Month: January 2011

Squeezing The Wrong Demo

by digby

Ezra Klein has a good post with an interesting graph showing what I am seeing among my friends:

That doesn’t count the underemployed, which afflicts even more people my age. They lost good paying jobs and are now toiling at part time work or contracting that pays substantially less than what they made before. Strangely, it turns out that nobody is eager to hire 50 year olds at the wages they spent 25 years working their way up to and they aren’t very excited about having a bunch of old duffers around the office or the factory when they can get young people to do it for much less and lower health care costs.

Here’s the political problem with this scenario. This is the baby boom and there is a huge number of them. You can ignore them and pretend that it doesn’t matter that this huge group is rapidly going through their meager retirement savings, but unless you are prepared to kill them, they’re going to be around for quite a while. And they are getting poorer rather than richer, what with the real estate and stock market crashes at the worst possible time in their lives — they’re still putting kids through college and taking care of aging parents. It’s a real squeeze.

I know it’s fashionable for Democrats these days to write the baby boom off as a lost cause — apparently, it’s assumed they’re all going to vote for Republicans forever because the oldsters are all voting for them today. But it’s really not a good idea to let that happen — there are simply way too many of them and they will vote far more reliably than under 30s do. Older people are just more interested in politics — especially when they are financially screwed and have no time to make the money back.

We can thank Joe Lieberman for one thing: he shot down the Medicare buy-in for 55 year olds, which would have been a huge, huge benefit for all these people and cemented their loyalty to the Democratic Party for the rest of their lives. But that would have made the hippies happy and Holy Joe was having none of it. Too bad.

Update: I also have to point out that for those of us in the individual health insurance market — as most of those unemployed 50 somethings are — the health care bill is extremely inadequate. It’s very expensive for us and when I did the famous HCR calculator, I found out that my savings from the bill will be minimal. And I don’t make much money. I suppose a few of them will qualify for medicaid, but if you have any assets at all, you’re stuck in the private market and it’s brutal for people over 50 — just when your health usually starts to be an issue.

I think this is a political time bomb. The only thing Dems have going for them is that Republicans are trapped in their ideology and can’t really do much of anything but lie and misdirect. But that’s a very thin reed.

.

The Sodomized Virgin Exception Part II

by digby

One of the most linked posts I ever wrote was called “The Sodomized Virgin Exception”, about the comments by a South Dakota lawmaker as to what might constitute a legitimate reason for an abortion. Here’s the gist:

FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Napoli says most abortions are performed for what he calls “convenience.” He insists that exceptions can be made for rape or incest under the provision that protects the mother’s life. I asked him for a scenario in which an exception may be invoked.

BILL NAPOLI: A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.

I commented at the time:

Do you suppose all these elements have to be present for it to be sufficiently psychologically damaging for her to be forced to bear her rapists child, or just some of them? I wonder if it would be ok if the woman wasn’t religious but she was a virgin who had been brutally, savagely raped and “sodomized as bad as you can make it?” Or if she were a virgin and religious but the brutal savage sodomy wasn’t “as bad” as it could have been?

Certainly, we know that if she wasn’t a virgin, she was asking for it, so she should be punished with forced childbirth. No lazy “convenient” abortion for her, the little whore. It goes without saying that the victim who was saving it for her marriage is a good girl who didn’t ask to be brutally raped and sodomized like the sluts who didn’t hold out. But even that wouldn’t be quite enough by itself. The woman must be sufficiently destroyed psychologically by the savage brutality that the forced childbirth would drive her to suicide (the presumed scenario in which this pregnancy could conceivably “threaten her life.”)

This was in 2006, and there was a fair amount of blowback that I was (as usual) being hyperbolic and rude, that this was a fringe sweller and I was unfairly tarring the good hearted pro-lifers as extremists.

Fast forward five years later. Nick Bauman in Mother Jones writes:

For years, federal laws restricting the use of government funds to pay for abortions have included exemptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest. (Another exemption covers pregnancies that could endanger the life of the woman.) But the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act,” a bill with 173 mostly Republican co-sponsors that House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) has dubbed a top priority in the new Congress, contains a provision that would rewrite the rules to limit drastically the definition of rape and incest in these cases.

With this legislation, which was introduced last week by Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Republicans propose that the rape exemption be limited to “forcible rape.” This would rule out federal assistance for abortions in many rape cases, including instances of statutory rape, many of which are non-forcible. For example: If a 13-year-old girl is impregnated by a 24-year-old adult, she would no longer qualify to have Medicaid pay for an abortion. (Smith’s spokesman did not respond to a call and an email requesting comment.)

Given that the bill also would forbid the use of tax benefits to pay for abortions, that 13-year-old’s parents wouldn’t be allowed to use money from a tax-exempt health savings account (HSA) to pay for the procedure. They also wouldn’t be able to deduct the cost of the abortion or the cost of any insurance that paid for it as a medical expense.

There used to be a quasi-truce between the pro- and anti-choice forces on the issue of federal funding for abortion. Since 1976, federal law has prohibited the use of taxpayer dollars to pay for abortions except in the cases of rape, incest, and when the pregnancy endangers the life of the woman. But since last year, the anti-abortion side has become far more aggressive in challenging this compromise. They have been pushing to outlaw tax deductions for insurance plans that cover abortion, even if the abortion coverage is never used. The Smith bill represents a frontal attack on these long-standing exceptions.
“This bill takes us backwards to a time when just saying no wasn’t enough to qualify as rape.”

No word on what constitutes “force” but I’m quite sure that Bill Napoli’s comments serve as a working definition for most of these people.

.

Iced Tea

by digby

You get what you pay for:

In 2009, Republican Edward Mangano was one of the first politicians to channel the Tea Party’s anti-tax fervor into a political victory when he knocked off Democrat Tom Suozzi for Nassau County Executive in New York State. Suozzi was a major political figure with ambitions for statewide office, and Magnano was a local legislator “given little chance of winning leading up to Election Day.” Upon taking office, Mangano — who ran on both the Republican and Tax Revolt Party lines — made good on a key campaign promise. On his inauguration day, Mangano signed a repeal of an unpopular home energy tax, instituted by Suozzi. The tax was implemented two years before as part of a deferred-pay deal Suozzi brokered with public worker unions, which was intended to spread around the sacrifice to deal with the county’s budget problems. In a special report, Reuters details how the repeal of that tax lead to a budgetary crisis and ultimately a takeover of the county’s finances by a state-appointed fiscal overseer. Noting that Mangano’s actions are “a black eye for the Tea Party,” the report explains how the Tea Party county executive had no plans for how to replace the lost tax revenue.

Weren’t these people the ones who railed against bail-outs?

.

Egypt On Fire

by digby

If you are like me and your cable provider doesn’t allow you to see Al Jazeera (because the boogeymen might be sending secret signals) you can watch it online here.

And here’s a little primer on the situation if you haven’t been keeping up from Zach Roth at the Lookout:

LOOKOUT:Â What are the protesters angry about, and what do they want done?

M.D.: Protesters have a large number of economic, political, and human-rights grievances. Widespread youth unemployment, rigged parliamentary elections in November 2010, and the prospect of President Mubarak (in power since 1981) beginning another term–or being replaced by his son–are the sparks that set these demonstrations off. The demonstrators are asking for Mubarak to step down and make way for an interim government to prepare for free elections.

LOOKOUT: Is there a real chance that Mubarak’s government might fall?

M.D.: Yes, there is a real possibility, but that does not seem to be imminent yet. As in Tunisia, the regime would begin to be uncertain if internal security services could not handle demonstrations and the army were called in. Armies generally don’t like firing on their own civilians and sometimes will choose keeping the loyalty of the population over defending an unpopular ruler.

LOOKOUT: If so, what might replace Mubarak’s regime? What role might ElBaradei play?

M.D.: There is a shadow government and parliament, formed in December, that has positioned itself as the opposition party with which the government can negotiate if things reach that point. But things are very fluid right now. ElBaradei could possibly play a leadership role within the opposition, although up until now he has been more effective at articulating popular grievances than at organizing or leading opposition groups.

LOOKOUT: How might a shift in power affect U.S. interests?

M.D.: U.S. interests are being challenged here. The United States has been tepid in supporting human rights and democracy in Egypt for years and has to deal with the resentment among Egyptians because of that. Partly for that reason, and partly because of the close association of the United States with Israel, any alternate group that comes to power might distance itself from the United States to some extent.

LOOKOUT: What role, if any, is the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamic groups playing?

M.D.: The Muslim Brotherhood, while still the single largest opposition group in Egypt, is not at the forefront of these protests. Rather, they are trying to get on the bandwagon at this point.

LOOKOUT: What are the similarities and differences between the situations in Egypt and Tunisia?

M.D.: Similarities include the fact that young people are leading the protests and that many of the grievances are common between the two countries: youth unemployment, corrupt government, human-rights abuses, and a leader in power for an entire generation who showed no sign of being ready to leave.

Differences include the fact that the Egyptian government has had far more experience with handling demonstrations; the Tunisian government seemed surprised and folded pretty quickly.

John Bolton was on Fox earlier pimping the idea that this is the work of the Muslim Brotherhood or radical extremists and fretting over the toppling of this “secular” government. If he’s any gauge, the Right is reverting to its natural impulse: supporting dictators. They aren’t “pro-life” when it comes to the “birth” of democracy after all.

.

Perfect Planning

by digby

Via DKos, here’s some news from Bizarroworld:

Tax revenues are projected to drop to their lowest levels since 1950, when measured against the size of the economy.

Oh, wait. That’s not Bizarroworld. That’s real. I guess the the fetishists who are lying about this and continue to agitate for even lower taxes have a new target: 1850.

You really should read the article, however. It’s not about that. It’s all about the deficit and how spending is just going to have to be slashed or … well, I just don’t know.

They do mention this in passing:

The latest deficit figures are up from previous estimates because of bipartisan legislation passed in December that extended George W. Bush-era tax cuts and unemployment benefits for the long-term jobless and provided a 2 percentage point Social Security payroll tax cut this year.

Who could have predicted?

And then there’s this:

CBO predicts that the deficit will fall to $551 billion by 2015 — a sustainable 3 percent of the economy — but only if the Bush tax cuts are wiped off the books. Under its rules, CBO assumes the recently extended cuts in taxes on income, investment and people inheriting large estates will expire in two years. If those tax cuts, and numerous others, are extended, the deficit for that year would be almost three times as large.

What do you suppose the chances of that happening are with the House in GOP hands in an election year? Yeah, me too.

Someone should give Grover Norquist a prize. “Starve the beast” is working perfectly.

.

Socialist Spudnuts

by digby

Reader Brew writes in to give us some context to Palin’s “Spudnut” tale:

Palin’s quirky invocation of the “Spudnut Shop” here in Richland Washington as an example of American “can-doism” is far more ironic than you and most of your readers likely realize.

The fact is, the town of Richland was literally built by the federal government as a part of the Manhattan Project. All of the houses that surround the Spudnut shop were built by the Army. To this day, the only employer in Richland of any consequence is the Department of Energy and the contractors that work on DoE contracts at the Hanford site, just north of Richland. As a result, virtually all of the Spudnut shop’s customers are paid by tax dollars. Those that aren’t are retirees, drawing government pensions and social security.

Were it not for government spending, the Spudnut shop would be bankrupt in a week.

Funny. But since a good many of Sarah’s Tea Partiers proclaim that they want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare, I’m not sure they would get the irony.

.

Savvy Hypocrisy

by digby

Think Progress reports:

Current GOP Conference Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) is one of those conservatives who blasted the health care law for cutting Medicare. In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal last month, Hensarling noted that the Simpson-Bowles deficit commission had few health care recommendations. He called this a “bow to the left and the White House, which cut Medicare by $500 billion to finance a corner of ObamaCare”:

Yet, incredibly, the Simpson-Bowles report has almost nothing to say about the runaway health-care entitlements. This is a bow to the left and the White House, which cut Medicare by $500 billion to finance a corner of ObamaCare and wants its signature achievement untouched. But this is like doing a Pentagon budget review and excluding Iraq and Afghanistan. Republicans ought to reject the report on those grounds alone.

Yet the National Journal reports this morning that none other than Hensarling is pushing for his fellow Republicans to support the privatization of Medicare and the moving of the eligibility age for the program from 65 to 69, which would involve enormous cuts:

PUSH TO PRIVATIZE. House GOP members are considering a measure to convert the government-backed Medicare program into a voucher system. The measure would be part of the House budget, which will be shaped next month. Republican Conference Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas said the he expects Republicans to support the provision, which would require Medicare to give seniors an allotment of money to buy private coverage starting in 2021. The eligibility age would also be raised, from 65 to 69.

Hensarling’s proposal appears to be along the lines of House Budget Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) “Roadmap For America’s Future Act,” which would involve the most dramatic cuts to Medicare the program has ever seen. Under the Ryan plan, “Medicare would be cut 76 percent below its projected size under current policies, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In other words, by 2080, the vouchers that would replace Medicare would receive one-quarter of the resources that Medicare would otherwise use.” Needless to say, it is incredibly cynical for Hensarling — and any of the other Republicans who support the Ryan plan — to complain about cuts to Medicare Advantage under Obama’s health law while simultaneously backing a proposal that would essentially end the program as we know it and leave millions of seniors on their own to contend with the health insurance industry.

In a normal country this would be considered incoherent at best. But in this country that kind of cynicism is called “savvy” and is the kind of thing we reward our winners in life for doing. Hensaerling will fit in perfectly on K Street as soon as he’s done doing what he can to destroy the safety net. (And to those who think it’s impossible for the Republicans to maneuver the Democrats into a bipartisan agreement to cut SS benefits and then use it against them in the next election, take heed. It’s really not that hard.)

It’s important to note one thing about this one, however. This is being done to position the Republicans for the looming “entitlement” battle. They will pretend to fight for this insane proposition and then reluctantly give it up in the “compromise.” The Democrats, meanwhile, are floating a slight raise in the payroll cap or perhaps means testing of social security for which they too will fight until they are forced to give those positions up in the “compromise.” And what will be left after both sides have given up their cherished desires?

You tell me. (And I’m sure you can see the problem here.) Whatever happens, the Democrats will undoubtedly tell us that the compromise saved the country all from crazy GOP privatization plans and we should be grateful for their stalwart defense.

In fact, they already are:

MR. AXELROD: Well, first of all, I think that — as I said, I think his interest is in seeing the program strengthened, and there are certain things that are not just non-starters for him but I think many, many members of Congress, and that includes privatization, which Congressman Ryan has opposed, for example.

Privatization of Social Security has been off the table ever since the crash and burn of the Bush attempt in 2005, and certainly since the stock market crash of 2008. Indeed, until the last couple of weeks, the only people who even mentioned it were tough talking Democrats who used it as a straw man to show how serious they were about protecting Social Security (and Paul Ryan.) But it’s creeping back into the conversation for good reason. It’s a very useful negotiating chip.

.

Barbaric Yawpers

by digby

So the president has appointed ex-Time Magazine journalist and current VP spokesman Jay Carney as the new press secretary. I’m hearing that people really like his taste in music. And he is nice looking.

But this article by Rick Perlstein is worth remembering before we all get too excited. On the the new blog Swampland back in 2007, Carney wrote a typical Villager piece of conventional wisdom of the time about how Bush would focus on the things people really cared about, Iraq not being one them. Perlstein chronicled the reaction:

[T]he commenters unraveled the entire foundation of Carney’s argument. He had said that, because “Americans reward presidents who, even in the face of enormous distractions, focus on issues that matter to them … Bush won’t spend much time tonight talking about surging troops in Iraq or the Global War on Terror.” But, as writers identifying themselves as “jjcomet,” “dmbeaster,” and “Newton Minnow” pointed out, the issue of greatest concern to the nation “is far and away the war in Iraq, at 48% the only issue in double digits.” Another made a similar point, shall we say, more qualitatively: “The Iraq War is a DISTRACTION?? Are you serious? Am I wrong or did he compare the Lewinski scandal to Iraq??? What is the matter with you!?!?”

At which Carney snapped back so churlishly (“the left is as full of unthinking Ditto-heads as Limbaugh-land“) that, for a moment, it was hard even to remember–why was it, again, that we were supposed to defer to the authority of newsweeklies (and the mainstream press) in the first place? Carney was rude and wrong. The barbaric yawpers of the netroots were rude and right.

Perhaps he’s changed. But this is a seasoned product of the Village. I would doubt that he is any more enamored of the barbaric yawpers of today than he was then.

Be sure to click over to Perlstein’s whole essay because it’s not only a good reminder of the Villager essential mindset, but it’s a good reminder of the value of the dirty hippies in the first place:

All in all, a rough day for Jay Carney. It inaugurated a rough week for those who still wish to uphold a model of cultural authority in which the fact that someone is a professional with a famous name– credentialed by other professionals with famous names–can serve as a reasonable proxy for trustworthiness. It marked one more step in the arrival of our new, more uncomfortable media world–one in which, to judge a piece of writing, we must gauge not the status of the writer, but his or her words themselves, unattached to the author’s worldly rank.

That’s all right by me. In his brilliant 1990 study The Letters of the Republic: Publication and the Public Sphere in Eighteenth-Century America, literary scholar Michael Warner argues that this is precisely why so many founding fathers insisted that public debates be carried out by pseudonym. “Publius,” he points out–the pen name under which the newspaper arguments for ratifying the Constitution collected as the “Federalist Papers” were published–“speaks in the utmost generality of print, denying in his very existence the mediating of particular persons.” In other words, it wasn’t supposed to matter that the author was the distinguished gentleman Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, or James Madison. You were just supposed to judge according to the words on the page.

That’s changing rapidly these days as the blogosphere becomes more and more professionalized and “credentialed.” But it was an interesting moment. And the barbaric yawpers still exist — ironically they are especially active at Swampland, where the commentariat is one of the most engaged with the writers of anyplace on the internet.

.

.

Disturbing No One

by digby

Jonathan Schell at The Nation has written an excellent critique of the president’s speech that captures the nagging problem I’ve had with it since I first read the transcript. As with so many policy discussions lately, it seemed to be forcefully addressing a problem that isn’t acute and ignoring the ones that are:

Why has that moment, now more than a half century past, been dragged out of obscurity to define the present? And why was the associated theme of American competitiveness in the world market chosen as the theme of the president’s State of the Union speech? After all, no superpower is aiming terrifying new weapons at the United States, as the Soviet Union seemed to be doing with its ballistic rockets during the cold war. As a matter of fact, even this was an illusion. The Soviet lead in rocketry almost immediately gave way to clear US superiority, although the mistaken belief in a “missile gap” persisted for years and was in fact instrumental in producing the Cuban missile crisis.

Neither does any economic event or trend seem to explain the use of this historical reference point. It’s true that the United States’s educational system is measurably slipping. It’s also true that the country’s infrastructure has decayed badly. And yes, the United States would benefit from whatever technical innovation it can bring off, just as any country would. But none of those problems, needful of attention as they are in their own right, is the chief cause of the United States’s economic doldrums—its stubborn high unemployment, its persisting housing bust, its galloping economic inequality. These were the fruit of an economic crash brought on by a misguided, corrupt, incompetent, larcenous, unregulated financial establishment. The relevant remedies are not better technology or some contemporary equivalent of sending a man to the moon. (In any case, although Obama insisted “We do big things,” he didn’t offer one.) The remedies needed are a re-regulation and reconstruction of the financial system, plus a major, Keynesian style stimulus program to create jobs and purchasing power, and so to jar the economy out of its stupor. But none of that was in Obama’s speech. On the contrary, his proposal to freeze spending for five years threatened more economic stagnation.

It seems, then, that our new “sputnik moment” is no more real than the first one. The difference is that it took a while to puncture the illusion of the original while the emptiness of the remake is immediately apparent.

He goes on to write that in his quest for bipartisan favor the president sought to give a speech that “disturbed no one and no one was disturbed.” But I actually think he did something more than that. Evoking Sputnik was no accident. The subtext of that whole speech was that the Chinese are “beating” us and we need to get into the race and beat them. The problem, of course, is that if we are going to “compete” with China on the terms that actually exist today, we are going to be racing to a lower standard of living for American workers and higher profits for American companies. I suspect that’s the unspoken goal of many members of the global elite (and perhaps it’s even inevitable) but I’m not sure Americans would see that as “winning the future.”

It does, however, offer the promise of bipartisan support in some fashion. Democrats are leery of China’s human rights record and safety and labor practices while Republicans simply see them as “Evil Empire Part II, must dominate.” I suspect there will be plenty of “common ground” there, and I feel quite certain that American companies are going to be well taken care of by both parties in the process.

I have to say though, that if you’re going to go for it, the tried and true policy that brings everyone together is war. Too bad we’re already fighting a hot one in Afghanistan already and mired in a quasi-occupation in Iraq (not to mention outposts all over the planet.) It could be a big bipartisan winner.

.

Leading Indicators

by digby

This is the modern Republican Party in a (spud) nutshell:

No one should have to explain that the “Sputnik Moment” is in reference to the United States entering the space race and winning it, not the Soviets winning it and ending up spending and losing … oh, whatever idiotic gibberish it is she said. And no one should have to explain that the founders did not work tirelessly to end slavery, much less “filled the trees and clogged through the land.” But this is what we’ve come to.

It’s very hard to see this country “winning the future” with leadership like this. Indeed, the fact that they are considered national leaders at all indicates that we’ve already lost it.

I’m beginning to think this is a strategy to discredit women in politics.

Update: Oh No. Right wing Watch says this is real.

My favorite thing is that they seem to have used an African American voice and have staged it in what appears to be an urban back alley. If this is in fact real, which is hard to believe, you almost have to love their clumsy cluelessness.

.