Month: October 2013

Thanks Dick

by digby

So Dick Durbin once again declared that Democrats won’t trade defense cuts for “entitlement” cuts. That’s nice. But check out what he did say:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) on Sunday opened the door to Social Security cuts as part of a budget deal with congressional Republicans. But Durbin pushed back against GOP calls for entitlement cuts as the negotiating price to curb or extinguish the economically damaging sequester cuts.

“If this is the bargain that the Republicans are now pushing for, that we have to cut Medicare to avoid cuts at the Department of Defense, they need to take a step back,” Durbin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Congress is currently negotiating a new budget, with a December deadline. The talks were mandated by last week’s deal to raise the debt ceiling and end the government shutdown.

Also speaking on “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) explicitly offered up trading some of the short-term cuts mandated by the Budget Control Act, known as the sequester, for long-term Social Security and Medicare cuts. He argued that Republicans had the tactical advantage on such an exchange.

“If you’re in a divided government and you’re arguing against the law, you’re at a disadvantage,” Blunt said, noting the failed GOP effort to defund Obamacare that resulted in a government shutdown. “The Budget Control Act is the only thing we’ve found that actually controls spending.”

Blunt said that if Democrats aren’t willing to negotiate over “entitlement savings versus some additional spending,” to ease the sequester, then Democrats will have to live with the sequester cuts.

Durbin said that Republicans had to put tax revenue on the table to get entitlement cuts. Fox host Chris Wallace noted that Durbin has previously supported entitlement cuts, and asked why Republicans should have to give up tax increases to get something that many Democrats support. President Barack Obama has repeatedly endorsed Social Security cuts as part of budget deals, and Durbin acknowledged that he did support Social Security reforms.

“Social Security is gonna run out of money in 20 years,” Durbin said. “The Baby Boom generation is gonna blow away our future. We don’t wanna see that happen.”

Gee, Dick, way to stoke generational warfare there. Thanks a lot. Pete Peterson’s wrecking crew couldn’t have said it better.

Needless to say, it’s bullshit:

Social Security will not run out of money in 20 years. The program currently enjoys a surplus of more than $2 trillion. Social Security will, however, be unable to pay all benefits at current levels if nothing is changed. If a 25 percent benefit cut were implemented in 20 years, the program would be solvent into the 2080s.

Oh hell, if that’s the case, let’s cut it 20 years in advance so we can pretend to be grown-ups shall we? After all there’s nothing we could possibly do to fix it except teach 80 year old ladies a well deserved lesson in how to shop for cheap food more efficiently.

By the way, here’s a reminder about how good these long term projections have turned out to be:

The good news is that I’m reliably informed by liberals everywhere that despite the nonstop talk about cutting entitlements ever since the shutdown ended, we need not worry our pretty little heads because the Democrats will never give in on their “revenue” requirement (what ever that means) and the Republicans will never agree to any form of revenue. So we’re home free.

From Gene Sperling to Bob Woodward on Feb. 22, 2013

But I do truly believe you should rethink your comment about saying saying that Potus asking for revenues is moving the goal post. I know you may not believe this, but as a friend, I think you will regret staking out that claim. The idea that the sequester was to force both sides to go back to try at a big or grand barain with a mix of entitlements and revenues (even if there were serious disagreements on composition) was part of the DNA of the thing from the start. It was an accepted part of the understanding — from the start. Really. It was assumed by the Rs on the Supercommittee that came right after: it was assumed in the November-December 2012 negotiations. There may have been big disagreements over rates and ratios — but that it was supposed to be replaced by entitlements and revenues of some form is not controversial. (Indeed, the discretionary savings amount from the Boehner-Obama negotiations were locked in in BCA: the sequester was just designed to force all back to table on entitlements and revenues.)

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It’s not like they’ve been hiding it

by digby

Blitzer: Let me ask you this hypothetical question. A healthy, 30-year-old man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, “You know what, I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it.” Something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who’s going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example?

Paul: In a society that you accept welfare-ism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of it.

Blitzer: Well, what do you want?

Paul: He should do whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would be have a major medical policy. But not forced—

Blitzer: But he doesn’t have that. And he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

Paul: That’s what freedom is all about. Taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare to take care of everybody.

Blitzer: But congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

Crowd: [Yeah! Yeah! Laughs.]

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It could work out OK for the GOP–but it probably won’t

by David Atkins

A little reminder from the New York Times:

“It’s civil war in the G.O.P.,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative warrior who helped invent the political direct mail business.

The moment draws comparisons to some of the biggest fights of recent Republican Party history — the 1976 clash between the insurgent faction of activists who supported Ronald Reagan for president that year and the moderate party leaders who stuck by President Gerald R. Ford, and the split between the conservative Goldwater and moderate Rockefeller factions in 1964.

Some optimistic Republicans note that both of those campaigns planted the seeds for the conservative movement’s greatest success: Reagan’s 1980 election and two terms as president.

“The business community thought the supply-siders were nuts, and the country club Republicans thought the social conservatives scary,” William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard, said of those squabbles. “That all worked out O.K.”

From one perspective that is certainly true. While liberals have been winning the social wars, the economic battles have been shifting farther and farther to the right. Democrats certainly shouldn’t be crowing too early.

But I would be remiss not to point out that there is a huge difference between 1964 or 1980 and today: Republicans were able to cynically capitalize on resentment against the civil rights and environmental movements in an opportunistic ploy of breathtaking evil. The entirety of the politics of the last 50 years has been about little else.

At no point in the last 50 years was lowering the taxes on the wealthy a popular move, nor was empowering corporations over people. But for the last many decades Republicans had an ace up their sleeve. It turned out that a majority voters were willing to tolerate an untold host of otherwise unpopular policies benefiting the plutocratic class, as long as the Republican Party (and a significant chunk of Democrats as well) would promise to put the civil rights genie back in the bottle. For a silent majority of the country, loose women and uppity minorities were more scary than rich fat cats. That remained true from 1968 right up to just a few years ago.

It may be that conservatives can bounce back from this civil war to shine even more brightly and even more conservatively than before, as they have done in the past. But I don’t think so.

The Objectivist plutocratic policies of the last 50 years never were popular. A majority of the country never really bought into supply side economics. Reagan won elections not by convincing the public that giving lots of money to rich people would help the economy, but by promising to kick the butts of commies, feminists and welfare queens. The key insight of What’s the Matter with Kansas is that Kansans aren’t really voting to cut Charles Koch’s taxes: they’re voting to poke fingers in the eyes the of social engineering coastal liberals they resent.

The challenge for the GOP, of course, is that racism and sexism no longer have the electoral zing they used to. Many of the voters most animated by those issues are aging out of the electorate, and a much more inclusive and diverse new generation is replacing them.

All that’s left now is an appeal to literally the least popular parts of the conservative agenda–the ones that were previously quietly passed while voters were distracted by the bright shiny objects. The last Republican presidential candidate to win the popular vote didn’t do so because voters liked his economic policies, but because he promised to be tougher against Muslims after 9/11. Republicans have always won on prejudice, not on economics.

Will the Republican Party manage to rise from the fires of its civil war with a new Objectivist image and dominate the electorate? Maybe. But I highly doubt it. That’s not what worked for them in 1964 or 1980. Prejudice did. And unfortunately for them, the country’s demographics are working against them this time around.

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Dog Day Afternoon – “Attica! Attica!” As far as oppressively humid hostage dramas go, this 1975 “true crime” classic from Sidney Lumet easily out-sops the competition. The air conditioning may be off, but Al Pacino is definitely “on” in his absolutely brilliant portrayal of John Wojtowicz (“Sonny Wortzik” in the film), whose botched attempt to rob a Brooklyn bank turned into a dangerous hostage crisis and a twisted media circus (the desperate Wojtowicz was trying to finance his lover’s sex-change operation). Even though he had already done the first two Godfather films, this was the performance that put Pacino on the map. John Cazale is both scary and heartbreaking in his role as Sonny’s dim-witted partner. Keep an eye out for Chris Sarandon’s memorable cameo. Frank Pierson’s exemplary screenplay was based on articles by P.F. Kluge and Thomas Moore.

Virtual secessionism

by digby

This piece by Garry Wills discusses the various ways in which the Republicans are finding ways to secede from America, just as they did once before:

Just as the Old South compelled the national party to shelter its extremism, today’s Tea Party leaders make Republicans toe their line. Most Republicans do not think laws invalid because the president is a foreign-born Muslim with a socialist agenda. But they do not renounce, or even criticize, their partners who think that. The rare Republican who dares criticize a Rush Limbaugh is quickly made to repent and apologize. John Boehner holds the nation hostage because the Tea Party holds him hostage. The problem with modern Republicans is not fanaticism in the few but cowardice in the many, who let their fellows live in virtual secession from laws they disagree with.

And this piece by Ed Kilgore, defines their modern identity:

It’s not just that these culturally threatened folk embrace their politics like it’s a religion. The actual religious outlook many of them espouse—whether they are conservative fundamentalist Protestants or neo-ultramontane Catholics—has imported secular political perspectives into their faith. They’ve managed to identify obedience to God with the restoration of pre-mid-twentieth-century culture and economics, and consequently, tend to look at themselves as the contemporary equivalents of the Old Testament prophets calling a wicked society to account before all hell literally breaks loose. So their politics reinforces their religion and vice-versa, and yes, the Republican Party, like the squishy mainline Protestant Churches and lenient do-gooder Catholic priests, are generally within crisis-distance of being viewed as objectively belonging to enemy ranks.

I’ve been observing this strain in American life for a long time and I’ve instinctively known that it was potent and growing in strength over the past couple of decades. But these two fellows are experts on this phenomenon and well worth paying attention to if you want to understand this dynamic. It’s not new, but it does evolve.

* link fixed

State sabotage

by digby

One of the most effective acts of Obamacare sabotage was for so many states to  “opt out” of creating their own exchanges, thus forcing the Feds to pick up the slack. Since the federal government offered up large sums to help them set up their own, it was assumed they’s be happy to create some state government jobs and allow their own people to benefit.  But no, they sent the money back.   And the result is an overwhelmed and poorly designed system that was never intended to serve so many.  Three points to the saboteurs.

Still, it’s important to note that the laboratories of democracy that did their job as intended are doing better. Jonathan Cohn surveyed the available information:

Obamacare’s architects assumed that most states would opt to run their own marketplaces, with federal officials running only a few. The assumption proved wrong: Pretty much any state with a Republican governor or Republican legislative control said no, adding to the administrative burden on HHS. But 14 states plus the District of Columbia are managing their own markets. Mostly it’s places you would expect—progressive outposts like California, Washington, and New York—where Obama and his policies are most popular. But Kentucky, where a Democratic governor and group of dedicated officials have worked diligently to deliver the law’s benefits, is also on the list.

Some of these states are still having major problems: Hawaii, which relied on the same contractor as HHS, seems to be in the worst shape. But the websites in other states are now running and, while it’s difficult to get a precise sense of how each one is operating, most appear to be functioning well. They may have more traditional glitches, like random error messages or delays in certain features. (California had to hold off introducing a tool that allows people to check provider networks online.) And most had trouble on the first day or two. But since that time they’ve been running more smoothly.

One of those states is Connecticut, where Kevin Counihan, chief executive of Connecticut’s health marketplace, told me last week that the system has been working well and consistently since Tuesday afternoon on October 1. “We were down from 12:30 until 2 that day, for a fix, but we’ve had no problems since. We are able to process applications through enrollment and we don’t have issues with wait time.” 

As a result, Obamacare in these places seems to be working more or less like it’s supposed to work. Consumers are getting opportunities they never had before—to shop for insurance plans, each one with clearly defined benefits that make true comparisons possible, and to receive substantial financial assistance that provides many with thousands of dollars a year in assistance. And, from the looks of things, people are taking advantage of it. The Advisory Board, which is tracking state figures, says that about 180,000 have completed applications for insurance and, of those, 50,000 have enrolled.

Those figures don’t say much about whether Obamacare in these states will meet goals for enrollment. It’s way, way too early to make that judgment. But the figures suggest that the technology in these places works. And people using the sites say the same thing. “The system is working well—we can’t complain,” Licelot Miguel, a navigator in New York, told Dwyer. (Miguel emphasized that she was speaking for herself, not on behalf of her organization.) The first day was tough, Miguel said: It seems some browsers weren’t working. But now the slowdowns tend to be human rather than technological, Miguel said, because people need 15 or 20 minutes to choose the right plan. “When you get through to the end, it’s like oooooh. People get excited.”

Cohn does not excuse the federal system problems by any means. In fact, he’s ruthlessly critical. But in my mind, the blame for this failure lies equally with the disgusting GOP politicians who would rather see their own constituents die in the street than help make health insurance affordable and available to them. After all, according to their own philosophy the smaller scale of 50 individual states attempting a new program is automatically superior. (Indeed, the Democrats who designed the system bought that line of logic and assumed this would be a big selling point.) So they did it with the intention of making the federal system fail. That’s sabotage.

Update: The government now estimates that 476,000 people have signed up through the federal and state exchanges.

QOTD: Rand Paul

by digby

“I never, ever cheated. I don’t condone cheating. But I would sometimes spread misinformation. This is a great tactic. Misinformation can be very important.”

This is also known as Republican dirty tricks. Underneath his tea swilling, Aqua Buddha exterior, he’s a very traditional guy.

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Job one for the plutocrats: destroy the medicaid expansion

by digby

You’ll recall in the recent government shutdown that the Koch brothers went out of their way to say they were not behind efforts to defund Obamacare. And they were right.  They have a different strategy altogether: screwing the poor, first and foremost:

Here in Virginia’s capital, conservative activists are pursuing a hardball campaign as they chart an alternative path to undoing “Obamacare” — through the states.

One leading target is Emmett W. Hanger Jr., a Republican state senator from the deeply conservative Shenandoah Valley, who prides himself on “going against the grain.” As chairman of a commission weighing one of the thorniest issues in Virginia politics, whether to expand Medicaid under Mr. Obama’s Affordable Care Act, he is feeling heat from the Republican right.

His openness to expansion has aroused the ire of Americans for Prosperity, the conservative advocacy group backed by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. Dressed in emerald green T-shirts bearing the slogan “Economic Freedom in Action!” its members are waging what the senator calls “an attempt to intimidate me” in Richmond and at home.

They have phoned his constituents, distributed leaflets and knocked on 2,000 doors in his rural district. When the Republican town committee met Monday night in Mr. Hanger’s home county, Augusta, Americans for Prosperity was there.

In Richmond on Tuesday, hundreds of volunteers in green shirts turned out for a commission hearing, bused in by the advocacy group’s field organizers, who provided Subway sandwiches for lunch.

“This has been one of those trench warfare kind of efforts for a year now, and I think it is one of those hidden stories of the whole fight against Obamacare,” said Tim Phillips, president of Americans for Prosperity. “It’s not flashy; it’s just in a whole bunch of state capitals and in the districts of a whole lot of state legislators, but it’s such a crucial aspect of the overall long-term effort to roll back Obamacare.”

Isn’t that nice?

What they understand about Obamacare is that the only truly progressive piece of it is the Medicaid expansion. Total destruction of this part of it is job one, lest people get it in their heads that government programs for poor people are the American Way.

It’s amazing that billionaires worth more than most countries have absolutely no shame in denying the poorest Americans access to basic health care, but that’s how they roll.

If we had a functioning democracy, this would present a roadblock:

Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to be relevant to anything these horrible greedheads may successfully accomplish since our political system is drowning in their money. Still, it’s interesting.

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GOP’s silver lining playbook

by digby

Tyler Cowan:

Look where we stand. In real terms government spending has been falling. Sequestration appears to be permanent, or it will be negotiated away by Republicans in return for preferred changes in tax and spending policy. Leading Democratic intellectuals are talking about future fiscal bargains with no new taxes. The American public polls as increasingly conservative.[…]

The Republican tactics understand the importance of skewed pay-offs. In an age of political gridlock, the goal is not to maximize the expected value of your image, any more than you would do the same on a date. Rather the goal is to maximize the chances of moving your agenda forward, conditional on the existence of world-states where that might be possible. The harder it is to pull off change, the stupider your strategy will look in most world-states, but hey that is the price of admission to this game. Capital is to be periodically run down, and if in politics, as in management more generally, if you always look good you are doing something badly wrong.

Needless to say, the left is having a very big laugh at all this. And there is some seriously fatuous nonsense in pieces of it, particularly the wistful hopes and dreams about Obamacare failure. (The notion that the nation polls as increasingly conservative is highly debatable as well.) But it isn’t all wet. We are living in a period of austerity and it’s very hard to see how we change the trajectory of shrinking government under current circumstances. The best we can probably hope for is that it doesn’t get any worse. So yeah, they took a hit in popularity and it may end up paying a price at the ballot box for it. But it’s not a total failure — it’s two steps forward one step back.

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Yahoo Zimmerman wannabes: the all American boys


by digby

Two men have come under scrutiny by the public and possibly by prosecutors after a video made the rounds online showing them pushing over an iconic rock formation.

At first, they almost left the rock, Taylor said, but after seeing a large group with several small children pass below the rock and gather at a nearby formation for a photo, they continued to worry it would tumble onto the nearby path.

Utah State Parks spokesman Eugene Swalberg called the video disturbing. Possible criminal charges are being screened by the Emery County Attorney’s Office and the Utah Attorney General’s Office, he said.

“This is not behavior that is appreciated or should exist in state parks,” Swalberg said. “This has been formed for literally millions of years, and it’s supposed to last for a long time. It doesn’t need individuals doing the work of Mother Nature.”

The goblins date back more than 170 million years to the Jurassic Period, Swalberg said. The park, which gets more than 85,000 visitors per year, was dedicated in 1974 to protect the fragile formations, he said.

“There are some established trails in the park, but there are also areas where you can have self discovery and wander amongst the goblins,” Swalberg said. “That’s the beauty of Goblin Valley. It’s not meant to have people push over the goblins. It’s meant to enjoy.”

Taylor and Hall maintain their actions weren’t malicious, and at the time they never considered what they were doing could be criminal.

“Neither one of us were out there intending to do illegal activity,” Hall said. “It just made sense to us at the time — remove the danger so that we don’t have to hear about somebody dying.”

What is it in our culture that tells a certain white, male American subgroup that they can claim they were being heroes and they can get away with anything?  Oh never mind — I forgot.  We have institutionalized that state of mind, haven’t we?

This is simply another version of “stand your ground” isn’t it? These immature jackasses decided they wanted to destroy some property, told themselves they were doing it to “save lives” and then went ahead and had their fun. They assume that nothing will happen to them because they claim they were “protecting the public — the childre” and they know that a whole bunch of jackasses just like themselves will defend them against the big bad gummint that doesn’t recognize their right to play cop, army man, “fireman” or cowboy whenever they feel like it.

And they have good reason to think it’s ok.  A large portion of our culture now celebrates all forms of vigilantism as a bedrock American value. It isn’t the first time we’ve seen this, of course, so maybe it is …

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