Month: February 2011

A Many Pronged Attack

by digby

I wrote about this right wing Georgia wild man Bobby Franklin a couple of months ago when he proposed that people shouldn’t have to be licensed to drive. You may have heard about his recent attempt to criminalize miscarriages. Well Julie Ingersoll has connected the dots on this fine fellow and guess what? He’s a Christian Reconstructionist:

Franklin has introduced a bill that lays out a “states’ rights” argument that the US Supreme Court did not have jurisdiction to hear Roe v. Wade and that the Court has no constitutional authority to define who is a person and what constitutes murder. The bill asserts in a preamble: “The State of Georgia has the duty to protect all innocent life from the moment of conception until natural death. We know that life begins at conception.” The preamble is the justification for making what Franklin labels “pre-natal murder” illegal. (Georgia isn’t the only state taking up new and controversial bills on abortion.) What makes Franklin’s bill different, though, is the provision on miscarriage. Miscarriage is not be considered pre-natal murder “so long as there is no human involvement whatsoever in the causation of such event.” There is no indication as to how such a determination is to be made, and critics are charging that the bill would require women who have had miscarriages to provide evidence that they were not at fault, and possibly be subject to criminal investigations by the state. Franklin’s bio on the state legislature’s website claims he “has been called ‘the conscience of the Republican Caucus’ because he believes that civil government should return to its biblically and constitutionally defined role.” That same website has a nifty little option that allows you to sort proposed bills according to their sponsors; so it was easy to get a sense of what he means by government’s biblically-defined role. He sponsored legislation to eliminate restrictions on bringing guns to church and to school. He proposed that the state of Georgia adopt a hard money currency system, and offered a resolution lecturing a state supreme court justice on the difference between a “democracy” and a “republic.” He has proposed amending the law so that victims of rape would be referred to as “accusers” rather than “victims” (this applied only to rape and not other crimes, so one couldn’t argue it was motivated by preserving the concept of innocent until proven guilty). Franklin has such a “limited view” of government that not only does he oppose public schools but he also thinks the state has no authority to issue driver’s licenses. Right. The state cannot issue driver’s licenses but it should regulate miscarriages. Oh, but there’s more on what Franklin thinks is government’s “biblically-defined role.” Franklin is a member of Chalcedon Presbyterian Church, one of the few out-and-out Christian Reconstructionist churches. Featured in Bill Moyers’ 1992 documentary God in Politics: On Earth As It Is In Heaven, Chalcedon Presbyterian is pastored by Joseph Morecraft, a regular lecturer at American Vision and Vision Forum events. And all of the proposed legislation noted above has roots in Christian Reconstructionist teachings or the culture of Reconstructionist-oriented biblical patriarchy.

Read on for the details.
There are quite a few of these people in politics and the right wing is electing more and more of them as they take over the Republican party. It is not some fringe part of the movement anymore as Mother Jones reveals in this story about how these “justifiable homicide” bills are cropping up all over the country:

That these measures have emerged simultaneously in a handful of states is no coincidence. It’s part of a campaign orchestrated by a Washington-based anti-abortion group, which has lobbied state lawmakers to introduce legislation that it calls the “Pregnant Woman’s Protection Act” [PDF]. Over the past two years, the group, Americans United for Life, has succeeded in passing versions of this bill in Missouri and Oklahoma. But there’s a big difference between those bills and the measures floated recently in South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa.[…]
AUL’s efforts to expand justifiable homicide statutes are part of a broader push by social conservatives to advance the political front lines on abortion and other social issues. After Republicans won the House of Representatives and swept to almost unprecedented state-level success in November, social conservatives were invigorated. Since state and federal legislative sessions began in January, they have pushed GOP lawmakers to introduce scores of bills aimed at promoting what they call a “culture of life.” That effort hasn’t failed to stir up controversy. At the federal level, House Republicans have attempted to limit the circumstances under which the government would pay for abortions to cases of “forcible rape,” a measure that was eventually dropped after it caused a national furor in January. Since then, cuts in federal funding for family planning, proposals specifically outlawing funding for Planned Parenthood, a Georgia bill that could criminalize some miscarriages, and the series of AUL-backed bills allowing for justifiable homicide in defense of a fetus have all helped put the culture wars back on the nation’s front pages. With conservatives riding a wave of 2010 success and anti-Obama feeling into the 2012 elections, anti-abortion forces are just getting started.

There is an impulse among many liberal wonks and activists to flinch in the face of this sort of right wing assault and perversely shame those who try to raise awareness of it. I certainly heard my fill of it during the last election where my worries about a teabag revolution were met with eye rolling and derision from more than a few of my colleagues. My hope was that my fears would come to nothing, but at this point I think the evidence shows that the Big Money Boyz have decided to keep their rubes (who were always just as socially conservative as “fiscally” conservative) happy while they implement their Disaster Capitalist program.

Unfortunately, there will probably be a temptation for some Democrats to think that they will settle for these “less important” culture war items in exchange for letting up on the economic side and offer them up in negotiations. (Or that there are only so many fronts on which Democrats can fight so, let’s let these go.) But everyone should know by now that when you give right wingers an inch, they take a mile. They want it all. And if push really comes to shove history shows that the Republicans will stab the social conservatives in the back long before they’ll sell out the plutocrats, so there’s really no point.

When I see someone like Richard Mellon Scaife criticizing the Republicans for going after Planned Parenthood, I realize that we are the proverbial frogs in slowly boiling water. The right has become very, very extreme and they are backed by big money and own one of the two major political parties in this country. And yet I haven’t yet seen much visceral reaction from the policy elites aside from the usual pooh-poohing of the hysterical hippies Cassandra crones like myself.

Maybe Wisconsin and other grassroots reactions around the country will wake them up. I hope so. And I certainly hope that when they do, they realize that there is no “common ground” with people who want to criminalize miscarriage. They have declared all-out war.

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Big Blubbering Babies

by digby

This is just blatant working the refs at this point, but still — you’d think they’d have just a modicum of pride:

The head of industrial conglomerate 3M (MMM, Fortune 500) blasted the president as being “anti-business,” claiming Obama has not done anything to improve the White House’s relationship with Corporate America.3M CEO George Buckley called Obama’s policies “Robin Hood-esque” and told the Financial Times that manufacturers like 3M may have to shift production to other countries in order to stay competitive.”We know what his instincts are … he is anti business,” Buckley said in an interview that ran late Sunday.The interview comes as the White House pushes its pro-business agenda. Last week, the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness held its first meeting to brainstorm ideas on job growth and boosting the economy.The Council is headed by a roundtable of business leaders including General Electric’s (GE, Fortune 500) Jeffrey Immelt, AOL (AOL) co-founder Steve Case and Intel (INTC, Fortune 500) CEO Paul Otellini.Otellini had been critical of the Obama administration’s handling of the economic recovery back in September. But he joined 19 other CEOs for a White House summit in December to talk about job creation and other ways to move the economy forward…

0:00 /5:19Soros: Obama lost control of agenda

Despite the recent public positions of other major business leaders, Buckley says he’s not alone.”There is a sense among companies that [the U.S.] is a difficult place to do business,” he told the FT. “We’ve got a real choice between manufacturing in Canada or Mexico — which tend to be more pro-business — and America.”

That’s very interesting. Canada has single payer health insurance — a huge benefit to employers — and higher taxes, something that these people are adamantly against. And Mexico pays people slave wages with no benefits, both of which these people obviously prefer. So, this statement would be incoherent, unless you just accept it for the obvious blackmail threat it is. Believe me, they are not lobbying to be more like Canada. They are lobbying to be more like Mexico. But hey, I suppose it could end up solving the immigration problem.

And these selfish, unpatriotic crybabies wonder why everyone hates them.

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The Paris Hilton Of Newspapers Sees What He Expects To See

by digby

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that Keith Olberman is a very good blogger. (If you haven’t seen his new blog, check it out.) Today’s post about the NY Times heir Sulzberger making an epic mistake is well worth reading:

Few news stories better spoke to the destruction of union solidarity and the realization that even those public employees collectively bargaining in Wisconsin were going to have to give something back, than the New York Times’ piece a week ago tomorrow titled “Union Bonds In Wisconsin Begin To Fray.”

The by-line was shared by no less than Arthur G. Sulzberger, the son of the publisher and official carrier of the Times’ family name. The piece ran prominently on the front page. Sulzberger himself interviewed the main ‘get’ in the piece. Beyond the mere reporting was the symbolism of the Times – even the sainted liberal media Times – throwing in the towel on the inviolability of unions, conceding that an American state could renege with impunity on a good faith contract with anybody, and that maybe the Right is right every once in awhile.

Problem is, A.G. Sulzberger’s featured disillusioned unionist interviewee…wasn’t in a union…the source, Rick Hahn, now admits that while he worked in union factories, he was never, you know, in a union per se. So why did the Diogenes of the Times, Mr. Sulzberger, believe he had found his honest union man? Because Hahn “described himself to a reporter as a ‘union guy.’”

Olbermann points out that while the story was on page one, the correction was buried on page five. But while he may be a good blogger and a great broadcaster, he missed a very important part of this story. But Jonathan at A Tiny Revolution caught it right away:

For me the best part of the Scott Walker prank call is how much he loves a New York Times article:

SCOTT WALKER: The New York Times, of all things—I don’t normally tell people to read the New York Times, but the front page of the New York Times, they’ve got a great story—one of these unbelievable moments of true journalism—what it’s supposed to be, objective journalism—they got out of the capital and went down one county south of the capital, to Janesville, to Rock County, that’s where the General Motors plant once was. FAKE DAVID KOCH: Right, right. WALKER: They moved out two years ago. The lead on this story’s about a guy who was laid off two years ago, he’d been laid off twice by GM, who points out that everybody else in his town has had to sacrifice except for all these public employees, and it’s about damn time they do and he supports me. And they had a bartender, they had—every stereotypical blue collar worker-type, they interviewed, and the only ones who weren’t with us were ones who were either a public employee or married to a public employee. It’s an unbelievable—so I went through and called all these, uh, a handful, a dozen or so lawmakers I worry about each day, and said to them, everyone, get that story and print it out and send it to anybody giving you grief.

Noting the fact that the article was written by Sulzberger Jr he later wrote:

So that’s ominously funny and funnily ominous in its own right. But we don’t need to try to predict how honest New York Times coverage will be in the future when A.G. Sulzberger becomes publisher…because we can just examine his writing right now. Sulzberger just wrote a 733-word article about the prank call. Number of mentions of Walker loving a certain Sulzberger-written New York Times article? Zero.

Yes, that’s right. Sulzberger Jr also wrote the article for the NY Times about Walker’s prank call and never mentioned that Walker had talked at length about his own (incorrect) article in the call.

One hates to think that just because Sulzberger is the heir to a great newspaper empire that he has an agenda. And perhaps it’s better to use Occam’s Razor and just assume that he’s lazy and inept as so many bosses sons are. But these events are ironically funny at the very least. Indeed, the fact that they assigned the Paris Hilton of newspapers to cover this story at all is hilarious, especially considering that he accepted the word of someone who said he was “a union man” and didn’t bother to ask what union he belonged to. I’m guessing that Sulzberger Junior just assumed that no one would lie about being a member of a union. Or maybe he was the only person he could find to properly illustrate the article he already wanted to write.

This is a lovely little story of Big Media and its biases working in favor of the ruling class. Just as one would expect.

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Chart O’ The Day

by digby

Courtesy of Dean Baker:

Figure 1 below projects pension fund assets if pensions had continued to earn on average a 4.5 percent nominal rate of return in the period since the end of 2007. Under this assumption, state and local pension fund assets would have been $857 billion higher at the end of the third quarter of 2010.

…. In the period since the beginning of the recession, annual payments into state and local pension funds have averaged $6.9 billion less than withdrawals. By contrast, in the three years prior to the downturn, payments averaged $18.4 billion more than withdrawals. If state and local governments had continued to contribute to their pensions at the same rate as they had in the prior three years, then the total assets of these funds would be $77 billion higher than was reported at the end of the third quarter of 2010. Adding this to the $857 billion figure above results in an additional $934 billion in pension funds, a figure far higher than most estimates of the size of state and local government shortfalls.

Kevin adds:

Dean calculates that if pension funds continue to invest in a basket of assets that includes equities, and economic performance remains at historical levels, most states have a pension shortfall of less than 0.2% of income. If this is right, then either very small changes in state contributions or very small changes in employee contributions (or a combination of both) are all that’s necessary to eliminate the pension shortfall entirely. It’s just not as big a problem as critics are suggesting.

It might not be too late to get this word out. I am under the impression that the chicken-littling about the pension funds hasn’t yet penetrated the average American’s consciousness and it might not be too late to turn it around.

That would require that Democrats try not to ape Republican talking points at every turn, which is unlikely, but I live in hope.

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Virtually Speaking

by digby

I’m on with dday at 6pm, talking about Madison and whatever else comes up.

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Wolfowitz rolls around in the gutter. Again.

by digby

Disgraced neocon Paul Wolfowitz appeared on CNN’s Zakaria show this morning and showed once again why he is a criminal weasel of epic proportions:

ZAKARIA: But you were – you were in high levels of government, so you understand the – the pressures people are dealing with. Could it be that one of concerns is that if the United States keeps calling for the ouster of – of these – of presidents, of prime ministers, that countries like Saudi Arabia will get rattled and say, wait a minute, we – you know, is the United States going to sit here and try to unseat all the – all the monarchies in the Middle East?

WOLFOWITZ: I don’t think that’s a legitimate reason to stand by a man who’s slaughtering his own people. And I have a lot of criticisms to make of the Saudis, but I don’t believe they’re capable of this sort of butchery. And if we –

You know, we’d be in a much better position to say, look, with all it’s faults, Saudi Arabia doesn’t treat its – its subjects as trash. It doesn’t kill them, brutalize them and threaten to take them back to the Stone Age. So let’s put Saudi Arabia in one category.

We’d be in a much better position to do that if we were clear about Gadhafi.

Can you believe the gall of this man? First of all, he is in no position to criticize any other administration ever for botching foreign policy. it’s amazing to me that he’s even allowed in the country much less on television opining about democracy and freedom. Second, he’s actually defending Saudi Arabia because it doesn’t treat its citizens like trash, which I suppose is true if you don’t count the 50% of them who are women. But who cares about them?

But Wolfowitz conveniently ignores his own administration’s recent rehabilitation of the butcher for PR (and oil revenue) purposes:

ZAKARIA: You were in the administration that have – that normalized relations with Libya. It is the Bush administration that brought him in from the cold – from the cold. Were you opposed to that decision?

Excellent question, don’t you think, since they paraded Qadaffi around like he was a conquering hero at the time as evidence that their bellicose posturing and illegal invading was making all the depots tremble in fear. Not to mention the fact that they took him off the terror watch list so that their oil buddies could turn on the spigot.

Here’s what the spineless creep replied:

WOLFOWITZ: Look, I think we needed to give some acknowledgement to the fact that he handed over his nuclear weapons program. But it was an illegal program, and I thought we were giving him a lot by in effect saying you wouldn’t suffer the fate of Saddam Hussein. I don’t think we had to go nearly as far as we went.

There was a lot of pressure from Pan-Am 103 families because they wanted to collect the money that Gadhafi was offered. I –

ZAKARIA: Do you think that’s really –

WOLFOWITZ: At one point, I believed – well, I was being told that the pressure was – I believe it was significant. I can’t prove it. The United States went ahead and restored full diplomatic relations and had the Secretary of State visit.

I think we have should have drawn more of a line. Some move was appropriate. I think we went too far, and I think the Obama administration continued that

What an asshole. He blames the PanAm 103 families for the Bush administration paying back their oil field buddies and using Qadaffi as the poster boy for the success of the Bush Doctrine. Because they wanted they were greedy!.

Licking his comb was actually the least offensive thing he’s ever done.

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Something Unusual is Happening

by digby

A tweet from Wisconsin:

3rd police officer in a row I’ve locked eyes with whose simply said, “thank you for being here”. Something very unusual is happening…

dday took some video of protesters making plan for when the police come in —scheduled for right now — to force the protesters out of the capitol.

If you want to see any news of this, the only place you can see it is on Fox where they are talking about the “hate in the faces” of the protesters and comparing it to Libya — presumably with the protesters in the role of Qadaffi.

You can best follow this on Twitter. Just like countries in the Middle East.

Update: The first two to sit down to get arrested surrounded by photographers:

h/t to brandzel

Update II: According to the twitter machine: so far, no arrests. Some off duty police are staying with the protesters in solidarity. Apparently, people will be allowed to stay if they move up a floor, but some protesters are staying to get arrested.

Update III: AFL-CIO live feed is offline, some say it was cut. (Have no idea what really happened.) You can get some live stuff from this feed. Or watch Fox, which is covering this live and making sure everyone is aware that these are nothing but Union Thugs who hate America.

Update IV: TPM’s Kleefeld reports:

Even the multiple police officers that I’ve spoken to say that they do not know whether there are plans to make any arrests.

At 3 p.m. CT, a small group of protesters held a press conference in the office of Democratic state Rep. Brett Hulsey, to announce that they would non-violently refuse to leave — opening themselves up to the possibility of being escorted out or even arrested. The protesters included students, unionists and members of the clergy.

They made clear that they would not be belligerent with police officers — who, they noted, had cooperated with protest leaders on issues of crowd locations and sanitation for the past week and a half. Instead, they blamed the decision to close the Capitol on the Republican-controlled state government.

When 4 p.m. came, hardly anybody left, and the chanting continued. At about 4:15 p.m., a protest organizer announced on the ground floor that everyone present had to make a choice: To leave, or to stay and move to the first upper floor. Some people did indeed leave, but many others filed up the stairs, expanding the already large presence on the first upper floor.

In a further sign that hardly anything has changed, the chants are still being led from the same place they have been the whole time: The center of the ground floor, which is visible from the balconies of the upper floors. A few protesters have remained on the ground floor, continuing to lead the chants in plain sight of the police.

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An Important Anniversary

by digby

While I was waiting in vain for a story about the rallies in Madison and across the country yesterday on CNN, I did happen to catch this important story, as Heather at C&L did:

I didn’t know that yesterday was the Tea Party’s “birthday” but wasn’t surprised to see that CNN celebrated it. It has, after all, been a big story for them over the past two years what with following them all over the country and reporting every gathering of more than four people as a national event. Now, the rise of a real populist movement in America that isn’t actually backed by major corporations and wealthy individuals is stale. Been there, done that and all that rot.

Fox, however, is following the Madison story closely and is working hard to set the narrative:

h/t to @stopbeck

Laying out The Case Against Birth Control

by digby

In case you were wonder whether women are being hysterical about the war on Planned Parenthood, here’s Kathryn Lopez to explain why it’s a legitimate concern:

Why are Republicans waging war on contraception? It’s not the first time the question has been asked, and it won’t be the last. Truth be told, Republicans aren’t engaging in battle on that front — but the phrase gets close to a legitimate fight. Congress, for its part, held an unprecedented vote in the House in February to end funding of Planned Parenthood. It’s not a permanent or final vote; it was attached to a short-term move to keep the government funded. The debate in Congress was given momentum by the Live Action investigatory videos, which raised significant questions about what exactly Planned Parenthood is doing; but the rest of us need to discuss why we’ve let Planned Parenthood step in as a mainstream Band-Aid, throwing contraception and even abortion at problems that have much more fundamental solutions. While women may want love and marriage, they don’t expect it. Justice Sandra O’Connor wrote in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey opinion that women had “organized intimate relationships, and made choices that define their views of themselves and their places in society, in reliance on the availability of abortion in the event that contraception should fail.” And why wouldn’t they? Who, nowadays, encourages them to want more? We’ve come to expect less for and from ourselves, and for and from one another. In part, it’s the fruit of the contraceptive pill. New York magazine recently observed in a cover feature: “The pill is so ingrained in our culture today that girls go on it in college, even high school, and stay on it for five, 10, 15, even 20 years.” That, of course, has had all kinds of fallout: a false sense of freedom, security. And it has ravaged women’s fertility, as it seeks to mute exactly what women’s reproductive power is all about. That’s why I want to turn back the clock — to a time when we valued love and marriage and didn’t expect, support and even encourage promiscuity. Life and history don’t work that way, obviously, there is no actual rewind. But we do have opportunities to learn from our mistakes. The spending fight over Planned Parenthood in Congress is about a number of things. It’s primarily about good stewardship, as so much of the spending debate is. But beyond legislation, beyond anything Congress can or should do, it is a call to arms for a new sexual revolution. It’s about wanting more for ourselves and for those whom we love. It’s about ending the surrender to a contraceptive mentality that treats human sexuality as just another commercial transaction.

She goes on to describe what she sees as an offensive TV commercial for a birth control pill which shows women celebrating their choices, which she sees as wanton sexuality run amok.

It’s rather refreshing to see it all laid out so clearly, I must say. But that’s it. They want to turn back the clock to a time when women’s role in life was strictly proscribed unless she stayed celibate. (Married women, of course, would be “free” to use their “reproductive power”.)

This is what it’s all about kids, whether anyone wants to admit it or not. The war on women (in this case being waged by a woman) is about the fear of female sexuality. This is powerful, primal stuff — eve and apples and all that — and it should be taken seriously. Just because it sounds patently absurd today doesn’t mean that it can’t be a serious “debate” tomorrow. Happens all the time.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Oscar Thoughts

by digby

Dennis is taking the week off, leaving us bereft of his invaluable insights just when we need him the most. (It’s Oscar week-end fergawdsakes!) So …. I guess I’ll have to try to fill his Pradas.

In my previous life I would have seen every movie nominated, already filled out my ballot and put a fairly good sized bet on the line. You see, if you work in Hollywood, the Oscars aren’t really about the movies, although it helps if they got good reviews. The studios (and sometime individuals) spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a boatload of hype and advertising so if you read the trade papers and listen to the buzz you can usually figure out where the heat is and make a good bet. But that was a while ago. Now I rarely see films on the big screen and usually miss the hot movies until they make their way to the DVD release. And the sad truth is that I just don’t watch as many movies as I used to. But here goes, from my meager knowledge of this year’s Best Picture nominees:

Of the best picture nominations, I have seen Inception, The Kids Are Alright, The King’s Speech, and The Social Network. I could kick myself for not seeing Black Swan yet because I am usually a big fan of Aronofsky, but I just haven’t gotten to it. True Grit, The Fighter and Winter’s Bone are on my list to see at the earliest opportunity. I’ll probably skip Toy Story, even though I know it’s supposed to be great, but I’m old and I’ve never much liked animation of any kind. (This is where being dead inside comes in.) I won’t see 127 Hours because it sounds excruciating and life is short.

For me the best picture of the year (of those I saw) was Inception.(Oddly, according to this NY Times article, it is the choice of most non-Americans who participated in their poll. Go figure.) I just thought it was a fascinating meditation on the nature of reality, which in this day and age is something we should all spend a a little time contemplating. And it was a masterful cinematic achievement, far more interesting and creative than the usual 3D, digitized Gameboy movies. So for me, it’s Best Picture.

But I also like the others. I thought The Kids are Alright featured the most interesting performance that I saw all year with Annette Benning’s very subtle rendering, in which she managed to be recognizably gay without a moment of cliche or overt stereotype. Julianne Moore was also very good, but she was more of the lipstick lesbian in the couple and I don’t think her role required quite the nuance of Benning’s. As it turns out, a long term gay marriage has the same tensions of all marriage, albeit with some additional complications. But in the end, infidelity, insecurity, growing older — it’s all human, with all that that implies. So, for me, Benning gets the nod for Best Actress. The movie was really all in her face.

The Social Network was just great, and it’s a very close call for me between it and Inception for Best Picture. The whole idea of who “owns” ideas is interesting and in this case it’s all wrapped up in class and aspiration and jealousy. Plus the moody cinematography and music made Cambridge look like something out of the Spanish Inquisition, which was sort of fitting.

Finally, The King’s Speech. Yes, I know everyone found it life changing, but I just thought it was a good, solid English hat movie. And there’s nothing wrong with that! I love a good hat movie, especially one that features Helena Bonham Carter, who really knows how to wear one. Colin Firth was excellent as always, but for me, his great performance last year in A Single Man was the award winner. I expect he’ll win. Everyone seems to think so and I can’t argue with them. Most great actors finally win for characters with disabilities.

That’s all I’ve got folks. I still haven’t seen Precious, that’s how out of it I am, so take this with a grain of salt. And feel free to weigh in with insults and derision in the comments.

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