Month: May 2011

Rush More

by digby

How much do I love Mike Stark? This much:

Today:

Haha.

Stark was right. Limbaugh is the kingmaker and the head of the Republican Party. He’s the guy they all come crawling to when they make a boo-boo and the one whose ring must be kissed in order to achieve true conservative status. He’s the man. He should take responsibility and make it happen.

Who shall it be? I can’t imagine him picking some squish like Pawlenty or Romney.Or some henpecked loser like Mitch Daniels whose wife left him to raise the kids while she pulled a feminazi and ran off with another man either. (If Mitch had done it, it would prove his macho bonafides.)Bachman? Nah … Newtie? Not anymore.

It’s a problem isn’t it? You can kind of see why he’s reluctant to shoulder the burden of leadership. The field isn’t exactly inspiring. I’m sure he’d really like to back Jeb Bush, but there lies danger too. What’s a kingmaker to do?

Palin is his best bet. He thinks she’s hot and liberals hate her. That ought to be good enough. And if she runs and loses, Rush can blame it on sexism which is exactly how he loves to yank our chains.

The truth is that just like everyone else, he knows they’re going to lose.He’s not going to waste even a tiny piece of his reputation on any of them.

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Bishop To King

by digby

I wrote a post the other day about the Catholic scholars excoriating the Ryan budget for its treatment of the most vulnerable members of society. It was a truly refreshing statement of Christian principles from a religious hierarchy that has seemed to have cared far more about female sexuality and potential new life than the very real predicament of poor and sick humans already on this earth.

Today, the Catholic Bishops — the lobbying arm of the American Catholic church — fought back. Jonathan Cohn reports:

Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York and president of the Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter on Wednesday to House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. The subject of the letter was the House Republican Budget, which Ryan wrote, and it was part of an ongoing dialogue between the two men. Dolan’s letter did not endorse the Republican budget per se. But it praised Ryan for his attention to the Church’s values and, if you read the text, you can see why Ryan has (according to Politico) been brandishing it as a signal of support:

As you allude to in your letter, the budget is not just about numbers. It reflects the very values of our nation. As many religious leaders have commented, budgets are moral statements.

I commend your letter’s attention to the important values of fiscal responsibility; sensitivity to the foundational role of the family; the primacy of the dignity of the human person and the protection of all human life; a concrete solicitude for the poor and the vulnerable, especially those who are hungry and homeless, without work or in poverty; and putting into practice the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity, here at home and internationally within the context of a commitment to the common good shared by government and other mediating institutions alike.

[Emphasis mine]

Cohn then cites the many good works the Church does in communities all over the country and gives a short history of Catholic involvement in progressive causes going back a century. He says:

Given this history, how can Dolan say anything remotely charitable about either the Republican budget or the man who wrote it?

I’m sure everyone who reads this blog is aware of just what an un-Christian document Ryan’s budget really is, but if you want details, Cohn’s got them. Of course, if you read this blog you also know that Ryan’s real religion is crude Randism, a cruel and selfish philosophy that celebrates greed and avarice and considers people who aren’t wealthy to be parasites not God’s children.

But what about the Catholic Bishops? I can’t help but be reminded of their last foray into national politics, when they lied to their most ardent political followers in order to foil the health care reforms. I wrote at the time:

Nick Baumann at Mother Jones takes a look at the top lobbyist for the Catholic Bishops (they have lobbyists?) who advised Stupak on his bizarre quest to hold out for the Stupak Amendment over the Nelson Amendment for no apparent reason. It’s a fascinating story.

And now it seems there is serious trouble in paradise:

Perhaps the biggest question hanging over the bishops’ strategy is why they were prepared to see health care reform fail unless the Stupak amendment’s abortion provisions were adopted. After all, there was virtually no difference between the Stupak amendment in the House bill—which Doerflinger insisted was the only acceptable option—and the Nelson language in the Senate bill, which the bishops warned would “require people to pay for other people’s abortions.”

[…]

In the days since Stupak voted for the bill, relations between his bloc and the bishops have soured. “The church does have some work to do in dealing with frayed nerves and divisions on policy questions,” Doerflinger told Catholic News Service. Last week, Stupak attacked the bishops and other anti-abortion groups for “great hypocrisy” in opposing Obama’s executive order after having supported former President George W. Bush’s executive order banning stem cell research in 2007. He told the Daily Caller he believed the bishops and the groups they were allied with were “just using the life issue to try to bring down health-care reform.” In other words, he suspected he was wrong to trust that his former allies were acting in good faith.

Yah think?

Yes, it was difficult to understand why Catholic bishops who purport to care for the poor would do such a thing. Certainly the non-wingnut laity wondered. In fact, they were aghast. So were the nuns. So were the Catholic hospitals. Stupak and his bloc were apparently just fools.

It was always obvious that these Catholic Bishops were simply trying to tank health care reform for political purposes. They are aligned with the Republican Party. And they have shown that they are, shall we say, somewhat morally indifferent.Powerful leaders who will cover up for pedophiles aren’t likely to give a damn about the plight of the uninsured.

That’s harsh, but this group deserves it. They lied about the abortion provisions in the health care bill for political purposes. They are an arm of the GOP, not an unaligned religious group lobbying for their religious principles. Of course there are many members of the church, as demonstrated during the health care debate and now this one, who are not partisan, or at least not partisan to the extent that they will lie and cheat and completely abandon their religious principles for power within the Republican party. But the American Catholic Bishops are something else again. They are explicitly political animals. Like The Borgias. They even wear the same hats.

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Principles

by digby

Eric Alterman has an interesting column this week on the subject of liberal “principles.” I’ll leave it to you to read the whole thing. It’s a perennial topic but always relevant.

I did want to discuss one little observation, however:

Funny how arguments based exclusively on “principle” tend to be consistent with the material interests of the people pushing them.

I immediately nodded my head but then realized that really isn’t true, is it? After all, we’ve all spent years trying to unravel why so many members of the working and middle class don’t vote their own financial self-interest. Many boring (and not so boring) books have been written on the topic. And while there are many wealthy greedheads out there, there are a fair number of wealthy liberals who vote against their direct financial interest.

But there is something to what he says. The one group of people whose “principled” vote lines up perfectly with its financial interest are wealthy conservatives. It’s possible that a few of them would hold the same beliefs about the social compact if they were poor, but I doubt it. These are people for whom the “principle” is simply that they are entitled to as much as they can get their hands on. Most of you have probably known a few rich folks who get visibly agitated when someone brings up the idea of higher taxes for people making over 250k a year. Sure, it will only result in their not being allowed to add a percentage point or two to their fat portfolio or buy a new Mercedes this year instead of next year. But it’s the principle of the thing, don’t you know.

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Southern Comfort

by digby

For some reason I find this hilarious:

Paging Rick Perry: How a Southerner Could Sweep to the G.O.P. Nomination

By NATE SILVER

Being a Southerner conveys certain advantages upon a Republican presidential candidate.

Yah think?

Not meaning to make fun of Silver, who is talking about a 2012 nomination strategy and why Perry needn’t fear a late start, but a headline that says being a southerner is a GOP advantage is right up there with one that says the Sun rises in the east. Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that it was assumed Democratic presidential aspirants needed to be Southerners too in order to offset this in the general election. I literally have an entire shelf filled with books devoted to this specific subject.

Here’s the 2000 electoral map where Florida was the toss-up:

Here’s the 2004 electoral map:

Here’s 2008:

Here’s the 1860 electoral map:

I’m fairly sure you can certain consistencies there. The fact is that the two tribes of America (and the parties that represent them) have tended to fall along the same basic lines from the beginning. Always? No, obviously. But the bases have always been fairly stable. Certainly not much has changed since 1968 when strategist Kevin Phillips wrote The Emerging Republican Majority positing that the ending of Jim Crow was going to precipitate a switch and the Republicans would become the Southern party.

There’s also a cultural identification that goes beyond the region. The Southern/Western Republican dominance and the migration of the Southern evangelical religions to other parts of the country has given the party a specific flavor that is very recognizable to their voters wherever they live. (Kevin Phillips discussed this interesting phenomenon in his more recent book American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century.) Why it wouldn’t be an advantage for a GOP candidate to be a Southerner would be a far more intriguing proposition.

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Uhm, don’t tell anyone but we’re not broke

by digby

I would imagine that the conservatives and corporatists in both parties would prefer that this message not get out lest the people start demanding a more equitable sharing of the wealth in this country:

We’re not broke nor will we be
Lawrence Mishel
May 19, 2011 Policy choices will determine whether rising national income leads to a prosperous middle class Read Briefing Paper
Many policymakers and pundits claim “we’re broke”1 and “can’t afford”2 public investments and policies that support workers. These claims are meant to justify efforts to scale back government programs and public sector workers’ wages and benefits. The “we’re broke” theme also implies that America’s working families should be satisfied with the status quo in terms of wages that have been stagnant for 30 years. Despite the rhetoric, it is clear that “we” as a nation are not broke. While the recession has led to job loss and shrinking incomes in recent years, the economy has produced substantial gains in average incomes and wealth over the last three decades, and economists agree that we can expect comparable growth over the next three decades as well. Between 1980 and 2010, income per capita grew 66.4%, and wealth per capita grew 73.2%. Over the next 30 years, per capita income is projected to grow by a comparable 60.6%. In other words, “we” are much richer as a nation than we used to be and can expect those riches
to rise substantially in the future.

Oh my goodness. If we aren’t really consigning our children to a life of garbage picking if we don’t end “entitlements” right now, whatever will the political class do with themselves?

I know why the message of “we’re broke” sells. When most of the wealth is going directly to the very top while everyone else is stagnating or falling backwards, it’s easy to get that impression. But the fact is that the US will be able to deal with its financial obligations in the future. Our real problem is income inequality. But those who get the best end of that deal can hardly be expected to take up that cause can they?

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The Long March

by digby

Lawrence O’Donnell had a good segment last night about how the Republicans have used the “Starve the Beast” strategy to build up deficits and make tax increases impossible.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

… And that is why, in this, the first 21st century round of the deficit reduction game in Washington, the Republicans have already won. Ronald Reagan never dreamed the Republicans could initiate a debate and actually vote on a bill that dismantles Medicare, and be applauded as serious for doing so. The political question is no longer how much will we cut Medicare, the political question now is will we dismantle Medicare? Will we repeal it?

It was a little over a year ago that Democrats passed the single biggest expansion of Medicaid in its history as part of a health care reform bill that increased health care spending for the population that is not eligible for Medicare. And now the Democrats health care fight is about whether they can keep Medicare alive, the most popular health care program the government has ever run.

Can Democrats even keep it alive? No Democrat thought they were ever, ever going to have to fight that fight. Not until this year did democrats notice how well the starve the beast strategy was working. Many of them did not realize how much they had participated in it themselves, some who voted for the Bush tax cuts, the single most effective starve the beast vote ever cast are now fighting to save Medicare. Their vote to starve the beast under George W. Bush was easy. But they have by now discovered that saving Medicare will not be so easy.

I don’t know who the Democrats who voted for the Bush tax cuts and are now fighting to save Medicare are, but I have my doubts about the latter. I think those who voted for the Bush tax cuts are either standard corporate lackeys or political hacks who don’t care one way or the other about government programs, they just wear the blue jersey because it’s convenient. At this point we have to count on sheer political opportunism to make the Democrats fight to save Medicare — Ryan handed them a potent weapon if they choose to use it.

But the rest of O’Donnell’s piece is correct and it’s worth listening to his recitation of the historical moments leading up to this to understand exactly how their plan worked. These deficits grew because the Republicans and their Democratic enablers cut taxes and destroyed the economy. Now they finally have their moment to enact their long sought spending cuts. Making Democrats do their dirty work for them is just frosting on the cake.

I don’t think taxes have to be off the table. Bush Sr raised them in 1990 and Bill Clinton raised them in 1993. But it’s hard and it will take a piece of political hide out of the President and congress that does it. I had expected that the newly elected Democratic president with his historic mandate and Democratic congress would have immediately taken action to ensure that the tax cuts for the wealthy under Bush would expire. That could have been fairly easily done by extending the middle class tax cuts under the Stimulus Plan. (It didn’t happen, I suspect, because there were delusions of a Grand Bargain.)

At any rate, he’s right that the current problem is the result of 30 years of relentless, demagogic, anti-tax rhetoric. You can call them crazy if you want but this has to be one of the most successful, long term conservative movement projects in history. Of course, head anti-tax activist Grover Norquist is the guy who greatly admired Lenin’s tactics, (as did the CATO and Heritage institutes) so they understood exactly what it was going to take.

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“We have a plan. It’s called Medicare”

by digby

With Republicans going far beyond line drawing to a full blown assault, a big Democrat finally digs in. Greg Sargent:

“It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”

That’s from Nancy Pelosi, who called me from Wisconsin, where she’s holding events today defending Medicare in Paul Ryan’s back yard. On the call, Pelosi laid out a message on Medicare she hopes Dems will use for — well, forever…

Pelosi insisted that when all the smoke clears, the Democratic Party will still be standing by Medicare in a way liberals can accept. “The fight of this Congress and beyond will be to preserve Medicare and not have it abolished,” she said. “The three most important issues we should be talking about are Medicare, Medicare, and Medicare.”

Finally — the Democrats have awakened to the fact that Paul Ryan’s plan is the best thing that ever happened to them, a major overreach of the kind that perfectly characterizes the Republicans’ greatest weakness: hubris.

Pelosi explained that when she had recently said that everything was on the table, she really meant “no benefits cuts.” Ok… But she did seem to feel that the Biden talks around the debt ceiling were going well, or at least weren’t leading to the one-sided agreement one has come to expect:

She said all indications from these talks are that in the end, the President won’t agree to anything in the way of serious Medicare benefits cuts. And unlike in the case of negotiations over spending cuts earlier this year — when House Dems were cut out of the talks — she insisted they have a seat “at the table” this time around.

“The reports I get are positive,” Pelosi said of those talks. “I don’t think you’ll see a repetition of what happened before.”

Let’s hope not.

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I Know You Are But What Am I

by digby

Over the years, I have often referred top what I call “I know you are but what am I” politics but I’ve never seen a better example than this one:

“When Mr. Liu came to the Judiciary Committee and said that, basically, Judge Alito’s philosophy judicially takes us back to the Jim Crow Era, that to me showed an ideological superiority or disdain for conservative ideology that made him in my view an ideologue,” Graham told reporters off the Senate floor.

Other examples: right wingers like Andrew Breitbart insisting that if you call them out on their racism it makes you a racist.

In other words, all criticism of conservatives is illegitimate. It’s a neat trick.

By the way, how’s that gentleman’s agreement on filibusters working out?

* And yes, Liu’s being “Borked.” But about a decade ago it became obvious that this endless payback had become something of a Village construct. It had long since worked to cow the Democrats into never filibustering another GOP Supreme Court nomination — it’s real purpose is and has been for some time to keep the courts packed with as many hard core conservative ideologues as possible. Which makes Lindsay Graham’s comment all the more ironic. We are so far down the rabbit hole that behaving like petty adolescents has become a respected political ritual that serves a much more pernicious purpose.

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A Decent Man, Smeared

By tristero

These days, Americans are so used to getting their news skewed to the right (if not the extreme right) that most of it just washes over us; we may know the water is polluted, but we still think it’s ok to swim in it, at least briefly. Every once in a while, though, a tsunami comes down the pike and sweeps us off our feet.

For me, this disgraceful article is one of them. Under the headline, “Disability-Claim Judge Has Trouble Saying ‘No.’Near-Perfect Approval Record; Social-Security Program Strained,” we read:

Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits will often appeal to one of 1,500 judges who help administer the program, where the odds of winning are slightly better than even. Unless, that is, they come in front of David B. Daugherty.

In the fiscal year that ended in September, the administrative law judge, who sits in the impoverished intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, decided 1,284 cases and awarded benefits in all but four. For the first six months of fiscal 2011, Mr. Daugherty approved payments in every one of his 729 decisions, according to the Social Security Administration.

The judge has maintained his near-perfect record despite years of complaints from other judges and staff members. They say he awards benefits too generously and takes cases from other judges without their permission.

Staffers in the Huntington office say he hears a disproportionate number of cases filed by one area attorney. Mr. Daugherty has been known to hold hearings for as many as 20 of this lawyer’s clients spaced 15 minutes apart.

Note the all-too-familiar themes of right-wingism: activist judges, waste of taxpayers’ money, welfare cheats. Note also the insinuation of an improper relationship between the judge and one lawyer who brings a “disproportionate number” of the cases to him. The lawyer is making lots of money from these cases; the article implies that perhaps the judge could be getting a little bite of all those fees. And if you click on the link, you’ll also find a very authoritative-appearing graph demonstrating that Judge Daugherty’s approval rate for disability claims is an extreme “outlier.” Very few judges grant anywhere near the number of claims he does.

Ok. In a sane world, what Judge Daugherty is doing would bring out comparisons to this man. Of course, the situations and people are radically different – America is not Nazi-occupied Poland and Judge Daugherty, whatever his flaws, appears to be nowhere as complex and flamboyant a character as Oskar Schindler – but somewhere in both men resides a deep core of common human decency. The judge seems to be doing what he can to ease the burden of some of the most forsaken and dispossessed people in one of the most forsaken and dispossessed regions in America, Not only is he providing relief to the disabled, but he is also doing what he can to make the convoluted process of obtaining that relief more manageable. As for the canard that what he is doing “strained” Social Security, read the article and take note of the level of benefits: we’re talking peanuts.

As an American, a taxpayer, and a human being, I have absolutely no problem with any of this. The Judge Daugherty that emerges from this article sounds like an extraordinary man – in spite of the clear intent to publish an article that implies otherwise..

This is an insidious piece of journalism. There is not one single example – not one – of Judge Daugherty making an erroneous decision, of providing benefits to someone who didn’t deserve them. That is because he hasn’t made one. How can I be so sure? Because if he had, you can bet your sweet bippy the Wall Street Journal reporter would have found out about it and reported it (More about the reporter in a moment). Yet the article gives you the distinct impression that he must have made mistakes, perhaps intentionally, perhaps for money. Perhaps the new investigation mentioned in the article will turn something up. If it does, and you can always find something amiss if you look hard enough, I think it is extremely unlikely that any close inquiry will find anything terribly serious. If the judge erred, he erred on the side of compassion.

Please understand: While an error in favor of compassion is the kind of mistake many people would enthusiastically agree with, there is not even a smidgeon of evidence that he made even that kind of an error! Nevertheless, the article implies he simply must have. Statistics and charts don’t lie, do they? Something must be up here. And it smells like money.

Which brings us to the clear insinuations that the judge is getting kickbacks from a sleazy lawyer: mrsocialsecurity.com, no less. The lawyer makes between $3,000 and $6,000 on each disability case he wins. Never mind that that’s about what a lawyer for Goldman Sachs makes in a couple of hours, at most, and the havoc that lawyer causes ends up costing American taxpayers way more than mrsocialsecurity.com does. But even so, let’s agree for the sake of argument that these fees are excessive, I don’t think they are for a minute, but let’s not get bogged down debating that, because regardless of whether they’re high or not, there is not a scintilla of evidence of any improper behavior on the lawyer’s part in charging and collecting such fees. More importantly, there is not even a ghost of that already non-existent scintilla of evidence that the judge was getting paid off by the lawyer.

It seems to me quite clear that, based upon the facts as presented, the judge and the lawyer were both expediting the approval and payment of disability payments that were, in fact, deserved. They were doing so for different reasons, perhaps, and the lawyer was making out ok from the deal, but that seems to be all they were doing. This would be a good thing to do anywhere. That it was being done in an area of high poverty, low education, and poor health services is downright admirable.

The article implies otherwise. The article implies that not only common human decency but also that streamlining the bureaucratic nightmare anyone who applies for government disability faces is somehow deeply suspicious.

One final point. It is clear from the thrust of the piece that it reflects the editorial stance of Rupert Murdoch and his fellow slimeballs. However, it is far from clear that the reporter is one of them – maybe he is, maybe not. There are numerous hints that reporter Damian Paletta thinks there is less to the story than Murdoch and Paletta’s other bosses want to make of it – eg, the placement of the word “impoverished” in the opening sentences; the fact that not a single incident of so much as worrying behavior is reported, other than the mere opinion of a disgruntled former judge tellingly described as “Denying Dan” and some court officials who brought an obscure court rule to Daugherty’s attention.

True, whether or not he held his nose when he wrote it – and I suspect he did – Damian got himself a long piece on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It’s easy to criticize such behavior as careerism and opportunism and, to paraphrase the great James Walcott, I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t. It starkly illustrates how ambition trumps integrity. But I also understand the tradeoffs involved in pursuing any career at a high level. Perhaps Paletta thinks there are more important issues and that doing articles like this one are the only way he can appease his bosses and get to a position to write about them in a way that could make a difference.

I’d like to think so and that he will write genuinely serious investigative journalism in the future. I’d like to give him the benefit of a doubt, but if you aren’t prepared to, I won’t argue. It’s just that the meanness of spirit behind this piece of character assassination is so deep-rooted, so cold, so vicious, and so impersonal that it is hard to believe that anyone who actually took the time to find out what was going on in Judge Daugherty’s courtroom would conclude there was anything at all amiss. This smells like an ideological hit job orchestrated by Murdoch, a thug in a custom-tailored suit that costs way more than that vulgar, money-grubbing Kentucky lawyer’s highest fees.

And that thug – Murdoch – is smearing a decent man at the end of a decent career, characterizing his most admirable intentions and decisions as unethical, if not immoral and criminal. Judge Daugherty deserves better.

When foreigners were good

by digby

Ed Shultz reminded me of this tonight (via Salon):

The Weekly Standard reported back then:

On July 10, 2003, Orrin Hatch, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, took action against what he calls “an anachronism that is decidedly un-American.” He introduced a bill that would allow a person who has been a U.S. citizen for 20 years and a resident for 14 years to run for president.

It was called the “Equal Opportunity to Govern Amendment,” and it proposed changing the Constitution to allow those born abroad to run for president. (Full text here.) The bill is still listed deep in the archives of Hatch’s website as the “Presidential Eligibility Amendment.” Hatch, who is trying to hold on to his seat in the face of a potential Tea Party challenge, apparently hasn’t talked about the measure in recent years. It is missing from the “Constitution” section of his website’s issues page. (I’ve asked Hatch’s office whether he still supports the amendment, and I will update this post if I hear back.) The measure, which never got out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, was known colloquially as the Arnold Amendment because it was seen as targeting the Austrian-born Arnold Schwarzenegger, then a GOP rising star. (It won support from his wife, Maria Shriver, among others.) When the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the amendment in October 2004, Hatch waxed patriotic:

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm, who was born in Canada, also supports this amendment. She explained: You cannot choose where you are born, but you can choose where you live and where you swear your allegiance. And I think if she has 20 years of living in this country, she ought to have the privilege of running for President if she so chooses. This is also true for the more than 700 immigrant recipients of the Congressional Medal of Honor—our Nation’s highest decoration for valor—who risked their lives defending the freedoms and liberties of this Nation, many of whom gave their lives. But no matter how great their sacrifice, leadership, or love for our country, they remain ineligible to be a candidate for President. Now, this amendment would remove this unfounded inequity.

The entire transcript of the hearing, in which Republicans like Don Nickles and Dana Rohrabacher also testified in support, makes for interesting reading (.pdf) today.

This would be after the harassment stories hit.

You have to love it. The Republicans were right at the time although their love affair with the drug using, womanizing matinee idol Arnold was always fairly sick considering their loathing for everything he really stood for. But that was the beginning of the American Idol campaign and they were dazzled.

The funny thing is that this woman would have once been thrilled to vote for him. You know she would:

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