Month: May 2012

Heartland gets a change of heart

by David Atkins

Well, this was fast:

A stark mug shot of domestic terrorist Ted Kaczynski briefly took center stage in the increasingly ugly debate over climate change Friday as the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank funded by major corporations, launched a billboard campaign equating people convinced that global warming is real to the convicted killer.

“I still believe in Global Warming. Do you?” read big orange letters next to the Unabomber’s infamously grizzled face on an electronic billboard along the Eisenhower Expressway outside Chicago, the Heartland Institute’s home.

The billboard went live Thursday afternoon. But by 4 p.m. Eastern time, an outcry from allies and opponents alike led the Heartland Institute’s president, Joe Bast, to say he would switch off the sign within the hour.

“The Heartland Institute knew this was a risk when deciding to test it, but decided it was a necessary price to make an emotional appeal to people who otherwise aren’t following the climate change debate,” Bast wrote in an e-mail to some of the institute’s supporters, explaining his decision to end the campaign.

I think we’ve finally hit the edge of the modern conservative Overton Window: a bunch of corporate astroturf hacks comparing the vast majority of the world’s scientists and heads of state to Ted Kaczynski and Osama Bin Laden. Everything short of that appears to be OK, but that’s just a step too far. For now.

That’s good to know, so that the traditional press can find the equivalent on the left side of the spectrum for “balance.” I’m sure they’ll find it somewhere–just as soon as they can find something that world leaders and academics agree with American conservatives about, and just as soon as they find the prominent liberal group comparing them to world-famous terrorists for it.

I’ll cue the Jeopardy theme while we wait.

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Kent State: How can you run when you know?

Kent State is America’s Tiananmen Square. The photo of a young girl kneeling over the body of a dead student is etched on our collective retinas. But all these years later, it is still hard to comprehend how National Guardsmen facing no real danger from student protestors several hundred feet distant would suddenly turn, raise their rifles, and fire, in just 13 seconds, 67 bullets into the crowd.

Inevitably, National Guard leaders insisted that the Guardsmen had not been ordered to fire; either they shot in self-defense or, at worst, acted on their own. Three hundred FBI investigators found no proof of a plan to shoot students; the Department of Justice closed the case three times in as many years. It took until 1979 for a civil suit to be resolved, with the state of Ohio issuing a mild statement of regret and paying $675,000 to the victims and their families.

And yet there is no resolution of this tragedy. Just before the May 4th demonstration began, a Kent State communications major who lived in a dorm overlooking the Commons decided to record it. Setting the microphone of his tape deck in his window, he created the only real-time account of the shooting. The original was destroyed by the Department of Justice in 1979, but a copy of the tape surfaced in a collection of evidence given to the Yale University Library. In 2010, at the request of two Ohio newspapers, forensic experts used technology not available in the 1970s to evaluate a digital CD of the tape.

They heard someone shout “prepare to fire” and then give an order. Two seconds later, the gunshots begin. (Alan Canfora, who was wounded that day and is now director of the Kent May 4 Center, presented the Department of Justice with the CD and asked the government to re-open the investigation. Last week the DOJ declined, declaring the enhanced recording “inconclusive.”

Sure it was. Read the whole article because it’s especially useful to be reminded how the American public reacted to young people being shot down by men in uniform for protesting. As you know if you read Nixonland the idea that the 60s youth rebellion or left politics in general were unopposed and the whole country was in the grip of hippie fever is just wrong:

In 1970, nothing was inconclusive. The reaction among the young was immediate: a nationwide strike involving 850 campuses and 4 million students, and a powerful song by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young that condemned President Nixon and the National Guard. Among their elders, the reaction was largely the opposite. A Gallup Poll taken shortly after the shootings at Kent State revealed that 58% of the respondents believed the responsibility for the deaths lay with the demonstrators; only 11% blamed the National Guard. As the author of a book about the shootings would later write, “These were the most popular murders ever committed in the United States.”

This is our country. Same as it ever was. The good news is that even if it isn’t popular and it spawns a certain hateful reaction, progress happens. Painfully.

Update: Here’s David Brinkley reporting the event via Newstalgia:

Occidental Petroleum Chairman: “They say they’re the 99%. But 99% of what I’m not sure.”

by David Atkins

Today I had the privilege of being a shareholder proxy (together with fellow bloggers Dante Atkins, RL Miller and Karoli) at Occidental Petroleum’s shareholder meeting today at a lavish Santa Monica hotel, together with a group of other activists organized on behalf of the 99%. New rules put in place by Dodd-Frank require companies to hold votes on executive compensation. Though the votes are non-binding, they’ve been having a surprisingly positive, chilling effect on outrageous compensation packages. The objective during the meeting was to ask questions about the company’s social and environmental responsibility policies and its executive compensation. For background, here’s some information on Occidental (OXY) from a dossier provided by the organizers:

OXY made billions in US profits and got billions in federal tax subsidies. From 2008 to 2011, OXY earned $15.8 billion in US profits and received over $3.1 billion in federal tax subsidies. In 2009, OXY earned $2.1 billion in US profits and received a $3.8 million tax refund – a tax rate of negative 0.2%.

In 2011, OXY made $4.7 billion in US profit and got a $1.3 billion tax subsidy.

Former CEO Ray Irani’s compensation peaked at $76.1 million in 2010, up 142% from the year before, bringing his total to more than $800 million since 2000. He was the second highest-paid CEO in the US in 2010, according to CNN Money. Assuming a 40-hour work week, Irani’s $76.1 million earnings that year break down to: $36,000/hour; $292,000/day; $1.5 million/week. To put this in perspective, the median annual worker’s salary of $34,000 equals:
$16/hour, $130/day, $650/week. At this rate, it would take 2,249 years to match Irani’s 2010 compensation.

In 2010, the company held its first ever advisory vote on compensation after CALSTRS and Relational Investors of San Diego increased scrutiny over the size of OXY’s compensation packages and lack of management succession.

Even though Irani’s exorbitant compensation was widely rebuked, the voluntary “Say-on-Pay” proposal required by the Dodd-Frank Act was voted down, 54% to 46%.

Yes, it’s that bad.

There were no cameras or even cell phones allowed in the meeting, but organizer after organizer stepped up to ask uncomfortable questions of Mr. Irani and the newly elected board. The answers given were total bullshit as one might expect: Mr. Irani claimed that Occidental paid a 42% effective tax rate, for instance. No follow-up was allowed.

A new set of directors was elected, among whom included former Michigan Senator Spencer Abraham, and George W. Bush Commerce Secretary Gutierrez. It was the second time I’ve had the displeasure of being in the same room with Mr. Gutierrez; the previous time I was in Washington D.C. during his tenure as Commerce Secretary, explaining to the assembled audience of rich executives that he saw his principal role as Commerce Secretary to distribute government funds “more usefully” into their hands where it would “be more productive.”

Eventually the organizers began a mic check in which we participated, saying among other things:

Can the board please answer why you continue to drill away our California Dreams, and why Ray Irani makes $50 million dollars when we as shareholders are driving on pothole ridden streets and our children’s teachers are being laid off. There is no budget crisis, but a crisis of your social conscience. WE ARE THE 99%.”

Most of the activists were then escorted from the room, with amused twitters from the various ghouls in dresses and pinstripe suits. Some of us stayed, however, to witness the aftermath (including a couple of very expensively produced media presentations on the increased drilling of “assets” by Occidental, as well as the company’s increasing dividends and shareholder returns–backed by the most jarring and out-of-place scoring of the Polovetsian Dances in my memory.) Immediately after most of the activists were escorted out, Mr. Irani said the following:

“90% of the shareholders of Oxy have approved this compensation package. This sort of thing has been happening at other board meeting around the country. These people, they say they’re the 99%. But 99% of what, I’m not sure.”

Assets. That’s all these people respect, and it’s all they care about. For people like Mr. Irani, people without assets are barely even people. When we call ourselves the 99%, he’s not even sure what the 99% is of, since people can’t be counted in petrodollars.

Shaming will never work with these people. They just don’t care, and they’ve long since lost whatever faint connection they may have had to the real human experience. The interventionist force of law is the only thing any of them will respect. They certainly don’t respect our humanity.

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Andrew earns a Moore Award nomination

by digby

I’m afraid I’m going to have to bestow an Andrew Sullivan Moore Award nomination — named for Michael Moore and given out for “divisive, bitter and intemperate left-wing rhetoric” — on … Andrew Sullivan:

Mann and Ornstein are correct. Large sections of the American right are now close to insane as well as depraved. And there is no Buckley to rein them in. Just countless Jonah Goldbergs seeking to cash in.

He’s right of course. But then so were many of the allegedly “divisive, bitter and intemperate” left wingers whom he nominated for his award because they basically said the same thing. Now a lot of people are waking up to the fact that the right wing has gone seriously off the rails and it’s no longer considered “divisive” to point it out. Unfortunately, those who saw it early will not be rewarded for their perspicacity. It just doesn’t work that way.

But good for Sullivan anyway. It may be considered intemperate, divisive and bitter, but somebody’s got to tell it like it is.

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Stand Your Ground (for men only)

by digby

Apparently, some Floridians are allowed to stand their ground but others aren’t:

In September 2009 Alexander obtained a protective order against Gray that was still in effect on August 1, 2010, when he flew into a jealous rage after discovering, while poking through her cellphone, that she had sent pictures of their newborn daughter to her first husband.

Alexander was in the master bathroom at the time, and Gray tried to force his way in. When she came out, he screamed and cursed at her while preventing her from leaving the bedroom. “I was like forcing her back with my body,” reported Gray, who is seven inches taller than Alexander and outweighs her by 100 pounds.

When Alexander managed to get by, she ran through the kitchen to the garage, where she says she realized she did not have the keys to her car, could not call for help because she had left her cellphone behind, and could not escape because the garage door was not working. Instead she grabbed her handgun from her car and headed back through the kitchen, where Gray confronted her again.

In his deposition Gray admitted he “had told her if she ever cheated on me I would kill her” and during the fight said, “If I can’t have you, nobody can.” He conceded he “was going towards her” when Alexander fired a single shot, high and to his right, that went through the kitchen wall and lodged in the ceiling of the living room. Finally he left, along with his two sons.

A jury only took 12 minutes to return a verdict of assault with a deadly weapon. She faces 20 years in prison.

Granted she wasn’t a nice young man carrying a weapon outside of his home, trolling the neighborhood looking for suspicious young black men, so she doesn’t get that benefit of the doubt. But id would seem that the fact that she didn’t actually hurt or kill anyone would mitigate the issue just a little.

Truthfully, I don’t know if her lawyers even claimed the “stand your ground” defense. I’m just pointing out that “justice” doesn’t really seem to be the point. And as the article points out:

Florida’s self-defense law says “a person is justified in the use of deadly force and does not have a duty to retreat” if “he or she reasonably believes” it is necessary to prevent “imminent death or great bodily harm” or “the imminent commission of a forcible felony.” In 1999, furthermore, the Florida Supreme Court ruled that a woman attacked by her husband in the home they share has no duty to flee.

Read the whole thing to understand just why this woman had every reason to believe she was facing imminent death or great bodily harm.

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We have more parasites, looters and moochers every day

by digby

The unemployment rate is now officially higher than it was when President Obama took office. That’s a slow recovery, but still good.

Here is the bad news:

Actually it’s a complicated issue isn’t entirely a reflection of this lesser depression but part of a longer trend:

This fine article by Brian Beutler explains. There’s a lot going on here, and none of it is particularly good.

“Applying this demographic view to recessions and recoveries suggests that the future recessions with historically typical cyclical behavior will have steeper declines and slower recoveries in output and employment,” conclude economists James Stock and Mark Watson (PDF).

If this is right, and current trends hold, our unemployment rate will remain high for a long time. That’s a scary thought, but as Wolfers noted, it depends on what’s underlying the trends. “If people are making other choices and are happy with those choices, it’s a great thing. But if women want to work and aren’t able to find jobs, it’s terrible.”

The data tell fascinating and important stories, but they aren’t the most telling indicators of the pace of the recovery. The U.S. has a much higher labor force participation rate than many other major economies, including some, like Germany, that weathered the global recession better than we have. The significance lies in broader demographic and policy differences between America and other countries.

A lot of this has to do with absorbing women into the workforce over the past few decades, thus propping up the workforce participation numbers. And Americans expect people to work as much of their life as humanly possible and then die quickly, so we’re exceptional, as usual.

But this is sort of funny:

If this is right, and current trends hold, our unemployment rate will remain high for a long time. That’s a scary thought, but as Wolfers noted, it depends on what’s underlying the trends. “If people are making other choices and are happy with those choices, it’s a great thing. But if women want to work and aren’t able to find jobs, it’s terrible.”

I have a sneaking suspicion that a very few of these people are voluntarily “making other choices” and are happy with that. I assume he’s obliquely referring to women staying home with their kids which I don’t doubt many women are happy to do. But it’s kind of a mixed blessing when you are losing your home, spending all your savings and getting deeply into debt in order to do it. I would imagine that for many families it’s a bittersweet “choice” at best. On the other hand, those people who are finding new careers as thieves, prostitutes and meth dealers are probably very happy with their choices. Who wouldn’t be?

Mike Konczal has a thoughtful analysis of all this here.

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Mr Family Values

by digby

He’s a really nice guy, damn it!

Ted Nugent Loses It During CBS Interview

“I’m an extremely loving and passionate man, and people who investigate me honestly, without the baggage of political correctness, ascertain the conclusion that I’m a damned nice guy … and if you can find a screening process more powerful than that, I’ll suck your dick.”

Nugent then turned to Glor’s female producer and said, “Or I’ll fuck you, how’s that sound?”

In a weird way I think this guy helps Romney. White, middle-aged psychopaths (of the non-Wall Street variety) aren’t warming to him and Nugent is his best ambassador.

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Another day, another (federal) GOP attack on women

by digby

In case this goes unnoticed while everyone is proclaiming that there is no war on women, I thought I’d make a note of it:

Rep. Todd Rokita’s (R-Ind.) State Health Flexibility Act, also known as HR 4160, contains a provision that would force 17 states, including California, Massachusetts, and New York, to either discontinue programs that help low-income women pay for abortions, or spend a lot more money to purchase new insurance plans for those women. Thirty House Republicans have signed onto Rokita’s proposal since it was introduced in March*, and the Republican Study Committee, a group of conservatives that includes over 70 percent of the GOP caucus, made HR 4160 part of its official budget plan.

If passed, the bill “would block the only avenue left to states that wish to make safe and legal abortions accessible to low income women,” says Sara Rosenbaum, a health law expert at George Washington University.

I’ll never understand why these people are so insistent that poor women have children they don’t want and can’t afford.

But never fear, it’s also an assault on poor, sick people in general:

Rokita’s bill, like the House Republican budget drafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would shift the system to a block grant model, under which states would receive fixed quarterly grants from Washington and have the freedom to set up low-income health care programs largely as they wished. There would be little in the way of minimum standards, the value of federal funding would decline dramatically over time, and states would be free to boot millions of people from their Medicaid rolls.

But lest you think this is just a case of states’ rights Republicans honoring their principles, well:

The Republican measure would give states more say over how they spend Medicaid funds, but it forbids them from covering abortions, even with state money—unless they purchase separate abortion-only plans or buy plans that include abortion coverage entirely with state funds. Either option could potentially cost these states millions of dollars.**

The one thing in the world the federal government does have a say over besides foreign policy is a woman’s uterus.

And you can see the result of the hideous Obamacare abortion fight in this. The Hyde Amendment already holds that federal Medicaid money cannot be spent for abortion.This new provision takes it to the next level and says that no Medicaid dollar can touch a state dollar that might be used to pay for abortions for poor women. It’s modeled on that fabulous Stupak compromise — our new baseline.

Obviously, this bill will not become law any time soon unless Mitt Romney becomes president. But they won’t give up. It’s a new goal, heavily backed by the radical freakshow they call the “Republican Study Committee.” They’ll stay with it.

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The cold truth about Obama and FDR

by David Atkins

Reacting to Wall Street’s delusional rage against the President which I highlighted earlier, Daily Kos diarist David Mizner asks the pertinent question: why doesn’t the President simply welcome their hatred? After all, Wall Street is deeply unpopular and Dems would stand to gain, right?

Well, the outrage is easy. I myself have shared in it. But honestly, the answer to this question isn’t that hard. No need to resort to the comfortable, easy, self-righteous retreats of corruption or fecklessness. It’s a function of two simple factors: money and votes.

Plainly speaking, FDR didn’t need the bankers’ money. Campaigning wasn’t nearly as expensive in those days. Lack of effective mass communications made it harder to purchase persuasion. And the Powell Memo that led to the coordination of big business spending on elections was over 30 years away. Wall Street had money, but it wasn’t as coordinated and it didn’t go as far.

But that’s not all. FDR also had the votes of the racist South. He couldn’t afford to lose them. FDR had the opportunity to pass an anti-lynching bill, but he couldn’t afford to do it and still get the New Deal passed:

The harsh logic of Roosevelt’s racial stance was expressed most clearly in 1938, when liberal congressmen attempted to pass federal anti-lynching legislation to halt the most horrific type of anti-black terrorism. (Several thousand blacks were killed by lynching in the United States between the 1880s and 1960s.) Southern Senators angrily filibustered, and FDR defied black leaders and his own wife by refusing to throw his support behind the measure. “I did not choose the tools with which I must work,” he explained. “Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected quite different ones. But I’ve got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners… occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the antilynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can’t take that risk.”

Roosevelt’s need to accommodate southern racists often complicated the implementation of his programs. Distribution of relief in the South, for example, slowed to a trickle because Southern relief administrators didn’t want to distribute money to blacks. One Georgia relief agent told Roosevelt’s emissary Lorena Hickok that “any N—– who gets over $8 a week is a spoiled N—–, that’s all… The Negroes regard the President as the Messiah, and they think that… they’ll all be getting $12 a week for the rest of their lives.” Domestic workers and agricultural laborers—the leading employment sectors for black women and men, respectively—were excluded from many of the benefits of labor legislation and social security.

The cold truth is that Democrats’ decision to support working families and organized labor from 1930-1970 led to an intense and furious backlash by moneyed interests, without which the Movement Conservative revolution would not have been possible. Republicans outraised Democrats in presidential elections during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s by a factor of 7-1 and higher. That in turn led to the creation of the DLC and the rise of the neoliberal elite to raise enough funds to be remotely competitive.

The cold truth is that Democrats’ decision to support women’s rights and especially minority rights in the 1960s led to the loss of the Deep South and much of the Rust Belt.

The cold truth is that adding the full force of Wall Street’s money and the medical industry’s money to the entirety of the racist and misogynist vote in the Deep South and Rust Belt would disable Democrats from winning a single Presidential election until most of the racists and misogynists are dead and buried. Which will happen, but not for quite some time.

Welcoming their hatred sounds great. But to do it without committing electoral suicide would require major campaign finance reform, and actively marginalizing states and populations where racism holds sway. Both of those things can be accomplished. They’re not as easy as simply demanding a more forceful rhetorician, but they’re more realistic. And that’s the cold truth.

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The premium support pilot program didn’t work

by digby

I’ve written about this before, but it really can’t be emphasized enough:

The co-creator of the concept that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) is relying upon to reform Medicare no longer thinks it will work. Henry Aaron, now of the Brookings Institution, got the chance to tell Ryan exactly why at a recent Capitol Hill hearing.

Aaron and former Urban Institute president Robert Reischauer came up with the idea of “premium support” in 1995, after the failure of then-First Lady Hillary Clinton’s bid to reform the health care system.

The basic idea is simple: let people pick their health insurers in the private market, subsidize the premiums, and competition will drive down costs. That’s the theory behind Ryan’s plan, recently endorsed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) in a white paper the two wrote.

It differs from Aaron’s original vision — in part because it has fewer protections for beneficiaries — but the essential concept is the same. Aaron said this isn’t the time to test it out.

“In the years since Bob Reischauer and I put this Idea forward, I’ve changed my mind,” Aaron said at a hearing of the House Ways and Means Committee last week.

The big reason is that Aaron has seen no evidence since the two men came up with the idea that their assumptions have been borne out.

A key assumption was that the insurance industry or government would figure out how better to adjust risk among companies so that if one insurer suddenly was saddled with an unusually expensive population, it would share the costs with other insurers or the government. That would keep costs down because it removes some of the incentive to cherry-pick healthier customers or shun sicker ones.

But in the case of Medicare Advantage, similar to premium support in that Medicare pays a private insurer to cover someone, the attempts at risk adjustment have raised costs by about 8 percent, Aaron noted. On top of that, although there are many Medicare Advantage plans in existence, they are not cheaper than traditional Medicare, and there’s little to suggest they will get cheaper.

“The evidence to date is not encouraging,” Aaron said, noting a recent study that isolated the effects of competition on Medicare Advantage costs from government-related influences. “After controlling for all those factors, Medicare Advantage plans are more expensive than is traditional Medicare.”

I wonder how he feels about Alice Rivlin more or less calling him a liar?

Progressives are increasingly concerned that others in the Democratic Party will embrace that and additional ideas promoted by Ryan to cut the budget deficit. Indeed, the latest Ryan Medicare plan is championed not just by Breaux but by another influential Democrat, Alice Rivlin, the former head of the White House’s Office of the Management and Budget in the Clinton administration.

Rivlin, who also testified Friday, recently told The Huffington Post that Democrats “are lying, not to put too fine a point on it,” when they say that premium support will end Medicare.

I guess Aaron isn’t technically saying that premium support will end Medicare when he says that it won’t work, but it’s hard to see what else it would lead to.