Month: April 2013

The first honest cable company

by David Atkins

Hope this makes your Monday morning a little bit brighter. Some dark humor never hurt anyone…

The AARP is not amused

by digby

Here’s how they see the Chained-CPI:

Congress and the Administration are considering, as a means of deficit reduction, a legislative change to the consumer price index – the so-called “chained CPI.” This change would have a particularly negative impact on Social Security benefits – here’s why:

1. Chained CPI compounds over time.
As a result of a chained CPI, there will be a 0.3% annual cut in Social Security cost of living adjustments (COLAs). Since this compounds over time, it would end up cutting the equivalent of one full month of benefits each year from a 92-year-old beneficiary. And it’s not a small cut overall – Social Security loses $112 billion over the next 10 years.

2. The greatest impact will be on the most vulnerable older Americans.
As retirees age, they have less income, fewer financial assets, and are more dependent on Social Security. Specifically, women tend to live longer than men and tend to have lower incomes, so women and poorer households are more at risk of falling into poverty with any cuts to Social Security.

3. Benefits for disabled and retired veterans would be cut.
3.2 million disabled veterans and another 2 million military retirees would see their benefits cut if chained CPI is adopted. Permanently disabled veterans who started receiving disability benefits at age 30 would see their benefits cut by more than $1,400 a year at age 45, $2,300 a year at age 55 and $3,200 a year at age 65.

4. Chained CPI is a less accurate measure of inflation
Since retirees spend much more on medical care than working-age Americans, the current CPI calculations already underreport the rapidly increasing health care costs experienced by seniors. Moving to a chained CPI would exacerbate the gap between formula and actual costs.

5. Social Security does not drive deficits, and should not be cut as part of a budget deal.
Social Security is a separately financed, off-budget program – it is not a driver of deficits in the rest of the budget. Any changes to Social Security should be handled separately, not as part of a budget deal that focuses on near-term savings that harm current retirees.

I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that the right wing versions of AARP are unlikely to take the opposite tack this time.

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George sets a very messy table

by digby

If you happened to miss this utter mess of a discussion on This Week this morning, here it is. Paul Krugman tries to bring it back to Planet Earth over and over again, but they just won’t have it. (And why anyone thinks we need to hear from Greta Van Susteran I don’t know. But if we do, we can certainly see her five nights a week on her own show on Fox News.)

Anyway, here’s Stephanopoulos, Will, Krugman, Van Susteran, Huffington and David Stockman. Oy:

Video and Transcript can be found here.

Krugman has explained why Stockman is nuts a number of times in the past week, including in this column, and these blog posts.

And here’s Neil Irwin with more about Stockman’s dangerous psychosis.

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The Grand Bargain is bad negotiating. It’s bad eleventh dimensional chess, too.

by David Atkins

The two main arguments in defense of the President’s proposal seem to be that:

1) the Grand Bargain proposal is dead on arrival, anyway, so it doesn’t matter except as a way to make Republicans look extreme;

and

2) the Grand Bargain is preferable to the sequester, so Democrats are doing the right thing to accept it as the lesser of two evils.

These are funny arguments for a few reasons, not least of which is that they’re mutually exclusive. If the Grand Bargain has no chance of passage, then it’s not a legitimate play to present an alternative to the sequester. If there is a chance of it passing then it’s a real offer, not a gambit in eleventh dimensional chess.

But let’s take each argument in turn, starting with the latter. Digby already covered the fact that the forced choice between the sequester and the Grand Bargain is an unnecessary illusion. Sequestration is deeply, wildly unpopular with most people. Neither side wants to be left holding the bag in support of it, except in extreme Republican districts.

Cutting Social Security, meanwhile, is also extremely unpopular. The first basic rule of politics is that if one’s opponent wants and demands really unpopular things, the right move is to hammer them on it every single day until election day. The answer isn’t to simply give in because they won’t do anything else, or to offer something equally unpopular in the hopes they will relent. And if Republicans can’t be made to pay a political price in 2014 or 2016 at the latest for supporting radically stupid policies, then the country is in serious trouble, anyway. One has to at least make an attempt to intimidate them by using the threat of electoral defeat. The government is already lurching from crisis to crisis, anyway, unable to pass even basic legislation. What difference would a more aggressive stance from Democrats make to that equation, except to give David Brooks heart palpitations? Little to none.

More importantly, a Grand Bargain is potentially more damaging than sequestration. Sequestration is highly damaging on its face. Republicans hate the dumb, non-targeted cuts to military programs; Democrats hate the dumb, non-targeted cuts to social programs. It’s just bad all around. It was designed to be bad so that politicians would do something else.

But chained CPI is not so obviously awful at first. It’s subtle at first, a cut that gets worse over time. The difference between sequestration and chained CPI is like the difference between throwing a frog in a pot of hot water, and slowly heating the frog’s water to boil. The frog is much likelier to jump out of the first pot than the second.

As to the first argument that the Grand Bargain will fail regardless, so it’s a good way to make Republicans look even more extreme? That’s the so-called “eleventh dimensional chess” argument: the view that Barack Obama is using deft jiu-jitsu to put Republicans in an impossible situation, painting them into a deeper corner of extremism. This fantasy is even more misguided. First, it may not fail. Second, cutting social security is not a great method of endearing oneself to the public. Again, it’s important to remember that the vast majority of the public does not want to cut Social Security. Cutting Social Security doesn’t make a politician look reasonable to the average voter. It makes them look crazy and extremist. Only in the Beltway is cutting Social Security seen as a laudable position.

Telling the public, “I offered to cut Social Security for them, and they wouldn’t even go for that” isn’t a great way to please anyone but David Brooks. The rest of the voting public will throw their hands up in disgust at a political system where both parties allow economy-wrecking billionaire CEOs to walk free while cutting paltry meal assistance for the elderly.

Even beyond that, offering Social Security cuts today becomes the benchmark for negotiations in the future.

Rhetoric itself has consequences, even if it doesn’t lead to legislation. Rhetoric communicates values. Rhetoric creates starting points for new battles ahead. And the rhetoric of cutting Social Security for no good reason is terrible for Democrats politically, and terrible for the country as a matter of public policy.

The Grand Bargain is bad policy. It’s bad negotiating. It’s bad eleventh dimensional chess, too.

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Hello Bobby? Gray Davis here. Care for a little piece of advice?

by digby

Your average voter tends to get a little bit testy when a Governor ostentatiously proposes to raise sales taxes and fees. And I’m going to guess that it irks them even more when he’s simultaneously eliminating income taxes for the wealthy and the corporations:

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, one of the nation’s most prominent Republicans and a possible 2016 presidential candidate, has fallen out of favor with local voters, and his bold plan to scrap the state income tax is running into trouble.

Jindal was re-elected to a second term with two-thirds of the vote in 2011. But his Louisiana approval rating was down to 38 percent in a recent poll, worse than Democratic President Barack Obama in one of the most conservative states.

The poll suggested voters think he is spending more time traveling outside the state and burnishing his credentials for a possible White House run than tending to local matters.

As the Louisiana Legislature prepares to kick off its two-month session on Monday, Jindal’s signature proposal to eliminate the state income tax is facing resistance.

His detailed plan would do away with all state personal and corporate income taxes. It also calls for a 56-percent increase in the state sales tax, a much higher cigarette tax, and the elimination of some tax loopholes to make up the $3 billion shortfall from scrapping the income taxes.

The poor and the middle class don’t like income taxes, to be sure, but they hate sales taxes even more. They don’t like it in the abstract and they sure aren’t going to like it in reality. Just like Gray Davis’ car registration fee, it’s in their faces: going to the store and getting hit with a 56% increase in the sales tax will be right there in black and white on the receipt.

I would have thought any politician worth his salt would have realized this. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. Jindal is doing what all the “big thinkers” on the right say we should be doing. But it looks like he took it for granted that his constituents are all reading Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and understand that he’s just helpin’ out the job creators. I’m going to guess they missed all that.

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What’s wrong with this picture?

by digby

Wow

A concealed handgun training class envisioned by former Navy SEAL Chris Kyle before his death drew hundreds of educators to a Texas school auditorium Saturday.

More than 700 teachers and administrators attended the all-day session on gun laws and safety at Kennedale High School in Dallas-Fort Worth area, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The free class was organized by Dalworthington Gardens Police Chief Bill and Kyle, who was fatally shot at a North Texas shooting range in February.

“It went from 20 to 30 teachers to the more than 700 we have here today. It just exploded with Chris’ involvement,” Dalworthington Gardens Police Chief Bill Waybourn told the paper.

What could go wrong?

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Must be the Mexicans

by digby

I think Rick Perry must be hitting the prescription drugs again:

News reports suggest a white supremacist group called the Aryan Brotherhood may be connected to the murders of Texas District Attorney Mike McLelland, his wife Cynthia Woodward and Assistant District Attorney Mark Hasse.

But when Fox News asked Perry on Wednesday about the murders, he speculated that Mexican drug cartels and border security problems were behind the killings, saying:

We know the drug cartels are very, very active in our country now… I would suggest to you, it is really at the heart of this issue. You secure the border, then it makes it harder for these individuals to have access into this country as well as it addresses this whole issue that’s hanging out on immigration.

This speculation was questioned by some sane people and Perry had to admit that he was pretty much just making shit up.

Under fire for his foundation-less ramblings, Perry walked back the comments the following day at a press conference.

“It is very premature to be making any statements about who may or may not have been involved with this,” Perry said Thursday.

Perry did, however, try to save some face by adding: “There was a report by the Texas Department of Public Safety that said the greatest threat to Texas safety were the drug cartels.”

I still can’t get over the fact that at one time a whole bunch of Very Serious People were promoting this idiot for president — after we’d endured the debacle that was George W. Bush.

I will once again make this proposal: California should agree to never nominate another one of its favorite sons for president if Texas will do the same. Seriously, Californians and Texans need to do this for the sake of the country.

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QOTD: Dan Pfeiffer

by digby

“This chained CPI that’s being referred to here, it is something the president will only accept on two conditions,” he said. “One, it’s part of a balanced package that includes asking — closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthiest, and two, that it has protections for the most vulnerable, including the oldest seniors.”

You’d better hope you have absolutely nothing when you are 90 or this “oldest, most vulnerable” protection won’t help you.(And it will only help you by making up a small amount of what you would have lost, and only for a couple of years.) Even people who bring in as little as $1500 per month will be hit.

Also too: “closing tax loopholes that benefit the wealthiest.”

Hahahahaha. That’s just so cute. Because they’ll never, ever figure out how to create some new ones. Ever.

What a deal!

Update: So, now that the president has made his opening bid, the Republicans are coming back with theirs. Here’s Lindsey Graham this morning:

“The president’s showing a little bit of leg here. He showed some leadership,” Graham said. “That puts the burden on us.”

Graham said that the cuts weren’t deep enough, however, and that he’d like to see “four to five trillion” in cuts over a “30-year window.” He also said he wanted to see the retirement age raised, a plan he referred to as “harmonizing the age for retirement.”

Why not? And if it doesn’t happen in this round, we have a new starting point for future negotiations so that’s good.

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The great escape: The Place Beyond the Pines

It’s official. Ryan Gosling is the McQueen of his generation. He has already aced the Taciturn Pro Driver (in the 2011 film Drivewhich I reviewed here) and now with this weekend’s opening of Blue Valentine director Derek Cianfrance’s latest effort, The Place Beyond the Pines, Gosling can add the Taciturn Pro Biker to his Steve cred. And judging from the chorus of dreamy sighs that spontaneously erupted all about the auditorium when his character first appeared onscreen, perhaps “taciturn, ripped and tattooed” would be a more apt description of Luke Glanton, a carny who makes his living charging around the ‘cage of death’ on his motorcycle. When we meet him, the carnival is nearing the end of a run in Schenectady. Killing time between performances, Luke runs into Romina (Eva Mendes) a woman he had a fling with the previous time the carnival blew through town.

Romina is reticent to re-connect with the flighty Luke, for two major reasons: 1) The new man in her life (Mahershala Ali), and 2) A now 1-year old bundle of joy named Jason that resulted from the aforementioned fling. She doesn’t tell Luke about item #2, but he soon finds out anyway. Now, Luke is determined to “do the right thing” and provide for his son. He promptly quits the carnival gig, accepts a job offer from a shady auto repair shop owner (Ben Mendelsohn) and sets about ingratiating himself back into Romina’s life (choosing to ignore that whole live-in boyfriend thing). However, minimum wage isn’t fitting in with Luke’s timetable. In lieu of a raise, his boss helpfully suggests that he try robbing a few banks for supplemental income (a sideline that the auto shop owner himself has dabbled in on occasion). With his special skill sets, Luke discovers that he has a knack; soon earning himself a nickname in the local media as “The Moto-Bandit”.

Luke’s reckless approach to his newfound criminal career puts him on a karmic path with that of another young father with an infant son, a rookie cop named Avery Cross (Bradley Cooper), and it is at this point that the film takes some unexpected turns. Without giving too much away, I’ll just reveal that that Luke’s story is but a prologue for what evolves into a more sprawling, multi-generational tale in the Rich Man, Poor Man vein. It can also be viewed as a three-part character study, with Officer Cross’s story taking up the middle third, culminating with a flash-forward 15 years down the road involving a tenuous relationship that develops between the now high-school-aged sons of the two men (Dane DeHaan as the older Jason and Emory Cohen as AJ Cross). There’s also a noirish subplot involving police corruption that echoes strongly of James Mangold’s Cop Land; in fact one of that film’s stars, Ray Liotta, is practically reprising his role here (Hmmm. How many times has Liotta played that character? I believe I have lost count).

While it’s tempting to label Cianfrance’s screenplay (co-written with Ben Coccio and Darius Marder) as too sprawling at times (tossing everything into the mix…from classic film noir cycle tropes to Sirkian subtexts) he earns bonus points for coaxing uniformly excellent performances from the cast (particularly from Gosling, Cooper and the Brando-esque young Cohen), and for keeping true to its central themes: family legacies, the sins of the fathers, and the never-changing machinations of American small town politics.

Saturday Night at the Movies review archives

Headache inducing bizarroworld propaganda

by digby

This makes my head hurt:

In a mystifying attempt to turn the tables on science itself, Fox News is trying to reclaim the term “climate deniers” to refer to people who accept the preponderance of evidence confirming manmade climate change and support action to limit its impacts.

On Friday’s edition of Fox & Friends, co-host Steve Doocy promoted National Review Editor Rich Lowry’s attempts to paint “advocates of limits on carbon emissions” as “deniers.” Doocy proclaimed that based on our carbon emissions “you would think it would be 900 degrees right now on planet Earth, but instead over the past 15 years or so, we have been flat temperature-wise”:

So now climate “deniers” are people who deny that there is no climate crisis? Will this work? Who knows? But Rich Lowry is out there trying:

The new climate deniers are the liberals who, despite their obsession with climate change, have managed to miss the biggest story in climate science, which is that there hasn’t been any global warming for about a decade and a half.

I don’t have the energy to unpack that in any detail, but you can click the link and it’s all there. Meanwhile, this spells out the idiocy quite well:

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