Month: December 2012

Fiscal cliff notes 12/5

by digby

Brian Beutler at TPM reports on the latest “fiscal cliff” maneuvering. If this is all true, it would appear that they’re going to split the Grand Bargain into two parts: Boehner may not have any choice but to go over the cliff and then sign on for the new tax cuts (and remember, Norquist gave the thumbs up on the latter plan) but if that happens, is that the end of the story? I’m afraid not. The Democrats may find themselves in the same position the GOP is in now, in that they will then be “forced” to do the thing their base is adamantly against:

House Republicans are privately contemplating a quiet surrender in the fight over Bush tax rates for top earners, and a quick pivot to a new fight over raising the debt limit, in which they’d demand steep cuts to programs like Medicare and Social Security.

The White House’s official position on this plan is: cram it. Officials say they will not negotiate, or pay a ransom. Congress has to raise the debt limit, period.

“I will not play that game,” Obama told the Business Roundtable on Wednesday. “We are not going to play that game next year. We’ve got to break that habit before it starts.”

But privately, Obama and Democratic leaders have sought to weave a debt limit increase into ongoing negotiations to avert automatic tax increases and spending cuts at the end of the year. Their clear preference is to defuse that bomb now, in a bipartisan way, rather than to stare down the House GOP pointing a gun at the country’s economy.

And recent remarks by Democratic leaders and interviews with top congressional aides suggest Democrats have no consensus plan to execute if the debt ceiling isn’t increased before the end of the year.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and other Dem leaders say that once the long fight over Bush tax cuts for the rich is resolved, the playing field will be evened, and the parties can negotiate further deficit reduction next year.

“If we can take the middle-income tax cuts off the table, then we end the hostage taking that the Republicans have been engaged in,” Pelosi said at a Wednesday media availability when asked about the Democrats’ debt limit contingency plan. “We’re not going to do that unless you give tax cuts to the wealthy. I think that clears the debate to find areas of agreement as we go forward.

Her No.2, Steny Hoyer (D-MD), simply argued against using the debt limit for political leverage, without saying if or how Democrats could prevent Republicans from taking that tack.

“The debt limit ought not to be held hostage to anything,” Hoyer said. “It hurt our economy, we were downgraded for the first time in my career and I think in history by one of the rating agencies. The creditworthiness of America ought not to be put at risk, it ought not to be a negotiating item.”

Neither of those responses constitutes an answer to the GOP’s ongoing demand that new borrowing authority be matched dollar for dollar with cuts to federal spending.

The president was very tough today, saying that he refuses to play their game on the debt ceiling,  and maybe that will be enough to make the Republicans simply crawl away with their tails between their legs and agree to some perfunctory cuts to medicare providers and some defense cuts and call it a day. That would truly be a new day. However, I would guess that everyone is looking at this thing as a two (maybe three) part Grand Bargain in which the agreement is that they’ll drive very carefully over the fiscal curb, cut taxes on the 98% (maybe even sweeten the pot a little) and then get down to some serious cutting.

Geithner on CNBC: Once Republicans agree to raise tax rates, White House will engage on spending cuts.

Obviously, we still don’t know what they will be, but suffice to say that at some point in all this we’re going to start talking about cuts. After all, just raising taxes on the rich wouldn’t be a “balanced approach” would it? Even among the so-called reasonable Republicans, it must not only happen, it must hurt. A lot:

On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet the Press, Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) reiterated his call for restructuring entitlement programs like Medicare, highlighting the “very painful cuts” he has proposed as part of a package to avert the fiscal cliff. Corker 242-page plan calls for a Paul Ryan-like proposal to transform the guaranteed Medicare benefit into a voucher plan for beneficiaries. 

Host David Gregory seemed to agree with Corker’s characterization and pressed fellow panelist Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to accept reforms that will shift health care costs to seniors in order to show that Democrats are “serious” about entitlements:

CORKER: Look, I laid out in great detail very painful cuts to Medicare. I just did it in a 242 page bill that I’ve shared with the White House […]

GREGORY: Name some specific programs that ought to be cut that would cause pain in terms of the role of our government that Democrats are prepared to support.

McCASKILL: Well, I think you can see more cuts frankly and a lot of us voted for more cuts in the farm program…and defense. I spent a lot of times in the wings of the Pentagon. if you don’t think there’s more money to be cut in contracting at the pentagon, you don’t understand what has happened at the Pentagon. […]

CORKER: David, as much as I love Claire, those are not the painful cuts that have to happen. We really have to look at much deeper reforms to the entitlements … I think the Speaker is frustrated right now because as you’ve mentioned, the White House keeps spiking the ball on tax increases for the wealthy. But has not yet been forthcoming on real entitlement reform. And without the two, there really is no deal.

Pelosi says no dice:

Those issues — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid — they should be in their own realm. Whatever adjustments would be made in Social Security should be there to strengthen Social Security, not to subsidize a tax cut for the wealthiest people in America and say that’s how we balance the budget. The same thing with Medicaid and Medicare…

I don’t think she means “their own realm” part of the debt ceiling fight either, FWIW. So, she’s taking a hard line.

On the other hand, her second in command is eagerly playing the bad cop:

Hoyer, the Democratic whip, warned that taking entitlement benefits off the table is a bad place to start the negotiations. Such entrenched positions are little different, he said, than the Republicans’ refusal to consider hikes in tax rates — a central element of President Obama’s deficit-reduction proposal.

Hoyer said GOP proposals to raise the Medicare eligibility age, make wealthier seniors pay higher Medicare rates and limit the cost-of-living increases for some federal programs are legitimate ones, even as he warned he might not support them.

“They clearly are on the table,” Hoyer said of the Medicare changes during his weekly press briefing in the Capitol. “They were on the table in the Boehner-Obama talks. They’ve been on the table for some period of time. That does not mean that I’d be prepared to adopt them now, but they’re clearly, I think, on the table.”

Hoyer said the GOP’s proposal to reduce the cost-of-living increases to certain federal programs – the so-called chained consumer price index (CPI) – should also be considered as part of the fiscal cliff talks.

“We have many Republicans say ‘absolutely not’ … on [higher] rates or revenues,” he said. “There are Democrats on our side who say ‘absolutely not’ if they do A or they do B or they do C. … You’ve got to put everything on the table.”

So, who knows?

Obviously the White House wants to get their tax hikes on the rich above all else, but from where I sit, a “deal” to do that just doesn’t look very promising. So, I still think the Republicans need to go over the cliff so they can be reborn as tax cutters. But if that happens I cannot see why they will give up their leverage in the debt ceiling to get some cuts and inflict some pain, particularly since they know that there are plenty of Democrats eager to sign on. They like pain.

Update:

I’m watching Chris Matthews, Ed Rendell and Alex Wagner game this out right now and they apparently think that spending cuts are completely irrelevant to all this deal making and that even if the Republicans bite the bullet on the Bush tax cuts, they’ll only use their debt ceiling leverage to try to get some goodies back for the 1%. Let’s hope they’re right about that.

But I have to point out that every time I see a Republican on TV talking about this they are hammering on “entitlement cuts.” (And, by the way, so are quite a few Democrats.) So, while I think there’s a good chance we’re either going over the cliff —- not the end of the world — or that the Republicans will throw in the towel on the hikes and agree to Obama’s proposal to extend the middle class tax cuts before the end of the lame duck, I still have a strong feeling that the Grand Bargain is still in the ether.

But as I always say, every day we go without slashing vital programs for average people for no reason is a good day. The more they put it off, the better chance it won’t happen.

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Pelosi says no to raising Medicare eligibility age

by David Atkins

This is a good sign:

It’s a perennial fear among liberals: In the quest for a fiscal cliff deal, the White House and Democrats will ultimately acquiesce to GOP demands to raise the Medicare eligibility age. But one Democrat is drawing a line against this possibility: Nancy Pelosi.

“I am very much against that, and I think most of my members are,” Pelosi said in an interview with me today. “I don’t see any reason why that should be in any agreement.”

The argument against raising the eligibility age is that it would leave hundreds of thousands of seniors without health coverage and wouldn’t raise that much money for deficit reduction, since many of those seniors would go into Medicaid or the Obamacare exchanges, offsetting savings. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that it would save $125 billion over 10 years.

Pelosi echoed this complaint succinctly, saying: “Show me the money.” She also said flatly that she didn’t believe raising the eligibility age would be in the final deal, despite GOP demands: “I don’t anticipate that it will be in it.”

If Democrats in Congress and enough anti-tax extremist Republicans can inadvertently join forces against Boehner, we may well have a great chance of scuttling this Grand Bargain after all.

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Econ 4 On Housing

by tristero

Econ 4, a group of liberal economists, have posted an excellent statement and video on housing issues.

We oppose treating the nation’s housing as a bundle of assets to be sliced, diced, flipped, and bailed out in pursuit of inflated profits and bonuses. 

We call for reality-based, ethically grounded housing policies that restore stability to families and sanity to markets. 

We call for mandatory partial reductions of mortgage principal whenever this can keep a family in its home. We call for America’s best run housing non-profits to be paid to provide the counsel required to determine when such modifications will work. We call for civil and, when necessary, criminal sanctions on banks and loan-servicing companies whose employees intentionally obstruct implementation of mandated loan modifications. 

We call for amending bankruptcy laws to restore pre-2005 rules that protected families and communities from bank depredations. 

We call for immediate return to the rule of law by requiring those who seek to foreclose to demonstrate they have the proper title and rights to do so – with stiff legal penalties if they ignore the law. 

In response to recent moves by the top 1% to buy distressed housing and convert it to rental stock as absentee landlords, we call for local, state and national standards to protect families from predatory rental practices. 

We extend our support to all who are working in the private, non-profit, and public sectors to promote access to affordable and stable housing as a human right of families and an asset for communities.

Freedom’s just another word for doing what they want

by digby

Wait. The anti-sex crusader and attorney general of Virginia is really referred to as “the cooch“? And he says stuff like this?

In 2005, a pro-choice student group at George Mason University organized its inaugural “Sextravaganza” event — a campus sexuality and health fair aimed at teaching attendees about practicing safer sex and preventing unplanned pregnancy. For this event, the group organized 15 booths to provide “information on abstinence, condoms and self-help exams, as well as sexual orientation.” An array of views were presented to approximately 500 attendees: a minister from the Campus Catholic Ministry staffed one of the tables promoting abstinence and opposing abortion, while others promoted abortion rights and provided information about safer sex.

Sen. Cuccinelli, however, was outraged that his alma mater — a public state university — would host an event he believed “really just designed to push sex and sexual libertine behavior as far, fast and furiously as possibly.” Among Cuccinelli’s objections to the event:

Upset that information about sexuality — other than abstinence only — would be presented to adult college students, he said it was symptomatic of the “moral depravity that has crept across this commonwealth and this country.”

Upset that the event was sponsored by the Pro-Choice Patriots, he said, “They’re selling their product. They are selling abortions.“

Upset that the GMU Pride Alliance presented information on sexual orientation, he said, “You can’t have safe homosexual sex. There is no such thing and yet one of the sponsoring groups is the homosexual group on campus.”

Upset about an (ultimately scrapped) plan to raffle off sex toys at the fair, he said the event would “push every form of sexual promiscuity there is out there.”
Upset that some of the advertising for the event was paid for out of student activity fees, he said, “”This is a how-to fun fair for sex. This isn’t education. This is pushing sex. It’s encouraging it… It doesn’t swell me with pride to see my alma mater putting on a soft porn show.”

Yes, “the Cooch” actually said “swell me with pride.”

In case you were wondering how a tea partying, liberty lover (and oh how he loves it) rationalizes censoring talk about sex with his freedom agenda, the Cooch” explains:

He told Bacon’s Rebellion, a Virginia blog, “in the realm of morality, freedom is not the right to do whatever you want (license), it is, in fact, the ability to do as you ought (self control).”

I’ve always thought that when right wingers talked about freedom it meant “free to do exactly what we want you to do” but it’s nice to see it validated.

By the way, “the Cooch” is being talked about as a possible national candidate. Someone needs to tell the Republicans that this won’t fool voters into thinking they’ve softened their position in the War on Women.

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Broken Logic

by tristero

I read the news today, oh boy:

Citigroup announced on Wednesday that it would cut 11,000 jobs, reducing its work force by roughly 4 percent in an effort to cut costs. 

The bank said it would take a pretax charge of roughly $1 billion for the cuts.

Under the reduction, 1,900 jobs will be eliminated in the institutional clients division.

Another 6,200 positions will be removed from the bank’s consumer banking business, along with 2,600 jobs in the operations and technology group. 

The bank’s shares rose about 4 percent in early morning trading.

Sure. I understand exactly why Citigroup’s stock would rise when it announced that it would seriously harm, and, in some cases, ruin the livelihoods of 11,000 employees and their families.

It still strikes me as deeply sick.

Yes there is a twisted sense to the decision – destroy the economic value of 11,000 people to save the larger company. But it is the logic of an economic system so perverse that it blithely re-assigns the self-evident rights of human beings – such as sheer survival –  to corporations.

And denies the exact same rights to people.

Dispatch from torture nation

by digby

The good news is that we are so very, very exceptional:

The warden of a North Carolina prison has been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation into allegations that inmates were forced to rub hot sauce on their genitals, officials said Tuesday.

Department of Public Safety spokeswoman Pamela Walker said that Sampson Correctional Institution administrator Lafayette Hall has been put on paid leave while the State Bureau of Investigation reviews what happened at the Clinton facility.

A correctional officer, David P. Jones, has also been put on leave, officials said.
In July, six inmates from Sampson sent a hand-written letter to the U.S. District Court in Greensboro complaining that staff had forced them to perform numerous humiliating acts for the entertainment of guards, including stripping nude and pretending to have sex. The medium-security facility houses about 500 male inmates in Clinton, which is about 60 miles southeast of Raleigh.

The inmates also reported being forced to gulp a super-hot “Exotic Hot Sauce” purchased off the Internet and slather it on their testicles, as well as being forced to grab and kiss wild snakes while working on a road crew and throwing captured bunnies in to oncoming traffic.

Those who performed for the guards were rewarded with preferential work assignments, food, cigarettes and beer, the inmates alleged. Both tobacco and alcohol are banned in North Carolina’s prisons.

It’s just some bad apples, not to worry.

You do have to wonder about those guards though. They could have entertained themselves for hours by tasering the inmates and everyone would think it was just good clean fun.

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Boehner: If Republicans can’t break the Senate, we’ll break the Congress

by David Atkins

John Boehner, obstructionist:

House Speaker John Boehner, Ohio Republican, made it clear that any bill that came to the House from the upper chamber as a result of Senate Democrats changing the rules on the filibuster would be “dead on arrival.” In a statement released from Speaker Boehner’s office, the Ohio GOP’er remarked:

“Senate Democrats’ attempt to break Senate rules in order to change Senate rules is clearly designed to marginalize Senate Republicans and their constituents while greasing the skids for controversial partisan measures. I question the wisdom of this maneuver, especially at a time when cooperation on Capitol Hill is critical, and fully support Leader McConnell’s efforts to protect minority rights, which are an essential part of our constitutional tradition. Any bill that reaches a Republican-led House based on Senate Democrats’ heavy-handed power play would be dead on arrival.”

In other words, any bill that passes the Senate with at least forty Senate Republicans/Conservadems voting against it would automatically die in Boehner’s House.

Republicans seem quite chastened by the election, wouldn’t you say? Ready to compromise any time now.

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And justice for all

by digby

Oh God:

A former death row inmate with intellectual disabilities has languished in the Texas prison system for over 30 years despite having no valid criminal conviction. Jerry Hartfield, an illiterate man with an IQ of 51, had his capital conviction overturned in 1980 because the jury at his trial had been improperly selected. A Texas appeals court ordered a new trial for Hartfield, but that trial has never happened. In 1983, then-Governor Mark White attempted to commute Hartfield’s former death sentence to life without parole. However, a federal court has recently ruled that the commutation was irrelevant since Hartfield was not convicted of a crime. No action had been taken on the case until 2006, when another inmate helped Hartfield file a handwritten motion, asking that he be either retried or set free.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected the petition, but a federal judge agreed with Hartfield, saying the decision overturning his conviction still stands. U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Hughes said, “Hartfield’s position is as straightforward and subtle as a freight train….The court’s mandate was never recalled, its decision never overturned, the conviction never reinstated; yet Hartfield never received the ‘entirely new trial’ ordered by the court.” The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit called the state’s defense of Hartfield’s incarceration “disturbingly unprofessional” and returned the case to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for further action. Given the Sixth Amendment’s right to a speedy trial, it is not clear that Hartfield could be re-tried.

And the real joke is that there are many people who will tell you that the fact this poor man hasn’t been executed proves that our death penalty system is perfect.

At this point I think it’s fairly obvious that Texas is an authoritarian police state. Which makes the US an authoritarian police state as well. How any country that even calls itself civilized can allow this is beyond me. It literally makes me ill.

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“Rupert’s after me as well”

by digby

I always thought the Republicans had visions of “President Petraeus” dancing in their heads. Apparently, their most impressive propagandist was quite serious about it:

In spring 2011, Ailes asked a Fox News analyst headed to Afghanistan to pass on his thoughts to Petraeus, who was then the commander of U.S. and coalition forces there. Petraeus, Ailes advised, should turn down an expected offer from President Obama to become CIA director and accept nothing less than the chairmanship of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the top military post. If Obama did not offer the Joint Chiefs post, Petraeus should resign from the military and run for president, Ailes suggested.

The Fox News chairman’s message was delivered to Petraeus by Kathleen T. McFarland, a Fox News national security analyst and former national security and Pentagon aide in three Republican administrations. She did so at the end of a 90-minute, unfiltered conversation with Petraeus that touched on the general’s future, his relationship with the media and his political aspirations — or lack thereof. The Washington Post has obtained a digital recording from the meeting, which took place in Petraeus’s office in Kabul.

McFarland also said that Ailes — who had a decades-long career as a Republican political consultant, advising Richard M. Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush — might resign as head of Fox to run a Petraeus presidential campaign. At one point, McFarland and Petraeus spoke about the possibility that Rupert Murdoch, the head of News Corp., which owns Fox News, would “bankroll” the campaign.

“Rupert’s after me as well,” Petraeus told McFarland.

McFarland said she had spoken “directly” to the Fox News chairman and the “advice to you from Roger Ailes is. . . . He says that if you’re offered [JCS] chairman, take it. If you’re offered anything else, don’t take it; resign in six months and run for president.”

Petraeus demurred, saying he would consider the CIA directorship if Obama offered it, as the president did several weeks later. Petraeus was confirmed and sworn in as director on Sept. 6, 2011. He resigned a year later, on Nov. 9, after the disclosure of an extramarital affair with his biographer.

In a telephone interview Monday, the wily and sharp-tongued Ailes said he did indeed ask McFarland to make the pitch to Petraeus. “It was more of a joke, a wiseass way I have,” he said. “I thought the Republican field [in the primaries] needed to be shaken up and Petraeus might be a good candidate.”

Ailes added, “It sounds like she thought she was on a secret mission in the Reagan administration. . . . She was way out of line. . . . It’s someone’s fantasy to make me a kingmaker. It’s not my job.” He said that McFarland was not an employee of Fox but a contributor paid less than $75,000 a year.

Naturally he dismisses the reporter as a low level grunt with delusions of grandeur. he’s just that much of an ass.

But I absolutely believe he was serious. When Ailes says he isn’t a kingmaker you have to laugh. Of course he is, and he was instrumental in creating The Man Called Petraeus. And to be honest, I think he could have been a formidable candidate in 2008 if he showed any retail political skill at all:

-David Petraeus has a 44/30 favorability rating nationally and is seen much more favorably by Democrats (47/25) at this point than Republicans (38/36).

There are the usual partisan reason for this, of course, and the little matter of his wandering eye. But the fact is that there have always been plenty of Democrats who worshiped TMCP and who knows how many of them would cross over if he proved to be a decent candidate? (I would have thought he would have had a better chance in 2016, but maybe Ailes was believing his own hype too and thought Obama was seriously vulnerable in 2012.)

In any case, that’s over now. The only thing Petraeus had going for him was The Man Called Petraeus myth but unless you’re as politically skilled as Bill Clinton (and virtually nobody is) you can’t get away with a tawdry affair like that anyway. But his mystique was all about rectitude and brilliance and I don’t think he can claim that anymore. After all, General Betrayus has a whole different meaning now. And he certainly didn’t behave in a very disciplined or intelligent manner.

Buh bye, TMCP, we hardly knew ye.

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ACORN stole the election, we want to secede, and we control the Republican primary

by David Atkins

PPP does a poll, Tom Jensen reports:

PPP’s first post election national poll finds that Republicans are taking the results pretty hard…and also declining in numbers.

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.

Some GOP voters are so unhappy with the outcome that they no longer care to be a part of the United States. 25% of Republicans say they would like their state to secede from the union compared to 56% who want to stay and 19% who aren’t sure.

One reason that such a high percentage of Republicans are holding what could be seen as extreme views is that their numbers are declining. Our final poll before the election, which hit the final outcome almost on the head, found 39% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats and 37% as Republicans. Since the election we’ve seen a 5 point increase in Democratic identification to 44%, and a 5 point decrease in Republican identification to 32%.

And yet we’re supposed to believe that a chastened Republican Party will tack to the center to solve its demographic problem and become competitive in 2016? Hardly. Their base is filled with voters who still believe it’s 1976 and they have a “silent majority” that is only being disenfranchised because of millions of fraudulent inner city votes. A great many of these older white exurban and rural voters haven’t even seen the inside of a big city in years, and have no idea what 18-35 year olds really think except for their wayward liberal grandchildren and that weird hippie with purple hair who works at the neighborhood grocery store.

Their leaders will bank on total gridlock and dysfunction leading to electoral apathy in 2014 to keep their House majority and pick up Senate seats, becoming even more extreme in their gerrymandered pockets of the country. Then they’ll nominate one of the more radical conservatives they can find, or force one of their more “acceptable” candidates to tack so far right to win the primary that like Mitt Romney they’ll be hard pressed to win the general election.

This GOP isn’t coming back to reality land anytime soon.

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