Month: March 2013

Senator Mike Lee has very hurt little feelings

by David Atkins

Oh, this poor, poor man:

Sen. Mike Lee said Thursday that President Barack Obama engaged in a “sophomoric” exchange with Republican lawmakers when he met with them earlier in the day, during which GOP Senators had to restrain themselves from “calling him out on it.”

“One of my favorite moments was when one of my colleagues stood up and said, ‘You know, Mr. President, it’s not all that helpful to have you publicly questioning our motives, publicly accusing us of wanting to eviscerate Medicaid, for example, simply because we want to call for reform or block grants,’” Lee (R-Utah) told Fox News host Greta Van Susteren.

This would be the same Mike Lee who called the Medicaid expansion under the ACA “coercion” while complaining about how underfunded Medicaid is by most states.

If Mike lee’s plan isn’t to make devastating cuts to an already struggling program while preventing the federal government from giving out quid pro quo grants to the states to expand it, then what is his plan?

The President’s response, ever seeking conciliatory balance, was:

“[He said,] ‘I don’t speak nearly as badly about you as some of you do about me,’”

Personally, I’d have been less measured. Mike Lee does want to eviscerate Medicaid. He and his colleagues believe that if poor people get basic healthcare it creates a culture of dependency saps their initiative to work a 90-hour week at a series of minimum wage jobs–preferably without the whole minimum wage part.

It’s a monstrous ideology that has been proven false time and again in the real world. If Mike Lee and his friends don’t want to be called out for what they’re trying to do, perhaps they should stop doing it.

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Oh Sally, nobody cares

by digby

There are a million reasons why nobody should listen to Sally Quinn on the subject of women in the workplace.   But  this has to be somewhere the list:

Monday, Dec. 31, 1979
Press: Brzezinski’s Zipper Was Up

And the Washington Post is caught with its facts down

As the reporter was leaving, he began to joke around and flirt with her. Suddenly he unzipped his fly. —Washington Post, Dec. 19
In yesterday’s story about Zbigniew Brzezinski, it was stated that at the end of an interview with a reporter from a national magazine—as a joke—Brzezinski committed an offensive act, and that a photographer took a picture “of this unusual expression of playfulness.” Brzezinski did not commit such an act, and there is no picture of him doing so. —Washington Post, Dec. 20

The Iranian crisis was in its seventh week and OPEC was propelling oil prices to historic heights. But in that cosmopolitan capital on the Potomac, the best and the brightest were preoccupied with a more delicate matter: the open or shut case of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s fly. As it turned out, President Carter’s National Security Adviser had kept his zipper up, and the Washington Post was caught with its trousers down.

The brouhaha resulted from a free-form and free-floating three-part series by Post Staff Writer Sally Quinn, who is known in Washington for her withering (some would say bitchy) profiles of prominent personalities. She outdid herself with the Brzezinski series, which contains a few blatantly smirky and sophomoric passages. She began the first installment with an account of how he had used sexual innuendo to rebuff her requests for an interview. “You’ll just have to come out here and live with me,” he is quoted as saying. “That’s the only way I’ll do it.”

Quinn never did interview Brzezinski. Instead, she pieced her story together from talks with some 50 of his friends and associates. He was depicted as a publicity hound consumed by his ambition to become Secretary of State—and more. “He likes to talk of himself as a sex symbol, to speak of the ‘aphrodisiac of power,’ ” Quinn wrote. In one vignette, Brzezinski is described as boogeying lustily at a Washington disco, looking faintly ridiculous and “flirting with 16-year-olds.” Quinn elsewhere describes him as a man “constantly torn between the thrill of making headlines and the risk of making a fool of himself.”

It was a possibly believable, if unflattering, picture of the National Security Adviser—until the final paragraphs of the first installment, when Quinn related the zipper incident. She first heard of that encounter a year ago from Clare Crawford, a former Post staffer who is now a PEOPLE Magazine Washington correspondent. Crawford had just received from Brzezinski an autographed picture taken after she interviewed him for PEOPLE. At Crawford’s office, says Quinn, she thought she saw a photo that showed Brzezinski unzipping his pants. Though hazy on details, Quinn now says that she heard someone say that this was indeed what Brzezinski had done. Before Quinn’s series went to press, the Post tried unsuccessfully to get the wording of Brzezinski’s inscription on the picture, but the paper evidently made no further attempt to verify the episode. read on …

Granted, those were the bad old days, as you can see by reading that piece. Quinn didn’t invent that sort of thing, but it was the game she successfully played for years. She was offensive to me even back then, when I was a young person trying to make it in the working world. She’s even more offensive to women today and has absolutely nothing to offer them. Her sort of career climb is still available, I’m sure, but it’s no longer the only one available. Thank God.

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Throwbacks

by digby

Usually I avidly follow CPAC, if only for the swag they usually sell. This one has always been my favorite.

I’ve been preoccupied with other things and haven’t seen the worst of this year until now.  (At least I hope this is the worst of it) I don’t know how many of these lovely young men are out there, but let’s just say I hope it isn’t very many:

The exchange occurred after an audience member from North Carolina, 30-year-old Scott Terry, asked whether Republicans could endorse races remaining separate but equal.After the presenter, K. Carl Smith of Frederick Douglass Republicans, answered by referencing a letter by Frederick Douglass forgiving his former master, the audience member said “For what? For feeding him and housing him?”

After the exchange, Terry muttered under his breath, “why can’t we just have segregation?” noting the Constitution’s protections for freedom of association. Watch it:

ThinkProgress spoke with Terry, who sported a Rick Santorum sticker and attended CPAC with a friend who wore a Confederate Flag-emblazoned t-shirt, about his views after the panel. Terry maintained that white people have been “systematically disenfranchised” by federal legislation.

When asked by ThinkProgress if he’d accept a society where African-Americans were permanently subservient to whites, he said “I’d be fine with that.” He also claimed that African-Americans “should be allowed to vote in Africa,” and that “all the Tea Parties” were concerned with the same racial problems that he was.

At one point, a woman challenged him on the Republican Party’s roots, to which Terry responded, “I didn’t know the legacy of the Republican Party included women correcting men in public.”

The funny thing is that this was a CPAC session on outreach to black voters. I would have thought this guy might have just been being some kind of smartass, but the video portrays him as just being an ass.

I think this would have struck me as less noteworthy if I hadn’t heard a young workman at my neighbor’s house use the “n” word the other day as if it was the most normal thing in the world. I was so shocked by it that I was paralyzed for a couple of seconds and didn’t respond right away. My neighbor (a very confident Hispanic woman) didn’t miss a beat — she just said, “hey none of that on my property. You don’t like it I’ll find someone else.” The kid rolled his eyes but he shut up.

Considering how much I heard the word when I was growing up back in the day, the fact that I was shocked shows it’s an improvement. But it’s still creepy that any white person, especially a young one,  would drop this language into a conversation in public.

Update: Oy

Via Daily Kos:

The white guy CONTINUES TO SCREAM, doesn’t get asked to leave. The black guy gets asked to leave.

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Cost curve bent

by David Atkins

Why do we need to cut Medicare again?

Sarah Kliff has details:

The reason for that yawning difference: Health-care costs growth has seen a steep decline over the past few years. Instead of outpacing the rest of the economy, it has grown at the exact same rate.

If that cost growth persists, it could make all the difference for Medicare: The entitlement program would, by 2085, make up 4 percent of the economy instead of the previously projected 7 percent.

The “if” there is crucial: We don’t know whether this cost growth slowdown is permanent or temporary, a factor of Americans cutting back on care during the recession.

This report presents some evidence to believe that the downturn could be here to stay. It includes data on the level of hospital readmissions for Medicare patients. These are typically considered a sign of unnecessary, costly care — patients don’t usually return to the hospital because they’re feeling in top shape.

Outside of general economic performance, healthcare costs remain the biggest driver of the deficit. The ACA for all its warts is an attempt to drive down those costs while expanding access. It appears to be working already to a certain extent.

As America moves inexorably toward more universal coverage, those costs will continue to come down even as outcomes improve. That will make Medicare more solvent until it eventually merges with or becomes a universal program. And that will happen sooner or later. America has been slower to get on board with universal health insurance than other countries, but the direction of public policy over the last half century is clear. It’s not as if the country is getting any more conservative, either, in terms of policy preferences.

All of which is to point out that even though it’s in worse fiscal shape than Social Security or Medicaid, not even Medicare need be cut at this point. Whatever problems exist with it can and should be fixed in a progressive way, not a regressive one.

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Some very good news on a Friday afternoon

by digby

Enough gloom and doom. It’s important to note once in a while that despite our little “set-back” with economic justice in this country and the ongoing “issues” with our military empire, some things are changing for the better. We know that gay rights are being acknowledged everywhere these day, even among conservatives. The right to use a fairly harmless herb for medical purposes and pleasure seems to be gaining ground as well. (In a country that fetishizes alcohol, why this is even a question is something future historians will ponder.)

And this, to me, is just huge:

The House of Delegates voted 82-56 to repeal Maryland’s death penalty on Friday, making the state the sixth in as many years to abolish executions and delivering a major legislative victory to Gov. Martin O’Malley.

The bill, which passed the Senate last week, now heads to the governor for his signature. O’Malley (D) has lobbied lawmakers for years to end capital punishment, and he put the full weight of his office behind it this session.

The House vote followed more than two hours of impassioned debate, in which repeal supporters argued that any risk of executing an innocent person is unacceptable and that the death penalty has been applied unfairly in the past.

“Human beings cannot devise a system of justice that is perfect,” said Del. Anne Healey (D-Prince George’s). “We are all flawed. … What I can’t live with is, if we make a mistake, it costs somebody else his life.”

That it was done by a presidential aspirant makes it even more significant. It’s interesting that this is winning on the basis of that argument by Anne healey. Obviously, it helps that we have technology that has proved that our system is convicting innocent people. But her argument is also a moral one: that executing an innocent person is unconscionable. You’d be surprised how many people think that’s just natural collateral damage, nothing we can do about it and anyway, we don’t do it. Her position is very American, what with our requirement that the government prove guilt. It’s good to see it again.

I happen to think it’s wrong to execute guilty people as well. Since I only believe in killing as a matter of self-defense, it’s very hard for me to see how killing someone who is shackled and in custody, as all people on death row are, can be morally justified. But this other argument is also very salient and it’s always been the one that swayed people in my life. There’s a certain instinctual moral belief in revenge and it takes some persuading to get people to move from that position. But anyone with even the slightest bit of humanity cannot think it’s ok to kill innocent people.

So, good for Maryland and good for America for slowly moving away from our institutional violence. It’s going to take a lot to do this — and we have the horror of our prison system that must be dealt with as well. But at least we’ve stopped with the 3-strikes and mandatory minimum and are turning the other direction. This correction is long overdue.

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QOTD: Paul Ryan

by digby

He spoke at CPAC today. All the wingnuts love this:

They are the party of shared hardship, we are the party of shared opportunity.

He’s partially right. They certainly don’t believe in millionaires sharing hardship.

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Let’s declare victory on the deficit and go home

by digby

… at least for a little while.

This is funny:

A strange sickness is afflicting congressional Republicans.

Unwilling to team up with Democrats to replace sequestration with a mix of spending cuts and tax increases, and unable to pass a cuts-only sequestration measure on their own, Republicans’ official position is that they’ve made their peace with enduring, across-the-board spending cuts in perpetuity.

But now that those cuts are creating real consequences, individual members are experiencing buyer’s remorse. The only problem is, until they change their underlying position on replacing sequestration, the only thing they can do about it is whine.

Call it sequestration NIMBYism.

“It seems difficult to say with a straight face that completely eliminating a source of revenue for the National Park Service is a smart, targeted cut,” said Sen. John Thune (R-SD), a member of GOP leadership.

Thune says he thinks the National Park Service made a political decision to close revenue-generating campgrounds, including at Wind Cave National Park in his home state, to make the cuts more visible to the public.

“Instead of cuts that reduce wasteful and duplicative spending, the administration’s politically calculated cuts are targeting facilities like the campground that actually serve as a revenue source for the park,” Thue added. “It appears NPS is just another agency following the White House’s lead in trying to find the cuts that can trigger a press release before looking to internal cost-saving measures that are less newsworthy.”

Sequestration is intended to be indiscriminate. It requires federal agencies to reduce spending by a certain percentage on each of their programs and activities.

That means all House and Senate members are likely to see some consequences in their districts and states. But when those consequences materialize, Republicans either blame the administration or plead for special treatment.

Yes, those across the board cuts are a bitch aren’t they? What a silly thing to agree to. And yet, most of them did.

Now, I’m given to understand by people much smarter than I that the only possible options here are continued sequestration forever or Obama’s plan to cut Social Security and Medicare in exchange for some loophole closing. At least that’s how the administration sees it:

The Obama administration has taken note of these complaints. And while Republicans and the media in Washington limit their focus to the fact that the White House canceled public tours, the administration hopes the problems sequestration is causing back home will create pressure on the GOP to support a balanced tax increase and spending cut measure to replace it.

“[T]hey’re right,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters at his daily press briefing Thursday. “[T]here are real impacts out there. And it’s an unfortunate result of the arbitrary, across-the-board nature of the sequester cuts. That was the — I use this term facetiously — the genius in the design of the sequester — it was written in a way to make it terrible. That was the purpose. Republicans and Democrats alike wrote it that way so that it would be so onerous that it would compel Congress to take alternative action to reduce our deficit in a more responsible way. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. And unfortunately, Republicans in Congress made the choice not to postpone the implementation of the sequester.”

The key phrase there is this:

Republicans and Democrats alike wrote it that way so that it would be so onerous that it would compel Congress to take alternative action to reduce our deficit in a more responsible way.

That’s the problem here. The budget is not just a vehicle for the holy grail of deficit reduction. In fact, they don’t have to reduce the deficit any more right now at all.  There is another way. They could repeal the sequester and replace it with a normal budget that simply seeks to fund the government instead of forcing another round of cuts. Maybe just take a break and let the government work as per normal for a while. After all, that 4 trillion dollar number is completely arbitrary. They should declare victory and go home:

Michael Linden and Michael Ettlinger provide us today with a handy chart of all the deficit reduction we’ve implemented over the past couple of years. In all, we’ve reduced spending by $1.8 trillion and increased taxes by $600 billion, for a total of $2.4 trillion. More details here. This may not be the grand bargain of Beltway dreams, but it’s pretty good progress in a short period of time.

And three-quarters of it has been from spending cuts.

Ezra calculates it even higher:

Let’s do some quick math. Start the clock — and the deficit projections — on Jan. 1, 2011. Congress cut expected spending by $585 billion during the 2011 appropriations process. It cut another $860 billion as part of the resolution to the 2011 debt-ceiling standoff. And it added another $1 trillion in spending cuts as part of the sequester. Then it raised $600 billion in taxes in the fiscal cliff deal.

Together, that’s slightly more than $3 trillion in deficit reduction. After accounting for reduced interest payments — as there’s now less debt to pay interest on — it’s more like $3.6 trillion. That’s real money!

Yes it is! Seriously. Enough.

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Did you know that the Chained-CPI is actually a middle class tax hike?


by digby

chained CPI is also middle class tax hike #occasionalreminder
— Atrios (@Atrios) March 14, 2013

Did you know that? Yes, it is:

Did you also know that none of that, by law, can go to fund Social Security’s projected “shortfall?” And that if they do change that law, it will forever put an end to the dedicated revenue stream that keeps SS out of the general budget? I’m afraid so:

If the chained CPI is adopted as part of a budget deal unconnected to any larger plan for Social Security then it effectively means that there will have been a substantial cut to Social Security benefits without any quid pro quo in terms of increased revenue. This hardly seems like a good negotiating move from the standpoint of those looking to preserve and strengthen the program.

And did you also know that the Chained-CPI cuts alone will not close the projected shortfall?  So, even if this is done, we’ll be right back here in a few years looking for new ways to “save” Social Security by cutting it.

By the way, according to CBO, this tax hike amounts to about $124 billion over 10 years. Not chump change, by any means, but hardly something that “takes the deficit off the table.” Remember how much Lockheed, which depends almost entirely on taxpayer funds, makes in one year?:

According to its 2011 annual report, “82% of our $46.5 billion in net sales were from the US Government, including 61% from the Department of Defense.” And don’t forget that a significant part of the 17% of its sales that went to international customers in 2011 were actually paid for by Uncle Sam under the rubric of foreign military aid. Only 1% of its sales that year were to “US commercial and other customers.” Its CEO made $20,538,981, while the company paid only $722 million in net federal and foreign taxes in that same year.

I think that puts the $124 billion over ten years in perspective, don’t you?

So wait, the Chained-CPI won’t fix the projected SS shortfall 20 years from now, and even if the poorest are given a little “bump” it’s not enough to make up for the cuts and it won’t raise all that much money in the larger sense. So what’s the point of all this again? This can’t just be a sneaky way to raise taxes on the middle class without telling them, can it? No, that could never happen.

Although, consider this from Dean Baker:

For the typical retiree, Social Security benefits are close to two-thirds of their income. This means that the use of the chained CPI would amount to a hit to their income of approximately 2.0 percent (two-thirds of 3.0 percent).

By contrast, if we assume that a couple earning $500,000 a year is the typical household affected by the tax increase [enacted at the beginning of the year], then their additional tax burden will be 4.6 percent of their income over $450,000 or $2,300. If we assume that this couple had not unusual exemptions (or even usual ones), then their after-tax income before the tax increase would have been around $350,000. This means that the Obama tax increase would reduce their after tax income by a bit less than 0.7 percent. This means that the hit to Social Security beneficiaries from the chained CPI will be around three times as large as the hit to the typical affluent taxpayer from the Obama tax increase.

That’s not counting the money retired people will pay in additional taxes if they happen to have taxable income, which a fair number of those middle class retirees probably will. (The taxman comes for your 401K money eventually …)

So, what we have is a proposal to cut Social Security benefits to fix a projected future shortfall and it won’t fix the shortfall.  Meanwhile, it will raise taxes, mostly on the middle class in a sneaky backdoor fashion but there’s no mechanism to use any of the money raised to go to Social Security without changing the dedicated funding system and putting Social Security into the general budget (thus leaving it far more vulnerable to future cuts.) And interestingly, this tax increase adds up to much more than the expiration of the Bush tax cuts for those making over 400k a year. What a beautiful scam.

Don’t worry though.  If we can only gut these “entitlements” for the sick and the old we’ll have vanquished the bad guys forever more and then we can do whatever we want. Right? Isn’t that what the Grand Bargain promises?

Update: In case you are among the last two people on earth who still think he’s not serious:

President Obama pledged in a private meeting with Senate Republicans on “to challenge his own party on entitlement reform,” The Hill reports.

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Mitt Romney, just the latest throwaway politician of the Right

by David Atkins

Much has been made of Mitt Romney’s cold reception among conservatives just a few months after being their standardbearer for the presidency. The usual reasons given are that Romney was too liberal on social issues, didn’t run a good campaign, wasn’t adequately charismatic, etc.

But Mitt Romney is only the latest in a long string of GOP presidents and presidential candidates to be shunned by their own party since Ronald Reagan. Let’s look at them in sequence:

1992: George H. W. Bush loses to Bill Clinton. Between breaking the “no new taxes” pledge, losing fringe support to Ross Perot, and coming off as an out-of-touch Kennebunkport Yankee, Bush Senior was quickly shunned and forgotten by the conservative base.

1996: After a whopping defeat, Bob Dole was barely heard from again beyond making ads for erectile dysfunction. The GOP couldn’t even be bothered recently to pass a bill on behalf of the disabled in spite of his emotional presence and support.

2000-2008: Despite his lionization by the conservative establishment for years, it’s important to remember that George W. Bush was dealt two major legislative defeats, largely by his own caucus. The first was his attempt to nominate Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, and the second was immigration reform. After a narrow victory in 2004, Democrats rolled into control of Congress in 2006. After the financial crisis and bailout in 2008, Bush Junior was so unpopular that he had to stay well out of the public limelight to give John McCain a chance.

2008: Speaking of John McCain, he was so ill-liked by the Republican establishment even prior to his defeat that he felt the need to rally his base by nominating the famously ignorant Wasilla Wonder as his vice-presidential nominee.

2012: Mitt Romney. No comment necessary.

Nor have the vice-presidential picks fared much better: of Dan Quayle, Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, and Paul Ryan, only the last three have much respect among the GOP base. But Palin and Cheney are absolutely toxic to those who aren’t hardcore conservatives, and Paul Ryan is well on his way there.

Democrats, by contrast, have no such problem. Progressives have been upset with Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry and Barack Obama for various reasons. But they have remained popular not only with the majority of the Democratic base, but also among the general public. Both Bill and Hillary Clinton are rockstars in the party with high public approval ratings. Al Gore has become a respected leader on climate change and sympathetic figure given the way the 2000 election was snatched from him. And Barack Obama is still Barack Obama. Of the Vice Presidents and VP candidates, only Joe Lieberman has become toxic for his politics (Edwards would still be popular but for his personal indiscretions)–and that because he has moved so far to the right.

What does all of this mean? It suggests something rather powerful. It suggests that Republican policies are deeply unpopular and ineffective, but that the Republican base refuses to believe or acknowledge that to be true.

Republican Presidential candidates have lost the popular vote in five of the last six elections. Their base has no choice but to blithely interpret those results as the product of inadequate conservatism. Yet those presidential candidates have usually chosen more conservative vice-presidential candidates to help rally the base–and those vice-presidential picks are even more allergenic to the public than the presidential nominees.

Meanwhile, the only Republican to win the popular vote in the last six election cycles was George W. Bush, a presidential failure so monumental that Republicans have cleansed their memories of his very existence.

Democratic presidents and candidates have no such problems. Bill Clinton was a successful president. Al Gore’s warnings about Social Security lockboxes and climate change have been proven right. John Kerry’s warnings about Republican financial and foreign policy have been proven right. And despite our numerous misgivings as progressives, Barack Obama remains a largely popular president navigating the worst economy since the Great Depression.

It should come as no surprise, then, that Mitt Romney is the latest victim of the Right’s capricious relationship to its standardbearers. The problem isn’t their candidates. It’s their ideas. But the Right is all too happy to blame the candidates when their ideas fail the test of reality and public opinion.

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Your moment of zen

by digby

This ad appeared in today’s Politico: