Month: December 2012

Hoyer says cutting debt will be the “single largest stimulus package that we could get for the economy” 

by digby

Steny Hoyer gives the company line:

Alex Wagner: Are you at all concerned about getting the Dems to the table in terms of a borader deal given the   obstinance we’re hearing in terms of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts. 

Hoyer: The Democrats are prepared to come to the table, with everything on the table. I think what your hearing from Democrats is that we have no intention of undermining  the security of our seniors or people who need health care. That does not mean that we’re not going to look at the long term fiscal sustainability of those programs, I think we are prepared to do that. But we want to make sure that nobody who is relying on Social Security —  which frankly has not been part of the debt creation, it is part of the fiscal situation we’re confronting, but it’s not created the debt — and Medicare as well which is absolutely essential for the health of so many millions of Americans. 

But I think that Democrats have said, look everything’s on the table, that doesn’t mean we’re for what’s going to be on the table but we need to have a full consideration of the whole gamut of things that are creating this issue and can solve this issue… 

It’s necessary for us to come to a place where we will be able to adopt a fiscally sustainable credible path for this country.  That will give great confidence to the American people and in my opinion will be the single largest stimulus package that we could get for the economy…

I certainly hope nobody else adopts that line because it’s completely ridiculous, worthy of only the most deluded right wingers.

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Exactly twelve years prior to 12/12/12

by digby

… this happened:

I don’t know what it means, but it must mean something.

h/t to @HowardMortman





*note the time this was posted.  Ooooooh …

Women are spinning their wheels when it comes to equality in leadership positions

by digby

This is why I’m still very doubtful that we’ll see a woman president in my lifetime:

The research organization Catalyst released its 2012 Census today, which tracks the number of women in executive officer and board director positions. Women held just over 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies this year and 16.6 percent of board seats at the same. Adding insult to injury, an even smaller percent of those female executive officers are counted among the highest earners—less than 8 percent of the top earner positions were held by women. Meanwhile, a full quarter of these companies simply had no women executive officers at all and one-tenth had no women directors on their boards.

But as in the Senate, progress may be slow and even small percentages can be victories. Did this year represent a step forward? Not even close. Women’s share of these positions went up by a mere half of a percentage point or less last year. Even worse, 2012 was the seventh consecutive year in which we haven’t seen any growth in board seats and the third year of stagnation in the C-suite. Meanwhile, women may hold the majority of the jobs in growing sectors such as retail, healthcare and food service, but of the executive officers in those industries they represent less than 18 percent, under 16 percent and just 15.5 percent, respectively.

I’d be happy to be wrong about this, but when you look at those statistics, I think it’s clear that this country is a long way from gender equality in any sense but particularly when it comes to seeing us in leadership roles.

And while the boomlet for Hillary Clinton seems to be all the vogue at the moment, experience tells me that the usual sexist crapola would begin immediately upon her announcement to run. And anyway, I still believe that for Nixon-goes-to-China reasons, the first woman president will have to be a Republican. That would be the only situation in which the Republicans wouldn’t let their misogynist freak flags fly and they’d police their opponents so hard with their phony, situational feminism, the lefty sexists couldn’t get any traction.

Perhaps I’m too cynical. But let’s just say that the fact we’ve recently held a big victory party because women will now make up all of 1/5th of the government in 2013, doesn’t speak well for our alleged progress. (You’d think 92 years of universal suffrage would have been long enough for such an exceptional country as ours to have evened things out a bit better than that.) Those statistics above bear this out and it’s clearly no longer because women haven’t been in the workplace long enough to work their way up to the top. There have been a couple of generations now of women with the education, experience and ambition and it’s still not happening. It’s not even growing.

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Fiscal “cliff” FYI

by digby

ICYMI:

“I think the tone was good,” Obama told Walters. “I believe that both Speaker Boehner and myself and the other leaders want to see a deal happen. And the question now is can we get it done. The outlines, the framework of what a deal should look like are pretty straightforward.”

While the administration has emphasized tax increases on the wealthy, Republicans insist they need specific commitments from the White House on cuts to entitlement program spending, which are the primary drivers of federal deficits and debt.

“It was a nice meeting, it was cordial,” Boehner said today of his Sunday meeting. “But we’re still waiting for the White House to identify what spending cuts the president is willing to make as part of the ‘balanced approach’ that he promised the American people.”

Boehner and House Republicans have proposed curbing the rate of increase for Social Security payments and raising the eligibility age for Medicare, among other changes, which are non-starters for many Obama supporters.

In his interview with Walters, the president hinted at new flexibility on entitlement spending cuts, but only once Republicans concede on top tax rates.

“If the Republicans can move on that [taxes] then we are prepared to do some tough things on the spending side,” Obama said. “Taxes are going to go up one way or another. And I think the key is that taxes go up on high-end individuals.”

Raising the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67 is “something that’s been floated,” Obama said, not dismissing the idea outright.

“When you look at the evidence, it’s not clear that it actually saves a lot of money,” he said. “But what I’ve said is let’s look at every avenue, because what is true is we need to strengthen Social Security, we need to strengthen Medicare for future generations, the current path is not sustainable because we’ve got an aging population and health care costs are shooting up so quickly.”

Read those tea leaves as you will.

Also too, this:

One might conclude that the Republicans want to go over the cliff. And why not? They have the debt ceiling waiting for them.

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Reince doesn’t know his base doesn’t know they lost

by David Atkins

Genius RNC ChairmanReince Priebus:

“I don’t think you can draw any quick conclusions other than the fact that we lost and we know that.”

Do they?

The newest survey from Public Policy Polling doesn’t augur well for Republicans: “49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn’t exist anymore.”

Good luck with the pretense at introspection, Reince. Half your party doesn’t even believe you really lost.

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Sounds Simplistic

by tristero

US News:

“These epi-marks protect fathers and mothers from excess or underexposure to testosterone — when they carry over to opposite-sex offspring, it can cause the masculinization of females or the feminization of males,” Rice says, which can lead to a child becoming gay. Rice notes that these markers are “highly variable” and that only strong epi-marks will result in a homosexual offspring.

I’m not buying this masculinization of females/feminizing of males stuff. I know far too many people of all genders and all sexual orientations who don’t fit the stereotypes.

Not saying that there isn’t a heritable component to sexual preference and gender identity, just saying that the way this is reported sounds way too schematic to be believable.

Also, the reporter, if not the researchers, thoroughly confuse gender identity (male/female) with sexual preference (choice of gender in a sexual partner). The two are not necessarily paired together. Furthermore, both male/female gender identity and gay/straight preferences are false dichotomies: both are continuums. Both identity and preference can be quite fluid.

Try again.

“Premature contraculation”

by digby

Politico shares its insights on what the right “deal” should look like:

…tax reform that goes way beyond individuals and rates; much deeper Social Security and Medicare changes than currently envisioned; quick movement on trade agreements, including a proposed one with Europe; an energy policy that exploits the oil and gas boom; and allowing foreign-born students with science expertise to stay here and start businesses.

Do this and there could be not an economic recovery — but a boom, many argue.

Just think, if only we’d elected the presidential candidate who ran on that agenda it might even have the support of the people.

Jared Bernstein writes:

Really? I gotta say, I don’t see it. In fact, pretty much everything on that list is a) conventional wisdom in DC and b) largely a distraction from where I think the evidence is actually pointing, as I’ll stress in a moment. To be clear, raising more tax revenues and slowing health care costs are critical in terms of getting our long-term debt situation under control, and immigration reform that provides a path for folks here to stay is also a great idea. A domestic energy boom is already underway and trade agreements do squat for growth (which doesn’t mean they’re not worth it—but their growth potential is hugely overhyped).

What’s holding back growth is inattention to the need for stimulus in the near term in an economy where monetary policy is at least partially hamstrung (zero lower bound), premature fiscal contraction (premature contraculation?), too much income and wealth inequality, and, over the longer term, the lack of a deep investment agenda in public goods, including education and worker training.

It just can’t be said often enough — everything that the DC consensus wants to do is counter-productive to the goals they claim to endorse. In fact, there is ample evidence that an austerity agenda of the magnitude they seem to want will do to the US what it’s already doing to Europe — create the opposite of a boom and instead usher in another recession. So maybe it would be a good idea to start questioning whether or not the goals the DC insiders claim to endorse are really the ones they are after.

It’s not hard to see what that might be. After all, that agenda could have been written by the Chamber of Commerce. In fact, it was. It may seem counter-intuitive to think business people would be in favor of tanking an economy but this explains it very well.

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McConnell’s self-filibuster highlights need for reform

by David Atkins

I’ve said time and again that filibuster reform is essential for making our democracy work. It’s also easy to do.

McConnell’s preposterous self-filibuster last week made the obviousness of the problem even more salient. Here’s Jon Stewart ripping it to shreds.

There’s a reason that when we do nation building in other countries, we don’t use our system of government as a model. It’s not really good at getting things done or addressing major problems. A winner-take-all, easily purchased bicameral system with checks and balances between Congress, President and the Courts is tough enough already without a ridiculous 60-vote threshold for bills in the least democratic of the bodies.

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Colbert on TMCP

by digby

I hadn’t heard the tape before …

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Holy moley … Paddy Chayefsky couldn’t have dreamed that one up.

Recall this?

The House on Wednesday overwhelmingly voted to condemn the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org for a recent advertisement attacking the top U.S. general in Iraq.

By a 341-79 vote, the House passed a resolution praising the patriotism of Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, and condemning a MoveOn.org ad that referred to Petraeus as “General Betray Us.”

The liberal group’s full-page ad appeared earlier this month in The New York Times and has served as a rallying point for Republicans. President Bush called the ad “disgusting” and criticized Democrats such as Sen. Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the party’s nomination, for being afraid of irritating the group.

“Such unwarranted attacks should be strongly condemned by Republicans and Democrats alike,” said Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., during brief debate on the resolution.
Wisconsin Rep. David Obey, a veteran Democrat, recounted how he left the Republican Party during the era of Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., and said that lawmakers have an obligation to criticize their allies as well as their enemies when they go too far.

“I’ve got an obligation to be equally upset when that kind of juvenile debate emanates from the left,” Obey said.

Yes, because General Petraeus was above politics and it was very unseemly to suggest otherwise. well he was above politics unless he decided that his very good pals “Rupert” and “Roger” were right and it was time for him to make his move.

I always had a bad feeling about this one. Paula Broadwell did the country a big favor.

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Just another GOP campaign strategist accidentally telling the truth

by digby

GOP campaign consultant Scott Tranter:

“A lot of us are campaign officials — or campaign professionals — and we want to do everything we can to help our side. Sometimes we think that’s voter ID, sometimes we think that’s longer lines — whatever it may be.”

Yeah, no mystery there.

The two parties are often more similar than different and the most I ever expect out of the Democrats is on the margin. But when it comes to trying to manipulate the electoral system itself, the Republicans take the prize. They admit that they’re willing to subvert the democratic process in order to win. As bad as the Democrats are, I have never seen them sink that low.

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