Month: December 2013

The fever shows no signs of breaking yet

by David Atkins

After their resounding defeat in the 2012 general election, many Republicans realized that they were facing a date with demographic destiny and needed to change course. Thus began the “rebranding” effort, which lasted all of a few months before the Republican base and the conservative media establishment slapped them down for suggesting that even a dollop of humanity be added to Republican policies.

Fast forward a year and another smashing electoral defeat in formerly red Virginia, and it looks like Republicans are finally beginning to see that….no, wait. Never mind. No change necessary. Full speed ahead, mates:

Virginia Republicans suffered a drubbing last month, losing all three statewide races (though a recount is impending in one). A year earlier, it was pretty much the same story as Mitt Romney got swamped and the party unexpectedly lost ground in the Senate.
But to hear GOP leaders in this once reliably red state tell it, this is no time to panic. No hint of discouragement is betrayed. Just as many party activists insisted after Romney’s loss, key figures here said that their shortcomings are cosmetic — that the problem is largely about campaign mechanics and how the conservative message is being delivered, not the message itself.

So if the Commonwealth, sure to again be a top battleground in 2016, is a microcosm for the broader Republican Party, the GOP faithful here weren’t showing much interest in the kind of soul-searching many in the GOP believe is necessary if they want to win big elections again.

“All these reports of our demise are premature,” said Bill Howell, speaker of the state House of Delegates. “The cycle swings, and we’ll be back.”

Gathering this weekend for the first time since crusading conservative Ken Cuccinelli’s narrower-than-expected 2.5-percentage-point defeat, a chorus of activists, elected officials and other party hands stressed that Cuccinelli’s ideology was not his undoing…

State party Chairman Pat Mullins accused the media of covering “war on women” attacks more aggressively than the problems with Obamacare.

“This year, our message couldn’t break through and we paid a price,” he said.
Mullins mocked post-election analysis that said Cuccinelli was too conservative for a changing state.

“This is false narrative by false prophets,” he said. “Republicans do not win when we are mini-Democrats or Democrat Lite.”

Eventually, no matter how much money the Kochs and the Waltons and their friends spend, demographic realities are going to destroy this incarnation of the GOP.

Women voters hate the GOP. Voters under 35 hate the GOP. Latino voters hate the GOP. Black voters hate the GOP. Asian voters hate the GOP. LGBT voters hate the GOP. Secular voters hate the GOP. Highly educated voters hate the GOP. Voters in densely populated areas hate the GOP. Nor is any of that likely to change soon.

All the GOP has left in terms of favorable demographics, are religious straight white men over 35 years old, mostly without college degrees, who don’t live in big cities. Folks who started on third base, grew up in the economy the New Deal built, got good jobs without going into massive debt for their education, bought houses cheap, elected Reagan, cut taxes, trashed the place, watched their houses and stocks quadruple in value through no skill or effort of their own, destroyed the economic future of the Millennial generation, and then think they “built that” and hit a triple. The Fox News watching demographic is overwhelmingly white and over 70 years old.

Every single electoral cycle, the percentage of GOP-friendly demographics shrinks in the electorate. Not only did Obama clean Romney’s clock in 2012, Democrats unexpectedly picked up Senate seats, and 1.5 million more Americans voted for Dem House candidates than GOP ones. The only reason the GOP holds the House is gerrymandering. Republicans have won the popular vote in presidential elections just once in the last six. 2016 won’t be any different.

The only reason the GOP has a near-term prayer at all is that fewer Americans vote in midterms, which means that hateful, committed Fox News/Limbaugh rump base of whipped-up hysterical neo-Confederate Ayn Rand-loving voters can still make a difference to reverse some of the momentum from Presidential years. But not for long.

Eventually, this fever will break. It has to in order to preserve the balance of the two-party system. The only question is what that will look like.

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The right’s not done yet

by digby

News flash: the right has hardly given up. In fact, they’ve expanded their work to encompass not only the federal government but all 50 states:

Most of the “think tanks” involved in the proposals gathered by the State Policy Network are constituted as 501(c)(3) charities that are exempt from tax by the Internal Revenue Service. Though the groups are not involved in election campaigns, they are subject to strict restrictions on the amount of lobbying they are allowed to perform. Several of the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents propose the launch of “media campaigns” aimed at changing state laws and policies, or refer to “advancing model legislation” and “candidate briefings”, in ways that arguably cross the line into lobbying.

The documents also cast light on the nexus of funding arrangements behind radical right-wing campaigns. The State Policy Network (SPN) has members in each of the 50 states and an annual warchest of $83 million drawn from major corporate donors that include the energy tycoons the Koch brothers, the tobacco company Philip Morris, food giant Kraft and the multinational drugs company GlaxoSmithKline.

SPN gathered the grant proposals from the 34 states on 29 July. Ranging in size from requests of $25,000 to $65,000, the plans were submitted for funding to the Searle Freedom Trust, a private foundation that in 2011 donated almost $15m to largely rightwing causes.

[…]

The proposals in the grant bids contained in the Guardian documents go beyond a commitment to free enterprise, however. They include:

• “reforms” to public employee pensions raised by SPN thinktanks in Arizona, Colorado, Minnesota, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania

• tax elimination or reduction schemes in Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Maryland, Nebraska, and New York

• an education voucher system to promote private and home schooling in Florida

• campaigns against worker and union rights in Delaware and Nevada

• opposition to Medicaid in Georgia, North Carolina, and Utah

This really is a matter of stupid amounts of money being devoted to a political ideology. This sort of coordinated, multi-pronged attack at several levels of government could not happen if it weren’t for the multi-billionaires who are willing to use their discretionary mad money on political causes. When you’re as rich as the Kochs, you can pretty much create a political industry from the ground up and fund it generously. Which is what they are doing.

I don’t know what to do about this. It seems almost impossible to stop it, although the democratic process should be able to create some countervailing pressure. But it’s hard to imagine that with the kind of resources they have behind them that they will not make at least some progress, in more than a few places, on enacting this agenda. And that’s just horrible.

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QOTD: The shrill one

by digby

From the blog:

[O]nce you realize how long self-styled centrists have virtually defined their identity in terms of what they imagine is their courage in going after Social Security, you can see why the shifting tides — the rise of Democrats who no longer feel the need to keep the WaPo opinion page happy — are leaving them a bit unhinged.

Ain’t it the truth? They’re completely off balance. Which goes to show that this whole Overton Window thing is a really good idea just like the hippies always said.

In fact, if anyone’s interested in doing some more of this kind of thing, here’s an old moldering set of principles we could work from going forward:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth—is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:
The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for all our citizens.

For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

h/t to SZ

(Asset) Seizure disorder

by digby

I have never understood why this can possibly be allowed under our constitution, but it is:

EARLIER this year Sarah Stillman wrote a first-rate piece in the New Yorker on the abuses of civil asset forfeiture—a practice wherein police seize and keep the property of people who have not been convicted of a crime. The piece opens with the story of Jennifer Boatright and Ron Henderson, who had their cash taken by authorities in the small town of Tenaha because they “fit the profile of drug couriers”, even though no drugs were found in their car nor were they charged with any crime. Despite this, Ms Stillman writes, “The basic principle behind asset forfeiture is appealing. It enables authorities to confiscate cash or property obtained through illicit means, and, in many states, funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime.” 

Those two sentences are true only to the extent that the two key qualifiers in them are true. The first is “obtained through illicit means”. That strongly implies not civil, but criminal asset forfeiture, referring to the seizure of property proven in a court of law to have been obtained through illicit means, not to the seizure of whatever property police can concoct a semi-plausible excuse to grab. The standards for civil asset forfeiture are far lower, as Ms Stillman and others have infuriatingly detailed. Police do not have to successfully prosecute someone, or even charge them with a crime, to seize their assets. The second is “funnel the proceeds directly into the fight against crime.” Using a convicted trafficker’s Escalade for stakeouts has a certain poetic justice.

Using forfeiture funds as the district attorney’s (DA) office in Fulton County, which covers most of Atlanta, is alleged to have done, does not. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has the sordid details: $5,600 on a Christmas party; $1,100 for flowers; $3,200 for “sirloin beef tip roast, roasted turkey breast and mini crab cakes with champagne sauce”; $8,200 on a security system for the home of Paul Howard, Fulton’s DA; $4,800 for a holiday awards gala held at a “historic Midtown mansion”. Mr Howard insists that he has done nothing wrong and that he has wide discretion in how he spends.

This convenient way of financing police agencies’ “finer things” first came to my attention over 20 years ago when I first read about the Donald Scott case right here in Malibu:

Early on the morning of October 2, 1992, 31 officers from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Drug Enforcement Administration, Border Patrol, National Guard and Park Service entered the Scott’s 200-acre ranch. They planned to arrest Scott for allegedly running a 4,000-plant marijuana plantation. When deputies broke down the door to Scott’s house, Scott’s wife would later tell reporters, she screamed, “Don’t shoot me. Don’t kill me.”That brought Scott staggering out of the bedroom, blurry-eyed from a cataract operation—holding a .38 caliber Colt snub-nosed revolver over his head. When he emerged at the top of the stairs, holding his gun over his head, the officers told him to lower the gun. As he did, they shot him to death. According to the official report, the gun was pointed at the officers when they shot him.

Later, the lead agent in the case, sheriff’s deputy Gary Spencer and his partner John Cater posed for photographs smiling arm-in-arm outside Scott’s cabin.

Despite a subsequent search of Scott’s ranch using helicopters, dogs, searchers on foot, and a high-tech Jet Propulsion Laboratory device for detecting trace amounts of sinsemilla, no marijuana—or any other illegal drug—was found.

Scott’s widow, the former Frances Plante, along with four of Scott’s children from previous marriages, subsequently filed a $100 million wrongful death suit against the county and federal government. For eight years the case dragged on, requiring the services of 15 attorneys and some 30 volume binders to hold all the court documents. In January 2000, attorneys for Los Angeles County and the federal government agreed to settle with Scott’s heirs and estate for $5 million, even though the sheriff’s department still maintained its deputies had done nothing wrong.

Michael D. Bradbury, the District Attorney of Ventura County conducted an investigation into the raid and the aftermath, issuing a report on the events leading up to and on October 2, 1992. He concluded that asset forfeiture was a motive for the raid.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department issued their own report in response, clearing everyone involved of wrongdoing while California Attorney General Dan Lungren criticized District Attorney Bradbury. Sheriff Spencer sued D.A. Bradbury for defamation in response to the report. The court ruled in favor of Michael Bradbury and ordered Sheriff Spencer to pay $50,000 in Bradbury’s legal bills.

I frankly don’t care if they are using the money to buy new SWAT uniforms or pay for swanky parties at the Ritz-Carlton. Police agencies should not have the power to confiscate people’s property without due process — and that means the people in question must be convicted of a crime. It should happen under the aegis of the courts and the assets should not go directly to those who did the confiscating. This is a recipe for official thievery.

The incentives for the sort of misconduct in the examples cited above are obvious. And they are yet another symptom of a justice system that is corrupt and unaccountable. Perhaps it has always been this way, in one respect or another but there’s just no excuse for allowing the police to run over the 4th Amendment in a tactical vehicle and then seize the spoils for themselves. Those are the actions of a mercenary army, not police agencies of a democratic republic.

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You’re not doing your daughters any favors with this stuff, daddies.


by digby

Ick:

I’m sure the intention here is good humor and fatherly concern. It’s natural to want to protect your children and I think fathers are especially protective of their little girls.

But this list is an awful lesson for both teen-age boys and teen-age girls. Girls aren’t inanimate objects and daughters are not daddy’s property. In fact, you could easily substitute “borrow my car” for “date my daughter” in that list and it would make perfect sense. They should be acknowledged as having equal agency in all this. And boys shouldn’t be “negotiating” privileges with a girl’s father. She’s a person and if either boyfriend or daddy are going to be doing any negotiating, it should be with her.

It reminds me of the purity balls especially the princess/conquest thing which, again, reduces the girl in this picture to daddy’s private property.  It’s antediluvian, patriarchal claptrap and modern men should know better. If you have those thoughts, keep them to yourselves and try to help create a world where your daughters don’t have to fight to be seen as equal citizens.

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Huckabee the comedian

by digby

Because nothing says Christmas like a bunch of lies and propaganda in service of people dying without health care:

My only consolation for having to watch this tripe is that it is preserved for the ages. History is not going to be kind to these idiots.

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Rand Paul encourages crime and prostitution

by digby

Since there are obviously not enough jobs for all the unemployed to fill them, he can only be saying they need to immediately start their new careers as robbers and whores in order to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Sunday he opposes extending unemployment benefits for workers, arguing that it would be a “disservice” to jobless individuals.

“I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for. If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers,” he said in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

It’s this twisted Randroid sanctimony that really gets to me. It’s bad enough that this creep thinks the unemployed are parasites and moochers. But he has the brass balls to adopt a disgustingly unctuous “compassionate” tone to suggest that he’s following Christian teachings by throwing them out on the street.

Why does he remind me of this:

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Another intelligence failure

by digby

This one is just sad:

Several years ago, a senior officer in the CIA clandestine service attended a closed-door conference for overseas operatives. Speakers included case officers who were working in the manner Hollywood usually portrays spies — out on their own.

Most CIA officers abroad pose as U.S. diplomats. But those given what’s called non-official cover are known as NOCs, pronounced “knocks,” and they typically pose as business executives. At the forum, the NOCs spoke of their cover jobs, their false identities and measures taken to protect them. Few said much about gathering intelligence.

A colleague passed a caustic note to the senior officer. “Lots of business,” it read. “Little espionage.”

Twelve years after the CIA began a major push to get its operatives out of embassy cubicles and into foreign universities, businesses and other local perches to collect intelligence on terrorists and rogue nations, the effort has been a disappointment, current and former U.S. officials say. Along with other parts of the CIA, the budget of the so-called Global Deployment Initiative, which covers the NOC program, is now being cut.

“It was a colossal flop,” a former senior CIA official said in sentiments echoed by a dozen former colleagues, most of whom spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a classified program.

The CIA spent at least $3 billion on the program, and the number of specially trained spies grew from dozens to hundreds. The entire clandestine service is believed to total about 5,000 people.

But because of inexperience, bureaucratic hurdles, lack of language skills and other problems, only a few of the deep-cover officers recruited useful intelligence sources, several former officers said.

Apparently, the people of Iran (where most of this was focused) are watching Hollywood movies too and exposed most of these spies who were then brought back to the US.

This is unfortunate. Assuming any powerful nation will spy on other countries, this form of HUMINT is the traditional way it’s done, with the use of people with knowledge of the relevant culture and politics using well honed skills to seek specific information on the ground. That’s a form of intelligence gathering that relies on the heuristic abilities of human beings which, in my opinion, are a lot more nuanced and sophisticated than the NSA dragnet computer models can possibly be.

But that takes training and long term commitment and we don’t really want to bother with that when we can spy on everyone in the world and draw conclusions from inferences based upon who knows who and where they drink their coffee. Let’s just say the possibility of error is at least as great with this huge data collection as it is when relying on trained spies on the ground. And I would guess that the possibility of missing something more important is greater. Computer analysis is only as good as what it’s programmed to analyze. Human beings on the ground would always have a subtler grasp on the reality of any threat.

But it didn’t work out apparently. So we’re going with this instead:

Aside from the obvious authoritarian concerns I really have to wonder if reliance on this fancy high tech intelligence gathering is going to end up making us less able to understand the complex nature of what it is we’re supposed to be spying on: namely, human beings.

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Maybe we should have a public-public partnership on health, not a public-private one?

by David Atkins

This is the sort of thing that happens when you do ill-advised public-private kludges instead of commonsense Medicare-style deals between the public and their government:

The California health exchange says it’s been giving the names of tens of thousands of consumers to insurance agents without their permission or knowledge in an effort to hit deadlines for coverage.

The consumers in question had gone online to research insurance options but didn’t ask to be contacted, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday (http://lat.ms/1jyABXS ).

Officials with Covered California, the exchange set up in response to the federal health law, said they began providing names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses if available this week in a pilot program. They said they thought it would help people meet a Dec. 23 deadline to have health insurance in place by Jan. 1.

The state doesn’t know exactly how many people are affected by the information sharing. Social Security numbers, income and other information were not provided to the agents, exchange officials said.

The pilot program meets privacy laws and was cleared by the exchange’s legal counsel, Peter Lee, executive director of Covered California, told the Times.

But some insurance brokers and consumers weren’t pleased with the state’s initiative.

“I’m shocked and dumbfounded,” said Sam Smith, an Encino insurance broker and president of the California Association of Health Underwriters, an industry group.

“These people would have a legitimate complaint,” said Smith, who added he had been given two consumer names.

It’s not the biggest deal in the world, but it is a problem. Privacy is at far greater risk when the government is forced to rely on private services that should be a one-stop efficient contract between the people and their elected government.

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