Month: April 2013

What if you don’t have rich relatives?

by digby

… or any close family at all?

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) responded to criticism of an email she sent describing her brother David, who counts on Social Security for income, saying “not everyone has a sister who can help.”

The email, which was sent on Wednesday, was a response to President Barack Obama’s plan to cut Social Security benefits. Warren said she was “shocked to hear” of Obama’s plan before describing how her brother David lives on the $13,200 per year he receives in Social Security benefits.

A reporter from Boston’s FOX 25 questioned Warren on the email, asking the senator why she didn’t help her brother.

“I do help him. This is a question about how much,” Warren said. “He was worked for 40 years and paid into this system and that’s all the money he has to live on. And there are literally millions of people around the country for whom that is the case.”

Warren also emphasized that the email was not just about her brother, but about all Americans who rely on Social Security benefits to get by.

“Let’s be clear about this. Not everyone has a sister who can help,” Warren said. “This is about people who work all their lives and all they’ve got at the end is their social security.”

Sunday Funny

by digby

Actually, not so funny …

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Saturday Night at the Movies

Thatcher’s relentless emphasis on money and management and marketing illuminated the value of things that couldn’t be quantified, and her moronic mantra “there’s no such thing as society” gave the humanitarian and moral a conspicuous importance. So, although I didn’t think it at the time, it’s possible that Thatcher gave the arts a shot in the arm.

Who could have predicted?

by digby

Oh heck, looks like we lost our moral authority after all:

A day after the United States imposed sanctions on Russians accused of rights violations, Moscow said Saturday that it could not “leave this open blackmail without response” and published a list of 18 current and former American officials who will now be barred from entry to Russia.

The list is headed by four men who Russia’s Foreign Ministry says are responsible for “the legalization of torture” and “unlimited detention”: David Addington, who served as chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney and provided legal support for interrogation policies; John Yoo, a high-ranking Bush administration lawyer who wrote several major opinions on torture; and Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller and Rear Adm. Jeffrey Harbeson, each of whom commanded detention operations in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

What did they expect?

I’m especially glad to see the artillery officer turned prison warden Geoffrey D Miller included. Or as I used to call him back in my more freewheeling blogging days, General Geoffrey D. Ripper.

Speaking of General Ripper and Admiral Harbeson, I couldn’t help but think about then when I read this piece of lazy tripe earlier today. I urge you to read the whole thing, it’s just astonishingly idiotic, but I thought I would highlight this particular passage:

Suicide is another effective way of getting media attention, and there remains a rumor among detainees that three simultaneous suicides would force the Pentagon to close Guantanamo — despite three suicides already happening in 2006.

Right. It’s not possible that being innocent, knowing they know you’re innocent and being locked up basically forever would make a person suicidal. It must be a plot to embarrass the United States.

The US Government has always had a hard time rationalizing the horrifying despair of the prisoners in its notorious prison camp and they have come up with a number of different approaches. This one is only slightly less fatuous than one I wrote about a number of times back in 2006.

Wednesday, September 27, 2006

Mad Hatter 

by digby


I wrote a post a couple of days ago quoting Admiral Henry Harris, the commander of Guantanamo saying there are no innocent men imprisoned there and that those who committed suicide were committing an “act of asymmetric warfare waged against us.” It struck me as absurd that hanging yourself in your cage could be considered an act of war and I thought this guy was likely taking the notion of “suiciders” to some ridiculous conclusion.  

But I came upon another quote from him saying something even more absurd:

Rear Admiral Harris is adamant that the people in his care are well looked after and are enemies of the United States. 

He told me they use any weapon they can – including their own urine and faeces – to continue to wage war on the United States.

Where do they find these nutballs to send down there to Guantanamo? First Geoffrey Miller and now this kook. Apparently he believes that any act of resistance by these people who are imprisoned in cages is an act of war.  

It seems to me that far too many Americans have worked themselves into some sort of hysteria, including this loon running Gitmo. When heavily guarded people in cages throwing feces is considered assymetrical warfare, we have gone down the rabbit hole. (Either that or a couple of toddlers I know are in training to be the next Osama bin Laden.) Does this man think he’s actually fighting terrorists down there?  

The men being held in Guantanamo might have been terrorists, but when they are under the total control of the most powerful military in the world they are most definitely not combatants, they are prisoners. It’s not an act of war to dislike your jailers or resist your imprisonment. That’s absurd.  

These people need to get a grip before they give themselves heart attacks from irrational fear. Those prisoners are just human beings not aliens from outer space. 

And now we know that almost all of them were innocent.

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David Sirota points out here that the Brookings Institution has launched something called “The Hamilton Project” led by Robert Rubin.

Looking at it, you can tell right away who the Hamilton Project is for: Wall Street Democrats. Or as I like to call them, “The Party of Gay Investment Bankers and Corporate Lawyers Whose Grandfathers Worked in the Roosevelt Administration.” (In fact, by my count, its advisory council includes twelve investment bankers.) They’re people who should naturally be Republicans, but just can’t bear having to hang out with Pat Robertson.

The funny thing is, they’re apparently desperate to make this clear. Why? BECAUSE THEY’RE CALLING THEMSELVES “THE HAMILTON PROJECT.”

Let’s ask the Democratic Party’s own website to explain the significance of this:

Thomas Jefferson founded the Democratic Party in 1792 as a congressional caucus to fight for the Bill of Rights and against the elitist Federalist Party.

The “elitist Federalist Party,” of course, was founded by Jefferson’s chief rival Hamilton.

Moreover, if you only take one thing away from seventh-grade history, it’s that Jefferson was the small-d democrat, while Hamilton famously exclaimed “The People!—The People is a Great Beast!” Hopefully that can be used as the title for all the Hamilton Project’s proposals for free trade, balanced budgets and school vouchers:

“The People is a Great Beast!”: A Plan for Economic Prosperity for 21st Century America

It’s not that I don’t feel for Robert Rubin & co. Times are tough for rich people who aren’t completely insane. They understand the insane rich are ascendant and well on their way to destroying everything.
In fact, this is probably the longest-running debate in American history:

Insane Rich: Let’s kill everyone and take their money! 

Non-Insane Rich: I like the way you think. I really do. But if we keep them alive and working for us, we’ll make even more money in the long run. 

Insane Rich: You communist!

Still, it might be nice if the Democratic party didn’t get all its ideas from people who hate Democrats. But don’t get your hopes up. Here’s the one senator who spoke at the Hamilton Project launch:

You can see the whole speech at the link just above the Youtube.

h/t to GP at Americablog who also found this interesting quote from Politico in 2010:

The [Hamilton Project’s] research, so far, would be familiar to students of the first Clinton administration: creative, wonky proposals for softening the impact of globalization without interfering with international trade, most of them crafted with an eye to fiscal austerity and a balanced budget.

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Why aren’t they scared of blowback?

by digby

There’s a lot of talk about what the political benefits of cutting the “entitlements” are with many of the Democratic elites taking the position that the country will see them as being “the grown-ups” and reward democrats for their common sense at the ballot box.  Others suspect that this is a fool’s game that will blow back on Democrats at the ballot box when Republicans cynically use it against them and the people blame for failing to protect their vital interests.

I think this little passage from a few weeks ago reveals the White House political calculations.  This was in reference to the Medicare changes:

Proponents, including some in the administration, acknowledge the political risks of increasing most beneficiaries’ costs, even in exchange for capping their total costs, as in cases of catastrophic illness. A 1988 law protecting against catastrophic costs caused such an outcry among older Americans, who faced an extra tax, that Congress quickly repealed it.

But administration officials say the 1988 law affected current beneficiaries, while Mr. Obama would apply any changes only to people becoming eligible for Medicare after 2016.

Uhm, so do you suppose that the administration thinks that people in 2016 won’t be upset about this? It’s only three and a half years away. But then again, that will be the last year of the Obama administration at which point he will go off into the sunset and burnish his legacy while the people take out their frustrations on the poor Democrats who are running for office that year. I’m hard pressed to see any other reason for that rationale.

It’s also important to point out that even when seniors aren’t personally affected by these cuts, they are distraught at the idea that their children and grandchildren won’t be able to depend on them too:

In the wake of the Great Recession, older Americans, especially in middle-income and lower-income brackets, are relying on these programs more than ever. A July poll by AARP of voters over age 50 found that 76 percent with annual income below $50,000 will rely more heavily on Social Security and Medicare in retirement than they had previously planned.

About 65 percent of Americans over 50 oppose changing Social Security or Medicare to help reduce the federal deficit – much higher than any other age group, according to polling by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which has surveyed Americans extensively on entitlement programs.

Older people’s direct experience with both programs helps explain the strong support, according to Michael Dimock, Pew’s associate director of research. But older generations also tend to think about Social Security and Medicare in terms of their children and grandchildren.

“Most older people who get involved in protecting Social Security will tell you they want to make sure it’s there for their children and grandchildren,” said Donna Butts, executive director of advocacy and public policy group Generations United.

“They may already be receiving it, so any changes won’t impact them,” she said. “But they feel strongly about the system.”

I can bear this out. When I was younger I certainly supported Social Security. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized much more personally just how important this program is, not just for my own looming elder years but having dealt with aging parents. You often don’t see how vital it is until you deal with old people — or get old yourself. I guarantee you that the vast majority of seniors are not just care about getting their check. It’s way bigger than that.

Especially now:

Moreover, grandparents’ concerns extend well beyond Social Security and Medicare. AARP’s most recent survey of grandparents found a high level of worry about the future facing their children and grandchildren.

And grandparents who can afford it are stepping up their support for their grandchildren. The survey showed 53 percent were helping to pay for education, 23 percent for medical and dental services, and 37 percent for everyday living expenses.

“Seniors sometimes are portrayed as just being in it for themselves,” says Amy Goyer, an expert on multigenerational and family issues at AARP. “But time after time, that’s not what our research shows.”

This is the real difference between the generations on this:

“The biggest difference between young and old on Medicare and Social Security is their impression of how well these systems work,” Pew’s Dimock says. “It isn’t about altruism or selfishness – seniors like Medicare and Social Security because they see the reality of how they work. Many younger people haven’t had those experiences.”

Pew data shows that 57 percent of Americans over age 65 think Social Security does an excellent or good job serving the people it covers, and 61 percent have similar attitudes about Medicare. A majority of younger people give both programs poor marks.

Why would they know about this? They’re living in a world full of the future, where the last thing they should think about is their old age. They don’t know that these programs work because they’re so distant from them. (And they do support them nonetheless, it’s just more abstract.) But the people who are in the last third of their lives and deal with this every day know first hand how important and efficient these programs are and want to protect them for their kids and grandkids. You can’t fool them about that. Indeed, the whole idea that you can buy them off by patting them on the head and saying “you needn’t worry about your own check dear, we’re only going to cut off your family not you” is fatuous and insulting. Elders are proud of what these programs have accomplished and they want them to survive for their children. In many cases, it’s all they have to leave behind.

It didn’t work in 1988 or in 2005 when George W Bush tried it and it’s unlikely to work today. The best the Obama administration can hope for is that they get it in under the wire while the harshest blowback happens to the Democratic fools who have to face voters in the future.

Update: This spells trouble too

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Why Austerity?  Cui bono?

by digby

I think this is really the question of the ages, for which we’re all trying to find an adequate answer. This discussion on All In with Chris Hayes and the accompanying blog post by Ned Resnikoff offers the most plausible explanations to me:

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Part of the reason might be pure pseudo-religious fervor in the virtue of austerity. British philosopher A.C. Grayling—ironically, a popularizer of secular humanism—hints at the link between economic austerity and old-fashioned Protestant virtue when he applauds shared sacrifice and writes, “The austerity years of the second world war and its aftermath were surprisingly good for people; calorie restriction meant flat tummies and robust health, at least for those not smoking the lethal cigarettes of the day.” 

Of course, not everyone is sharing in the sacrifice and enjoying post-prosperity svelteness. As Radhika Balakrishnan, executive director for Rutgers’ Center for Women’s Global Leadership, pointed out on Thursday’s All In, the financial sector is doing better than ever under austerity.

“What we’re seeing is the financialization of the economy,” she said. “The economy is run by finance capital. It is not manufacturing, not working class unionized jobs that actually give people money to be able to buy things, but it’s finance capital. And profit is at an all-time high.” 

This suggests another, even greater, factor driving austerity: Finance capital is not only insulated from the consequences, but stands to reap massive rewards. In Europe, for example, the ECB is using austerity to pressure the Greek government into removing labor market controls and break the country’s labor unions. They also demanded that the country institute a six-day work week. Such “reforms” open the door for international companies to provide low-wage, precarious jobs to the Greek people and extract substantial profits from their labor. 

In the United States, austerity has resulted in mass public sector firings, to the detriment of public sector unions. The public sector is, of course, the last real citadel for organized labor in the United States, and by launching a prolonged assault on that citadel, the American right has successfully chipped away at what remains of the country’s organized left wing. In the place of public services and public employment, state and local governments have been forced to turn to private investment. 

No more so has this process been more extreme than in Michigan, where non-elected Emergency Managers have launched an orgy of privatization, sometimes going so far as to put entire school districts in private hands.

From the perspective of the financial industry and major private investors, austerity has in fact been a rousing success. As a result, it is likely to continue in both Europe and the United States for some years to come.

It is, in other words, disaster capitalism in action.

It’s hard to know if this is something our elites consciously know or if they have convinced themselves that this is virtuous on the merits. But in the end, the only important question is cui bono? It’s clear it isn’t the people.

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Destroying the Democratic Party from the ground up

by David Atkins

Greg Diamond, vice chair of a county Democratic Party in California, writes of the Grand Bargain:

As one of four Vice Chairs of a county Democratic Party serving over 3 million residents, I suppose that it will fall upon people like me to sell the $hit that President Obama has proposed to over half a million voters in my region of the county. I probably can’t sell them on the notion that this $hit — reducing the amount of money that recipients of Social Security will receive compared to its purchasing power — is actually a good thing, but I will be asked to sell them, at least, on the idea that this $hit doesn’t matter nearly as much as they might think it does, compared to the good things that President Obama has done.

It doesn’t seem to be working. In fact, I don’t think it’s going to work at all. However big or small one can argue that it really is, this $hit is looming large in people’s minds — and the Republicans have already shown that they’re going to jump on this $hit with both feet. Symbolically, it’s not the size of the $hit that matters so much to voters, but the fact that it’s there at all — in a place where they never expected to see it, least of all from Democrats. This is the kind of $hit that people are going to remember — the kind of $hit that can really bring us down in 2014.

I want to be a good Democrat, but I just don’t think that I can sell this $hit to voters at all.

As a county Dem party chair and state executive board member, I wholeheartedly agree.

The California Democratic Party is a bastion of sanity in all this, and getting better. A couple of excellent progressive things happened at our convention this weekend so far, and I’ll have a wrap of everything once it’s over.

But Democratic clubs and county committees are where the rubber hits the road in many ways. We’re the ones who have to interface with Democratic and progressive voters, and try to keep them engaged and aware of the political stakes.

How are we supposed to sell this? What am I supposed to tell an infrequent 70-year-old voter is the reason to get out to the polls and elect Democrats in 2014? That we’re great on social issues? What script am I supposed to write for my phonebankers and precinct walkers? How am I supposed to sell this?

And what am I doing devoting so much free labor to the cause, if this is how it is repaid?

Like I said, I’m in California, which is an entirely different animal. I’m proud to be a California Democrat, and don’t consider myself of the same New Democrat breed they concoct in D.C. I know that if we get universal healthcare and social insurance, it will come from the more progressive states, not from the national capital. I have hope that California can take the progressive lead.

Even so, it’s tough. And God help the purple and red state and county Democrats who have to figure out some way of answering for all this to the voters.

At a certain point, there just won’t be any foot soldiers left. Money can be a lot of things, but it can’t buy the enthusiasm of grassroots supporters, or the love of voters on the fence.

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A balanced approach

by digby

I was struck by a quote included in this excellent Salon article from earlier this week about the president’s long term quest for a grand bargain on deficit reduction. It’s from July of 2011:

THE PRESIDENT: I’m not going to get into specifics. As I said, Jake, everything that you mentioned are things that we have discussed. But what I’m not going to do is to ask for even — well, let me put it this way: If you’re a senior citizen, and a modification potentially costs you a hundred or two hundred bucks a year more, or even if it’s not affecting current beneficiaries, somebody who’s 40 today 20 years from now is going to end up having to pay a little bit more.

The least I can do is to say that people who are making a million dollars or more have to do something as well. And that’s the kind of tradeoff, that’s the kind of balanced approach and shared sacrifice that I think most Americans agree needs to happen.

The “modification” turns out to be more than two hundred bucks a year — and keep in mind that’s out of about 15 thousand total, so it’ not tip money. It is a real sacrifice from people who are already living from hand to mouth.

But it’s the second half that really gets me and always has — the idea that asking wealthy people to pay some more in taxes is somehow equivalent to taking money out of the hands of people who have basically nothing. It’s in no way equivalent. Giving up a thousand dollars a year really is a sacrifice — it’s a painful reduction in their ability to live in dignity. Asking a millionaire to pay a few thousand more in taxes is completely meaningless. It’s not a “sacrifice” its a tip.

I cannot understand why so many Americans accept this formula. No, cutting the meager benefits of people who are barely getting by is simply not “balanced” by taxing millionaires. If it is, the whole concept of shared sacrifice is turned on its head.

Anyway, we’ve featured this video on the blog before, but I think it’s a good idea to feature it again in this context:

Ask yourself if it makes sense to ask some of the most vulnerable populations, people who are living on very little money, to cut back in exchange for something from people whose accountants will barely even notice. It’s a very sad comment on our values and priorities.

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You WILL be a gun owner

by digby

You have to hand it to the right wing. They never, ever back off. While the feds are using every ounce of muscle they have to get a tepid background check bill passed, in the states they’re proposing laws to coerce people to allow guns in their places of business:

A bill introduced by Missouri state Rep. Caleb Jones (R) would subject business owners who post “no guns” signs to potentially costly lawsuits, while immunizing businesses that allow guns from suits resulting from those guns:

1. Any private business that displays signage which prohibits public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be liable for any injury or damages incurred by such public invitees, business visitors, and employees as a result of such prohibition if such public invitee, business visitor, or employee establishes by a preponderance of evidence that having access to a firearm may have prevented his or her injury or damage.

2. Any private business that does not prohibit public invitees, business visitors, and employees from carrying a concealed weapon on the premises owned or occupied by such private business shall be immune from any liability arising from its decision to permit concealed weapons to be carried on business premises.

Basically, any yahoo who says he wouldn’t have lost his front teeth in a drunken barfight if he could have opened fire on everybody in the room now has standing to sue the bar owner for not allowing him to pack heat inside his establishment.

I’m going to guess that we’re going to see more of these mandatory gun ownership laws crop up all over the country:

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