Month: December 2011

More violent, anti-social behavior from Occupy Wall Street. You can certainly understand why the campus police were so upset:

OSU Police Capt. Richard Atkins said several people were injured by jumping over the walls of the stadium stands. He said many had twisted ankles because they didn’t realize how high the stands were.

One man, he said, jumped from 15 feet and landed on his back on the concrete. Of all the injuries, Atkins said two were considered to have traumatic injuries and were flown to Oklahoma City hospitals.

“It’s farther down than it looks,” Atkins said. “We put people in place that tell them not to.”

But when the final seconds ticked down, fans couldn’t help but rush the field and tear down the goal posts.

Atkins said no injuries were reported due to the tearing down of the goal posts. He said most people might have had smashed fingers or were pushed around, but they didn’t suffer any significant injuries.

Shyla Eggers, director of public relations at Stillwater Medical Center, said the hospital staff received six patients from ambulances and two others were brought in by cars. She said the injuries ranged from ankle sprains, ankle fractures to back and heel sprains.

“We haven’t seen anything like this in what I can remember, in the last 12 years,” she said.

She said two people are still at the hospital to undergo surgery for ankle fractures.

The other six have been treated and released.

At least 10 people were injured, but Eggers said more people could have been hurt but refused treatment.

Michael Authement, who heads the command post at emergency medical provider LifeNet EMS, said that a throng so big took to the field as the game ended that some fans were trampled.

“They won the game and stormed the field and ripped down the goal posts, and some were jumping off the stands and hit the field and others got trampled. It was a nasty deal,” Authement said.

But hey, at least it was over something important. And anyway, they couldn’t help themselves.

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Virtually Speaking

Premium Loser

by digby

I don’t know what’s happened to the NY Times editorial board but they seem to have taken leave of their senses today. Today’s editorial discusses the various versions of Medicare “premium support” (aka vouchers) and comes out in favor of them, with some caveats. Here’s their great idea:

The best proposal for premium support is one that gives beneficiaries choice while protecting them from any added costs if competition does not keep prices down. Enrollees would be given a set amount of money to buy a plan comparable to what Medicare now provides. If they chose a plan that cost less, they could pocket the difference. If they wanted better benefits, they would have to pay the added premium themselves. But if market competition failed to restrain costs, the federal government would increase the support given. So far, this idea has found no support among leading politicians, who apparently have less confidence in market forces than they claim.

Gosh, ya think? Is it possible that even craven politicians can understand what would happen with that plan? Do you think the insurance companies might have some skewed incentives at all? (Gosh, if prices go up the government will pay more! Great!)

This is the elderly we’re talking about here. The only people who would want to take the cheaper plan are those who really need the money. It wouldn’t be healthy people, it would be poor people. It’s highly likely that these poor people would not get the care they need for chronic conditions or preventive care because their policies wouldn’t cover such things, thus entering the system sicker and requiring more expensive care. That’s how “cheap” policies work.

I don’t understand what world these people live in. Do these people honestly believe that the elderly, most of whom are already sick in one way or another or are destined to become so (after all, it’s a rare person who stays perfectly healthy and then dies peacefully in his sleep at age 92) should be forced into a more complicated system than that which already exists? It’s as if they are being accused of irresponsibly running up big bills and must be taught a lesson in prudence before they die.

I would love to know where this penchant for making the health care system even more complicated and unworkable comes from? And why does everyone have to be a “consumer?” We are citizens and human beings and when we get old we get sick, period. Making elderly people shop around in order to live is utter nonsense when we know that the only reason to do so is to keep our “privatized” system reaping profits every step of the way.

It’s the abstraction in all these debates that drives me crazy. People, not statistics. Patients, not consumers. Yes, health care costs are high and are absorbing more and more of our GDP, but the sick people are not the problem. Getting sick can happen to anyone and getting old is something that will happen to everybody (if they’re lucky). Treating being human as a problem is the problem.

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Redistricting Snafus

by David Atkins

It looks as if the expected redistricting massacre after the 2010 elections isn’t going as well as Republicans might have hoped:

he Republican Party’s favorite political tactic of late – tilting the rules of American elections to its benefit – has not been going as well as expected in the biggest political fight of all: redrawing the boundaries of electoral districts that will last for the next decade.

Regardless of how miserable the 2010 election was for Democrats – losing a US House majority and the GOP gaining 63 seats, as well as winning majorities in 20 state legislative chambers and 16 governor’s races – it does not appear that the GOP will be able to draw enough new political lines to lock down Democrats for a decade, as many party activist had hoped.

The handful of scorecards and Web sites doing the best job of tracking the all-important process of redistricting suggest that the GOP may gain a dozen House seats or more by redrawing lines, prompting Democratic stalwarts like Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., not to seek reelection.

But the GOP cannot erase the fact that the country has millions of citizens who are Democrats or independents. Thus, even as Republicans have a “national ability to draw about four times as many House districts as Democrats,” according to the Washington Post, it appears they are doing more to protect incumbents than to eliminate Democratic prospects or other challengers. According to the Post’s scorecard, which does not list every state, the GOP stands to gain only seven or eight House seats nationally. That figure is remarkably low, considering that the GOP’s gains in 2010, up and down the political ladder, broke records that had lasted for decades.

There is only so far that deceit and manipulation can take a conservative movement that is radically at odds with what the majority of the American people want. Luntz’ counterproductive new talking points are an example of that, as are the hostile reactions to the policies of Republican governors nationwide, as are the Occupy Wall Street protests.

Democrats made the mistake of believing in 2006 and 2008 that the electorate was endorsing the Democratic policies of the last 20 years, rather than rejecting the conservative/neoliberal status quo represented by Bush and the Democrats who enabled him. When voters didn’t see the change they had hoped for and voted for out of President Obama, they stayed home in 2010, leading to conservative routs. It wasn’t just that progressives stayed home–in fact, hardcore Dem base voters actually did turn out. It was that while Obama had won independents in 2008 handily, of the independents who turned out in 2010, 8% more of them had voted McCain in 2008 than voted Obama.

So conservatives believed that 2010 represented a rejection of liberalism and an embrace of the beliefs of Ayn Rand.

The conservative movement is starting to wake up to the fact that the country as it actually exists doesn’t really like them. No matter how they try to slice and swindle the electorate, they can only hide that for so long, especially with demographic changes that make the lay of the land even more hostile to them.

That’s why the current plan for the Republicans is simply to stop poor and young people from voting at all. It’s a lot easier to remove people from the voting pie entirely, than to try to slice them up in increasingly deceptive and creative ways.

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I had meant to show this clip from Up With Chris last week and somehow forgot. I was reminded of it when I reviewed the show this morning over coffee. His take on the Supercommittee says it all:

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

This is why I like Hayes so much. He completely rejects the conventional wisdom but ably synthesizes our ongoing conversation on the left into a form that works on TV without sounding … how shall I say it … threatening. There is much to be learned from young liberal pundits about how to talk about these ideas.

Contrast what you just heard with this, and you’ll see what I mean.

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

It’s true that young Russert isn’t supposed to be a pundit, but he sure sounds like one — Cokie Roberts. Or his late father. Or Gloria Borger or David Gergen or any other Villager who constantly pounds home this message that the people are wrong and the elites are right and the only problem is that damned democracy standing in the way of the “tough medicine” that privileged celebrities like this prince of nepotism all agree must be swallowed by the polloi.

By all means cut social security

by digby

Get that spare room ready kids. Grandma’s moving in:

The Labor Department’s jobs report for November, released Friday morning, also shows that the number of employed high school graduates actually fell by 187,000 over the last 12 months, while the number of employed college graduates has gone up 1.1 million during the same period.

Nevertheless, readers have pointed out that even among the college-educated, there is one cohort that is still feeling more pain: older workers. More than half of all unemployed workers 45 to 54 years old have been out of work for six months or more, and among unemployed 55-to-64-year-olds, close to 60 percent have been searching for work for more than six months.

People in the older of these two groups are worse off than they were a year ago. The median duration of unemployment rose from 36.6 weeks a year ago to 42.7 weeks this November. The younger of the two groups is slightly better off; its median duration of unemployment fell to 27.9 weeks, down from 30.2 weeks a year ago.

This is happening at a time when this cohort just lost a lot of their nest eggs in the downturn. And this group will be affected by the beltway’s favorite benefits cut gimmick, the “chained CPI.”

This proposal is anything but a small technical fix. The chained CPI would jeopardize the already fragile economic status of many of the most vulnerable seniors and others dependent on Social Security and SSI as a primary, albeit, inadequate source of income. Adoption of the chained CPI would diminish the core income security benefits promised to every American.

One in three seniors relies on Social Security as 90% or more of their income. Average Social Security income for older women amounts to a little over $12,000 for women and slightly under $16,000 for older men. Small benefits cuts that compound over time will increase economic vulnerability and financial hardship among aging and disabled Americans and most of all for women.

For today’s Social Security recipient who begins receiving benefits at 65, use of the chained CPI would result in a $560 annual benefit cut by age 75. Cuts would disproportionately harm older women who tend to live longer and on lower incomes. For an older woman living on $1,100 a month, the median Social Security benefit, the chained CPI would reduce her benefits by an estimated $672 per year by the time she reaches age 80, $1,044 by age 90 and $1,212 by age 95.

This economic downturn is going to reverberate for many, many years as it is. The losses that people heading into the last part of their lives have experienced are unrecoverable even if they could find work, which apparently they can’t. To even contemplate cutting the one guarantee they have to keep them out of poverty in their old age is unconscionable.

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Blue Dogs Rule

by digby

Yesterday I wondered why the Democrats were being so complacent about climate change denialism considering that they weren’t even getting much of a share of the petrobucks that were funding the Tea Party and waddaya know? Here’s a front page NY Times story on none other than Oklahoma Democrat Dan Boren, who is apparently huffing natural gas profits like it’s no tomorrow.

Boren is, of course, one of the Bluest Dogs in congress, as right wing and intractable as his daddy was in the Senate. (Daddy’s raking in big bucks from oil and gas companies too.) So perhaps the Democrats’ willingness to help the Republicans destroy the planet does make sense after all. They seem to believe that they need to hang on to every last Blue Dog (some would call them moles or infiltrators) and in order to do that they must be given their way. All it takes is one.

If you want to know what’s wrong with our politics read the whole article on Boren. He is totally corrupt.

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Mitt Romney, Jahb Creator

by David Atkins

The L.A. Times has a great article on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

Shortly after Mitt Romney resigned from Bain Capital in 1999 to run the Olympics in Salt Lake City, potential investors received a prospectus touting the extraordinary profits earned by the private equity firm that Romney controlled for 15 years.

During that time, Boston-based Bain acquired more than 115 companies, according to the prospectus. Bain’s estimated annual returns were more than five times that of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the same period.

Now a front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney says his Bain experience shows he knows how to create jobs. He often cites Bain’s investment in a little-known office supply store called Staples, which now employs more than 90,000 worldwide.

I think we all know where this is going…

But a closer examination of the prospectus paints a different picture of Bain’s operation. Under Romney’s leadership, Bain became one of the nation’s top leveraged-buyout firms, helping lead a trend in which companies were acquired using debt often pledged against their own assets or earnings.

Bain expanded many of the companies it acquired. But like other leveraged-buyout firms, Romney and his team also maximized returns by firing workers, seeking government subsidies, and flipping companies quickly for large profits. Sometimes Bain investors gained even when companies slid into bankruptcy.

Romney himself became wealthy at Bain. He is now worth between $190 million and $250 million, much of it derived from his time running the investment firm, his campaign staffers have said.

Bain managers said their mission was clear. “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation,” said Marc B. Walpow, a former managing partner at Bain who worked closely with Romney for nine years before forming his own firm. “The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

Bain’s top 10 dollar investments under Romney — averaging $53 million — spanned a number of sectors, including healthcare, entertainment and manufacturing. The firm’s largest investment was its 1999 buyout of Domino’s Pizza, into which Bain put $188.8 million, eventually reaping a fivefold return.

Four of the 10 companies Bain acquired declared bankruptcy within a few years, shedding thousands of jobs. The prospectus shows that Bain investors profited in eight of the 10 deals, including three of the four that ended in bankruptcy.

And something about this story is going to sound very familiar:

Leveraged buyouts allow investors to purchase businesses with the acquisition funded sometimes by significant amounts of debt. To critics, these leveraged deals can make acquired companies more vulnerable to economic downturns, leading to a greater likelihood of bankruptcy and job cuts. At the same time, the deals sometimes introduce discipline to firms and even whole industries that need it.

Either way, Bain investors typically profited.

That was true in the case of GS Industries, the 10th-biggest Bain investment in the Romney years. Bain formed GSI in the early 1990s by spending $24 million to acquire and merge steel companies with plants in Missouri, South Carolina and other states.

Company managers cut jobs and benefits almost immediately. Meanwhile, Bain and other investors received management fees from GSI and a $65-million dividend in the first years after the acquisition, according to interviews with company employees.

In 1999, as economic challenges mounted, GSI sought a federal loan guarantee intended to help steel companies compete internationally. The loan deal was approved, but in 2001, before it could be used, the company went bankrupt, two years after Romney left Bain.

More than 700 workers were fired, losing not only their jobs but health insurance, severance and a chunk of their pension benefits. GSI retirees also lost their health insurance and other benefits. Bain partners received about $50 million on their initial investment, a 100% gain.

“Bain was demanding certain financial performance with no understanding of what the problems were on the ground,” said David Foster, a former steelworkers union official who negotiated labor contracts with GSI management from 1994 until the bankruptcy. He said Bain “bled the company,” withdrawing cash for dividends and management fees even as circumstances in the steel industry deteriorated.

“If I were looking for effective management of a project, a company or a country, this is exactly the kind of management I would not want to have,” Foster said of Bain. “Bain partners think the profits they made are a sign of their brilliance. It’s not brilliance. It’s lurking around the corner and mugging somebody.”

“It makes me sick,” said Steve Morrow, a retired GSI steelworker, recalling what happened to his fellow workers after the Kansas City shutdown. Some top managers received bonuses from Bain, he said. “But the salaried and hourly people ended up with the shaft.”

Union officials say they tried to work with GSI management and Bain to assure workers and retirees that they would have some benefits even if the heavily indebted company went under. But they said their appeals fell on deaf ears during and after the time Romney was running the firm.

Mitt Romney’s career is pretty much metaphor for everything that has gone wrong with America in the last 30 years. But that’s not why the GOP base is rejecting him. They’re rejecting for inconsistency, for being too liberal, and for not hewing to the correct flavor of Christianity.

Sounds about par for the course.

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Saturday Night At The Movies

The discreet charm of the bourgeoisie
By Dennis Hartley














Hipsters: Singing! Dancing! Oppression!

If the psychic energies of the average mass of people watching a football game or a musical comedy could be diverted into the rational channels of a freedom movement, they would be invincible. –Wilhelm Reich
Free your mind and your ass will follow. –George Clinton

Here are two things generally not mentioned in the same breath: “Colorful musical romp” and “Khrushchev-era Soviet Union”. But I have to say it…Hipsters is a colorful musical romp set against a backdrop of the Khrushchev-era Soviet Union. Lightly allegorical and doggedly retro, Valeriy Todorovski’s film is a mashup of Absolute Beginners and Pleasantville, with more than a few echoes from West Side Story, Grease and The Wall.
It’s 1955, and life is a bit on the gray side for 20-something Muscovites, especially within the ranks of the Young Communist League, whose idea of a good time is ruining everyone else’s. This is how we meet League member/star athlete Mels (Anton Shagin) and his (sort of) girlfriend Katya (Evgeniya Brik), who is the commissar of his particular auxiliary. Lovely but priggish Katya is leading a patrol of saturnine League members, who are on the hunt for stilyagi (“hipsters”) who might be having a night out (god forbid) enjoying themselves. Their quarry will not be tough to spot; with their pompadours and peacock threads, they stand out from the drab, state-mandated conformity that surrounds them. Katya and her gang soon detect the telltale sound of (forbidden) American jazz, zeroing them in on their prey. Armed with scissors, they proceed to get Amish on their asses, unceremoniously cutting up their carefully coiffed hair and flashy hipster clothing.
It turns out that Mels may be conflicted; while giving chase to several hipsters, he is stopped in his tracks after he is smitten by one of them (Oksana Akinshina), a fetching blonde named Polza (you half expect Mels to break into “Maria”). Maybe this whole stilyagi scene ain’t so bad after all, he figures, and lets Polza go with a promise that he won’t narc her out. The free-spirited Polza reciprocates with an implication that if he gets hip, he might get lucky. Well, you know how easy guys are. Cue the inevitable montage, wherein Mels enlists one of the hipster dudes to give him all the requisite grooming, fashion and dancing tips. His transformation complete, Mels sets off to win Polza’s heart. It’s a wafer-thin plot, but I can’t think of too many genre entries that allow obstacles like narrative to get in the way of the song and dance (at 125 minutes, there’s plenty of both).
If you dearly love the song and dance, you’re sure to get a kick out of the energetic performances, over-the-top set pieces and eye-popping costumes. I found the song lyrics to be nonsensical at times; perhaps something literally got lost in the translation. Although the overall tone is fluffy, Todorovski saves room for political commentary (lines like “a saxophone is considered a concealed weapon” may elicit chuckles, but hold ominous undercurrents). I sense the film has deeper subtext in this regard (more attuned to, let’s say, Russian audiences?). Still, its prevalent theme, exalting self-expression and righteous defiance in the face of oppression whenever possible, is hard to miss. And, in light of the OWS movement (and our own ongoing culture wars) it’s a timely one as well













Ladies of Spain: The Women on the 6th Floor


If there is one thing I’ve learned from the movies (at least ever since Alan Bates said “Zorba, teach me to dance” to Anthony Quinn) it’s that the Noble Peasant has much wisdom to impart to the Uptight Bourgeoisie (particularly when it comes to learning the sirtaki). The latest example is a French import (set in 1960s Paris) called The Women on the 6th Floor, an “upstairs/downstairs” social satire from director Phillipe Le Guay. In this case, the servile class occupies the uppermost floor of an apartment building owned by a staid middle-aged stockbroker named Jean-Louis (Fabrice Luchini). Jean-Louis, who inherited the property from his father, lives in a swanky downstairs apartment with his neurotic wife (Sandrine Kiberlane) and two spoiled teenage sons. After the family’s cranky long-time maid quits in a huff, he hires lovely Maria (Natalia Verbeke), who takes a room on the 6th floor, where she joins a small group of fellow female Spanish émigrés.
It’s obvious from the get-go that Jean-Louis is quite charmed by the young Maria, who invites him upstairs to meet her friends. Although he has lived in the building since infancy, Jean-Louis has somehow never managed to venture up the 6th floor. At least, that’s the only possible explanation for his “shock” when he discovers the relatively dismal living conditions endured by the nonetheless high-spirited coterie of Spanish maids who live in the servant’s quarters. Well, mostly high-spirited. One maid does give him a cooler reception. “Oh, don’t mind her,” another one of the women cheerfully offers, “she’s a Communist” (with a heart of gold). At any rate, Jean-Louis is seized by a sudden urge to make amends for the disparity (yes, that fast) and, spurred by his newfound altruism, begins making some capital improvements to the 6th floor. Now that his armor has been breached, it’s only a matter of time until he’s hanging out with the gals, laughing, breaking out the good vintage from his cellar, and discovering the savory delights of authentic homemade paella. You know-he’s leaning how to dance the sirtaki.
With a trope this hoary, you’d better have something substantive to back it up with, and luckily for the audience, Le Guay offers assured direction and well-coaxed performances from his entire cast. Luchini (a 40-year film veteran) brings just the right amount of warmth, poignancy and self-effacing humor to his portrayal of a man coming to grips with an unexpected winter passion. The film’s secret weapon is Verbeke, a voluptuous Argentine who brings an earthy sensuality to the screen that reminds me of the young Sonia Braga. While this film doesn’t break any ground, it may teach you a few new steps.
Previous posts with related themes:
The Housemaid/The ServantLa NanaThe VisitorWonderful WorldWhatever Works
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The business of denial

by digby

This is just creepy:

Over the past year, GOP politicians have increasingly questioned or flatly denied the established science of climate change. As the presidential primaries heat up, the leading candidates have either denied the verdict of climate scientists or recanted their former views supporting climate policy. As the tea party grows in influence, and the fossil-fuel industry injects unprecedented levels of spending into the electoral system, challenging climate science has become, in some circles, as much of a conservative litmus test as opposing taxes. Conservatives such as Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who notoriously called climate change a hoax, once were marginalized. Now Inhofe tells National Journal he feels that he’s “come in from the cold.”

In his first week of campaigning for president, Texas Gov. Rick Perry said that climate change was a theory that “still has not been proven” and was driven in part by a “substantial number of scientists who have manipulated data” to secure research grants. In his book Fed Up! he dismissed climate science as a “contrived phony mess that is falling apart.”

Mitt Romney, who as governor tasked the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Division with creating a policy to fight climate change, has now walked back his pronouncements that human activity causes global warming.

Newt Gingrich, who in 2009 recorded an ad with then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling on Congress to take action on climate change, recently called that ad “the dumbest single thing I’ve done in recent years.” Jon Huntsman, the one Republican presidential candidate who stands by views that climate change is real and caused by humans, is reaping support from about 1 percent of GOP primary voters.

Despite the rhetoric on the campaign trail, a quiet but significant number of prominent Republican politicians and strategists accept the science of climate change and fear that rejecting it could not only tar the party as “antiscience” but also drive away the independent voters who are key to winning general elections. “There’s a pretty good-sized chunk of the Republican caucus that believes that global warming is happening, and it’s caused at least in part by mankind,” said Mike McKenna, a strategist with close ties to the GOP’s leadership. “You can tell these guys are uncomfortable when you start to talk about science.”

Read the whole article. It’s quite distressing. We have a political Party that is simply rejecting science, and in particular climate science, which is the most important scientific issue government’s need to deal with at the moment. The article shows that this wasn’t always the case, up until as recently as the last election. Something very fundamental has changed and it’s changed in a way that’s going to make it hard to go back to the former consensus:

Here’s what has changed for Republican politicians: The rise of the tea party, its influence in the Republican Party, its crusade against government regulations, and the influx into electoral politics of vast sums of money from energy companies and sympathetic interest groups.

It mentions one pair in particular, the Kochs. And this is not because they are a fun target or that they don’t have sincere beliefs in their own special brand of aristocratic libertarianism. They’ve always been right wing cranks. But the fact is that they’ve been expanding their wealth exponentially in the last few years and have a whole lot of money to spend on their pet projects. It’s likely that they would be funding some wingnut project under any circumstances. But they have a vested interest in climate change denial, which explains the odd confluence of interest between the Tea Party and Big Oil. It’s not immediately obvious why the Tea Partiers should be so hostile to the idea of climate change, but the cultivation of the Religious Right and rebranding them as Tea Partiers was probably key to making that work. And that’s been a big part of the Kochs’ involvement with their Super PAC Americans for Prosperity:

Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity, says there’s no question that the influence of his group and others like it has been instrumental in the rise of Republican candidates who question or deny climate science. “If you look at where the situation was three years ago and where it is today, there’s been a dramatic turnaround. Most of these candidates have figured out that the science has become political,” he said. “We’ve made great headway. What it means for candidates on the Republican side is, if you … buy into green energy or you play footsie on this issue, you do so at your political peril. The vast majority of people who are involved in the Republican nominating process—the conventions and the primaries—are suspect of the science. And that’s our influence. Groups like Americans for Prosperity have done it.”

I’m not sure why this has not resulted in all out war between the parties — it’s not like Big oil and gas are funding the Dems in anywhere near these numbers they fund the GOP and the Kochs are as partisan as it comes. It seems to me that this is one area where we cannot explain away the Democrats’ tepid response by a need to appease an industry that funds them. So what is it? It’s not like the people aren’t with them.

In a Pew survey last spring, 75 percent of staunch conservatives, 63 percent of libertarians, and 55 percent of so-called Main Street Republicans said there was no solid evidence of global warming. Those views are far out of step, however, with those of the general public: Overall, Pew found, 59 percent of adults say there is solid evidence that the Earth’s average temperature has been getting warmer over the past few decades. GOP candidates’ climate-science skepticism could win primaries but lose general elections.

I urge you to read the whole National Journal article. It’s chilling (no pun intended.)

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