Month: April 2011

As American As Bad Apple Pie

by digby

I’ve heard of not looking in the rear view mirror and not playing the blame game. But actively recruiting the people responsible for Abu Ghraib to be Democratic senators is taking this to a new level:

It’s being reported this morning that Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez may run for the open Senate seat in Texas, with the blessing of DSCC chair Patty Murray. A DSCC spokesman says Sanchez would make a ”strong candidate,” in part because of his “proven commitment to our nation’s security.” But that commitment to our security also included his stint overseeing military operations in Iraq from 2003-2004 — and the left and Senate Dems excoriated Sanchez because the Abu Ghraib scandal happened on his watch. Back when the news of the scandal first broke in 2004, Senator Murray, who now oversees the recruiting of Dem Senate candidates, said everyone responsible, no matter where in the chain of command, should be held accountable. “These actions are a disservice to the thousands of American soldiers in the region who serve us honorably each and every day, and, sadly, are likely to make their efforts to calm a troubled region even harder,” Murray said at the time.

But making them Senators sends an excellent signal. When Lyndie England getting out of jail. Maybe we can make her the first female Ambassador to Iraq?

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Transformational Government

by digby

In an article discussing the fact that the wealthy only pay an average of 17% tax on their millions (and poor people pay no federal income taxes at all, the bastards!)here’s how CBS describes the Republican and White House budget proposals:

The sheer volume of credits, deductions and exemptions has both Democrats and Republicans calling for tax laws to be overhauled. House Republicans want to eliminate breaks to pay for lower overall rates, reducing the top tax rate from 35 percent to 25 percent. Republicans oppose raising taxes, but they argue that a more efficient tax code would increase economic activity, generating additional tax revenue.

President Barack Obama said last week he wants to do away with tax breaks to lower the rates and to reduce government borrowing.

Basically, they’re saying that the president and the Republicans are proposing the same thing, except the Republicans are promising that the deficit will magically go away. Again, I get why the conservatives want to exchange tax breaks for lower rates. Their rich patrons will take the lower rates and will reinstate all the tax breaks and more as soon as possible. Entire armies of lobbyists are employed expressly for that purpose. (The fact that the Ryan budget the House passed last week includes a total rollback of Dodd Frank should be some indication of where they are coming from on this sort of thing.) They don’t really care about deficits, so they are employing their vacuous supply-side talking points, assuring everyone that if you cut taxes on the wealthy you increase revenue.

Here’s Amanda Terkel in yesterday’s HuffPo discussing the GOP’s mantra:

[Congressman Joe] Walsh replied that the best way to raise revenues is to grow the economy. “You get taxes and regulations off the backs of businesses so that revenues can increase,” he insisted.

Amanpour continued to press him, expressing skepticism that Congress can really balance the budget just by cutting social programs. Walsh insisted that tax cuts consistently help the economy grow and therefore raise revenues for the government.

“In the 80s, federal revenues went up,” said Walsh. “We didn’t cut spending. Revenues went up in the 80s. Every time we’ve cut taxes, revenues have gone up. The economy has grown.”
[…]
Walsh isn’t the first lawmaker to make this argument. Last year, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made a similar comment about the Bush tax cuts.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever that the Bush tax cuts actually diminished revenue,” he asserted. “They increased revenue, because of the vibrancy of these tax cuts in the economy.”

But even conservative economists have cast doubt on this claim.

“Federal revenue is lower today than it would have been without the tax cuts. There’s really no dispute among economists about that,” said Alan D. Viard, a former White House economist under George W. Bush, in a 2006 Washington Post article.

Robert Carroll, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for tax analysis, also said that no one in the administration believes tax cuts created a surge in revenue. “As a matter of principle, we do not think tax cuts pay for themselves,” Carroll said.

Bruce Bartlett, a Reagan economist who became a strong critic of the Bush administration’s policies, used data from the Office of Management and Budget in a blog post last year to illustrate how “the Bush tax cuts reduced revenue rather significantly.”

Ok, so the Republicans are lying as usual. And they are pulling an additional fast one with this notion of “reducing tax expenditures” as a way to raise revenue. Here’s what “tax expenditures” are:

Tax expenditures are, quite simply, spending programs implemented through the tax code. These programs give people and businesses special tax credits, deductions, exclusions, exemptions, deferrals, and preferential rates in support of various government policies. Some of these programs help people save for retirement, buy a home, or pay for college; others encourage companies to invest in green energy technologies or build nuclear power plants; they even subsidize corporations that drill for oil or purchase real estate; and much more.

The government uses both tax expenditures and direct spending to support its policies. Direct spending is when the government takes taxpayer dollars and gives them to others to spend for a specific purpose. The government uses tax expenditures to accomplish the same goals as direct spending, but it transfers money by lowering taxes for an individual or company instead of giving them the money.

Consider this example to see the similarities between direct spending and tax expenditures: The government wants to create a program that provides $10,000 to every individual who weatherizes his or her home. The government can deliver the subsidy in one of three ways: (1) cut a check for $10,000, (2) create a tax expenditure like a refundable credit worth $10,000, or (3) use a combination of direct spending and tax expenditures. In all three cases the individual who weatherizes his or her home receives $10,000 from the government.

What makes tax expenditures different from other forms of government spending?

The government uses tax expenditures and direct spending for the same purposes, but tax expenditures receive different treatment in two key ways. Most tax expenditures are not subject to the same annual appropriations process as other forms of spending. This means they are less likely to be scrutinized.

Second, tax expenditures appear to be tax cuts instead of spending because they transfer funds to businesses and individuals through tax subsidies. It is therefore generally easier to win votes for tax expenditures than direct spending. And members of Congress often pursue their priorities through tax expenditures as a result, even if direct spending would be more effective and cost less.

More at the link. So really, eliminating tax expenditures is not “raising revenue”, it’s cutting spending for programs that benefit the people — it’s just doing it by eliminating the incentives that make them possible. And what’s most ironic about it is that it’s GOP propaganda about big government that insisted upon enlisting the private sector and using these “incentives” instead of direct government spending in the first place.

Now, it’s true that there are a boatload of tax expenditures for corporations and the wealthy that can and should be cut. There is no reason for any government program that puts even more money into the pockets of rich people without giving any benefit to the citizens. But they are the least likely to stay cut for long — lobbyists are cheap by comparison and they are good at their jobs. No, the weight of this quest to eliminate the tax expenditures is going to fall on the programs that help average people or individuals. (They need to have “skin in the game”, dontcha know.) What’s happening is that all the programs the government has put in place for the past 60 years, from the New Deal to Medicare to the more modern tax incentives and subsidies for things like education and green energy are on the chopping block. That’s transformative alright.

So why is the administration pre-emptively signing on to this formula? I can’t say why they think that this kind of “reformation” of the tax code in a time when government is already restricted in it’s ability to deliver needed services to its citizens is a good idea. But this commentary by Gene Sperling explaining the White House position confirms that they do sign on to it. Basically, the president has promised to retire the Bush tax cuts and he will also close loopholes and remove “tax expenditures” which will bring in more money to deal with the deficit. And that means we can afford to lower the tax rates back down again — which also means the Bush tax cuts will become the Obama tax cuts. Hooray for the Democrats. Tax cuts uber alles:

Sperling: Obama’s message is bipartisan tax reform that lowers rates

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

In other words, “deficit reduction” as currently conceived is pretty much all spending cuts, whether through cutting direct government programs or indirect tax incentives. But we’ll pretend that it’s actually due to the elimination of corporate loopholes and subsidies. (So many we can actually lower tax rates even more!) If it happens (a long shot to be sure) the wealthy will end up paying less than they are already when all is said and done. And to be fair, average citizens’ may end up paying lower rates as well. But their government will end up doing much, much less to provide for the common welfare. That’s transformational, for sure.

And it also shows to me that this deficit hysteria is bullshit. “The market” demands low tax rates or they’ll crater the economy again, the CEOs demand low tax rates or they’ll move all their jobs offshore, and the wealthy donors demand low tax rates so they can leave most of the country’s wealth in the hands of their deadbeat offspring. Let’s be honest about what’s happening here and deal with it directly: the owners are demanding that average people give up their security and their futures so the top 1% can pay even less in taxes — or else. Whether it comes in the form of “tax reform” or direct spending cuts or any combination, that’s the “deal” that’s really on the table.

*And yes, I know that many of these subsidies are nonsense and should be eliminated. But unless they are willing to at least keep the tax rates at a reasonable level for the wealthy and corporations at the same time, once the lobbyists are done the net gain in revenue — if there is any — will all fall on the middle class and poor.

If I trusted these people to do the right thing, or even that they knew what the right thing was, I might be willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But this is not about the deficit — this is about cutting taxes and reducing the government’s ability to mitigate the harsh consequences of unbridled capitalism and support a strong, educated, healthy society that is compassionate toward those who cannot work. But hey, if you like a Hobbesian Jungle featuring lovely, full service, heavily armed gated resorts for the wealthy you’re going to love 21st century America.

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Happy Birthday Gert!

by digby

May we all live to be 80 and still fighting the good fight with spirit and compassion. I hope your day was one of your best ever.

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Tolerant/Intolerant

by digby

There’s lots of positive chatter this week-end about Sally Kohn’s excellent piece in the Washington Post about the limits of liberal tolerance. It’s an excellent question. Along with our bent for altruism and empathy, it’s a real Catch 22 for liberals seeking to live their values. It’s a little bit hard to it when the act of doing so empowers those who are hostile to them. There was a guy named Jesus who had some things to say about that but his teachings on the subject a very out of fashion these days, particularly among the people who hate tolerance, altruism and empathy. It’s more than a little bit ironic that they are the ones who’ve made a political litmus test out of being Christians.

It’s also, by the way, what sets the liberals apart from your commies — their system doesn’t really incorporate those values either, even if they share some hostility toward capitalistic excess. But don’t tell that to the right wingers. But then they also think liberals are in cahoots with Islamic fundamentalists who believe women should be stoned for adultery and gays should be hung, so they have a bit of a hard understanding these nuances.

The perennial question is what to do about it and after years of pondering this question I think it comes down to this: you can be altruistic and empathetic even when people are mean and ungrateful. Those values aren’t dependent upon how others receive them. And in order to live in this world you have to be tolerant of human foibles and differences among us. But you can’t be tolerant of injustice, greed, cruelty and violence. It’s not all that hard to see the difference when you step back and look at it clearly.

Anyway, read Kohn’s article. It’s a very interesting discussion of our competing worldviews and asks the right questions. It’s a problem, no doubt about it. It’s always has been.

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Kabuki For Dummies

by digby

January 2011:

Where do we stand? There’s one bit of good news, which the Democrats, if they actually wanted to stop this austerity trainwreck, could use to great advantage in the upcoming “negotiations”:

At the House GOP retreat in Baltimore, “Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) delivered a stern message that the debt ceiling will eventually have to be raised to keep the government from defaulting. But he also promised that Republicans will ‘use the leverage’ they have to enact at least some of their spending-reduction goals. ‘It’s a leverage moment for Republicans,’ Cantor said in an interview Friday. ‘The president needs us. There are things we were elected to do. Let’s accomplish those if the president needs us to clean up the old mess.'”

I wonder what “old mess” he’s talking about — the mess the Republicans made in their eight years of useless wars and tax cuts or the old mess of “entitlement spending”? But that’s beside the point: Cantor just said that they will have to raise the debt ceiling. He said it out loud and on the record. Therefore, we now know that any capitulation made by the President and the Democrats in the negotiations will be made because they wanted to make them. There can be no doubt about that.

Today:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says he is certain that Congress will raise the debt ceiling, saying leaders are “not going to play around with it” and risk the “catastrophic” consequences of defaulting on the nation’s debt obligations.

“I want to make it perfectly clear that Congress will raise the debt ceiling,” Geithner said in an interview with ABC News “This Week” anchor Christiane Amanpour. When asked if he was sure, Geithner responded, “absolutely,” adding that Congressional leaders made clear they understood the importance of the matter when meeting with President Barack Obama at the White House last Wednesday.

“I sat there with them, and they said, we recognize we have to do this. And we’re not going to play around with it,” Geithner said of last week’s White House meeting. “We know that the risk would be catastrophic.”

Both sides are now on the record. As dday writes, here, there’s no reason to not believe this is true. Wall Street is simply not going to allow the Republicans to default; it would be insane for any number of reasons. This kabuki by Snooki.

As dday says:

[A]ny policy attached to the debt limit increase is now owned by President Obama and Tim Geithner. Republicans are going to raise the debt limit regardless: it’s no longer credible, after this announcement, that the GOP “forced” the White House into any policy change. If your adversary just assured you that they will agree to your preferred clean bill, why would you accept anything else? The answer is clear: any policy other than a clean bill is one that’s not only acceptable to the President, but affirmatively sought by him.

So while Geithner’s statement is certainly bold, it also cuts through all of the future nonsense over the next couple months about “negotiation.” There will be no such negotiation. The President will decide for himself what kind of policy he wants to include as a means of looking “serious” about the budget deficit. And he will affirmatively add that to the debt limit vote. He won’t be forced into anything.

I have zero patience with this. They can have a bogus deficit discussion around the 2012 budget and they can convene commissions galore, but attaching it to the debt limit is unadulterated bullshit. The Treasury Secretary just said on national television that the debt ceiling must be raised or a catastrophe will result and that the Republicans have already agreed. There’s literally nothing more to talk about.

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Shut It Down!

by digby

Paul Ryan showed himself to be remarkably thin-skinned and (dare I say it) shrill this past week as he came under some serious criticism for the first time in his charmed career. he was snappish when describing the President’s truthful characterization of his plan as being cruel to seniors and he got very, very peeved at the suggestion that he wasn’t so serious after all. It looks as though the man who wants an adult conversation is quite the whiner when someone doesn’t agree with him.

But this really takes the cake. John Nichols reports on the rugged, Randian individualist’s reversion to Big Brother tactics when the Democrats did an end run on the GOPs pathetic strategy to make his plan look “reasonable” by presenting one that’s even worse:

[T]oward the close of the vote on the RSC proposal, the Democrats started switching from “no” votes to simple declarations that they were “present.”

As a result, it looked for a few moments like the RSC proposal was going to pass—putting the House Republicans on record in support of the sort of sweeping cuts in government programs that the GOP’s more libertarian members imagine are necessary. That’s quite distinct from the scheme advanced by Ryan, a key backer of the 2008 bank bailout, to begin steering all that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid money to Wall Street, speculators and profiteers who are his political base.

Ultimately, 172 Democrats voted present.

That meant that the RSC plan had to be blocked by Republicans who claim to be anti-big government conservatives. And so it was, as key Republicans such as Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier, R-California, and Washington Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, another member of GOP leadership team, led the race to switch votes.

When it was clear there were enough Republican votes to block the bill—at a point where 120 GOP memners have voted “no” to 119 who had voted “yes”—Ryan started screaming to the presiding officer: “Shut it down!”

Suddenly Paul Ryan became Big Brother.

The Budget Committee chair was desperate to close the vote before any more Democrats could switch from “no” votes to those declarations of “present.” (Sixteen Democrats were finally record as voting “no.” If just two of them had cast mischievous “yes” votes while the rest switched to present, the Republicans would have been stuck with a plan that made drastic cuts to government programs, but that did not so smoothly implement Ryan’s scheme for a further redistribution of the wealth upward.)

“Shut it down!” screeched Ryan. “Shut it down!”

The Wisconsin congressman was determined to stop the voting process immediately.

Big Brother was not about to lose control of the process he had rigged to deliver for his political benefactors.

He needed to prevent a bold act of dissent that exposed his hypocrisy.

And he succeeded.

But not without revealing himself as an authoritarian who was not about to let his best-laid plans be upset by an act of creative rebellion.

Ayn Rand once wrote: “Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”

Of course, Rand herself had quite an authoritarian streak in her dealings with others so I don’t know that she would expect a Galtian he-man like Ryan to personally subscribe to such philosophical fine points either. Winners don’t need to follow the same rules as the parasites.

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Dispatch From Reagan Country

by digby

More evidence that racism is completely been purged from the body politic:

A Southern California Tea Party activist, and Republican Party official came under fire Saturday after it was revealed that she sent an email including an altered photo depicting President Barack Obama as an ape.

The e-mail sent by party central committee member Marilyn Davenport shows an image posed like a family portrait, of chimpanzee parents and child, (That’s right, the deceased mother of the President of the US is portrayed as a chimpanzee, too.)with Obama’s face superimposed on the child. Text beneath the photo reads, “Now you know why no birth certificate.”

County GOP Chairman Scott Baugh said he “received it Friday afternoon and quickly responded with an email telling Davenport it was “dripping with racism and is in very poor taste.” Baugh has called for Davenport’s resignation …

Davenport responded initially by blasting the leak as “cowardly,” and attacking the “liberal media.”

Scott Moxley of the OC Weekly pointed out some startling facts about Orange County:

“Orange County might be a beautiful oceanfront locale, but it’s also home to Holocaust deniers, vicious anti-gay bigots and freakish big-haired televangelists.

Here, one of our Republican politicians welcomed the inauguration of the first African American U.S. president in early 2009 by sending out an email that depicted a watermelon field in front of the White House.”

When Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose emailed the White House watermelon photograph, he was defended by…guess who? Marilyn Davenport. California Republican Party Michael Schroder said that whe “Newport City Councillman voted against installing grass turf near the beach because it would “attract Mexicans”,” Davenport also came to his defense as well.

Read on for the rest. Makes me personally proud to be a Californian.

And keep in mind that these are elected officials. If this stuff wasn’t fairly common among their cohort, they wouldn’t keep doing this in public.

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White Man’s Overbite

by digby

You’ve probably already seen this, but for some reason I mercifully had been spared until last night when I happened upon it on BET. I just don’t know what to say…

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Saturday Night At The Movies

Yes darling, but is it art?

By Dennis Hartley

Mona Lisa smile: Juliette Binoche in Certified Copy

Love is like two dreamers dreaming, the exact same dream
Just another Technicolor romance on the screen
-from “Nightmoves” by Michael Franks

In the introduction to his playful 1974 rumination on art forgery, F for Fake, director Orson Welles looks straight into the camera and says, “This is a promise. For the next hour, everything you hear from us is absolutely true, and based on solid fact.” Trouble is, the film runs 85 minutes (think about that for a moment). I couldn’t help but flash on that, when somewhere around the halfway mark of Certified Copy, the latest film from Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami, I had to ask myself: “Now…steady. Is he having a laugh?”

Initially embarking in the direction of Before Sunset/Two for the Road, before taking an abrupt turn into Last Year at Marienbad/Track 29 territories, Kiarostami’s film begins innocently enough. Elle (Juliet Binoche) is a French ex-pat living in Tuscany. A single mom, Elle supports herself and her pre-teen son by running a small art gallery. One day, she attends a lecture by a British art critic named James Miller (William Shimell). He’s promoting his latest book, which deals with art fakery, and the age-old existential question: If it is perceived as “art” in the eye of the beholder, does it matter if it’s “real”?

Elle, who splits before the lecture ends, seems less fascinated by what the author has to say than she is by the man himself; although she blushes and vehemently denies as such when her precocious son teases her afterwards about her apparent crush. Self-consciously doing her best not to come off like a groupie, Elle introduces herself to James, and after he lets on that he has no particular plans until he has to catch his train that night, offers to take him on a tour of the countryside to catch a little local flavor. Hey-it’s Tuscany, right? And as we’ve learned from watching countless romantic movies set in the Tuscan countryside, what’s not to love about those sunny, pastoral vistas that inspired the likes of Michelangelo, daVinci, Donatello and Botticelli? This is not lost on the director or his DP Luca Bigazzi (Il Divo, Bread and Tulips) who allow us plenty of time and space to soak in the lovely views while Elle and James prattle on about love, life, art, meow-meow, etc.

Just when you’re being lulled into thinking this is going to be one of those brainy, talky, yet pleasantly diverting romantic romps where you and your date can amuse yourselves by placing bets on “will they or won’t they-that is, if they can both shut up long enough to get down to business sometime before the credits roll” propositions, Kiarostami throws you a curveball. When a café proprietress mistakes James for Elle’s husband, marveling at how he seems to be treating his wife as if he is courting her for the first time, she decides to play along. While James is, erm, indisposed at the gent’s, Elle romances an entire back story on the spot, telling the woman that this is their 15th anniversary, and that they have decided to revisit the town where they spent their honeymoon. When James returns, he seems to intuit the Kabuki, and slides into character, picking up Elle’s narrative right on cue. Even after they leave the café, they don’t “break character”. Or is it Kabuki? Have they actually been married for 15 years-and all that blushing first date stuff was just a role-playing game? Perhaps this is an attempt to spruce up a tired relationship? Or is James a figment of Elle’s imagination…or vice versa? I’m not telling.

Don’t worry, these are not spoilers. Because the director isn’t “telling” either (sly devil). I don’t even think he knows what’s going on with these two. You know what I think? I think that he wants us to think. I know-life throws enough curveballs at us every day. You’ve got enough to think about -why spend ten bucks on a movie that’s going to make your brain hurt even more? Because while you’re pondering, you have an impossibly attractive couple to ogle. Not to mention Binoche’s amazing performance; there’s pure poetry in every glance, every gesture. Shimell (no stranger to opera aficionados), is impressive as well in his first notable movie role. Then again, maybe this film isn’t so much about “thinking”, as it is about “perceiving”. Because if it’s true that a “film” is merely (if I may quote Mr. Welles once again) “a ribbon of dreams”-then Certified Copy, like any true work of art, is simply what you perceive it to be-nothing more, nothing less.

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Last Train To Galt’s Gulch

by digby

Dennis will be along in a bit with a review of a real film, but do yourself a favor and read Roy Edroso’s take on the new Atlas Shrugged movie. A taste:

[A]s much fun as it is to slag rotten movies, it is much better to be surprised by a good one, especially when you’ve reached the stage in life where two hours in front of a stinker sets you dreaming of the warm couch and leftover sesame chicken that you left back home. But it is my great regret to inform you that Atlas Shrugged: Part I is neither good nor good-bad, but bad-bad-bad-bad. I dreamed, not of sesame chicken, but of my own swift and merciful death, and http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifthat of the director, not necessarily in that order. It is not a pleasurable surprise, not a hoot, nor an outrage; it is Rand’s granite crushed, reconstituted, and spread across the screen with steamrollers.

Fun.

I do take exception to one thing Roy says. Any notion that that teenage potboiler could ever be anything but ridiculous is wishful thinking. There’s a reason nobody’s ever been able to get a decent script out of that monster. It’s just too stupid. And that’s in a industry that has made gazillions on a franchise called Jackass.