking about “Keynesian fantasies” sent a chill down my spine. Luckily they won’t be able to take the presidency (yet) but they will be able to create even worse gridlock than we’ve seen at a time when gridlock is the last thing we need. All in the name of austerity.

The Institute for America’s Future gathered over 300 economists to sign a statement in language even Sarah Palin should be able to understand, explaining just why this is such a terrible idea. It begins like this:

In the fall of 2008 the U.S. and other major economies were in a free fall in the wake of a global financial crisis. Emergency stimulus policies here and around the world broke the fall, but brought us only part way to full recovery.

Today there is a grave danger that the still-fragile economic recovery will be undercut by austerity economics. A turn by major governments away from the promotion of growth and jobs and to premature focus on deficit reduction could slow growth and increase unemployment – and could push us back into recession.

History suggests that a tenuous recovery is no time to practice austerity. In the Great Depression, Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal generated growth and reduced the unemployment rate from 25 percent in 1932 to less than 10 percent in 1937. However, the deficit hawks of that era persuaded President Roosevelt to reverse course prematurely and move toward budget balance. The result was a severe recession that caused the economy to contract sharply and sent the unemployment rate soaring. Only the much larger wartime spending of the early 1940s produced a full recovery.

[…]

Austerity advocates confuse two different issues—short term deficits generated by the recession and long term projections of deficits and debt. Deficits rose last decade largely due to the Bush tax cuts and the unfunded wars and prescription drug program, but they exploded as a result of the economic crisis. Once prosperity is restored, deficits will be reduced substantially. Over the long term, projections of rising deficits and debt are mainly due to one fundamental factor: rising health care costs.

Contrary to the claims of many deficit hawks, America does not have an entitlement crisis. America has a broken health care system. Efforts to reduce public sector costs without fixing the health care system, such as caps on Medicare and Medicaid spending or replacing them with vouchers, will undermine the effectiveness of these programs, but won’t fix the broken health care system. The health care reform bill passed earlier this year may be a first step towards repairing the health care system, but much more will need to be done.

Social Security has nothing to do with our current deficit. It is supported by its own dedicated payroll taxes (which were increased to build up a trust fund to cover the baby boomers’ retirement). Social Security has actually reduced the unified budget deficit for the most of the last three decades and will continue to do so for most of the next decade. Making sure Social Security is solvent for the next century should be dealt with separately from any process set up to address short or long-term deficits, and can be accomplished with minor adjustments.

Far be it for me to suggest that Christine O’Donnell and Michelle Bachman’s ideas about Keynes might be a bit misguided. I don’t want to be disrespectful of their economic knowledge. But it seems to me that these folks ought to at least be given as much attention. They might have something to add.

You can read the whole statement at the new website Don’t Kill Growth And Jobs In the name of Deficit Reduction.

Another Day Another Taser Death

by digby

He had a “medical issue” otherwise known as “dying from electrocution”:

An Oklahoma City man police were trying to arrest Thursday died a short time after officers shot him with a Taser in the city’s second fatal incident involving the device since July, police said.

Police did not identify the man Thursday, but a relative identified him as Gary Lee Grossenbacher, 48. The relative, Grossenbacher’s sister-in-law Kim Cooke, of Minneapolis, declined further comment.

Two officers and paramedics responded to a domestic dispute call about 6:40 a.m. in the 100 block of Sonora, Knight said. A man and woman were in an altercation at their house, and the woman told officers the man hit her.

The man resisted as officers tried arrest him. At least one of the two officers sprayed him with oleoresin capsicum, commonly known as pepper spray, and shocked him with a Taser, Knight said. The man had a medical issue moments later.

Paramedics already on the scene treated the man and took him to Mercy Health Center, where he died, Knight said.

Oh wait, there’s another one:

A South Carolina coroner says a man who died after he was stunned by police officer was a homicide victim.

But multiple media outlets reported the Greenville County coroner’s office says state investigators should decide if there was criminal wrongdoing in the death of 39-year-old Andrew Torres on Aug. 9.

Coroner Parks Evans says the mentally ill man died from an irregular heart beat as the result of having an enlarged heart, the physical strain of fighting with police and being stunned with Tasers.

Police Chief Terri Wilfong has said her officers followed proper procedures when they went to a home to take Torres into custody for involuntary psychiatric commitment

The mentally ill in the country have targets on their backs. When they are suffering from some kind of break or are delusional, they can’t make the “decision” to comply so they get electrocuted — and some of them die. Anyone who has a relative who is mentally ill should be aware of this. They are in danger.

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Have The Teabaggers “Always Been In Charge?”

by digby

“We are our country. We have always been in charge. This is America.” Christine O’Donnell, 9/17/10

Uhm, no. Please read Michael Tomasky’s excellent essay about the 230 years of American tea bagging. As those who read my blog know very well, this is also my view of the contours of American politics. And no, they have not always been in charge. Indeed, they have rarely been in charge, thank goodness.

Tomasky points out, also correctly, that the old rules do not apply and that the forces of progress had better learn to adapt lest this gets out of hand. He writes:

[T]he historically situated question is this: is the Tea Party movement a flash in the pan, or is it a historic fulfilment of an urge that has been building for 230 years and is on the cusp, with the help of Rupert Murdoch’s “news” channel, of becoming a permanent fixture in American politics?If most of those eight candidates lose on 2 November, the more establishment Republicans will attempt to rein in the movement. Whether they can do so is another question. Meanwhile the Democrats now have an opportunity, in a year that has largely been bereft of them, to make the Beltway politics chatter focus on the other side’s problems, rather than their own. Democrats have a tendency to play by the old rules. One old rule of politics is that when the other side is shooting itself in the foot, do nothing – just stand back and watch.But we are in a new media and political environment. In fact it’s not even new any more. It’s been around for 15 years, but still Democrats think the old rules apply. One old rule is, don’t respond to nutty allegations because you only give them oxygen. Well, Democrats have spent two years not responding as “birthers” spin their conspiracies about Obama, and the result is that between 20% and 25% of American adults doubt that the president is a genuine American.So I propose a new rule: when the other side is shooting itself in the foot, stand close by and keep handing out bullets. Democratic strategists should be thinking of fresh ways to demonstrate to the American people that these Tea Partiers are not the sons and daughters of John Adams but people who stand almost entirely outside the country’s best mainstream traditions.

Thank you. I know it’s terribly shrill but the fact is that in this fractured culture of ours, counting on people to “see through” these tea partiers is far too faith based. There is no guarantee that they will. And the consequences of them not doing so is quite grave.

Listening to Christine O’Donnell speak at the Values Voter Summit today is very, very creepy. She managed to lay every bad thing in the country from the economic slump to male pattern baldness on “Keynesian fantasies” (which she seems to think are what we liberals have when we pleasure ourselves against God’s will.) This from a creationist who believes condoms don’t prevent AIDS. You can’t just let this stuff hang out there.

Update: Here’s Michelle Bachman calling President Obama infantile because he used the term negative rights. Wait until you hear what she thinks it means.

It’s a carnival of misinformation. Can we see the problem with this?

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Triumph Of The Wingnut

by digby

Can you say hubris?

Word to Palin voting wingnuts: if you voted Republican in 2008 you don’t get to say “we” voted for Obama. (Particularly when you make videos that show you’re either only 16 years old or you’ve been watching waaay too many gladiator movies.) The people who made this video didn’t vote for the Democrats and their claim to having ever given them a chance is a lie.

Hubris is the deadliest political character flaw. Republicans aren’t the only ones who have it of course. But they have it in spades:

Nov. 3 [1998] election night … Republicans lose five House seats despite Gingrich’s earlier predictions they would gain more than 20.Even that night, Gingrich’s senior political director, Joe Gaylord, expresses confidence–which ultimately will be exposed as overconfidence–that “we would gain seats, it was only a matter of how many we gain.”As the night progresses, smiles disappear from Gingrich’s “war room,” and multiple shots capture the speaker, mouth widened in disbelief. Later, he tells Pack he was “genuinely confused.”Gingrich goes on camera to accept his share of the blame, but even in the walk to the interview room, he tries to cast the losses in the best possible light, explaining to his advisors that most GOP incumbents were victorious.

I’m not saying that’s going to happen again. And the premature “Mission Accomplished” is always fun. But puerile arrogance is rarely a smart strategy. You just don’t know what those crazy voters might do.

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Left Jab Video Of The Day

by digby

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but John Boehner is very,very, touchy. He doesn’t like being mocked and he doesn’t like his nefarious deeds being exposed for all the world to see.

Too bad:

pass it on …

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Haley In The Middle

by digby

The consequences of moving the goalposts:

As dark as this picture is for congressional candidates, there’s bright news at the state level. Somehow, moderates are holding their own in governor’s races—and some of the party’s biggest rising stars are centrists in the statehouse ranks. If Sarah Palin and Jim DeMint are the patron saints of hard-right anti-establishment types, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is their counterpart in the center. The wily head of the Republican Governors Association, a possible contender for president in 2012, preaches a big-tent philosophy that contrasts sharply with the ideological purification drive on the right.

Things have moved so far to the right that Haley Barbour is a centrist now.

It’s true that he’s a “Big Tent” Republican, at least to extent that he can get away with it. But it’s not because he wants a bunch of lily-livered moderates in the party, but because he knows there aren’t enough hardcore nuts in the country (yet) to sustain a far right majority. But that doesn’t make someone a “centrist.” It makes him a practical power broker.

Haley Barbour is hardcore conservative and a corporate whore. Unless you define Joe Lieberman as the far left, he most certainly is not a centrist.

h/t to AC

Weird Enough To Blow It Off

by digby

Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson wrote an op-ed this morning discussing why the Democrats shouldn’t count on a Reaganesque 1982 miracle in November despite the similarities in the various approval ratings and money advantage by the Democrats.

In keeping with every other prediction it’s very gloomy. But I have to wonder if the enthusiasm gap isn’t about to close — not because the Democrats are more fired up, although some might be. I am thinking that the crazed rightward shift of the GOP might start to suppress enthusiasm among the mainstream Republicans and right leaning Independents. It’s hard to know — they may all come out just for the chance to stick it to the hated Democrats. But I wouldn’t be surprised if some unknown number of them forget to vote. It’s getting pretty weird. A lot weirder than 82.

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Grayson’s Opponent Is A Member of the Hardcore Theocratic Right

by digby

TPM is featuring an interesting article today about Alan Grayson’s kooky opponent Daniel Webster. Seems he’s keeping company with the Christian Reconstructionists (aka American Taliban):

Listed in his official voter guide as a top supporter is a right wing activist named David Barton, who has already come under scrutiny for addressing two white supremacist organizations. Barton claimed in both circumstances that he was unaware of the group’s white supremacist ties. But that doesn’t mean he’s not possessed of extreme views of his own. From 1998 to 2006, he served as vice-chair of the Texas Republican party, which is notorious for having one of the most zealously conservative platforms in the country. In 2004, for instance, the platform advocated the following: 1. The abolition of the IRS and the repeal of the Sixteenth Amendment.
2. The elimination of the income tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, capital gains tax, corporate income tax, and payroll tax.
3. “an orderly transition to a system of private pensions based on the concept of individual retirement accounts, and gradually phasing out the Social Security tax.”
4. The abolition of the Department of Education.
5. Eliminating the government’s right to restrict public display of “the Decalogue” (a.k.a. the 10 Commandments). The Texas GOP also “opposes the legalization of sodomy,” and holds that “[h]omosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans.” Neither Barton nor Webster responded to requests for comment. Barton is the founder of the evangelical organization WallBuilders and was instrumental in Texas’ efforts to change its state’s (and the nation’s) textbook standards.

That’s right. It’s Beck’s intellectual mentor, Mr Black Robed Regiment himself. But this shouldn’t come as any surprise to anyone who’s followed Webster’s career. He’s a Christian Reconstructionist from waaay back. He’s a follower of one of those evangelical cultleaders, Bill Gothard, who’s been training CRs for decades with his “seminars.” And he isn’t the only one. (How about GOP leaders Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee?)

Gothard has some very unusual views, not the least of which is this:

At his Advanced Seminars in 1983, Gothard introduced sex regulations based upon Old Testament commands. Under the session titled “Six Purposes, Principles, and Keys To Fulfillment In The Marriage Relationship,” he told married couples to abstain from physical relations: 1. During the wife’s menstrual cycle; 2. Seven days after the cycles; 3. 40 days after the birth of a son; 4. 80 days after the birth of a daughter; and 5. The evening prior to worship.Some may even find the sexual guidelines found in his 1986 volume, Research in Principles of Life Advance Seminar Textbook, intrusive and offensive. What most would feel is personal and private between a couple and their physician, Gothard spells out. On pages 170-171, Gothard suggests that a man keep track of his wife’s menstrual cycle and use it as a reminder of the sufferings and death of Jesus, then quotes Isaiah 53:4-5.

It’s a good thing these people aren’t primitive and backwards like those awful fundamentalist Muslims.

How do I know that Webster is one of his disciples?

Speaker Has Strong Ties to Institute

by Peter Wallsten, T. Christian Miller, St. Petersburg Times, February
16, 1997

Last summer, Daniel Webster journeyed to South Korea on a religious
mission, meeting with the country’s president and other political and spiritual leaders.

He was joined by Bill Gothard, the head of a $30-million Christian evangelical group.

Four months after the trip, Webster ascended to one of the most powerful positions in Florida: speaker of the state House of Representatives.

He brings with him 14 years of experience with Gothard’s Institute in Basic Life Principles, where Webster has not only attended seminars, but also taught classes and even made an instructional video that raised money for the institute.

The group preaches a literal interpretation of the Bible, including the belief that women should submit to their husbands’ authority. With programs for lawmakers, judges, doctors, juvenile delinquents and home- schooling courses, the institute’s reach is wide. It says that 2.5-million people around the world have participated in its programs.

Webster is an enthusiastic supporter. His six children learn at home, taught by his wife, Sandy, using the institute’s curriculum. The family, which also is active in its Orlando Baptist church, has participated in numerous institute seminars over the years.

Webster said he does not want to force his beliefs on other people.

“I’ve never tried to say this is what’s right for everybody,” he said. “”All I’ve said is, “Here’s what works for me.’ ”

Webster said he will not let the institute’s teachings dictate his legislative agenda in the House, where he is the first Republican speaker in 122 years.

Still, the institute is attracting increasing interest in Tallahassee. Webster has hired four House staffers whom he met through the institute, although Webster’s press secretary, Kathy Mears, pointed out that hundreds of people work for Webster. Mears herself has participated in institute courses.

Over the years, Webster and state Rep. Stephen Wise, R-Jacksonville, have recruited at least eight other Florida lawmakers to the program, including Sen. John Grant, R-Tampa, and Rep. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey.

But Webster said there is no connection between Gothard’s seven Bible-based principles and the five principles Webster is using to rank every measure the House will consider this year…

Granted, that was 13 years ago. But considering his proud meeting today with The Black Robed regiment pastor, I think it’s fair to assume that his beliefs haven’t changed.

Just how many of these people are going to be in the US government if the Tea Party becomes the dominant faction in the GOP?

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Remember “Jesus Camp”?

by digby

With the rise of Tea Party, which obviously includes the Christian Right, and the controversy about whether or not liberals should be alarmed by their philosophy and goals, perhaps it’s a good time to revisit some of the great work that’s been done in recent years to expose just what these folks are all about. Just a little friendly reminder, as it were:

Or this:

Todd Bentley has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. To contain the 10,000-plus crowds flocking from around the globe, Bentley has rented baseball stadiums, arenas and airport hangars at a cost of up to $15,000 a day. Many in attendance are church pastors themselves who believe Bentley to be a prophet and don’t bat an eye when he tells them he’s seen King David and spoken with the Apostle Paul in heaven. “He was looking very Jewish,” Bentley notes.

Tattooed across his sternum are military dog tags that read “Joel’s Army.” They’re evidence of Bentley’s generalship in a rapidly growing apocalyptic movement that’s gone largely unnoticed by watchdogs of the theocratic right. According to Bentley and a handful of other “hyper-charismatic” preachers advancing the same agenda, Joel’s Army is prophesied to become an Armageddon-ready military force of young people with a divine mandate to physically impose Christian “dominion” on non-believers.

There are lots of these people and they are heavily featured in the Tea Party faction of the GOP.

David Brody: “Are you concerned at all that some of the social conservative issues, abortion and same sex marriage, some of these other issues because they are taking somewhat of a back seat right now at least to the fiscal issues that there are some inherent problems for social conservatives in something like that?”

Senator Jim DeMint: “No actually just the opposite because I really think a lot of the motivation behind these Tea Party crowds is a spiritual component. I think it’s very akin to the Great Awakening before the American Revolution. A lot of our founders believed the American Revolution was won before we ever got into a fight with the British. It was a spiritual renewal.”

…

I think people are seeing this massive government growing and they’re realizing that it’s the government that’s hurting us and I think they’re turning back to God in effect is our salvation and government is not our salvation and in fact more and more people see government as the problem and so I think some have been drawn in over the years to a dependency relationship with government and as the Bible says you can’t have two masters and I think as people pull back from that they look more to God. It’s no coincidence that socialist Europe is post-Christian because the bigger the government gets the smaller God gets and vice-versa. The bigger God gets the smaller people want their government because they’re yearning for freedom.”

Yeah, they’ll be free as long as they toe the Christian Right line. It’s fairly clear that atheists, Muslims and others aren’t going to be quite as “free.” Bring on the Black Robed Regiment.

That’s the fellow who’s angling to become the majority leader of the US Senate if the Republicans win the election, by the way. I don’t think he has a problem with Christine O’Donnell. He endorsed her.

Update: On Fox at 3:26pdt, they just posed a text poll: “How concerned are you about the secularization of society?”

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The Takeover

by digby

Glenn’s written a widely circulated piece this morning in which he rightly points out, as I and others have as well, that the Tea Party is not something new, it is just the far right of the Republican Party. It’s an amalgam of all the fringes, from John Birchers, to neo-confederates to the Christian Theocrats, all coming together with the help of some very wealthy benefactors. After decades of moving the party ever rightward, they are now finally reaching the fringe.

One thing to remember, however — while these people have been around forever, this is the first time they have become a truly powerful institutional force in the Republican party. They have moved smartly into the vacuum left by the Cheney failure and they have done it in a time of crisis, which gives them opportunities they wouldn’t normally have. They are more dangerous today than usual and if they win these seats this fall they cause some very serious trouble.

Oh, and by the way, never think there’s a real schism between the neocons and the Tea party. They are coming together very nicely around this:

The Washington Times today has a couple of items noting a new “Team B” report on the threat entitled Sharia: The Threat To America, released today by the Center for Security Policy, a think tank led by Washington Times columnist Frank Gaffney. Bill Gertz reports that “A panel of national security experts who worked under Republican and Democratic presidents is urging the Obama administration to abandon its stance that Islam is not linked to terrorism, arguing that radical Muslims are using Islamic law to subvert the United States.”

Frank Gaffney, director of the Center for Security Policy, said the Obama administration’s policy is based on an incorrect assumption. The Team B report seeks to expose flaws in anti-terror programs, including the policy of not referring to al Qaeda and similar groups as “Islamist” to avoid offending Muslims, he said. “What if it turns out that some of the people the Obama administration has been embracing are actually promoting the same totalitarian ideology and seditious agenda as al Qaeda, only they’re doing it from White House Iftar dinners?” said Mr. Gaffney, referring to the daily meal eaten by Muslims to break their fast during Ramadan.

The Times also gave space to three of the report’s authors, former CIA director James Woolsey, National Review’s Andrew McCarthy and former DIA director Harry Soyster, to promote their report.

Just don’t use the “T” word to describe these people.

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