Homeless in Connecticut

I'm liking Connecticut's junior Senator more and more all the time. This guy gets it. In order to better understand the reality his poorest constituents face, Sen. Chris Murphy spent the day with a homeless guy. The guy did everything right. He overcame tremendous odds in his childhood to better his life. Then the crash came and he lost his job and his home. Now he's on the street and the paltry $400 a month he was receiving in UI benefits were cut off by the crackpot conservatives in Congress.

Thing is, this "fiscally responsible" policy makes it almost impossible for the homeless guy to get back to a decent life. He's trying to find a job but:

If there’s one thing Murphy took away from the experience, it’s a better sense of how critical stable housing is as a foundation for solving other problems. “Without a place to live, Nick can’t find a job,” Murphy said. “Without a house, it’s much harder for him to kick his drug habit.” But without more affordable housing in Connecticut and funding for the poor, it’s extremely difficult for people like Nick to leave the shelter and break out of the cycle of poverty.

Every damn politician that voted to cut assistance for the poor should be forced to spend a month in their shoes. Maybe that would cure their sociopathic callousness.

Humanitarian assistance

Don't have much hope for this one passing, but at least it will bring the slow motion disaster that is our long term unemployed back into the news. First bill Harry Reid will bring to the floor in the new session will be a three month extension of unemployment benefits which expired on Saturday after the Boehner's Heartless House of Dysfunction skulked out town for their holiday joy without addressing the crisis.

The Senate is expected to take up a bill sponsored by Sens. Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Dean Heller (R-Nev.), which would temporarily extend the benefits without offsetting the cost.

“I hope we can get that done,” Reid said.

This on top of the cuts to food assistance for the poor, which are about to be cut again if the Crackpot Caucus succeeds in their latest round of policy by extortion. There are millions of Americans who will be starting out the new year, scared, hungry and cold because our coddled, self-absorbed, overpaid political class are more concerned about their own cushy sinecures than representing the interests of the commonwealth.

Charlie is right. These people must be stopped before it's too late. It will only happen if we fight together to take back our government.

Hungry

Some days I just despair for the future of my progeny. Are we so far gone as a society to find it acceptable to watch our elderly and disabled slide into abject poverty while casino capitalists on Wall Street are raking in billions of nearly tax free winnings and corporate CEOs make 475 times more than their workers, who have reached the human capacity for increased productivity while sharing none of the gains?

With House Republicans hell-bent on cutting food stamps, some Congressional Democrats believe they can strike a "compromise" in the upcoming Farm Bill by "only" taking $90/month away from 850,000 poor families. [via]

And this on top of the expiring unemployment benefits for 1.3 million Americans which probably won't be renewed before John Boehner sends his House of Dysfunction home to enjoy their own comfortable holidays.

Give me that old time populism

Just when I despair of the possible rehabilitation of the Democratic party, Elizabeth Warren delivers a speech on the Senate floor in which she calls for increased Social Security benefits:

“The absolute last thing we should do in 2013 – at the very moment that Social Security has become the principal lifeline for millions of our seniors — is allow the program to begin to be dismantled inch by inch.

“Over the past generation, working families have been hacked at, chipped, and hammered. If we want a real middle class — a middle class that continues to serve as the backbone of our country — then we must take the retirement crisis seriously. Seniors have worked their entire lives and have paid into the system, but right now, more people than ever are on the edge of financial disaster once they retire — and the numbers continue to get worse.

“That is why we should be talking about expanding Social Security benefits — not cutting them. Senator Harkin from Iowa, Senator Begich from Alaska, Senator Sanders from Vermont, and others have been pushing hard in that direction. Social Security is incredibly effective, it is incredibly popular, and the calls for strengthening it are growing louder every day.”

Bigger excerpt at the link. No, she won't be running in 2016 and that's a good thing. She can do a lot more good in the Senate right now. And we need to vote in more progressive Dems to help her in 2014.

Nuke the filibuster already

I've long resisted the calls to kill the filibuster but I no longer have any doubt if the Republicans ever manage to bamboozle the electorate into giving them back a majority in the Senate, the very first thing they'll do is abolish it. So if Democrats could nuke the filibuster please. It's not that I don't appreciate this sort of chatter:

From young newbies to the old guards, Democratic senators are clamoring for filibuster reform, and insist that a mass Republican blockade of three judges to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals may be the final straw before going nuclear.

"It would mean they've totally gone back on what they said when there was a Republican president," Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), the longest-serving member of the chamber, told TPM. "It would be such a reversal that I think there'd be overwhelming pressure to change the rules."

It's just that Democrats have been making the threat for so long it's no longer credible. The GOPers mock it. Shrug it off. As John Mccain said, "Someday Republicans will be in the majority, and if they set this precedent, they may not like the result. What goes around comes around in this town."

Republicans won't need any precedent to ramrod through their corporatist agenda. They've proven many times over, they have no honor. They have no scruples. They're unencumbered by ethics. Republicans will kill the filibuster out of the gate so Democrats can't use their own dirty dealing, obstruction tactics against them.

Democrats have to do it now while there's still time to accomplish something of value. And nothing is more valuable than striking a balance on the D.C. Circuit court. If you missed it last week, Brian Beutler already explained why the GOP are blocking judicial nominations

First, let me stipulate that I believe the Senate rules give the minority way too much power, not just over nominations, but over legislation as well. I think Democrats made an error in 2005 by “capitulating,” instead of allowing Republicans to go nuclear over President Bush’s judicial nominees. And whatever dilatory mechanisms senators want to erect to prevent the Senate from becoming too much like the House, the supermajority cloture era is anti-democratic and unsustainable in a polarized system like ours. [...]

But the trick Senate Republicans are playing this year — the power they’re exerting over both the executive and the judiciary — is new, and disjoined from the question of whether individual nominees deserve to serve in either branch of government. They’re denying (or threatening to deny) confirmation to any nominees in order to nullify laws, stymie legitimate policymaking, and “reverse court pack” — keep liberal judges off of one key appellate court in order to preserve its conservative balance for as long as possible.

That court is poised to destroy decades worth of hard fought for socially responsible progress. By intent and tradition, for the last 200+ years empty seats on the benches have been filled by the winners of the election so as to reflect the will of the people. As was passing legislation without requiring a super majority for every single bill. Republicans have overturned all of that outside the electoral process. The crackpot conservatives have transformed the Senate Gentlemen's Club into a frat house. That precedent certainly can't stand. So stop them. At this point, Democrats have nothing to lose by nuking the filibuster first, except excuses for inaction.

Poverty is not healthy for children and other living things

A new study shows poverty is bad for your brain:

The mental strain of living in poverty and thinking constantly about tight finances can drop a person’s IQ by as much as 13 percent, or about the equivalent of losing a night of sleep, according to a new study. It consumes so much mental energy that there is often little room to think about anything else, which leaves low-income people more susceptible to bad decisions.

Previous studies have shown it is also bad for your health and diminishes a child's chances to escape the cycle of poverty:

Poverty has other negative impacts. The chronic stress of growing up in poverty has been found to impair children’s brains, particularly in working memory. A study of veterans found that poverty is a bigger risk factor for mental illness than being exposed to warfare. The mental stress of being poor is also a major reason for why low-income people tend to have negative health outcomes like high blood pressure and cholesterol or elevated rates of obesity and diabetes.

Poverty takes its toll on health in a number of other critical ways: It prevents people from buying healthy food, makes people more likely to smoke, means they are more likely to live in areas with poor air quality, and can cause health problems that begin in the womb.

I've long been astounded that so many people believe living in poverty is a willing choice because, free government cheese. I can only believe these people have never been poor or spent any significant time among the poverty stricken. Poverty hurts. The poor have to work ten times harder just to accomplish the simplest tasks of daily life. Small wonder they seek to escape the pain and fear in short term pleasures when their future prospects are so harsh and uncertain.

Government waste on welfare

This has happened in every state that has tried this trick. It's wasteful and the money would be better spent on helping people rather than trying to feed bogus stereotyping. Why drug testing people who need welfare assistance is stupid.

Utah has spent more than $30,000 to screen welfare applicants for drug use since a new law went into effect a year ago, but only 12 people have tested positive, state figures show.

The idiots in the Statehouse who sponsored this bill were (shockingly) unavailable for comment. [image via]

Farm bill fails in the House

Boehner blames the Democrats for not delivering the votes for him.

In a blow to House GOP leaders, the House on Thursday rejected a five-year farm bill.

Members voted down the $940 billion bill in a 195-234 vote that only won 24 Democratic votes. Most Democrats voted against the bill because it cut food stamp programs by more than $20 billion.

The 62 crackpot cons voted against it because it didn't cut food assistance enough. The crackpots think they might pass it if they make bigger cuts. In which case Boehner better have all the votes on his side because they'll likely lose the 8 Dems that voted for this abomination.

Still would be a horrible outcome, but let the damn GOPers own their own inhumane policy. No reason for a single Dem to help them do it.

Ambulatory turds

Apparently I owe the GOP a small apology. While Republicans certainly deserve blame for slashing food assistance, I just found out they were not alone in this inhumane act against hungry Americans. This Kos petition reveals an alarming number of Democrats voted against restoring food aid as well.

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted down an amendment by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) to restore $4.1 billion in food stamp cuts—by reducing corporate welfare to a handful of crop insurance companies, mostly based overseas. Only 26 senators voted “yes.”

Here are the Democrats who voted against the amendment:

Sens. Baucus, Bennet, Cardin, Carper, Coons, Donnelly, Durbin, Feinstein, Franken, Hagan, Harkin, Heinrich, Heitkamp, Johnson, Kaine, Klobuchar, Landrieu, Manchin, McCaskill, Mikulski, Nelson, Pryor, Rockefeller, Shaheen, Stabenow, Tester, Mark Udall and Warner

Hard to think a bigger betrayal against the people and the apparently former values of the Democratic party. Call them out if your Senator is on that list. And even if they're not, shame them in every venue you can find. [Blog title shamelessly stolen from Mike Finnigan]

GOP credo: feed the rich, starve the poor

The Republicans are hellbent on destroying any and all government assistance for the olds, poors and other needy Americans. Their most inhumane target remains cuts to food assistance programs. Krugman blasts the GOPers today and notes:

And why must food stamps be cut? We can’t afford it, say politicians like Representative Stephen Fincher, a Republican of Tennessee, who backed his position with biblical quotations — and who also, it turns out, has personally received millions in farm subsidies over the years.

Prairie Weather has the full numbers. Congressman Fincher and his family have received roughly $8.9 million in government handouts over the last 10 years. In fact, Rep. Fincher is the second largest recipient of farm subsidies in Congress. And did I mention this farm bill that severely slashes food assistance for poor children, including the WIC program which insures the bare basic nutrional requirements for babies, also includes a $9 billion increase in crop insurance to the sole benefit of big agribusiness guys like Fincher?

That, in the world according to Fincher, we can afford. No problem because cotton farmers need that help. Those poor kids and poverty stricken olds can just go rummage in garbage bins for their daily bread I guess.

Once again, on the stupid or evil scale, we're putting this down as pure evil.

Look at all the hungry people

Think Progress looks at real world effects of Meals on Wheels cuts brought to you by the GOP sequester clown car.

Directors of Meals on Wheels programs across the country spoke with ThinkProgress about how they are coping with decreased funding. Some, like Meals on Wheels of Western Broome in New York, are private nonprofits that don’t rely on government funding and will therefore be shielded. But by and large, the heads of these programs described facing deep cuts after having already slimmed down in response to lean times over the past few years.

The list is depressing but olds going hungry is just the obvious result of sequester fever. The long term consequences won't be seen right away. Maybe they'll be too subtle for Big Media to notice.

The isolation of already housebound clients will literally kill people. A recent study showed social isolation contributes to early death. For many of them, the daily delivery is probably the only daily contact they have with outside human beings. Those who don't die of loneliness will likely end up in hospitals and nursing homes from lack of decent nutrition. Which will end up costing us all much more than the few million they're saving on delivering food.

Austerity kills

Austerity doesn't just kill economies, austerity is literally killing people:

Detailing a decade of research, Oxford University political economist David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, an assistant professor of medicine and an epidemiologist at Stanford University, said their findings show austerity is seriously bad for health.

In a book to be published this week, the researchers say more than 10,000 suicides and up to a million cases of depression have been diagnosed during what they call the "Great Recession" and its accompanying austerity across Europe and North America.

The effects of forced austerity has reached practically genocidal proportions in Greece and if our homegrown austerity maniacs get their heart's desire we won't be far behind in the USA. They've been fraying the edges of the social safety net at the state level since GOPers took over the local legislatures and now with the stupid sequestration cuts, the federal safety net is in danger of falling apart altogether.

Difficult to not to sound like a conspiracy nutcase, but you don't have to be a brain surgeon to figure out if you keep limiting access to food and health care assistance for the poors and olds and kick people into poverty and homelessness, they're going to die sooner. Which of course eliminates the need to spend money taking care of them, the better to give more tax breaks to the wealth holders. Reminds of this classic quote:

"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Not making any grand accusations, but as the world economy hinges more and more on a relative handful of people making money simply by moving around their money, the blue collar working class is becoming as obsolete at the buggy whip.

The grand bargain is dead

May it rest in peace forever. The damn grand bargain that so obsesses our POTUS is neither grand, nor a bargain. Never understood why he keeps trying for a deal that is the effective equivalent of political suicide. In any event, doubt we have to worry about that much. I don't think Corker means what Think Progess does. They're billing it as his being open to increasing revenue, but that's not what I read in this:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) believes Senate Republicans would be open to increasing revenue through tax reform as part of a “grand bargain” to reduce the deficit.

Chris, I think Republicans — if they saw true entitlement reform — would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues. And that doesn’t mean increasing rates, that means closing loopholes. That also means arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth. And I think we’ve been saying that from day one.

By "true entitlement reform" Republicans mean transforming Medicare and Social Security into something that has no resemblance to programs as we know them now. And by "arranging our tax system so that we have economic growth" Corker means, perhaps closing loopholes in order to further lower the tax contributions of the super wealthy. Maybe to zero. Zero would be good for them.

But even if Senate GOPers really are amenable to some sort of deal, Boehner made clear any revenue raisers are D.O.A. in the House.

Said Boehner: "The president believes that we have to have more taxes from the American people. We're not going to get very far. The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over. It's time to deal with the spending problem."

More interesting, is this admission our hapless Speaker made on the Sunday bobblehead show.

“We do not have an immediate debt crisis – but we all know that we have one looming,” he said. “And we have one looming because we have entitlement programs that are not sustainable in their current form. They’re going to go bankrupt.” [via}

Too bad Republicans couldn't muster the same concern about the looming disaster of climate change. They're perfectly willing to roll the dice on destroying the planet by ignoring that. And this was a curious aside in Boehner's interview.

Boehner reiterated his trust in the president, despite a relationship defined by legislative deals that have fallen apart.

“Absolutely, there’s no issue,” he said.

Can only assume Boehner believes the base doesn't watch the bobbleheads to admit that out loud. Feel rather certain he'll be wailing about Obama dealing in bad faith and moving goalposts and such the next time he's forced to try to bring something to the floor -- and fails -- because he has no control of the crackpot caucus.

Saving Social Security

Scissors wielding austerity addicts have been circling around the social safety net like vultures at a garbage dump for years now. They're salivating at the opportunity to use the deficit to shred the social contract made decades ago with the working people. They want that pot of money and they're more than willing to lie about earned benefits to get their grubby claws on it. But the truth is, Social Security is not a driver of debt. Indeed, "Social Security can be financially tweaked by changing its tax or benefit structure, or both," and deliver full benefits for many years to come.

Yet the austerity addicts drive the conversation. Even President Obama, who promised not to touch the program, offers up shady cuts in his futile search for a ill-advised grand bargain. Surprisingly, the very conservative Josh Barro comes forward to say don't cut SS:

Back in December, I wrote that applying chained CPI to Social Security is the wrong solution to our budget problems: It’s just a way of dressing up a cut to retirement benefits at a time when retirement insecurity is rising. Despite its problems, Social Security is the best-functioning component of the U.S.'s retirement-saving system. Instead of cutting, the federal government should be expanding its role in retirement saving.

Exactly right. GOP has solidified their "cuts only" position on government spending. That very much includes destroying Social Security as we know it. If Democrats were smart they would be pushing for expanding the program instead of adopting the austerity framing on earned benefits.

Sadly, so far few of our Congresscritters have realized how winning a position this is. Bernie Sanders leads the charge to protect the safety net with The Keeping Our Social Security Promises Act.

Under Sanders' legislation, Social Security benefits would be untouched. The system would be fully funded by making the wealthiest Americans pay the same payroll tax already assessed on those with incomes up to $106,800 a year. The idea follows through on a proposal that President Obama made when he was running for office in 2008.

It's a damn shame Bernie doesn't get any attention, from anybody. Neither the establishment progressives nor the netroots left promote his work nearly enough.

No time to cut entitlements

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.

Good to see NYT publishing this but must credit Atrios for getting there first.

Tarnished future for golden agers

This column by Duncan Black on bleak prospects for retirees is a longer form version of Atrios' newest hobby horse which might be summed in the shorter as: bail out the people. I've been saying stuff like this myself for a long time now, but nobody listens to me so it's good to see a very popular sucky blogger trot this into the public discourse:

We need an across the board increase in Social Security retirement benefits of 20% or more. We need it to happen right now, even if that means raising taxes on high incomes or removing the salary cap in Social Security taxes.

Read it all, especially if you're younger and are depending on a 401K plan to ensure your comfort in your golden years. Because if you are, you're likely to be disappointed.

Meanwhile, if you're on the cusp of retiring or in that over 55 and lost your job demographic, you're pretty much screwed and apparently invisible to the powers that be. And that's just SS benefits. If you add in the current mania to "fix" Medicare by foisting the costs back onto the olds, you're probably going to face an early death.

Which as Matty Yglesias points out is a great cost saving scheme:

… It really can’t be emphasized enough that this is the precise inverse of the entitlements problem. Failure to provide adequate social services to unemployed 61-year-olds not only saves money because you don’t need to pay for the benefits, it saves even more money when it leads to that guy dying at 71 rather than 74. To some, those are three extra years to spend with your grandkids. But to the Congressional Budget Office, that’s just more Social Security checks and more Medicare bills.

Oddly, I was just thinking the other day, this austerity fixation (being perpetrated mainly by millionaires) is the modern day equivalent of throwing us olds onto ice floes and sending us out to sea. As the kids say, sure looks like a feature, not a bug.

[photo via]

Things you don't see on the TV news

Big Media dutifully transcribes every utterance made by the major actors on Capitol Hill in the fiscal bluff kabuki. But they never seem to get around to reporting the obvious motivations of the Big Money players in this drama.

According to The Public Accountability Initiative, the group Fix The Debt - which advocates for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security cuts while pushing corporate tax reform - has 38 leaders with “ties to 43 companies with defense contracts totaling $42.3 billion in 2012.”

We have the most bloated defense budget in the entire world, but they'll move heaven and earth to protect that spending problem. On this sinking ship, it's women, children, the poors and the olds first -- to be thrown overboard.