Month: August 2012

R and R, the id of the 1%

by digby

Paul Ryan:

“What’s unique about what’s happening today in government, in the world, in America, is that it’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now. I think Ayn Rand did the best job of anybody to build a moral case of capitalism, and that morality of capitalism is under assault.”

Mitt Romney’s partner in Bain Capital, Edward Conard:

A central problem with the U.S. economy, he told me, is finding a way to get more people to look for solutions despite these terrible odds of success. Conard’s solution is simple. Society benefits if the successful risk takers get a lot of money. For proof, he looks to the market. At a nearby table we saw three young people with plaid shirts and floppy hair. For all we know, they may have been plotting the next generation’s Twitter, but Conard felt sure they were merely lounging on the sidelines. “What are they doing, sitting here, having a coffee at 2:30?” he asked. “I’m sure those guys are college-educated.”

Conard, who occasionally flashed a mean streak during our talks, started calling the group “art-history majors,” his derisive term for pretty much anyone who was lucky enough to be born with the talent and opportunity to join the risk-taking, innovation-hunting mechanism but who chose instead a less competitive life. In Conard’s mind, this includes, surprisingly, people like lawyers, who opt for stable professions that don’t maximize their wealth-creating potential. He said the only way to persuade these “art-history majors” to join the fiercely competitive economic mechanism is to tempt them with extraordinary payoffs.

Ayn Rand’s vision, per Wikipedia:

“an apocalyptic vision of the last stages of conflict between two classes of humanity — the looters and the non-looters. The looters are proponents of high taxation, big labor, government ownership, government spending, government planning, regulation, and redistribution.”

“Looters” confiscate others’ earnings by force (“at the point of a gun”) and include government officials, whose demands are backed by the implicit threat of force. Some officials are merely executing government policy, such as those who confiscate one state’s seed grain to feed the starving citizens of another; others are exploiting those policies, such as the railroad regulator who illegally sells the railroad’s supplies for his own profit. Both use force to take property from the people who produced or earned it.

“Moochers” demand others’ earnings on behalf of the needy and those unable to earn themselves; however, they curse the producers who make that help possible and are jealous and resentful of the talented upon whom they depend. They are ultimately as destructive as the looters — destroying the productive through guilt, and appealing to “moral right” while enabling the “lawful” looting performed by governments.

And then there are the “parasites” who, according to the “maestro” Alan Greenspan, deserve to perish.

This is the Romney-Ryan vision. They wouldn’t be the first dangerously delusional megalomaniacs to run a world power. But let’s just say it’s never ended very well.

Catfood tastes great and is good for ya too!

by digby

For all your detailed information on Paul Ryan’s destructive dystopian plan to kill the safety net, you can go to Strengthen Social Security.

For instance, this seems worth publicizing to me:

Rep. Ryan explicitly rejects lifting the cap on earnings subject to the Social Security tax so millionaires and billionaires contribute to Social Security on all of their income like everybody else, or increasing revenue for the program in any other way. Instead, Rep. Ryan claims, without evidence, that do so would weaken “a growing, prosperous economy.” By contrast, Rep. Ryan embraces the benefit cuts in the Bowles-Simpson proposal, which would cut benefits by 19 percent for the average worker, by raising the retirement age, reducing benefits for individuals with earnings over $37,000, and cutting the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA).

I know that many Democrats would dearly love to embrace this suicidal position too. But I’m hopeful some of them may realize that the people won’t be happy if they know that’s what they’re voting for.

Update: Hahahaha. Old men being thrown to the ground. Funny stuff:

StopPaulRyan here
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“Two Distinct Ideologies?” Are You Kidding?

by tristero

A very long time ago, I opined that it would be wonderful if Judge Roy Moore – he of the Ten Commandmants rock – would run for president. It would make electing sensible people that much easier. David Neiwert took me to task for my cynicism – and he was right.

David’s point – he’s an expert on the far right – was that, despite any short term gains, the country is far better off if wacko ideas are not treated as part of the mainstream discourse. The problem is that elevating extremism to the level of serious discussion tends to confer enormous status on bad ideas and that makes it more difficult to fight against them. It also tends to move the discourse towards treating the bad ideas as reasonable ones – the Overton Window concept, more or less.

I thought about this for quite a while and finally came to the reluctant conclusion that it would be far better if right wing nuts remained marginalized, even if it meant that it would be harder to elect Democrats, liberals and other people with reasonable views. You just don’t play with fire.

Ryan Lizza writes:

…the good thing about the Ryan pick is that the Presidential campaign will instantly turn into a very clear choice between two distinct ideologies that genuinely reflect the core beliefs of the two parties. And in that sense, Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan is good news for voters.

It would be nice if that were true. But Randism isn’t so much an ideology as it’s a cult, roughly akin to Scientology. Randism has as much intellectual integrity as intelligent design creationism or birtherism. As a result, “two distinct ideologies” aren’t at play. There is only one: centrism, represented by Obama. What Romney and Ryan offer is just battiness, not a truly coherent vision.

As a matter of substance, there is little to be gained by elevating Ryan’s wonky junk to the level of a presidential discussion, and much to lose. The assumption among Democrats who cheer Ryan’s vice-presidential nomination is that Americans will be so appalled when they finally hear, loud and clear, what the Ryans of the world actually want to inflict on them that they will turn away in droves.

I hope that happens, and will be very glad if it does. Even so, Ayn Rand’s crackpot notions have now moved to the exact center of the national debate about what kind of country we should be, with an unprecedented level of visibility.

Any way you look at it, this is terrible news.

Get yourself a cup of tea and let’s party like it’s 2010!

by digby

Looks like they’re going to replay their successful campaign of 2010:

“Unlike the current president, who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion, we will preserve and protect Medicare and Social Security,” Romney said Saturday while introducing Ryan.

The trouble with this argument — made frequently by Republicans, including Ryan himself — is that Ryan’s own budget sustains the Medicare cuts in “Obamacare.” Congressional Republicans have voted overwhelmingly — most recently this spring — for the blueprint containing those cuts, which don’t significantly alter the seniors’ safety net program.

Talking points circulated by the Romney campaign Saturday similarly instruct surrogates to make the “Obama cut Medicare” argument to blunt voters’ fears over Ryan’s Medicare plan.

“No. President Obama is the one who should be worried, because he has cut $700 BILLION from Medicare to pay for Obamacare, and put in place a panel of Washington bureaucrats to make decisions about what kind of care seniors will receive under Medicare,” the memo reads. “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a bipartisan plan to strengthen Medicare by giving future seniors the choice between traditional Medicare and a variety of private plans.”

You remember 2010, right? When the Tea party swept the congress?

This is how they did it:

I wonder if there has ever been a dumber political move than the Grand Bargain talks last summer in which the President and the Democrats put the safety net on the table (and bragged about it even as recently as this week) after those ads in 2010? I’m still gobsmacked by it.

Turning this on the Democrats is a perfect “I know you are but what am I” political gambit and it will be a miracle if the electorate just doesn’t assume they cancel each other out and go to other factors to make their choice. On the other hand, it allows the Democrats running down ticket to disavow any cuts to Medicare and Social Security, which could end up being a good thing.

Go out and get a supply of aspirin. This is going to make your head hurt for the next two months.

*Also, you can contribute to Rob Zerban, Ryan’s congressional opponent, here. Maybe we can get rid of him altogether.

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The Infantile Randroid on deck

by digby

Judging from the emails flooding my inbox from big Democrats and Obama campaign officials, Romney picking Ryan may end up very good news for the country. This is not because Ryan is going to help Romney win, needless to say. It’s because of this, from Jim Messina of the Obama campaign:

Congressman Paul Ryan is best known as the author of a budget so radical The New York Times called it “the most extreme budget plan passed by a House of Congress in modern times.” With Mitt Romney’s support, Ryan would end Medicare as we know it and slash the investments we need to keep our economy growing — all while cutting taxes for those at the very top.

And this from Senator Patty Murray:

Ryan is best known for the extreme budget that bears his name — one that would end Medicare as we know it while giving huge tax breaks to billionaires and corporations. A Romney-Ryan ticket is a frightening prospect for the middle class and anyone who might one day need Medicare or Social Security.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, for the past couple of months there has been an aggressive effort to create this “fiscal cliff” hysteria and push through large cuts to the safety net and other important programs in exchange for some millionaire tip money and a small reduction reduction in defense in the lame duck session. I’ve been sick watching what seemed to be a runaway train.

But this could change the dynamic. Up until now all this talk has been largely under the radar and away from the campaign trail as everyone tries to talk about jobs and the current economic woes. After all, that’s what the people of the country actually care about. But that’s over. With Ryan on the ticket his dystopian Randroid budget will be on the ballot. If we’re very lucky the Democrats will say things on the campaign trail that will make it much harder for them to agree to a Grand Bargain in the lame duck.

It’s possible that they will try to thread this needle and say they are the grown-ups etc, etc. The President has certainly been trying up until now, in discrete ways. This is from a major NY Times story just this week:

As president … he has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

I’m guessing that they’re all going to have to stop thinking like this with Ryan on the ticket. Changing the terms of the political discussion in this particular way is not a way for Democrats to win elections and the Obama campaign clearly knows this since they haven’t been talking about their desire to cut Medicare and Social Security on the trail. Running against the Ryan vision demands that they give up on any public support for Grand Bargains and giving a full-throated defense of the safety net that he wants to destroy.

It doesn’t mean the Lame Duck monster has been put down. They can always go back on their word. But this makes it a little bit harder.

By the way, I’ve been writing about Ryan for a very long time and not because he’s so good-lookin’. He’s not a normal politician, he’s a dangerous Ayn Rand acolyte who should never be allowed to get near to real power.

StopPaulRyan here
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On Romney’s Choice for Vice President

by tristero

UPDATE: And after you’ve enjoyed this rockin’ teenage tribute, read Charles Pierce on the man he calls the “zombie-eyed granny starver”.

UPDATE: Romney is trying to distance himself from the only quote substantive unquote reason he picked Ryan, namely his crackpot plan for a budget. This is a lame attempt to claim that attacks on the Ryan Plan are obsolete. No one doubts that any budget Romney releases will be filled with tax breaks for Romney and his pals and contain numerous stealth projects to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. (The repeal of Obamacare won’t be stealth). You can also expect massive giveaways to the military and to churches – a lot to the churches. In short it will be the Ryan budget – mittitfied.

Purrfect for what ails you

by digby

I miss Fridays with Inkblot, so I’ll just post this wonderful story about the enduring power of kitties to make us all feel better, even those who have bigger problems than most of us:

Few medical treatments are as grueling as bone marrow transplantation, which can require months of isolation while patients have their own marrow destroyed to allow the transplanted cells to take over. The risk of infection during this period is so great that even an ordinary touch from a loved one could introduce deadly germs.

And so it’s no wonder that Maga Barzallo Sockemtickem, a 16-year-old cancer patient who spent seven months in isolation at Seattle Children’s Hospital in 2011 waiting for a bone marrow donor, before returning this year for another month, found herself missing her pet kitty, Merry. Maga wasn’t allowed to bring Merry into her sterile room safely, so the staff at Children’s went to Facebook for help. On the hospital’s Facebook page, they asked fans to post pictures of their cats for Maga to see: 3,000 cat photos later, the Cat Immersion Project was born.

Using sheets, projectors and the photos sent in by fans, the Children’s staff built a virtual cat cocoon around Maga’s bed, so she could be surrounded by images of playful kitties.

Maga’s response to the project was priceless.

Her thank you note:

You guys remind me that there is so much good in the world, and its just makes me feel so much better, and connected. I can’t tell you how it feels sometimes, feeling disconnected and cut off from the world, and then with something like cat pictures bringing me back. Thank you all for your kind words, and well wishing. Its means more then you can ever know. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

These folks at Seattle Children’s Hospital are fantastic. Their joyful creativity in helping these seriously sick kids feel better emotionally as well as physically is truly inspirational.

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The world they’ve made

by digby

The big purge continues:

The leader of Kansas’ moderate Republicans said three weeks of attack ads from conservative groups, including those with ties to the Koch brothers, are to blame for Kansas Senate moderates’ losses during Tuesday’s primary.

Senate President Steve Morris (R-Hugoton), who lost his own seat to state Rep. Larry Powell in the primary, confirmed that internal polls showed moderate Republicans in the lead until roughly three weeks ago when a series of conservative groups launched radio and television attack ads on moderates, tying them to President Barack Obama and claiming they supported Obamacare. Seventeen out of 22 moderate Republican Senate candidates were defeated Tuesday, a culmination of a bitter GOP war that has engulfed the state since 2011.

“They tried to tie our folks to President Obama even though we had nothing to do with him,” Morris told HuffPost. “They said we all supported Obamacare and that’s not true. It’s effective. The campaigns we did were positive and informational. The campaigns against us were very nasty. Evidently negative campaigning must work.”

Morris, the president of the National Conference of State Legislatures which is holding its annual summit meeting in Chicago this week, said conservative groups including Americans for Prosperity, the Club for Growth, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Kansas Right to Life spent between $3 and 8 million.

Morris noted that the Koch brothers also helped fund the campaign, using Kansas as a testing ground for their ideas. “They said it will be an ultraconservative utopia,” Morris said of the Kochs. “It depends on your definition of a utopia.”

That’s something isn’t it? And keep in mind this came from fellow Republicans. Meanwhile in bizarroworld:

President Obama spent his formative years in academia, so he’s no doubt familiar with postmodernism, the literary theory that rejects objective reality and insists instead that everything is a matter of interpretation and relative “truth.” At any rate he’s running the first postmodern Presidential campaign, now organized almost exclusively around allegations about his opponent that bear no relation to the observable universe…

The point is that more than any President we can recall, Mr. Obama isn’t trying to persuade voters that he deserves to stay in office because of his philosophy, record or positive vision for the country. Rather, his case is that he deserves re-election because Mr. Romney is worse, and he is so very much worse because of things that were invented in the West Wing but are detached from reality.

The entire theory of the Obama campaign seems to be that the more outrageous the claim the better, because the more you repeat it the more the media will talk about it, and the lie will achieve a kind legendary truth.

I’m sorry, it’s their PoMo Political world. We just live in it.

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The ongoing assault on voting rights continues apace

by digby

It is very hard to see how this is constitutional, but they’re going ahead with it anyway:

Starting October 1st, voters in Democrat-leaning urban centers including Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo will now only be allowed to vote between 8 am and 5 pm on weekdays, when the majority of people are at work. The board of elections in these counties, which are split evenly between Democrats and Republicans, was gridlocked over a Democratic effort to expand hours. The Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted stepped in to deny expanded hours in these counties. But Republican-heavy counties have actually expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends, when most people have time to go to the polls. The Nation reports:

According to the Board of Elections, 82% of early voters in Franklin County voted early on nights or weekends, which Republicans have curtailed. The number who voted on nights or weekends was nearly 50% in Cuyahoga County.

“I cannot create unequal access from one county board to another, and I must also keep in mind resources available to each county,” Husted said in explaining his decision to deny expanded early voting hours in heavily Democratic counties. Yet in solidly Republican counties like Warren and Butler, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends.

Besides historically favoring Democrats, these urban centers comprise Ohio’s most populous and diverse counties. 28 percent of Cuyahoga County is African American, as is 20 percent of Franklin County. President Obama won the African American vote by 95 points in Ohio.

This takes some real gall, but there’s no shortage of that in the Republican party these days.

It reminds me of this passage from a famous Supreme Court ruling:

The right to vote is protected in more than the initial allocation of the franchise. Equal protection applies as well to the manner of its exercise. Having once granted the right to vote on equal terms, the State may not, by later arbitrary and disparate treatment, value one person’s vote over that of another. See, e.g., Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 665 (1966) (“[O]nce the franchise is granted to the electorate, lines may not be drawn which are inconsistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment”).

That ruling was Bush vs Gore, of course, when the Court decreed that the votes of one side could diluted by re-counting all the votes and so the counting had to stop altogether. Considering that twisted logic, one would think that allowing some people more time and opportunity to vote would also be considered a violation.

Unfortunately, that case is no guide:

“Our consideration is limited to the present circumstances, for the problem of equal protection in election processes generally presents many complexities.”

I’m reminded of that hideous result whenever I read about these GOP vote suppression efforts. Like so many of our problems, this voting rights crisis can be traced to America’s “don’t look in the rear view mirror” policy about everything these days. If the election of 2000 didn’t make Democrats wake up to the long term goals of the Republican Party then nothing would. But aside from a few activists on the margins talking about computer voting machines, the political world went silent upon the instructions of the political establishment to “get over it.”

Including this guy:

Nice judicial temperament he’s got there.

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“I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain”

by digby

Hey does everyone remember this?

CNN’s Erick Erickson wants people to know that he pays taxes, and he thinks that the Occupy Wall Street protesters should stop whining.

The CNN contributor, who also founded the conservative blog RedState, helped launch “We Are The 53%” to counter the “We Are The 99 Percent” Tumblr. The site says that it features messages from “the 53% of income-earners who pay taxes” and “refuse to b-tch about it.”

Erickson posted a picture of himself holding a scribbled message that read, “I work 3 jobs. I have a house I can’t sell. My family insurance costs are outrageous. But I don’t blame Wall Street. Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain.”

He was talking about the real scofflaws, the ones Michele Bachmann insisted needed to ante up at least the price of a couple of Happy Meals to be considered Americans.

Fox & Friends: “Is that fair?” On the April 9 edition of Fox News’ Fox & Friends, after co-host Gretchen Carlson stated that “yesterday we were reporting a story that 47 percent of all Americans don’t pay any taxes,” Fox Business host Stuart Varney stated: “Yes, 47 percent of households pay not a single dime in taxes. And some of those households actually make a profit from the Treasury.” Co-host Steve Doocy asked, “Is that fair?”

Greta Van Susteren: “Is it fair for half the country to be paying all the federal income tax?” On the April 7 edition of Fox News’ On the Record, host Greta Van Susteren noted the report and said, “Is it fair for half the country to be paying all the federal income tax?” Her guest, former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA), said: “You’re talking about people who are, you know, earning $50,000 a year who have kids, four kids. And they — because of deductions and other things, they don’t pay any income tax, and they may be eligible for a refundable tax credit above the fact that they don’t pay any income taxes. … [W]hen you reach the point where people feel like they don’t have to pay anything and they’re getting money out of the Treasury for nothing, then there’s no end to the amount of government that people want.”

Sean Hannity: ‘[I]t seems like, at this point, what incentive is there going to be for the people that are paying taxes?” On the April 8 edition of his Fox News show, Sean Hannity said: “But there was a big report today. It came up on the AP. It was the Drudge headline last night before I went to bed. And I got here in Grand Rapids, and I’m reading the Internet, and 50 percent of Americans no longer pay taxes. They don’t pay income taxes. So we — and it seems like, at this point, what incentive is there going to be for the people that are paying taxes?”

Las Vegas Review Journal: “[W]hen people get something for nothing, they have every incentive to continue voting to forward the bills for their goodies to someone else.”

Indeed. Someone ought to ask these folks whether it’s just the senior citizens and the working poor families who need to chip in or whether these fine folks ought to be part of that 53% too:

It so happens that this summer the Internal Revenue Service released data from the 400 individual income tax returns reporting the highest adjusted gross income. This elite ultrarich group earned on average $202 million in 2009, the latest year available. And buried in the data is the startling disclosure that six of the 400 paid no federal income tax.

The I.R.S. has never before disclosed that last fact.

Not even Mr. Romney, with reported 2010 income of $21.7 million, qualifies for membership in this select group of 400. But the data provides a window into the financial lives and tax rates of the superrich. Since the I.R.S. doesn’t release data for the tiny percentage of Americans at Mr. Romney’s income level, the 400 are the closest proxy.

And that data demonstrates that the ultrarich can and do reduce their tax liability to very low levels, even zero. Besides the six who paid no federal income tax, the I.R.S. reported that 27 paid from zero to 10 percent of their adjusted gross incomes and another 89 paid between 10 and 15 percent, which is close to the 13.9 percent rate that Mr. Romney disclosed that he paid in 2010. That means that more than a quarter of the people earning an average of over $200 million in 2009 paid less than 15 percent of their adjusted gross income in taxes.

When Erickson said “Suck it up you whiners. I am the 53% subsidizing you so you can hang out on Wall Street and complain,” I’m fairly sure he sure didn’t know he was talking about Mitt Romney. But he was.

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