Month: March 2014

Commies, every last one of ’em

by digby

Time for a drink. The stupid is just too much today:

The Republican-controlled House passed legislation on Thursday to force President Barack Obama to crack down on states that have legalized marijuana in any form.

Introduced by Reps. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.), Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Jim Gerlach (R-Pa.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), the ENFORCE the Law Act (H.R. 4138) would allow the House or the Senate to sue the president for “failure to faithfully execute federal laws,” including those related to immigration, health care and marijuana.

“President Obama has established a disturbing pattern of cherry picking the laws he wishes to enforce,” Issa said in a statement. “The Constitution charges the President with the responsibility to faithfully execute all the laws and not just the ones he supports.”

Keep in mind that these are the same jackasses who have made a fetish out of states’ rights. The same ones who have been in hysterics over President Obama acting like a dictator.

I know.

Have a good night.

Cheers.

Here they go again

by digby

Krugman:

Four years ago, some of us watched with a mixture of incredulity and horror as elite discussion of economic policy went completely off the rails. Over the course of just a few months, influential people all over the Western world convinced themselves and each other that budget deficits were an existential threat, trumping any and all concern about mass unemployment. The result was a turn to fiscal austerity that deepened and prolonged the economic crisis, inflicting immense suffering.

And now it’s happening again. Suddenly, it seems as if all the serious people are telling each other that despite high unemployment there’s hardly any “slack” in labor markets — as evidenced by a supposed surge in wages — and that the Federal Reserve needs to start raising interest rates very soon to head off the danger of inflation.

To be fair, those making the case for monetary tightening are more thoughtful and less overtly political than the archons of austerity who drove the last wrong turn in policy. But the advice they’re giving could be just as destructive.

What are they agitated about this time? Rising wages. That’s right. After years and years of wage stagnation caused by the greed, avarice and malpractice of financial elites, the mere prospect of workers getting a raise is so outrageous that they need to put the brakes to this anemic economy. And Krugman points out that the data is far from clear that wages are actually rising. But whatever, it’s time to get back to taming non-existent inflation.

Krugman examines why that might be:

Part of the answer, I’d submit, is that for some people it’s always 1979. That is, they’re eternally vigilant against the danger of a runaway wage-price spiral, and somehow they haven’t noticed that nothing like that has happened for decades. Maybe it’s a generational thing. Maybe it’s because a 1970s-style crisis fits their ideological preconceptions, but the phantom menace of stagflation still has an outsized influence on economic debate.

Then there’s sado-monetarism: the sense, all too common among in banking circles, that inflicting pain is ipso facto good. There are some people and institutions — for example, the Basel-based Bank for International Settlements — that always want to see interest rates go up. Their rationale is ever-changing — it’s commodity prices; no, it’s financial stability; no, it’s wages — but the recommended policy is always the same.

Finally, although the current monetary debate isn’t as openly political as the previous fiscal debate, it’s hard to escape the suspicion that class interests are playing a role. A fair number of commentators seem oddly upset by the notion of workers getting raises, especially while returns to bondholders remain low. It’s almost as if they identify with the investor class, and feel uncomfortable with anything that brings us close to full employment, and thereby gives workers more bargaining power.

I think it’s a little bit of all of that, with a healthy portion going to the latter. I think there are quite a few very wealthy types who have their money prudently invested in bonds and they want a little sumpm-sumpm from the 1% looting we’ve seen over the past few years. Sure, they’ve been making huge gains just from the fact that they have so much to start with. And I’ll guess they have investments in equities as well, which means they’ve made a killing. But come on … these low interest rates just aren’t moral. The rich deserve to have their investments make a lot of money because they’re so good (…and we’re so evil.)

It’s time to put a stop to all this coddling of the working class. Tamp down those wages before they get all spoiled and think they deserve benefits too! Next thing you know they’ll start forming unions and agitating for vacation time and then we’ll be just like Europe and everything will go all to hell. Best nip it in the bud.

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Chart of the day: personal versus corporate income taxes

by David Atkins

If you want to know what’s wrong America, you could do worse than starting here, courtesy The Swarm Lab:

As I have argued frequently in the past, there are many external factors that help the ultra-rich hoard America’s wealth. But intentional plutocrat-friendly tax policy is certainly a big factor, too.

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Headline ‘O the Day

by digby

Another region where the Russian military threatens to dominate the U.S.

Another one??? Oh my God! Run for yer lives! (Or better yet, duck and cover…) Actually it makes me feel young again. Really young. Like when I was in elementary school. That’s the kind of lying bullshit we heard day in and day out as an excuse for unfettered military spending. (Anyone remember the missile gap?)

Here’s reality. According to this analysis (I don’t know if it’s right in all details, but the general gist is certainly correct) the US and Russia are Number 1 and Number 2 in military strength. But since the US alone has nearly 50% of all the global military strength on the planet the difference between number 1 and number 2 is vast..

The US is on the left and Russia is on the right:

And one might also point out that this is just the US vs Russia. It doesn’t count NATO which is most of Europe or the American allies in North America.

The differences between the two countries in economic terms are just as huge and the idea that Russia is going to dominate America in anything but maybe vodka production is ridiculous.  In other words, this is the stupidest CNN headline ever. But I’m going to guess that it won’t be the last we see of the new Commie Cold War. They’re getting very excited.

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Heckling the heckler


by digby

It used to be that Chris Christie got points for heckling nice suburban school teachers asking him questions about why they have to pay for school supplies. Now he’s got a much bigger problem:

Actually his problem is huge:

The hecklers come on the heels of a new Bloomberg News poll that shows 63 percent of Americans say they don’t believe Christie’s claim that he knew nothing about the bridge controversy, in which his top aides ordered the closure of certain access lanes on the bridge in an apparent act of political retribution. 

That number includes 43 percent of Republicans who don’t believe the brash Republican governor. Sixty-three percent of independents don’t believe him, and a whopping 79 percent of Democrats.

I wouldn’t be surprised to see Democrats start to shift attention to Scott Walker.

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QOTD: Frederick Bastiat

by digby

Via @NatashaChart:

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” –Frederic Bastiat

I think we’re there …

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Hard core social conservatives demand hard core social conservative policies

by digby

I wrote about anti-abortion warrior meeting yesterday, and this article doesn’t add much to it except for the polling that shows the hardcore social conservatives will vote for any of the candidates as long as they present themselves as evangelical crusaders:

Invoking fiery references to Satan, “savagery” and a “culture of death” to criticize their opponents, anti-abortion lawmakers on Wednesday insisted that Republican contenders keep an intense focus on social issues in the upcoming midterm elections and the 2016 presidential race.

Like many abortion opponents, the Susan B. Anthony List is in search of a White House contender who won’t shy from social issues after back-to-back presidential nominees in 2008 and 2012 who focused their campaigns on the economy and came up short. Several potential 2016 candidates were making their pitches in blunt terms, urging the group members to stick to their principles and fight those who would stand in their way.
[…]
In a Washington Post-ABC News poll published this month, 50 percent of conservative Republicans and 46 percent of white evangelical Protestants said they would consider voting for Cruz. Huckabee drew potential support among 50 percent of conservatives and 44 percent of evangelicals.

Other candidates who did not speak to the abortion summit fared about as well. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, hardly a social warrior, drew potential consideration of 45 percent of conservative Republicans and 40 percent of evangelicals. And Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., would be considered by 52 percent of conservative Republicans and 43 percent of evangelicals.

The key for these voters is backing a 2016 candidate who opposes abortion.

To be perfectly honest, I think Mike Huckabee is the perfect GOP candidate for 2016. He’s a hardcore social conservative with a bit of a “populist” sheen (which is to say that he doesn’t call poor people lazy slackers doesn’t have that patrician image that revealed Mitt Romney’s affinity for the 1%.) He’s got a nasty streak that can appeal to the right wingers, but he puts a smile on his bigotry and hatred in downright Reaganesque fashion.

But who knows? If he’s the best they can do, I doubt it will be enough. On the other hand, we have a long way to go and events may conspire to change the whole picture before then. Things can change quickly in this fast paved world we live in.

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The Justice Department sends another message — “we’re liars!”

by digby

This is just pathetic:

Four years after President Obama promised to crack down on mortgage fraud, his administration has quietly made the crime its lowest priority and has closed hundreds of cases after little or no investigation, the Justice Department’s internal watchdog said on Thursday.

The report by the department’s inspector general undercuts the president’s contentions that the government is holding people responsible for the collapse of the financial and housing markets. The administration has been criticized, in particular, for not pursuing large banks and their executives.

“In cities across the country, mortgage fraud crimes have reached crisis proportions,” Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said at a mortgage fraud summit in Phoenix in 2010. “But we are fighting back.”

The inspector general’s report, however, shows that the F.B.I. considered mortgage fraud to be its lowest-ranked national criminal priority. In several large cities, including New York and Los Angeles, F.B.I. agents either ranked mortgage fraud as a low priority or did not rank it at all.

RThe F.B.I. received $196 million from the 2009 to 2011 fiscal years to investigate mortgage fraud, the report said, but the number of pending cases and agents investigating them dropped in 2011.

“Despite receiving significant additional funding from Congress to pursue mortgage fraud cases, the F.B.I. in adding new staff did not always use these new positions to exclusively investigate mortgage fraud,” the report says.

Mortgage fraud was one of the causes of the 2008 financial collapse. Mortgage brokers and lenders falsified documents, sometimes to make mortgages look safer, other times to make the property look more valuable.

The inspector general focused much of its report and most of its recommendations on fixing internal systems that produced inaccurate data that wildly overstated the government’s results.

Mr. Holder, for example, announced in 2012 that prosecutors had charged 530 people over the previous year in cases related to mortgage fraud that had cost homeowners more than $1 billion.

Almost immediately, the Justice Department realized it could not back up those statistics, the inspector general said. After months of review, it became clear that only 107 people were charged.

The $1 billion figure, it turned out, had been drastically inflated. It was actually $95 million, the inspector general said. Yet Justice Department officials repeated those claims for months, even after it was obvious the figures were wrong, the inspector general said.

That’s the Justice Department we’re talking about. You know, the department that puts legal pot workers in jail for years to “send a message” and pursues Real Housewives with Javert-like zeal for filling out phony W-2s a decade ago. That’s right, that Justice Department, the one that puts people in jail all day long for lying to them.

This administration has faced no crisis as grave as the financial crisis and no crimes that harmed more people. That crisis set back an entire generation, which may not ever recover to the point at which it can achieve the hopes, dreams and ambitions it had before this happened. And this administration has completely failed to hold the people who did this accountable for their actions. In fact, those people have been rewarded. I guess they figured that Bernie Madoff was Wall Street’s Jesus and he “died” for Goldman Sach’s sins.

Not that the administration saw these people as having sinned at all.  Recall the recently disclosed Fed minutes which featured these comments by the then NY Fed Governor Tim Geithner:

To Mr. Geithner, the nattering naysayers raising alarms about the financial system’s soundness were a bigger problem than the one that they were trying to draw attention to. “There is nothing more dangerous in what we’re facing now,” he said, “than for people who are knowledgeable about this stuff to feed these broad concerns about our credibility and about the basic core strength of the financial system.”

Nothing to see here folks …

Oh, and by the way, they’re still lying.

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There’s a reason we protect teachers

by David Atkins

One of the more insidious aspects of the billionaire assault on teachers is the effort to make public teaching an “at will” occupation in which a teacher can be fired at any time. I’ve written a couple of posts about the Vergara v. California lawsuit aimed at destroying teacher protections, but I haven’t focused much on the consequences of losing the case.

Already in private charter schools there have been a raft of outrageous firings that are currently illegal in the public system, but billionaires want to legalize. Here are a few of them, sent to me via email by an education activist:

• Burke Wallace, English teacher and football coach at Livermore Valley Charter Prep in Alameda County, was fired for the crime of being gay.
• after news reports mentioned that he had married his longtime partner, Christopher Persky, following the Supreme Court’s ruling on Proposition 8.  Students allege that staff at the school knew about Bencomo’s sexual orientation.  Bencomo had taught at St. Lucy’s for 17 years, and was likely only terminated because of community awareness about his sexual orientation, following news of his marriage.  Because Bencomo taught at a private school, he did not enjoy due process protections.  If Students Matter is successful, public school teachers in California will have the same rights as Bencomo did.
• Carie Charlesworth, a teacher at a California private school, was fired for being a victim of domestic abuse.  Charlesworth’s abuser was harassing her at school, in violation of a restraining order.  Officials at Holy Trinity School in San Diego fired Charlesworth, citing her ex-husband’s “threatening and menacing behavior” and calling Charlesworth a “liability.”  As a private school teacher, Charlesworth did not enjoy the benefits of the statutes that Students Matter is trying to undermine.  If Students Matter is successful, nothing will prevent public school teachers from being fired for similar harassment.
• Probationary teacher fired for political views:  Karen Salazar, a second-year English teacher at Jordan High in Watts, wasfired after administrators declared her lesson plans to be too “Afro-centric.”  Salazar had used lesson plans that included excerpts fro “The Autobiography of Malcom X” and poetry from Langston Hughes.  As a probationary employee, Salazar did not have due process recourse.  If Students Matter is successful, no teacher will be able to appeal dismissals for teaching materials that administrators dislike.>

This is what will happen to public schools in California and eventually across the nation if Vergara goes the wrong way. All so a few billionaires can get even richer by turning students into commodities.

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Rare Sumatran tiger cubs

by digby

Need I say more?

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