Ok, I’m officially starting to get very, very creeped out by these plutocrats:
Mitt Romney’s two-day fundraising waltz across Texas begins today in Dallas with a pair of high-dollar events — one for $2,500-givers at the Belo Mansion and for the really big donors – those who cut a check for $50,000 for the GOP or bundle $200,000 from others — dinner with Romney at the Highland Park home of developer Harlan Crow. What better place for Romney to get a Texas-size sense of the American spirit than Crow’s spacious estate.
Crow is quite a collector. His personal library would rival a small college, complete with first editions on American history, several original Gilbert Stewart paintings decorating the walls and, under long glass displays, letters of famous people from Thomas Jefferson to the Wright brothers. Then there’s the room mementos of the principals of World War II – on one wall, a painting by Winston Churchill, on another wall a landscape by Dwight Eisenhower and, on a third wall, two original paintings of a European city scene by Adolph Hitler. On an antique table is a signed copy of Churchill’s book on fly fishing.
Outside, should Romney get an opportunity to wander the grounds, is a garden of tyrants. Crow has collected busts and statues of famous dictators of the past, which he displays with a certain elan on the lawn. There’s a head of Stalin, a rare statue of Fidel Castro, a towering Lenin and various other bad guys expropriated from their countries of origin.
Sarah Posner’s profile of the most important right wing anti-feminist you’ve never heard of is must read. I think Phyllis Schlaffly may have found her successor:
When I first saw her speak at a panel discussion on the HHS mandate and religious freedom at Georgetown University in March, Alvaré crammed 50 years of legal, medical, Catholic, sexual and sociological history into a breathless dissertation about how the availability of contraception has led to the “immiseration” of women. She accused the Obama administration, through its reliance on the Institute of Medicine’s recommendations on contraception coverage, of being motivated by possible anti-Catholic “animus,” and dismissed out of hand the relevance of the scientific and medical evidence the IOM report presented. For Alvaré, the medical evidence is purely ideological and untrustworthy, precisely because it is premised on the usefulness of contraceptives and compiled by people who favor the availability of contraception and abortion.
At the heart of Alvaré’s persistent arguments are what she presents as two essential truths: Birth control is bad for women’s health and well-being, and the government’s effort to legislate insurance coverage for it by religious institutions represents a violation of both religious freedom and the separation of church and state.
Some people have been making the case that the abortion wars were never about “life” from the beginning. It was a very specific marketing decision to pit adorable innocent babies against selfish, immoral bitches who spawned them. But it was always about the sex. And now they are emboldened to make their real argument.
Alvaré and her cohorts might seem absurd — after all, having sex isn’t like jumping out of an airplane — but in conservative circles, both academic and political, her views are given currency. She contends that what she calls “sexuality-ism” — essentially, sexual freedom — is “the most pronounced opponent of religious freedom right now.” But, she adds, with both honesty and portent: “Who is the biggest opponent of sexuality-ism? It’s us.”
Read the whole thing. It’s actually quite bracing. The years of fighting against being portrayed as heartless baby killers has demoralized many feminists and made them forget what these people really care about. It’s a testament to the power of the propaganda — and women’s primal understanding of and sensitivity toward their role in human reproduction — that this has worked so well in spite of the obvious hypocrisy. After all, these are the same people who believe that there should be no food, shelter, health or education guarantee for actual children, which should give the game away.
It’s long past time we put away the sanctimony about “life” and got down to the real argument. Are women fully human or aren’t they? Do they have the right to physical pleasure, personal freedom, bodily autonomy or don’t they? Historically the answer has usually been no, or at best, a very qualified yes. We have begun to think differently these last few decades and some people don’t like it, which is what this is really all about. I’m happy to see it out in the open. Now we can have a fair fight.
Polarized swingers: the new Pew Poll shows they make no sense
by digby
Here’s an interesting new Pew Poll about polarization. Apparently there are more swing voters, even as the two parties are more distinct and polarized, which says that these people really don’t know their own minds. (After all, if the two parties are very far apart, you’d think it would make it more likely that a person would pick one or the other, not go back and forth.)
In any case, I found this to be an odd conclusion:
While Republicans and Democrats have been moving further apart in their beliefs, both groups have also been shrinking. Pew Research Center polling conducted so far in 2012 has found fewer Americans affiliating with one of the major parties than at any point in the past 25 years. And looking at data from Gallup going back to 1939, it is safe to say that there are more political independents in 2012 than at any point in the last 75 years.
Currently, 38% of Americans identify as independents, while 32% affiliate with the Democratic Party and 24% affiliate with the GOP. That is little changed from recent years, but long-term trends show that both parties have lost support.
Now look at this and tell me what’s wrong with that:
Do you see what I see? That’s right, the Democratic share has been fairly constant. The new Independents are coming from the Republican ranks. Why Pew chose to say that it’s been an equal fall off for both parties is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t appear to be true.
Now Waitt has decided to get back in the game. In May, he launched a super-PAC called icPurple, seeded it with $300,000, and set his sights on a handful of local and congressional races in California’s June 5 primary. His goal: Help independent, centrist candidates win political office. Think of it as the super-PAC for the David Brooks set. On Tuesday, Waitt will find out if it’s working.
The mission of icPurple rests on the theory that a large chunk of the American electorate is, at heart, a lot like Waitt. Its website asks readers to sign a “Declaration of Independents” and offers a test with questions that are designed to show we’re not as polarized as we might think. (Waitt classifies himself as socially liberal and fiscally conservative.) “If you can’t sign up for everything the Democrats believe in, you probably shouldn’t vote for a one,” icPurple warns. Ditto for Republicans. The super-PAC’s first television ad, a 30-second spot, features a band of elementary school kids fighting over whether to paint their tree house with red or blue paint. Finally, someone has the idea to mix the two. Voila: purple.
A truck stop. A pleasant woman’s voice over an AM radio station: “… the corrected numbers show large job job gains … the reforms made job creators more confident …. Wisconsin is getting back to work …” The ad’s sponsor is the “WMC Foundation,” as in Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, the state’s largest business organization, who have scored the neat trick of simultaneously blanketing the state with misleading pro-Walker ads and mainlining into the media an ostensibly objective survey in which its membership overwhelmingly affirms that thanks to Walker’s “reforms” they’ll be hiring more … soon.
Wisconsinites meanwhile pulled out their phones and saw texts reading, “Tom Barrett is a Union Puppet who will give Union Thugs everything they want. Call & ask why 414-271-8050.” That’s Barrett campaign headquarters – whose switchboard was promptly shut down by the deluge of calls.
Welcome to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin – and, if Wisconsin fails to do the right thing today, Scott Walker’s America: dirty tricks and intricately nested corporate-sponsored lies, states competing with one another to out-Dixie Dixie, glittering simulations of democracy on TV commercials paid for by cruel lying billionaires, passed on verbatim by reporters too lazy to care.
Unfortunately, that vision of Walker’s America is all too real. As I get older I realize more than ever that things can (and often do) get worse.
It’s immensely difficult to beat the kind of relentless corporate backed propaganda and lies that have been blanketing Wisconsin. But if anyone can do it, Wisconsin progressives can. Fingers crossed …
It’s super primary Tuesday today. That means Wisconsin recall, and primaries all over the nation, including in South Dakota, California, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Montana.
If you live in Wisconsin, you know what to do. Get rid of Walker and his lackeys in the state senate. Clear that ugliness out of that beautiful capitol building in Madison and give back to teachers, firefighters and so many other working families in Wisconsin the right to negotiate for a decent standard of living.
If you live in California, Howie Klein has a list of great candidates, including fantastic progressive Norman Solomon. There are two initiatives in the state, propositions 28 and 29. Prop28 adjusts term limits from 14 years to 12 (sounds bad!), but crucially it allows legislators to serve all twelve years in one chamber. Please vote on 28 if, like me, you despise term limits. Prop29 is the tobacco tax to fund cancer research. I’m a yes on that, but make your own decision as you see fit.
If you live in Los Angeles, chances are you fall into a district with a battle between Brad Sherman and Howard Berman, and/or Torie Osborn and Betsy Butler. The progressive choices there are Sherman and Osborn, hands down.
If you live in Ventura County, there is a huge Congressional race that is #1 on the national radar right now. There are four Democrats running against the execrable Tony Strickland and the deficit-obsessed, just-switched-from-Republican-to-“independent” Linda Parks. Fortunately, the strongest Democrat in the race is also the most progressive of the bunch, and that’s Julia Brownley, author of the campaign finance disclosure bill in California and a great champion for education and the environment. Overlapping Ventura and Santa Barbara counties is also a State Senate race featuring a Republican (Mike Stoker) and two Democrats (Hannah-Beth Jackson and Jason Hodge.) Hodge is the very definition of a conservadem, while Hannah-Beth is an admirable progressive. Please vote for Hannah-Beth Jackson.
I don’t know much about what’s happening in the rest of the states, but if you have recommendations, especially in Dem vs. Dem primaries where we can help change the Democratic Party for the better, list it in the comments, and I’ll update this post throughout the day.
And for those of you who are going to pipe into the comments and insist what a waste of time voting is because it’s all controlled by the oligarchy blah blah bah, I’m sorry for you and I’m also not listening. Even if you’re right, people in other countries are dying for the right to do what you throw away so casually. It only takes two minutes to vote. Even if you believe voting effectuates practically no change at all, it’s also the very least you can do. Just get out there and do it, please, in the most progressive way you can, however you interpret that. And then go back to making legitimate complaints about the system and organizing in other ways for the rest of the 364 days, 23 hours, and 58 minutes for the next 12 months.
Today we vote. And no matter what happens, tomorrow we keep on fighting for progressive values as best as we know how.
Update: In the comments, Carl Manaster has an excellent reminder: In California’s CD52, please vote for Lori Saldaña, a strong progressive over a lazy weak establishment Dem – competing to take out Brian Bilbray. http://lori4congress.com/ I was up at 5am delivering vote reminders to her declared supporters.
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of Justice asked officials in Florida to suspend the controversial voter purge conducted by Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) administration, citing possible violations of voting rights law. Florida officials had been purging a list of suspected non-citizen voters, estimated at one point to include at least 180,000 people, despite evidence that the list is riddled with errors. Thousands of targeted voters are in fact American citizens. As ThinkProgress and the Miami Herald have reported, a great deal of the individuals also happen to be Hispanics and Democratic-leaning voters, suggesting the effort is deeply partisan.
The plan for the purge, according to a story from the Associated Press, was initiated last year by then-Secretary of State Kurt Browning after a meeting with the governor. Browning said he was motivated by a “Spidey sense tingling” to undergo a massive project to develop the list now being used to send letters to registered Florida voters informing them that they have been flagged as non-citizens. Although both Gov. Scott and Browning have downplayed accusations that the purge is political, a donation from a secret money group may fuel growing suspicions that the effort is partisan.
Just before Browning was selected in 2011 by Scott as Secretary of State, Browning led a group called “Protect Your Vote Inc,” which was set up to oppose fair redistricting. One of the biggest checks to Browning’s organization came from the Center to Protect Patients’ Rights, which gave $100,000 in 2010. At the time of the donation, the source of the money was shrouded in secrecy.
You guessed it: Protect Your Vote Inc is yet another Koch Brothers tentacle of hell.
This would be funny at this point if it weren’t so dangerous. No matter what rock gets overturned, Koch money is underneath it. Of course they can afford it. They’re worth 50 billion dollars. This is chump change to them.
When President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign unveiled its new slogan, some conservative critics were quick to pounce. “Forward,” they asserted, is a word long associated with Europe’s radical left. Its choice reaffirmed their contention that Obama is, to some degree or other, a socialist – a claim that surfaced early in the 2008 campaign and has persisted ever since, fueling a lively industry of bumper stickers and books…
But to many historians and political scientists – and to actual socialists as well – the persistent claim that Obama is a socialist lacks credence.
He’s widely seen as a pragmatist within the Democratic Party mainstream who’s had ample success raising campaign funds from wealthy Wall Street capitalists. Even some of his strongest critics acknowledge that his administration hasn’t sought one of the classic forms of socialism – government control of the nation’s means of production.
You don’t say.
I guess in a country where 46% of the population are creationists, it’s reasonable that a news agency would explore a stupid topic like this. But there is no reason, once they did their “investigation”, not to come right out and say that Obama isn’t a socialist. He says he isn’t and his policies aren’t so this isn’t a matter of interpretation. It is a fact. Obama is not a socialist. End of story. What am I missing?
I don’t suppose you’ll be surprised to learn that I got the link to this story from Fox Nation, where this is a fairly representative comment:
Funny as heII … trolls refuse to acknowledge they or Obama are socialists … yet day after day they flout Europe and Canada’s socialist “successes”. So why are they afraid to be labeled what they endorse?
Because … the Communist Party of the USA has endorsed Obama since day one of his political career. They want to stay as far away from that truth AS POSSIBLE.
It’s so tiresome watching Paul Krugman and fellow anti-austerity activists be right about everything, but continue to be ignored. It’s a big reason why we’re increasingly on edge and impatient with the “centrist” pro-austerity crowd. There’s nothing more frustrating than continually being right and making accurate predictions, only to be ignored time and again by the same discredited yet unfazed, still-confident acolytes of failed conventional wisdom.
Conservatives: reckless gamblers giving you life planning advice
by David Atkins
One of the most remarkably asinine things you’ll hear conservatives say during this economic crisis is that the answer to youth unemployment and student debt is for more young people to start their own small businesses. You can see example after example of this “very serious” advice, including this clueless article from Time’s business section:
The U.S. government is being strangled by partisan politics. Youth employment is at a 60-year low. Student-loan debt is approaching $1 trillion (and default rates are rising quickly).
Yet young Americans are far more optimistic about the country’s future than the pundits would have you believe — and they are demonstrating that optimism through entrepreneurship. According to a 2011 survey, 23% of young people started a business as a result of being unemployed. Fifteen percent started a business in college. And let’s not forget the veterans, who are twice as likely as other Americans to own businesses.
So why are so few pundits and politicians building on that entrepreneurial energy as a solution to joblessness and economic malaise? The fact is, it’s high time we funneled our collective energy toward rebuilding an entrepreneurial America.
What we need to be doing is really making it easier to young people to start their own businesses, making it far far easier for new entrepreneurs. I mean, you say we have to give them jobs, create jobs, we shouldn’t be about creating jobs, we should be about enabling the economy to create jobs by low tax regimes, opportunities for people to start businesses and so on, not by creating jobs.
While some two-thirds of small firms make it past the two-year mark, just 44 percent can hack it for four years, according to the latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And by “hack it,” we’re just talking survival rates here: Plenty of those “survivors” are choking down ramen noodles to keep the lights on.
If those odds don’t scare you off, consider too that some industries may be inherently tougher to crack than others. Your friends might think that you rival Mario Batali in the kitchen, or that you can go sole for sole with the likes of Kenneth Cole. But the sober truth is that it takes more than talent to run a restaurant, a clothing boutique and a host of other ventures. Sadly, some of the most enticing industries are also the riskiest.
What all these “conservatives” are advocating, then, is that young people spend their twenties going into even more debt to build a small business, over 55% of which will fail within four years, leaving them destitute, in double the debt they started with, and unemployable by age thirty.
So-called conservatives are advocating this. As public policy, it’s sheer madness. I say this as one of the few who made it: I started by own small business at 23 and am still going today. But first, it’s a volatile and gut-wrenching experience I wouldn’t recommend for most people, to say nothing of everyone, and second, I have some advantages: I run it out of home so there’s no major overhead cost, I had no student debt due to scholarships, and I had six years of apprenticeship in the industry from working 30 hours a week in my family business while going to college. So I have every advantage you could ask for in this regard, and it’s still touch-and-go such that I wouldn’t advocate my career choice to most people.
Listening to comfortable conservatives advocate this sort of nonsense for average college graduates is nothing short of insane. It’s insulting. They might as well tell young people to go to Vegas and dump all their money on one play at a roulette table in Las Vegas. At least the roulette table gives you near 50% odds, which is better than the odds of your small business staying afloat for more than four years.
But it makes sense. It’s conservatives, after all, who thought it was a great idea to bet the entire country’s economic future on the whims of the Wall Street casinos. Why wouldn’t they give the same advice to our nation’s youth?
This article by Jonathan Weisman in today’s NY Times indicates that the Republicans are out on the campaign trail saying that the “sequestration” is going to destroy America’s military and must be stopped at all costs. He focuses on Huckleberry Graham, who is nearly hysterical on subject (perhaps because he also says that there is going to be “an air and sea campaign from hell” on Iran!)
But it’s clear that it’s a kabuki dance leading to something I’ve been predicting for a while:
But the threat they created may be doing its job. Mr. Graham is openly talking about revenue increases to offset the costs. Even South Carolina’s ardently conservative House members, Mick Mulvaney, Joe Wilson and Jeff Duncan, said last week that they were ready to talk…
For now, Democrats and Republicans are waiting for the other side to blink. And the pressure may be working. Mr. Graham said the sentiment for raising revenues by closing tax loopholes or imposing higher fees on items like federal oil leases is expanding in his party.
That’s quite a sacrifice, isn’t it? And to think that all they want in return is draconian cuts to social programs and painful shrinkage of the safety net. They’re heroes, for sure.
This is why I don’t care about this ridiculous obsession with “revenues” by the Democrats. Yes, billionaires and corporations should be paying more. They can afford it right now, they are doing quite well. But the way they plan to do that is fraudulent: “tax reform” that consists of lowering rates and allegedly closing loopholes (which will only remain closed for people who can’t afford lobbyists to open them again.) It’s a scam.
Moreover, we don’t really need to be collecting more money right now. We can borrow very cheaply and pay for infrastructure and putting people back to work, creating demand. This entire discussion of deficits is bullshit. We’re in a depression.
“The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity.” So declared John Maynard Keynes 75 years ago, and he was right. Even if you have a long-run deficit problem — and who doesn’t? — slashing spending while the economy is deeply depressed is a self-defeating strategy, because it just deepens the depression.
As he also points out, this is being done in Europe and here not because any of these people care about deficits. It’s being done because they want to dismantle the welfare state. And they have successfully bought off or confused just about everyone in the country — actually, the world.
Democrats should not die on the tax hikes for millionaires hill (however that’s defined.)”Tax reform” is a joke which will be killed one corporate donation and lobbyist inserted exception at a time. The safety net, on the other hand, will never be the same. They should just say no. We can run these deficits easily for the time being and when the economy does turn around we can do real tax hikes (raise rates, not “reform”) on real millionaires to pay back that debt. Let’s see how that works out before we start slashing away at the safety net people depend upon. There’s just no good reason to do anything else.
Update: Unfortunately, the Democratic buy-in has filtered down to the community level. I got this email this morning from a reader named Bert:
Yesterday, June 3rd, 2012, I was volunteering at Lummis Day. This is a Celebration of North East Los Angeles, named for a remarkable man, Charles Lummis, who was an early City leader and envisioned a multi-cultural California back in the 1880’s. The Celebration is to further that vision.
The Democratic Party was well represented at the Community Booths and I approached Xavier Becerra’s table. I introduced myself to the woman at the table as a constituent and someone who has donated to, and written to Congressman Becerra in the past. I asked her opinion on Social Security and Medicare. What I heard was not reassuring. Briefly she said that politically unaffiliated economists, when they run the numbers, show that we cannot continue supporting these programs because the retiring population is larger than the working population that pays for them. The congressman supports them and wants to keep them, but that changes are going to have to be made. She was not specific about what types of changes and to be fair we were talking generically about Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.
My response was that once the door is open to making adjustments, then it’s a quick slide down a slippery slope to cutting and more cutting. I told her that the $106,000 tax cap on Social Security taxes should be raised. I felt her response was non-committal, and not the response that I wanted to hear, which would’ve been “We will stand by these programs and fight to the death.”
What I found interesting is that the Washington conversation that there is not enough money for these social programs, is at the level of the community booth. That was disappointing.
That bolded sentence is a piece of propaganda perpetrated by the financial industry. It isn’t true. Seriously, do people think that someone just woke up yesterday and discovered that the baby boom was going to retire? We’ve been around a long time now.
For a thorough explanation of why that line of argument is completely wrong, click here.
