Month: December 2011

Next step in our Randian dystopia: stimgatize the unemployed

by digby

So now they’re going to “reform” unemployment. The first thing they say they’ll do do is stop the millionaires from collecting it. I don’t know how many millionaires are collecting it now or how this will be administered, but fine. I guess that makes them populists now.

But this is the really good stuff. We know most of the Jaaahb Creators are busy trying to create Jaaahbs even if they’re collecting benefits. But these lazy good for nothing workers need to prove they are worthy:

The bill by Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.) would require unemployment claimants to pass a drug test if they are identified in an initial screening as having a high probability of drug use…

Kingston cited an overwhelming number of job applicants flunking drug tests as the rationale for his proposal.

“I had an employer tell me of an overwhelming response for job openings,” Kingston said in a statement. “There was just one problem: half the people who applied could not even pass a drug test.”

Earlier this year, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) used an identical anecdote to promote drug testing the jobless. When HuffPost checked the claim, however, it turned out to be completely false — the employer said it tested only new hires, not applicants. And among new hires, less than 1 percent flunked a drug test. Haley later admitted her claim was bogus, but did not relent in her support for drug testing the unemployed.

Kingston spokesman Chris Crawford declined to provide any information supporting Kingston’s anecdote…

But just as you can tell if someone looks like an “illegal” you can tell if someone’s likely to be a drug user. They’re just looking for the “bad people” who are stealing the money from hard working taxpayers.

It’s probably people like this:

As a construction worker for 26 years, I moved up through the ranks, saw my wages improve over the years and really enjoyed my job. But over the past 10 years my wages steadily declined. In 2008, my wages fell to $10 an hour, that’s $2 less than what I made in 1985!

I decided to leave work and take care of my ailing grandparents for a time, trusting that I’d have a job when I was ready to return. Well, here I am trying to get a construction job now for 2 years without any luck. My unemployment insurance has run out, and I am desperate for a job.

Unfortunately, my story isn’t unique. Pueblo, where I’m from, is experiencing an unemployment rate above 10%. Every family is affected. I believe in extending unemployment insurance for other people who still qualify, who are still struggling just to get by, who are still searching high and low for work.

That’s why I marched into Rep. Tipton’s office today and demanded a meeting. There is a crisis in Pueblo—and across the country—that requires leadership and commitment, and so far we have seen neither from our representative.

Rep. Tipton came and spoke with us for a few minutes in the lobby. When we asked him if he would vote to extend unemployment insurance, what I heard is that he is “pondering” it. I don’t understand how there is even a question about it!

One of his aides met with us in the lobby as well. When we asked him again about if Rep. Tipton would vote to extend the unemployment insurance, he told us he had to listen to both sides and then he told us a strange story. He heard about a disheveled guy going in for an interview and purposefully not getting hired just to get an unemployment check. We all sat there for a minute in disbelief. When I realized, that he was saying that my representative was considering not voting for unemployment insurance because he thinks there are lazy people milking the system, I was compelled to act.

Click the link for the rest of the story. I’m guessing that disheveled person would be one of those required to pee in a cup. And certainly we should require that the unemployed be dressed properly. Lord knows that God fearing Real Americans understand proper fashion.(Maybe we can get some faith based funding to do some wardrobe checks to determine worthiness.)

These stories have been circulating among our “representatives” for quite some time. Many of them now believe the unemployed are just refusing to take work and as long as we “subsidize” them, they’ll never get off their lazy duffs and take one of the many open jobs available to them. That’s a tale they are being told by their big money contributors when asked why they are sitting on their profits — they assure their puppets that they’d love to hire, they just can’t find anyone to work. The economic slump is the fault of lazy Americans who just want to milk the system and it’s all Washington’s fault for allowing it.

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A welcome to both Mitt Romneys

by David Atkins

The L.A. County Democratic Party has produced a video welcoming Mitt Romney to Los Angeles. It’s pretty good, especially the Mitt Romney bits.

Enjoy.

Romney’s patient Zero

by digby

Rick Perry has famously said that if he is elected president all foreign aid will start at zero each year and be voted on individually on the merits, even including Israel (although he winked and nodded to his Armageddon warriors to make sure everyone knew he would make sure it always got what it needed.)It looks like Mitt Romney has gone him one better. He’s going to make Medicare start at zero each year and have the congress vote on it. No more mandatory spending on sick old people, no sir:

KLEIN: Exactly. You know now, obviously a key question that’s going to determine whether this plan puts Medicare in a sustainable fiscal trajectory is the rate of growth of those support payments. Would the value — under your plan would the value of those subsidies grow at the standard measure of consumer inflation, or the rate of medical inflation?

ROMNEY: […] One is Congressional action — deciding as Hoover, Heritage and Brooking said a few years ago, we just have a budget. And every year don’t call this an entitlement. Every year pass a budget for how much the total subsidy is going to be. And that would then set the limit of how much each person is going to receive. Obviously, I’ve mentioned that people of lower income would get a higher subsidy than people of higher income. […]

KLEIN: So you are saying, just to clarify, you would leave it up to Congress to determine it each year or that’s one idea that –

ROMNEY: That’s one, that’s one principle. I think the key principle is this: It’s not going to grow at an open-ended rate driven only by medical inflation.

Hey, some years we may decide it’s more important to buy a new fleet of planes or give Jaaahb Creators another tax cut. The sick old people are going to have to pony up just like everyone else. You might have to put off that heart operation or give up your medication for a year or two. It’s all about priorities.

And one thing we will not do is have the cost of these services determine how much we will spend. The government’s not made of money you know. (Well, it sort of is, but we won’t talk about that.)

If Mitt learned one thing when he was in the business of breaking up companies and putting massive numbers of people out of work, it was that when costs go up there will be fewer customers and the market will force some competition and those costs will come back down. Of course, he didn’t actually kill the customers before, but the principle remains the same.

Is it just me or is it increasingly obvious that part of Mitt’s problem that he says as many dumb things as Rick Perry but he just does it in a less George W. Bush-like way?

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Wanted: anger management for pinhead pundit

by digby

The celebrity psycho who sends out a camera crew to stalk reporters had a little meltdown last night over being asked whether he attended a fundraiser for Newt Gingrich:

Right wing watch says:

Bill O’Reilly, reportedly walking out of a Newt Gingrich fundraiser held last night in DC, is asked by Wisconsin community organizer Brendan Lane if he attended the fundraiser. O’Reilly ignores him and then, with no prompting, strikes Lane with his umbrella. He then says, “Hey, sorry about that.” O’Reilly, with Lane following at a distance, then walks with his now-broken umbrella over to a Capitol police officer. Incredibly, you can hear O’Reilly say that he wants to press charges against the man he just struck.

And to think the guy didn’t even say the words “Andrea Makris.”

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This would probably be a good time for a progressive group to go up with a competing ad about Scott Brown’s popularity among the Wall Street crowd.

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Looking out for number one

by digby

The Politico reports the following with a somewhat shocked and derisive Village tone, but it’s actually good news:

A handful of Democrats have spent the past six years staking out positions as centrists who were willing — and sometimes eager — to buck their party on major issues like the environment, unemployment benefits and health care.

Now, as labor unions, environmentalists and progressive groups sketch out their multimillion-dollar ad campaigns and get-out-the-vote strategies for 2012, they say they won’t go all in for some of the most hotly contested races, even though they ponied up for some of the same candidates just six years ago.

“We’re really not going to waste time or money on some people that just really haven’t fought for anything other than their own special interest,” said Jim Dean, chairman of Democracy for America, mentioning Nelson in particular.

[…]

“I think that we certainly do not want the Republicans to take control of the Senate and see that as being a real threat to working people,” said Michael Podhorzer, political director of the AFL-CIO. “On the other hand, if the question to us is should 51 be Elizabeth Warren or Ben Nelson, then our resources are going to go into Elizabeth Warren.”

Nelson — the chamber’s quintessential swing vote — irked the labor community with his support of a GOP-led filibuster of an Obama nominee for the National Labor Relations Board last year. He and Tester also joined the GOP in blocking consideration of the labor-backed White House jobs bill in October, and West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said he opposed the bill on its merits.

“That may or may not be the way the [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] thinks about it, but what’s different now is that we’re not thinking to follow what the Democratic leadership is saying, but we’re for defeating the Republicans in the Senate and we want to do it by making a list of the people who are most pro-worker and electing them first,” Podhorzer said.

What a shocking calculation. (And here the article talks about “the math” like it’s some kind of complicated algorithm.)

This is as it should be. There is a certain amount of money to be spent. Why should liberal groups be forced to spend it on people who have gone out of their way to thwart their agenda. I think all of those people should go to the conservatives who benefit from their votes and ask them for the money.

If this holds and labor and other liberal interest groups hold their ground and pour their resources into real progressives like Warren and Baldwin, we are going to see something new and it will be very interesting to see how the dynamic plays itself out in Democratic Party circles.

It will be a miracle of the Democrats keep the Senate. But if they lose those conservatives and some progressives win the lesson will be unmistakable, regardless.

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Why Newt is the man for the conservative heart

by David Atkins

There has been a lot of speculation among liberals and Village types as to why Newt Gingrich has surged in polls. But why don’t we listen to conservatives themselves tell the story?

Cue Jim Robinson, founder of Free Republic, in a freeper thread on Gingrich’s polling surge, mocking those disaffected with Gingrich’s weaknesses:

Right. Newt and Mitt are polar opposites!

Mitt is a pro-abortion, big government progressive.

Newt is a pro-life, budget balancing Reaganite who helped usher in the Republican majority, the Reagan Revolution and the long lasting Reagan economy.

Mitt’s legacy is RomneyCare, taxpayer funded abortion, gay marriage, liberal activist judges, an all but destroyed Republican brand in Massachusetts and a bankrupt state. And he’s proud of it.

I have no problem with Bachmann, Santorum or Perry, other than they can’t seem to get out of the gates or stay long on the track without stumbling and taking hard falls. Wouldn’t trust Trump other than cheer leader.

Unlike McCain, I believe Newt is capable and unafraid to take the fight to the enemy and win! And that’s what we need.

Reading Free Republic, (which I do every day) is really instructive. It’s a good window into the conservative soul, a good reminder of what we’re up against. Best of all, it’s like watching Fox News, but a week in advance. What starts in the dredges of the conservative cesspool eventually winds up all over the mighty Wurlitzer.

And what do we learn? It’s about the culture war. It’s about sticking it to women, minorities and the economically underprivileged. It’s about the Lost Cause. It’s about kicking those elitist liberals in the teeth, more than about personal morality or policy goals.

Always was, always has been, still is, and always will be. That’s what they want, that’s what the politicians they elect respond to, and that’s why attempting to compromise with them is a pointless waste of time.

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Newtie quote of the day

Nobody does it better. That’s why they love him.

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The good news is that racial discrimination has been vanquished in America. At some point it will surely be reflected in the data: