Month: July 2012

A GOP dilemma that isn’t a dilemma

by digby

I think the New York Times believes this is going to be some kind of problem for the Republicans, but I don’t understand why:

For much of the past year, Republicans assailed President Obama for resisting the Medicare spending reductions they say are needed to both preserve health benefits for older Americans and avert a Greek-style debt crisis. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House Republicans’ point man on the budget, has called the president “gutless.”

Yet since the Supreme Court upheld the Democrats’ 2010 health care law, Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, have reversed tactics and attacked the president and Democrats in Congress by saying that Medicare will be cut too much as part of that law. Republicans plan to hold another vote to repeal the law in the House next week, though any such measure would die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“Obamacare cuts Medicare — cuts Medicare — by approximately $500 billion,” Mr. Romney has told audiences.

That is a reprise of Republicans’ mantra of the 2010 midterm elections, which gave them big gains at both the state and federal levels and a majority in the House. Yet the message conflicts not only with their past complaint that Democrats opposed reining in Medicare spending, but also with the fact that House Republicans have voted twice since 2010 for the same 10-year, $500 billion savings in supporting Mr. Ryan’s annual budgets.

The result is a messaging mess, even by the standards of each party’s usual election-year attacks that the other is being insufficiently supportive of older people’s benefits.

No it isn’t. Cognitive dissonance is a feature, not a bug. Paul Ryan has already figured out how to speak perfect gibberish on this topic in a way that will appeal to dumb people:

ABCNews’ “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos asked Ryan about Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s contested claim that health care reform simultaneously cuts $500 billion from Medicare, hikes taxes by $500 billion and adds trillions to the deficit over a 10-year stretch.

“By that accounting,” Stephanopoulos said, “your own budget, which Gov. Romney has endorsed, would also have $500 billion in Medicare cuts.”

“Well our budget keeps that money for Medicare to extend its solvency,” Ryan said. “What Obamacare does is it takes that money from Medicare to spend on Obamacare.”

Stephanopoulos was confused: “Congressman, correct me if I am wrong: I thought your Medicare savings were put toward deficit reduction, debt reduction.”

“Which extends the solvency of Medicare,” Ryan said. “What they do in Obamacare, they try to count this dollar twice. They claim that this helps Medicare solvency and, at the same time, they spend this money on creating Obamacare.

“The trustee report for Medicare, they say the same thing,” Ryan added. “You can’t count these dollars twice. In our budget we make sure all of these dollars from Medicare savings go toward extending the solvency of Medicare and don’t go toward spending new money on Obamacare.”

The Democrats will undoubtedly issue dozens of position papers explaining in minute technical detail why this isn’t true. And most people will throw up their hands and vote with the team they feel most comfortable with. It would probably be better if they just said, “Paul Ryan is a liar. Democrats have always been the protectors of medicare and always will be.” But they won’t.

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QOTD: David Atkins

by digby

Some people believe that if a bearded guy in the sky didn’t hand-fashion all living beings from dust, the world would lose its sense of wonder. As for me, knowing all my childhood and Hollywood conceptions of dinosaurs were wrong, and that my cockatiel and lovebird aren’t just feathered dinosaurs but more like actual dinosaurs with significant adaptions–that is a source of wonderment far greater than any monolithic supernatural entity could create.

Moi aussi.

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Good God these billionaires are twisted

by digby

Jonathan Schwartz flags an article in GQ which features interviews with a number of different people on the economic scale, one of whom is a major GOP billionaire donor named B. Wayne Hughes. Read what this privileged psycho has to say about his fellow Americans:

Wayne talked to me about “derelicts on welfare” who check themselves into the hospital because they’re “bored” and “want feeding,” and “we’re paying for all that activity.” He said too much tax money is spent on “guys going to chiropractors, guys getting massages! On us! Give me a break. Guys getting Viagra!” He talked about “Los Angeles bus drivers who are on permanent stress leave because someone spat on them when they got on the bus, and now they’re emotionally upside down. More than half the bus drivers are out on stress leave! Systems like that cannot work!” It seemed as if, for Wayne’s philosophy to work, he needed to believe that those who don’t make it deserve their ill fortune.

It’s hard to believe that jerk is real, he seems more like a caricature of a misanthropic asshole from a Victorian novel — Ebenezer Scrooge — that a real person. But he is real, as are many other of these billionaires just like him. Why do so many people who have so much become such miserly egomaniacs?

I think Jonathan gets this right:

the Prime Directive of everyone’s psyche is to believe they’re morally good. (As Hughes says in the GQ article, “I’ve lived my whole life doing what I thought was right.”) But there’s no rational way for any human being in history to believe it’s morally justified for them to have as much money and power as Hughes, Murdoch, etc. So people at the top must become crazy in this particular way. As my grandfather, a historian who focused on the Spanish conquest of the Western Hemisphere, always said:

The hostility of those who have power toward those who can be called inferior because they are different – because they are others, the strangers – has been a historical constant. Indeed, at times it seems to be the dominant theme in human history.

And it goes all the way down the scale to the absurd point at which lower middle class white people who should by all rights hate that hideous billionaire, turn their attention instead to the same “derelicts on welfare” and blame them for the fact that they aren’t billionaires themselves. It’s the only little bit of privilege they think they have.

Read the whole post. It’s got a lot more good stuff in it.

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Dave Johnson asks a good question

by digby

What if Romney wins the election by less than the number of people kept from voting by Republican anti-voting laws?

And I’m already hearing that political science types don’t think voter suppression makes any difference in election outcomes so it’s much ado about nothing. They’ll show their models to the establishment “proving” that based on past voting patterns or some such, that Romney would have won anyway, so there’s nothing to see here. The election would have to be close for this to happen, you see, and that means that the Great God of Polling would have been indeterminate going in. (Exit polls have already been somewhat discredited.) I’m fairly sure it will be dismissed as more sour grapes and people will, once again, be told to get over it.

But will they? Dave says:

This would be worse than the Supreme Court putting Bush in after Gore won. Partly because this time we’re not going to just shut up and take it.

Really? That’s being awfully optimistic. I just don’t see what mechanism makes that happen. Occupy — or whatever the mass demonstration impulse we have is called — is non-partisan and believe on a lot of levels that elections don’t matter. Democrats in general are beaten omega dogs who assume they are supposed to lose (or take that position for money — kind of like World Wide Wrestling.) Maybe the African American community might have the gumption to complain, but that would be dismissed as Obama loyalty and that would be that.

No, I am not going to count on a big epiphany or a strong response if this happens. Unfortunately.

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Chris Christy: statesman

by digby

David Ferguson reports on the latest from the great Republican hope:

In a scene that could have come from outtakes of MTV’s popular reality series “Jersey Shore,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) was caught by cameras bellowing and storming up the boardwalk in the popular vacation town Seaside Heights, NJ after a man in the crowd insulted him. The footage, shot with a phone camera and distributed by TMZ, shows Christie shouting angrily until a member of his entourage leads him away.

The video initially showed Christie standing athwart the flow of the crowd, yelling at a man off-camera.

“You’re a real big-shot!” shouted the governor, clutching an ice cream cone, “You’re a real big-shot, shooting your mouth off!”

“Nah, just take care of the teachers,” the man said before walking away.

“Yeah, keep walkin’ away,” Christie jeered at him, “Keep walkin’!”

At least he didn’t start screaming “stop raping people.” But it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

And by the way, this was shot with a phone and it doesn’t look like there were very many people around, so this wasn’t for the cameras. He really is like this.

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Latest battle in the WOW

by digby

Assaulting women on every level:

Three Years into the Recovery, Job Growth for Women Undermined by Public Sector Job Losses, NWLC Analysis Shows

Analysis by the National Women’s Law Center of jobs data for June 2012 shows that last month women gained more private sector jobs than men did: 49,000 v. 35,000. But women lost 17,000 public sector jobs in June, while men gained 13,000 public sector jobs. Since the start of the recovery three years ago, women have gained 908,000 net private sector jobs—and lost 396,000 net public sector jobs. Men have gained 2,304,000 net private sector jobs—and lost 231,000 net public sector jobs. In the last three years, women have a net gain of 512,000 jobs; men have a net gain of 2,073,000 jobs.

“The June jobs data reflect a disturbing trend we’ve seen during the three years of the recovery: cuts in public sector jobs are undermining the recovery overall—but especially for women,” said Joan Entmacher, Vice President for Family Economic Security at the National Women’s Law Center. “For every ten private sector jobs women have gained since the recovery began in June 2009, they’ve lost more than four public sector jobs. Our communities are losing teachers, nurses, police and firefighters but some policy makers still don’t get it. They’re pushing for deeper budget cuts that will mean more lost jobs, more cuts in education, health care, public safety, and other vital services.”

The public sector is heavily female and African American. Why?

Historically, the state and local public sectors have provided more equitable opportunities for women and people of color. As a result, women and African Americans constitute a disproportionately large share of the state and local public-sector workforce.

State and local public-sector workers of color face smaller wage disparities across racial lines, and at some levels of education actually enjoy a wage premium over similarly educated white workers.

The disproportionate share of women and African Americans working in state and local government has translated into higher rates of job loss for both groups in these sectors. Between 2007 (before the recession) and 2011, state and local governments shed about 765,000 jobs. Women and African Americans comprised about 70 percent and 20 percent, respectively, of those losses. Conversely, Hispanic employment in state and local public-sector jobs increased during this period (although most of that increase occurred in the lowest-paid jobs).

I had to go to the DMV recently and it was very efficient. But as I was waiting (about ten minutes) I listened to a couple sitting sitting next to me complaining about the DMV clerks being fat, lazy, stupid etc. They were speaking specifically about the African American women who were at the information desk.

I have always thought that a good part of the hostility toward public workers in recent years was related to factors that have nothing to do with their pensions. The problem, at least in part, probably has to do with the “wrong” people having secure, decently paying jobs that they don’t “deserve” which are paid for by taxes. Same old shit.

And then there are the public school teachers, still a heavily female profession:

Joe Weisenthal first caught that over 100,000 teaching jobs have been cut in the last year. It’s not that parents no longer demand teachers for their children, it’s that state government cutbacks have led to this specific job loss, and the federal government has not taken up the slack since 2010. If you go back to June 2008, teacher jobs have fallen by 300,000.

Such cuts obviously have perilous effects for the nation’s education system and long-term economic health, but it hurts the economy in the short-term too. Teachers are disproportionately women, so the cuts affect a subset of worker that already faces significant disadvantages in the American workplace, and these losses no doubt played a role in the recession’s out-sized impact on female workers.

The news from the private sector is alarming for women as well:

It continues to be striking that a disproportionate share of the jobs being created are going to men. This is not due to the comeback of manufacturing and construction. Since December of 2009, manufacturing has added just 496,000 and construction has lost 145,000 jobs. The real story is that men have gotten a hugely disproportionate share of the jobs in industries with more of a gender balance.

For example, in retail since December of 2009, men have gotten 474,000 jobs while women have lost 49,000. Men have gotten 190,000 of the 192,000 jobs created in transportation. In finance they have seen an increase in employment of 123,000 while the number of jobs for women fell by 65,000. It is too early to know if this trend will continue, but the disproportionate growth of jobs for men in these and other areas over the last two and a half years is striking.

I can’t blame men for taking whatever jobs are available. But those numbers are startling. Women are being hit very hard in this “recovery.”

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Feathers!

by David Atkins

Here’s an amazing fossil find of yet another feathered dinosaur, strongly suggesting that not just some but most dinosaurs had feathers:

The discovery of a fantastically preserved, bushy-tailed fossil theropod has cloaked the dinosaur world in feathers.

Named Sciurumimus — Latin for “squirrel-mimic” — albersdoerferi, the dinosaur lived 150 million years ago in what is now Germany. When it died, it came to rest in sediments so fine-grained that they preserved an almost photographic impression of the filaments covering its body.

Other feathered theropods, the taxonomic clade including all two-legged dinosaurs and their bird descendants, have been found previously, inspiring fantastic artist renditions and speculation that plumes rather than scales were the dinosaur norm.

Those fossils, however, belonged to a relative latecomer group known as coelurosaurs. Whether most theropods were feathered, or just a few recent evolutionary offshoots, was an open question. The new fossil find, described July 3 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by paleontologist Oliver Rauhut of Germany’s Ludwig Maximilian University, gives a resounding answer.

Compared to the coelurosaurs, S. albersdoerferi was “significantly more basal in the evolutionary tree of theropods,” or a trunk rather than a branch, wrote Rauhut and colleagues. If it had feathers, so did the rest of the theropods.

Some people believe that if a bearded guy in the sky didn’t hand-fashion all living beings from dust, the world would lose its sense of wonder. As for me, knowing all my childhood and Hollywood conceptions of dinosaurs were wrong, and that my cockatiel and lovebird aren’t just feathered dinosaurs but more like actual dinosaurs with significant adaptions–that is a source of wonderment far greater than any monolithic supernatural entity could create.

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Friday drunken cat blogging

by digby

Just, this:

Poor kitty. I feel just like him whenever I have to watch Fox news.

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California will get high speed rail

by David Atkins

In another testament to the power of progressive leadership, the California State Senate just approved major funding for a high-speed rail project that will eventually connect San Francisco all the way down to San Diego with super fast, efficient trains. The vote was close–a bare minimum of 21-16–though it’s likely that some legislators were given permission to vote no because they face reelection in tough districts.

The bill now moves to the desk of governor Jerry Brown, who will almost certainly sign it.

This is a huge victory for progressives, thanks in large part to an influx of progressive legislators and the courage and tireless energy of activists across the state.

However much the big money boys may own and operate Washington, D.C., progressive states can still lead the charge toward a better future. It would be nice to get these things done at a federal level, but if red states have to dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century (or even the 20th), then so be it. It’s been that way for the last 100 years, and it’s not going to change anytime soon.

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Ooops. Lousiana GOP discovers that America has more than one religion

by digby

Guess what? Some of those Louisiana politicians who voted to give public education funds to religious schools are having second thoughts. But not for the reasons we might have hoped.

Valerie Hodges is a Louisiana state Senator:

Valarie Hodges admitted that when she supported Governor Bobby Jindal’s school voucher program, she only did so because she assumed the religious school vouchers could only be used for Christian schools. Religious freedom means that everyone’s free to follow Valarie Hodges’ religion! She explains,

I actually support funding for teaching the fundamentals of America’s Founding Fathers’ religion, which is Christianity, in public schools or private schools. I liked the idea of giving parents the option of sending their children to a public school or a Christian school. (read on …)

I would guess that most immigrants taking the citizenship test undertand just how Un-American that is. Fundamentally Un-American.

Still, I think it makes some sense in her world. After all, they get their information about the Constitution from pseudo-historian charlatans like David Barton:

Last week we wrote another post in our on-going series highlighting social and governmental institutional that David Barton claims came directly out of the Bible. And today we found a presentation that Barton delivered last month where he once again made all of these now standard claims, but this time with the additional claim that the Constitution’s provision regarding treason “is a verbatim quote out of Ezekiel 18:20”

Here is Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.

The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attainted.

And here is Ezekiel 18:20:

The soul who sins shall die. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father, nor the father bear the guilt of the son. The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

You’d think at least the Bible people would be offended, but apparently not.

The far right has been brainwashed into thinking that America was intended to be an explicitly Christian nation. (Sometimes they’ll agree that the Jews have a claim as well.) But even if one is now thoroughly confused about what “free exercise” of religion means due to the shiny new “liberty” argument, one would think that the Constitution is still clear on the establishing part: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.” But then I suppose that anyone who can believe that the Bible says “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying war against them” verbatim isn’t going to be dissuaded by the plain words in the Constitution.

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