Month: February 2015

Because they care

by digby

Not really:

Yesterday, a coalition of 50 groups, several funded by the Koch brothers, sent a letter to Congress arguing that the way to fix federal transportation funding is to cut the small portion that goes to walking, biking, and transit [PDF]. The signatories do not want Congress to even think about raising the gas tax, which has been steadily eaten away by inflation since 1993.

The coalition membership includes many stalwarts of the Koch network, including Americans for Prosperity, Freedom Partners, and the Club for Growth. The Koch brothers recently went public with plans to spend nearly $900 million on the 2016 elections.

The billionaire-friendly coalition is trying to play the populist card. Raising the gas tax to pay for roads, they say, is “regressive” because poor people will pay more than rich people if the gas tax is increased.

This newfound concern for the poor, whether from Norquist or the Kochs is very touching. All they want is equality for rich and poor alike. Nothing new about that little absurdity:

In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread. — Anatole France

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Grover puts the squeeze on his buddy Sam

by digby

Sam Brownback was once the apple of Grover Norquist’s eye.  But Grover has soured on him:

Brownback’s tax cuts have wrecked the state budget and forced the governor to propose raising taxes in order to avert fiscal calamity. And Norquist is now rallying conservatives in the Kansas Legislature to oppose the Republican governor’s plan.

Earlier this week, Norquist penned a letter to state lawmakers encouraging them to thwart Brownback’s proposal to raise taxes on liquor sales and tobacco products. Although Norquist hewed to his normal claims that taxes end up hurting the state’s bottom line, he also adopted a tactic that you’d normally hear from liberals: Don’t raise these specific taxes because they overburden the poor. “The fact is, so called ‘sin taxes’ like the cigarette tax and alcohol tax disproportionately impact consumers who can afford the tax increase least. A pack-a-day smoker would end up paying an extra $547.50 in taxes a year,” Norquist wrote in the letter, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Kansans living along the Missouri border may opt to avoid the tax altogether by purchasing their tobacco products in Missouri—where the tax would be lower.”

Norquist is concerned about low income Kansans not being able to drown their sorrows in booze and nicotine  — which is all they have left after Brownback’s tax cuts destroyed what was left of the Kansas safety net and the tax breaks for rich people have inexplicably failed to trickle down on their head.  Cheap beer and cigarettes are all that’s keeping them from grabbing some pitchforks and storming the castle.

Here’s the thing, though. Kansas is lagging because of Brownback’s insane far right policies. It is taking them much longer than other states to emerge from our epic recession. But Norquist knows that they will probably emerge sooner or later. As bad as Kansas is, it isn’t Greece. And if they can keep the faith, Norquist and Brownback can take credit for being tough guys and holding out long enough for the economy to get better thus proving that all that supply side mumbo jumbo does work. But that’s not really what Norquist cares about. He knows supply-side is a scam. He cares about starving government programs because he believes that they create an affinity for liberalism. If they can keep from raising any taxes, they can pretty much eliminate all programs for the poor and middle class while claiming “the economy” is doing fine. That’s what he’s after.

Brownback is up against the wall. But if Norquist can put the squeeze on him to hold out they may be able to get what they’re after — an uptick they can use to prove that the state did the “right thing.” The human suffering involved is a feature not a bug.

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It’s just a little fix

by digby

Dylan Scott at TPM has compiled the five most obvious reasons that the current Obamacare lawsuit King vs Burwell is complete bunk. (It has to do with the fact that there is demonstrable proof that all Democrats and Republicans from the very beginning assumed there would be a federal exchange and the line the plaintiffs are choosing to look at is obviously a typo.)

But here’s why I think that won’t necessarily matter.  It’s true that at least one of the five conservatives could look at all this and say, “that’s ridiculous, the evidence shows clearly meant for there to be a federal exchange so the fact that it says otherwise in this one passage is irrelevant and this case is dismissed.” That would be the rational thing to do.

But if one accepts that the Supremes are a political body, (and they definitely are)  then they have another way to deal with this which is to simply say, “yes, this passage shows that there’s a conflict in the bill as written and it’s not for us to decide which is binding. All the congress has to do it go back and fix this one little thing.”  In other words, they don’t have to embarrass themselves and openly take sides, they can simply say the law is invalid as it stands but they’re sure that  members of congress will work in good faith to correct any vagueness.” Which is, of course, a bad faith argument since they know the Republican congress will not “fix” anything.

The repercussions of this would be huge, of course. Millions of people would be thrown off health insurance or priced out of the market. And a lot of people seem to think the  conservatives on the Supreme Court would be loathe to do that because it would reflect badly on them. I just don’t see why that would be. They would be blamed by liberals and hailed by conservatives and in the end, they could easily just say they believe this was a problem for the congress to solve and it’s not their fault if it’s polarized, that must be the will of the people.

Maybe they are more responsible than that.  Or, I should say, maybe one of them is more responsible than that — Roberts or Kennedy — or, in a fantasy world, both. It could happen.  But I sure don’t see why everyone is so positive of it. They have no problem fatuously declaring that the muddled 2nd Amendment unequivocally confers an individual right to bear arms and that denying billionaires their right to totally dominate the public square is a violation of the first amendment. I think their understanding of their proper role in our system is sufficiently elastic to allow them to destroy Obamacare.

And remember, they will be hailed as heroes on the right if they do it, and traitors if they don’t. The incentives all go in one direction.

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Why aren’t they leading the herd?

by digby

I had thought that Chris Christie might be trying to compensate for his overreaction during the ebola scare by claiming that there needed to be “balance” on requiring vaccinations for children (whatever that means.) But apparently, he’s been working with the anti-vax types for a long time:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suggested Monday that officials find a “balance” between requiring vaccinations and allowing parents to turn them down. But his run in with the issue may go back much longer.

Louise Kuo Habakus, an anti-vaccination activist who runs the site FearlessParent.org, provided a letter to MSNBC Monday in which Christie purportedly endorsed her concern that vaccines may be linked to autism – a concern long discredited by public health officials. She shared a photo showing Christie meeting with her and what she said were other anti-vaccination activists with her organization, the NJ Vaccination Choice Coalition, as well as other autism groups at a meeting they organized with the then-candidate in August 2009.

“I have met with families affected by autism from across the state and have been struck by their incredible grace and courage,” Christie wrote in the letter. “Many of these families have expressed their concern over New Jersey’s highest-in-the nation vaccine mandates. I stand with them now, and will stand with them as their governor in their fight for greater parental involvement in vaccination decisions that affect their children.”

I’m probably not as viscerally furious with the anti-vax parents as some of my cohorts because I see why they have gotten the wrong idea. There’s a ton of news out there about Big Pharma not doing adequate testing on new drugs and being corrupt and self-serving and people naturally get cynical and suspicious after a while. Obviously, vaccinations have proven over many years, with a massive control group (the entire population) to be as safe as any vaccines can be, and that is very safe indeed. Yes, there are some who suffer side effects, but it’s so rare as to be a much less risky endeavor than allowing your kids to play a sport or fly on airplanes and certainly less risky than allowing them to ride in cars. And the upside is so huge.

I’m old so I had the childhood diseases when I was a kid and I remember it vividly. I even had rubella and was quarantined for weeks. These diseases were a scourge that would run through the school and many kids got sick, some with major complications. A little boy in my first grade class got encephalitis from measles. We were all vaccinated for polio — I’m not that old — but I sure knew people growing up who’d had it and there was nothing more awful.

It’s insane to allow these diseases to proliferate if you can stop it and the only way you can stop it is by creating herd immunity. And while I realize many parents don’t like to think of their kids as part of the herd, I’m afraid they’re not that special.

I’m not angry at these parents — I think they truly believe they are doing the right thing by their kids. But they’re misinformed the way so many people are misinformed about just about everything these days. It’s almost as if the internet is so filled with contradictory information that people have retreated to old tribal folkways and the oral tradition to try to sort out the various concerns. It’s a huge problem in a million ways.

For reasons I don’t fully understand, politicians like Christie are unwilling to say the obvious: you need to get your kids vaccinated! But there’s something going on in the polling or perhaps some other reason for failing to do the obvious because it isn’t just him. This is from the White House just last week:

Q Does the President, does the White House have a message about that and who will be getting vaccinated?

MR. EARNEST: Well, the President certainly believes that these kinds of decisions are decisions that should be made by parents, because ultimately when we’re talking about vaccinations, we’re typically talking about vaccinations that are given to children. But the science on this, as our public health professionals I’m sure would be happy to tell you, the science on this is really clear.

Q That people should get vaccinated?

MR. EARNEST: That’s certainly what the science indicates, and that’s obviously what our public health professionals recommend. And being guided by the science in matters like this is typically the right approach.

That’s not exactly an exhortation, is it? In fact it’s as milquetoast as it gets — “that’s certainly what the science indicates …  obviously what our public health officials recommend …being guided by science is typically the right approach”. Golly, ya think?

I’d guess they are afraid of people saying the state is intruding into the affairs of the family. But they do this all the time. The state forces people to use those car seats, after all. What’s so different about this? And in this case, it’s really not a matter of individual choice, is it? By failing to vaccinate, parents aren’t just endangering their own kids they’re endangering other people’s kids. Even libertarians should have to take a big breath before they claim that’s ok …

This is a very strange debate. These aren’t obscure new protocols. They’ve been around forever and we literally have hundreds of millions of people walking around who lived to tell the tale. I have to think that a full blown education campaign would fix this.  I suspect it’s more the result of information overload and confusion not blind hostility to authority and a reflexive rejection of all science.

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Gorbachev warns the new Cold War with Russia could turn “hot”

by Gaius Publius

It’s not on most people’s radar, I think, that what’s going on inside Ukraine is a proxy war between the West — mainly the U.S., aided by the E.U. — and Russia. In the same way, the long “internal” Nicaraguan conflict of the Reagan ’80s was a proxy war between, yet again, the U.S. and Russia (also, between the U.S. and anyone in Latin America who didn’t want to live under U.S. continental domination):

The [Nicaraguan] Revolution marked a significant period in Nicaraguan history and revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War with the events in the country rising to international attention.

Although the initial overthrow of the Somoza regime in 1978–79 was a bloody affair, the Contra War of the 1980s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. During the 1980s both the FSLN (a leftist collection of political parties) and the Contras (a rightist collection of counter-revolutionary groups) received large amounts of aid from the Cold War super-powers (respectively, the Soviet Union and the United States).

The so-called Ukrainian uprising is similar, with forces on both sides (not just one) aided and abetted by more powerful nations using others to do their bidding. In fact, the whole recent history of Ukrainian unrest has in it the heavy hand of the West (click; it’s a good read).

In that context, I offer the following, Mikhail Gorbachev quoted from an interview he gave to RT.com:

Mikhail Gorbachev has accused the US of dragging Russia into a new Cold War. The former Soviet president fears the chill in relations could eventually spur an armed conflict.

“Plainly speaking, the US has already dragged us into a new Cold War, trying to openly implement its idea of triumphalism,” Gorbachev said in an interview with Interfax.

The former USSR leader, whose name is associated with the end of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States, is worried about the possible consequences.

“What’s next? Unfortunately, I cannot be sure that the Cold War will not bring about a ‘hot’ one. I’m afraid they might take the risk,” he said.

Gorbachev’s criticism of Washington comes as the West is pondering new sanctions against Russia, blaming it for the ongoing military conflict in eastern Ukraine, and alleging Moscow is sending troops to the restive areas. Russia has denied the allegations.

“All we hear from the US and the EU now is sanctions against Russia,” Gorbachev said. “Are they completely out of their minds? The US has been totally ‘lost in the jungle’ and is dragging us there as well.” 

There’s more; read here to get the full report. There’s no question we’re in a new cold war with Russia. I’ve written about the background of betrayal and encirclement that characterizes U.S. relations with Russia since Bush I and Gorbachev negotiated the new path forward in the era of Russian glasnost (“public candor”) and perestroika (“restructuring”). Proxies in the new war include our “allies” (clients) in Ukraine; NATO and its march to the borders of Russia; and the price of oil.

You should know that Russia is taking this very seriously. This is not about “that devil Putin,” as we in the comfortable TV-watching West are led to see it. For all Russians, this is about what Gorbachev says it’s about — “Plainly speaking, the US has already dragged us into a new Cold War, trying to openly implement its idea of triumphalism.”

Consider just NATO. Imagine Mexico as a Warsaw Pact ally after a “restructuring” in Washington. You don’t have to agree to understand that for Russians the encroachment has gone too far. To quote a line Alan Grayson used in another context, “This could end in tears.” Mikhail Gorbachev agrees, and he’s not the devil, right?

GP

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Our own T-party?
by Tom Sullivan

Bill Curry, two-time Democratic nominee for governor in Connecticut and a former Clinton White House advisor, explores how progressives might reinvigorate the “corrupt and empty husk” of the Democratic Party. Somehow the four groups he believes make up the Democratic voting block must learn to

The lazy moochers of the 47%

by digby

Here’s one:

Leaving home in Detroit at 8 a.m., James Robertson doesn’t look like an endurance athlete.

Pudgy of form, shod in heavy work boots, Robertson trudges almost haltingly as he starts another workday.

But as he steps out into the cold, Robertson, 56, is steeled for an Olympic-sized commute. Getting to and from his factory job 23 miles away in Rochester Hills, he’ll take a bus partway there and partway home. And he’ll also walk an astounding 21 miles.

Five days a week. Monday through Friday.

It’s the life Robertson has led for the last decade, ever since his 1988 Honda Accord quit on him.

Every trip is an ordeal of mental and physical toughness for this soft-spoken man with a perfect attendance record at work. And every day is a tribute to how much he cares about his job, his boss and his coworkers. Robertson’s daunting walks and bus rides, in all kinds of weather, also reflect the challenges some metro Detroiters face in getting to work in a region of limited bus service, and where car ownership is priced beyond the reach of many.

But you won’t hear Robertson complain — nor his boss.

“I set our attendance standard by this man,” says Todd Wilson, plant manager at Schain Mold & Engineering. “I say, if this man can get here, walking all those miles through snow and rain, well I’ll tell you, I have people in Pontiac 10 minutes away and they say they can’t get here — bull!”

As he speaks of his loyal employee, Wilson leans over his desk for emphasis, in a sparse office with a view of the factory floor. Before starting his shift, Robertson stops by the office every day to talk sports, usually baseball. And during dinnertime each day, Wilson treats him to fine Southern cooking, compliments of the plant manager’s wife.

“Oh, yes, she takes care of James. And he’s a personal favorite of the owners because of his attendance record. He’s never missed. I’ve seen him come in here wringing wet,” says Wilson, 53, of Metamora Township.

With a full-time job and marathon commutes, Robertson is clearly sleep deprived, but powers himself by downing 2-liter bottles of Mountain Dew and cans of Coke.

“I sleep a lot on the weekend, yes I do,” he says, sounding a little amazed at his schedule. He also catches zzz’s on his bus rides. Whatever it takes to get to his job, Robertson does it.

“I can’t imagine not working,” he says.

‘Lord, keep me safe’

The sheer time and effort of getting to work has ruled Robertson’s life for more than a decade, ever since his car broke down. He didn’t replace it because, he says, “I haven’t had a chance to save for it.” His job pays $10.55 an hour, well above Michigan’s minimum wage of $8.15 an hour but not enough for him to buy, maintain and insure a car in Detroit.

As hard as Robertson’s morning commute is, the trip home is even harder.

At the end of his 2-10 p.m. shift as an injection molder at Schain Mold’s squeaky-clean factory just south of M-59, and when his coworkers are climbing into their cars, Robertson sets off, on foot — in the dark — for the 23-mile trip to his home off Woodward near Holbrook. None of his coworkers lives anywhere near him, so catching a ride almost never happens.

Instead, he reverses the 7-mile walk he took earlier that day, a stretch between the factory and a bus stop behind Troy’s Somerset Collection shopping mall.

“I keep a rhythm in my head,” he says of his seemingly mechanical-like pace to the mall.

At Somerset, he catches the last SMART bus of the day, just before 1 a.m. He rides it into Detroit as far it goes, getting off at the State Fairgrounds on Woodward, just south of 8 Mile. By that time, the last inbound Woodward bus has left. So Robertson foots it the rest of the way — about 5 miles — in the cold or rain or the mild summer nights, to the home he shares with his girlfriend.

Surely all hard workers are rewarded with great riches, right? And those who aren’t rewarded with great riches must not be hard workers. Isn’t that how the American Dream works? I know I heard that somewhere.

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This is why we can’t have nice things

by digby

Two words: perfidious Democrats:

Republicans in Congress aim to revamp an anti-regulatory law from the Newt Gingrich era in an effort to paralyze new financial, environmental and labor rules with a never-ending string of court challenges.

Next week, the House will consider a bill to amend the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995, which then-Speaker Gingrich (R-Ga.) shepherded through Congress. The 20-year-old law imposed a host of cost-benefit standards on federal regulators, including a requirement that they consider the costs that new rules might impose on state and local governments. But in order to garner Democratic votes and protect against a presidential veto, Gingrich made a significant concession: The regulators’ calculations could not be challenged in court.

That would change under a new bill from Reps. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.), which would open up every aspect of these complex analyses to judicial review — leading to an inevitable barrage of lawsuits from those affected by the pending rules.

The proposed Unfunded Mandates Information and Transparency Act is part of a multifront attack on the federal regulatory state by Republican lawmakers, and Democrats have overwhelmingly opposed the measures in the House. But Sanchez signed her name to the current bill, and some Senate Democrats are working with Republicans on parts of the plan.

This is a purely political power play — Republicans using whatever levers they have at their disposal to thwart the Democrats from achieving their goals. There is no particular policy goal it’s all process. If the shoe were on the other foot the the Republicans would never find any of their own to sign on to it. Democrats signing on to stuff like this is the very definition of useful idiocy.

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Snow daze

by digby

For our teacher friends. (You know who you are …)

The Great Whitebread Hope

by digby

You’ll recall that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker recently shared his vast foreign policy experience as “commander in chief” of the Wisconsin National Guard:

“You know, the interesting thing with that is, as a governor, not only do I and the other governors, the commanders in chief of our National Guard at the state level, which is a distinct honor and privilege … as a part of that, my adjutant general that I have in the Wisconsin National Guard is also my chief homeland security adviser. And on a fairly frequent basis he, along with members of the FBI, gives me and I presume other governors security threat assessments. So we go and get classified information—important confidential information—about threats not only to our state but typically within our region and across the country. Without violating the terms of any of those specifically, I just gotta tell you that for my children and others like them, I see on an ongoing basis legitimate concerns about the threat to national security, state by state and across this country. And it’s one of the reasons why I’ve said repeatedly, one of the most important things we need out of our leaders in Washington, particularly our commander in chief, is leadership.”

I feel safer already. Here he is this morning, doin’ some of that leadin’:

RADDATZ: OK, but as you’ve seen on our show today, there are enormous foreign policy challenges going ahead, which the next president will inherit. One of your potential rivals for the GOP nomination, Senator Marco Rubio, said a governor with eyes on the presidency could acquire a global strategic vision, but that taking a trip to some foreign city for two days does not make you Henry Kissinger. I think you met with Henry Kissinger yesterday. But what would you say in response to Governor Rubio?

WALKER: I did actually have the honor —

RADDATZ: Senator Rubio, sorry.

WALKER: No, no, Marco is a great guy. I think the senator has got great vision. I look at actually this weekend got to see not only Henry Kissinger, but former Secretary of State George Shultz, (inaudible), and even Madeleine Albright, who I think very highly of on foreign affairs. Governors don’t just take trips. As a governor, I’ve had risk assessments given to me by the FBI and my adjutant general about threats not only in my state, but around the country. That is one of the reasons why I’m so worried about the future, not just of our country, our world.

RADDATZ: Let’s talk about some specific, and you talk about leadership and you talk about big, bold, fresh ideas. What is your big, bold, fresh idea in Syria?

WALKER: Well, I think – I go back to the red line.

RADDATZ: Let’s not go back. Let’s go forward. What is your big, bold idea in Syria?

WALKER: I think aggressively, we need to take the fight to ISIS and any other radical Islamic terrorist in and around the world, because it’s not a matter of when they attempt an attack on American soil, or not if I should say, it’s when, and we need leadership that says clearly, not only amongst the United States but amongst our allies, that we’re willing to take appropriate action. I think it should be surgical.

RADDATZ: You don’t think 2,000 air strikes is taking it to ISIS in Syria and Iraq?

WALKER: I think we need to have an aggressive strategy anywhere around the world. I think it’s a mistake to –

(CROSSTALK)

RADDATZ: But what does that mean? I don’t know what aggressive strategy means. If we’re bombing and we’ve done 2,000 air strikes, what does an aggressive strategy mean in foreign policy?

WALKER: I think anywhere and everywhere, we have to be – go beyond just aggressive air strikes. We have to look at other surgical methods. And ultimately, we have to be prepared to put boots on the ground if that’s what it takes, because I think, you know–

RADDATZ: Boots on the ground in Syria? U.S. boots on the ground in Syria?

WALKER: I don’t think that is an immediate plan, but I think anywhere in the world–

RADDATZ: But you would not rule that out.

WALKER: I wouldn’t rule anything out. I think when you have the lives of Americans at stake and our freedom loving allies anywhere in the world, we have to be prepared to do things that don’t allow those measures, those attacks, those abuses to come to our shores.

Honestly, I think this guy is the most overrated politician in the GOP field. The fact that Iowa likes him doesn’t mean a lot since it shares the same media market. And while it’s true that he managed to win elections in GOP sweep years and avoid a recall it doesn’t attest to any special political skill on his part. After all, he was unpopular enough that they tried torecall him! He’s just not that impressive.

As I have written before, I think he’s the latest iteration of the Great Midwestern Hope syndrome, which reflects a common desire among certain members of the political establishment for a Republican “reformer” in the LaFollette mold who can modernize the GOP image and bring in all those alleged moderates who just want someone who can “get things done.” The problem is that the likes of Tommy Thompson, Tim Pawlenty and yes, Scott Walker, are plodding bureaucrats with the national appeal of doorstops. The political class may know who they are but nobody else does. And when the rest of the country gets a look at them it inevitably says, “are you kidding?”

Obviously, I could be wrong. I really have no idea who’s going to break through in the crowded GOP field. But if it’s Walker, I seriously doubt the Democrats will have much trouble dispatching him.