QOTD: Dana Perino
by digby
On the debt ceiling:
PERINO: This is the analogy that I like. If you were to go home and found that there had been a sewage blockage in your basement, you don’t raise the ceiling of the basement, you pump out the sewage. [Fox News, Hannity, 1/8/2013]
I’m sure she’s a very nice person.
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Military wannabe fools who don’t know we have an Air Force
by David Atkins
Here it is direct from their website:
The Citadel is evolving as a planned community where residents are bound together by:
Patriotism
Pride in American Exceptionalism
Our proud history of Liberty as defined by our Founding Fathers, and
Physical preparedness to survive and prevail in the face of natural catastrophes — such as Hurricanes Sandy or Katrina — or man-made catastrophes such as a power grid failure or economic collapse.The Citadel is not your typical planned community where the developer’s objective is selling cookie-cutter homes at the highest possible profit-margin.
The Citadel is not profit-driven. The Citadel is Liberty-driven: specifically Thomas Jefferson’s Rightful Liberty.
Marxists, Socialists, Liberals and Establishment Republicans will likely find that life in our community is incompatible with their existing ideology and preferred lifestyles.
DESCRIPTION: The Citadel Community will house between 3,500 and 7,000 patriotic American families who agree that being prepared for the emergencies of life and being proficient with the American icon of Liberty — the Rifle — are prudent measures. There will be no HOA. There will be no recycling police and no local ordinance enforcers from City Hall.
Now, there are only two reasons to engage in this lifestyle: prepping for apocalyptic doomsday, and prepping for military invasion.
For the doomsday scenario, living together in a planned community with well over 5,000 other armed John Galt wannabes is not a great survival strategy unless there is ample farming and animal husbandry available, and nearly everyone engages in food production. If there ever were a “power grid failure,” nuclear holocaust or some such dramatic event, help would certainly go to areas of high population first. That’s how it worked during Katrina, Sandy and nearly every other natural disaster of significance. If there are disruptions in the supply chain, Denver will get help before Boise, Boise will get help before Coeur D’Alene, and Coeur D’Alene will get help long before any far-off area these people pick out. And yes, no matter how self-reliant they thought they were, they would need help within months if not weeks.
Moreover, geography alone would likely prevent them from needing to use their assault rifles. No teeming hordes of scary people of color are going to use precious fuel to drive up to their Nowhereville enclave in Idaho in any case. Assault rifles aren’t useful for hunting, which actually would be a useful skill.
The other scenario, of course, involves armed resistance against a tyrannical government or force of invasion. The same scenario hypothesized by my local Ventura Republican city councilman Neal Andrews in opposition to a resolution advocating better gun control measures after I specifically mocked both of these reasons for assault rifle ownership in public comment:
Andrews said he couldn’t support anything that removed power from people to protect themselves against a “rogue government or invading army.” In the past, Andrews has seen “evil under a veil of authority,” he said.
Andrews and the fools planning “The Citadel” have evidently never heard of the United States Air Force and its bomb-dropping capacity. I’m sure neither the Chinese military nor a hypothetical tyrannical U.S. military cares a whit whether the citizens of The Citadel can hit a man-sized target at 100 meters. That’s what unmanned aircraft are for.
If a military force bothered at all with a few thousand nutcases in the middle of nowhere (as unlikely a proposition as an invading Communist army caring about whether it controls some rural high school in Colorado), it would simply drop a few bombs on the “planned community”, reduce it to rubble, torch the farms and livestock, block the roads, and simply allow whoever remained to starve and freeze to death in the woods clutching their arsenal of inedible assault weapons.
Freedom!
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“I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.”
by digby
In a video posted to YouTube and Facebook on Wednesday, Tactical Response CEO James Yeager went ballistic over reports that the president could take executive action with minor gun control measures after the mass shooting of 20 school children in Connecticut last month. After the Drudge Report likened Obama to Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin on Wednesday, pro-gun conservatives expressed outrage over the idea that the White House could act without Congress. “Vice President [Joe] Biden is asking the president to bypass Congress and use executive privilege, executive order to ban assault rifles and to impose stricter gun control,” Yeager explained in his video message. “Fuck that.” “I’m telling you that if that happens, it’s going to spark a civil war, and I’ll be glad to fire the first shot. I’m not putting up with it. You shouldn’t put up with it. And I need all you patriots to start thinking about what you’re going to do, load your damn mags, make sure your rifle’s clean, pack a backpack with some food in it and get ready to fight.” The CEO concluded: “I’m not fucking putting up with this. I’m not letting my country be ruled by a dictator. I’m not letting anybody take my guns! If it goes one inch further, I’m going to start killing people.”
Right winger: check Gun nut: check CEO: check It’s not quite as unhinged as Alex Jones on Piers Morgan the other night, but close… *And there’s some interesting internet gossip about this fellow as well.
But please, let’s make sure that guys like him have easy access to guns. it can only make us safer.
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Progressive Talk
by digby
If you’re tired of the stale fare served up by fake progressives on TV take a look at this interview with Adam Green, head of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Netroots activist extraordinaire:
Adam Green talked about the work of his Progressive Change Campaign Committee, and the organization’s agenda for the 113th Congress.*He also outlined what progressives would like to see from President Obama in his second term, and he responded to telephone calls and electronic communications.*Topics included tax rates, Social Security and Medicare, jobs in the oil and gas industry, AIG’s potential lawsuit against the U.S. government, and President Obama’s negotiation skills.
And then read this piece about Bob Borosage who runs Campaign for America’s Future, who the right wing portrays as the left’s Grover Norquist. (I’m sure Bob would be thrilled to have that kind of clout among the unruly Democrats, but I’m afraid we just don’t operate that way.)
There are a lot of ideas and a ton of energy out here on the left side of the dial. It’s not batshit insane so it doesn’t get the quite the attention that the right does. (And many of the Villagers are still living in the 70s, running from hippies instead of right wingnuts who want to overthrow the government.) But it’s out there, organizing and slowly but surely making some progress. I’ve always thought that ne of the most important keys to success is perseverance, and Borosage and Green are good examples of people who have it.
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In order to be free we must become a totalitarian police state
by digby
That’s basically the message of the gun nuts. And sadly, people are listening:
It wasn’t just students who returned to school this week after their holiday break. In school districts around the country, extra police officers are being deployed to provide a sense of security while policymakers weigh legislation in response to the massacre in Newtown, Conn.—proposals that could make police in schools an increased and permanent fixture in kids’ lives.
Politicians’ response to the deadly attack unleashed on Sandy Hook Elementary in December has been swift. This week, Vice President Joe Biden convened meetings for a White House task force to address gun access and mental health issues, and has promised to deliver a legislative proposal to the president by month’s end.
But several proposals swirling in the mix would double down on a trend of militarizing public schools. The National Rifle Association suggested putting armed guards in “every single school,” and more than one lawmaker has voiced support for such a plan. Days after the shooting, California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer introduced the Save Our Schools Act, which would authorize governors to use federal funds to call on the National Guard to secure school campuses. Boxer has also called for a $20 million increase from the $30 million already spent annually on school security measures like metal detectors and security cameras.
These proposals have been met with alarm by school communities in places like Los Angeles, where students are already too familiar with police. “We need a dramatic shift in how our schools operate,” said Manuel Criollo, the director of organizing at the Los Angeles-based Labor Community Strategy Center. “But safety is not equated with having more police in our schools or police as the primary response [to violence.]”
But this is how we defend ourselves against tyranny, right? Wait … what?
One of the true flaws of the surveillance/police state apparatus so far is that it didn’t properly indoctrinate the citizens early enough to submit unquestioningly. This will be very helpful. That it’s done in the name of liberty and the Bill of Rights makes it all the more deliciously ironic.
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The one economic problem nobody seems to give a damn about
by digby
It remains one of the strangest and saddest aspects of our current economic debates that nobody seems to care all that much about our still painfully high unemployment. And it’s probably a lot higher than we know:
In December, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted just 1.5 million “99ers,” the smallest number in any month since 2010. The fourth quarter of last year also saw the lowest average number of 99ers in two years. But it’s not clear that more of the very long-term unemployed are finding jobs.
“That decline is likely not due to an improving labor market, because it just hasn’t improved much over the last two years,” Heidi Shierholz of the labor-backed Economic Policy Institute said in an interview. “A lot of the decline in the unemployment rate we’ve seen is just due to people dropping out of the labor market.”
The people counted as unemployed for 99 weeks or more have been actively looking for work, or they wouldn’t be considered part of the workforce at all. One thing that may have kept so many people searching for so long is federal unemployment insurance, which from late 2009 through 2011 combined with state benefits to provide as many as 99 weeks of compensation. People are required to search for work — in other words, to remain attached to the workforce — as a condition of receiving benefits.
But the duration of benefits is shorter than before. In February 2012, Congress set in motion a gradual reduction of the maximum duration to 79 weeks in June, then to 73 weeks by September. As of December, the jobless in only nine states qualified for the full complement of benefits.
Jesse Rothstein, an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley, found in a 2011 research paper that the recent regimen of extended benefits did indeed keep people from giving up their job search as quickly as they otherwise might have. Rothstein and Shierholz said the dwindling long-term benefits might help explain why there were fewer 99ers at the end of last year, though it’s hard to be sure.
“I’ve been surprised at how little anybody’s paying attention — not just to the 99ers, but also the 79ers in the past year,” Rothstein said. (The term “99ers” has most commonly been a nickname for people who used up 99 weeks of unemployment benefits, though the estimate of how many people out of work for 99 weeks is not based on the insurance rolls.)
“There are still a lot of people who haven’t found work, and it’s reasonable to guess it’s not because they’re shirking, but because the labor market is still pretty terrible,” Rothstein said. “I wonder how they’re getting along.”
Yeah. I do too. But apparently nobody else does. Hey, I’m old enough to remember when 7.8% unemployment was considered catastrophic and the whole government lurched into gear to bring it down. I guess it’s the new normal now. Oh, 7.8% plus all those who’ve just dropped out of the labor force.
Meanwhile, we’re still on the austerity train determined to “fix” our problems by making them worse. I’m sure that’s going to end well.
I should note that the extension of UI under the “fiscal cliff” deal was the one true accomplishment. (The tax hikes would have happened anyway.) I’m not sure what it would have done to the economy to cut millions off of all cash support, but the scale of human misery certainly would have been large.
On the other hand, I’m fairly sure that both Democrats and Republicans have bought into the notion that this group of long term unemployed are just lazy slackers who refuse to look for work so they think cutting them off is a good way to motivate them. Unfortunately, the opposite is true. According to the article, people keep looking for work as long as they get benefits. It’s when they get cut off that they stop.(Also too: 7.8 percent unemployment!)
So, once again, our leaders are attempting to solve a problem by doing the thing that actually makes it worse.
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No, America is not a conservative country. But we do have a racism problem.
by David Atkins
In case you haven’t heard, France is embroiled in a big battle over gay marriage right now, with the fate of the law uncertain. Yes, many states in America are now to the left of largely secular, “socialist” France on this issue.
What is there to make of this? Simply the following: most of the U.S. is actually mostly on a par with Europe and Japan on most major social issues. We complain about some of our civil liberties protections being eroded, which is true–but the protections we are upset about are largely nonexistent in Europe, where the surveillance state is largely the norm. The U.S. is nearly alone in allowing direct birthright citizenship. Homeschooling and certain religions are banned in Germany. The hijab is banned in France.
Instead, what we see in the U.S. is three things: first, the lack of direct experience of domestic warfare that allows for an unchecked militarism untempered by the sobering experiences of Europe and Asia.
Second, the moneyed corruption of a winner-take-all system without publicly funded elections that creates economically conservative laws in spite of a fundamentally progressive populous. Americans want a stronger safety net and higher taxes on the wealthy. That we don’t get them is more a product of the corruption of government than of our relative conservatism as a people.
But the biggest problem is the most controversial one, and I’m sure I’ll get a lot of flack for saying it. We have a racism problem in this country, mostly localized to the South, but also prevalent in other rural, sparsely populated areas as well.
The United States has a unique relationship to race because of our history of slavery. After World War II, the nation was well on track to create social democracies and safety nets on par with other civilized nations. The one dirty secret, however, was the fact that minorities were not allowed in on the game.
When the Civil Rights era of the late 60s finally began to put an end to the de facto segregation and benefit differences, a huge segment of white America society began to freak out at government using their tax money to help people of color (and, to a lesser extent, women who wouldn’t be dominated by men.) We’re still living through–and barely crawling out of–the repercussions of that.
But that doesn’t mean that America is a conservative country. If you took resentment of racial minorities off the table, Americans would be mostly as progressive as other nations. But racial resentments complexify and skew every political debate.
Most important, though, is the fact that there is no “conservative” or “liberal” America. There is rural/exurban white America, and then there’s everyone else. If it were up to non-urban whites, Mitt Romney would have won nearly every state in the union.
On the other hand, if you had simply removed every state from the Old Confederacy and Mormon Triangle from the union beginning in 1930, American public policy would look pretty much on par with the rest of the civilized world.
I suppose one could say that this means that our struggle is deeply American, has always been with us and will always be with us. That’s true in one sense. But in another very real sense, it also means that there is not and has never really been one America. There has been an uneasy peace between two Americas since the nation’s founding, a peace in which one side and then the other has alternately found itself more in power.
Nixonland was very successful in returning the Lost Cause to glory, and allowing that other America to hold sway with a drawl, a twang and a cowboy swagger for some 50 years. But now the tide is turning–perhaps permanently–in the other direction. That’s a good thing.
But under no circumstances has it ever been fair to say that America is a “conservative” country. Certain parts of it are, in certain very ugly ways for very ugly reasons. And those parts have been allowed to have undue sway for far too long, aided and abetted by a political system that is all too easily bought and corrupted by the interests of the militant and the wealthy.
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Makers and Takers Redux
by digby
Just because they lost, doesn’t mean they don’t believe it. From our friends at CNBC:
Income inequality has been on the rise for three decades in the United States, according to the Congressional Budget Office, with the gap between the “haves” and “have-nots” currently at its widest point since 1967.
But as Democrats and Republicans wrangle over fiscal “fairness” and taxation, some experts argue that income inequality is not such a bad thing. They even go as far as saying that America’s economy functions on the basis of it.
The debate on income inequality has featured heavily in U.S. politics. Prominent Republican and former runner for the GOP’s presidential nomination, Rick Santorum said last February that income inequality was part of the fabric of American society, and long should it be so.
“There is income inequality in America. There always has been and hopefully, and I do say that, there always will be,” Santorum said during a speech to the Detroit Economic Club. “Why? Because people rise to different levels of success based on what they contribute to society and to the marketplace, and that’s as it should be,” he added.
“We should celebrate like we do in the small towns all across America. You celebrate success. Why? Because in their greatness and innovation, yes – they created wealth, but they created wealth for everybody else. And that’s a good thing, not something to be condemned in America,” he said…
Thomas Garrett, assistant vice president at the St. Louis Federal Reserve, wrote in 2010 that income inequality in the U.S. was “not so bad.”
“Although many people consider income inequality a social ill, it is important to understand that income inequality has many economic benefits and is the result of – and not a detriment to – a well-functioning economy,” Garrett wrote, insisting that U.S. Census statistics “exaggerate the degree of income inequality.”
One problem, in particular, he said, was that the “statistics do not include the non-cash resources received by lower-income households [such as the tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for housing, food and medical care] and the tax payments made by wealthier households to fund these transfers.”
Income inequality, he adds, is “a by-product of a functioning capitalist society” and the wealthiest had more, because they were more productive, Garrett affirmed.
He is not alone. Edward Conard, a former partner at asset management firm Bain Capital argued that inequality was actually good for economic growth. In his book,”Unintended Consequences: Everything You’ve Been Told about the Economy is Wrong,” Conard said that concentrating wealth in a skilled investor class helps fuel U.S. innovation, a tenet of the “American Dream”.
Well, I’m sure it’s pretty to think so. If you’re a vulture capitalist.
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QOTD: Honest Abe
by digby
He’s talking about the power of persuasion:
Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it, nothing can succeed. Consequently he who molds public sentiment goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.
I don’t think anyone believes this anymore — we are told that our government structure means that it doesn’t matter much what any statesman or leader believes or says and that a president has very little power to persuade.
But I still disagree. I think the real power of any leader lies in his ability to mold public sentiment and that it’s obvious that presidents do this all the time, for better or worse. But unless you actually look at what they’re saying and judge public sentiment by criteria that go beyond the latest polling numbers, you’ll never see it. And you wind up with a view of how the world works based solely on transactional politics — which is an extremely one-dimensional way to see it.
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