Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

A political party descends rapidly into moral insanity

by David Atkins

The New York Times covers a Pew poll with some data about polarization:

[T]rends suggest that Americans are not vastly more polarized than they were in the late 1980s but that they have increasingly sorted themselves into two ideologically cohesive political parties.

During this time, Republicans have moved farther to the right — on economic issues, at least — than Democrats have moved to the left. Asked whether the government should take care of people who cannot take care of themselves, 75 percent of Democrats now say yes, down only slightly from 79 percent in 1987. But just 40 percent of Republicans say so, down from 62 percent in 1987.

Republicans’ support for stricter laws to protect the environment has fallen even more sharply.

But the views of Democrats have shifted on some economic issues as well, with Democrats becoming more strongly in favor of government steps to ensure equal opportunity. On social issues, like gay rights, Democrats have moved more than Republicans.

The poll, released Monday, suggested that Democrats have opinions closer to those of the country as a whole on gay rights and Wall Street. Republicans are closer to the national mood on affirmative action and whether the government should go deeper into debt to help the poor.

Bottom line? Since 1980 Republicans have moved much, much farther to the right. Democrats have also moved to the right on economic issues, but have moved somewhat to the left on social issues. Meanwhile, Democrats are much more in line with the public on core issues, while Republicans play very well on the public’s racism. Of course, there’s a problem with this: Pew creates a caricature of the liberal argument, postulating that Democrats want to go into more debt to help “the poor.” On the contrary. The People’s Budget balances the budget, while austerity measures are doomed to make the economy worse, decreasing tax revenue and increasing the deficit. Progressive Democrats want to close the deficit by clawing back some of the wealth essentially stolen by the richest 1%, and using it to help both the poor and the middle class, thus reinvigorating the economy while reducing unemployment and closing the deficit.

That aside, though, here’s the shocking bit, straight from the Pew Poll’s analysis itself:

Just 40% of Republicans agree that “It is the responsibility of the government to take care of people who can’t take care of themselves,” down 18 points since 2007. In three surveys during the George W. Bush administration, no fewer than half of Republicans said the government had a responsibility to care for those unable to care for themselves. In 1987, during the Ronald Reagan’s second term, 62% expressed this view.

In just five years, the percentage of Republicans who say the government should take care of people who can’t take care of themselves has dwindled by 18 percentage points. That’s no minor shift. That is a political party in the throes of a descent into moral madness.

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QOTD: Chris Hayes

by digby

The central question for liberalism? Here’s Chris Hayes talking about inequality.

The argument that I make in the book is that inequality is bad because of what it does to the people at the top of the social pyramid. That it actually makes the people at the top of the social pyramid worse… It just is impossible, in practical terms, to separate equality of opportunity from equality of outcome. The latter subverts the former almost as what I call in the book a kind of iron law.

To me this is the most startling observation of the book. (Not the only one, mind you, just the most startling.)If he’s right, that income inequality always ends up rigging the game on behalf of the elites, then the whole liberal project of “equality of opportunity” is called into question, right? Opportunity alone is never going to cut it.

And frankly, the fact is that not everyone is going to become one of the elites, for a variety of reasons, no matter how equal the opportunity playing field really is. So, it’s really a lottery system — some people born American, with successful parents, more talent, more energy, more luck — are able to take advantage of the “equal opportunity” to climb to the top. Terrific as far as it goes.

What happens to everyone else?

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Preparing the Romney purge already?

by digby

Alex Parene at Salon notes that prominent Republicans are signaling that Romneybot is underperforming specs:

Are prominent conservatives panicking about Mitt Romney’s campaign? It sorta looks that way, today. The Wall Street Journal editorial board — the men who ensure that even educated, newspaper-reading rich conservatives are successfully misinformed on all the major issues of the day — has a big “Mitt Romney is blowing it” editorial today (published online late Wednesday) that seems designed to stir up as much trouble as possible for the candidate.

The first line is hilarious and patently untrue: “If Mitt Romney loses his run for the White House, a turning point will have been his decision Monday to absolve President Obama of raising taxes on the middle class.”

Oh, indeed it will. After all, conservatism can never fail, it can only be failed.

We really needed for them to nominate a true believer this time — I’m afraid the fact that a loss for Romney the Massachusetts corporation in a suit will do little to calm the far right flame. In their minds he will prove, once again, that the country really wanted a far right extremist. If they had nominated one of their stars

The most interesting thing about this is the fact that Democrats have bought into the same mythology. Even if they don’t have to, the Party supports the most conservative Democratic candidate available, obviously laboring under the similar belief that the nation is begging for more right wing politics.

And people wonder why politics are so conservative these days.

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Almost 10% of Pennsylvania voters could be disenfranchised by new voter ID law

by David Atkins

I don’t see how this can possibly be constitutional:

The impact of Pennsylvania’s new Voter-ID law could be much wider-reaching than the state’s Republican officials claimed when passing the bill, the Philadelphia Inquirer reports.

In fact, over 758,000 registered voters in Pennsylvania — representing 9.2 percent of the state’s 8.2 million registered voters — do not have photo identification cards from the state Transportation Department, based on a comparison between voter registration rolls and the Transportation Department database.

The problem is most acutely shown in Philadelphia, with 186,830 registered voters who do not have ID cards in the Transportation database, 18 percent of the city’s total registration.

Pennsylvania has tended to vote Democratic in presidential elections, having only voted Republican in landslide elections since the 1950’s. However, the results can sometimes be quite close, and the GOP has sought to win the state in cycle after cycle. It voted for Barack Obama by an 11-point margin in 2008 — a raw vote spread of about 620,000 votes, less than the new figure of potentially disenfranchised voters. Before that, it went for John Kerry by only 2.5 points in 2004, a spread of about 145,000 votes.

Recently, the state’s GOP House Majority Leader Mike Turzai boasted of the Voter-ID law as a Republican accomplishment that would have an effect in November, telling a party meeting: “Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

The Supreme Court ruled that Indiana’s voter ID law was constitutional, but similar attempts in Wisconsin and Texas have been blocked at least for now, with Texas challenging the Voting Rights Act itself.

But it’s impossible to see how preventing almost 10% of the population from voting can be viewed as anything other than gross disenfranchisement.

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Well that’s mighty white (male) of him:

by digby

Oooh, here’s a scoop:

Mitt Romney’s wife has disclosed a tantalizing detail about her husband’s intensely secret vice presidential search: He’s considering choosing a woman.

“We’ve been looking at that, and I love that option as well,” Ann Romney told CBS News in a joint interview with her husband that was broadcast Thursday.

That’s half the fucking population they’re so generously “considering”. In fact it’s a little more. Can people see just how offensive that is … how it reeks of privilege?

I guess not everyone sees what a sad comment that is. It’s 2012 and a woman is still a novelty option. Cute almost! I guess I’m just shocked that I’m on verge of old age and this is still happening.

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Another story from the taser war on the mentally ill

by digby

Seattle:

The mother of a 25-year-old man who died after Tukwila police allegedly tased him said she told officers that her son was mentally ill and she “begged them not to use a Taser on him,” it was reported Tuesday.

Victor Duffy’s mother, Deanne Mills, told the Seattle Times she returned to her Tukwila home on Saturday just as the police were arriving. She said her son had called 911 during a fight with his younger sister despite his “deathly” fear of police.

The Seattle Times said that, according to Mills, her son had been diagnosed as being bipolar and having PTSD after a confrontation with police in which he was tased six years ago. She told the newspaper that her son was mentally ill and had not been taking his medications.

“I begged them not to use a Taser on him,” Mills was quoted as saying by the Times. “I told them he was afraid and I asked them to take care of him.”

Naturally, they used a taser on him:

Duffy’s relatives told the newspaper they were herded outside the home and they could hear a Taser being used and Duffy screaming inside the home while they were outside. One of his cousins said Duffy then jumped out of a second-story window to get away from them and apparently broke his ankle.

In a news release issued Monday by the Tukwila Police Department, the police said that officers responded to a 911 call late Saturday morning from residents of a house in the 5600 block of South 152nd Place.

“A 26-year-old male with a history of mental illness was being combative with his family and making strange statements to the 911 operator,” the statement said. “Officers arrived to find the male holding a golf club and threatening his family.

“The male broke his ankle while trying to escape from the officers as they were taking him into custody for involuntary mental health commitment … while in the ambulance, the male began to have breathing difficulties. He was taken to Harborview Hospital for emergency care, where he later died.”

So the relatives were not in the home and none of them were in danger. Apparently the cops couldn’t be bothered to listen to the mother about his mortal fear of tasers so they zapped him and he dove out a window to escape.

Mentally ill people are being tortured and killed by police. This has been the case throughout history, but you’d think we’d be a little bit more civilized by now. Whenever I see people laughing uproariously at some poor person being tasered and screaming in agony, I’m reminded of this:

In 1675 Bedlam moved to new buildings in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke, outside the City boundary. In the 18th century people used to go there to see the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the “show of Bethlehem” and laugh at their antics, generally of a sexual nature or violent fights. Entry was free on the first Tuesday of the month. Visitors were permitted to bring long sticks with which to poke and enrage the inmates. In 1814, there were 96,000 such visits.

We haven’t come that far I’m afraid.

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It would seem that people are waking up to the fact that the possibility of states opting out of the Medicaid expansion might put a crimp in the fabulous achievement of Obamacare and, not incidentally, leave millions of people uninsured.

Wonkblog is featuring a story about it this morning, with some charts that spell out very clearly who’s going to get hurt:

Now why would people want to deny health care to people at the lowest end of the spectrum, the ones who can least afford it? I think this little dispatch from North Carolina explains it quite well:

Greenville News 07/01/2012

Sense of entitlement is likely to metastasize

Obamacare has been ruled constitutional by the Supreme Court, those esteemed individuals we consider sages when they agree with us and tyrants when they don’t.

The decision has rendered supporters of the law posi­tivelyapoplectic, even raptur­ous.

Detractors have been lying in fetal positions taking antac­ids and trying to figure out how it all happened. Either way, for now it’s a done deal.

The politics of the matter remain to be seen.

While not a supporter of the legislation, I am man enough to concede and say that I hope it works. I admit that there are a couple of provisions that are (at least temporarily) merci­ful in its pages. Among them, coverage for pre-existing conditions; a thing that could be very useful for my diabetic teen as he grows older.

In addition, there’s the abil­ity to keep children on their parents’ insurance until age 26. With unemployment soar­ing even among undergradu­ate and graduate degree hold­ers, mom and dad may have the only insurance available for the kids as they ply their advanced degrees and theses by serving fries and burgers.

The problem I have with the Affordable Care Act (well, one of the problems I have) is that it presumes a certain amount of responsibility among the populace and due vigilance in the government (Not particularly common on either part.) What I mean is, the Afford­able Care Act requires that individuals purchase health insurance or face a fine. The same goes for businesses.

Of course, businesses are easy to fine. But individuals?

Less so. And really, if the gov­ernment is unwilling to deport illegal aliens in custody for crimes, or imprison multiple offender drunk drivers with suspended licenses, do we really think they’ll take a per­son to the mat if they neither purchase insurance nor pay the penalty for failing to do so? Seems unlikely to me.

Thus, individuals will not add to the fund from which they’ll draw deeply when they are sick themselves, and final­ly get insurance (like a death­bed baptism).

The other problem is not about fines or rules, but about lifestyles and attitudes. Hospi­tals have all too many patients with no sense of accountabil­ity, who “take” as a way of life. Not a majority, mind you, but a powerful minority has de­veloped an incredible alacrity for navigating hand-outs, programs, criminal courts, government checks and as­sorted entitlement programs.

This isn’t a screed against the poor, but a shot at the ma­nipulative. All too often they come to hospitals only for pain or anxiety medicine or work excuses. Or for manufactured drama on weekend nights.

Frequently, they come to add weight to their somewhat spurious disability applica­tions for things like “I can’t keep a job,” and “I get angry a lot.” (Yes, we actually heard those from healthy young men seeking disability checks.) These persons, soon to be eligible for insurance, are superb at obtaining food, medicine, money, drugs and influence at the expense of others.

They understand how to use state and federal pro­grams with maximal effi­ciency. And they know that speaking loudly, calling out for “patient care representa­tives” and filling out negative satisfaction surveys will gen­really, in most large facilities, get them their snacks, drinks, pain medicine and excuses.

The amount of money hos­pitals spend tracking down frankly false complaints, for pain prescriptions alone, is staggering.

To understand the depth of this problem, just “ask a nurse,” and you’ll get an ear­ful about the awful treatment they endure, the way nurses and other care providers struggle to care for their own kids and make ends meet only to be told by a fully capable adult, “I need you to give me my prescription, since I don’t have any money.” This as their iPhone and cigarettes spill out of their pockets, and their drug screen lights up for marijuana, cocaine, opioid pain medications and the now ubiquitous Methamphet­amine. (All of which they can magically afford).

Here’s my point. If anyone thinks that providing a means to insurance for everyone will make all people better or healthier, they’re wrong.

While it will likely benefit many, the patients I’m dis­cussing won’t work on their diets, smoking, drinking, Meth use or their serial pa­ternity.

All they’ll understand is that there’s one more way to get things they want without contributing to the solution.

Ironically, in this way the ACA might inadvertently cause entitlement to metasta­size even more widely than it already has. I hope I’m wrong. But experience, in the real world, with real human be­ings, suggests I’m not. I sup­pose only time will tell.

I can’t imagine who he’s talking about.

[W]e have to remember that this is an ideological and even a moral issue to conservatives, who view dependence on any form of public assistance as eroding the “moral fiber” of the poor (as Paul Ryan likes to put it), and as corrupting the country through empowerment of big government as a redistributor of wealth from virtuous taxpayers to parasites who will perpetually vote themselves more of other people’s money. This line of “reasoning,” of course, would justify the abolition of Medicaid, not just a failure to expand it, but conservatives are careful (and smart) to disguise that ultimate goal and simply suggest we have reached some sort of welfare-state tipping point beyond which we become Greece.

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Profits equals liberty in our corporate democracy

by digby

Just remember, corporations are people too and have exactly the same rights you and I do:

Verizon believes that even if Congress had authorized network neutrality regulations, those regulations would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment. “Broadband networks are the modern-day microphone by which their owners [e.g. Verizon] engage in First Amendment speech,” Verizon writes.

Verizon believes that it’s entitled to the same kind of control over the content that flows through its network as newspaper editors exercise over what appears in their papers. That includes the right to prioritize its own content, or those of its partners, over other Internet traffic.

“Although broadband providers have generally exercised their discretion to allow all content in an undifferentiated manner, they nonetheless possess discretion that these rules preclude them from exercising,” Verizon writes. “The FCC’s concern that broadband providers will differentiate among various content presumes that they will exercise editorial discretion.”

Verizon points to a 1994 case in which the Supreme Court ruled that regulations requiring cable television providers to carry broadcast television channels triggered First Amendment scrutiny. By the same token, Verizon says, network neutrality rules trigger First Amendment concerns by restricting broadband providers’ rights to allocate more bandwidth to some content than to others.

That’s not all. Verizon also believes the FCC’s rules violate the Fifth Amendment’s protections for private property rights. Verizon argues that the rules amount to “government compulsion to turn over [network owners’] private property for use by others without compensation.”

The Fifth Amendment prohibits the taking of private property without compensation. According to Verizon, network neutrality rules are “the equivalent of a permanent easement on private broadband networks for the use of others without just compensation.”

Indeed, quoting a recent law review article, Verizon argues that network neutrality rules allow third parties to “physically invade broadband networks with their electronic signals and permanently occupy portions of network capacity.”

Well hell. If I didn’t know better I might think they are tailoring their argument just for this Supreme Court.

So, what do you think? Are we seriously going to say that the bill of rights applies to corporations? Was that the sacred founders’ dream?

I doubt it. In yet another in the July 4th series of leftist quotes from the founding fathers, via Jonathan Schwartz:

[P]ower always follows property. This I believe to be as infallible a maxim in politics, as that action and reaction are equal is in mechanics. Nay, I believe we may advance one step farther, and affirm that the balance of power in a society accompanies the balance of property in land. The only possible way, then, of preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue is to make the acquisition of land easy to every member of society; to make a division of the land into small quantities, so that the multitude may be possessed of landed estates. If the multitude is possessed of the balance of real estate, the multitude will have the balance of power, and in that case the multitude will take care of the liberty, virtue, and interest of the multitude in all acts of government.

I have heard a whole lot of “big ideas” come along in the wake of Citizens United, as normal people struggle to figure out how to save our democracy from this corporate coup. Many are great ideas, but one that might be promising is the idea of a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people. Obviously it would cause a revolution in the law since corporate personhood has been around for a long time. But maybe that’s a good thing.

Of course, if it were up to me and some utility-like corporation like Verizon, which provides a necessary lifeline that makes the entire economy work, tried something like this: I’d nationalize the damned thing. But that’s just me.

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It doesn’t matter if they call it a tax or a penalty

by David Atkins

The last few days have seen Mitt Romney argue with himself, to much general hilarity, over whether to call the Affordable Care Act’s mandate provision a “penalty” or a “tax.” The larger conservative establishment would obviously love to call it a tax, since John Roberts gave the mandate his grand seal of Constitutional approval by declaring it to fall within Congress’ powers of taxation. Mitt Romney has trouble with that, since he himself called the mandate a “penalty” when he instituted a healthcare mandate in Massachusetts. So the Republicans are doing backflips trying to find their rhetorical footing on the subject and failing amusingly.

But on a larger level it doesn’t even matter what they call it because people who know anything about the issue at all already understand the basics pretty well, and people who don’t understand the issue at all after the last two years aren’t likely to be persuadable because of what a politician says about it now.

It’s fairly obvious what the mandate does: once the government makes health insurance affordable (in theory), people who don’t pay for it will be penalized in order to prevent moral hazard, and to prevent people from not buying insurance until the minute they feel they might have a medical problem. Call it a tax, call it a penalty, call it whatever one wants: the concept is clear enough.

That doesn’t make it popular, of course. Conservatives hate it because it gives government another power over what people do with their money, and because it means that human suffering won’t be as wholly dependent on how much money people happen to have–and as we all know, punishing people with misery and death for daring to not have enough money is a core moral principle for conservatives. Progressives tend to hate the mandate because it entails the government forcing people to buy insurance from bloodsucking private corporations that cannot and will not provide care or coverage as inexpensively or as effectively as a single-payer system could.

But both camps are fairly clear about the basics, as will anyone be who looks at the issue for more than 10 seconds.

So the Republicans can spin their wheels trying to frame the mandate as a tax in spite of having nominated the grand architect of the original private healthcare mandate system. It won’t work. People understand that taxes are levied on purchases. Fines are levied on people who don’t do what the government says they must, including making appropriate purchases. Calling the mandate a “tax” doesn’t actually make much sense, given how most people understand the concept of taxation.

But more importantly, the larger voting public generally understands what the mandate is. What Republicans call it won’t make much of a difference.

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Oh, and to hell with pre-existing conditions ban too

by digby

I’ve been hearing a lot of people suggesting that Mitch McConnell has seen the writing on the wall and will not fight the ACA in the Senate. Maybe so. But he sure has a funny way of putting it:

The senior senator from Kentucky, who himself enjoyes government-subsidized insurance as a federal employee, toldthe National Review on Tuesday that the party would do little to help the 129 million people who could be denied insurance because they suffer from a pre-existing condition should the law be repealed. “I’m not convinced that issue needs to be addressed at the federal level,” he said, before praising Republican governors for refusing to implement a provision of the law that expands health coverage to lower-income residents through the Medicaid program.

During the interview, McConnell also confirmed that he planned to repeal Obamacare’s main provisions — like the individual mandate — through reconciliation, a process that allows the Senate can pass budget-related bills with a majority vote

He also said this:

Is there anything more specific on Medicare and Medicaid?

I’m hoping that the states will advantage of the option not to add massive numbers of new people to the Medicaid rolls. I’ve had a couple of town-hall meetings in hospitals this week and I’ve had a number of them over the past year. In Kentucky, we can’t handle the Medicaid patients we already have. Our health-care providers are completely distraught at the notion that, in my state for example, 400,000 people would be added to the Medicaid rolls, with 30 percent of Kentuckians receiving free health care. They can’t handle it. They can’t handle the Medicaid they have now and they certainly can’t handle this. I don’t know what our state government will decide to do, but some governors are saying “thanks, but no thanks,” now that they have the option.

On a final note, what’s your message to conservatives and tea-party activists who are suspicious of Republican leaders and their commitment to repeal?

Boy, I don’t know how they could be suspicious on this issue. Every single Republican in the House and Senate voted against Obamacare. I must have made 125 speeches about it on the floor. If there is any area where I don’t think conservatives of any stripe should be concerned, it would be this one. We’ve been clear and unambiguous about Obamacare from the beginning to the end — all of it. And I led the fight in the Senate, so I know what I’m talking about.

Again, that’s a funny way of saying that they aren’t going to repeal it if they can.

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