Month: October 2012

Making fools of the donors

by digby

It looks like Mr Super Executive and fiscal conservative is being taken to the cleaners by his campaign staff:

Voters in Columbus, Ohio, saw 30-second television ads for both Barack Obama and Mitt Romney while watching “Wheel of Fortune” on their CBS affiliate over three days in September. For Obama’s team, the order per spot cost $500. For Romney’s, the price tag on the order was more than five times steeper at $2,800 per ad.

That gap – found in data filed with the Federal Communications Commission — is an outgrowth of an unusual TV-buying strategy by the Romney campaign. Media strategists on both sides of the political aisle, along with station managers who handle ad placement, expressed puzzlement to POLITICO about the way Romney’s TV operation does business.

Unlike other presidential campaigns, which typically outsource their ad reservations and placement to specialized firms with large teams that know how to make the most of the complicated FCC payment procedures, Romney does all his TV buying in-house through a lean operation headed by a single chief buyer.

The campaign rarely buys cable ad time, focusing overwhelmingly on broadcast television. Romney places his commercials on a week-to-week basis, rather than booking time well in advance, and typically pays more so that his ads don’t get preempted and to spare his campaign the hassle of haggling over time as prices rise.
For those “Wheel of Fortune” ads in Columbus, for example, Obama bought the airtime on Aug. 29, according to the FCC data. Romney bought the time on Sept. 11, the day before his ads aired.

The Romney media operation is organized under the umbrella of a firm called American Rambler, which includes top Romney advisers Stuart Stevens and Russ Schriefer, the campaign’s chief media consultants, as well as Stephanie Kincaid, the campaign’s top buyer and a longtime employee of the Stevens and Schriefer Group. Press accounts have also named senior Romney campaign aide Eric Fehrnstrom as a Rambler partner, and Romney aides said other top officials’ work is handled through the firm.
The most recent Federal Election Commission data showed that the Romney campaign paid $85,258,006 to Rambler this cycle through August 2012, much of which represents ad buys with primary-election dollars.

Of course, to Mitt, that’s chump change. But you have to wonder if their donors feel the same way.

A whole lot of Republican “strategists” are getting very, very wealthy from this campaign cycle, what with rich fools throwing millions at them. They’re getting rolled, big time.

The funniest thing about it is seeing these “conservatives” rail against crony capitalism. Shameless doesn’t even begin to describe it.

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Death by taser, caught on tape

by digby

Even if you believe in Taser International’s pet medical diagnosis that only afflicts people in custody (“Excited Delirium“)you would think this would be considered to be wrong.

Unfortunately, police commonly taser people in the US who are already in handcuffs and in custody and it doesn’t raise a hue and cry. They usually say, as the officer in that video does, that they had to do it for their own safety but it’s quite clear it’s because they are trying to force “compliance.” They lie because it’s impossible to explain how someone who is mentally ill, high on drugs or in the midst of having an epileptic fit can be expected to understand the commands to “comply.” And frankly, when you listen to the agitated police screaming at the person to stop struggling, it’s quite clear that if “excited delirium” exists it is a disease that afflicts the authorities as well.

I’ve come to believe that tasers are deadly torture devices and I think they should be banned. (I didn’t always think so, but I no longer believe the authorities can be trusted with such a device.) But if they are used, there should definitely be zero tolerance for using them on anyone who is handcuffed in custody. It’s as outrageously immoral as using a cattle prod. The police can back off and let the person flail if that’s what it takes. Hitting them repeatedly with electro-shock on the scene is no different than hitting them repeatedly over the head with a baton.

Some people die, like this fellow, although not all do. But the minute an electrical shock in administered to suspects already custody, they become victims of torture. There is no excuse for it.

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Leadership according to Rahm Emmanuel

by digby

Read and learn:

A lot of people look for leadership today, OK? What is leadership?

On the Race to the Top, the president of the United States took on a very powerful constituency of his own party to see through an education goal for the country. I say that because Bill Gates said to me, he says, when I was speaking at something, he applauded when I talked about Race to the Top only because he says that’s where he thought the president most put nation above party. Name me one thing a Republican nominee has ever spoken against the base of their party. One. Gay marriage. Gun control. Taxes. I mean, 100 percent correct on everything.

OK, two. The president’s own party was against what he said on Afghanistan. Showed leadership.

Third, auto industry. A lot of people advocated bankruptcy. A lot of people advocated Chrysler. He picked a different course and then stuck to it.

Health care, even though I advocated different, he doubled down, even when the chips were down, to get something that had been elusive to other presidents for 80 years.

In the financial area, people were advocating nationalizing banks. People were advocating breaking up banks. Picked a different course.

Leadership is about willing to put the chips down and lead a country even though [there are] adverse political consequences. And time and again he has shown that. That’s what leadership is.

And I say it’s in direct contrast many times with people in the Republican Party who have yet to in one area, find fault or difference with parts of their own party. And there can’t be one party absolutely right 100 percent of the time. Not possible.

I would laugh if I wasn’t crying.

Rahm expresses perfectly the Village Democrats’ attitude: Democrats show leadership when they abandon their principles, while Republicans are stubborn for clinging to theirs.

I don’t suppose it ever occurs to any of them that as long as the Democrats are doing the Republicans’ work for them, they don’t have to do anything but up the ante and throw red meat at their base.

That excerpt is from interviews for tonight’s Frontline. There are a whole bunch of good ones which will be providing fodder for much bloggering to come, I’m sure.

Update: Also too, this, from the same interview:

Look, there’s a bigger change. It’s not about Washington. Washington is a mirror reflection sometimes of what goes on in the country. There has been a dramatic shift in the Republican Party in the center of gravity, OK? The most dramatic way of saying it is I don’t think Ronald Reagan would be nominated by the Republican Party today. It’s moved that far. If you look at his record as governor, there’s no way today that he’d ever become the nominee of their party. That’s one.

Not that I disagree that there’s been a dramatic shift in the GOP’s center of gravity. It’s obvious that the country is polarized and has some fundamental disagreements about how their government should operate. (It isn’t the first time.)

But why would a party that has just nominated a wishy-washy Governor of Taxachusetts who passed the antecedent to Obamacare not nominate Ronald Reagan? Clearly, as wingnutty as they are, they are capable of nominating someone who has a “checkered” political past as a moderate. And Reagan’s past was far more palatable that Mitt’s should be. After all, he cracked some heads, and that’s always a good thing.

Maybe Rahm was just being sloppy and/or trite, but the truth is that this far right freakshow is more sophisticated than Rahm’s giving them credit for. Which is also typical of Democratic politicians.

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Quote of the Day: a pollster

by digby

E.J. Dionne asked a pollster friend of his if conservatives and liberals treated him differently when the polls didn’t go their way:

“When you give conservatives bad news in your polls, they want to kill you,” he said. “When you give liberals bad news in your polls, they want to kill themselves.”

Doesn’t that just say it all?

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The landslide debater

by digby

Someone sent this in an email and I thought it was worth sharing:

I remember watching it and everyone in the group I was with was slightly appalled. (Sadly, it turned out that he had Alzheimer’s disease — but it was obvious in 1984.)

Let’s just say that debate performances aren’t everything. That guy won his reelection in a landslide.

On the other hand, perhaps President Obama might keep this in mind in his second debate:

It is a pretty straightforward story. President Obama was pushing toward his 2008 margin among the Rising American Electorate– particularly unmarried women – according to this pivotal research completed right before the first debate. But the debate touched on none of the issues that have moved these voters.

According to this survey and focus groups, Obama can get to 2008 levels when he makes
Romney own ‘the 47 percent’ and offers a robust message to make this country work for the middle class again – with more punch and choice, more values, more on the consequences of unequal power, and above all, big policy choices that go well beyond the thin rhetoric of the first debate.

And just for fun, he might use the word “women” a time or two. They represent about 60% of the people who vote for him.

Update: The research linked above said that the way to get these women back in the fold was to link women’s issues with economic issues.  Irin Carmen’s story at Salon suggests that the President is listening:

By Friday, two days after the debate, Obama implicitly conceded he’d goofed up. There he was, talking up his women’s health positions and his appointment of two women to the Supreme Court in Fairfax, Virginia. He even adopted the feminist line that reproductive health issues are also economic issues, saying there was something that didn’t  “get enough attention in the debate other night, and that’s economic issues that have a direct impact on women.” (Wonder how that happened!) 

Obama touted the Affordable Care Act’s women’s health provisions, including no co-pay contraception, saying, “I am proud of it. It was the right thing to do, and we’re going to keep it.” He also jokingly tied in Romney’s support for defunding Planned Parenthood with the similarly politicized yanking of PBS funding, the sole meme-generating moment of the debate: “Governor Romney said he would get rid of Planned Parenthood funding. Apparently, this, along with Big Bird, is a driving the deficits.”

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Pete Peterson’s magical thinking club

by digby

Matt Yglesias wrote an important post today about why Pete Peterson’s ongoing crusade to cut the deficit is killing us. He notes that many serious liberals dismiss the (dirty hippie) idea that the focus on long term deficit reduction is wrong in itself in favor of the idea that it’s simply wrong for the current situation. Being one of those who have been saying for years that focusing on long term projections (which are notoriously unreliable and always unenforceable) is a fools game, I appreciate the fact that Yglesias has taken another look at this:

That is all, I think, correct. But I’d like to push the idea that the deeper critique is also correct—the focus on long-term fiscal policy is misguided and it’s the misguided nature of this focus that helps drive the odd interventions into partisan politics.

To see why, think about the deficit reduction deals of 1990 and especially 1993. Those were deals that conservative viciously opposed, and the backlash against moderate Republican support for the 1990 deal is the essential context for the budget gridock of the subsequent 20 years. But another thing to note about those deals is that they weren’t deals about long-term fiscal policy. Chait complains that deficit reduction groups were insufficiently enthusiastic about this deals:

Because Republicans opposed both laws so hysterically, they successfully turned them into symbols of phony government thumb-twiddling while the deficit raged out of control. Accordingly, Karl raged (in his Gen-X way) against Clinton’s plan, “that deficit reduction is a myth.” And the speaker before him denounced the 1990 deficit reduction bill. But both plans worked incredibly well! By the end of Clinton’s term, we were running surpluses, which allowed conservatives to take power in 2001, argue that the surplus represented a nefarious overtaxation, and bring us back into structural deficits.

But this simply reflects the fact that “the deficit” means two different things. The deficit that George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton targeted was a short-to-medium-term affair. The problem that they were trying to solve was that loose fiscal policy was inducing the Federal Reserve to maintain relatively high interest rates in order to contain inflation, creating a situation in which potentially valuable private sector investors were being crowded out by government borrowing. You might think that maintaining low taxes or high levels of military spending or high levels of social services are more important than that goal of promoting lower central bank interest rates, but it’s perfectly comprehensible disupute among competing priorities. And the deficit reduction packages achieved their goals in that sense. Interest rates declined without inflation surging.

That is correct. You’ll all recall the famous Bill Clinton line:

`You mean to tell me that the success of the economic program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?”

Yglesias explains how Peterson is doing something completely different and that he’s dragged the political establishment along with him:

Pete Peterson, by contrast, is wrestling with a question that’s either much deeper or much shallower than something as petty as managing aggregate demand. One way of looking at it is that he’s concerned that in the future too much economic activity will go toward bolstering the living standards of unproductive retirees rather than toward growth-boosting investments. This, however, is too deep a problem to solve. No matter how much we scrunch our eyes together and promise really really hard, we can’t force the political system of 2040 to avoid overspending on health care services for my eightysomething dad rather than on private sector capital investments that will increase the productivity and wages of hypothetical thirtysomething kid. It simply can’t be done.

What we can tackle is the shallow problem of CBO scores. Right now, the way the CBO scores things shows gigantic future deficits. If you pass a law saying “if the cyclically-adjusted budget deficit goes above 3.5 percent of GDP, Medicare reimbursement rates will automatically fall to eliminate the deficit” then you solve the CBO score problem.

It goes away like magic. But that’s a dumb plan. Or, rather, it’s not a plan at all. It’s just a scoring rule. But if you peer into the details of different deficit reduction plans this is how they all work. Because the only way to change a long-term CBO score is to change a scoring rule. It’s a bit of a postmodern game in which there’s nothing outside the text. The way CBO scoring is supposed to be useful is that a member of congress might have an idea he’s genuinely enthusiastic about and want a credible analysis of what that proposal would cost. He might then also want credible analysis of which tax measures would or wouldn’t raise an appropriate amount of revenue. But the CBO doesn’t employ fortune-tellers who can assess conjectures about the future application of information technology to health care, about the military situation in the Pacific Rim, or about the political economy of tweaks in program design. So all the long-term plans end up relying on scoring rules. You direct the CBO to assess a situation in which congress “isn’t allowed” to spend more than X on domestic programs or Y on the military or automatically applies cuts to hospitals. But giving the CBO those instructions doesn’t change anything in the world, it’s just an accounting exercise.

Excessive focus on these issues distracts crucial attention from meaningful budget questions which play out on a much shorter time frame. Right now, fiscal policy is set to be much too tight in 2013 with terrible growth effects that are being ignored by the political system. In 1993, fiscal policy was too loose and the president who cut the deficit didn’t get any credit from the deficit scolds because they were too busy worrying about long-term problems that the Clinton administration didn’t solve because they can’t be solved. To assess fiscal policy correctly, you have to get off the focus on the long-term and instead pay attention to what politicians actually control.

I would just suggest that Peterson and his Masters of the Universe pals may not be quite as ingenuous about their “worries” as Yglesias imagines. It’s true that’s what they say. But Peterson and his friends were all for privatization, which would have the same economic effect on protecting living standards of the elderly at the expense of greater economic activity. So I’m just not convinced that old Pete is being entirely above board. But none of that changes the fact that this all based upon magical thinking. Peterson may be worried about his grand kids (insufferable privileged jerks that they are) but I suspect he’s mostly worried about the fortune he’s bequeathing them.

And keep in mind that these people who are so convinced that these projections have been sent down from Mt Sinai are many of the same people who deny that climate change exists and are perfectly content to wait to see if the catastrophic droughts, famines and massive refugee crises actually develop.

As for economic projections, it’s difficult to even get the current ones right:

The estimated deficit is $38 billion below what CBO projected in its August Budget and Economic Outlook because revenues were higher and outlays were lower than expected near the end of the fiscal year.

Building up projected long term deficit as the greatest threat to America’s future, especially in the middle of an economic slump, is truly malicious. At a time when smart people should be putting everything they have into figuring out how to create growth and restore a sense of security among the American people, our leaders are tilting at phantom windmills of the distant future. They are basically doing exactly the wrong thing. Well played Mr Peterson.

*Sorry for the long copy and paste of Yglesias’ post. Please click over to Slate to read the rest.

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Teaching selfishness

by digby

John Stewart and company turn Sesame Street into a Galtian paradise:

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

The bit is funny and pointed, of course. But it also made me just a little bit sad to think that the lesson Grover and the adorable little tyke are talking about is not considered by millions of Americans to be —- wrong. Teaching kids to be unselfish, to share with those in need is so basic to raising decent human beings that it makes me almost unbearably sad to realize that we live in a society in which millions of people are growing up to scream “suck it up whiners” instead and yell “yeah” when someone asks if a sick man without insurance should die.

Our culture is sick. Deep inside.

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Healthcare, Not Warfare: A Cosmic Thing

by digby

Here’s a good ad from Rob Zerban, Paul Ryan’s congressional opponent:

Apparently, some of Ryan’s supporters are having a fit because it says he wants to “end Medicare.” Of course he does. He thinks people who get benefits from the government are parasites.

And speaking of Zerban, Blue America is having another drawing:

This week, PDA and Blue America have teamed up to mark the 12th anniversary of America’s violent involvement in Afghanistan by going after two senior Republican militaristic policy-makers who are dead set on extending the occupation of that country, House Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon and House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan. Both espouse a radical Austerity agenda that cuts back on human needs for healthcare, education, infrastructure expansion, nutrition, basic research, etc while expanding military spending and continuing to cut taxes for millionaires and billionaires. And, shockingly, both have “free passes” to reelection from the DCCC.

Although Obama won both CA-25 and WI-01 in 2008 and is expected to win both districts in November by even greater margins, the DCCC would rather spend money to try to replace powerless backbenchers on the Republican side with conservative New Dems and Blue Dogs than go after key GOP policy makers and replace them with stalwart progressives, in these cases, Dr. Lee Rogers in California and Rob Zerban in Wisconsin. That doesn’t sit well with us.

So… who remembers Cosmic Thing by the B-52’s? It was the band’s best-selling album and had two smash hits, “Love Shack” and “Roam.” When the 1989 blockbuster had sold 4 million copies in the U.S., their record company, Reprise, where I was working, celebrated by designing a spectacular, customized, RIAA-certified, quadruple platinum award. Only a few dozen were ever manufactured and it is extremely rare and collectible… especially for a B-52 fan. Do you know any? Christmas is coming up fast.

We’re going to pick one random person who contributes– any amount; no minimum– to Rob Zerban’s and Lee Rogers’ campaigns on this page: Healthcare, Not Warfare: A Cosmic Thing. And if you want to have a chance to win and can’t afford a contribution, just send us a note at P.O. Box 27201, Los Angeles, CA 90027 and tell us you want in and… you get a chance too.

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Loophole kabuki: Shumer’s clever strawman

by digby

As Atrios says, you’ve got to love the framing of this article:

WASHINGTON — Senator Charles E. Schumer of New York, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, threw cold water Tuesday on what had been an emerging consensus for a bipartisan deficit- reduction plan — an overhaul of the tax code that lowers top income tax rates but raises more revenue. Mr. Schumer’s position greatly complicates efforts to win bipartisan support for a deal before January, when the “fiscal cliff” of tax increases and automatic spending cuts goes into effect.

That bastard, coming along and ruining everything.

But the meat of the article is interesting, because it shows that Shumer is doing no such thing:

In a speech to the National Press Club, Mr. Schumer was set to say he rejected the idea of a tax code overhaul as “little more than happy talk.” Taxes could not be changed to bring in more revenue, lower the top tax rates and still protect the middle class from tax increases, according to excerpts from his speech.

Instead, he will say, the top two income tax rates should be frozen, and any additional revenues generated by closing loopholes and curtailing or eliminating tax deductions and credits should be devoted to deficit reduction.

“It is an alluring prospect to cut taxes on the wealthiest people and somehow still reduce the deficit, but you can’t have your cake and eat it, too,” Mr. Schumer’s prepared remarks said. “The reality is, any path forward on tax reform that promised to cut rates will end up either failing to reduce the deficit or failing to protect the middle class from a net tax increase.”

I think the concern with the deficit at the moment is counter-productive to say the lease, but if they’re going to do it, I’m all for keeping tax rates as they are and putting all that money they project from “closing loopholes” toward deficit reduction. Since I think the probability that much money will ever be produced (or produced for very long) that may be the best we can hope for.

As I’ve written many times, “tax reform” as currently conceived is a scam which will end up starving the government of needed funds and giving the rich even more of a tax break than they already have. The simple fact that so many little Paul Ryans are in favor of it should be a tip off that they are really trying to turn the US into a tax haven for the rich.

Ryan said so explicitly:

As Mother Jones explained:

James Henry, a former chief economist at McKinsey & Co., describes offshore tax havens like the “bar scene in Star Wars.” He explains, “Dictators and kleptocrats used them to conceal stolen loot. Arms dealers and drug dealers use them to launder their deals. Google and Apple and Pfizer use them to park their intellectual property and pay themselves tax-free royalties. Banks use them to park lousy loans and stash the offshore accounts and assets under management of their wealthy individual clients, many of which are paying zero taxes back home…And so on.”

When I say he wants to turn America into a dystopian hellscape I’m not exaggerating. So, when you have someone like Ryan endorsing “tax reform” I’d say watch your wallet. And start looking for a gated community — with armed guards.

Unfortunately, Shumer is batting at a straw man as far as the so-called fiscal cliff is concerned. There’s not been a whole lot of serious talk about tax reform in this round, so I don’t know why he’s bringing it up unless it’s to set up a deal whereby the Republicans agree to some loophole closing in exchange for some benefits and program cutting. That’s the vaunted “balanced approach” everyone (except the people) are looking for.

Everyone who’s speaking publicly is sending up trial balloons and publicly negotiating right now, so it’s almost impossible to know what their real position is going to be. However, if we take them at their word, it’s not hard to see what they are doing. They want to “tweak” Social Security, find “savings” in Medicare, “streamline” Medicaid, and “cut out the fat” in various other vital programs to the tune of four trillion dollars or so, all of which will come out of the hides of average citizens in the form of less money, less security, fewer services. Oh, and they’re going to ask the rich to “pay a little bit more” too, which Chuck Shumer is saying will come from closing some loopholes in the tax code. This is what they mean by shared sacrifice. Just so you know.

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The P.I.T.Y. Party for the ultra-rich

by David Atkins

Stephen Colbert says what needs to be said:

As Digby and I have been saying for a long time now, it’s not enough for these people to own everything while stamping out opportunity for the rest of us. They want to be loved for it. That’s why there’s an Ayn Rand renaissance, and that’s why they’ve put the little robber baron from Monopoly at the top of the GOP ticket.

Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps they’ve finally reached the point of total insulation from us plebs. But I wouldn’t count on it. That sort of hubris has never really worked out well for them over the long run.

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