Month: October 2015

Ted Cruz for speaker

by digby

You don’t have to be a member of congress …

This piece by Steve Benen shows just how influential Cruz is among House wingnuts:

Whether, and to what degree, Cruz intends to intervene in House affairs is not clear, but when the Washington Examiner said the senator has “meddled” in the lower chamber “on several occasions,” that’s no exaggeration.

In September 2013, just eight months into his congressional career, Cruz strategized with House Republicans privately. GOP lawmakers shut down the government a few days later.

In October 2013, Cruz met again with House Republicans about their shutdown gambit.

In April 2014, Cruz hosted a chat with House Republicans about strategy on immigration reform. A bipartisan reform bill died in the chamber soon after.

In June 2014, on the same day as the election of the current House GOP leadership team, Cruz met again with a group of House Republicans.

In July 2014, Cruz huddled with House Republicans, who took his advice, ignored their party’s leadership, and derailed a GOP border bill.

A week later, also in July 2014, they met again, this time as members were getting ready for their August break.

In December 2014, with Congress facing a funding deadline, Cruz huddled again with House Republicans.

In September 2015, Cruz met privately with a group of House Republicans once more as the party weighed another government-shutdown plan.

And today, with House Republicans poised to choose a new Speaker, there’s Ted Cruz hanging out with House Republicans.

Just to be clear, when the junior senator from Texas meets with GOP House members, he’s not huddling with every House Republican. In most of these gatherings, Cruz chatted with groups of a couple dozen lawmakers, not a couple hundred.

I wonder how much he has to do with this:

Representative Marlin Stutzman, a fourth-generation farmer from northeast Indiana, came to Washington on the Tea Party wave of 2010 intent on tackling his constituents’ many demands: cutting federal spending, repealing the estate tax and, as he said in his campaign announcement, standing up for “We the people.”

But instead, Mr. Stutzman, 39, and many of his conservative colleagues who eventually pressed for the resignation of Speaker John A. Boehner find themselves serving in a House they describe as of the leadership, by the leadership and for the leadership — where power lies not in big ideas or high-minded debate but in the mighty weight of the speaker’s gavel.

In interviews, in public appearances and in private conversations, the conservatives said it was their shared frustration over their powerlessness, and what they viewed as Mr. Boehner’s refusal to open up the legislative process, that forged their strongest bond and ultimately led them to press for his ouster. Still, the group has been ridiculed for an ideology and approach that seems deeply rooted in a single word: no.

They say their policy positions — drastic reductions in the size of government and lower taxes — are repeatedly undercut by the unwillingness of Republican leaders to contemplate using their ultimate weapon, the power of the purse, to force a government shutdown. Rather than trying to get past the paralysis, Mr. Stutzman and his allies want to use it to maximum effect.

“The Shutdown Caucus — we have been called that,” said Representative Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, clearly unbothered by the phrase. He recalled Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the majority leader, once telling him in the midst of a fight over raising the debt ceiling, “We don’t want to play chicken on this issue.”

Mr. Mulvaney said he had replied: “Put this issue aside, I’ll play chicken with you every time. You think I am crazy, and I know you are not.”

Mr. Stutzman and Mr. Mulvaney, along with other hard-liners, share an anti-establishment zeal, a profound allergy to federal intervention and a ferocious antipathy toward President Obama. But their ranks, about 40 members loosely bound by their affiliation with the shadowy House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservative lawmakers, in some respects defy facile caricature.

“It’s easy to dismiss us as the knuckle-dragging, Cro-Magnon, Tea Party group,” Mr. Mulvaney said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

No they’re not Cro-Magnons. They’re unhinged reactionaries. I guess that’s supposed to be better.

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The right’s puerile Dirty Harry fantasy

by digby

I wrote about it for Salon this morning:

Screenshot from YouTube video of the event

Ben Carson, the Republican presidential candidate, said on Tuesday that victims of mass shootings should not be timid during attacks, imagining that if he were facing a raging gunman, “I would not just stand there and let him shoot me.”

The remarks on Fox News came a week after a gunman entered a community college classroom in Oregon and opened fire on students after asking them about their religion. Mr. Carson said that he would defend his faith at any cost and that if he had been in that classroom he would not have cooperated.

“I would say: ‘Hey, guys, everybody attack him! He may shoot me, but he can’t get us all,’” Mr. Carson, a conservative who has been rising in recent polls, said.

There’s lots more at the link about “stand your ground” and “Castle Doctrine” and how “good guys with guns” are actually raising the body count substantially. This macho fantasy world these people inhabit is very, very dangerous.

Update: Here you go:

Police in Auburn Hills, Michigan are investigating an attempted shooting at a Home Depot, where a 47-year-old woman with a concealed carry permit tried to shoot a fleeing shoplifter, WXYZ reports.

According to authorities, the woman witnessed a man exiting the Home Depot while being followed by loss prevention officers. The man attempted to flee in a small, dark sport utility vehicle, at which point the woman pulled out her concealed 9mm handgun and opened fire in the Home Depot parking lot.

She fired repeatedly, and police believe one of the bullets struck and flattened the SUV’s tire — but the suspects, described as two males in their 40s, one white and one black, still escaped. The woman is said to be cooperating with police, who are still deciding whether to charge her for shooting up a Home Depot parking lot to stop a suspected shoplifter.

According to police, there were many people in the parking lot when the woman shot at the fleeing SUV. A police spokeswoman told a WXYZ reporter that “the best thing that anybody who witnesses or thinks they’re witnessing a crime could do for us is gather information, write down information, provide it to the officers when they arrive.”

Update II: this piece by Josh Holland is informative. He spoke with actual combat vets who have a slightly different take than the fantasy heroes Trump, Carson and Wayne LaPierre.

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The TPP Vote & the Presidential Primary

by Gaius Publius

Earlier this year, the pro-corporate neoliberals in the Democratic Party — Obama, Biden, the TPP senators and House members — and their behind-the-scenes enablers — Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi — won the long and drawn out Fast Track vote. For the next three to six years, any bill labeled a “trade deal” will be “fast-tracked” through Congress. No amendments, no delay of the calendar, no filibuster. Just an up-or-down vote, with the hands of Congress hands well tied.

According to The Guardian (and others), the twelve nations involved in TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) negotiations have finally reached agreement. The deal is ready for Obama’s intent-to-sign announcement and Congressional approval.

The Guardian reports, in a filled-with-corporate-spin article:

TPP deal: US and 11 other countries reach landmark Pacific trade pact

Trans-Pacific Partnership – the biggest trade deal in a generation – would affect 40% of world economy, but still requires ratification from US Congress and other world lawmakers

Trade ministers from 12 countries announced the largest trade-liberalizing [spin; it’s actually trade-managing] pact in a generation on Monday. In a press conference in Atlanta, trade ministers from the US, Australia and Japan called the the Trans-Pacific Partnership an “ambitious” and “challenging” negotiation that will cut red tape [spin] globally and “set the rules for the 21st century for trade” [not spin; it will lock in monopolies for a generation].

The deal – in the works since 2008 – is a major victory for the US president, Barack Obama [not spin]. “This partnership levels the playing field for our farmers, ranchers and manufacturers [spin] by eliminating more than 18,000 taxes that various countries put on our products,” the president said in a statement. “It includes the strongest commitments [lies, if by “commitments” he means things that can be forced to happen] on labor and the environment of any trade agreement in history, and those commitments are enforceable, unlike in past agreements [distancing-from-NAFTA spin].”

While it still faces major hurdles, not least in Congress, the deal could reshape industries and influence everything from the price of cheese to the cost of cancer treatments [not spin; these will all go up]. It is expected to set common standards for 40% of the world’s economy, become a new flashpoint for the 2016 presidential campaign, and could become a legacy-defining agreement for the Obama administration [not spin, but the legacy won’t be favorable].

The deal is seen as a challenge to China’s growing dominance in the Pacific region [spin; China will be a shadow participant via corporate subsidiaries in TPP countries like Vietnam]. China had been invited to join the trade group but balked at restrictions that the deal would have placed on its financial sector and other areas. …

I glossed the text so I wouldn’t have to write a kitchen-sink essay about it. Instead, I want to touch briefly on three aspects of this deal, three ways to look at what happens down the road. Keep in mind, this still has to pass Congress.

The Bipartisan Public Is Against It

The first thing to remember is — the public does not support it. Lori Wallach at Public Citizen (pdf):

Polling: As this memo shows, recent polling reveals broad U.S. public opposition to more-of-the-same trade deals among Independents, Republicans and Democrats. While Americans support trade, they do not support an expansion of status quo trade policies, complicating the push for the TPP. Furthermore, recent Pew polls in many of the TPP nations show that, outside Vietnam, the deal does not have strong support.

There’s much more in this vein. Just look at the popularity of Donald Trump’s statements against TPP among right-wing Republicans. No one but the wealthy and their defenders say nice things about NAFTA. By and large, people get that this is more of that, is worse than that. And when the text is actually released, people will finally get how much worse than NAFTA it is.

Three of Four Major Candidates Have Declared a TPP Position

Second, let’s look at what this does to the presidential battle. Donald Trump has tweeted his disdain:

The incompetence of our current administration is beyond comprehension. TPP is a terrible deal.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders has been solidly against TPP for a long time.

If we are serious about rebuilding the middle class and creating the millions of good paying jobs we desperately need, we must fundamentally rewrite our trade policies. NO to fast track, and NO to the TPP.

The whole piece from which the above was taken is an excellent bottom-line take-down of TPP.

Joe Biden, not a candidate, quite, is on board defending TPP:

For those wondering (@armandodkos), Biden aide tells me: “The Vice President supports the TPP agreement and will help pass it on the hill.”

— Olivier Knox (@OKnox) October 5, 2015

Biden, I think, could kill any hope he has of being taken seriously as a Democratic candidate if he carries through and whips for TPP.

Hillary Clinton‘s position is unclear (example here). She has said she needs to read the text to evaluate it. At HillaryClinton.com, the only hit for the word “trade” comes on the National Security issues page:

Holding China accountable. As secretary of state, Hillary reasserted America’s role as a Pacific power and called out China’s aggressive actions in the region. As president, she’ll work with friends and allies to promote strong rules of the road and institutions in Asia, and encourage China to be a responsible stakeholder—including on cyberspace, human rights, trade, territorial disputes, and climate change—and hold it accountable if it does not.

The text will soon be released. I’d be surprised if an announcement from her weren’t forthcoming. It’s certainly time for the last major candidatorial shoe to drop. According to this timeline (pdf), “The Fast Track statute requires public posting of a text 30 days after the 90-day notice of intent to sign.”

One note about Clinton — If she comes out strong against TPP, and whips against it during the congressional debate, it will likely result in a big win for opponents of TPP and it will boost her credibility as an alternative to Sanders. If you’re a Clinton supporter, I’d start lobbying for that today.

The parallel risk for Clinton is also present, and to an almost equal degree. If she seems in favor, it could confirm her opponents’ worst fears about her pro-corporate leanings.

The Congressional Battle & After the Congressional Battle

Third, this doesn’t end with passage, should that occur. Or at least, it doesn’t have to. TPP is an “executive agreement” and not a treaty. About that (my emphasis; links at the source):

An executive agreement[1][2] is an agreement between the heads of government of two or more nations that has not been ratified by the legislature as treaties are ratified. Executive agreements are considered politically binding to distinguish them from treaties which are legally binding. An executive agreement is one of three mechanisms by which the United States enters into binding international agreements. They are considered treaties by some authors as the term is used under international law in that they bind both the United States and a foreign sovereign state. However, they are not considered treaties as the term is used under United States Constitutional law, because the United States Constitution’s treaty procedure requires the advice and consent of two-thirds of the Senate, and these agreements are made solely by the President of the United States.

There’s a lot in play here. Can an “executive agreement” be abrogated by a later president? Does Congress need to vote on that abrogation? Have any of our previous treaties or “executive agreements” been ignored by past administrations?

I don’t have answers to these questions, but I think we do need them. After all, if I were president and I hated TPP as much as I do, I’d unsign it on day one if I could. In fact, if I were a candidate running hard against TPP, one with a real chance to win, I’d consider announcing my opposition to enforcing TPP ahead of time if I discovered that were one of my options.

Just a thought. I get that there are a lot of questions to answer first. I also get that there’s plenty of time to answer them.

Is a “What I Will Never Put You Through if I’m President” Speech Starting to Look Attractive?

And a fourth idea, or at least a dream. I wrote about this earlier (scroll to the end of this piece), but this brings it home again. A Sander-like candidate not only tallies accomplishments by doing; she or he also accomplishes by not-doing. This is a case, again, where a different, better president would not even have brought this up. And what a gift that would have been, not having been handed this battle one more time.

Remember the energy and time burned in trying (and failing) to stop Obama and the corporate leadership of the Democratic Party from passing Fast Track? It was exhausting. And here we are again. With that in mind, I would dearly love to listen to a presidential candidate say these words:

If you elect me president, here’s what I will never do …

▪ I will never negotiate a so-called “trade” deal that sends American jobs across our borders. No one will have to spend one minute asking me to stop a deal that hurts American workers. I will support only trade deals that increase American jobs, that create new workers in this country, that increase our balance of payments, and nothing less. …

A dream perhaps, but a nice one.

(A version of this piece appeared at Down With Tyranny. GP article archive here.)

GP

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Are they ever NOT going to fall for that?
by Tom Sullivan

Late in The Avengers, Thor (Chris Hemsworth) takes a run at his evil brother Loki (Tom Hiddleston), dives through a false image of him and gets locked in a S.H.I.E.L.D. prison. Loki smirks, “Are you ever NOT going to fall for that?”

Which brings up massive tax cuts that pay for themselves. Sen. Marco Rubio expects Republican primary voters will fall for it again. Ezra Klein explains the Rubio tax plan succinctly at Vox:

The basic idea here is that massive tax cuts boost growth so much that they pay for themselves, and so there’s no actual trade-off between lower taxes and balanced budgets. In this telling, eating your cake leads your body to burn calories so fast that it’s like you end up thinner than you started!

Basically no serious economists believe this. Careful efforts to quantify whether tax cuts boost growth have led to estimates that they have a modest negative effect, a modest positive effect, or not much effect at all, depending on what assumptions you use. Mankiw, the former Bush adviser, described the idea that cuts boost growth so much that they pay for themselves as the province of “cranks and charlatans” in his economic textbook.

What is more amazing is that Cranks and Charlatans is not already the name of a popular Washington, D.C. watering hole. (Have at it.) Maybe near the offices of the Tax Foundation. Klein continues:

Rubio’s tax plan is a massive suite of tax cuts so large even many conservatives have blanched at its cost. As Jonathan Chait wrote, the skeptical reception Rubio’s plan got among many on the right spoke to a problem almost without precedent in the modern GOP: Rubio had designed a tax cut “so gargantuan that nobody in the party actually believes it.”

But the Tax Foundation believes it. The foundation scored it using its Taxes and Growth Model and found that while the plan costs trillions of dollars during its first 10 years, by the end of those 10 years it begins to generate surpluses through economic growth. The foundation concluded that over the long run, the “plan would increase the size of the economy by 15 percent over the long run,” which is … hopeful.

You have heard the rest before. Rubio is, as Charlie Pierce observes, “a mile wide and an inch deep on almost every issue you can name.” Jonathan Chait deconstructs Rubio’s interview with John Harwood:

What’s stranger is Rubio’s claim that his issues — actually, issue, singular, is completely novel to anything considered by Bush or Romney because “they were not part of the 20th century debate.” The gambit here is to wall off any association between Rubio and previous Republican failures by drawing a line at the century mark, after which all intellectual continuities stop. The trouble with this little trick is that the Bush administration took place from 2001 to 2009. Romney ran for president in 2008 and 2012. All these things took place during the 21st century.

When it comes to economics all things moldy are new again. Just hose them off, swap out the “sell by” date on the packaging and put the cheap cuts back in the meat case.

What is interesting is the GOP’s enthusiasm for reforming every sector of the economy except the economy itself. Rubio says, for example, higher education is due for an upgrade: “So you’ll hear me spend a tremendous amount of time talking about higher-education reform. Our higher-education model is outdated. And I proposed concrete bipartisan ideas about how to fix some of those things.” But when Harwood asks him if he agreed with Ben Bernanke, that “more corporate executives should have gone to jail for their misdeeds” that led to the financial crisis, Rubio begs off. “I’m not necessarily a person that’s looking for that sort of thing unless obviously it’s an egregious case and a clear criminal violation. I’m not sure what that would have solved at the end of the day.”

Guns don’t kill people. People kill people. But when it comes to the finance industry, Wall Street corporate abstraction kill economies; people running them do not. Our business models are not overdue for an upgrade. They are working just fine for all the right people.

Are voters ever NOT going to fall for that?

A moment of zen

by digby

Here’s Sarah Posner with an explanation …

Thank you daddy, Part XX

by digby

Nice of John Kasich to acknowledge that “we don’t want women paid less than men for the same job”:

I like his quick catch there when he starts to use the standard right wing BS about women not having the same experience and taking time off to frivolously give birth and then expect to be treated like equal citizens in the workplace. (They really should just stay home , amirite?)

But hey, “we need to work on this, girls” is an awesome policy.  It’ll make a big difference, I’m sure.

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The American Way (of guns)

by digby

From The Guardian journalist Rory Carroll:

Defiance from customers + staff at Roseburg Gun Shop. ‘A different outcome if the teacher had been packing.’ pic.twitter.com/wFjYwdKuFS

— Rory Carroll (@rorycarroll72) October 2, 2015

For Roseburg Gun Shop the real danger to the community is Obama. ‘He wants to leave us defenseless.’ pic.twitter.com/jtSm08KvRC

— Rory Carroll (@rorycarroll72) October 2, 2015

Candi Kinney of Roseburg Gun Shop has just ordered more assault rifles. ‘Always a rush after a big shooting.’ pic.twitter.com/mVPWgGkgR3

— Rory Carroll (@rorycarroll72) October 2, 2015

I think it’s quite clear that they have convinced themselves that this is the answer to gun violence. They believe that the best we can hope for is to possibly have fewer casualties by arming teachers with loaded weapons so they can kill the shooter before he gets a chance to kill more than a handful of students. (They must know that it’s impossible for these teachers be such great sharpshooters they will be able to draw their weapon and shoot the gun out of the killer’s hand before he has a chance to fire, so this is the only explanation.)

They simply accept that people are always going to storm into classrooms, workplaces and churches and try to kill large numbers of people. All we can do is try to lower the body count a little bit. Maybe. And sure there may be more gun accidents and more lethal domestic violence and more armed confrontations with police as a result of our society being flooded with guns, but that’s the price we have to pay.

And if gun stores and manufacturers make a nice profit at it well isn’t that just the American way?

h/t to DKos

Being Chaffetzed

by digby

I wrote about the new GOP it-boy, Jason Chaffetz for Salon this morning.  I noted that he was all over the news last week first with the Planned Parenthood hearings, which were a debacle, the news that the Secret Service had tried to publicly embarrass him with confidential information and then his stepping into the Kevin McCarthy mess and winding up  deciding to run for Speaker. It was quite a week.

Picking up the story there, here is an excerpt:

Chaffetz’s former boss Huntsman had this to say about his former chief of staff:

And despite his politically eclectic past, Chaffetz has stuck to his arch-conservative guns during the five years he’s been in Congress. He wants to slash Social Security, ban gay marriage and look into impeaching President Obama. Still, he sees himself as a sort of mediator between the hard-core Tea Party insurrectionists and everyone else — perhaps because he’s been everything from a liberal Democrat to a moderate Republican to a hard-right zealot, depending on where the opportunities lie at any given moment.

He is good communicator, except for the fact that he seems to have a tiny problem with the truth, which he perfectly illustrated in the Planned Parenthood hearing, when he offered up a chart so misleading that it caused Politifact to call it not only misleading, but, quoting one expert, “ethically wrong.” And while he may have a point that Kevin McCarthy screwed the pooch on Trey Gowdy’s Benghazi committee, his own history of being loose-lipped and excitable puts McCarthy’s little faux pas to shame.

As The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank reported on one of the earlier Benghazi investigations led by congressman Darrell Issa:

Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a “consulate” and a nearby “annex,” was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) was the first to unmask the spooks. “Point of order! Point of order!” he called out as a State Department security official, seated in front of an aerial photo of the U.S. facilities in Benghazi, described the chaotic night of the attack. “We’re getting into classified issues that deal with sources and methods that would be totally inappropriate in an open forum such as this.”

A State Department official assured him that the material was “entirely unclassified” and that the photo was from a commercial satellite. “I totally object to the use of that photo,” Chaffetz continued. He went on to say that “I was told specifically while I was in Libya I could not and should not ever talk about what you’re showing here today.”

Now that Chaffetz had alerted potential bad guys that something valuable was in the photo, the chairman, Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), attempted to lock the barn door through which the horse had just bolted. “I would direct that that chart be taken down,” he said, although it already had been on C-SPAN. “In this hearing room, we’re not going to point out details of what may still in fact be a facility of the United States government or more facilities.”

If any members of Congress are thinking that Jason Chaffetz will be a more mature and professional leader than Kevin McCarthy, they might want to think again.

Huntsman had him pegged — “selfpromoter” “powerhungry”

More at the link.

QOTD: Keep ’em dumb and uneducated

by digby

This from Ben Carson’s book:

“[T]he government may say everyone deserves a college education and announce a program of wealth redistribution in order to make sure that everyone has a fair chance in an increasingly sophisticated world.

On the surface this seems like a noble goal and could gain a lot of popular support. The problem with this kind of thinking is that it introduces a type of top-down government that allows a group of elites to determine what is good for society.”

I’m not exactly sure what he’s saying there but it sounds as though he either thinks academic “elites” shouldn’t be determining what people know or government “elites” shouldn’t be helping people to get educated because they shouldn’t make the judgment that education is good for society. Or maybe both?

Whatever he’s saying, it’s a ridiculous comment. Carson is an educated man who must know that not everyone is brilliant enough to get scholarships to Yale as he did but nonetheless would benefit from education and would contribute to society much more than he or she gets back in the long run. This quote is gibberish. But then much of what he says is gibberish which is just plain weird considering his own academic record and successful career.

This guy is most enigmatic politician I can remember. I can only assume that he just started thinking about politics recently and turned to the right wing fever swamps to educate himself on the subject. He spouts this Glenn Beck level drivel with total confidence.

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So angry they can’t think straight

by digby

Think Progress reports that Republican facebook users have worse grammar than Democratic Facebook users:

Bernie Sanders supporters might think you’re great, but Donald Trump supporters think your an idiot. 

Grammar-wise, that’s at least what might be derived from a new analysis released Tuesday by the proofreading app Grammarly. By analyzing the spelling and grammar of comments on each presidential candidate’s Facebook page, the analysis found that Republican supporters made mistakes at nearly twice the rate of Democratic supporters.

To get their results, Grammarly went to each candidates’ Facebook page, taking comments that were at least 15 words long and expressed either positive or neutral feelings about the candidate. Then, the app selected at least 180 of those comments to analyze for each candidate.

The analysis — intended by Grammarly to be “a lighthearted look at how well the 2016 presidential candidates’ supporters write when they’re debating online” — found that, for every 100 words written, an average Democratic candidate supporter made 4.2 mistakes, while an average Republican candidate backer made 8.7 errors. It also asserted that Democratic supporters have larger vocabularies, using 300 unique words for every 1,000 words they use, compared to Republicans who only use only 245 unique words for every 1,000.

It’s fun to think that Republicans are dumb. But they aren’t any dumber than Democrats. I suspect their grammar mistake are due to the fact that they more often tend to write with great passion and anger. That leads to mistakes. I know. (Oh, do I know …)

Still, you cannot help but chuckle a bit over the fact that the Donald’s supporters are, well, to put it in terms they would prefer, yuuuuuge winners in the competition for who has the worst grammar:

Trump better watch his back. Rubio’s supporters are right on his tail making 8.8 mistakes per 100 words. He’s cutting into Trump’s lead with the illiterate.

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