“I am not a sixth grader”
by digby
Difi got hot under the collar today and for good reason. Ted Cruz is a real asshole:
People on the right got upset with Elizabeth Warren for not knowing her “place” as a freshman when she closely questioned those bank regulators. But it really takes chutzpah for a freshman to go after one of his senior Senate colleagues like this. She didn’t like it and she told him so. Good for her.
And yeah, this guy even looks like Joe McCarthy.
.
QOTD: Rand Paul
by digby
Despite his moments of lucidity on discrete issues, you can always count on Rand to make sure that nobody ever forgets that he’s essentially a putz:
“The Tea Party, I always say, is more like the American Revolution, and Occupy Wall Street is more the French Revolution,” Paul said.
“We hearken back to sort of rules. We weren’t unhappy with people just because they were rich; we weren’t happy with you if you were making money off of our taxes and we were bailing you out. If you were making $100 million, your bank goes bankrupt and all of a sudden we bail you out and you’re still making $100 million — that upset us.”
“I think Occupy Wall Street was more of a generic sort of, ‘We just hate people who have any money, and why can’t they give it to us?’ kind of thing,” he said.
We can be grateful that he’s against the president ordering their assassination by drones. On civil liberties, one must take the support where one can — it’s not as if most people give a damn about that stuff. But unfortunately, that’s about it.
.
Another libertarian for civil liberties
by digby
First we had the controversial filibuster of mostly libertarians and right wingers railing against Obama’s covert war policies. Then the left joined in. Everyone Here’s one that might actually surprise you:
From Attorney General Eric Holder’s testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, we learned that the Obama administration is “struggling” with how to provide more information on its so-called targeted killing program; that senior officials have “talked about a greater need for transparency” about the program; and that we “will hear the president speak about this” in the future. After a limited document review by the Senate intelligence committee; a spirited 13-hour filibuster led by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.); and a last-minute admission by Holder that the president does not have the authority to use drones to kill a U.S. citizen on American soil who is not engaged in combat, the White House is still bobbing and weaving on whether to share with Congress the legal opinions and memorandums governing targeted killing, which include the legal justification for killing U.S. citizens without trial.
The Obama administration is wrong to withhold these documents from Congress and the American people. I say this as a former White House chief of staff who understands the instinct to keep sensitive information secret and out of public view. It is beyond dispute that some information must be closely held to protect national security and to engage in effective diplomacy, and that unauthorized disclosure can be extraordinarily harmful. But protecting technical means, human sources, operational details and intelligence methods cannot be an excuse for creating secret law to guide our institutions.
That’s the centrist (or pragmatic progressive or whatever the hell he calls himself) John Podesta.
I don’t know what his game is, but I don’t care. Maybe his friend the president wants to be seen as being “forced” to do this for some reason. It doesn’t matter. People from every point on the political spectrum want this information released for whatever reasons and it should be released. Just proclaiming that you’re not as bad as Dick Cheney isn’t really enough.
.
Oh boy, is Washington ever confused right now
by digby
Apparently Republicans were shocked to find out that the President, really really, really wants to cut those damned entitlements.Of course he is:
President Obama is seeking to push Republicans to work with him on a grand deficit bargain by first assuring them he’s willing to cut entitlements, and then attempting to scrape off enough of them who will in turn agree to raise new revenues…
“He wanted us to believe he’s serious” about being willing to scale back the safety net, said Ribble. “There was nothing in there to make me believe he wasn’t.”
I think we all know that’s the plan. Of course, it will require Nancy Pelosi to round up virtually every last Democrat so the Republicans don’t have to take any responsibility for cutting popular programs for their constituents and raising taxes. And gosh, waddaya know?
“In terms of C.P.I., I have said let’s take a look at that,” [Pelosi] said at a weekly press briefing in Washington. “What is it — there are elements in our party, who have said that we can do this without hurting the poor and the very elderly. So let’s see what that is. There are others who are objecting to it plain and simple. I have to say if we can demonstrate that it doesn’t hurt the poor and the very elderly, then let’s take a look at it because compared to what? Compared to what? Compared to Republicans saying Medicare should wither on the vine? Social Security has no place in a free society? These are their words. These are their words.”
Right, because if we don’t pass the Chained-CPI Social Security will disappear. Awesome.
Meanwhile, in an interesting side-note, according to Greg Sargent, we are facing the possibility that the Democrats are going to run in 2014 on a “no new taxes” platform:
I’m told that national Democrats are planning to mount a major campaign to hammer Republican candidates — particularly ones in swing areas — over a specific aspect of the Paul Ryan budget: The possibility that it could result in middle class tax hikes.
… and the Republicans will run on “don’t cut Medicare and Social Security”:
“Obamacare took $716 billion from Medicare, a large portion of which came from the Medicare Advantage program which serves a great many seniors, and especially poor seniors,” Cruz said on the Senate floor. “According to the Office of the Actuary at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Medicare advantage cuts in Obamacare will reduce enrollment from 14.8 million to 7.4 million by 2017. It will cut it in half. Seven million people will lose their coverage under Medicare Advantage.” (The actuary also found that those who lose coverage under Medicare Advantage, an optional program under which seniors can receive coverage through a private insurer, would remain covered under traditional Medicare.)
“I would remind you the president said if you like your health insurance, you can keep it,” Cruz said. “Yet seven million seniors are losing Medicare Advantage.”
Anyone for an early cocktail?
.
Only counting one side of the equation gives you the wrong answer
by digby
The wonks are at it again. Apparently, there’s a new paper that suggests we’ve been measuring inflation all wrong and naturally it shows that people are a lot richer than anyone thinks. (So let’s cut some gummint programs!) Anyway, Dean Baker rudely points out that if people are richer today because we’ve been measuring wrong, it only stands to reason that they were poorer before, right? And guess what? That throws off all the projections about how rich we’re going to be in the future:
If income is growing more rapidly than the official data indicate then people were much poorer in the recent past than official data indicate.
The Census Bureau’s data show that median household income, measured in 2011 dollars, was 9.4 percent lower thirty years ago in 1981 compared to 2011. It was $46,024 in 1981 compared to $50,054 in 2011.
However if we make the Meyer and Sullivan adjustment then real income has been rising by 0.8 percentage points more rapidly each year than these data assume. This means that Meyer and Sullivan would say that the median income for a household in 1981, measured in 2011 dollars, would be $35,637, 28.8 percent less than the 2011 level. Meyer and Sullivan’s adjustment implies that today’s elderly were considerably poorer in their working lifetime than the official data show.
This goes in the other direction as well. If we apply Meyer and Sullivan’s adjustment to projected income growth then income will be rising much more rapidly. If the Meyer and Sullivan adjustment is applied to the projection of average annual wages from the Social Security trustees then the average real (inflation adjusted) wage in 20 years will be more than 50 percent higher than it is today. If we go out to 30 years, then the Meyer and Sullivan adjustment means that average wages will be more than 80 percent higher than it is today.
This pattern of income and wage growth would likely be relevant to anyone trying to make an assessment of the relative well-being of the young and old. If today’s old were relatively poor through most of their lives then we might think it makes less sense to take away benefits that sustain their current standard of living. On the other hand, if today’s young can anticipate rapid wage growth in the future we might be less concerned about providing them additional support.
You see, you can’t just have it one way. Baker makes this point repeatedly, but it doesn’t seem to penetrate. If all the assumptions people are making about the past are untrue, then you have to adjust the assumptions for the future. And that means, for instance, that if we have been underestimating inflation for the past three decades, we need to adjust our projections for the future as well — and guess what that means? That’s right, presumably people would be making more money and there would be more available for programs like Social Security and Medicare, right? So cutting the programs because our poor kids and grandkids are going to be burdened by these huge costs doesn’t have quite the same resonance. Indeed, in a sane world one would assume that the deficit would take care of itself as well, since higher wages should also mean more revenue to the government.
Unfortunately, while this deficit isn’t really a problem, we do have one, and it’s the real reason we’re so screwed. And it’s a doozy.
Baker again:
Virtually all economists agree that in the long-run productivity is the main determinant of economic prosperity. This means that if we can sustain high rates of productivity growth, as we are now doing, then the economy will be able to provide our children and grandchildren with a prosperous future – one where they will be far richer on average than we are today.
Of course if we continue to allow the Wall Street boys, the CEOs and their high-living friends to get the bulk of the gains from growth then our children and grandchildren will have much to worry about. But the problem then, as now, will not be the debt that we have left them.
The problem will be that we let the rich take over the country. If we leave the Wall Street crew in charge, then we will have done much to bankrupt our children.
This is what the Big Money Boyz don’t want us to notice. They don’t really care about deficits, we know that, because unless they think we’re going to institute a soylent green program it doesn’t make any sense. Somebody’s going to have to take care of the old people, whether it comes directly out of their family’s pockets or via a program like Social Security. They’re not so stupid that the think these costs to society will simply disappear if they manage to make people poorer. But what they do care about is keeping their outsized share of the nation’s wealth as far as the eye can see. So, perhaps we have the answer as to what austerity’s really all about: misdirection. The oldest trick in the book.
.
How to survive the next nine years of hell
by David Atkins
It should be obvious by now that the Republican Party and the American conservative movement at large are incapable of introspection. Greg Sargent makes that perfectly clear in his examination of the Ryan budget, a document of such immorality that only true libertarian ideologues wouldn’t be repulsed by it. The Ryan budget slashes Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and all sorts of other crucial supports for the poor and middle class. Meanwhile, it gives even bigger tax and other financial advantages to the wealthy than even Mitt Romney had proposed.
Sargent also points out the obvious: that the American people just finished litigating these very issues in a hard-fought election that pitted a slightly left-of-center agenda against libertarian plutocracy. Libertarian plutocracy lost. Paul Ryan lost. Republican Senators lost. And yes, Republicans would have lost the House as well but for particularly devious gerrymandering.
Republicans also know that the country isn’t getting any closer to their worldview. The country is moving away from it. So why keep on pressing?
The simplest answer is that there are still enough Americans who either 1) believe wholesale in the religion of Objectivism, or 2) are possessed of such racial resentment and ignorance that they believe the reason for their lack of jobs and wage growth is the fault of some brown person somewhere getting their tax dollars, or 3) believe that Republican Jesus is coming back any time now to smite the various constituencies who don’t adhere to their peculiar institutions of provincial American traditionalism. There are enough of these people to control the Republican primary process, and Republican politicians not running for President couldn’t care less about the rest of the country.
They also know that because of gerrymandering, the likelihood of their losing the House of Representatives anytime between now and the year 2022 is slim. At worst they may lose the gavel by a few seats, but with more than enough pliable Blue Dogs and New Democrats to carry along their radical agenda.
Finally, it’s important to understand just what Sargent says. These people are ideologues through and through:
If you want a safety net, you need to pay for it. Republicans would prefer to roll it back — even as they deeply cut taxes on the rich. All of this slashing of government would take place amid a fragile recovery — which is justified by grotesquely hyping the immediate threat posed by long term debt.
The most charitable reading of this blueprint is that its authors actually believe all of this is good policy. And indeed, it reflects a set of views many Republicans have long espoused in various forms: Rolling back government programs poor people rely on is good for them, unshackling the “takers” from dependence and freeing them to exercise the economic liberty that will enable them to prosper. Government throws a wet blanket on individual initiative and is more likely to discourage, rather than enable, social mobility. Asking a little more from the “makers” and “job creators” to expand protections for the poor and elderly and invest in education and infrastructure will create economic stagnation, while reducing their tax rates will unleash explosive growth.
The election was just fought around all these ideas, and the American people rejected them decisively. Yet many Republicans remain fully in thrall to them. No amount of candy or flowers can win these folks over.
It’s not going to get better. Republicans will retreat somewhat on the social issues that are killing them worst in the polls: guns, gays, overt discrimination against women, and immigration reform. But on the core economics they’ll only double down on the extremism all the way until 2022.
So what should Democrats do?
First and foremost, Democrats should relentlessly hammer Republicans on their unpopular positions while taking popular stands themselves. They should point out consistently their own willingness to compromise with Republicans if Republicans will come forward with remotely acceptable policies. But that’s just the politics preventing a Republican takeover of the entire federal government apparatus in 2016 and 2020.
But the country cannot effectively survive nine more years of crisis budgeting every few months. The country cannot tolerate the near shutdown of the government by record automatic filibusters.
Structural changes to the fundamental running of the country are necessary. Abolishing the debt ceiling is one. Moving to a two-year budget cycle is another. Switching to a talking filibuster is a third. There are many others as well, including the elimination or bypassing of the electoral college, implementation of disclosure laws for campaign contributions, and creation of national non-partisan redistricting.
These and other dull but crucial changes will be necessary in order to keep the country limping forward until 2022, when the country will finally have a chance to be rid of the Objectivist cult as a major political force once and for all.
.
What do the Republicans really want?
by digby
Matt Yglesias has noticed the same contradictory narratives about the GOP agenda among the beltway wagsthat I wrote about yesterday. He catches Vandehei in living color:
Here’s Jim Vandehei on Morning Joe this morning (emphasis added):
Yeah, I would just replay that clip [Obama talking to Stephanopoulos] over and over and over again, and that tells you everything you need to know about the next year. The president wants tax increases and he, and he does not want to do a bill where there is big changes in entitlement reforms. Republicans don’t want tax increases and they want to do big, they want to do some big changes on entitlements. So, there’s not really a middle ground to be had.
And here’s Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen on Tuesday (emphasis added):
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) says he can envision such a scenario if Democrats put specific entitlement cuts on the table. But, top House GOP officials tell us that is nuts. The prevailing view among House Republicans is that they have finally won the cuts they spent years fighting for and see little reason to tick off senior voters by cutting entitlements while also ticking off the base with new taxes. In truth, many Republicans aren’t very motivated themselves to start messing with entitlements if they don’t have to.
The first is, of course, the standard both-sides-are-at-fault narrative that has Republicans digging in on taxes while Democrats refuse to cut entitlements. But seeing as the negotiations are between the President and the Republicans and the President is on record ready, even eager, to cut those entitlements, I agree with Yglesias that the latter is the more likely reality.
As I wrote yesterday, they believe in cutting entitlements, no doubt about it. They have always hated these government programs. But they are stuck at the moment because their only growing demographic is older people and even these nuts aren’t so looney that they don’t realize it. What they want is to pass entitlement cuts without voting for it, so they can run against the Democrats as the entitlement cutters. (They want to “save” them, of course. Doesn’t everybody?)
I hesitate to pin too much hope on this, but you have to admit that it’s held up so far. The president’s been explicitly offering up entitlements for two years now and the Republicans haven’t taken him up on it. And at this point all he’s asking for is some vague loophole closing they know the lobbyists will fix in a jiffy. No, the problem is that they don’t want to be on record voting for entitlement cuts. Would you?
In the current poll, 24% say that if they were making up the federal government’s budget this year they would decrease spending for military defense, down from 30% two years ago. More than seven-in-ten either support increasing defense spending (32%) or maintaining it at current levels (41%).
There continue to be sizable partisan differences in views of funding for government programs. For most, substantially larger shares of Republicans than Democrats support decreased funding. Yet there are only two possible reductions that draw majority support from Republicans – foreign aid (70%) and unemployment assistance (56%). There is no program among the 19 included in the survey that even a plurality of Democrats wants to see decreased.
An earlier report on this survey showed that 70% think it is essential for the president and Congress to pass major legislation to reduce the federal budget deficit this year. That portion of the survey, conducted in collaboration with USA TODAY, also found that more Americans want the focus of deficit-reduction efforts to be mostly on spending reductions rather than tax increases.
Yet the survey also finds higher percentages support increases rather than decreases in spending for education, veterans’ benefits, entitlements and other programs. Six-in-ten (60%) say they would increase education funding, while 53% want funding for veterans’ benefits and services to grow and 41% say the same about spending on Social Security.
Now, many of of our leaders are dumb or ideological extremists, we know this. But there are also quite a few, I’m sure, who know this deficit obsession is bullshit. Some might even read the papers and see what’s happened to Europe. But I guarantee every last one of them can read polls. And even the ones in those safe gerrymandered districts know that cutting the “entitlements” will cause them problems. It’s very unpopular.
In fact, all cutting is unpopular — there’s not one category in the list that gets majority support. And since we don’t actually have to do it — I’d guess it explains why we keep having these stand-offs. This is all a kabuki dance designed to appease the elites. There’s no upside for politicians and no upside for the country! Even Republicans have to see the political pitfalls.
Sadly, we seem to have a president who wants us to eat our spinach and thinks the world will thank him for it later. But he doesn’t have to run for re-election again. (He sure wasn’t very specific about his preferences during his election campaign, was he? Joe Biden’s assurances were just one of his colorful gaffes apparently.) But all these other political leaders do have to run again.
.
Looks like Mitt messed with the wrong guy
by digby
Romney really was exactly what he appeared to be. And it was very foolish indeed not to hide it better:
The bartender who secretly filmed Mitt Romney’s infamous “47 percent” remarks at a Boca Raton fundraiser last May had an idea of what the former Massachusetts governor and GOP presidential nominee was really like. The two had crossed paths before.
The filmmaker tells The Huffington Post that he had actually met Romney at a previous fundraiser, held months before at the home of private equity manager Marc Leder. At that event, which included drinks and a quick speech by the presidential candidate, the would-be filmmaker also tended bar.
He and Romney shared a typical bartender-to-patron moment.
“I handed him a diet Coke with lemon on it,” the filmmaker recalled, “because I was told that that’s what he drank.”
Romney didn’t acknowledge his server at all.
“He took it and turned and didn’t say anything,” the filmmaker explained. “I presented him the exact right drink that he wanted … Had it there, sitting there on a napkin. He took it out of my hand and turned his back without a ‘thank you’ or anything else.”
The little people have cameras and everything. Best if the rich folk think twice.
The filmmaker said that he had worked a party where Bill Clinton was the guest and Clinton had gone out of his way to meet and greet the servers. Smart politicians understand that everybody has a vote. Decent human beings always thank the servers. Romney isn’t either.
Oh, and apparently this fellow, whose name is Scott Prouty, also saved a woman from drowning. Some people just have the luck to be in the right place at the right time and the courage to do what needs to be done. (Some people would call them heroes.) You can read all about him in this piece by David Corn.
.
Liberty loving wingnut “adores” the new pope because lefties object to his ties to death squads
by digby
Bless his heart. He just can’t help it. It’s who he is:
That lefties are accusing the new pope of handing over lefties to the right wing junta for execution makes me adore the new pope.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 13, 2013
He tried to backpedal under tremendous criticism, but it’ really doesn’t work, does it?
So I’ve apparently endorsed death squads b/c I’m laughing at the lefties attacking the new pope for being anti-commie back in the day.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 13, 2013
I dunno. It sure sounded like he thought the handing over of lefties to the right wing junta for execution was adorable. It goes a little bit beyond “anti-communism.”
If you say the leftwing attacks on the new pope make you like him more, you’re endorsing death squads.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 13, 2013
He’s the one who explicitly wrote the words “handing over lefties to the right wing junta for execution”
Lefties upset about the death squads in Argentina back in the day are all about death panels in the United States.
— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) March 13, 2013
Now he’s just getting silly.
The responses are well worth reading if you’re interesting in this nonsense. My favorites are:
@ewerickson Would you feel differently if he used drones?
— Alex Parker (@AlexParkerDC) March 13, 2013
~@ewerickson @wentrogue so wait if you’re ok with the Pope handing leftists over to be executed, why did you guys hate Khomeini??
— ｃｏｎｔｉｎｇｅｎｃｙ ｒａｉｎｂｏｗｓ (@heySMM) March 13, 2013.
The far right
by David Atkins
This won’t come as a big surprise to regular Hullabaloo readers, but it’s worth a reminder as politicians and public policy advocates fret about the lack of bipartisanship in Congress that the hard right is still the biggest obstacle to finding any sort of common ground:
The group is featuring him on a new Web site intended to promote primary challenges next year to Republican incumbents who it believes have compromised on conservative principles. In Mr. Kinzinger’s case, the group said, his failures include going along with the bipartisan agreement in 2011 to raise the federal debt ceiling and voting with Speaker John A. Boehner to ratify the deal at the beginning of this year to raise taxes on the wealthy but avert tax increases for the middle class.
As the Republican Party and the conservative movement continue to debate the lessons of 2012 — a discussion that will get further attention this week at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington — the Club for Growth is playing the role of principle-driven counterweight to Karl Rove, whose political operation has been leading the charge favoring of a more pragmatic view of how Republicans can best regain power.
It is a stance that has made the group and its president, Chris Chocola, beacons of conviction to economic conservatives who think the party’s Congressional leadership has been too willing to make deals and back moderate candidates. But the Club for Growth’s strategy has also exacerbated strains within the party and drawn criticism that ideological conformity is the wrong formula for a party seeking to broaden its appeal in the wake of successive losses in presidential campaigns.
“I have always been concerned with the Club for Growth’s mission,” said Rich Galen, a Republican commentator and former aide to Newt Gingrich and Dan Quayle. “As someone who came to Washington after Watergate when the House G.O.P. could meet in a phone booth, I have always felt it is too hard to elect our folks to put them at risk in primaries.”
To be a broad-based majority party, Mr. Galen said, “you have to accept that the edges will get farther and farther apart and you have to accept that one edge will not agree on all items with the other edge — but they will agree more with that other edge than they would with Democrats.”
To Mr. Chocola, that kind of attitude is exactly the problem.
“I can’t go to the Capitol Hill Club anymore,” he said, referring to the hangout for House Republicans. “But we have a $16 trillion debt because politicians worry about being popular rather than providing the leadership to do the hard things.”
But, the critics say, doesn’t the left do the same thing?
Well, no. There are two big differences.
First, the progressive left doesn’t even begin to have the same influence or funding that the far right does. Even if we wanted to play the Club for Growth’s game, we have neither the power nor the reach to do it. And the media barely notices.
But the second and more important difference is that the far right is advocating deeply unpopular and objectively crazy and immoral policies. The left simply isn’t doing that.
Cutting Social Security is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. Cutting Medicare is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. Giving the ultra-wealthy more tax breaks is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. Invading Iran is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. Refusing gun background checks is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. Perpetuating breaks for the fossil fuel industry is unpopular. It’s also bad public policy. The list is endless.
This is why journalism that prioritizes balance over truth is so harmful. If the press isn’t able to stand up and tell the public who is right and who is wrong, all that’s left is a tug-of-war among seemingly bickering infants. If the press isn’t able to say that one side is utterly bought off by corporate interests, and the other side is mostly bought off by corporate interests but less so, then apathy reigns supreme.
If the press were as interested in bipartisanship as they claim to be, the first step would be to start telling the truth about public policy.
.