Month: July 2012

This is why they keep kids away from book learnin’

by digby

I love this story. Remember this kid?

Well guess what?

Jonathan Krohn took the political world by storm at 2009’s Conservative Political Action Conference when, at just 13 years old, he delivered an impromptu rallying cry for conservatism that became a viral hit and had some pegging him as a future star of the Republican Party.

Now 17, Krohn — who went on to write a book, “Defining Conservatism,” that was blurbed by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Bill Bennett — still watches that speech from time to time, but it mostly makes him cringe because, well, he’s not a conservative anymore.

“I think it was naive,” Krohn now says of the speech. “It’s a 13-year-old kid saying stuff that he had heard for a long time.… I live in Georgia. We’re inundated with conservative talk in Georgia.… The speech was something that a 13-year-old does. You haven’t formed all your opinions. You’re really defeating yourself if you think you have all of your ideas in your head when you were 12 or 13. It’s impossible. You haven’t done enough.”

Krohn won’t go so far as to say he’s liberal, in part because his move away from conservatism was a move away from ideological boxes in general.

“I want to be Jonathan Krohn,” he said, “and I’m tired of being an ideology, and it’s not fun and it gets boring and it’s not who we are as individuals.”

But a quick rundown of his current political stances suggests a serious pendulum swing away from the right.

Gay marriage? In favor. Obamacare? “It’s a good idea.” Who would he vote for (if he could) in November? “Probably Barack Obama.” His favorite TV shows? “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report.” His favorite magazine? The New Yorker. And, perhaps telling of all, Krohn is enrolling this fall at a college not exactly known for its conservatism: New York University.

“One of the first things that changed was that I stopped being a social conservative,” said Krohn. “It just didn’t seem right to me anymore. From there, it branched into other issues, everything from health care to economic issues.… I think I’ve changed a lot, and it’s not because I’ve become a liberal from being a conservative — it’s just that I thought about it more. The issues are so complex, you can’t just go with some ideological mantra for each substantive issue.”

The article says that he’s bucking the CW by becoming more liberal as he ages instead of more conservative, but that silly. When you’re a little kid you reflect your parents views. And many people, perhaps most, never question that and continue with that identification for the rest of their lives. A lot of us however, reach the age that this kid does, read a few books, talk to a few people and start to question what we’ve been told.

I suppose there are some Alex P Keatons out there who rebel against their liberal parents, but I think it’s more likely to be a right to left phenomenon. Maybe some of these kids go back into the fold after a while, but more stay with the liberal side.

This kid’s very smart. If they wanted him to stay conservative they should have kept him away from books:

“I started reflecting on a lot of what I wrote, just thinking about what I had said and what I had done and started reading a lot of other stuff, and not just political stuff,” Krohn said. “I started getting into philosophy — Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Kant and lots of other German philosophers. And then into present philosophers — Saul Kripke, David Chalmers. It was really reading philosophy that didn’t have anything to do with politics that gave me a breather and made me realize that a lot of what I said was ideological blather that really wasn’t meaningful. It wasn’t me thinking. It was just me saying things I had heard so long from people I thought were interesting and just came to believe for some reason, without really understanding it. I understood it enough to talk about it but not really enough to have a conversation about it.”

This is why the 2012 Texas GOP platform comes out against teaching critical thinking.

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Polling shows Republicans fighting a losing battle on ACA repeal

by David Atkins

Greg Sargent has an excellent analysis of the polling on the Affordable Care Act today. The basic summary is that public opinion is nearly evenly split on the Supreme Court’s decision (and moderates are slightly in favor of it.) And as we’ve known for a long while, a majority of people want to repeal the law but keep most of its provisions. The mandate, of course, is the least popular part of the law, while making insurance affordable for those with pre-existing conditions and allowing those under 26 to remain on their parents’ coverage are highly popular.

But perhaps the most problematic polling number for Republicans is this:

This poll fielded following the Supreme Court’s decision upholding the heart of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) finds a majority of Americans (56 percent) now say they would like to see the law’s detractors stop their efforts to block its implementation and move on to other national problems…

Solid majorities of voters of every political stripe say the decision won’t impact whether or not they vote this November – though Republicans are more likely than Democrats (31 percent compared to 18 percent) to say the result makes them more likely to turn out.

The economy and jobs are top of mind for voters this election, not the intricacies of healthcare law. But the Republicans have spent so much time inflaming their base by painting the Affordable Care Act as a Communist takeover, that they don’t have much choice but to make full repeal of the law a rallying cry through November. The more they talk about it, the more voters will see Republicans as unfocused on their principal concerns.

As a policy matter, the fight will really be over implementation of Medicaid expansion. But as a political matter, that too is a losing battle for Republicans. Bright red states where Romney is already assured of victory won’t have any problem with letting poor people die due to lack of access to healthcare, but that won’t fly well with more morally sane parts of the country where the election will be decided.

Creating a fictional, terrifying alternate reality for rubes can be very useful for mobilizing one’s base and stopping key reforms. But it also has very negative political consequences and backfires over the long run as that base of rubes continues to shrink.

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Dispatch from Gilead

by digby

Via RH Reality check:

A Tampa woman whom we only know as R.W., was raped. She was treated by the rape crisis center, who gave her two emergency contraception pills, one to be taken immediately and one to be taken 12 hours later. When she reported the rape to the police, they uncovered an arrest warrant on R.W. for failure to pay restitution and failure to appear. After she was arrested, a Hillsborough County guard confiscated her second pill, claiming it was against her religious beliefs.

I can hardly get past the arrest. A rape victim reports her rape and is arrested on an old warrant for failure to pay restitution? Really? That’s the priority?

As for the allegedly “religious” guard, let’s just call her what she really is: a fascist.

If this is true, it’s an obscenity. But it’s a natural extension of what’s been happening with this hideous “conscience” exception to the law of the land. Taken to its natural extension anyone in authority can cite their religion to do whatever he or she wants , regardless of the law. When you look back in history you can see where that leads. In fact, America was formed by people who were desperate to get away from that horror.

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Wise words from Ed Kilgore

He knows his Southern politicians:

I know, I know, it’s widely thought to be incontrovertible that logic, pressure from providers, and the sheer idiocy of states with stingy Medicaid programs turning down a massive redistribution of resources in their favor, will all convince Republican governors to go along with the Medicaid expansion after they kick and scream for the benefit of “the base.” Perhaps that’s true, and that the rhetoric is the latter-day equivalent of the “massive resistance” southern lawmakers pledged to wage against the federally-imposed demise of Jim Crow.

But as the civil rights precedent showed, the competitive pressure of demagoguery is sometimes a lot more powerful than the “business logic” of going along with a more rational course of action. Now that Scott and Jindal have thrown down the gauntlet, can Nikki Haley or Scott Walker or Rick Perry or Sam Brownback be far behind?

This is of more than academic interest since the design of ACA really does depend on Medicaid expansion. In states where Medicaid fails to cover those under the federal poverty line, there are potentially millions of people who will not qualify for the subsidies available to higher-income families participating in the health exchanges.

As I’ve said from the beginning, the moral heart of the ACA is the medicaid expansion (and the banning denial of pre-existing conditions.) This was the big payoff for liberals in this thing. The rest is an experiment in using “markets” to make it “more affordable” for middle class people in the private insurance market. (Like me.)Hopefully the subsidies and exchanges will work and many people will be better off. Certainly they’ll have better preventive coverage and no lifetime limits, so that’s something.

But expanding Medicaid to cover more than 10 million people, mostly working poor, who cannot afford to buy health insurance at all was the real liberal accomplishment of the Act, although some of us predicted from the beginning that it would also be the most vulnerable. (Hell, even the Obama administration has been willing to cut existing Medicaid, so it’s hard to see how this won’t be on the chopping block going forward.)

In any case, this is the one piece of the ACA that truly offends the right wingers. It actually is government paid health care, after all. I think Kilgore is right and that it’s not a given that these governors will accede to the federal law on this without a long drawn out battle.

As I said on the morning of the decision, there will be those who follow in the footsteps of their forebears: “no health care now, no health care tomorrow, no health care forevuh!” States’ rights were invented for people like this.

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Will We Fall For It Again?

by tristero

Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum has it exactly right:

Confronting a high-profile attack on its fizzy products, the American soft-drink industry is beginning an aggressive campaign to fight New York City’s proposed restrictions on large servings of sugary drinks.

Hoping for a debate about freedom, not fatness…

The beverage association would not disclose its budget for the New York campaign, but Eliot Hoff, a spokesman for the coalition, said it was “prepared to utilize whatever resources are necessary.” [emphasis added]

In short, Big Food will seek to change the subject, specifically by transforming a difficult yet nevertheless quite tractable problem – the obesity epidemic – into sophomore dormitory bullshit.

Now we can master-debate “freedom of choice” all we want, but that truly serious question still remains: What are we going to do about obesity? A ban on big sodas isn’t my first choice – a tax on soda would be a more sensible start – but it’s better than nothing.

To change the subject from a complex, unavoidable social problem that must be confronted into a seemingly more serious, but actually frivolous, debate about a Big American Idea is a typical tactic of the right and large corporations. It prevents careful thought about progress and change by appealing to that old American desire to think grandly about the ultimate purposes of our country. But the con will only work if we allow it to.

We shouldn’t.

The great media war and the survival of the press

by David Atkins

Lenny Alcivar, Romney campaign spokesman, gives a hint as to the Romney campaign’s media strategy:

When this election is over, one of the lessons that will be learned by the mainstream media is that they no longer have a toe-hold on how Americans receive their news. Never before – in a way that has taken Democrats off stride – have we seen the confluence of an aggressive online community, led by Breitbart, and an aggressive campaign team not willing to cede an inch of ground to Democrats. This combination has created a new political reality. We no longer allow the mainstream media to define the political realities in America. The rise of Breitbart, Drudge and others, combined with an aggressive Romney campaign is a powerful tool in the arsenal of the conservative movement.

If I talk to Breitbart about an issue, thousands more will hear our message than if we give a quote to one of the hill rags.

That’s a fascinating counterpoint to this:

Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the Court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They’ve explained that they don’t want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As Chief Justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the Court, and he also is sensitive to how the Court is perceived by the public.

There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the Court – and to Roberts’ reputation – if the Court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the President himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, “wobbly,” the sources said.

As any reader of progressive blogs knows well, the traditional media is not at all liberal. But it doesn’t have to be anymore. Even Fox News isn’t far enough right for many Republicans. We’ve reached a new low when Drudge and Breitbart become the key mouthpieces for the Republican presidential nominee.

For all the faults of the traditional media, it does serve the key purpose of orienting a large portion of the public around a single set of facts. Often those “facts” are wrong, as in the runup to the invasion or Iraq, or the happy talk during the creation the housing bubble. But those dramatic press failures don’t negate the use value of a resource that appears as authoritative as it can be in establishing a baseline from which public policy can be made. When the left criticizes the press, it is usually less in the hope that it disappear completely, than in the hope that it actually report the news with the objectivity the actual facts demand, regardless of the natural partisan bias of those facts.

The right doesn’t care a whit about objectivity, of course. The right simply wants its partisan message blasted to as many people as possible, while forcing the traditional press to cover their “stories” because, well, people are talking about them.

Ultimately, members of the press need to realize that this is a fight for the very survival of their profession. Few politicians on the left–much less presidential campaigns–are willing to say that they intend to ignore the traditional press in favor of pushing out their message through some of the least reputable, most conspiracy-minded progressive blogs. This isn’t a “both sides do it” issue.

The American right is at war not just with basic morality and science, but with the very notion of journalism itself. They want a Supreme Court that resides in a bubble without the context of public opinion, and an electorate that gets its information straight from bloviating tinfoil hatters.

At some point the establishment press is going to have to call this out for what it is, even if it means losing the 25% of the Dittoheads who have gone far off the deep end. It’s not as if those folks are going to be paying subscribers or revenue generators, anyway.

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Virtually Speaking with Joan McCarter and me, 6pm pdt, 9pm edt

by digby

Call in to speak with the host
(646) 200-3440

Joan McCarter (DailyKos) and Digby (Hullabaloo) SCOTUS the PPACA and Chris Hayes’ Twilight of the Elites Plus this week’s ridiculous moment from Culture of Truth.

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Your guide to the ongoing discussion of health care

by digby

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“We can’t afford it”

by digby

No kidding:

States across the country are revisiting three-strikes laws and other tough mandatory minimum sentencing laws, particularly for low-level drug crimes. Of the 24 states that passed three-strikes laws in the early 1990s, at least 16 have since modified them to give judges more discretion in sentencing or narrow the types of crimes that count as a “strike,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

At least 14 states in recent years also either eliminated mandatory minimum sentencing for low-level drug offenders, or gave judges more discretion to consider alternatives to incarceration, according to the NCSL.
[…]
The changes are part of a broader rethinking of many of the “tough on crime” sentencing policies that dominated the country for decades. Driven largely by the flagging economy, states have embraced a variety of reforms to rein in the cost of high prison populations, including diverting low-level drug offenders into treatment; reforming the parole system; and granting early release to certain inmates.

Harris, who prosecuted Larry Williams, concedes the sentence would have been far less harsh if Williams were tried today, in part because of the statewide debate about the cost of maintaining California’s prison system, one of the nation’s most crowded.

“No judge would do that now where the third strike is possession of stolen property,” he says. “We can’t afford it.”

People did try to point out that this was a huge waste of money at the time. But nobody listened — there was bloodlust in the air and whole lot of nonsense being bandied about regarding “super-predators” and the like (which turned out to be made-up) so we decided as a society to throw millions of people in jail even though it was hugely expensive, cruel and ineffective. (Of course that was a feature, not a bug. )

Sunday catch-up

by digby

Here are some good reads and analysis on the health care decision. The first, by Robert Frank, gives an excellent analysis of why the reforms happened the way they did. He explains the history of the employer based health care system and emphasizes the fact that because it is what already covers the majority of the population, there was just no feasible way to up-end it — it had to be built upon.

I have to agree that this was the most daunting obstacle to any kind of single payer. Too many people had health care they liked (or, at least, thought they liked.) Telling people to give something up so that other people could benefit (including themselves if they lost their jobs) is a heavy lift — especially for Americans who really don’t like the idea of helping other people. (If people need help and you don’t, it proves they don’t deserve it as much as you do, right?)

Anyway, it’s a good piece. It makes the important case that the success of this conservative, contraption depends upon how it evolves from this point. There are ways to make it better — maybe even evolve into a truly affordable universal program. I hope the health care policy wonks who care about universality and security aren’t just resting on their laurels and assuming this thing will work perfectly.

Another good read today is this analysis of the Supreme Court decision which shows what a petulant bunch of jackasses the conservative wing is. They had Roberts in the bag and when he changed his mind, they held their breath until they turned blue.

It doesn’t say why Roberts changed his mind, but implies that he was reading all the stuff about the court losing legitimacy in the press. I’m not sure that we’ll ever know what it really was.

Finally, this segment by Chris Hayes on Roberts adhering to norms:

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

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