Chart ‘o the day
by digby
You can see the problem. All of these people recognize that inequality exists. But they disagree rather sharply on the causes — and even in areas of agreement, their interpretation of what that means (for example “government policies”) is likely to be very different.
One out of ten Republicans believe that inequality is rising because the poor have a bad work ethic and the government coddles them. A greed too. Those poor people are really greedy.
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The conservative jobs program: become a criminal
by digby
They’re just not leaving people any alternatives:
If you are poor, live in Louisiana, and have the audacity ask someone else for help, be prepared to spend up to six months in jail.
A new bill to outlaw panhandling is quickly moving its way through the Louisiana legislature. HB 1158 would criminalize solicitation, making it a misdemeanor punishable with a maximum fine of $200 and up to six months in jail. The bill is targeted not just at panhandlers, but hitchhikers and those engaged in prostitution as well.
If they decide to apply this to email solicitations for money I might be inclined to support it.
Obviously, this is nuts. There is such a thing as free speech. In fact, the Supreme Court has gone so far as to say that money itself is a form of speech. So how in the world can it be constitutional to make it illegal to ask for money? It’s the basis of our entire system!
This is also yet another example of the conservatives promoting their jobs program: become a thief or a prostitute. With their cuts to unemployment insurance, food stamps, their opposition to any kind of subsidized health care and now even banning begging in the streets, they are literally leaving these people no alternative but to become criminals.
The upside is that the police and prison industrial complex will be extremely well compensated by the taxpayers and it will add up to a hell of lot more money than a couple of bucks in a tin can. But if they play their cards right, Louisiana will eventually get prison slave labor fully legalized and they’ll be able to “give back.”
And then their long lost world will be returned to them.
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Oh you crazy kids…. #disillusioned #whywouldntheybe?
by digby
The big news today is that millenials are disillusioned about politics. I can’t imagine why …
And that means they aren’t going to bother to vote:
Despite what seems like growing approval for the president, the Democrats and Republicans in Congress among 18- to 29- year olds, the percentage of young people who are likely to vote in the midterm elections is shrinking relative to the last time we asked the question five months ago, and also compared to four years ago at this time. Currently, less than one-in-four (24%) young Americans under the age of 30 say that they will “definitely be voting,”in the upcoming midterm elections for Congress, a sharp decrease of 10 percentage points since the Fall. During a similar time of the year in 2010, 31 percent of 18- to 29- year olds reported that they would definitely vote. According to U.S. Census Bureau estimates summarized by CIRCLE1, 23 percent of 18- to 29- year olds voted in the 2010 elections, a decrease of 1.5 points from 2006 when 25.5 percent participated.
But then again, what else is new?
So, yes, young people are disillusioned, depressed and mistrustful. And who can blame them? They are coming of age at a time of serious economic stress and lowered expectations. I did too — it was called “the 1970s”, and these attitudes remind me a lot of the way the later baby boomers felt about our institutions when we were young. It’s ironic that Barack Obama is the vessel for this generation’s disappointment while Nixon was ours, but it’s not really about particular politicians so much as it is a sense of being sold a bunch of great big lies over and over again. That tends to take a toll on your youthful idealism.
But I also think that drawing too many conclusions from the voting intentions of young people in a second term off year election is a stretch. If there’s a drop off it’s just as much attributable to ongoing voting patterns that have little to do with external events:
Older people vote more often. They also watch more news programs and give more money to politicians. There’s something about the routine rituals of democratic politics that appeal more to older people than young people. Maybe it’s just that young people have other things to do and politics becomes a form of entertainment for us old duffers. I was a political junkie way back when I was young too and I blew off some midterms. It wasn’t a protest, it was a lack of interest — my congressional reps were usually incumbents who weren’t in any danger and the state and local races were uninteresting. Ballot measures were what caught my eye most often in midterms. These days I’m one of the old people who no longer follows every musical trend or stays out late at clubs so I have even more time on my hands to think about politics, so I always vote. I know it’s hard to believe when you’re young, but your interests change a bit when you get older.
I think getting young people to the polls to vote in midterms is always going to be a challenge. It’s not that young people don’t care — it’s just not a priority in off years. I suspect that a stronger push for easier voting would help (the last thing the Republicans will stand for.) But here’s some good news for the Democrats: studies show that the Party with which you identify when you’re young doesn’t tend to change. And everybody ages. So it won’t be long before all those young Obama voters are voting in midterms too. The question will be if the Republicans are seducing the next groups of youngsters to their fold. Kids do tend to rebel against their parents …
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Blog News. Writing here, there and everywhere
by digby
Just a little note to say that Salon has announced that I have joined their team and I wanted to explain exactly what that means. I will be writing for them as I have been the last three weeks, commenting on various topics that catch my eye. So far it’s been a lot of fun and they are a great group to work with.
However, just so you know, I will still be blogging full time here as I always have. I honestly see nothing changing at all in that respect — this is my home and will continue to be so. The only thing new is that you’ll have another place to read my scribbles.
I should point out that normally my Salon piece will go up quite early in the morning. So, if you go over there around 8AM eastern/5AM pacific time you’ll usually see my little contribution.
So, don’t remove Hullabaloo from your bookmarks! David, Dennis, tristero and I will still be churning out the words of wisdom — or words anyway, at the same pace as always.
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The Religious Left fights back
by digby
Some of the most creative progressive organizing these days is happening in North Carolina. We’ve all heard about Moral Mondays and the leadership role assumed by the liberal Christian churches in taking to the streets on social justice issues. Now the liberal clergy is taking to the courts. And it’s a very clever strategy.
My piece at Salon today reviews the Manhattan Declaration, the right wing Christian and Catholic manifesto from 2009 which started the ball rolling on the new “religious liberty” argument that they can never be free as long as they are not allowed to discriminate. (More or less.)
This … is going to force them to confront their own argument head on:
In a novel legal attack on a state’s same-sex marriage ban, a liberal Protestant denomination on Monday filed a lawsuit arguing that North Carolina is unconstitutionally restricting religious freedom by barring clergy members from blessing gay and lesbian couples.
The denomination argues that a North Carolina law criminalizing the religious solemnization of weddings without a state-issued marriage license violates the First Amendment. Mr. Clark said that North Carolina allows clergy members to bless same-sex couples married in other states, but otherwise bars them from performing “religious blessings and marriage rites” for same-sex couples, and that “if they perform a religious blessing ceremony of a same-sex couple in their church, they are subject to prosecution and civil judgments.”
You mean to say that Christian clergy who support gay marriage believe they have a right to exercise their religious freedom too? Well now, that’s a conundrum, isn’t it? After all, nobody has ever said that conservative Christians should be compelled to go against their beliefs and legally marry gay couples. But these laws are very definitely telling these liberal Christians that they cannot. Indeed, in North Carolina they criminalized it, holding clergy legally liable for performing the ceremonies.
Surprisingly, the North Carolina Values Coalition did not step up to defend the religious freedom of these Christian Clergy. Quite the opposite, in fact. They attacked their religious belief: read on
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No, the answer isn’t more asset building for the 99%. The answer is boosting wages over assets
by David Atkins
If you want your day’s fill of poorly thought-out, plutocrat-friendly pieces, Politico Magazine has become a great place to go. Andrea Levere and Ezra Levin’s neoliberal answer to Piketty deserves an honored mention in the tradition.
They acknowledge the reality of Piketty’s argument that asset returns grow faster than incomes, leading to increasing inequality. They also acknowledge that the wealthy control the vast majority of the assets. But they reject the call for taxation on the assets of the super-rich in favor of…increasing the assets and savings of the poor, instead of providing income (wage) support. No, really:
In other words, government spends to help low-income families just get by, and it spends to help high-income families get further ahead. Piketty found that concentrated wealth is the driving force behind income inequality, and federal policy is actively concentrating that wealth.
Some may argue that working families do not receive benefits for saving and investments because these families are unable to save or invest. But decades of research proves otherwise. The American Dream Demonstration, for instance, a nationwide research project on savings for working families, showed that even the lowest-income families will save toward their goals of college, home and business ownership if provided with the right opportunities and incentives. And a rigorous study of New York City’s $aveUSA program has found that low-income tax filers will save a significant portion of their refund to serve as a personal safety net.
There’s no shortage of ideas for new asset-based policies. Children’s Savings Account programs, which help children start building assets early in life, have launched throughout the country and congressional leaders have committed to supporting legislation to provide every child born in the country with a savings account.
Other asset-based proposals would expand and make refundable the Saver’s Credit — a rare retirement savings tax expenditure targeted to low- and moderate-income households. Policymakers are also working to remove asset limits from public benefit programs so families don’t have to choose between building wealth and receiving benefits that help them make ends meet. (In many states, a parent who saves as little as $1,000 or $2,000 in a savings account for themselves or for their kids risks getting kicked off of public benefits.)
So instead of doing something about radical inequality, the new neoliberal answer is to give the 44% of Americans living paycheck to paycheck more savings vehicles and incentives to stash away money to pay for those increasingly impossibly high mortgage and tuition costs.
As the inequality problem becomes more and more severe and as Piketty’s arguments gain increasing influence, look for all the neoliberal asset addicts to make ever more preposterous arguments to defend incentivizing boosting assets over boosting wages.
It’s all they know, and doing anything else would turn their worlds inside-out and hurt all their very asset-heavy bank accounts.
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Social Security is a very efficient program. If the granny starvers have their way it won’t be for long.
by digby
I used to work with a friend who gave classes about retirement planning and perhaps one of her more surprising observations was that working with the Social security administration was very easy and the experience was always efficient and well managed. This must be one of the reasons why people are so happy with it (after the checks they get each months, obviously.) It works.
Well, guess what? The granny starvers can’t get what they want the honest way — their constituents actually like Social Security and want it protected. So they’re going after it with stealth:
[C]ries to cut benefits have grown quieter as the program’s enemies realize that the American people will work together to beat back anything they throw at us. But benefit cuts aren’t the only way to dismantle our Social Security system. There is already an invisible war under way—and we’re losing!
The Social Security Administration is funded the same way Social Security benefits are—by payroll taxes that all of us pay. Its expenses have no impact on the federal debt, and represent less than 1% of Social Security’s annual expenditures. But Congress has still cut fourteen of the last sixteen SSA budget requests! And now, these cuts are being felt, as the Social Security Administration is forced to shutter dozens of field offices around the country.
RJ Eskow wrote on the Huffington Post that “many disabled and elderly Social Security recipients depend on field offices, and the workers in them.” And as Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times said “They haven’t been able to cut benefits, so they’re doing the next best thing: making it hard for you to know what you’re due, and harder to get it when it comes due.”
That’s very clever. The best way to undermine any government program is to make it inefficient and make the people who need it come to hate it.
I have another friend who went through a tough financial patch this past winter and needed to apply for heating oil help from the state. It was so onerous to go through the process — and they were so ineffective and downright incompetent — that she had to give up. Months later, after she’d suffered through the cold winter by hook or by crook, they informed her that they had finally sent a check to the heating oil company. It was April. Needless to say, the heating oil company had not been willing to extend credit so the account had been closed long before.
If the conservatives can make Social Security work that badly they’ll go a long way toward finally breaking the compact it has with the American people. One way or the other, they’re not going to give up.
Oh, and when I talk about conservatives, I’m not just talking about Republicans. The GOP doesn’t do this on their own.
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The best way to make sure Obama doesn’t give in? Hold the Senate.
by David Atkins
Dems are worried about what will happen in a post 2014 environment in which Republicans hold the Congress. Will President Obama exercise his veto pen? Or will he cave?
Democrats have something else to fear after the November midterms besides just an all Republican-controlled Congress: President Barack Obama.
With Obama’s political career winding down and poll numbers continuing to languish, his party brethren fret that their own president — forced to work with GOP majorities — would give away the store on key policy issues ranging from the budget to energy and trade. It’s a concern congressional Democrats have voiced every time Obama and Vice President Joe Biden tried to cut big fiscal deals with Republicans — and the panic is now more palpable with the growing prospect of a Senate GOP majority.
I’m worried, too. But the best way not to find out is to not lose the Senate.
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Oliver vs Alexander
by digby
For the debut of his new show on HBO, John Oliver interviewed General Keith Alexander;
That may be the most disturbing thing I’ve seen all month.
Just remember: you should “trust” the NSA because it’s full of good people who are protecting you. So there you go.
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Rand Paul’s populism. He tells those Fat Cats to listen up: he’s going to cut their taxes whether they like it or not.
by digby
According to Benjy Sarlin, our man Rand is out there pounding the populist drums insisting that the GOP has to stop being the party of the wealthy. It’s vitally important to make sure that Americans understand they are NOT the party of Wall Street but are instead the party of the average Joe the Plumber. And how do they demonstrate this? You might be surprised — if you don’t know Rand Paul:
“What did Ronald Reagan do, did he come forward and say ‘Oh, lets just cut taxes for low-income people?” he said. “No! He said forthrightly ‘Let’s cut everyone’s taxes.’ He did dramatically. The top rate, that’s what rich people pay, the top rate was 70%, he lowered it to 50% then he lowered it again to 28% and 20 million jobs were created!”
Mocking the naysayers who might think better of cutting taxes on the 1% during a period of exploding inequality, Paul quipped: “Anybody here ever work for a poor person?”
And if you’re a racial minority you’ll benefit even more by Paul’s plan to cut certain millionaires’ taxes to nothing. Take that, fat cats!
Tax cuts are the communion wine of wingnut religion. Paul is just doing what all the right wing “populists” have been doing for years — explaining to a certain kind of fool that it’s in their best interest to give all the money to rich people. And there are a whole bunch of people out there who buy it.
I’ve told the story before about the Rush Limbaugh caller I heard years ago who told the 250 hundred million dollar man that he was happy for his boss to get a big bonus while he didn’t get a raise because that meant the company was doing well and he’d do well too in the long run. Rush heartily congratulated him on his perspicacity.
The Sarlin piece points out that all the “populist” Republicans from Ryan to Paul to Huckabee have one thing in common: whatever they think the best strategy for winning elections, they are of one mind about cutting taxes and they are making sure that the Fat Cats know they are in no danger of any pitch forks pointing in their direction. Not that there was ever any question about that. Right wing populism aims its pitchforks at the poor parasites, especially those of color, not the rich ones. But as we know, the wealthy plutocrats are very sensitive about all this. The Republican trickle down theory soothes those wounds in in a very comforting way.
On the other hand, it’s not as if Democrats have nothing to work with:
Two dozen interviews about the 2016 race with unaligned GOP donors, financial executives and their Washington lobbyists turned up a consistent — and unusual — consolation candidate if Bush demurs, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t recover politically and no other establishment favorite gets nominated: Hillary Clinton.
Most donors and Wall Street titans have not lined up with any candidate yet, waiting for the field to take shape after the midterms. But if Bush doesn’t run, the list of Republican saviors could be short. Some donors fear Christie will never overcome the Bridgegate scandal. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin so far seems more inclined to stay in the House than to run for president. And to varying degrees, other candidates — such as Florida Sen. Marco Rubio and Govs. Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio — are either unknown or untrusted.
The darkest secret in the big money world of the Republican coastal elite is that the most palatable alternative to a nominee such as Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas or Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky would be Clinton, a familiar face on Wall Street following her tenure as a New York senator with relatively moderate views on taxation and financial regulation.
I don’t know why this is considered a big secret. Of course they’re going to align with Clinton over Cruz or Paul — those two are very unlikely to be able to win the presidency. I seriously doubt that it’s an ideological issue, although I’m sure they all think Cruz and Paul are cranks. But they have nothing to fear from either of them. In fact, they have nothing to fear from any GOP candidate and unless Warren or Sanders could put up a serious campaign, they have nothing to fear from Democrats either, least of all Clinton.
They’re betting on winners. It’s what they do. They’d prefer to back Republicans because they don’t like the hippie faction of the Democratic Party. (Of course, the Bundy faction has them a little spooked as well — for different reasons.) But all things being equal, these are patriarchal, plutocratic conservative men who are naturally more at home in the Republican Party. But the Democrats are fine too. They can make money either way.
What they really fear are the people.
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