Month: March 2012

In case anyone thought that Rush Limbaugh might have learned his lesson well — not so much:

He obviously believes that his career is invulnerable. Is he right?

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Hope For Paws

by digby

Oh man — this made me weep:

h/t to John Aravosis who writes:

Here’s the link for a donation page for the group that rescued the dog, Hope for Paws. They spent a lot of money saving this animal, and other animals. Help them out if you can.

I have to go and hug my cat for a while now.

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There’s lots of chitchat today about the Supreme Court oral arguments in the ACA case and the idea that the court could be results oriented and rule against the mandate despite the specious reasoning of the plaintiffs. Evidently, some people have forgotten about Bush vs Gore, the fifth vote for which was the same as is likely this time: Anthony Kennedy.

It’s silly to think that they are incapable of making a political decision. Of course they aren’t. They are clearly members of the two political tribes, with Kennedy being an iconoclastic conservative. This isn’t really in dispute. All you have to do is look at the number of 5-4 decisions to see that.

While former solicitor general Paul Clement, who argued against the mandate today, is highly respected for his skills and his integrity, I wasn’t surprised to see Michael Carvin there as well. He’s a well known Republican lawyer but he’s also a political operative. I’m sure he wouldn’t see it that way, but there’s no getting around it.

Rand Paul, cartoon villain

by David Atkins

United States Senator Rand Paul:

Instead of punishing them, you should want to encourage them. I would think you would want to say to the oil companies, “What obstacles are there to you making more money?” And hiring more people. Instead they say, “No, we must punish them. We must tax them more to make things fair.” This whole thing about fairness is so misguided and gotten out of hand…

“We as a society need to glorify those who make a profit,” Paul concluded.

Recall that this is the same Rand Paul who said that criticism of BP after it drowned the Gulf coast in oil sounded “really unAmerican.”

Think Progress has done a great job deconstructing everything wrong with Paul’s statement: every dollar “earned” by oil companies is money extracted from consumers’ pockets; the oil industry doesn’t actually employ that many people, and almost half of the people it does employ earn minimum wage; oil companies are already making insane profits while paying pathetically low tax rates, even as they use their incredible profits to lay off their workforce. And that’s not even getting into the issue of climate change.

But the fact that anyone has to even compile these arguments is silly. There was a day not too long ago when no United States politician would have even dared to utter those words. There was a day when no screenwriter would have written those words for a screen villain because it would sound too preposterous, like something only a cardboard character of greed and corruption would say. Rand Paul sounds like the heavy from a story written by a nine year old kid, with no sense of the sophistication taken by actual real-life villains to make their selfish rationales more palatable to the public.

And yet, here we are. Not only is this man a United States Senator but his father is running for the highest office in the land, even as (if media reports are to be believed) there may be a deal in the works to make him second-in-line to the presidency right below a job-killing vulture capitalist.

We take these things for granted in some bewilderment because we happen to be living through them. But if you had run this scenario by any Hollywood screenwriter 20 years ago as a story for a political drama set in the near future, they’d have told you to come back with a more credible storyline.

A mania has taken hold of a significant part of this country, and I’m not sure how it resolves with the nation in one piece, or even peacefully. One of America’s two political parties is quite literally being run by unabashed stock cartoon villains, while the other is desperately trying to compromise with them to no avail.

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They’d rather die than have health care

by digby

Here are some quotes from today’s Koch sponsored Americans For Prosperity rally in Washington:

Mother, wife and breast cancer survivor Tracy Walsh:

“It’s [ObamaCare] about controlling who gets medical treatments and which medical treatments they get.”

“It seems we learn something new and awful every single week since ObamaCare passed.”

“None of these things promote freedom or liberty.”

“I believe this court will and they must side with Liberty,”

Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson:

“This isn’t about healthcare, it’s about freedom.”

Florida Rep. Allen West:

“This healthcare law is not in concert with the Constitution of the United States of America.”

“The Supreme Court needs to make the right decision.”

“No matter what the Supreme Court decides, come November of this year, we are going to send Barack Hussein Obama, back to Illinois.”

“We are going to restore this constitutional republic.”

South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint:

“Don’t believe for one minute we can fix ObamaCare.”

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul:

“Hang in there, we’re going to beat this bill.”

AFP Pennsylvania President Jennifer Stefano:

“Hands off my family, hands off my work and hands off my healthcare, or as we say in Philadelphia, yo President Obama don’t tread on this mama.”

Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey:

“Remember, if the federal government has the power to force you and buy the health insurance plan that they dictate, if we accept the idea that is a permissible power by the federal government, trust me, it doesn’t end there.”

“The president to the United States let us down by pursuing and enacting this.”

AFP President Tim Phillips:

“Anywhere in the world when you’re in trouble, medically speaking, where do you come? You come right here. Why do you come, because we have the best choices.”

Canadian Shona Holmes, survived brain cancer but nearly died due to waiting on the Canadian government system:

“I was in a lot of trouble in Canada where we have government mandated insurance.”

“The one thing that I have learned from all that I have seen that it is impossible to undo this once it is done.”

“It’s up to you to stop this.”

President of Concerned Women for America Penny Nance :

“Are you on the side of liberty?”

Former GOP presidential candidate and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann:

“The crown jewel of Socialism is socialized medicine. You understand the importance of this issue.”

“We see before us a bill that will change the United States forever.”

“Power comes from us, not from this marble building behind us.”

“We will not wave the white flag of surrender when it comes to liberty and our healthcare.”

“We stand united.”

Rep. Steve King

“This American liberty is a precious thing, it doesn’t exist anywhere else in the world.”

I would love to know why anyone thinks that the result of the Supreme Court striking down Obamacare will be a rush to pass single payer. I’d love for that to be true, since today’s oral arguments certainly indicated that the court may very well strike it down, but the other half of the country would rather die — literally — than have any kind of government involvement in health care. I certainly hope that people aren’t bullshitting themselves on this point.

I would say that it’s far more likely that the Democrats will be hard pressed to even defend Medicare from getting the ax at this point. This country is in the grip of some people who have been so brainwashed that they have lost their relationship to reality itself. Even nations run by right wing dictators aren’t this self-destructive. We are the most powerful nation on earth — and we’re basically at the mercy of a group of primitive paranoids:

Update: From TPM:

[I]t sounded and looked exactly like every other AFP-backed tea party rally on health care has since the 2010 wave election. The protesters were bused in from around the country and most of them held the ubiquitous pre-printed “Hands Off My Healthcare” signs. Though there was a smattering of the nastier stuff on handmade placards, including at least one birther sign and another reading simply, “Obama Terrorist,” for the most part was a slick, well-organized gathering of middle-aged and senior conservative Americans — nothing like the fiery, chaotic town hall events that came to characterize the health care debate in 2009.Phillips said there’s good reason for that: The tea party health care fight was always about politics, and whatever happened at the court Tuesday isn’t likely to change that.“No matter what the court does, [the health care law] will be an issue in November,” Phillips said. “The president is embracing this legislation. Good. We’re going to help him do that.”

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States’ Fright

by digby

This is a fascinating article about the GOP assault public employees. If it weren’t for them taking a wrecking ball to state government wherever they have the power to do so, this country would have emerged from recession much earlier:

The conservative Republicans who took power in Pennsylvania in 2010 have had a busy year. Republican state legislators, empowered by new control of the governorship and the state house, proposed one of the most stringent mandatory ultrasound bills in the country. The House passed a voter identification law that could block 700,000 Pennsylvanians from voting, most of them young, of color, and poor. Meanwhile, the same state legislators led a successful charge to shrink public employment. The number of government employees fell over 3 percent that year, one of the sharpest declines in any state. Before the cuts, “Pennsylvania [had] the second lowest number of state workers per capita, already,” said Rebecca McNichol, Pennsylvania state director of the CLEAR Coalition. Yet, she says, “this past year the budget was devastating” in deeper cuts.
 
Pennsylvania isn’t alone. Republicans seized control of both branches of the legislature in 11 states after the 2010 elections. It’s in these very states that public sector layoffs are disproportionately concentrated, leading to one of the biggest rounds of job losses for the public workforce since record keeping began. Governors and state legislators promised to focus on creating jobs and balancing budgets during campaign season—even newly elected Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett still claims that creating jobs is one of his “top priorities.” Instead, these newly Republican states are targeting public workers, causing a significant drop in employment in the public sector that has threatened the entire economy.

And it’s a vicious circle. The more the the right cuts government the worse government works and the more people want to cut it. And keep in mind that this is the vaunted laboratories of democracy, not the hated federal government:
 

President Obama is often blamed for the precipitous drop in government payrolls—even though it was caused by shrunken budgets at the state level. “There is no reason to think Mr. Obama is as happy about the reduction in government workers as some Republicans. But like it or not, the Obama administration has turned out to be anything but a big-government one,” wrote Floyd Norris in the New York Times. It’s true that during Obama’s tenure, government employment at all levels dropped by 1.2 percent in 2011, one of the largest declines in history. The federal government lost a proportional share of these jobs: about 13 percent of government workers are employees of the federal government, and about 13 percent of overall public sector job losses in 2011 happened there. But what’s critical to understand is that the drop-off in employment in state and local government wasn’t spread evenly across states, and this trend had almost nothing to do with Obama or his policies.

I don’t think his rhetoric or policies helped in making the case for government, but it doesn’t appear to be significant in hurting the recovery. No, what’s hurting the recovery is a bunch of Tea Partiers hacking away at needed government services by cutting programs and firing workers.

This is the conservative dream come true. I hope all these people who vote for them enjoy their freedom — to have a lower standard of living than their parents and create an even lower one for their children. It’s a proud legacy, I’m sure.

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Blue America Chat: Carol Shea Porter returns

by digby

Howie sez:

Today our old friend, former Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter (D-NH), will be joining us for a live blogging session at Crooks and Liars at 2pm (ET). Carol’s unlikely grassroots victory in 2006 over a Rahm Emanuel corporate Democrat in the primary and then over a conservative Republican incumbent in the general was a highpoint for progressive activists. Four years later, though, Carol was defeated by a Tea Party extremist in the mania that turned New Hampshire, a deep, deep shade of red. After just two years of right-wing extremism up close and personal, polls show that New Hampshire voters have come back to their senses and are ready for a course correction. Blue America is proud to endorse Carol again and we’re asking everyone to consider contributing to her campaign.

When Carol ran for office and while Carol was in office, she did something that a lot of Democrats talk about, but that very few actually do. She refused all corporate PAC and DC lobbyist money, not something that endeared her to the Beltway Democratic Establishment. Carol prefers to leave that kind of unethical behavior the careerist crooks, who take cash from corporate special interests and then vote to destroy the environment, and against the interests of working families and the middle class. And, as long as we’re talking about Frank Guinta, anyone who wants to get behind the fake mainstream conservative mask he wears for the media and for voters, might check out the extremist freak he exposed himself as when he filled out this questionaire for the Tea Party.

Her opponent, remember, cast the deciding vote on the Ryan Budget Wednesday, which passed out of committee 19-18, several Republicans joining all the Democrats on the committee to vote it down. Carol asked, rhetorically, what’s wrong with the bill. And she answered– for all of us:

To start with, Americans do not like the changes to Medicare in this budget. The budget pushes seniors into vouchers, or what Ryan euphemistically calls “premium support.” Seniors could use the vouchers to buy their own insurance with a private company, or they could stay in Medicare, but either way, when the amount of the voucher runs out, an individual’s wallet comes out, and it would be extremely expensive. The vouchers would not reflect the rising cost of health care, because while health care costs are expected to rise around 7% per year, Medicare spending would be kept at the CPI plus 0.5%. Also, if people are in a lot of different plans, Medicare would lose its ability to control costs and to negotiate better deals for seniors and other taxpayers, and that would push costs up as well.

Read on for the full indictment.

Carol is true blue progressive with a proven track record. Let’s help her get back to Capitol Hill where she will continue to shake things up… for the 99%.

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“If we ever stop talking about hoodies, we might start talking about guns”

by digby

Stephen has the word:

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The People’s Budget and the perils of too much compromise

by David Atkins

Digby asks the right question:

While everyone coos and drools over Paul Ryan’s Very, Very Serious plan to cut the deficit, the progressive caucus can’t even get progressives to pay attention to their budget. This is a budget that preserves all the things we care about, even raises benefits for the elderly and cuts the deficit more than Paul Ryan does…Evidently anything that doesn’t demand pain from ordinary people just doesn’t interest the Villagers or anyone else. Why is that?

The easy answer, of course, is that public policy is designed by and conducted on behalf of the very wealthy. But there’s another connected factor, too: the fact that at least a significant portion of one side is willing to compromise, and the other is not.

The reason the progressive budget doesn’t get a second look by the media is that it has zero chance of passing. It would take a full 60 uncorrupted Democratic/Sanders Senators, a majority of Democratic representatives, and an unwavering Democratic President to pass the thing. That’s extremely unlikely to happen anytime soon.

On the other hand, the Paul Ryan budget (or something close to it) is in significant danger of actually passing–which is one of the reasons the presidential election is so important. Whatever Romney’s personal politics, he wouldn’t hesitate to sign the Ryan budget, which makes him just as conservative as Ryan regardless of his past history as governor. If Republicans take the White House, hold the House of Representatives and seize five or more Senate seats, they can pass something close to the Ryan budget with only a few Democrats like Manchin crossing the aisle “for the good of the country.”

Whereas no Republican would come close to touching the People’s Budget with a 100-foot pole.

And that’s the problem with being the willing compromiser and “adult in the room.” Rather than broadening one’s policy choices, it actually narrows them. It leads to a situation where only the Ryan budget can be taken seriously, because only the Ryan budget or something near it will get any votes from the other side of the aisle.

Without Democrats’ morality of compromise and a few individual Democrats’ compromised morals, the Ryan budget wouldn’t be in any greater danger of passing than the People’s Budget. The media would be free to summarily ignore both of them. Sadly, that’s not the world in which we live.

In this case as in so many others, Democratic compromise doesn’t beget centrist policy and an appreciation for the grown-up willingness of the left to cooperate with its adversaries for the good of the country (not that such a thing is desirable.) Rather, it begets a media fetish for extremist conservative policy because only the latter falls within the realm of the possible.

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The budget nobody will talk about

by digby

While everyone coos and drools over Paul Ryan’s Very, Very Serious plan to cut the deficit, the progressive caucus can’t even get progressives to pay attention to their budget. This is a budget that preserves all the things we care about, even raises benefits for the elderly and cuts the deficit more than Paul Ryan does.

The Budget for All increases funding for a variety of successful job creation programs, restores high earner’s marginal tax rates to Clinton-era levels, and preserves Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without making benefit cuts. The plan builds on the successes of the CPC 2012 proposal, The People’s Budget, which garnered praise from notable economists such as Paul Krugman and Jeffrey Sachs and outlets such as The Economist.

A one-page summary is available at http://1.usa.gov/H6u4lI and the executive summary is available at http://1.usa.gov/GQRcVC.

Evidently anything that doesn’t demand pain from ordinary people just doesn’t interest the Villagers or anyone else. Why is that?

*Update: I cannot find the correct url for the full Budget materials. Will add the link when I get them.
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