Month: July 2012

Taking responsibility for your actions

by digby

What a country. Not only do we live in a shooting gallery in which half the nation apparently thinks we should all dress in body armor out in public because crazy people owning lethal automatic weapons is a right endowed by our Creator, but if you do happen to forget to “protect yourself” properly from the flying bullets, you’ll have to take up a collection to pay for the medical bills:

Sixteen of the dozens of people hurt in the Colorado theater massacre remained hospitalized Tuesday.

Twelve people were killed in the carnage.

Among the victims still in the hospital is Caleb Medley, who was shot in the eye. He’s in intensive care, under heavy sedation, in the same hospital where his wife is in the maternity ward, due to give birth to their son.

Seth Medley says his brother is in critical but stable condition and making some improvements in small steps, but added that doctors say he’s not anywhere near out of the woods.

One of Caleb and Katie’s best friends is Michael West, who’s known Katie since kindergarten and Caleb since they started high school. West says Caleb can “make you laugh at the most mundane things.”

Complete coverage: Massacre in Aurora

Caleb’s family has been told his medical bills could total $2 million. So, West is trying to raise money.

“Caleb doesn’t have any insurance, so I put together a website,” West says.

So far, the site has raised more than $57,000 for Caleb and his family, but much more is needed

Warner Brothers is kicking in a “substantial sum” for the victims, which is the right thing to do.

But where’s the NRA? They’re a hell of a lot more responsible for this horror than some comic book movie. Wouldn’t it be a gesture of decency of good will for them to contribute some money to the victims of the fruits of their labors? This shooter sure as hell couldn’t have gotten the job done this efficiently without them.

Update:

The logic of the American yahoo

Background checks for people wanting to buy guns in Colorado jumped more than 41 percent after Friday morning’s shooting at an Aurora movie theater, and firearms instructors say they’re also seeing increased interest in the training required for a concealed-carry permit.

“It’s been insane,” Jake Meyers, an employee at Rocky Mountain Guns and Ammo in Parker, said Monday.

When he arrived at work Friday morning — just hours after a gunman killed 12 and injured 58 others at the Century Aurora 16 theater — there already were 15 to 20 people waiting outside the store, Meyers said.

He called Monday “probably the busiest Monday all year” and said the basic firearms classes that he and the store’s owner teach are booked solid for the next three weeks, something that hadn’t happened all year.

“A lot of it is people saying, ‘I didn’t think I needed a gun, but now I do,’ ” Meyers said. “When it happens in your backyard, people start reassessing — ‘Hey, I go to the movies.’ “

I think I’d probably overheat in head to toe kevlar so I’ll just have wait for Netflix if all these lunkheads are going to be carrying firearms into movie theatres.

Thanks a lot.

.

It’s John Galt’s world. We just live in it.

by David Atkins

Normally I can read a news story and provide some reasonable perspective to give further context. But this just leaves me speechless:

Senate Republicans will press this week to extend tax cuts for affluent families scheduled to expire Jan. 1, but the same Republican tax plan would allow a series of tax cuts for the working poor and the middle class to end next year.

Republicans say the tax breaks for lower-income families — passed with little notice in the extensive 2009 economic stimulus law — were always supposed to be temporary. But President Obama had made them a priority in 2009 and demanded their extension in 2010 as a price for extending the Bush-era tax cuts for two years, and both the White House and Senate Democrats are determined to extend them again.

That sets up a potentially tricky issue for Republicans. They have said they do not want taxes to go up on anyone while the economy struggles to gain altitude, but under their plan, written by Senator Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the senior Republican on the Finance Committee, about 13 million families would see their tax refunds reduced, and some would see their taxes increase.

“Senator Hatch’s amendment would extend tax breaks for the top 2 percent of Americans,” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, who leads the Senate’s Democratic majority, said this month. “But it fails to extend a number of tax cuts that help middle-class families get by in a tough economy.”

The tax showdown is set for Wednesday, when the Senate will vote on whether to take up Democratic legislation to extend Bush-era middle-class tax cuts through 2013. The motion will need 60 votes to pass, and only if it gets those votes will Republicans be given a chance to vote on their alternative tax plan. The House will vote next week on a similar Republican plan that also allows the 2009 stimulus cuts to lapse.

Let’s be very clear here: we are still in the middle of deep economic recession and high unemployment caused by reckless casino capitalism. Economic inequality is at record levels for the modern era.

And Republicans are flat-out running on a campaign of lowering taxes on the super rich while raising them on lower and middle incomes. Rather than being an insane, devastating and unthinkable political platform, it is simply called “tricky.” The political party advancing this platform has an even chance to win the Presidency, and a better than even chance to win the Senate and hold onto the House. Also, the advertisement on the right-hand side of the page is this:

Sometimes I wonder if it’s worth even trying to save this country from itself. If half of the country wants to experiment with immoral Objectivist fantasies, I’m half inclined to let them as long as they leave the rest of us alone. The problem is, they won’t.

.

The lovely Palin Clan

by digby

Gee, I wonder where he got that:

Kids do say the darnedest things. But they don’t say it if they’ve never heard it. And there’s a history in that family of the little kids saying it.

I’d be sympathetic toward a young mom dealing with a three year old if she weren’t exploiting her child on a reality show. Her little sister seems more mature than she does.

.

Ungrateful conservatives

by digby

Jake Tapper reports:

The New Hampshire Union Leader’s John DiStato today reports that in 1999 the business in question, Gilchrist Metal, “received $800,000 in tax-exempt revenue bonds issued by the New Hampshire Business Finance Authority ‘to set up a second manufacturing plant and purchase equipment to produce high definition television broadcasting equipment’…” In addition, in 2011, Gilchrist Metal “received two U.S. Navy sub-contracts totaling about $83,000 and a smaller, $5,600 Coast Guard contract in 2008…”

The businessman, Jack Gilchrist, also acknowledged that in the 1980s the company received a U.S. Small Business Administration loan totaling “somewhere south of” $500,000, and matching funds from the federally-funded New England Trade Adjustment Assistance Center.

“I’m not going to turn a blind eye because the money came from the government,” Gilchrest said. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m getting some of my tax money back. I’m not stupid, I’m not going to say ‘no.’ Shame on me if I didn’t use what’s available.”

Right. Some of his personal tax dollars paid for all of that, including the roads he’s been using for decades and the education of his workforce and the police and fire protection and reliable energy and water and everything else that contributes to the environment that makes it possible for his business to exist. He’s quite the macho pioneer.

You know, if none of that matters to him, why doesn’t he move his plant to Somalia? They don’t have all these taxes and you really can do it all on your own — including building your own roads and bridges. If what you want, however, is to make a business in first world country where all these services are so taken for granted you aren’t even aware that you are getting them, maybe you ought to STFU and say “thank you” to all your neighbors who helped make it possible for you to be successful.

Oh, and offer them a helping hand as well. It’s the decent thing to do.

.

The financial elite is a lawless international syndicate

by David Atkins

David Dayen riffs on an alarming report by the Tax Justice Network:

The Tax Justice Network, an organization I frankly had never heard of until this weekend, came out with a study over the weekend alleging that between $21 and $32 trillion in global wealth is being hidden away in tax havens. This represents the total sum of the US and Japanese economies combined. Former McKinsey and Co. chief economist James Henry oversaw the TJN study.

These are assets and not earnings, but the study estimates that if the assets generated even a modest 3% rate of return, the tax revenue off of it would equal between $190-$280 billion worldwide. Instead of going toward productive purposes, that annual take remains in the hands of high net-worth individuals using tax shelters.

A good deal of this wealth, between $7.3 and $9.3 trillion, comes from rich individuals in the developing world. They have sheltered their wealth and denied their largely impoverished countries the ability to raise themselves out of debt and provide for their citizens, through simple tax evasion. Well over $1 trillion of that sheltered wealth comes from China…

If you’re wondering how global inequality can continue to rise despite advances in productivity and the promotion of democracy worldwide, it’s due to the ability for the richest people in the world to stash away their money with relative ease. And the global financial system, the executives of which have the net wealth and lifestyle of the richest of the rich, enable this behavior.

This sort of behavior doesn’t just damage the economies of the affected countries: it damages the labor market as a whole. When the rich is developing countries keep their wealth in offshore havens, economic justice and equitable growth in those nations is impacted. When that happens wages stay lower, which in turn make it more profitable for companies to cheaply outsource their labor costs to less industrialized countries. The middle class suffers worldwide.

The question is what to do about it. It’s highly unlikely each nation is going to pass national laws to address the issue. The solution would have to entail some sort of international ban on this type of financial activity, focused on the financial institutions receiving the deposits.

Making a humiliating attempt at reconstructing this piece by Dylan Matthews explaining the philosophy underlying Obama’s claim that businessmen didn’t do it all on their own (a real treat if you’ve got the stomach for it) Rush proves he’s not very bright and, in the process, fumbles one of the fundamental explanations as to why conservatives hate liberals:

Intellectuals hate capitalism because intellectuals are egomaniacs; they think they’re smarter than everybody else. And if capitalism were just, they would be the ones who are rich, because they’re the ones who smarter. And because they’re the ones who are smarter than everybody else, they’re the ones that deserve it! But capitalism hasn’t seen fit to reward college professors and academics with billionaire status.

And so, there’s something wrong with capitalism.

It’s pure ego, folks. Nothing more than that. It’s not hard to understand. Intellectuals don’t like capitalism, and they don’t like America, because they resent it. They’re the smartest people in the world, and yet capitalism doesn’t take care of them — and that’s why it’s gotta be changed. That’s Obama; that’s his professors; that’s the people who’ve mentored him. That’s who they are. Hard work doesn’t count for squat. It’s how smart you are. In fact, in their world the smarter you are, the less hard you have to work. And that ought to be rewarded. It’s a neat perversion of so many American traditions and ethics.

It’s a perversion, that much is true.

Oddly, Rush seems to be claiming that smart people aren’t rich and rich people aren’t smart, but I don’t think that’s what he means. (After all, if that’s the formula, at 40 million a year he would be proclaiming himself one of the stupidest men on earth.)

What he’s trying to articulate is what a fair number of conservatives believe: “if you’re so smart how come you’re not a billionaire?” That’s what any really smart person would do, right? So, you must not really be that smart. In fact, you can’t possibly be any smarter than I am! You’re just a lazy egomaniac speaking gibberish and trying to give all my hard earned money to the wrong people. Who wouldn’t want to be rich more than anything?

Romney’s musical director

To protect and to serve

by digby

… or shoot rubber bullets into crowds of women and children:

I thought this was interesting:

Four people told Jackson that police offered to buy their cell phone video.

Of course they did. And that’s because something went very wrong here and they know it. If the cops can’t keep their cool enough to figure out how to calm a situation like this without shooting rubber bullets into crowds of kids and sending in attack dogs to bit mothers with babies in their arms then they need to get into another line of work.

This is yet another example of the militarization of the police. Many of them don’t see themselves as public servants anymore. They see themselves as soldiers in a war — against the citizens. Just looking at that footage of police in uniform with those weapons aimed at that crowd makes my blood run cold.

.

The grown-ups are planning a coup

by digby

Oh my dear God:

Anyone watching the Washington budget debate over the past decade must have wondered why there didn’t seem to be any grown-ups in the room — someone who could cut through what Honeywell’s Dave Cote calls the “hysteria, histrionics and hyperbole” and force the bickering children to agree on a reasonable compromise.

That’s what the voters want, what the economy demands and what country must now have to regain its confidence and its global influence.

Some grown-ups who have been noticeably absent from this conversation have been the heads of the country’s major corporations, who talk a good game about deficit reduction but haven’t invested the time, money and political capital necessary to jolt the political system from its dysfunctional equilibrium.

That’s about to change. Last week, the first battalion of CEOs showed up in Washington, reporting for duty.
[…]
During the past year, there have been quiet meetings put together by chief executives such as Cote, Aetna’s Mark Bertolini and JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon, and Senators Mark Warner (D) and Saxby Chambliss (R), the ringleaders of the bipartisan Gang of Six. Nudging it along and pulling it all together has been Maya MacGuineas, who for a decade has been sounding the deficit alarm from the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

In addition to Cote, Dimon and Bertolini, the charter business members include Sandy Cutler of Eaton, Gregg Sherrill of Tenneco, Marty Flanagan of Invesco, Gary Loveman of Caesars, Thomas Quinlan of R.R. Donnelley & Sons and financiers Steven Rattner and Pete Peterson.

This is the “Fix the debt” group I wrote about last week. I didn’t realize John Galt was going to be the front man, but the whole project is just perverse enough that it makes sense.

What’s most infuriating about this piece is the blithe assumption that a) this is the biggest problem in the universe and b) Wall Street sharks like Jamie Dimond are coming to the rescue. Talk about putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse.

They aren’t going to let up on this.

Dean Baker writes:

Steven Pearlstein, the Washington Post business columnist, often writes insightful pieces on the economy, not today. The thrust of his piece is that we all should be hopeful that a group of incredibly rich CEOs can engineer a coup.

While the rest of us are wasting our time worrying about whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney are sitting in the White House the next four years, Pearlstein tells us (approvingly) that these honchos are scurrying through back rooms in Washington trying to carve out a deficit deal.

The plan is that we will get the rich folks’ deal regardless of who wins the election. It is difficult to imagine a more contemptuous attitude toward democracy.

The deal that this gang (led by Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles) is hatching will inevitably include some amount of tax increases and also large budget cuts. At the top of the list, as Pearlstein proudly tells us, are cuts to Social Security and Medicare. At a time when we have seen an unprecedented transfer of income to the top one percent, these deficit warriors are placing a top priority on snatching away a portion of Social Security checks that average $1,200 a month. Yes, the country needs this.

He repeats what we all know: they want to change the cost of living formula that will result in cutting social security by nearly 10% over time. If I’m lucky enough to live into my 80s, I’ll be feeling it. But hey, I guess I can always get a job to make up for it, right?

Oh, and they want to raise the Medicare eligibility age. Because buying insurance in your 60s is so inexpensive. (Even under Obamacare it’s expensive as hell.)

But not to worry. These “grown-ups” will reluctantly agree to close a few loopholes (yeah, right) in exchange for lowering their rates which every Very Serious Person agrees is not only a great way to raise revenue but also a tremendous sacrifice for the millionaires.

It’s a balanced approach. Hallelujah.

Just so you know how much the sacrifice is going to hurt our grown-ups:

David M. Cote J.D.
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Honeywell International Inc.
$37,842,723 annual compensation

Alexander M.(Sandy) Cutler
Executive Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Chairman of Executive Committee, Eaton Corporation
$13,586,010 annual compensation

Gregg M. Sherrill
Executive Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Tenneco Inc.
$5,750,640 annual compensation

Martin L. Flanagan
Chief Executive Officer, President and Executive Director, Invesco Ltd.
$13,420,458 annual compensation

Mark T. Bertolini
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President, Chairman of Executive Committee and Member of Investment & Finance Committee, Aetna Inc.
$10,556,335 annual compensation

Thomas J. Quinlan III
Chief Executive Officer, President and Director, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company
$6,059,714 annual compensation

James Dimon
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, President and Member of Operating Committee, JPMorgan Chase & Co.
$23,105,415 annual compensation

Those are all figures for 2011. There’s no annual compensation info available for the rest of them.

I’m sure they’re really going to feel the pinch in this deal. The 90 year old women who will have 10% less of their already meager social security probably won’t suffer half as much.

.

QOTD: Mitt Romney

by digby

Via Think Progress:

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

ROMNEY: You Olympians, however, know you didn’t get here solely on your own power. For most of you, loving parents, sisters or brothers, encouraged your hopes, coaches guided, communities built venues in order to organize competitions. All Olympians stand on the shoulders of those who lifted them. We’ve already cheered the Olympians, let’s also cheer the parents, coaches, and communities.

Commie.