Month: October 2015

GOP debate: Your money or your vote
by Tom Sullivan

You knew right away America was in trouble when the branding for CNBC’s GOP debate coverage last night read “YOUR MONEY * YOUR VOTE” — echoes of Jack Benny’s tightwad character getting mugged:

Thug: Don’t make a move. This is a stickup! Now come on. Your money or your life.
[long pause]
Thug: [repeating] Look, bud, I said ‘Your money or your life.’
Jack Benny: I’m thinking it over!

The rest of the night, too, was one, long punchline. The full transcript is here. Sean Illing has a candidate-by-candidate summary at Salon. But the moderators were “mostly awful” and it was “two and a half hours of political gas.”

CNBC’s moderators were so awful they might have asked candidates what costumes they were wearing for Halloween. (Maybe they just didn’t get around to it.) But it meant candidates garnered easy applause in attacking the “liberal” media whenever asked a question they didn’t like, or just to fill time. Think Progress observed that the network that launched the T-party was “too liberal to host the Republican debate on Wednesday.”

In case you got too hammered playing the debate drinking game: Jeb Bush is a goner. John Kasich did a weak imitation of Howard Beal. Rand Paul and Mike Huckabee might as well not have been there. Donald Trump kept quiet, mostly. Even Chris Christy had a decent line or two. Carly Fiorina was a great Hewlett Packard CEO in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Ben Carson did not have economic relations with that nutritional supplements company.

Carson: I did not have sexual relations with that company. https://t.co/bftIguaM4T— botnet caucus member (@emptywheel) October 29, 2015

The audience was clearly on Carson’s side and gave CNBC big boos for pushing Carson on Mannatech:

It is by now an established strategy (if not reflex) for GOP candidates to dodge uncomfortable questions by looking into the camera and suggesting the allegation is false, “total propaganda,” or a DNC talking point. Their base will believe it and moderators are unlikely to push back, even as Twitter explodes with links to videos or articles from such liberal outlets as the Wall Street Journal or National Review (above) contradicting them.

WSJ: Ben Carson has had ties to dietary supplement maker that faced legal challenge https://t.co/fOFw3c4jxM via @WSJ— Barry Ritholtz (@ritholtz) October 29, 2015

But Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz had the best night.

When Jebya attempted to knock down Marco Rubio over not showing up for work, the junior senator from Florida was prepared. He cut Bush off at the knees. The New Yorker’s John Cassidy:

But Rubio isn’t just a youthful purveyor of upbeat bromides and echoes of Ronald Reagan. If he were, Jeb Bush would have less to worry about, and so would Hillary Clinton. Beneath his bland exterior lurks a shrewd and feline political operator, with an instinctive sense of balance and a set of claws capable of drawing blood.

He did.

Cruz is the slickest, however. Clever. Calculating. He plays to his audience better than the rest, playing to their sense of being beset on all sides by implacable enemies:

“Let me be clear. The men and women on this stage have more ideas, more experience, more common sense, than every participant in the Democratic debate. That debate reflected a debate between the Bolsheviks and the Mensheviks. Nobody believes that the moderators have any intention of voting in a Republican primary. The questions being asked shouldn’t be trying to get people to tear into each other, it should be what are your substantive solutions to people –”

Not even the Chinese are communists anymore. Yet red baiting never goes out of style with these would-be leaders for the 21st century.

Donald Trump decried gun-free zones in public places as a “feeding frenzy for sick people.” But he might have been describing the craziness Kasich sees among his own colleagues. One wonders, without talk radio and Fox News as a culture medium, would the infection be this bad?

Tonight’s Colorado toking game

by digby

In honor of Colorado’s enlightened views on recreational marijuana, tonight’s debate will feature a toking game.

This is a CNBC debate so presumably it will be about the economy.  Nonetheless Lindsay Graham and Bobby Jindal will probably find a way to say that if we don’t tax the Islamic terrorists over there, we’ll have to tax them over here.  Or something.

Anyway, fire up your PAX II and take a little breather of a nice smooth indica the first time they use the words “debt ceiling.”  Eat a little sativa brownie when they answer questions about repealing Obamacare and suck on one of those delicious cherry flavored cannabinoid lozenges while they politely discuss carried interest loopholes and capital gains taxes. Pour a whole bottle of tincture on your tongue every time the word “email” is mentioned. Eat a handful of homegrown ditchweed when anyone says the words “Sidney Blumenthal.”

And then get out the Mezcal and start doing shots because the rest of it is likely to be a screaming grudge match about which one of these nutters is actually the crazy one.

I’ll be drunk tweeting at @digby56 if you want to follow along.
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A recipe for violence

by digby

Also a recipe for Republicans to alienate Latinos for a very, very long time:

Protests at campaign events are as old as American democracy, but they have taken a dim turn this presidential season at the massive events staged by Trump. Supporters of the Republican frontrunner were caught spitting on Hispanic protesters at an event in Richmond, Virginia. At an event before the U.S. Capitol in September, one supporter was caught on video pulling the hair of a young woman who tried to shout down Trump. Outside Trump’s New York headquarters, Trump’s personal bodyguard was videotaped ripping a sign from the hands of a protester on the public sidewalk. When the protester tried to grab it back, he punched the protester in the face. A lawsuit has been filed.

The protest Trump movement shows no signs of abating, nor do the angry responses in Trump’s crowds. A group of influential Republican Latino activists met Tuesday in Colorado and blasted Trump, threatening to withhold their support in the general election if other GOP candidates embrace his rhetoric. And on Wednesday, the day of the debate, thousands of Latino leaders and over 60 organizations will protest Trump in Boulder near the debate event hall.

“[The protest] will remind these same politicians that immigrants, their loved ones, and their allies are voters and are ready to demonstrate their political power,” said Federico Peña, former Denver mayor and a Cabinet member to President Bill Clinton, who will lead the rally, according to the Denver Post. Former Colorado U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar, who served in President Obama’s first-term Cabinet, will also speak at the event.

Aware of the increasing confrontations, the Trump campaign has been taking steps in recent weeks to dial down the vitriol. “The campaign does not condone violence of any kind,” says campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks. And the candidate has continued to maintain his trademark swagger. “I am going to win with Hispanics,” he claimed to loud cheers from the crowd in Miami, after the protesters had been cleared. (That would be a tough turnaround, since a recent Washington Post/ABC news poll shows 82% of Hispanics view him unfavorably.)

Meanwhile, a national network of immigrant rights groups have taken to organizing regular protests at Trump events, sometimes coordinating in advance with training on non-violence and how to react to the crowds. “We made reference to what the civil rights workers and students had to go through,” explained Florida Immigrant Coalition leader Maria Rodriguez, who organized training for the Miami disruption. “It’s not like we’re even going to change the mind of his followers, perhaps. But we have to inspire a sense of defense of dignity among all of us.”

Hopefully this is a bad as it gets. But when you combine the anger and paranoia of the gun-proliferation activists with the anti-immigrant activists and legitimize the kind of degrading rhetoric that comes from Trump and his supporters by making him the Republican Party’s frontrunner for president, you have a combustible situation.

Let’s hope they keep a lid on anything more violent than what we’ve seen.

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Welcome to our world Dr Paul

by digby

You know, the world where the rich are treated better than the poor, where those who are not considered to be as good as others because they aren’t “winners:  are relegated to second class citizen status?  In other words, libertarian utopia?

Rand Paul thinks it’s unfair that the national front-runner is treated so much better than someone who is barely registering in the polls. They should be treated equally, dontcha know.

The drama began Tuesday afternoon as RNC officials led campaigns on a walk-through of the debate site. After touring the stage, candidates got a peek at what their greenrooms looked like. 

Trump was granted a spacious room, complete with plush chairs and a flat-screen TV. Marco Rubio got a theater-type room, packed with leather seats for him and his team of aides. Carly Fiorina’s room had a Jacuzzi.

Then there was Chris Christie, whose small space was dominated by a toilet. So was Rand Paul’s. 

After the walk-through ended, RNC officials, led by chief strategist Sean Spicer and director of finance events Anne Marie Hoffman, guided the 35 or so advisers upstairs for a meeting. There, Spicer complained about a series of recent press leaks on RNC-led conference calls with campaigns. He also outlined the planned format for the fourth Republican debate, to be held in Milwaukee and broadcast on Fox Business on Nov. 10.

But with some campaign advisers steaming over what they’d seen during the walk-through, the discussion veered back to greenrooms.

“This is ridiculous,” fumed Christie’s campaign manager, Ken McKay. “We’re in a restroom.” 

Paul’s team also piped in, with one adviser, Chris LaCivita, demanding that something be done to remedy the situation.

I sure hope they provided the bottle of Cristal and removed all the brown M&Ms as stipulated in the rider or there will be serious hell to pay.

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ICYWW what the wingnuts think of the budget deal …

by digby

The word went forth from “Conservative HQ” Richard Viguerie’s outfit:

It looks like Viguerie is throwing his weight behind Cruz.

Debate night!

by digby

In anticipation of the debate tonight wrote a little re-cap of the GOP race so-far and gave my thoughts about where it stands at the moment for Salon this morning:

[Cruz’s] message is pitch-perfect. No one, not even Trump, in the GOP field can deliver the Washington-is-broken-and-they-don’t even-get-it message better than Cruz. Trump’s problem is that he veers WAY off message every few minutes. Cruz is much more disciplined, finding ways to bring virtually any question he is asked back to how terrible the “Washington Cartel” is. Cruz has one other thing that Trump lacks: A track record of sticking it to the party establishment …[And] as the field starts to shrink, Cruz’s skills as a nationally recognized debate champ will shine through — and get more positive attention. 

There’s more about Cruz and Rubio and tonight’s debate at the link.

Saints and Scrooges
by Tom Sullivan

“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again; “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!”

CEOs who don’t act like CEOs are a rare breed, and newsworthy. Even more so when they are not fictional. Susie Madrak highlighted one the other day at Crooks and Liars. Seems this guy found out it paid off to double the salary of his entry-level employees. Blasphemy! Rush Limbaugh branded him a socialist. Need we say more?

In April, Dan Price, CEO of the credit card payment processor Gravity Payments, announced that he will eventually raise minimum pay for all employees to at least $70,000 a year.

The move sparked not just a firestorm of media attention, but also a lawsuit from Price’s brother and co-founder Lucas, claiming that the pay raise violated his rights as a minority shareholder.

But six months later, the financial results are starting to come in: Price told Inc. Magazine that revenue is now growing at double the rate before the raises began and profits have also doubled since then.

On top of that, while it lost a few customers in the kerfuffle, the company’s customer retention rate rose from 91 to 95 percent, and only two employees quit. Two weeks after he made the initial announcement, the company was flooded with 4,500 resumes and new customer inquiries jumped from 30 a month to 2,000 a month.

As Inc. magazine tells it:

Profit growth continued to substantially outpace wage growth. This spring, he spent two weeks running the numbers and battling insomnia before making a dramatic announcement to his 120-member staff on April 13, inviting NBC News and The New York Times to cover it: Over the next three years, he will phase in a minimum wage of $70,000 at Gravity and immediately cut his own salary from $1.1 million to $70,000 to help fund it.

Time will tell if Price is right or if “Gravity is being run by a well-intentioned fool.” Still, it was Heaven Can Wait, wasn’t it, where Warren Beatty’s character, a quarterback suddenly inhabiting the body of an eccentric billionaire tells a boardroom full of stunned executives he wants to spend more money upgrading their tuna-fishing methods if it will save porpoises? He states the obvious:

Joe Pendleton: We don’t care how much it costs, just how much it makes.

Speaking what he knows — football — Pendleton insists, “Let’s be the team that makes the rules, plays fair, that gets the best contract, that’s popular.”

Now, for a little contrast:

SunTrust Banks in Atlanta is laying off about 100 IT employees as it moves work offshore. But this layoff is unusual for what the employer is asking of its soon-to-be displaced workers: SunTrust’s severance agreement requires terminated employees to remain available for two years to provide help if needed, including in-person assistance, and to do so without compensation.

Many of the affected IT employees, who are now training their replacements, have years of experience and provide the highest levels of technical support. The proof of their ability may be in the severance requirement, which gives the bank a way to tap their expertise long after their departure.

[ See the follow-up story: Q&A about SunTrust’s cooperation clause ]

The bank’s severance deal includes a “continuing cooperation” clause for a period of two years, where the employee agrees to “make myself reasonably available” to SunTrust “regarding matters in which I have been involved in the course of my employment with SunTrust and/or about which I have knowledge as a result of my employment at SunTrust.”

After the a media backlash, the bank sought to knock down the bad press, saying it had rescinded the clause.

Full Disclosure: I am related to one of those laid-off employees. This news came as no surprise. The bank has been trying to outsource that IT group for years.

The Washington Post explores what millennials love about Bernie Sanders. They’re feeling more like SunTrust’s IT group than Gravity’s employees, if they can even find a job:

“I can’t foresee a future where we’re going to buy a house,” Reprogle said. “It’ll be 10 to 15 years, and by that time, we’ll be too old to have children. I don’t know how people afford to have children these days. We’re exactly the kind of people who should be looking at a middle-class lifestyle.”

They are looking for more Gravitys and fewer SunTrusts. Who is more likely to help them?

Tweet ‘O the Day

by digby

Fox host asks why guns should be regulated in the US if “we’re not regulating the car” https://t.co/OnMk1jebf2 pic.twitter.com/3TgDSOXuYG

— Allegra Kirkland (@allegrakirkland) October 27, 2015

Schmaht as a whip.

And yes, their guest is the Duck Dynasty guy.

Kasich, the born again truth-telling, everyman moderate


by digby

John Kasich:

“Do you know how crazy this election is?” he shouted during a pre-debate rally in Ohio on Tuesday. “Let me tell you something. I’ve about had it with these people. Let me tell you why. We got one candidate that says we ought to abolish Medicaid and Medicare. You ever heard anything so crazy as that, telling our people in this country who are seniors or about to be seniors that we’re going to abolish Medicaid or Medicare.

He’s talking about Ben Carson’s loopy health care statements. But Carson isn’t alone in this by any means.

Libertarian platform 1980:

“We favor the abolition of Medicare and Medicaid programs.”

You may recall that the person running for Vice president on that 1980 Libertarian ticket was a guy by the name of David Koch.

The Kochs reportedly do not like Kasich because he took medicaid money and once said that when he dies and goes to heaven, St. Peter is going to want to know what he did to help the poor not how much money he made. This was heresy. Also too, he was rude to a rich woman friend of theirs.

Still, plenty of others have wanted to abolish all the safety net programs including Social Security, Milton Friedman for instance. Ronald Reagan said that Medicare would spell the end of America as we know it and suggested turning the Social Security system into a private savings program 50 years ago.

Here’s another one: Ron Paul Calls Social Security and Medicare Unconstitutional, Compares Them to ‘Slavery’

Back in the 60s and 70s it was an article of faith that the programs would have to be killed. More recently, they’ve been a bit more wily about their plans. Still, we had headlines like this just recently, remember?

No, they don’t come right out and say that’s what they’re doing. They just plan to kill he programs slowly, painfully over time.

Back when Kasich was the Paul Ryan of his day, they had a government shutdown over the budget. And he was very much involved. Here’s how that went:

Domenici said the measure, a revised version of a plan proposed by Senate Minority leader Thomas Daschle, R-South Dakota, would spend $300 billion more than Republicans have proposed through 2002. He and Kasich said it did not overhaul Medicare, welfare and other social programs enough.

I’m not saying that Kasich is a Medicare abolisher, per se. But it’s not fair to make him out as a big defender of the program either. He’s a Republican. Don’t forget his finest hour:

In April 1995, Budget Committee chairman John Kasich (R-Ohio) muscled through the House of Representatives the Contract with America budget plan. It was a towering achievement by Washington standards. Three cabinet departments–Commerce, Education, and Energy–were to be eliminated. Hundreds of small government programs and several large ones–from the National Endowment for the Arts, to mass transit grants, to the federal helium reserve, to the peanut subsidy program–were to be canceled. In short, it would have dramatically halted the government’s fiscal expansion of the past 40 years.

I just point this out in case anyone gets the idea that John Kasich is some kind of moderate. He isn’t. Just because the Koch brothers don’t like him, it doesn’t mean we should.

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Is Rubio the new Sarah Palin? #quittersRus

by digby

You remember him saying this last week:

“This should actually be the rule in the entire government, where if you’re not doing your job, you should be fired.” —

Naturally, the DNC and Jeb Bush pounced on this because he just isn’t bothering to show up for work anymore.

He’s had a bunch of excuses:

Excuse #1: It’s normal for presidential candidates to miss votes. (Des Moines Register)
Excuse #2: He gets briefed on hearings by his staff. (Washington Post, Politico)
Excuse #3: He would never miss a vote where he would have been the deciding one. (USA Today, Reno Gazette-Journal, Roll Call)
Excuse #4: He’s leaving the Senate. (Republican Primary Debate in Simi Valley, CA)
Excuse #5: Votes he has missed are “show votes.” (Breitbart, Huffington Post)
Excuse #6: He wants his votes to be meaningful. (CNN’s State of the Union)
Excuse #7: He is frustrated. (Washington Post)
Excuse #8: He feels as if he is standing around and doing nothing. (Washington Post)

Now he says he hates being in the Senate. and doesn’t see any reasons why he should go to work if he’s not running for re-election. Also too, he’s not a quitter.

I have always thought that Rubio looked like the best bet on paper for the GOP. The whole young vs old, Latino up and comer thing should sell itself. But really, he sucks at politics as much as Jeb does.

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