Author: Tom Sullivan

Veni, vidi, vaya con Dios
by Tom Sullivan

It seems a bright eighth grader in Vermont thought it would be a good idea for the state to adopt a Latin motto. So Republican state Sen. Joe Benning introduced legislation recommending Stella quarta decima fulgeat (“May the fourteenth star shine bright”). The phrase harkens back to when Vermont entered the union as the 14th state.

Wonkette has what happened next:

And then Burlington TV station WCAX put the story on its Facebook page with the headline, “Should Vermont have an official Latin motto?” and all Stupid broke loose when morons thought that Vermont was knuckling under to a bunch of goddamned illegal immigrants.

An email from Benning to the Vermont Political Observer captured the irony:

I anticipated suffering the backroom internal joking from my colleagues in the legislature. What I did not anticipate was the vitriolic verbal assault from those who don’t know the difference between the Classics and illegal immigrants from South America.

A couple of samples:

“I thought Vermont was American not Latin? Does any Latin places have American mottos?”
“ABSOLUTLY NOT!!!! sick and tired of that crap, they have their own countries”
“How do you say idiotic senator in spanish? I’d settle for deport illegals in spanish as a back up motto”
“Hell No! This is America, not Latin America. When in Rome do as the Romans do!”

Later commenters jumped in to lampoon the earlier posts, of course. Wonkette and the Vermont Political Observer have more.

Quod erat demonstrandum.

They’re comin’ ta git ya
by Tom Sullivan

No, really. I keep saying that what we’re seeing nationally is the next phase of Defund the Left. If it feels as if there’s a target on your back, dear Reader, it’s not your imagination.

On All In Thursday night, Chris Hayes spoke with Lisa Graves of the Center for Media and Democracy in Madison, Wisconsin about Gov. Scott Walker’s plan to strike 13 percent from the budget of the University of Wisconsin. Shocking enough. But there was more, as Jonas Persson and Mary Bottari reported for CMD’s PRWatch:

Walker’s executive budget (see below) amends Sec. 1111 of the statutes to remove language specifying that the UW system has a public service mission to “extend knowledge and its application beyond the boundaries of its campus” and to “serve and stimulate society.” He strikes language ensuring that the mission of the UW is to extend “training and public service designed to educate people and improve the human condition,” as well as the language specifying that “the search for truth” is “basic to every purpose of the system.”

Walker backtracked, claiming the strikeout of language core to the state’s guiding principle since the Progressive Era, the “Wisconsin Idea,” was a drafting error. Politifact rated that claim “Pants on Fire.”

But this observation about Walker by Chris Hayes jumped out at me (emphasis mine):

There’s something sort of ingenious about this from a political standpoint. It seems to me that one of his M.O.s in office has been to sort of use policy as a mechanism by which to reduce the political power of people that would oppose him — progressives, the left. I mean, go after the unions, right? Which is a huge pillar of progressive power in the state of Wisconsin. And another big pillar of progressive power in the state, frankly, is the university system.

Speaking of M.O.s, this is eerily similar to what is happening in North Carolina, and no accident, is my guess. Like Walker’s, the GOP-led legislature here has been looking to weaken any foci of opposition. Three weeks ago and without explanation, UNC Chapel Hill’s president, Tom Ross, was forced from office. A local blogger offered this explanation to the Charlotte Observer:

Without a clear explanation of why Ross, 64, was being forced from his job, political consultant Thomas Mills concluded politics was the reason. Ross is a former executive director of the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, a financial backer of progressive groups, and that may have hurt him, Mills said.

“Maybe what they want is somebody who’s going to kowtow to the legislature, and he has pushed back about some legislative priorities,” said Mills, who has worked for Democrats. “If they want that, what’s the point in having a system president?”

Rumors fly that “third Koch brother” Art Pope wants the job.

Chad Nance at Camel City Dispatch believes much more is being targeted.:

Art Pope’s Civitas has long wanted to close North Carolina’s Historically Black Colleges… now they just may get their chance. In 2014 their hand-picked UNC Board of Governors targeted programs throughout North Carolina’s university system that are geared toward the studies of poverty, economy, climate and other sciences, and diversity studies. Any part of academia that might contradict these right-wing partisans’ anti-science and anti-working people agenda is on the chopping block.

Just this week, Greensboro got blindsided when a GOP state senator from the county introduced a bill to restructure elections for city council. (North Carolina is a Dillon’s Rule state.) The News & Record reported:

Senate Bill 36 would shrink the size of the council, fundamentally change the role and powers of the mayor, lengthen council terms, and reduce the number of council members who are elected at-large.

The changes would mean that residents would vote for two council representatives — their district member and the mayor — instead of five.

The legislation also puts four current City Council members in the same newly drawn District 4. Council members Mike Barber, Marikay Abuzuaiter, Zack Matheny and Nancy Hoffmann would have to battle it out for a single seat.

And wouldn’t you know? Of the four, three are Democrats, as is the mayor.

Same M.O.

The News & Record reports this is “the third time in recent history that the legislature has sought to rearrange a local government body.” That is incorrect.

They did it to Buncombe County (mine) in 2011, going from at-large elections to districts to weaken the influence of the city of Asheville — and increasing the number on the commission by two. Now, you can argue that it’s more representative for county voters, and it might be, but this arrived via virtually the same M.O. as Greensboro. No advance warning. No consultation with local officials or referendum of voters. Imposed by fiat from Raleigh by the “small government” people. And hanging in the air is the implied threat to do the same to Asheville city council in retribution for the city not rolling over and submitting to Raleigh’s will when they passed legislation to wrest away control of the city’s water system — that’s still in the courts — as they attempted to with Charlotte’s international airport. Remember Detroit’s emergency manager, Kevyn Orr? First piece of public infrastructure he targeted for privatizing was water and sewer.

First they came for the labor unions, etc. Are we seeing a pattern here?

Deference must be shown
by Tom Sullivan

Somebody didn’t get the memo. For an exceptional people who celebrate their revolution to overthrow rule by kings and titled nobility, we have an amazing number who still believe they are entitled to deference. According to some in Washington, “entitlements” are bad. They make a people weak. And if there is anything (besides LGBT people) that makes their skin crawl and makes them reach for another grain alcohol and branch water, it’s weakness.

See, deference must be shown to “the job creators” — praised be their name — even when their invisible hands create no jobs. Deference must be shown to Wall Street titans, for without their wisdom, there would be no six- and seven-figure bonuses for selling fraudulent securities, and no taxpayer-funded bailouts. Behold them in their glory. Behold the power the royals wield over our late, great democracy. Psst. Kneel, willya?

Proper deference must be shown, too, towards the alpha dogs’ faith, a faith that justifies. Tolerated other faiths must know their place. Sadly, the Kenyan Pretender did not get the memo either. At the national prayer breakfast Thursday, President Obama said:

“Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history,” he told the group, speaking of the tension between the compassionate and murderous acts religion can inspire. “And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ.”

Blaspheme! Speaking in the prophetic voice was never much welcome in Old Testament times. Nor is it now. Pretty tame stuff for a prophet, too. But you can imagine the response:

Some Republicans were outraged. “The president’s comments this morning at the prayer breakfast are the most offensive I’ve ever heard a president make in my lifetime,” said former Virginia governor Jim Gilmore (R). “He has offended every believing Christian in the United States. This goes further to the point that Mr. Obama does not believe in America or the values we all share.”

Heretic! he cried. Anybody got a match?

Pretty thin-skinned for a people willing to dish it out with a shovel when it’s somebody else’s faith.

“There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency, that can pervert and distort our faith,” the prophetic voice continued.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, called Obama’s comments about Christianity “an unfortunate attempt at a wrongheaded moral comparison.”

What we need more, he said, is a “moral framework from the administration and a clear strategy for defeating ISIS,” the acronym for the Islamic State.

Because military strategy is what we go to prayer breakfasts for, after all.

Our moral framework collapsed when Americans cheered and defended the last administration for committing torture. Now you want the Muslim Pretender to rebuild it for you? It’s what prayer, fasting, and sackcloth and ashes are for, pal. That’s in a book you might be familiar with. They’re just not as much fun as a good, Christian ass whuppin’.

Sheesh. These guys can’t make up their minds whether they want their Christian country to act like Christ or to just “act” like it’s a Christian country. We wear Christianity the way a teenager wears an American Eagle hoodie and thinks it’s stylish.

Argument by clickbait
by Tom Sullivan

This morning E.J. Dionne takes on income redistribution as a conservative wedge issue. In particular, Rep. Paul Ryan’s lame attempt to brand non-GOP-approved economic policies as morally suspect with his recent coinage of “envy economics.” To be sure, it’s less insulting than “makers vs. takers.” And it’s more suitable for Sunday morning chat fests than Conrad Hilton III’s “f_cking peasants,” if no more mature. But it’s the thought that counts.

You’ve gotta hand it to the GOP intelligentsia. They seem to have an endless supply-side of these arguments. Dog whistles for the clickbait generation.

Dionne asks, as long as we’re branding opponents’ policies, why not brand Ryan’s “greed economics“?

Ryan’s opening rhetorical bid is unfortunate because there are signs that at least some conservatives (including, sometimes, Ryan himself) seem open to policies that would redistribute income to Americans who have too little of it.

Yes, conservatives and just about everybody else — except, perhaps, for truly austere libertarians — are for redistribution. But almost everyone on the right and many of the more timid Democrats want to deny it. This form of intellectual dishonesty hampers a candid debate about solving the interlocking problems of stagnating wages, rising inequality and declining social mobility.

Ryan attempted over the weekend to paint the president’s economic proposals as unAmerican, unfit for an “aspirational” and “optimistic” people. Besides, they don’t work, according to Ryan. Dionne counters:

Well. Regiments of Republicans claimed that Obama’s policies, and especially Obamacare, would be “job killers.” In the face of 58 straight months of private-sector job growth, will they ever admit their claims were absolutely wrong? Will anyone even ask them? And like them or not, aren’t Obama’s proposals on higher education, child care and pre-kindergarten programs all about aspiration and optimism?

The irony—usually lost on champions of “trickle down” such as Ryan—is that where once he argued that Obama’s policies pitted class against class and would stifle “the job creators,” as Jonathan Weisman observed, now Ryan argues that those same policies have “exacerbated inequality” and made things worse, saying, “The wealthy are doing really well. They’re practicing trickle-down economics now.”

For your enjoyment, found on Pinterest:

A zombie faith

by Tom Sullivan

It was kind of stunning, actually, to see the Washington Post’s Michael Gerson invoke “the common good” in a national newspaper, as I mentioned yesterday. Speaking of that sort of thing (like “public trust”) being so gauche and all. Pitting people against each other? Now that’s how you get ahead in politics. At least, for a certain kind of politician.

Long ago, President Lyndon Johnson explained how this conservative schtick works:

If you can convince the lowest white man that he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll even empty his pockets for you.

The Fox News business model, ladies and gentlemen. They’ve just expanded the palette a little.

Regarding pitting people against each other, Michael Hiltzik yesterday looked at how the Republican Congress is dealing with Social Security disability funding — not by solving the problem, but by “intensifying the crisis.” Someone must be punished, and Republicans are pretty sure it’s the Poors, the aged, and the infirm:

In practical terms, the rule change sets up a confrontation over Social Security’s finances by pitting the program’s retirees against its disabled beneficiaries and their dependents. The confrontation is totally unnecessary, because the required reallocation would have minimal effect on the old-age program. The old-age trust fund, which is still growing today and has not yet been tapped, is expected to last at least until 2034; the reallocation would make both the disability and old-age funds solvent until 2033, according to the latest estimates by the Social Security trustees.

The rule change does, however, reflect Republicans’ cherished disdain for disability recipients, whom they love to caricature as malingering layabouts. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) slathered himself in iniquity last month when he told a New Hampshire audience: “Over half the people on disability are either anxious or their back hurts.”

Digby dealt with this at Salon yesterday, noting that at $1,130/mo on average, nobody’s living large on disability. But:

Apparently, even that’s too much. The government needs to crack down on these lazy moochers and put them to work. Back in the day they used to sell pencils and apples on street corners, amirite? And in third world countries you see plenty of horrifically disabled people making a tidy living by begging. They show the kind of gumption we are denying our paraplegics and mentally ill by molly coddling them with a poverty level stipend.

“Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled,” the apostle wrote mockingly of false piety, teaching that faith without works is dead. But that zombie faith is much in vogue.

This morning, Stephen Richter examines the need conservative lights such as George Will have to keep flogging the welfare horse, writing:

If there is a resurgence of the level of transfer payments to welfare recipients now, that is not due to any relaxation of the standards under which people qualify for welfare. (Indeed, the bar to obtain and keep benefits remains quite high.)

Nor is it the result of some sweeping cultural degradation foisted upon the good and hard-working American people by “progressives,” as Will ultimately insists. There is little to suggest struggling Americans have become newly enthusiastic about being compelled to seek help – including from the government – to make ends meet.

That the United States is at the bottom of rankings of social mobility among OECD countries matters little to theoreticians like Will, Richter writes.

Facts be damned. Hands up as well as handouts are for the weak, and against the natural order. The Founders may have mentioned tending to the “general welfare” twice in the U.S. Constitution, but they didn’t really mean it. Social Darwinism and The Market are hungry gods.

UPDATE: Fixed payment typo.

Freedom to be jerks
by Tom Sullivan

The Kochs, the NRA, and Randians of the right treat the word freedom as a conversation stopper. (What, are you against freedom, commie? Game Over. We win.) But just as creating the T-party pushed the GOP so far right that party regulars now are stuck with trying to reign in the monster they created, turning freedom into a worship word may be backfiring too:

A Florida man set up a gun range in his front yard, but police said there’s not much they can do but keep an eye on him.

Other residents are livid that 21-year-old Joseph Carannate set up targets and plans to fire his 9mm handgun in his residential Saint Petersburg neighborhood, reported WFLA-TV.

“I don’t know if this idiot is going to start popping off rounds,” said resident Patrick Leary. “I’m furious.”

Yeah? Furious commie.

But since by law the Gunshine State prohibits local governments from restricting gun rights, freedom means fire at will. Freedom means telling the neighbors, hide in the basement with your young-uns if you don’t like it.

The recent fight over vaccines travels that same road, doesn’t it? The teaser headline on the front page of the Washington Post online grabbed me this morning. Gerson: Vaccines and our duty to our neighbors. Whaddya mean “duty to our neighbors,” commie? Free-DOM:

Resistance to vaccination on the left often reflects an obsession with purity. Vaccines are placed in the same mental category as genetically modified organisms (GMOs), DDT and gluten. But the problem with organic health care is that the “natural” rate of child mortality is unacceptably high. Organically raised children can get some very nasty ­diseases.

Opposition to vaccination on the right often reflects an obsession with liberty — in this case, freedom from intrusive state mandates. It has always struck me as odd that a parent would defend his or her children with a gun but leave them vulnerable to a microbe. Some conservatives get especially exercised when vaccination has anything to do with sex — as with the human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine — on the questionable theory that teenagers are more likely to fornicate if they have a medical permission slip (or less likely to without it).

Whether you are blazing away in a suburban front yard, or putting neighbors’ children at risk by refusing to immunize yours, or publishing cartoons of Mohammed with intent to offend (France, I know), or strolling into the Burger King with your AR-15, or doing anything else arrogantly prick-ish, because freedom, maybe the radical individual thing has gotten out of hand. Doesn’t it seem, at long last, that our freedom fetish is turning us into a nation of jerks?

Michael Gerson dares use the phrase “common good”:

In all these matters, there is a balance between individual rights and the common good. This may sound commonplace. But some Americans seem to believe that the mere assertion of a right is sufficient to end a public argument. It is not, when the exercise of that right has unacceptable public consequences, or when the sum of likely choices is dangerous to a community.

Commie.

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

When in doubt, hit somebody
by Tom Sullivan

The Times editorial board paid closer attention than I did to Obama’s State of the Union speech:

They went largely unnoticed, four words President Obama ad-libbed during the State of the Union address last month as he asked lawmakers to provide legal cover for America’s military intervention in Iraq and Syria.

“We need that authority,” the president said, adding a line to the prepared remarks on his teleprompter that seemed to acknowledge a reality about which his administration has been inexcusably dishonest.

“Marry in haste, repent at leisure” goes the old saying. That applies to legislating as well. The PATRIOT Act, for one. In this case, passage on September 14, 2001 of the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), signed on September 18 by President George W. Bush. Specifically:

Section 2 – Authorization For Use of United States Armed Forces

(a) IN GENERAL- That the President is authorized to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons.

Obama now wants to use the AUMF to retroactively justify bombing Syria over a decade later. Congress will likely go along. The Times is not amused:

By failing to replace the sweeping war authorizations Congress established for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan more than a decade ago, with a far narrower mandate, lawmakers are abdicating one of their most consequential constitutional powers: the authority to declare war. White House officials maintain that the current campaign in Iraq and Syria is legal under the Afghan and Iraq war resolutions, a dubious argument considering those were tailored to respond to the Sept. 11 attacks and to deal with Saddam Hussein, then the Iraqi leader, on the grounds — since proved to be false — that he had weapons of mass destruction.

Obama called on Congress in 2013 to “refine, and ultimately repeal” the Bush AUMF and vowed himself not to expand it lest we “grant Presidents unbound powers” (to wage war on their say so). Now, Obama and the usual suspects want Congress to draft a new AUMF against ISIL. Because when in doubt, hit somebody. And because we have so many places to hit them from.

In 2008, the Pentagon claimed “545,000 facilities at 5,300 sites in the U.S. and around the globe.” What counts as a facility? Or a site? How many of those are overseas? In 2009, Anita Dancs with the Institute for Policy Studies estimated about 865 bases overseas, at an annual cost of $250 billion. (What counts as overseas is a matter of interpretation.) Ron Paul caught flack in 2011 for saying 900.

Trouble is, the Pentagon can’t even give you an accurate count of what the empire administers, as Nick Turse found about the same time:

There are more than 1,000 U.S. military bases dotting the globe. To be specific, the most accurate count is 1,077. Unless it’s 1,088. Or, if you count differently, 1,169. Or even 1,180. Actually, the number might even be higher. Nobody knows for sure.

But you can trust them. That global footprint is justified. Just what the Founders imagined. If we can’t find enough enemies to justify those bases, new enemies can be arranged, and new legal justifications for attacking them.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday. Bread and circuses for everyone.

If your blue state is healthier, thank a Republican
by Tom Sullivan

Affordable Care Act opponents argue in King v. Burwell now before the U.S. Supreme Court that Congress intended to withhold subsidies from the states unless they established their own exchanges. If SCOTUS agrees, ACA opponents expect the ruling to effectively gut the federal exchanges operating in over half the states and to seriously undermine Obamacare.

Even as this argument seems to have fallen apart, should the court strike down the federal exchange subsidies, Republicans in Congress vow not to reinstate consumers’ health insurance tax credits.

Steve Benen writes:

Remember, as far as the public is concerned, a clear majority of Americans would expect the Republican Congress to protect consumers from hardship. Indeed, Greg Sargent this week flagged the latest report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, which found that nearly two-thirds of Americans would expect lawmakers to keep existing subsidies in place if the Supreme Court ruling goes the wrong way. Only a fourth of the country would expect Congress to do nothing.

The same report found that even most Republicans support states setting up exchange marketplaces so that families can continue to receive subsidized access to medical care. This is, of course, the exact opposite of what GOP policymakers have in mind.

Ezra Klein reframes that outcome, arguing that Republicans’ plan for Obamacare’s demise has become “a plan to rip themselves off.” Klein elaborates:

If the Supreme Court rules for the plaintiffs in King v. Burwell, the subsidies will basically shut off in (mostly) red states. And congressional Republicans won’t do anything about it. That means Republicans in those states will be paying the taxes and bearing the spending cuts needed to fund Obamacare but getting none of the benefits.

Which is to say, the biggest fight in American politics in recent years began with Democrats creating a law that was a giant subsidy from blue states to red states and has evolved into Republicans working to turn the law into a giant subsidy from red states to blue states. It is very, very weird.

Not really. Republicans, especially in the 15 refusenik states Klein identifies, have a unremitting knack for cutting off their noses to spite their faces (and their children’s). They have principles and they stand in on them.

Stings and errors of outrageous brokers
by Tom Sullivan

Nice to see Matt Taibbi back at Rolling Stone. But not so nice for the financial services industry.

Taibbi reports on a memo from Jason Furman, Chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors, detailing the stings and errors average investors fall prey to from their brokers. “The current regulatory environment,” Furman explains in the document obtained by Bloomberg, “creates perverse incentives that ultimately cost savers billions of dollars a year.”

“For instance,” Taibbi writes, “it might surprise a lot of Americans to know that brokers handling retirement funds aren’t required by law to act in the best interests of their clients.” In nontechnical jargon, you might call this a “red flag.” When brokers “churn” accounts, performing needless trades to rack up fees, long-term investors can lose as much as 1-3 years worth of retirement withdrawals.

Taibbi continues:

The Obama administration is proposing to fix the problem by changing the rules and imposing a fiduciary duty standard on brokers, forcing them to act in their clients’ best interests. If this Labor Department proposal ever gets past the 50 yard line, expect the financial services lobby to carpet-bomb Washington with studies showing that apart from nuclear winter or inviting al-Qaeda to occupy the White House, nothing could be worse for America than forcing brokers to act in the best interests of their clients.

Bloomberg has more details.