Don't see much buzz beyond the occasional mention in social streams about how sequestration cuts are still slowly dribbling out into the public sphere is various ways. Certainly the outrage pretty much disappeared once they saved frequent flyers from any inconveniece. But on the bright side, at least it's not being completely ignored either. Via Atrios, I see Jared Bernstein is collecting coverage at one handy link. So there's that. [Tim Eagan cartoon]
And for the love of all that is holy, please stop calling them entitlements. They're earned benefits dammit. Still, Thomas B. Edsall exposes the stupid in our inane national conversation about starving granny to save the wealthy a few bucks in taxes. There is a simple fix to "save" the programs:
Currently, earned income in excess of $113,700 is entirely exempt from the 6.2 percent payroll tax that funds Social Security benefits (employers pay a matching 6.2 percent). 5.2 percent of working Americans make more than $113,700 a year. Simply by eliminating the payroll tax earnings cap — and thus ending this regressive exemption for the top 5.2 percent of earners — would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, solve the financial crisis facing the Social Security system.
Read it all if you love the maths, but the shorter is Medicare can similarly be made solvent by simply reworking the contribution ratios. And no, raising the starting age for earned benefits is not the answer:
In the case of Social Security, proposals to raise the age of eligibility for full benefits amount to a benefit cut of 6 to 7 percent for every year that eligibility was increased.
Which brings us to why the current conversation is so stupid:
Cutting benefits is frequently discussed in the halls of Congress, in research institutes and by analysts and columnists. The idea of subjecting earned income over $113,000 to the Social Security payroll tax and making the Medicare tax more progressive – steps that would affect only the relatively affluent — is largely missing from the policy conversation.
The Washington cognoscenti are more inclined to discuss two main approaches that are far less costly for the affluent: means-testing of benefits and raising the age of eligibility for Social Security and Medicare. (Sidenote: policy makers and national journalists who weigh in on this issue generally earn more than $113,700 a year.) ...
I'd add most of them are making far in excess of that figure. Also, too:
In this case, the electorate is pointing toward progressive tax increases for those closer to the top far more readily than members of the political class, for whom high-earners are a crucial source of campaign contributions.
Not sure what started this mass bashing of the courtier press this week, but there's been a heartening amount of calling out the perps. Today Brian Beutler takes on Obama Derangement Syndrone in the establishment media. Brian riffs off David Ignatius who published an inane op-ed that included this gem:
“Obama tries everything to gain control — except a clear, firm presidential statement that speaks to everyone onboard, those who voted for him and those who didn’t — that could get the country where it needs to go,” Ignatius sighs.
This of course ignores the last two years of pre-election campaigning, the SOTU and President Obama's numerous road trips in the last few weeks to make his case directly to the people. Road trips which Ignatius and his fellow insider Villagers sneeringly term "campaign-style" tactics. Which wouldn't be necessary if these parrots of the conservative party line did their job instead of obsessively repeating the tired "both sides do it" refrain.
The GOP’s explicit position is that no compromise solution of any kind is acceptable — this must be resolved only with 100% of the concessions being made by Democrats — which means any compromise Dems put forth is by definition a nonstarter at the outset.
... a hidden-from-no-one opposition strategy that embraces crises, shutdowns, and sequesters rather than wanting to avert them. Look again at the Lizza/Cantor quote: Obama and the Republicans could have had a "Grand Compromise" deal, but Republican hotheads wanted a fight for the sake of fighting.
On the off chance you've forgotten, this refers to when the scary sequester monster was spawned:
During the insane-at-the-time-and-worse-in-retrospect debt ceiling crisis nearly two years ago, Cantor intentionally talked Speaker John Boehner out of accepting a compromise with the Obama Administration, because Cantor wanted to preserve this as a campaign issue.
Pundits obsessed with pushing false equivalencies and needlessly blaming "both sides" are convinced they're part of the solution. They're actually part of the problem.
Me, I'm tired of being polite about it. The big platform, prima donna punditry is willfully engaging in a failure to inform solely to keep phony controversies alive. These people are not stupid. They have to know they're promoting false narratives. It's lazy and destructive. Hard to call it any else but journalistic malpractice commited solely for personal gain.
Hell hath no fury like a GOP deep pocket donor scorned. GOP fundraising legend Georgette Mosbacher is done with kowtowing to tea party idiots. She's most unhappy they've been allowed to "tarnish the Republican brand" and puts establishment Republicans on notice. She's not going to pay to play their stupid game anymore. And neither will her wealthy friends.
“There’s one thing they understand,” she says with the confidence of a woman who has played at the highest level of the game for many years. “They understand money. Politics is about money. Make no mistake. They’re going to have to listen.”
Which is not only quote of the day, but also a damn good summation of what's wrong with everything in our politics.
Latest word is the House Republicans will maybe end up allowing the passage of the Senate bill at some point tonight, but not before making a day long public spectacle of their dysfunction. Clear highlight being Cantor's brief challenge for the gavel. Which apparently failed if one is to take the clues from the subsequent solidarity photo ops. Like this one:
I've seen a few call this day a turning point on the twitter. Not so sure we've really reached peak wingnut myself, but surely this farce will become the stuff of legends. In the future, people will write books about this Congress. The subtitle for all them could be this tweet:
Joe Manchin: "Something has gone terribly wrong, when the biggest threat to our American economy is the US Congress."
There were many GOP confabs today. Clearly some of the caucus really don't understand how negotiations work:
Dan Pfeiffer @pfeiffer44
Amazing RT @LukeRussert: Told that one member inside conf mtg asked for Boehner to try and bring up his original offer to Obama.
And this suggests the caucus did not heed the advice to stay sober.
billmon @billmon1
Hemlock is extra. MT '@robertcostaNRO: source tells me 5:15 GOP caucus mtg will not be a dinner: "Just heavy snacks & soft drinks, water.'"
Now hearing a vote on the Senate bill is definitely coming tonight. As if they have any choice. The game is already over:
@politicalwire Note to House GOPers looking to amend bill: Senate has left town and current Congress ends Thursday at noon.
The last four or five hours have been nothing more than theater of the absurd.
Wet, gray Christmas here in my little city. Perfect day to catch up on some lighter reading.
Every year some undercover (or not quite undercover) journalist goes on the National Review's annual Carribean cruise where well-heeled cons take to the sea with the stars of the NRO. I never get tired of these stories. The mood on this year's cruise was bleak and angry. Worth a read in full, but this one graf summed up the crowd's mindset perfectly:
“Their conception of what the country is about, they really were sure the country would reject Barack Obama,” he continued. “I do think it hits them hard. The fear I have, why this election stung, I think, Obama has successfully de-ratified some of the Reagan revolution in a way that Clinton never could and didn’t even try to. That’s what freaks people out, that feeling in their gut, either Obama has changed the country, or the country has sufficiently changed that they don’t have a problem with Obama. That’s what eats at people.”
Because this is their country dammit and everyone else who isn't them is ruining their sense of superiority and entitlement.
Then there's this related but not quite the same subset of conservatives. Meet the doomsday preppers whose gurus are not only the slickest of grifters but also serve as the saviours of the true believers.
Though doomsday evangelists fantasize about reaching mainstream consumers, hardcore prepping attracts a fairly limited demographic. Stevens pegs the market at about 4 million people, and he has his theories on why it's not for everyone. "It's the upper-middle white class that shows up here," he says. "I've seen two or three black people and that's about it. They never show up to these places. They don't get it. Culturally. It's not brainpower, it's not color, it's cultural. They've never lived this lifestyle. More important is the car with thin tires and the beautiful finish and nice clothes and rings. I'm sorry, that's just the way it is!"
Translation: those shiftless negroes only care about the bling and free stuff from the gummit. Can't get any money out of them. Fascinating read.
To be clear, I support gun rights for responsible owners. I know many of them intimately. But this happened all across America in the week after the Newtown massacre. At gun shows. Where not everyone does a background check.
More than 200 people lined up at each of three entrances on Saturday morning to pay the $8 entrance fee to the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth, which has an exhibit hall spanning 25 acres. They crowded the aisles of the show and stood two-deep at booths for assault weapons and ammunition clips.
At all three shows the attendees were overwhelmingly white men, with some women and very few ethnic minorities.
These are people who honestly believe without a shadow of doubt they are right -- both morally and intellectually -- and everyone else is either wrong, evil, or both.
Bob Hofmeister, whose wife owns Xtreme Sports, a gun dealer with a table at the Kansas City show, said the business sold 15 to 20 AR-15s in the past week.
"Some of these people just want to show their rights to own guns," Hofmeister said.
Because freedom, and nothing quite says public safety like tens of thousands of paranoid gun hoarders rushing out to panic buy semi-automatic weapons and stockpile high capacity ammo clips.
If more guns is crazy, Wayne LaPierre doesn't want to be sane
Hot on the heels of the most bizarre press conference ever, NRA chief Wayne LaPierre is making the rounds of the bobblehead shows to defend the NRA's hare-brained position on gun regulation, that being, there should be absolutely no additional regulation whatsoever.
Surprisingly, Dancing Dave challenged that idiotic NRA stand:
GREGORY: This is a matter of logic, Mr. LaPierre, because anybody watching this is going to say ‘hey wait a minute. I just heard Mr. LaPierre say that the standard is we should try anything that might reduce the violence. And you’re telling me that it’s not a matter of common sense that if you don’t have an ability to shoot off 30 rounds without reloading, that just possibly you could reduce the loss of life? Would Adam Lanza have been able to shoot as many kids if he didn’t have as much ammunition?’
LAPIERRE: I don’t buy your argument for a minute.
In fact, Wayne LaPierre can't believe you people don't get that the only obvious solution to gun violence is more guns. An arsenal in every house and an armed vigilante on every street corner and at every school house door is the ticket.
"This is the beginning of a serious conversation. We won't be taking any questions."
And while Wayne LaPierre was having this one-way serious conversation, a lone gunman went a murder spree in PA where among others, he killed a woman hanging Christmas decorations at a church and three armed policemen were injured. Which in the world according to the NRA would not have happened if only everybody was armed and ready to shoot at will.
One false claim making the rounds about the House Republicans who defeated John Boehner’s “Plan B” last night is that they don’t understand that higher taxes are inevitable. A lot of them understand that point perfectly well. Some of them have been privately advising the Republican leaders to pursue a strategy that they know would lead to higher taxes than Plan B contained.
Establishment GOPers should have thought of that when they empowered these champions of "enlightened self-interest" in 2010.
It's not that complicated. The people who elected them don't do nuanced agreements. There is only one cardinal rule among purity cons. If Democrats are for any part of it, they are against it. Compromise is the dirtiest of all words in their vocabulary.
[photo credit]
If it wasn't so morally corrupt, it would be hilarious. Lindsey Graham finds his inner Ted Nugent and issues the GOP's hostage demand: Either you severely slash aid to the olds and the poors or we're going to burn the whole damn country down.
Of course, Lindsey's excuses for the GOP's extortion of America were total hogswaddle. I feel certain the Fox News blonde did not challenge him on it. In the interests of my health, didn't watch the vid, but guessing she nodded gravely in agreement.
In case you were wondering: This is not just Lindsey going all butch after one too many cocktails on the holiday party circuit. Also on Fox "News" Sen. Bob Corker made the same hostage demand. (No, I don't know who he is either.)
I usually ignore Andrew Malcolm's idiotic hackery (and no, don't click his link). I wish I had resisted because you can't unsee this drivel:
Amazing how a reelection can reshape an incumbent’s thinking about many things. Now safely ensconced in the White House for 49 more months, the Obamas have decorated the place with 54 Christmas trees this year.
Even allowing for the usual Washington excesses with taxpayer money, that’s a whole grove of Christmas trees.
“We have 54 trees in the White House,” an excited Michelle Obama proudly told visitors the other day. “54! That’s a lot of trees.”
In fact, the Obamas’ 54 trees this year are almost 50% more Christmas trees than last year. That was during the campaign before Obama whispered a reminder to the Russians that he had to be careful until Nov. 6, when a victory would give him more “flexibility.”
Or shorter: Those trees are a communist plot. Or something. And how dare those people enjoy our holiday. Shouldn't they be celebrating Kwaanza? (And the crowd went wild!)
All of which brought up fond memories of the 2005 White House Christmas. Laura Bush only had 18 trees but she had hundreds of toparies made of fresh fruit and real roses. The Blue Room tree was decorated with fresh white lilies. There were thousands of cookies in the shape of White House dog Barney. Who also had his own Christmas video and a official White House web page. Between the topiaries and the swags, they used enough fresh fruit to fulfull the average nutritional requirement of a small town for a month. And all the trees and miles of swag were strung with crystals. Oh and Mister Malcom, about that 300 pound gingerbread house? Laura Bush did that in 2006.
Ye gods. Andrew Malcolm is talking about the home of our President. Where heads of state and other dignitaries are entertained to further our national interests. We're supposed to want to impress them with our national wealth and power by cheaping out on Christmas decorations?
I'm okay with catty judgments on how the theme was executed but to challenge the right of this First Lady to follow the decades long tradition of showing her decorating style at Christmastime is a bit much. None of which I would bother to mention except they pay this guy way too much money on the premise that he's some kind of neutral observer instead of an ordinary, hardcore cranky conservative.
In a move not publicly announced, former Rep. Dick Armey, the folksy conservative leader, has resigned as chairman of FreedomWorks, one of the main political outfits of the conservative movement and an instrumental force within the tea party. [...]
"The top management team of FreedomWorks was taking a direction I thought was unproductive, and I thought it was time to move on with my life," Armey tells Mother Jones. "At this point, I don't want to get into the details. I just want to go on with my life."
A confidential contract obtained by The Associated Press shows that Armey agreed in September to resign from his role as chairman of Washington-based FreedomWorks in exchange for $8 million in consulting fees paid in annual $400,000 installments. Dated Sept. 24, the contract specifies that Armey would resign his position at both FreedomWorks and its sister organization, the FreedomWorks Foundation, by the end of November.
And all the rubes still get free "Taxed Enough Already" t-shirts.
Republican lawmakers in Michigan, a state which eliminated tax credits for children last year, have proposed a tax credit for unborn foetuses of 12 weeks gestation. [...]
One of the main sponsors of the foetus tax credit bill, Jud Gilbert, a Republican representative of Algonac, said the rationale behind it was to recognise that mothers have additional bills to pay.
"You're recognizing the fact that people have additional expenses, another person to take care of," he told told Mlive. "Money saved there could be contributed to doctor's bills and all kinds of things."
Gilbert said the move would speed up a tax exemption that parents only get when a child is born.
That is unless the parents happen to be on the low end of the income scale. This is what makes it so appalling.
However, tax exemptions for children and families have been cut in the state, to the extent that another 9,000 children have been forced into poverty as a result, according to policy groups.
Family values, "right to life" Republicans. They'll zealously protect the zygote in the womb. They'll fight like hell to make sure every unintended pregnancy happens. But once the child has been born, you're on your own baby.
I get that many of these people actually view themselves as good Christians, acting as warriors for their Lord, but I find this a very odd definition of Christianity.
CHATTANOOGA — U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais said Wednesday that he never intentionally misled voters about his past and stressed that he has no plans to resign over recent revelations that depict a private life starkly at odds with his public image as an anti-abortion, family values congressman. [...]
But DesJarlais said he is not the same man who supported his first wife's decision to have two abortions. The physician-turned-congressman said he also deeply regrets sexual relationships with multiple women, including two patients, three co-workers and a drug company representative while he was chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper. [...]
In the newspaper interview, DesJarlais said the charges of hypocrisy are unfair because, he said, his anti-abortion views have evolved over time but had not been formed when his wife aborted her pregnancies.
How convenient. His views evolved just as he needed fundie votes to get elected. But it's not even about reproductive choice. Haven't checked his voting record but feel reasonably sure as a Republican he votes against any social program that helps the already born overcome either bad choices, or bad luck while he votes for every corporate giveaway on the books. That's the real hypocrisy. Voters shouldn't reward him for it.
He says he'll run again. Have to hope he loses to someone whose moral values are rooted in principle and actual concern for their fellow Americans instead of convenience.
County officials received a complaint shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday that Republicans outside a polling location on Maple Street in Homestead were stopping people outside the polls and asking for identification.
This is just in PA. I'm seeing reports of similar incidents all over the country on the twitter. This is going to an ugly day and if Obama manages to win against this concerted effort to steal the election, it's going to an even uglier tomorrow.
If you're being harrassed, or otherwise denied your right to vote, here's what to do:
On its face, it doesn't make sense. Certainly not to any one who's been paying attention right along. There's this overwhelming incredulity among the well informed that this could not possibly be real. No thinking person should be fooled by the blatant lies that have become Romney's stock in trade. But those who harbor the strongest disbelief don't live in Republican strongholds.
This was brought home to me when I voted last week. I was as thrilled as a freshman going to the senior prom as the football hero's date to see a long line on just the third day of early voting. I love seeing people participate in the process, even when I know they're not voting for my guy. I said as much to a woman outside the polls as I was leaving. She was clearly a Republican.
She looked at me and pointedly said, "As long as they're informed votes."
It was clear by her tone she knew I had voted Democratic and thought me to be not informed enough to be worthy of having cast my ballot. That stopped me in my tracks.
I very sweetly replied, "Yes, being informed is important. And everyone should exercise their right to participate."
I smiled brightly at her. She looked away and slammed her car door shut.
She could have been any one of the women in this video. Well except for the really crazy one. Didn't think I'd watch the whole thing, but was transfixed. I've seen this kid do interviews before. He's great. I don't know how he keeps his composure for so long.
This was taken at the Romney rally in Defiance where Meat Loaf endorsed Romney. (Added bonus if you make it to end, is the most embarrassing moment of Mr. Loaf's solo). These people could be my neighbors.
They believe they're the informed ones and we're the ones who are deluded.
Addendeum: And why do they think that, you ask? Here's a clue.
It's that The Donald is still batshit crazy. Oh wait. That's not a surprise. We already knew that and I blame the media for his obvious lapse into insanity and inanity. If they ignored his pathetic attention seeking, he might be convinced to seek the professional mental health help he so obviously needs.
After teasing it for the last couple of weeks, and amid a storm of media speculation and rumor mongering about divorce decrees and cocaine use, it turns out The Donald's big reveal is he thinks he's a character in a Godfather movie and offered President Obama a deal "he can't refuse." As if anyone believes The Donald would actually cough up the 5 million if POTUS took his rancid bait...
Brutal travel day. Burned to a crisp. Fortunately, looks like it was slow news day too. Don't have the energy to leap into the twitter mayhem but made the usual rounds. Atrios captures the essence of the problem in one of his terse, semi-cryptic posts. Just read it. It's very short. The Galtian Overlords Don't Know What They're Doing.
Or you might say, they know exactly what they're doing in the moment, but don't understand the consequences of what they do. I see no evidence the law of diminishing returns factors into their calculations. Ever.
The GOP obviously can't win the election fair and square with their failed policies, so they do what they always do lie, cheat, and steal Democratic registration forms and throw them in the trash. This story broke last night and it just gets weirder as it develops.
This guy was a supervisor of GOP registration drives in swing states. He got caught throwing only eight forms away and only five of those were of voters not yet registered with the state. It begins to feel like he deliberatively got caught in a serious, but essentially petty crime in order to minimize the extent of the fraud. Authorities are already saying there's no evidence of a widespread problem. Yeah, Occam's Razor, but what better way to disguise a larger crime than to deliberately get caught in a smaller one which defines it as a lone wolf operation?
UPDATE: Sources close to the Rockingham County Sheriff's Office are telling me that Strategic Allied Consulting is involved in this. This is the same group that was in the national news two weeks ago for their "registration" drive in Florida that had forms with made up voters.
Even more interesting. Strategic Allied Consulting shares a Virginia headquarters with two other notables.
#1- American Crossroads- the superpac founded by Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie
#2- The office of Virginia State Senator Jill Holtzman Vogel.
And this guy is well connected within the GOP, having worked for Republican officeholders and the RNC. Also Nathan Sproul, who has managed to get away with apparent registration fraud for years, lurks around the edges of the whole mess.
Suppose we'll never know. These people are pros at ratfking. But it will be interesting to see if wide spread registration problems surface at the polls on election day.
On a related note, a few days ago "the Maricopa County Elections Department mistakenly listed the wrong date of the upcoming general election on an official government document." Said document contained a voter ID card. And what a coincidence, the wrong election day date was only listed in Spanish on the document. The English version was correct.
