Month: January 2014

They can’t even be slightly human

by digby

With all my cynicism and all my dark predictions, I continue to be more optimistic than I should be. I truly thought that the Unemployment Insurance extension was probably a done deal. Silly me for being a pollyanna:

Just as it appeared the Senate was poised for a breakthrough on extending federal unemployment insurance for another year, things took a turn for the worse, and lawmakers left the chamber Thursday afternoon without holding a vote.

Three of the six Republicans who’d helped the Senate advance an unemployment bill through the first 60-vote hurdle on Tuesday complained bitterly that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) had declined to let them offer amendments. When Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) asked if there would be votes on GOP alternative language, Reid said there would not.
[…]
The deal negotiated in the Senate on Thursday would have reinstated the benefits for one year, unlike the three-month extension that the chamber advanced Tuesday. In an attempt to win Republican support, Reid and other Democrats, including Budget Committee Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.), agreed to slash the duration of the benefits, saving $8 billion, and adopted a version of a Republican proposal to prevent Americans from simultaneously receiving unemployment insurance and Social Security Disability Insurance. The rest of the money used to pay for the extension would have come from prolonging the sequestration cuts to mandatory spending accounts by one year.

“In this proposal, there has been a desire to address the concerns of the Republicans and Democrats,” Reid said. “Is it perfect? Of course not.”

Republicans, however, were hardly satisfied with the parameters of the deal. They saw the sequestration concession as an insufficient and insincere way of paying for the extension, since it wouldn’t be achieved until 2024. They also complained that Reid had watered down the proposal to prevent people from double-dipping on disability and unemployment insurance. Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), who had pushed that amendment forcefully during negotiations, had wanted more stringent restrictions. His version would have saved the government $5.4 billion. The Reid proposal saved $1 billion.

“Sen. Portman was not looped into conversations or negotiations with Sen. Reid about this today and just learned about this on the floor,” a Portman aide said.

So the main reason it failed is hurt fee fees and Harry Reid is an big old poopy head. Why would I have ever thought otherwise?

This is just insane. These people are out of money. There are no jobs. It’s going to hurt the broader economy. It makes no sense.

Today the government reports that unemployment has dropped to 6.8% — still a number formerly thought of as a crisis — and despite the fact that it’s attributable to people leaving the workforce in droves they will almost certainly use this as an excuse to say that the economy is now hunky dory and these lazy slackers need to get off their butts and start cleaning toilets.

Hopefully this is just the usual kabuki dance and they are all going to eventually find a deal that just noxious enough to make liberals sick to their stomachs so that it can pass. But sometimes I think the idea is to force progressive activists to fight for even the most pro-forma government functions until they just fall over in exhaustion and give up. Even the tiniest act of human decency requires going to the mattresses these days.

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Capital gains, state budgets, and the insanity of depending on the asset economy

by David Atkins

This is what happens when you leave your economy to the whims of the market and the asset classes, courtesy Jon Healey at the L.A. Times:

Hey Wall Street, California owes you one.
The prolonged bull market has produced two banner years for capital gains in the state, with an even better year expected in 2014. The result has been surging capital gains tax revenues, which account for all of the surplus projected by Gov. Jerry Brown for the coming year.

Those revenues averaged a little less than $4 billion a year from 2008 to 2011, accounting for about 4.5% of the state’s general fund. From 2012 through 2014, the average is expected to be $10.2 billion, or roughly 10% of the general fund.

But as Brown points out in the above picture, capital gains follow a roller-coaster trajectory. They shot up during the dot-com boom, then crashed in the aftermath. They rebounded during the housing bubble, only to collapse again when it burst.

Here’s the pic:

Jon Healey’s conservative views aside, the answer isn’t to leave capital gains untaxed in an era of record inequality. The answer is to broaden and strengthen the middle class so that there is a more prosperous and more stable tax base. It’s not just that millions of people suffer in a financialized economy divided between the very rich and the impoverished multitudes. It’s also dramatically destabilizing for governments that become increasingly dependent on asset-based revenues, and whose budget rise and fall dramatically with the markets. Allowing the economy to become even more financialized and unequal isn’t just morally wrong. It’s also incompetent and guaranteed to crash the government far faster than deficit spending ever could.

But maybe that’s the point?

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Speaking of loyalty

by digby

Chris Christie implosion day seems like a good day to remind people of this:

Gov. Chris Christie is cashing in donations from top Democratic fundraisers and other traditionally liberal donors across the country, even nabbing the support of a handful of rainmakers aligned with President Obama and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, a Star-Ledger review of state and federal records shows.

The checks are flying into the Republican governor’s war chest from all sorts of unlikely places — the hedge fund run by liberal billionaire George Soros, for example, and the politically progressive halls of the University of California, Berkeley.

The nascent support from Democratic donors is an early sign of Christie’s fundraising prowess in a potential run for the White House in 2016, experts and Democratic donors said, and dovetails with recent polls showing him gaining popularity nationally among Democrats and independents.

Christie’s partnership with New Jersey Democratic leaders and his warm relationship with Obama after Hurricane Sandy could be enticing donors who don’t often give to GOP candidates, even if they are closer ideologically to Democrat Barbara Buono, Christie’s lesser-known challenger, political scientists and Democratic fundraisers say.

“While I do not agree with his stance on every issue, he is one of the best political leaders I have talked to in a long time,” said Ken Rosen, a UC-Berkeley professor who cut a $3,800 check to Christie after chatting with him at two events. “He is willing to take on tough issues such as pension reform, education reform, mental-health issues, even if his views are not politically correct.”

How insightful.

Read the whole article for some real stomach churning idiocy. Let’s just say, “with friends like these …”

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The Onion tells the truth about climate that most journalists won’t

by David Atkins

The Onion tells it like it really is:

With the implementation of tighter carbon emissions caps and more responsible household energy use, it is not too late to reverse the dire course of global warming, a panel of scientists who know full well that it is far too late and we are all doomed told reporters today. “If we all do our part right now to design and enforce more responsible business and environmental practices, there’s still a good chance we can avoid the calamitous consequences of worldwide climate change,” said climatologist Dr. Kevin Little, a man who, deep in his heart, knows all too acutely that it’s over, there’s not a damned thing we can do, and so we might as well just start preparing now for what is certain to be the unprecedented destruction of human civilization at the hands of a ravaged ecosystem. “It will take massive investment and cooperation on a global scale, but I’m optimistic we can be in good shape by around 2030 or so.” The researchers who awake each morning with the grim realization that they are bearing witness to mankind’s sad, inevitable endgame also suggested there is still very much a chance of stabilizing the rapid loss of Arctic sea ice.

The best case scenarios involve a moon shot at geoengineering or a miraculous advance in renewable energy extremely soon. The medium case scenario is climate-induced economic collapse that reduces carbon emissions enough that we don’t get a runaway greenhouse effect. The worst case scenario is an unlivable planet.

That the actual reality.

Those who willfully promote climate change denial while knowing better in order to support their short-term greed are–and I do not exaggerate here–committing crimes against humanity. It’s only unfortunate that Roger Ailes and Stuart Varney won’t live long enough to face trial for it.

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“I’m no fan of Governor Christie, but he’s a real man …and anyway, Benghazi!™ “

by digby

In case you were wondering how the right wingers would get from their mistrust of Christie to defending him, here you have it:

I am not a fan of Gov. Christie. He’s not exactly a friend of conservatives and he’s been way too chummy with his BFF President Obama. But give credit where credit is due.

Gov. Christie stood before the cameras and took his lumps like a man. He did so without the use of a TelePrompter. The buck stopped with Christie. In the Obama White House, the buck stops with his newly-bearded spokesman.

The governor seemed genuinely contrite and remorseful. He did not stand before the reporters defiantly shrieking, “What difference does it make?”

He took immediate action and fired the person responsible for the political payback.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but to my knowledge, no one has been fired for Fast & Furious, the Benghazi terrorist attack, the IRS scandal, the NSA scandal or the ObamaCare debacle. No one.

But by golly, the Mainstream Media and Democrats are getting their pound of flesh over bumper-to-bumper traffic over the Hudson River.

Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the Associated Press the “revelations are troubling for any public official.” But she said: “They also indicate what we’ve come to expect from Gov. Christie – when people oppose him, he exacts retribution.”

That’s almost farcical coming from a presidential administration that launched Internal Revenue Service investigations against Tea Party organizations and pro-life organizations.

Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-N.J.) called the actions by Christie’s administration “the worst type of political retaliation and abuse of public trust.”

I respectfully disagree. An Internal Revue Service audit of Billy Graham and ordering a church to turn over its membership roles is the worst type of political retaliation and abuse of the public trust.

To our knowledge, Gov. Christie did not secretly spy on traffic reporters or threaten to throw them in jail for suggesting alternative routes to avoid congestion.

No one lost their automobile insurance.

He did not blame the lane closures on a YouTube video. Terrorists did not blow up the bridge nor did they did they harm the head of the Port Authority on the streets of Fort Lee.

He did not order the New Jersey State Police to spy on motorists to determine whether they were using the left lane or the right.

Last summer President Obama took Republicans to task for what he called an “endless parade of distractions and political posturing and phony scandals.”

Yet he remains noticeably silent when his own party piles into a pickup truck and tries to run down Christie like he’s a possum crossing a Southern highway.

The scandal is not the closing of the George Washington Bridge. The real scandal is a Mainstream Media that somehow thinks getting home late for Hamburger Helper is akin to terrorists attacking an American consulate in Benghazi.

And what about Obaaahmacare??!!! And that Michelle forcing poor innocent children to eat vegetables? And birth control and sluts? What about the sluts??? Come on now …

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“If any member of Congress should be under surveillance, it would be Sanders”

by digby

Sure, why not?

After Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) demanded to know whether the NSA was spying on U.S. Congress members, one self-styled media watchdog suggests that maybe they should.

“Not one article has dared to ask whether Sanders and other ‘progressive’ members of Congress should be under surveillance because of their contacts with foreign intelligence agencies,” wrote Cliff Kincaid, director of the Accuracy In Media Center for Investigative Journalism.

“In a sense, the story is a bunch of hype,” Kincaid wrote. “Like other Americans, certain data about members of Congress is being collected by the NSA, but not searched unless there is evidence of foreign and terrorist connections. Sanders wants the public to think this is sinister activity.”

Kincaid complained that no federal elected officials, including the president and lawmakers, are required to go through security background checks before being allowed to serve, which he suggests could put national security at risk.

“If any member of Congress should be under surveillance, it would be Sanders,” Kincaid wrote.

Kincaid pointed out that Sanders, a self-described socialist who runs for office as an independent but caucuses with Democrats, had worked with activists to halt nuclear proliferation – which the right-wing activist suggested was unpatriotic.

Who is Cliff Kincaid? Yeah, he’s a member in good standing of the right wing noise machine:

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM [Accuracy in media] Center for Investigative Journalism. From 2003 – 2010 he was Editor of the “AIM Report.” A veteran journalist and media critic, he currently specializes in election coverage, the Fairness Doctrine, coverage of the U.N., and coverage of financial bailouts. AIM’s founder, Reed Irvine, hired Cliff as an intern and then a staffer in 1978, and Cliff has been associated with AIM in some capacity ever since.

Cliff regularly appears on television and radio programs, including the CBS Evening News, NBC’s Today Show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, The Glenn Beck Show, Fox and Friends, The O’Reilly Factor, Hannity and Colmes, The Savage Nation, The G. Gordon Liddy Show, The Laura Ingraham Show, The Mike Gallagher Show, Your World with Neil Cavuto, NOW, Frontline and Voice of America. His columns have been read on the air by Rush Limbaugh.

Accuracy in Media is a longtime wingnut welfare outfit that’s easy to dismiss as just another bunch of right wing cranks. But they serve an interesting function in the right wing media ecosystem: they are refs that work the refs. Here’s an example:

In November 2005, AIM columnist Cliff Kincaid criticized Fox News for broadcasting a program The Heat is On, which reported that global warming represents a serious problem (the program was broadcast with a disclaimer). Kincaid argued the piece was one-sided and stated that this “scandal” amounted to a “hostile takeover of Fox News”

At the time a bipartisan consensus was forming on climate change. AIM was instrumental in beginning the push back by pressuring right wing media. It’s worked. 

I doubt that his call for Senator Sanders to be put under surveillance will be quite as successful but it serves the purpose of getting it out in the wingnut ether that this is a reasonable position to take. You never know where that sort of thing will lead.

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The elderly radicals

by digby

Amy Goodman had a fascinating interview with three of the criminal, would-be terrorists who burglarized an FBI office back in the 70s and gave their purloined files to the press. It’s quite interesting how they see themselves and how they look at their deeds in the context of today’s controversies:

One of the great mysteries of the Vietnam War era has been solved. On March 8, 1971, a group of activists — including a cabdriver, a day care director and two professors — broke into an FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania. They stole every document they found and then leaked many to the press, including details about FBI abuses and the then-secret counter-intelligence program to infiltrate, monitor and disrupt social and political movements, nicknamed COINTELPRO. They called themselves the Citizens’ Commission to Investigate the FBI. No one was ever caught for the break-in. The burglars’ identities remained a secret until this week when they finally came forward to take credit for the caper that changed history. Today we are joined by three of them — John Raines, Bonnie Raines and Keith Forsyth; their attorney, David Kairys; and Betty Medsger, the former Washington Post reporter who first broke the story of the stolen FBI documents in 1971 and has now revealed the burglars’ identities in her new book, “The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.”

Once again I must point out that while many things have changed in the last 40 years, I seriously doubt that the propensity of human beings to abuse power, especially secret power, is one of them.

Update: This NY Times video on the story offers some very interesting context.
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Headline ‘o the day

by digby

“Misfortune?” Really?  I think of misfortune as getting cancer or losing your job.  Getting caught for illegally using your power to punish innocent people is something else entirely.

The Village is enjoying the spectacle today.  But I’d guess he’s not done yet.  If he’s combative enough in just the right way, they’ll be anxious to rehabilitate him. He’s such a man’s man.

Update: That press conference …. ooof. I think Josh Barro captures my impression quite well.

Human materialism as support for universal basic income

by David Atkins

More evidence that human beings are at heart fiercely competitive and more than a little greedy:

All work and no play may just be a result of “mindless accumulation”.
So say scholars behind research, published in the journal Psychological Science in June, that shows a deeply rooted instinct to earn more than can possibly be consumed, even when this imbalance makes us unhappy.
Given how many people struggle to make ends meet, this may seem a frivolous problem. Nonetheless, the researchers note that productivity rates have risen, which theoretically lets many people be just as comfortable as previous generations while working less. Yet they choose not to.
To explore the powerful lure of material accumulation, the researchers constructed an experiment in two phases. In the first phase, subjects sat for five minutes in front of a computer wearing a headset, and had the choice of listening to pleasant music or to obnoxious-sounding white noise.

They were told they could earn pieces of chocolate when they listened to the white noise a certain number of times. Some participants had to listen fewer times to get each piece of chocolate, making them “high earners”; some had to listen more times, making them “low earners”.
All were told that there would be a second phase to the experiment, also lasting five minutes, in which they could eat the chocolate they earned. But they were told they would forfeit any chocolate they couldn’t consume, and they were asked how much they expected to be able to eat.
On average, people in the high-earner group predicted that they could consume 3.75 chocolates.
But when it came time to “earn” chocolates, they accumulated well beyond their estimate. On average, they listened to enough white noise to earn 10.74 chocolates. Then they actually ate less than half of that amount.
In other words, they subjected themselves to harsh noise to earn more than they could consume, or predicted they could consume.
“We introduce the concept of ‘mindless accumulation’,” said one of the paper’s authors, Christopher Hsee, a professor of behavioral science and marketing at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. “It’s a waste of effort,” he added, “But once people are in action, they can’t stop.”

On one hand, this fact of human nature is part of the reason communism fails. No matter how much we have, we tend to always want more, even if it’s more than we need or can even use. And we usually want to have more than our neighbor.

But the flip side of that conservative capitalist coin is that if people are provided a universal basic income, they’re still going to want to do sometimes unpleasant work in order to accumulate more than their neighbor. It also puts a dent in the myth that government largesse creates dependency. Fundamentally, people want to have more things even if it means pointless work.

We’re materialistic creatures with a decent work ethic. We don’t need to be made miserable by conservative economics in order to reinforce that.

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Bao Bao!

by digby

Awwwww

Bao Bao, the giant panda cub at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo, mugs for the cameras as she greets the media for the first time. Then, Bao Bao went back to sleep as mom Mei Xiang munched on bamboo. The public gets their first look at the cub on Jan. 18.

You can check the full video at the link above. This is the link to the Panda Cam.

Here’s one of her finer moments:

Ooooof. Poor little Bao Bao.