Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

The Bathtub Was No Utopia

by tristero

Here is a very strange review about a very great movie, Beasts of the Southern Wild:

While the film centers on Hushpuppy’s struggle to survive the degradation that surrounds her — primarily through imagination and her incipient art — this “You’ve got to fight for your right to party” ethos is also a central theme. Viewers are asked to interpret a lack of work discipline, schooling, or steady institution building of any kind — the primary building blocks of any civilization — as the height of liberation. “Choice,” even the choice to live in squalor, is raised to the level of a categorical imperative. There is no inkling of the economic and social history of the region that had limited these “choices.” We are left with a libertarian sandbox, with a rights-based life philosophy gone rancid.

I have pretty sensitive antennae to political messages embedded in the arts and entertainment, but I really don’t see this.

The Bathtub clearly was not intended to be any kind of positive utopia. Instead, it’s a complex, harsh, squalid, and – in the eyes of Hushpuppy – somewhat magical place, ecstatic, gorgeous and also frightening. If anything else, the abuse Hushpuppy’s father heaps on her should disabuse anyone that the residents of The Bathtub are meant to be paragons and the place itself somehow is on the highway to The Way Things Really Ought To Be.

Instead, “Beasts” is a story of endurance beyond the endurable – the awful environment, the awful parental abuse – and about the attempt of a child to transmute suffering and loss into beauty, strength, and love. It is Hushpuppy’s story – and oh, what a performance from Quvenzhane Wallis! That story is not about liberation, but rather the tragically futile aspiration to transcend her pain. After all, does anyone, at the end of the movie, doubt that as strong as Hushpuppy is, that she is destined for happiness or a substantially easier life than those around her? (And don’t we wish we were wrong?)

No story is apolitical, of course, but in this case, clearly the director is juggling and subverting Rousseau-ian Noble Savage tropes, not libertarian ones, and clearly he in no way is endorsing the grim lives of The Bathtub, or many of the actions of its people. Of course, there are moments of community and joy and shared doomed causes in the Bathtub – but all of that is part of living just about anywhere, even in wastelands like much of Faulkner’s Mississippi. It may be a puzzle that moments of happiness are possible under such conditions, but they are.

The film is a masterpiece, all the more astonishing given it is Benh Zeitlin’s first film and was made for almost nothing. And like most great works of art, it is specific to its characters and story, virtually sui generis.

It’s still night time in America

by digby

Gee, I wonder why we still have high unemployment?

Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman looks at the impact of shrinking government jobs on the overall unemployment rate. Just 9% of the population worked for the government in July as public payrolls have been cut 640, 000 since the end of the recession. Economists say the jobless rate would be 7.1 percent if the share of the population working for the government from 2001-2007 were still in their jobs.

That would have been lower than Reagan’s 7.2% when he declared morning in America. Which was the Obama plan. Except they forgot that slashing “government” translates to slashing jobs. Ooops.

This all goes back to the deficit fetish that’s been an obsessive concern of this administration since the beginning and which is going to come sharply back into focus as soon as the election is over. I wish I understood what they thought they were doing, but I suppose that if they win re-election whatever it was will be seen to be vindicated and they’ll do more of it.

Meanwhile, here’s the alternative Mitt Romney spouting some gibberish which nobody can trace to any known facts, studies or models:

One thing that distinguishes this recovery is that public sector jobs, government jobs, have already fallen by 650,000. Given the conservative goal of shrinking government, is this a positive development or a negative one?

Well, clearly you don’t like to hear [about] anyone losing a job. At the same time, government is the least productive—the federal government is the least productive of our economic sectors. The most productive is the private sector. The next most productive is the not-for-profit sector, then comes state and local governments, and finally the federal government. And so moving responsibilities from the federal government to the states or to the private sector will increase productivity. And higher productivity means higher wages for the American worker. All right? America is the highest productivity nation of major nations in the world, and that results in our having, for instance, an average compensation about 30 percent higher than the average compensation in Europe. A government that becomes more productive, that does more with less, is good for the earnings of the American worker, and ultimately it will mean that our taxes don’t have to go up, that small businesses will find it easier to start and grow, and we will be able to add more private sector jobs. Don’t forget! It’s the private sector jobs that pay for government workers. So if you have fewer government workers doing work more and more productively, that means private sector work will grow.

If you say so Mitt.

So, we have one presidential candidate who has already presided over a huge shrinkage of the government workforce and is ready to negotiate four trillion more(give or take a trillion) in future cuts. And we have another one who is clearly clueless and will do whatever Zombie Ayn Rand and her living boytoy Paul Ryan tell him to do. Sigh.

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Tom Paine was a commie

by digby

This long piece by Paul Rosenberg about Romney and his lies is worth reading, but I wanted to share this excerpt and say to the Tea Party, “I gotcher founders for ya, right heah“:

Romney’s support for Paul Ryan’s budget would not only end Social Security and Medicare as we know them, it would shrink government as a whole back to the level of the 1920s, when the US was still a third-rate military power.

This is not only wildly unpopular as well as impractical. It is also profoundly un-American, in sharp contrast to Obama’s professed commitment to a strong social foundation of shared prosperity, which is profoundly American.

We can see this in the words of Founding Father Tom Paine, who wrote – in his own version of “you didn’t build that”:

“Personal property is the effect of society; and it is as impossible for an individual to acquire personal property without the aid of society, as it is for him to make land originally.

“Separate an individual from society, and give him an island or a continent to possess, and he cannot acquire personal property. He cannot be rich. So inseparably are the means connected with the end, in all cases, that where the former do not exist, the latter cannot be obtained. All accumulation, therefore, of personal property, beyond what a man’s own hands produce, is derived to him by living in society; and he owes on every principle of justice, of gratitude, and of civilisation, a part of that accumulation back again to society from whence the whole came.”

Other Founders echoed similar sentiments, but Paine was distinctive as both a visionary and a commoner – that was the power and genius of Common Sense, without which the American Revolution would have failed.

The passage above comes from Agrarian Justice, in which Paine argued for a social insurance system for young people and the aged, based on a national ten per cent tax on inherited property. Here he seemed much more the visionary, far ahead of his time, anticipating programmes that would not arise anywhere for almost a century.

Tom Paine had been dead for nine years when Karl Marx was born, but according to the right wing he must have literally been a visionary and saw the Marxism on the wall.

Rosenberg makes the point that this strain of thought is as American as apple pie, going all the way back to the beginning. When I was a kid it was the consensus view. Unfortunately, that’s given way to another of the all-American obsessions: the cult of individualism.

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It’s not free, you’re paying for it

by digby

Jodi Jacobson at Rh reality check makes an excellent point about something that’s been bugging me too. When describing the contraception benefit, it’s not correct to say that it’s free:

This is not the case, and it is misleading–and politically dangerous–to say so.

To get birth control without a co-pay means you have an insurance policy. No one can walk into any pharmacy today and get the pill without a prescription, which in any case first entails a visit to a doctor’s office. No one without insurance can walk into a doctor’s office and get an IUD for for free, nor any kind of contraception, unless they pay out of pocket or meet the means test for and are covered by Medicaid, an increasingly difficult enterprise in itself but the subject of a different article. Ten percent of women in the United States who work full time are currently uninsured and without coverage, they do not have access to “free” birth control. Nor do other women without insurance, or those whose plans are, for logistical reasons or because they were grand-fathered, not yet compliant with the ACA on preventive care. None of these women have “free” birth control now, and they will not later even if they get insurance. (See the National Women’s Law Center Guide on what to do if you have questions about your insurance plan and contraception without co-pay.)

Why? Because if you have insurance, you pay for it, either by virtue of your labor or out of your own pocket, or, depending on the situation, both. And under the ACA, it is now mandated that your insurance plan cover certain benefits without a co-pay. This does not make them “free.” It means that you are paying for that service as part of your premium. You earned it, you paid for it, it is yours. If you pay for it, you deserve to get it.

It’s part of the required, preventive care package in everyone’s insurance policy, a package that includes the following:

Children (0-17): Coverage includes regular pediatrician visits, vision and hearing screening, developmental assessments, immunizations, and screening and counseling to address obesity and help children maintain a healthy weight.

Women (18-64): Coverage includes cancer screening such as pap smears for those ages 21 to 64, mammograms for those ages 50 to 64, and colonoscopy for those 50 to 64; recommended immunizations such as HPV vaccination for women ages 19 to 26, flu shots for all adults, and meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccinations for high-risk adults; healthy diet counseling and obesity screening; cholesterol and blood pressure screening; screening for sexually-transmitted infections and HIV; depression screening; and tobacco-use counseling. Starting in August 2012, additional preventive services specific to women, such as screening for gestational diabetes and contraception, will be covered by new health plans with no cost sharing.

Men (18-64): Coverage includes recommended immunizations such as flu shots for all adults and meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccinations for high-risk adults; cancer screening including colonoscopy for adults 50 to 64; healthy diet counseling and obesity screening; cholesterol and blood pressure screening; screening for HIV; depression screening; and tobacco-use counseling.

Some of those tests have been quite expensive for me in the last few years because I have a plan with an insanely high deductible since it’s all I can afford. So this is a real benefit for me. And it’s obviously a good benefit for women of child-bearing years because preventing unwanted pregnancy is extremely cost effective. That’s why insurance companies didn’t balk at the requirement.

But it’s not free. You have to be insured to get the benefit (which is too bad, but that’s another issue) and that means that you have paid for it one way or another.

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Romney officially joins the religious right

by digby

This is sickening:

He’s going all in with the crackpot Christian right. I guess we should have expected it. These guys don’t do this for nothing:

Mitt Romney took time on Thursday during a trip to Denver to meet with a group of well-known social conservatives, including Gary Bauer, James Dobson and others, POLITICO’s Jonathan Martin reports.

The group assured Romney they are firmly behind him, according to a source familiar with the conservation.

The meeting took place roughly two weeks after a group of social conservatives, including Family Research Council head Tony Perkins, urged Romney to pick a running mate who’s staunchly anti-abortion.

That’s really revealing considering Romney’s own reversals on the issue. It just proves what whores for power they really are.

There is another motive which, for some reason, is only being reported by one intrepid journalist, Adele Stan at Alternet:

The boyish contours of his face now marked with the occasional line, Reed, at 51, still conveys a youthful vigor, fit and trim in a well-tailored dark suit, his full head of hair brushed neatly back to display a smooth forehead. Taking no small measure of credit for the triumph of Walker and Kleefisch, Reed boasts of the 600,000 voter contacts he says his organization made to get conservative Wisconsinites to the polls on June 5. Later that evening, Reed will present to Kleefisch, who is billed as Wisconsin’s answer to Sarah Palin, FFC’s Courage in Leadership Award. (Kleefisch will also accept the same award for Walker, who did not attend.)

If you like what happened in Wisconsin, Reed implies, you’re going to love the 2012 presidential race, when FFC reaches out to 27.1 million conservative voters; he promises that FFC will contact each of them between seven to 12 times to either get them to the polls, or better yet, vote early in states that permit it. Consider it payback, if you will, for the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

Maybe this is hype. But I wouldn’t bet on it. These people have been developing their network for decades and if they put some real money behind it, which they will — politics is swimming in millions of dollars of the one percent’s tip money — and with the validation of the Dobsons’ and Perkins’ they can probably activate these voters. Politics for these people (most people) is tribal. They’ll do it out of loyalty and hate, even if they don’t love the candidate.

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The GOP succession

by digby

Last night Blue Gal tweeted this observation:

This is true and more’s the pity. It’s the old “conservatism can never fail it can only be failed”. These people are certified lunatics and it’s bad for the country for them to keep going further and further right, which is where this attitude inevitably leads.

On the other hand, when I read this WSJ editorial I wondered if this could change the dynamic:

The case for Mr. Ryan is that he best exemplifies the nature and stakes of this election. More than any other politician, the House Budget Chairman has defined those stakes well as a generational choice about the role of government and whether America will once again become a growth economy or sink into interest-group dominated decline.

Against the advice of every Beltway bedwetter, he has put entitlement reform at the center of the public agenda—before it becomes a crisis that requires savage cuts. And he has done so as part of a larger vision that stresses tax reform for faster growth, spending restraint to prevent a Greek-like budget fate, and a Jack Kemp-like belief in opportunity for all. He represents the GOP’s new generation of reformers that includes such Governors as Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal and New Jersey’s Chris Christie.

As important, Mr. Ryan can make his case in a reasonable and unthreatening way. He doesn’t get mad, or at least he doesn’t show it. Like Reagan, he has a basic cheerfulness and Midwestern equanimity.

As for Medicare, the Democrats would make Mr. Ryan’s budget a target, but then they are already doing it anyway. Mr. Romney has already endorsed a modified version of Mr. Ryan’s premium-support Medicare reform, and who better to defend it than the author himself?

Republicans are likely to do worse if they merely play defense on Medicare and other entitlements. The way to win on the issue is go on offense and contrast Mr. Romney’s patient-centered reform with President Obama’s policy of government price controls and rationing medical care via a 15-member panel of unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats.

Personalities aside, the larger strategic point is that Mr. Romney’s best chance for victory is to make this a big election over big issues. Mr. Obama and the Democrats want to make this a small election over small things—Mitt’s taxes, his wealth, Bain Capital. As the last two months have shown, Mr. Romney will lose that kind of election.

If the election really were a referendum on Ryan’s Randian wet dream, and they lose, one would think that the right would have to reevaluate. The problem, of course, is that Ryan wouldn’t be the man at the top of the ticket, so I don’t think he’ll be held responsible for the loss. And according to GOP rules, his turn would be next. Do we really want him as a shoo-in for the 2016 nomination? I don’t. I think he’s the most dangerous man in America, for all the reasons spelled out in that gooey WSJ endorsement, and I don’t want to ever take a chance that this Randroid nutcase ever gets his hands on real power.

So, here’s hoping that Mitt goes in another direction. I’m hoping for Tim Pawlenty and his smokin’ hot wife. Feel this magic:

Now that, my friends, is a Vice President.

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QOTD: Glenn Greenwald

by digby

After observing that if the founders are able to see what has become of the American press they must wonder why they worked so hard to secure the First Amendment, Glenn Greenwald followed up with this update:

I was unaware when I made my observation about the Founders that John Adams closed a 1777 letter to his wife Abigail with this thought:

Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom! I hope you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.

If Heaven had the misfortunate of subscribing to Time (or, more likely, receiving it for free as a consolation prize for a failed sweepstakes entry), then a moment of silence is warranted to lament Adams’ pain. Then again, if Adams has access to Time in the afterlife, then he’s most certainly not in Heaven.

word

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Voting rights for me, but not for thee

by David Atkins

In case there was any doubt about what Republicans are really up to and why, this should lay that to rest:

The real story from Ohio is how cutbacks to early voting will disproportionately disenfranchise African-American voters in Ohio’s most populous counties. African-Americans, who supported Obama over McCain by 95 points in Ohio, comprise 28 percent of the population of Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County but accounted for 56 percent of early voters in 2008, according to research done by Norman Robbins of the Northeast Ohio Voter Advocates and Mark Salling of Cleveland State University. In Columbus’s Franklin County, African-Americans comprise 20 percent of the population but made up 34 percent of early voters.

Now, in heavily Democratic cities like Cleveland, Columbus, Akron and Toledo, early voting hours will be limited to 8 am until 5 pm on weekdays beginning on October 1, with no voting at night or during the weekend, when it’s most convenient for working people to vote. Republican election commissioners have blocked Democratic efforts to expand early voting hours in these counties, where the board of elections are split equally between Democratic and Republican members. Ohio Republican Secretary of State Jon Husted has broken the tie by intervening on behalf of his fellow Republicans.

‘I cannot create unequal access from one county board to another, and I must also keep in mind resources available to each county,” Husted said in explaining his decision to deny expanded early voting hours in heavily Democratic counties. Yet in solidly Republican counties like Warren and Butler, GOP election commissioners have approved expanded early voting hours on nights and weekends. Noted the Cincinnati Enquirer: “The counties where Husted has joined other Republicans to deny expanded early voting strongly backed then-candidate Barack Obama in 2008, while most of those where the extra hours will stand heavily supported GOP nominee John McCain.” Moreover, budget constraints have not stopped Republican legislators from passing costly voter ID laws across the map since 2010.

But, of course, both sides do it and racism isn’t at the core of one of our two political parties. That’s divisive tribal talk that gets in the way of bipartisan compromise and our post-racial society.

To get angry about it would be, well, shrill. And that would be…almost indecent.

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You Can’t Be Too Careful

by tristero

Kerry Messer, president of the self-styled Missouri Family Network allaying fears about Missouri’s weird prayer law:

“This is only about religious liberty. If a Christian student is told they must kneel and bow east in a mock Islamic prayer to sensitize students to the Muslim community, that student can refuse to participate.”

And that happens a lot in Missouri public schools.

Credit where credit is due: Democratic sell-out edition

by digby

We are so screwed:

The news media have played a crucial role in Mr. Obama’s career, helping to make him a national star not long after he had been an anonymous state legislator. As president, however, he has come to believe the news media have had a role in frustrating his ambitions to change the terms of the country’s political discussion. He particularly believes that Democrats do not receive enough credit for their willingness to accept cuts in Medicare and Social Security, while Republicans oppose almost any tax increase to reduce the deficit.

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