Two charts of the day courtesy of Vox
by David Atkins
America is a great place to live. If you’re a corporation, that is:
But they’ll keep complaining about being “overtaxed,” even though we pay extremely low taxes:
Part of the problem in American politics is that most voters just don’t understand the scale of the theft being perpetrated on them by the corporate world. Or that an alternative model is even possible.
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Walking, chewing gum and frothing at the mouth
by digby
Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said he would get behind House Speaker John Boehner’s lawsuit against President Barack Obama, which will focus on the administration’s unilateral changes to the health care law’s employer mandate.
“I will vote for it,” Ryan said.
Ryan said concern about “the lawlessness of the administration” is the driving force behind the lawsuit, which he said isn’t getting in the way of other House GOP efforts.
“We can walk and chew gum at the same time. We can juggle a lot of bills,” Ryan said. “We’re working on border security, foreign policy and many things at one time, so it’s not as if this displaces action on other items.”
Just in case you were wondering if Ryan’s attempt to reclaim the bogus mantle sane and sober legislator was legit, this should prove otherwise. Same as it ever was.
Don’t miss Krugman’s latest take on Ryan, here.
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Republicans overreaching again
by David Atkins
If anything may save Democrats in 2014, it could be Republicans. The president’s approval ratings may not be terribly high, but the public doesn’t like the GOP approach to the situation:
according to the poll, only 35% want Obama impeached, with nearly two-thirds saying the President should not be removed from office.
There’s an obvious partisan divide, with 57% of Republicans but only 35% of independents and 13% of Democrats backing a move to impeach Obama.
“Anti-impeachment sentiment is roughly where it was for past presidents – 67% opposed Bill Clinton’s impeachment in September 1998, and 69% opposed impeaching George W. Bush when a few Democrats began talking about it in 2006,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
“One reason may be that Americans take impeachment very seriously. Only about one in five say that impeachment is a valid response if Congress is dissatisfied with a president’s policies or the way he is handling his job. Nearly eight in 10 say impeachment should be reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors,” Holland adds.
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Boehner and House Republicans plan to sue Obama over his health care law. They claim he violated the Constitution by circumventing Congress and changing the law’s employer mandate on his own.
By a 57%-41% margin, Americans say House Republicans shouldn’t file the suit. As with the question on impeachment, there’s a wide partisan divide over the lawsuit.
When it comes to expanding the power of the presidency, has Obama gone too far? Forty-five percent say yes, with three in 10 saying the President’s actions have been about right, and 22% saying he hasn’t gone far enough.
If today’s Republicans were a normal political party they would be in a position to take advantage of some of the President’s weaknesses and expected low Democratic turnout.
The Republicans are not a normal political party, and they’ll like pay a price for that.
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QOTD: Rafael Cruz
by digby
Ted’s activist daddy:
I think if the left had their way, they would do away with the whole Bill of Rights.”
No. We just want to tweak it a little. Mostly, I want to outlaw religion and ban all speech I personally don’t like. But I’m open to other stuff too.
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The One Percenters of the future
by digby
So apparently, some protesters are following Zephyr Teachout the candidate in New York who’s challenging Andrew Cuomo for Governor. They seem nice:
Inside the subway, three of the protesters got on a train to go downtown. On board, two of the protesters discussed how “creepy” they thought Teachout’s supporters were. The third protester, a young man in a bright blue shirt took out his wallet and began fiddling with an identification badge from the real estate firm SL Green that had his face on it.
According to Project Vote Smart, SL Green is one of Cuomo’s top ten corporate campaign donors. A spokesperson for SL Green declined to comment on this story.
While on the train, we attempted to get a picture of the protesters. As we departed at the Bleecker Street station, another passenger pointed us out to them and told them we tried to take their picture. The young man in the blue shirt cursed at us and the group left the station.
Outside, we saw the young man again and walked some distance behind him. Two blocks from the station, he turned and entered an NYU Law School residence. He approached us in the courtyard in front of the building and began to shout.
“You’re going to take out your phone and you’re going to take my picture, I should break your f**king phone right here!” he said.
After explaining who we were and showing press credentials, we asked him whom he represented and why he was protesting Teachout’s campaign.
“I’m a college student!” he exclaimed.
The young man turned around to leave before returning to inform us he wasn’t refusing to answer for “political” reasons.
“This is not a political thing where I’m walking away from your questions,” he explained.
He went on to say he merely objected to us personally before turning around and going inside.
“F**k you! You are the worst member of society,” the young man said. “I don’t need to speak to you. … Have a nice f**king life.”
I’m sure this young man will go far.
It’s probably not fair to blame Cuomo for this. It’s likely that his megabuck donor is doing this on his behalf and who knows if he even knows about it. But it’s so telling that some One Percenter would feel the need to recruit people to do this regardless of direction from the candidate. This silly behavior is indicative of the general thin-skinned nature of this crowd — which, I’m sure includes Cuomo himself. There’s nothing a liberal sell-out hates more than being accused of being a liberal sell-out.
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Tasers are part of the problem not the solution
by digby
My piece in Salon today discusses those two choke hold incidents this week and the Police Commissioner’s promise to look into more taser use. Those who have been following this blog and my writing on tasers will be unsurprised that I am not in favor.
The viral video incidents this week in New York, the first of which resulted in death and the second a beating in the face as well as the illegal choke holds were about suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes in the first case and jumping a subway turnstile in the second. These were not people who were suspected of a violent crime requiring that the police spare no energy in protecting the public. Indeed, it appears that the violent acts against these two suspects were entirely based upon the “crime” of failing to instantly obey a police officer. Have we decided that this crime is worthy of beating, torture and possibly death? Because that’s what’s happening all over the country. It’s happening to children, it’s happening to the mentally ill, it’s happening to the elderly and the sick, it’s happening to average citizens who merely assert their rights and it can happen to you too. (It even happens to NFL players.)
Police officers have a tough job. And they deserve the perks they get such as early retirement and generous pensions. That’s the deal we, as a society, make with them because they put themselves at risk and have to deal with very unsavory people and sometimes that requires brute force and violence. I don’t think anyone disputes that. But over the years we’ve also recognized that they do not have the right to physically hurt citizens with impunity or endanger their lives without a very good reason and a whole body of law was developed to prevent police brutality. Somewhere along the line in the last few years, however, perhaps as more police agencies have militarized and come to see themselves as fighting a war with the American public rather than “protecting and serving” the idea that they have ultimate authority on the streets of our cities and towns and that this authority grants them the right to expect instant compliance from every citizen lest they risk being shot through with electricity, choked or beaten.
Read on. The thrust of this piece is the fact that too many police officers are losing their common sense. A good cop will know when to exert her authority and will understand that it’s not necessary in every interaction. It’s not the only thing they have to work with — psychology, patience and compassion are also necessary tools in their arsenal. The militarization of police departments — this us against them attitude — is turning them from public servants into occupying soldiers. It’s a problem.
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Max Speak!, You Listen
by digby
Back in the early days of blogging there were only a few lefties online and very few as smart and honest as economist Max Sawicky. His blog was a must read every day for me for years and I learned a great deal from him.
Well, he quit blogging. I missed him. And now he’s back. There’s lots to like on his page right now, but I thought I’d just excerpt this in case anyone might believe that Paul Ryan’s “devolution” plan is anything but yet another way to drown us all in the bathtub:
The story goes back to the days of Richard Nixon. I told it here. I was not the first to figure out the deal. The short version is that a program or programs converted to a block grant is being set up to wither away. Block grants are designed through formulas to grow slowly or not at all, despite the likelihood that whatever the included programs were aimed at typically costs more to deal with every year. There are also two malignant political dynamics at work. One is that Congress doesn’t like to spend money without a say in what happens to the money. Block grants transfer control to state governments. They have the fun of spending the money, Congress has the fun of raising the taxes to pay for it. The other is that the more vague — “flexible” — the purposes of the grant, the less focused is its political support.
State officials are always happy to play this game because the money is front-loaded. In the initial years the grant is close to what they were getting before, and by the time the grant shrinks, they will be out of office anyway.
The transfer of program responsibility from the Federal government to the states is known as devolution. It is the standard way of attacking domestic spending for social purposes, going back to Richard Nixon’s dismantling of the original, more interesting War on Poverty launched by Lyndon Johnson.
Why the basic income movement will be mainstream soon
by David Atkins
If you believe as I and many others do that our current economic crisis is dictated not only by intentional plutocratic rigging but also by globalization, mechanization and deskilling, then you’re likely to believe that the economic models of the 20th century aren’t going to work in the 21st.
Those who think this way tend to sound almost crazy to a lot of activists. We talk about things like ending the Westphalian system, about altering corporate law to require at least partial worker ownership. But more than anything else, a lot of conversation revolves around a basic universal income to decouple human dignity and base-level financial freedom from the idea of “having a job.” Not because we’re crazy liberals who don’t believe in work or capitalism, but because there simply aren’t going to be enough jobs to go around, and the ones that will exist simply won’t pay enough. The disparity between labor and capital is going to keep growing to a point where you can’t soften the edges of the system anymore.
The basic income question made its way to Vox yesterday with approval:
So here’s my takeaway: a negative income tax or basic income of sufficient size would, by definition, eliminate poverty. We still don’t know if there’d be much of a cost in terms of people working and earning less. If there is, the effect is almost certainly small enough that a negative income tax can offset the lost earnings and remain affordable. The worst case scenario is that we eliminate poverty but see a modest decline in employment. The best case scenario is we eliminate poverty at even lower cost and don’t see much of an effect on employment. That’s a gamble I’m willing to take.
The usual suspects who don’t cry “moral hazard” at every turn are worried about a potential decrease in productivity. That’s not necessarily going to happen, because most people who are suddenly freed from the drudgery of a soul-crushing job aren’t going to become couch potatoes overnight. They can start businesses without worrying about failure putting them on the street. They can write books, create art, teach, and do all those productive things everyone dreams of doing but has neither the time nor the energy for.
But even if it did decrease productivity, so what? Productivity has been skyrocketing for the last 40 years without redounding to the benefit of actual workers, whose wages have stagnated. So if all this increased productivity is simply helping make the rich richer while working the poor and middle class harder and longer, then we can afford as a society to relieve the stress of the workers who actually build the economy, while dumping a little less money into the pockets of the fat cats to buy their second yachts.
It seems a little crazy now to most people, but it’s going to be a mainstream proposition before too much longer. And it’ll happen right around the time when mechanization and deskilling start taking all the white collar and STEM jobs that the upper-middle class and lower-upper classes think are protected from the technology and globalization onslaught. When the white collar workers start getting thrown en masse into the same vicious economic blender that has been shredding blue and pink collar jobs, watch the political winds start to shift.
It’s just a matter of time.
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Compassionate conservatism
by digby
No, I’m not talking about Paul Ryan’s latest phony stab at redemption. I’m talking about this horrible thing:
State Rep. David Simpson (R-TX) gave a presentation on his recent tour of the Texas-Mexico border, explaining that officials believe tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors are fleeing abuse and sexual slavery in Central America.
“We need to love the immigrant, love people, and remember that these children are being fodder in this situation,” Simpson said at one point.
Once the floor opened up to questions, one constituent, who the Longview News-Journal identified as Longview resident Terri Hall, took the microphone to suggest that migrants were crossing the border in such large numbers because of a “well-planned, well-thought-out” government operation.
“I understand the humanitarian and the compassion. But you are to represent us,” she said. “We have children, and we have elderly people who have immunodeficiency disorders. These are people that are coming in with diseases — leprosy, tuberculosis, polio. You need to represent us.”
Hall’s comment was met with loud applause.
Unfortunately, this is as American as apple pie. The following is an excerpt from Rick Perlstein’s forthcoming book called “The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and the Rise of Reagan
Because we’re so good …
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Freedom of religion but not freedom from religion
by digby
The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan and two other groups on Wednesday filed a lawsuit against the mayor of Warren, Mich., who banned an atheist group from setting up a station alongside one run by a prayer group in the city hall atrium.
Mayor Jim Fouts (R) said that the group’s “reason station” would be opposed to prayer and compared atheists to Nazis and members of the Klu Klux Klan.
“The city has certain values that I don’t believe are in general agreement with having an atheist station, nor in general agreement with having a Nazi station or Klu Klux Klan station,” Fouts told the Associated Press on Wednesday. “I cannot accept or will not allow a group that is disparaging of another group to have a station here.”
Fouts has let a prayer group run a station where they hand out fliers and offer prayers to passersby since 2009. Yet the mayor rejected Douglas Marshall’s request to run a “reason station” where he would offer to have philosophical discussions with people who walk by in the city hall atrium.
“They don’t walk up to people,” Fouts told the AP, explaining how the prayer group operates its city hall station. “They are just there if someone wishes to seek solace or guidance from them. The atheist station does not serve that purpose. It will not contribute to community values or helping an individual out.”
Right. Because no atheist could possibly want to seek solace an guidance from a like-minded person. Because we are evil servants of Satan.
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