Month: December 2011

Why the pipeline?

Pinball on a building

by David Atkins

When I was a little toddler accompanying my mom and dad to the video arcade, I would frequently be placed on top of a pinball table next to the one my dad would play on, staring at the flashing lights for ages. I’ve loved pinball ever since, in both its physical and video manifestations.

So this at the festival of lights from Place des Celestins in Lyon is all sorts of awesome:

Attentive gamers will recognize the sound effects from the free pinball game that comes embedded with Windows XP. Ah, the memories…

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Sexist double standards, Republican edition

by David Atkins

Minnesota Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch has resigned over allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate:

Minnesota’s Republican Senate Majority Leader Amy Koch abruptly resigned from her leadership post this week, and there are now allegations that she had an “inappropriate relationship” with a subordinate staffer.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Koch’s fellow Republicans confronted her about the alleged relationship. When Koch was confronted, she neither confirmed nor denied the relationship. “I think I need to consider resigning,” she said, according to the paper.

“There is no doubt that a manager cannot have such a relationship with someone they oversee, whose budget they oversee,” interim Senate Majority Leader Geoff Michel (R) said at a news conference Friday. “It’s pretty clear. That kind of relationship is inappropriate, it raises a conflict of interest and it creates … an unstable, unsustainable work environment for our staff.”

Rumors are swirling, as one could expect, but no one is saying who the staffer is. Koch’s communications director, Michael Brodkorb, no longer works for the Senate. The news was revealed Friday evening, but local media haven’t locked down whether he was dismissed or resigned. There is no confirmed connection between Koch’s leadership resignation and the news that Brodkorb is out.

Of course, when the House Majority Leader has a relationship with Congressional staffer, then leaves his cancer-stricken wife to marry her, then he’s a staunch defender of conservative values deserving the Presidency of the United States.

Something tells me that if Newt Gingrich had been born with a vagina and abandoned her cancer-stricken husband for a male Congressional staffer while maintaining credit accounts at Tiffany’s, she’d have been hounded out of office for the rest of her life.

The Republican Party: standing up for freedom everywhere, as long as you have the right equipment down there.

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Media Matters has compiled the stupidest Fox and Friends moments of the year, and they are all … stupdendous.

My favorite is this one:

It’s no secret that Steve Doocy is Fox & Friends’ chief climate change misinformer. He has been knownon multiple occasions to make jokes about how climate change isn’t happening because it’s snowing or cold at the time. (He seems to get awfully quiet during heat waves in the summer).

On January 27, while New York was being hit by a massive snowstorm, Doocy reported on the weather from outside the studio while a random man in a polar bear costume danced around behind him. Although Doocy made the obligatory Al Gore joke, what really made this moment special was that nobody on the show seemed to have any idea how to handle the situation. This led to nearly a full minute of half-hearted jokes and a high-school reunion level of awkward conversation. All punctuated by a polar bear in a Hawaiian shirt and a lei.

It just doesn’t get any better.

First branch #fail

by digby

Here is Up With Chris Hayes on the defense bill:

The gift that keeps on giving

by digby

In case you were wondering, they agreed to a temporary two month extension of the payroll tax cut and Unemployment. So we will get to relive this again. And probably again.

Freeway Blogging — LA style

by digby

(These signs were placed yesterday over and alongside the 5, 405, 101, 10 & 110 freeways in and around Los Angeles.)

1) You can say whatever you want.

2) It costs almost nothing.

3) It reaches thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of people.

4) Done right, it can even reach millions.

5) Finally get rid of that old paint in the garage.

6) Payback for all the political propaganda you’ve been subjected to.

Dianne Feinstein gets one right

by David Atkins

I’ve given Dianne Feinstein a lot of criticism over the years for her generally conservadem stances on a wide variety of issues. But on the awful issue of unilateral executive indefinite detentions, she’s going out of her way to do the right thing with the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011:

(1) An authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority shall not authorize the detention without charge or trial of a citizen or lawful permanent resident of the United States apprehended in the United States, unless an Act of Congress expressly authorizes such detention.

(2) Paragraph (1) applies to an authorization to use military force, a declaration of war, or any similar authority enacted before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Due Process Guarantee Act of 2011.

Emptywheel has a smart take on it:

The language seems sound enough to me. And given that this wouldn’t constrain the President’s ability to detain (or kill) Americans in Yemen, the Obama Administration might not put up as big of a fight as it did with the detainee provisions (though I suspect they would fight it, because of all the other things that rely on detention language–they’d have to rewrite a bunch of OLC memos).

Of course all that assumes this would be passed before President Newt takes over; he’d never sign something like this.

But the other thing is that DiFi has a habit of introducing very simple language and getting pushed around by the Executive, effectively letting the President tweak such language out of existence (see also her “exclusivity provision” in the FISA Amendments Act).

I think if she could get a vote, with this language, she might just win.

I’ve said before that current nation-state-based legal frameworks are inadequate to deal with many aspects of the modern world, including climate change and international terrorism.

There needs to be a way of dealing with avowed terrorists, Al-Qaeda recruiters and proclaimed violent enemies of the United States who ensconce themselves in failed state war zones avoiding capture–regardless of whether they happen to have been born in the United States. Such people shouldn’t feel safer from retribution simply for having been born on American soil, than their fellow Al-Qaeda recruiter who happened to have been born elsewhere.

But there obviously needs to be a way of dealing with it that doesn’t give the American President carte blanche to murder and detain whomever the heck he or she wants based on a trial-free presumption of guilt.

Currently, there is no such system due to the legacy of nation-state legal frameworks. It’s one or the other. Given the dual choice, it’s certainly better to allow the American-born terrorist to roam free than to give the President terrifying and unconstitutional powers.

But that’s not exactly a satisfying answer, and whatever the very valid legal civil liberties concerns may be, the political reality is that most Americans aren’t going to shed any more tears for Al-Awlaki than they did for Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. That genie is out of the bottle and it’s not going back in.

Feinstein’s solution is far from perfect: an imperial President could simply lock up political enemies and throw away the key if they ever stepped foot outside the U.S. The problem is the entirety of the legal framework. But at least it presents a stop-gap to prevent the most horrific potential Stasi-style abuses. So bravo to DiFi for this one.

The Anxiety Generation

by digby

This piece by Ron Brownstein about the over 50s captures the experience of most of my peer group pretty well. Some are doing quite well — upper 1%ers, who have comfortable nest eggs. But a whole lot of middle class working people are more like this:

But the effects of strained earnings and tanking investments are written in the near-retirees’ gloomy assessments of what their post-working years will look like. Although nearly half of today’s retirees said they had retired earlier than their parents did, fully half of those nearing retirement expect to stop working later than their parents did. More than two-fifths of near-retirees now believe they will remain in the workforce longer than they anticipated when they were younger. On average, those near retirement expect to work until 66; most of today’s retirees reported stepping down at 60. And while only one in nine retirees say they are still working, two-thirds of those nearing retirement expect to work at least somewhat after they step down from full-time employment. Nearly half of those near-retirees say they anticipate having to work out of necessity, not desire.

Eason, the Livonia real-estate appraiser, is among those worrying about what lies ahead. “Back in the old days, people had pensions coming, and they knew … they had Social Security waiting,” he says. “And now large businesses are just removing pension funds. I think, personally, it’s criminal. And all the other cuts—you put all this together in a shaker glass and what’s coming out? Not much.”

Eason acknowledges that he has been unable to do much to prepare for retirement. While his wife is contributing to a 401(k) account at her job, he has not been able to put aside much because he owns his own business as an appraiser, “and unfortunately in the last few years I haven’t been working much.” And, of course, the stock market’s decline since 2007 has buffeted his wife’s 401(k)—and he fears it will be years, maybe even decades, before it recoups the losses. As for the family home, its worth has plummeted well below the cost of their mortgage, and Eason expects a long wait there too before the losses are reversed. “Because I’m a real-estate appraiser by trade,” he says, “I watch the market in my local neighborhood. The house I live in cost $147,000, and … other houses [built in the same year by the same builder] are selling for around $75,000. So at that rate, it’ll take the rest of my life for the market to catch up and equalize.”

This over 50 crowd represents a huge part of the population: the baby boom. Only the very first vanguard are already retired. That includes about 75 million people. As I said, a good number of them are doing well. But there are many millions who have seen the bottom drop out, taking care of both kids and parents during this bust, losing years of growth in their 401ks and home equity at the worst possible time. I can attest to the fact that this group is watching the safety net fray with increasing anxiety. (This talk of making older people bargain hunt for cheap medical insurance chills my blood.)

And those are the one’s who have been able to save. A lot of others are experiencing no wage growth and increasing expenses:

Although declining 401(k) balances are a worry for some, in follow-up interviews with near-retirees, by far the larger concern was the inability to get far enough ahead of the monthly bills even to invest for retirement. Only about one-fifth of the near-retirees say they can live comfortably and put aside money to save (compared with the nearly one-third of retirees). “It’s a matter of keeping up with current obligations, which makes our saving and socking away more difficult,” Cerny says. “So that sort of extends the working life.” Robert Gagnon, a mechanic in Livermore, Maine, voiced a similar frustration. “I have a lot of confidence in my [financial] abilities…. But it’s still difficult to work and make monthly payments for everything, home and insurance, and still pay for college [for the kids] and then save for retirement on top of that,” he says. “I’m not saying I don’t save for retirement, but I’m saying that it should be more. But I’m just paying other expenses that are pretty high.”

You don’t even want to imagine what’s like to be a 55 year old looking for work in this economy. A whole lot of Americans in this age group seriously wonder if they’ll ever be able to get a real job again.

It’s hard to deal with financial reversals no matter when it happens. But I have found that there is something particularly frightening about it when you realize that you are running out of time to make it back again. That’s where a lot of baby boomers are right now.

A smart politician would assure these people that the programs they know they will need before too long are safe and secure and ensure that they will do everything necessary to protect them. There are a boatload of these folks and they will vote on this issue, I guarantee it. Personal survival has a way of focusing the mind.

If you have a little extra, we’d be grateful for a donation to our Hullabaloo holiday fundraiser:

Thank you!

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