Month: June 2014

The maverick bein’ mavericky to the max

by digby

Chris Hayes took McCain downtown:

I only wish that being inconsistent and hypocritical — even incoherent — actually made a difference in these political battles.

For those who haven’t been playing along the last 30 years or so, this is how Republicans do “national security” politics. Shocking, I know, but they haven’t been transformed into Rand Paul isolationists because they finally realized that  it costs too much blood and treasure to be the world’s policemen. For most conservatives that was an emotional way station for them to distance themselves from the embarrassment that was George Bush. Now that they can claim Obama prematurely bugging out of Iraq precipitated a crisis (all of which is a lie) they will be happy to wrap themselves in the flag and hug the military to their breasts and take up the mantle of True Patriotic Americans once again. The hate Big Government but they love the Empire.

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The GOP’s demoralizing Obamacare problem

by David Atkins

It hasn’t gotten much press lately what with the developing mess in Iraq and the Eric Cantor shocker, but another poll was released showing the bind Republicans are in over the ACA. Greg Sargent explains:

So this new Bloomberg News poll will pose an additional problem to those who simply refuse to accept the reality that, while disapproval of the law remains high, the American people still want to stick with it:

What is your opinion of the health care law?

It should be repealed: 32

It may need small modifications, but we should see how it works: 56

It should be left alone: 10

So 66 percent support giving the law a chance to work with possible small modifications or leaving it alone, versus only 32 percent who want it done away with. This seems like fair wording.

Meanwhile, the poll also finds that 39 percent support the law, while 11 percent oppose it because it did not go far enough — a total of 51 percent, versus 42 percent who oppose the law because it went too far. Some have raised legitimate questions about the validity of this particular line of questioning. But taken together, all these numbers seem to support the idea that the electorate remains polarized around whether to approve or disapprove of the law, while clearly supporting keeping it in place.

Meanwhile, there is broad support for the law’s individual provisions. Sixty-five percent support banning insurance industry discrimination against preexisting conditions; 55 percent support eliminating lifetime caps on insurance company payouts for health care; and 75 percent support allowing children up to 26 to stay on parents’ policies. As always, the mandate is unpopular, but even here it’s not too bad, at 46-52. (This is only one poll, but its general findings on repeal and the popularity of the law’s provisions have been confirmed in polling for years now.)

If you think progressives are frustrated these days, consider being your average Fox News-watching rube. Your leadership both in Washington and in the media told you for years that the ACA was Satan’s playground itself. You were told that America’s very survival depended on its repeal. You were told that by electing enough Republicans and by forceful enough in your outrage, it would in fact be repealed. You were told that if your heroes in Congress shut down the government, the demonic forces trying to give healthcare to the unworthy would be defeated. And then you and your friends were humiliated.

Then to add insult to injury, it turns out that most of the law’s provisions are pretty popular. Heck, even some of your friends are signing up and realizing that they can actually get covered by Medicaid after all, or they qualify for much lower prices and much better coverage on the exchanges. Ouch.

Your politicians told you that they would be riding a wave of anti-Obamacare sentiment all the way to an electoral tidal wave in 2016. And now you barely hear a word about it. Instead, it’s an uninspiring and insipid chorus of “amnesty” and “Benghazi” and “Bergdahl.”

That has to be pretty demoralizing.

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QOTD: Kevin Drum

by digby

This is 100% correct.

Yes, the tea party has won. But it won because of support from Fox News. In reality, it’s Fox News that won. And for all that Fox gets a lot of attention, I still wonder how many non-conservatives really watch it. Not just the occasional clip on Jon Stewart or Media Matters that’s good for a laugh or an eye roll. How many really sit down occasionally and take in a full evening? Or a whole day? Because that’s the only way you’ll really understand.

Take his word for it — and mine. Unless you watch this thing for a very long stretch you can’t understand the nearly hypnotic nature of it.

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Stay Out 

by tristero

Iraq is descending into the chaos that so many of us who opposed the war predicted. The human toll must be horrible, likely beyond the imagining of most living Americans.

This article says the US should go back in and my mind boggles. When will we ever learn? The author’ makes two blatantly ludicrous assumptions:

The first is that the US government could re-intervene with good intentions. Not only is that utterly naive, it’s impossible. For one thing, good intentions aren’t enough. As Bush convincingly demonstrated, you also have to know what you’re doing. Even now, even without right wing ideologues running foreign policy, this country hardly knows enough about Iraq to be effective. Nor does the US have a stable enough political culture to follow through.

Also, who says the US has good intentions? After all, a genuinely serious American solution to Iraq begins by bringing to justice those responsible for the invasion. That would demonstrate actual good intentions by the present American government to the citizens of Iraq. Dream on.

Assumption two is that the US has some kind of fairy dust that can help stave off catastrophe if we can just get a chance to sprinkle it around. There is no such thing. The American military would only make things far worse.

And since we don’t know what we’re doing, since the criminals will get off, and since we have no magic powders, the US must stay out. That doesn’t preclude cooperation with an international coalition; it simply means that further unilateral military involvement is an absolutely terrible idea.

Iraq today is a tragedy, plain and simple. We will only add to the horror Bush perpetrated by unilaterally returning.

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“It’s not my party”

by digby

So Ron Fournier dusted off his pith helmet, grabbed his binoculars and went out into the wilds of
America to study the indigenous tribes:

“America is for the greedy, for those who’ve made their buck or grabbed their power. It’s not for us,” said Helen Conover of Oxford, Pa. She was eating with two other Chester County employees, Jennifer Guy and Kim Kercher, at the Penn’s Table diner. Conover was the table’s optimist.

“This country’s doomed,” Guy said. Kercher nodded her head and told me that she’s close to losing her house to a mortgage company and can’t get help from Washington. For years, their county salaries haven’t kept pace with the cost of living. “The rich get richer. The poor get benefits. The middle class pays for it all,” Kercher said.

Guy said she’s an independent voter. Conover and Kercher are registered Republicans. All three voted for Obama in 2008, hoping that he could start changing the culture of Washington. Now, they consider the president ineffective, if only partly to blame for his failure.

“He hit a brick wall,” Conover said. “The Republican Party is not going to let him change anything.”

I replied, “But it’s your party.”

“No,” Conover bristled, “it’s not my party. I don’t have a party.” She paused, took a small bite of her sandwich and added, “An American Party is what I have.”

An American Party—what does that mean? For months, I’ve heard that phrase or similar antiestablishment sentiment from voters in Michigan, Arkansas, South Carolina, and elsewhere—whites and nonwhites; voters who are poor and rich and from the shrinking middle-class; Democrats, Republicans, and independents. “We need American leaders, not Republican and Democratic leaders,” a construction worker in Little Rock, Ark., told me last month. Down the street from Penn’s Table, barber Stefanos Bouikidis held scissors in his right hand while throwing both hands in the air. “How are things going to change with corporate America running everything?”

At West Chester’s popular D.K. Diner, a military veteran who served five combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan said the only solution may be a revolution against political elites. “We may need to drag politicians out and shoot them like they did in Cuba,” said a grim-faced Frederick Derry two days after a Las Vegas couple allegedly shot two police officers. The attackers draped their bodies with a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag, according to ABC News, pinned a swastika on them and a note that read, “The revolution has begun.”

Lest you think that the conservative Fournier finds this the least bit incoherent — or slightly unhinged — he assures us that this is actually peaceful populism:

A violent revolution is unconscionable. But what may be in the air is a peaceful populist revolt—a bottom-up, tech-fueled assault on 20th-century political institutions.

Of course it’s “tech fueled” because … well, who knows? He doesn’t explain. But the rest of it sounds totally awesome.

Edrosos explains what it’s all about:

*A pullback from the rest of the world, with more of an inward focus.
*A desire to go after big banks and other large financial institutions.
*Elimination of corporate welfare.
*Reducing special deals for the rich.
*Pushing back on the violation of the public’s privacy by the government and big business.

Sounds reasonable — oh, wait, we forgot the most important revolutionary bullet:

*Reducing the size of government.

Because if you want to rein in the rich, corporations, the financial industry, etc., the first step is to scale back the government — the SEC, the CFPB, the Justice Department and all that, they just get in the way; flying squads of billionaires, battening on the bathtub-drowned Small Government, will take care of all that for you.

I’m with Pierce on this:

Certainly, Cantor was one of the more unpleasant stalks of stinkweed in the conservative terrarium, and I have no doubt that a great number of people agree. But, seriously, the issue in the election was not “immigration reform.” It was “AMNESTY!!!!!!!!1111!!!!!!!! AIEEEEEEE!!!!11111!!!!!!!!!!!!!” That was the central point of all the free media on talk radio that was Brat’s only way of countering the massive financial advantage Cantor had. That was the issue that was the accelerant that produced the conflagration that consumed Cantor’s career. Just being a dick wasn’t enough to beat Cantor. (It never was before.) But being a dick who was believed to be in favor of “AMNESTY!!!!!111!!!!!! AIEEEEE!!!!!11111!!!!!” was more than enough. Cantor’s absence from the district undoubtedly made it easier to position him that way. But it simply isn’t possible to imagine an 11-point margin of victory over a prominent member of the Republican leadership in 2014 that didn’t involve something that engaged The Base’s Id in some way.

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Frank Luntz tries to excuse the inexcusable

by David Atkins

Frank Luntz was in the New York Times yesterday to defend the wildly, outrageously inaccurate polling that said Cantor would waltz to victory.

From the spinmeister himself:

ERIC CANTOR wasn’t the only person at a loss for words on Tuesday night.

His pollster, McLaughlin & Associates, found itself trying to explain the impossible — how a projected 34 percent lead for the House majority leader 12 days before the election could end up an 11-point loss on Election Day to David Brat of the Tea Party in the Virginia Republican primary.

We’ve all been there. There isn’t a pollster alive — me included — who hasn’t had to take the walk of shame, hat in hand, to explain to an angry client why a predicted outcome simply didn’t happen.

Make no mistake: This was a whopper for the ages. McLaughlin didn’t merely get it wrong; this was quantitative malpractice — a mind-blowing modern-day “Dewey Beats Truman” moment.

That said, polls can’t predict elections. They are essential tools, windows into the minds of a particular audience — but they cannot and should not be used as infallible crystal balls.

Trouble is, pollsters are under ever increasing pressure to feed a voracious media beast and provide the answer to that perennial question, “Who’s gonna win?” And therein lies the problem with polls, pollsters and consumers of both.

Yes, a poll is a useful tool for gaining insight and information, but it is only one arrow in the quiver. Without qualitative insight — talking with voters face to face to judge their mood, emotion, intensity and opinion — polls can be inconsequential, and occasionally wrong.

The Cantor campaign’s catastrophe is not without modern precedent, even if the size and scope were extreme. Anyone remember Al Gore winning Florida, John Kerry winning Ohio and, of course, President Mitt Romney?

he simple truth remains that one in 20 polls — by the simple rules of math — misses the mark. That’s why there is that small but seemingly invisible “health warning” at the end of every poll, about the 95 percent confidence level. Even if every scientific approach is applied perfectly, 5 percent of all polls will end up outside the margin of error. They are electoral exercises in Russian roulette. Live by the poll; die by the poll.

Even for Luntz, this is deeply embarrassing. Dewey/Truman, Gore in Florida, and Kerry in Ohio were all within either the official statistical margin of error, or close enough as to be excusable. Almost no one but the rubes, “unskewers” and deluded professional operatives actually believed that Romney was likely to win in 2012; just about every single pollster, not to mention every polling aggregate, had Obama as the victor.

A 34 percent lead turning into an 11-point loss isn’t a “your mileage may vary” black swan. Eric Cantor wasn’t arrested for murder in the meantime–and even if he had been, not even that sort of thing swings 45 points in the polls. Heck, even jailed alleged mafia gun running CA Secretary of State candidate Leeland Yee still pulled 10% in a crowded electoral field, dropping a maximum 10-20 points off his probable tally otherwise.

Yes, the occasional poll does wind up missing the mark so badly that it falls outside the margin of error. That’s the business, and why a competent campaign with Cantor’s resources polls more than once just to be on the safe side. But it’s one thing to poll outside the margin. It’s another to miss by 45 points. That’s not just a miss. It’s not on the same planet.

Luntz probably has friends at McLaughlin & Associates and feels a professional obligation to cover for them. But his take on it is embarrassing. McLaughlin either made a catastrophic error, or it cut corners and grifted Cantor’s campaign. One or the other. It is practically impossible–certainly not a 1 in 20 chance–for a legitimately and accurately conducted poll to miss by 45 points. It just doesn’t happen.

Luntz does know this, of course. His piece ends with a barely disguised pitch for candidates to do a little less quantitative polling, and a little more in-depth qualitative research of the focus group variety. Luntz has a professional interest there and I happen to agree with him. I’m a professional qualitative researcher myself, after all, and I share Luntz’ opinion on the relative value of the two methodologies.

But let’s not pretend that the McLaughlin poll was legitimately and correctly conducted. It can’t have been.

UPDATE: A reader correctly points out that I doubled the actual number of the “swing” by both subtracting from Cantor’s line and adding to Brat’s. That’s true, so it would actually be a 22-point “swing”, potentially less if you count all the undecideds going to the challenger. Even so, it’s still far, far beyond any reasonable standard for error. Another reader notes that the poll might have been of registered rather than likely GOP voters–I don’t know if that’s true, but that would be polling malpractice in a super-low turnout election.

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Inequality video ‘o the day: CEO pay edition

by digby

EPI has just released a big study on CEO pay as compared to the average worker.  As you might imagine it’s not exactly uplifting news if you aren’t a CEO.

They also wisely put together a short video showing he highlights of their findings:

Details at the link.

The hawks are circling like vultures

by digby

Listening to McCain babble on about Obama firing his entire staff and replacing them with his True North, the Man Called Petraeus while Huckleberry Graham shrieks “we’ve got another Benghazi! in the making” is enough to make me start drinking. And it’s not even noon yet here on the west coast. And that’s nothing to the legions of morons who are condemning the Obama administration for puling out of Iraq.

Here’s a reminder of how that happened, in case anyone is cloudy on the actual history here’s a recap:

President Obama’s speech formally declaring that the last 43,000 U.S. troops will leave Iraq by the end of the year was designed to mask an unpleasant truth: The troops aren’t being withdrawn because the U.S. wants them out. They’re leaving because the Iraqi
Obama campaigned on ending the war in Iraq but had instead spent the past few months trying to extend it. A 2008 security deal between Washington and Baghdad called for all American forces to leave Iraq by the end of the year, but the White House — anxious about growing Iranian influence and Iraq’s continuing political and security challenges — publicly and privately tried to sell the Iraqis on a troop extension. As recently as last week, the White House was trying to persuade the Iraqis to allow 2,000-3,000 troops to stay beyond the end of the year.

Those efforts had never really gone anywhere; One senior U.S. military official told National Journal last weekend that they were stuck at “first base” because of Iraqi reluctance to hold substantive talks.

That impasse makes Obama’s speech at the White House on Friday less a dramatic surprise than simple confirmation of what had long been expected by observers of the moribund talks between the administration and the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, which believes its own security forces are more than up to the task of protecting the country from terror attacks originating within its borders or foreign incursions from neighboring countries.

In Washington, many Republican lawmakers had spent recent weeks criticizing Obama for offering to keep a maximum of 3,000 troops in Iraq, far less than the 10,000-15,000 recommended by top American commanders in Iraq. That political point-scoring helped obscure that the choice wasn’t Obama’s to make. It was the Iraqis’, and a recent trip to the country provided vivid evidence of just how unpopular the U.S. military presence there has become — and just how badly the Iraqi political leadership wanted those troops to go home.

Former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, for instance, is a hugely pro-American politician who believes Iraq’s security forces will be incapable of protecting the country without sustained foreign assistance. But in a recent interview, he refused to endorse a U.S. troop extension and instead indicated that they should leave.

“We have serious security problems in this country and serious political problems,” he said in an interview late last month at his heavily guarded compound in Baghdad. “Keeping Americans in Iraq longer isn’t the answer to the problems of Iraq. It may be an answer to the problems of the U.S., but it’s definitely not the solution to the problems of my country.

You’ll recall that political control of the country had been turned over to the Iraqis by none other than George W. Bush. “Let freedom reign!”

So, now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s take a look at where we are now. (And let’s just say that CNN’s attempt to turn this into another battle between good ‘n evil by pimping the idea that it’s all about a “new bin Laden” who is so evil he even wears a mask is not the best way to think about it.)

What started as a crackdown against democratic protests three years ago, has become a region-wide conflict that now has Iraq descending back into chaos. The countries of the region — along with the United States and various non-state actors — all have a hand in creating this moment, as money, fighters, weapons, and a desire to control the Middle East have come together to produce an extremely volatile and terrifying situation.

What has made the Syrian conflict so difficult to respond to has been the fact that the situation has refused to be tied down as just a civil war. In addition to the top-line fighting between the Syrian government and rebels who’d like to oust Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, there’s also a proxy war ongoing between Sunni-majority states in the Gulf and Shiite-majority Iran and its allies. There’s also struggles for dominance among the rebels, who fight each other almost as frequently as the Assad government these days. Add in disagreements between the countries united against Assad over just which of the Syrian rebels to finance, and the reason a simple solution for the conflict hasn’t been developed becomes more understandable.

And standing out among all of this now is the attempts of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) — also known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) — to establish its own state within the region. ISIS managed to takeover the city of Fallujah in January, hold it against Iraqi army efforts to dislodge it, and in the last few days take over both the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit. The former al Qaeda affiliate is literally fighting every other actor in Syria in the process, whether through direct fighting or through proxies, diplomatic battles, or other forms of conflict that don’t involve actually shooting at each other. The confusion inherent in this situation is mapped out, as best as possible, in the below chart from ThinkProgress:

If only we had elected the McCain-Palin ticket. Recall how they would handle all this:

In a small, mirror-paneled room guarded by a Secret Service agent and packed with some of the city’s wealthiest and most influential political donors, Mr. McCain got right to the point.

“One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, ‘Stop the bullshit,'” said Mr. McCain, according to Shirley Cloyes DioGuardi, an invitee, and two other guests.

If only we had listened none of this would have happened, amirite?

By the way, ISIS includes some of the guys we would have been arming in the Syrian war against the government. In Iraq they would be the enemy.

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Theocratic libertarianism?

by digby

I wrote about the essential libertarian philosophy of David Brat over at Salon this morning. I point out that he, like many libertarians, is against corporate welfare which makes him an ally of the left on that one issue. (And that’s a good thing!) But he’s no populist:

A closer look at Brat’s rhetoric reveals a man who is not very populist beyond that one issue. He’s a typical libertarian (albeit with a theological twist). And so along with his commitment to end corporate welfare, one would presumably need to take the bitter with the sweet. He thinks it’s unfair that people pay less into Medicare and Social Security than they take out so these programs have to be slashed or eliminated. He believes that Obamacare should be scrapped along with employer-based insurance so that people will buy their own health policies, which will (he doesn’t say how) eliminate the problem of preexisting condition exclusions. He thinks education funding should be drastically cut. He believes that if the country is rich enough it will solve the climate crisis — because rich countries always solve their problems.

But Andrew Sullivan thinks he can bridge the partisan gap anyway and be the “Chomsky-Nader” of the right. Why?

The K Street-Wall Street nexus is a scandal; as is our absurdly complex tax code (largely devised for corporate welfare and for those with expensive tax lawyers). Put that together with a left-sounding defense of the American middle-class against millions of undocumented, low-wage immigrants, and you’re beginning to get somewhere.

So pitting the middle class “against millions of undocumented, low-wage immigrants” is “left-sounding” now? Who knew?

It’s very interesting to me how this fellow is such a Rorschach test. Everybody wants to see him in their camp. And weirdly, in one way or another, he is.

Speaking of which, Julie Ingersol explained the theocratic twist in this piece at Religion Dispatches:

Brat calls himself a “Calvinist (in theory not practice)” by which he likely means that while he is a practicing Catholic, it is the Calvinist tradition that shapes his view of the world. This means at least two things: first, that there is no aspect of life outside the realm of religion, and second, that human beings left to their own devices are inherently sinful (what Calvinists refer to as Total Depravity).

These commitments play out in Brat’s Interpretation essay in the form of an argument that not all biblically prohibited activities must necessarily made illegal. He is relying on the Reformed notion, popular among Tea Partiers, that God delegates limited authority to specific human spheres.

Brat notes a division between the responsibilities of the state and the church. The state, in this model, is severely restrained in its authority over economic activity. The best check on the depravity of individuals who make up the civil government is the decentralization of authority into the distinct spheres; the best check on the depravity of human beings in the economy is the decentralization of the market created by competition.

Historian Michael McVicar has this called this “theocratic libertarianism”: it creates an economic zone free of government regulation, but it does not create a zone free of the regulations of religion.

This is the model in which care for the poor is the responsibility of the family and the church and any government safety net is labelled “socialism.” It is the model in which education is the sole responsibility of families, leading to the goal of eliminating public education and any state regulation of private education and home schooling. At the very heart of this version of Calvinism is the goal of bringing all areas of life “under the Lordship of Christ.”

“Theocratic libertariansim” may be the scariest sounding philosophy I’ve come across. Holy hell…

The rich are just sitting on the money

by David Atkins

As the economy continues to sputter even though stocks, corporate profits and other assets are at record highs, it has become abundantly clear that what is good for Wall Street isn’t good for Main Street. The entire idea behind supply-side economics has been that if you give the rich more money, they’ll make increased investments, which will in turn result in better lives on Main Street.

We all know that’s a lie. Increased investment by the wealthy does not in fact produce better jobs and wages for workers.

But not even the first part of the corollary is true. These days the rich aren’t even bothering to invest a huge amount of their growing hoards. They’re just sitting on massive piles of cash:

Canny caution or bumbling oversight, the world’s richest people have retained huge stockpiles of zero-yielding cash throughout the recent surge in financial asset prices.

Their persistence may have, counter-intuitively, prolonged the buoyancy of those very assets in the process — helping to inflate the outsize wealth of the super-rich further.

With the debate about rising inequality re-invigorated this year by French economist Thomas Piketty’s best-selling book on ballooning wealth gaps, the spending and savings behavior of the so-called “plutonomists” has rarely seen more scrutiny or had more influence on the economy and markets.

Political clamor for redress through greater taxation of asset incomes, rents, gifts and inheritances may well build. But few expect much change in the rising wealth of the richest 1% of households or the 0.1% deemed ‘high net-worth individuals.’

Yet as stock markets barrelled to record highs — with the MSCI’s all-country index up almost 30% over the past 18 months — investment advisors estimate up to 40% of their money remains un-invested and is still parked in deposits.

As the latest equity market surge began early last year, a benchmark survey by CapGemeni and RBC Wealth Management had average cash or deposit holdings among those global wealth investors at almost 28% — more than the 26% held in equity or some 20% in real estate.

Defining the richest 12 million savers as those with more than $1 million in investible assets — excluding their primary residences and collectibles — the survey’s high cash holdings may simply reflect a preference for banking large slices of wealth rather than risking it in volatile markets.

And, to be sure, returns on the 70% of other investments would have paid handsomely enough anyway.

The richest have always tended to hold relatively high levels of cash. Liquid holdings are preferred for wealth protection, tax-avoiding mobility, inheritances or gifts.

Yet the survey’s cash levels are more than twice the levels registered in the equivalent survey from the height of the pre-crisis go-go years in 2006 and 2007.

All of that money is sitting around as useless as the cash in Walter White’s storage shed–and most of it is just as immorally made. Not only are the investments of the rich not producing better results in the economy, they’re not even bothering to invest their money.

There isn’t a single piece of supply-side economics that stands up to scrutiny. It’s a fraud, top to bottom.

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