Scott Supak's Shared Items

What Some Fools Believe

2012-03-01T09:10:00.000-08:00

This is what it looks like when a political party becomes a rump party.--SS

The firehose of stupid is too fast for me to keep up. In the last 24 hours:

Joe Arpaio said he’s going to hold a press conference to announce the results of his Obama birth certificate investigation.

Romney says that Santorum needs to give back the delegates that he won in Michigan because Democrats crossed over.

Romney was against the Blunt-Rubio Amendment an hour before he was for it.

In case you think I’m exaggerating about the stupidity, take a look at Memeorandum this morning. It’s a dozen items on the Blunt-Rubio bill and contraception, the story of a racist GWB-appointed federal judge, and Limbaugh calling women sluts.

Federal judge struggles with allegations of racism

2012-03-01T08:56:00.000-08:00

I will also celebrate when this guy dies!--SS

Federal judge struggles with allegations of racism:

U.S. District Chief Judge Richard Cebull admitted yesterday to sending a racist email about President Obama from his courthouse chambers. His apology left much to be desired.

The subject line of the e-mail, which Cebull sent from his official courthouse e-mail address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: "A MOM'S MEMORY."
The forwarded text reads as follow:
"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.
"A little boy said to his mother; 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?' " the e-mail joke reads. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!' "

Cebull, an 11-year veteran of the federal bench, was a George W. Bush nominee. He's served as Montana's chief federal judge for nearly five years.

After his email worked its way to a reporter at the Great Falls Tribune, Cebull was asked for an explanation. The judge admitted having sent it, acknowledged the message's inherent racism, but denied being a bigot. Cebull said, "I apologize to anybody who is offended by it."

That's not an uncommon line, but it's also not a real apology. Genuine regret in a situation like this means apologizing for sending racist garbage, not apologizing to those who happen to be offended by racist garbage.

Cebull added the email was intended to be a private communication and "was not intended by me in any way to become public." This, too, is unhelpful. The judge is effectively arguing, "Sure, I sent along an ugly, racist message, but don't worry, you weren't supposed to know about it."

Cebull insists he's not a racist, and only sent the message because of his hostility towards the president.

His weak explanation notwithstanding, a federal judge whose impartiality and lack of prejudice has been called into question has a problem. Going forward, will African Americans in Cebull's court room have confidence in his professional standards and sense of fairness? Will Democrats?

Travis McAdam, executive director for the Montana Human Rights Network, said. "We have a hard time believing that a legitimate criticism of the president involves distributing a joke that basically compares African Americans with animals."

Twitter / @AndrewBreitbart: I'll shut my mouth for Car ...

2012-03-01T08:53:00.000-08:00

Now he will shut his mouth forever.--SS

Twitter / @AndrewBreitbart: I'll shut my mouth for Car ...:

"I'll shut my mouth for Carter. That's just politics. Kennedy was a special pile of human excrement."

Energy, Price Signals, and Conservation

2012-02-29T16:24:00.000-08:00

Energy efficiency is much more than a personal virtue (I;m looking at you, Dick Cheney).--SS

Energy, Price Signals, and Conservation:

Gas prices remain up there—latest national average is 3.72/gal, up $0.33 from a year ago. Though oil fell back a bit today the pressures on energy supply behind this recent spike remain in place, including geopolitics in Iran, some offline refineries, a bit of market speculation (nothing untoward, but it matters), and just general tightness in a tight system as demand recovers somewhat both here, and more portentously, in Asia (see Jim Hamilton, as always, for details on this).

In terms of the overall economy, what you worry about here is a) oil is an important production input to everything we do, and b) higher gas prices mean less disposable incomes for people. Those are the dynamics behind the rules of thumb—the ones that say a $10 increase in a barrel of oil translates into about a quarter more per gallon at the pump, and, if it sticks, could shave 0.2% off of GDP growth. Not good, and why oil is #2 on my list of threats to the recovery (right after fiscal drag and before Europe).

But there’s other stuff in play which you’d also want to consider, some of which should give you hope. Most of it is longer term, so it’s worth remembering that there’s little anyone could or should do to reverse price spikes like this, at least not in a knee-jerk sense (i.e., you wouldn’t want to release oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve every time there’s a price pop at the pump—that’s supposed to be for real emergencies, not political ones).

For example, here’s a picture of energy consumption per dollar of GDP, down about 60% over the last 60 years. It means we’re using energy more efficiently than we used to.

Source: EIA

Here’s energy consumption per person, which isn’t going down, but hasn’t trended up either over the last few decades.

Source: EIA

Average fuel efficiency of cars, at least, is up by about half since the 1980s, though adding all those SUVs has obviously hurt us here. However, these data only go through 2009, and anecdotally, it’s said that consumers have been pretty aggressively shopping away from gas guzzlers.

Like I said, there is such a thing as price signals. IE, the prices of a fixed commodity that’s heavily demanded, like oil, should go up over time, even with all the drilling and fracking going on out there. And one of the things that price increase is trying to tell us is to conserve more—to insulate our buildings, to increase our fuel efficiency, to develop renewables.

But in order to hear what the price is saying, we gotta listen–we can’t just screech about how the President is to blame, we’ve got to drill and frack more, and somebody do something…anything…fast! I’m not trying to be a scold here–these price spikes hurt low- and middle-income families the most, not to mention folks whose jobs depend on driving (truckers, cabbies). In that sense, one of the the best things we could do right now would be to focus policy on jobs and paychecks of families still climbing back from the Great Recession (in this sense, the renewed payroll tax break should help offset the recent price spike a bit).

Finally, I’ve often pointed to the picutre below to suggest that folks are just driving a lot less right now compared to any other time period in the figure going back to the mid-1980s. I’ve wondered if that’s largely recession related or a sign of a more elastic response to higher prices—i.e., drivers refusing to eat the higher costs and instead just staying put. I’ve crunched a few numbers and I now think it’s the economy, not a change in the elasticity, but there’s more work to be done here.

So, am I saying that we’re out of the woods and that if gas goes well above $4/gallon no one will notice? Of course not. In fact, I crunched a few other numbers and found that if you regress the consumer confidence index on gas prices and include a dummy variable for when we went over $4 for a few months in 2008, you shave 2-3% off of the confidence index, which ain’t nothing (and that regression controls for unemployment and the general rising trend in gas prices at the time, so it does seem associated with crossing $4).

All’s I’m saying is that it’s a good thing that we’re using energy more efficiently and that this—and not just drill/frack—is an important way to think about the longer term challenge of energy costs.

Source: US DOT, FHA

Dave Dutton and Sonia Sola’s Story | Backstage w/Supak: organic search optimizing progressive environmentalist

2012-02-29T15:00:00.000-08:00

We're still looking for votes to help our friends raise the funds to build a commercial kitchen on their farm! All help is appreciated! Spread the word, re-post, and vote!--SS

Dave Dutton and Sonia Sola’s Story | Backstage w/Supak: organic search optimizing progressive environmentalist:

"Raising Organic Family Farms is letting farmers tell their stories, and the farmers with the most votes for their stories will get a grant to help them with their latest project. Our good friends, who provide us with organic produce, eggs, honey, apple cider, and grass-fed beef and other meats, run Nectar Hills Farm up here near Cooperstown, NY. Dave and Sonia are hoping to raise funds to build a commercial kitchen where they can branch into prepared foods and further expand their business. So please, go read Dave and Sonia's story, and click the little thumbs up there to give them a vote!"

Why We Need a Buffett Rule

2012-02-29T14:20:00.000-08:00

Great graphics!--SS

Why We Need a Buffett Rule:

Download this column (pdf)

In recent months President Barack Obama articulated a fairness principle known as the “Buffett Rule,” named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who disclosed that he pays a smaller percentage of his income in federal taxes than his secretary. The Buffett Rule holds that no millionaire should pay a lower effective tax rate than middle-class families.

On February 1, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) introduced the Paying a Fair Share Act of 2012. The bill would turn the principle behind the Buffett Rule into a rule of the U.S. tax code, requiring that all households with incomes above $1 million pay at least a 30 percent minimum tax rate (with a phase-in for incomes between $1 million and $2 million).

Here are seven compelling reasons why we need a Buffett Rule.

1. The incomes of the top 1 percent have skyrocketed over the past three decades, nearly quadrupling and leaving middle-class incomes far behind. Rising inequality has meant that the very rich have captured an outsized share of the country’s economic gains.

2. During these same years, tax rates on millionaires dropped sharply as a result of the Bush tax cuts and successive rounds of tax cuts on investment income (capital gains and dividends).

3. A large number of millionaires are now paying lower taxes than millions of middle- class Americans.

4. While many at the top continue to pay lower taxes than those below them on the income scale, the entire burden of deficit reduction falls on investments and services for the middle class.

5. The Buffett Rule would raise significant amounts of revenue to address our budget challenges, while affecting a tiny percentage of people who can easily afford it.

6. The Buffett Rule enjoys broad, bipartisan support.

7. And that’s because the rule would restore fundamental American values.

Seth Hanlon is Director of Fiscal Reform at the Center for American Progress.

See also:

Ronald Reagan, Father of the ‘Buffett Rule’ by Seth Hanlon and Michael Linden

Issue Pulse: Support for the Buffett Rule

Many Millionaires Do Enjoy Lower Tax Rates by Sarah Ayres

Download this column (pdf)

May the Best Candidate Win?

2012-02-29T13:20:00.000-08:00

Willard is the worst campaigner I've ever seen.--SS

May the Best Candidate Win?:

The Nate Silvering of election analysis—the endless and addictive parsing of exit polls and demographics and historical precedents and outliers and predictive models and Intrade odds—has made campaigns increasingly look, to politicos at least, more like science than art. But there is one “predictive model” that matters more than any other—and it’s entirely the province of unmeasurable, flesh-and-blood, gloriously subjective intangibles. It’s also refreshingly simple: In general elections, the best campaigner wins.

Think about it: When was the last time the superior campaigner of either party lost the presidency? Barack Obama out-talked, out-charmed, and out-disciplined John McCain by a country mile in 2008. George W. Bush, despite his oratorical handicaps, communicated more warmly and stayed on message more relentlessly (and repetitiously) than Al Gore or John Kerry. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton were, of course, masterful on campaign stumps and television screens alike. George H.W. Bush had the great good fortune, in 1988, of facing not-ready-for-prime-time Michael Dukakis. You have to reach back almost four decades, to the Jimmy Carter victory over Gerald Ford in 1976, to find a contest in which the candidates were fairly matched in the seductive arts of wooing voters. The last time the better campaigner lost a presidential election was 1968—and even then, “happy warrior” Hubert Humphrey came amazingly close to overcoming the dark cloud of Vietnam and the crack-up of the Democratic Party and defeating Richard Nixon.

It hasn’t always been this way, of course. Before the mass-media age, unappealing candidates—William Howard Taft, anyone?—could prevail, and often did. But arguably since Roosevelt and certainly since Eisenhower, presidential nominees have been superstar celebrities. The reason that it matters so much which candidate voters would rather invite over for a barbecue, or go to a baseball game with, is because we virtually have to do just that. In the 24-hour news cycle, presidents’ voices and images are always with us. They’re part of our everyday lives.

Of course, it’s true that just as candidates matter, so do campaigns. Effective campaigns can make mediocre candidates—like Nixon and Bush II—more appealing.

None of which offers much hope for Romney in a contest with Obama, assuming he continues to grind his way to the Republican nomination. Even Ann Romney might have to concede that her husband is no match, either on the stump or on TV, for the easy charm and forceful eloquence of this president. And if Romney’s campaign staffers are wily enough to make him substantially better, they certainly haven’t shown it yet. Romney might kvetch about Obama’s star quality, as McCain did last time (remember that McCain ad likening Obama to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears?), and try to use it against him. But if the last seven decades of political history are any indication, he’s going to have a devil of a time overcoming it.

Six Years Since Cheney Shot His Friend

2012-02-29T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Cheney Philosophy: Shoot first, celebrate the misery later. Oh, and gun safety is for pussies.--SS

Six Years Since Cheney Shot His Friend: "The sixth anniversary earlier this month of Dick Cheney shooting his buddy in the face during a quail hunt went largely unnoticed... except for the ceremonial consumption of a quail snack," The Daily reports.

Said Harry Whittington: "It was a commemorative hors d'oeuvre."

"Six years after the incident, Whittington, 84, is still riddled with the bird shot Cheney accidentally hit him with. Some 30 odd pellets are lodged in the lining of his heart, his gums, his hand, his forehead, and the bridge of his nose... But rather than complain, Whittington refers to the lead embedded in his
body as 'memorabilia,' and says that he and Cheney remain in touch and
still trade hunting tales."

Stimulus 101

2012-02-29T12:34:00.000-08:00

They can't argue with facts, so they make shit up.--SS

Stimulus 101:

Valerie Jarrett, a senior aide to President Obama, argued the other day that unemployment benefits "stimulate the economy." The Romney campaign apparently didn't care for the remark.

"First they told us that borrowing $1 trillion from China was supposed to stimulate the economy," a campaign spokesperson said. "Then just yesterday, one of President Obama's top advisors said that unemployment stimulates the economy. That's like saying an iceberg stimulated the Titanic. Only in White House fantasy world do debt, unemployment and higher taxes stimulate the economy."

It's unsettling how easily confused Team Romney gets on these issues. The economy is supposed to be the former governor's signature issue.

For one thing, the stimulus (a) didn't cost $1 trillion; (b) wasn't financed by China; and (c) really did stimulate the economy. For another, Jarrett didn't say "unemployment stimulates the economy"; she said unemployment benefits stimulate the economy.

And third, whether the Romney campaign likes it or not, Jarrett was right. Paul Krugman had a column on this a while back that the former governor might find helpful.

When the economy is booming, and lack of sufficient willing workers is limiting growth, generous unemployment benefits may keep employment lower than it would have been otherwise. But as you may have noticed, right now the economy isn't booming -- again, there are five unemployed workers for every job opening. Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work -- but they can't take jobs that aren't there.
Wait: there's more. One main reason there aren't enough jobs right now is weak consumer demand. Helping the unemployed, by putting money in the pockets of people who badly need it, helps support consumer spending. That's why the Congressional Budget Office rates aid to the unemployed as a highly cost-effective form of economic stimulus. And unlike, say, large infrastructure projects, aid to the unemployed creates jobs quickly -- while allowing that aid to lapse, which is what is happening right now, is a recipe for even weaker job growth, not in the distant future but over the next few months.

The basic concept here is quite simple: unemployment benefits are good for the economy. People who receive the aid aren't sticking it in a mattress or a money-market fund; they're spending it and doing so immediately because it's their main source of income. This injects demand and capital into the economy quickly, helping the beneficiaries and the rest of us.

In fact, when it comes to bang for the buck, jobless aid is the second most effective stimulus in the public-sector arsenal, right behind food stamps.

Mark Zandi from Moody's Economy.com

So who's actually stuck in a "fantasy world"?

Joe Nocera Claims Fracking Raises U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Almost 20 Percent

2012-02-28T14:34:00.000-08:00

From Dean Baker.--SS

Joe Nocera Claims Fracking Raises U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions by Almost 20 Percent:

In his column today, which argues for responsible fracking, telling readers that there can be enormous gains from using cleaner techniques in fracking. In discussing the importance of reducing fracking related methane emissions Nocera comments:

"How big a difference will it make to the environment if industry can minimize methane leaks? A lot. ... Suppose, for instance, the current leak rate turns out to be 4 percent. Suppose we then reduce it in half. That would mean an immediate reduction in overall U.S. greenhouse gases by — are you sitting down for this? — 9 percent. If the leaks are reduced to 1 percent, the decrease in greenhouse gases jumps to 14 percent."

While Nocera does not make this point, but if cutting the methane emissions from fracking in half would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 9 percent, then the methane emissions must come to close to 18 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions. If methane emissions are actually 6 percent, as indicated by a study Nocera cites, then fracking would account for more than one quarter of all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

Nocera may have his numbers completely wrong, but the implication of the evidence presented in his piece is that fracking is an incredibly dirty process from the standpoint of greenhouse gas emissions. If his numbers are right, he makes a compelling case for banning fracking unless it can be done far more cleanly than is currently the case.

S.C. Gov. Haley urges Obama to deepen Atlantic ports

2012-02-28T13:38:00.000-08:00

Look, Ma! A Republican for borrowing and spending on infrastructure!--SS

S.C. Gov. Haley urges Obama to deepen Atlantic ports:

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley implored President Barack Obama on Monday to find more money to deepen the Charleston port and other Atlantic harbors so they can accommodate giant cargo ships after the widening of the Panama Canal is completed in 2014.

The GOP's White Men Problem

2012-02-28T11:23:00.000-08:00

They just can't help themselves.-SS

The GOP's White Men Problem:

You know the parable of the scorpion and the frog: The scorpion asks the frog to carry him across the river, and the frog says, "But what if you sting me?" The scorpion replies, "Why would I sting you? If I do that we'll both drown." Then midway across the river, the scorpion stings the frog. "Why?" the frog cries, as they begin to sink to their doom. "It's my nature," replies the scorpion.

I keep thinking of this as in one election after another Republicans lash out at one large group of American voters after another in the hopes of holding on to the affections of the older white men who form the party's base. The people who run the party know that their continual efforts to stir up resentment, bitterness, and at times outright hatred at people who are not older white men do profound long-term damage to the party. But as a collectivity, the GOP just can't help itself. It's their nature.

This is a topic Jonathan Chait takes up in an essay in New York magazine, in which he argues that 2012 is the Republicans' last chance to hold on to power before their shrinking base undoes them:

In the wake of [Bush's] defeat, strategists like Karl Rove and Mike Murphy urged the GOP to abandon its stubborn opposition to [immigration] reform. Instead, incredibly, the party adopted a more hawkish position, with Republicans in Congress rejecting even quarter-loaf compromises like the Dream Act and state-level officials like Jan Brewer launching new restrictionist crusades. This was, as Thomas Edsall writes in The Age of Austerity, "a major gamble that the GOP can continue to win as a white party despite the growing strength of the minority vote.
None of this is to say that Republicans ignored the rising tide of younger and browner voters that swamped them at the polls in 2008. Instead they set about keeping as many of them from the polls as possible. The bulk of the campaign has taken the form of throwing up an endless series of tedious bureaucratic impediments to voting in many states—ending same-day voter registration, imposing onerous requirements upon voter-registration drives, and upon voters themselves. "Voting liberal, that's what kids do," overshared William O’Brien, the New Hampshire House speaker, who had supported a bill to prohibit college students from voting from their school addresses. What can these desperate, rearguard tactics accomplish? They can make the electorate a bit older, whiter, and less poor. They can, perhaps, buy the Republicans some time.

It isn't just clinging to a shrinking portion of the electorate that does the Republicans harm, it's the way they do it. By focusing on resentments and animus, they make their politics more anti than pro, the consequence of which is that you only win some of your target group (whites), while alienating all or most of the groups you're setting yourself in opposition to (blacks, Hispanics, Muslims, non-religious people, young people, women...). And while it's difficult to make a particular portion of the electorate love you, it's pretty darn easy to make them conclude that you hate them, and thus they shouldn't even consider voting for you.

It's important to remember that this is seldom a coherent, organized strategy. When George W. Bush was in office, one smart operative, Karl Rove, could to a large degree dictate the party's direction. But today, any bunch of yahoos can hijack the party and set it moving down a politically dangerous path. Bush can spend years courting the Hispanic vote, and then when he's ready to leave office, the guys trying to succeed him get into a nasty fight about who hates immigrants more, and all that work is undone, the result being that Barack Obama beats John McCain among Hispanics by 36 points (and then four years later, they do it all again). A bunch of crazy legislators in Virginia introduces a bill mandating transvaginal ultrasounds before a woman can get an abortion, and before you know it the whole party has jumped aboard an anti-contraception train, even though anyone in the party with a brain knows it's politically disastrous. A crazy primary process ends up with Rick freakin' Santorum, perhaps the most personally unpleasant, Puritanical national figure in American politics, becoming one of the faces of the party.

In short, the incentives to appeal to the resentments of its base are strong enough that the party goes through campaigns telling one group after another, "We can't stand you, so don't even think about voting for us."

James Inhofe Takes the Climate Conspiracy Theory to New Heights, Even as Global Warming Bakes His Home State

2012-02-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

Great graphic.--SS

James Inhofe Takes the Climate Conspiracy Theory to New Heights, Even as Global Warming Bakes His Home State:

by Chris Mooney, reposted from DeSmogBlog

James Inhofe, Republican Senator from Oklahoma, has a new book out. It is entitled The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future.

I have not read it yet. So I cannot say much about its contents, but I can say this: The title suggests that Inhofe, like Rick Santorum, is endorsing the global warming conspiracy theory. Indeed, where Santorum only muttered the word “hoax” without a great deal of elaboration, it looks like Inhofe is going to put some real meat onto those paranoid bones.

Let me once again reiterate why the global warming conspiracy theory is, well, just plain ridiculous.

To believe that global warming is a “hoax,” or that there is a “conspiracy,” you must believe in coordinated action on the part of scientists, environmental ministers, politicians, and NGOs around the world. It won’t do just to situate the hoax in the United States and its own scientific and NGO community, because the idea of human-caused global warming is endorsed by scientists, and scientific academies, around the globe.

Any one of these could blow the whistle on the so-called “hoax.” That this has not happened either means there is no hoax, or that the degree of conspiracy and collusion—among people who are notoriously individualistic and non-conformist, by the way—is mindboggling. We’re talking about some serious cat-herding going on.

Oh, and by the way: You also have to believe that the colluding hoaxers have nefarious objectives—basically, they want to kill capitalism and strangle economies. This is even less plausible.

In other words, there is no hoax, and to believe in one is to be a conspiracy theorist. Inhofe himself uses the word “conspiracy” in his subtitle, so I do not think it at all unfair to describe him in this way. Either he is actually right in his claims—not likely—or else he’s conjuring a conspiracy where none exists. It’s that simple.

I point this out, incidentally, because I am continually amazed that our national discourse basically shrugs at conspiracy theories. That’s saddening evidence that we live in an “anything goes” political culture that has become unmoored from reality.

And how did this happen? Here’s a hint: Inhofe will debut his book on Fox’s Sean Hannity program tonight.

Let me end this post with a dose of reality. Inhofe, the climate conspiracy theorist, not only hails from but represents the state of Oklahoma. Here is what has been happening, climatologically, to Oklahoma lately, according to NOAA and other sources:

* The summer of 2011 was the hottest summer on record for the state. According to the Oklahoma Climatological Survey, “Oklahoma experienced the hottest summer of any state since records began in 1895 with a statewide average of 86.9 degrees.”
* July 2011 was the worst. Says the Oklahoma Climatological Survey: “July’s average temperature was 89.3 degrees, becoming the hottest month for any state on record, besting over 67,000 other months.”
* August also fried Oklahoma, and was the hottest August on record.
* This, of course, caused serious damage and monetary losses: “Agricultural damage alone from the drought and related heat has been estimated as high as $2 billion.”

From the perspective of Inhofe’s constituents—say, an Oklahoma farmer—the global warming conspiracy sounds like an intellectual dalliance that the state simply cannot afford.

– Chris Mooney is Washington correspondent for Seed magazine, senior correspondent for The American Prospect, and author of the bestselling book The Republican War on Science. This piece was originally published at DeSmogBlo g. The top graphic is from Grist.

After Getting Sick From Algae Bloom Exacerbated by Heat Wave and Drought, Inhofe Jokes the “Environment Strikes Back”

U.S. Sees Most Extreme July Climate, Oklahoma Sees Hottest Average Temperature of Any State on Record

Public Opinion Snapshot: Cut Military Spending, Tax the Rich

2012-02-27T12:14:00.000-08:00

Conservatives say they want to tax the rich and cut the military, but they will vote for Willard.--SS

Public Opinion Snapshot: Cut Military Spending, Tax the Rich:

The conservative view is that we should solve our fiscal problems by cutting spending on everything but the military and that under no circumstances should we increase taxes, especially on the rich. The public begs to differ. In a recent CBS/New York Times poll, the public overwhelmingly favored cutting military spending (52 percent) over cutting Social Security (13 percent) or Medicare (15 percent).

And when it comes to taxing the rich, the public says bring it on! By a lopsided 67-29 margin, the public thought taxes on households earning $1 million or more a year should be increased to help deal with the budget deficit.

The fact of the matter is that the conservative approach to fiscal issues takes too many reasonable policy approaches off the table just because they don’t fit with conservative ideology. The public evidently agrees.

Ruy Teixeira is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. To learn more about his public opinion analysis, go to the Media and Progressive Values page and the Progressive Studies program page of our website.

American Future Fund takes aim at Obama, irony

2012-02-27T10:52:00.000-08:00

Well, which is it young feller? Do you want I should drop or freeze?--SS

American Future Fund takes aim at Obama, irony:

For a few years, the right has maintained a pretty consistent message when it comes to President Obama and Wall Street: the president is the financial industry's enemy.

Indeed, in most conservative circles, this is just taken as a given. Obama led the way on an onerous Wall Street reform package; he's said unkind things about "fat cats"; he wants to close the carried interest loophole that hedge fund managers are so fond of; and overall, the president has just been a big meanie when it comes to those poor folks in the financial industry.

With this in mind, it came as quite a surprise when the secretive American Future Fund launched this new attack ad yesterday, part of a $4 million ad campaign targeting nine swing states. In the commercial, AFF effectively says their own conservative allies have had it backwards all along: Obama isn't too mean to Wall Street; he's too cozy with Wall Street.

The minute-long spot doesn't lie, exactly, in making its case. The American Future Fund, which relies on undisclosed contributions from conservative donors, tells viewers that Obama has hired Wall Street veterans, supported the Bush/Cheney bank bailout, and has accepted campaign contributions from the financial industry. As attack ads go, these criticisms are fairly honest.

But it's the larger context that makes the ad so unintentionally amusing. For one thing, the ad contradicts three years of GOP talking points, which have gone to almost comical lengths to convince voters that the president has waged war on Wall Street's "wealth creators." For another, as Jon Chait noted, Mitt Romney's campaign is reportedly being bankrolled by the financial industry, and Romney has vowed repeatedly he'll remove safeguards and layers of accountability created after the 2008 crash, freeing Wall Street of its "burdens."

The underlying message the AFF is trying to get across is among the most ironic things we'll see this year: "Obama is too friendly with Wall Street, so vote for Republicans, who'll make things easier on Wall Street."

If it seems like these disjointed lines of attack keep coming up, there's a good reason for that. At different times over the last three years, Obama's detractors on the right have said he's a ruthless Chicago thug and a weak pushover. He's a bystander who goes golfing too much and an activist president who engages too much. He's sticking to the Bush/Cheney script on national security and he's putting us at risk by abandoning the Bush/Cheney national security agenda. He's cutting cherished entitlement programs like Medicare and he refuses to cut entitlement programs like Medicare.

If the right would just pick a caricature and stick with it, their criticisms would at least be more coherent.

Practically Frothing For War

2012-02-26T13:14:00.000-08:00

Zandar's got their number, as usual: Sticky Ricky is the neo-con choice for going to Tehran with boots on the ground.--SS

Practically Frothing For War:

The redemption of Rick Santorum as Serious Foreign Policy Thinker(tm) comes courtesy of Michael Ledeen in the WSJ.

After leaving the Senate in 2007, Mr. Santorum wrote about foreign policy frequently for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, where he was a fellow until June of 2011. In essays written for the center, he acknowledges that terrorists are indeed inspired by radical Islam—but he wants to work with Muslims who do not wage jihad, subjugate women or oppress minorities. He’s specific about the radicals: They are evil men who have perverted the meaning of “martyrdom,” changing it from the act of dying for one’s faith to killing others to advance the dominion of one’s faith.

His opposition to tyranny abroad has been a constant in his political career. Even in the final days of his losing 2006 re-election campaign, Mr. Santorum never stopped calling for action against Iran and Syria. Apparently, Pennsylvanians weren’t impressed by his Iran Freedom and Support Act, enacted in 2006, which imposed sanctions on the regime and authorized $100 million annually for the democratic opposition, or his 2003 Syria Accountability Act.

But today he looks prescient and gutsy. Back then, the Bush administration was trying to run away from such ideas. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at one point turned to a Democrat, then-Sen. Joe Biden, to block Mr. Santorum’s Iran bill, before it finally passed. But Mr. Santorum’s basic vision has prevailed.

And so it goes. Clearly the Murdoch machine is hedging their bets when it comes to the very real possibility that the man who will carry the GOP’s standard into battle against President Obama is going to be a know-nothing fundamentalist dipstick. So like Bush 43 before him, the same “scholars” who told us that it didn’t really matter that the Republican candidate is a moron because he would be surrounded by a brain trust of great minds led by the necessary vision and will to “win” are hard at work constructing the exact same fantasy with Iran as their target.

Ledeen and his crew of bloodthirsty ghouls have been after “regime change” in Iran now for over a decade. To see him latch his lamprey maw onto Santorum’s back to try to ride him into a war with Tehran should be setting off alarm bells in the head of every American old enough to vote. They want war, and Rick Santorum is the best way to get it. Ledeen allowed out of his crypt to try to sell Santorum as Commander-in-Chief means that not only is the GOP establishment making plans for Santorum vs Obama in the fall, but that when it comes to all the truly important boxes to be checked, that Ricky will do for them just fine.

The GOP establishment will prevent Santorum from winning over Romney? Really? At best they are hedging pretty damn hard, and at worst they are sabotaging the increasingly failtastic Mittens to get the man they wanted all along. If “probability of deciding to go to war with Iran” is your top criteria for picking a GOP nominee, then Santorum’s the clear choice. If Murdoch and the neo-cons are backing him, the notion that Santorum will crash and burn long before Tampa is no longer so assured, is it?

Mitt Romney’s budget in less than 150 words

2012-02-25T16:05:00.000-08:00

Just the facts, Willard.--SS

Mitt Romney’s budget in less than 150 words:

Money comes into the federal government through taxes and bonds. The vast majority of it is then spent on old-people programs, poor-people programs, and defense.

Mitt Romney is promising that taxes will go down, defense spending will go up, and old-people programs won’t change for this generation of retirees. So three of his four options for deficit reduction — taxes, old-people programs, and defense — are now either contributing to the deficit or are off-limits for the next decade.

Romney is also promising that he will pay for his tax cuts, pay for his defense spending, and reduce total federal spending by more than $6 trillion over the next 10 years. But the only big pot of money left to him is poor-people programs. So, by simple process of elimination, poor-people programs will have to be cut dramatically. There’s no other way to make those numbers work.

Mitt Romney promises anti-union construction business lobby he'll make their dreams come true

2012-02-25T15:54:00.000-08:00

Union members who vote Republican are traitors to their union.--SS

Mitt Romney promises anti-union construction business lobby he'll make their dreams come true:

(Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Mitt Romney once again laid into unions on Thursday as he accepted the endorsement of the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), a staunchly anti-union industry group:

Thursday’s crowd was particularly receptive as Mr. Romney said he would pursue right-to-work laws and forbid unions from collecting dues that could be used for political purposes.
“If I become president of the United States, I will curb the practice we have in this country of giving union bosses an unfair advantage in contracting,” Mr. Romney said. “One of the first things that I will do – actually on Day One- is I will end the government’s favoritism towards unions in contracting on federal projects.” The audience responded with a standing ovation.

Romney was referring there to Project Labor Agreements, agreements that set uniform standards for all workers, union and non-union and from different trades, on a large construction project. They promote efficiency on projects involving multiple contractors and avert strikes and other labor disputes; additionally, they can contain provisions calling for jobs to be filled by local workers or, as in a recent Los Angeles PLA, people from economically disadvantaged communities.

The Associated Builders and Contractors really hates PLAs, even though PLAs include non-union workers, as part of a more general hatred of unions and workplace safety regulations and prevailing wage laws and really anything else that protects workers. But it's important to understand that the ABC is not the voice of the construction industry. Though the organization tries to present itself that way, a forthcoming (not yet available online) independent report by Thomas Kriger, a professor at the National Labor College, finds that if the ABC's claim to represent "23,000 merit shop construction and construction related firms" is true, it represents just 0.03 percent of the nearly 800,000 construction firms in the country. There is not a single state in which more than 6 percent of licensed or registered contractors are ABC members.

Not only that, the ABC does not appear to define "construction related firms" in the way that most of us would: Its members include 59 banks Freddie's Bar-B-Que of Sapulpa, Oklahoma, the Land and Sea Restaurant of Corpus Christi, Texas, and the Rose of Sharon European Florist of Jacksonville, Florida. In fact, there are only six states in which 75 percent or more of ABC members are actually contractors.

The Associated Builders and Contractors is a totally appropriate Mitt Romney endorser, in other words, since like him, it's not quite what it wants you to think it is. It portrays itself as speaking for a higher proportion of contractors than it does, portrays itself as speaking for contractors specifically when in fact many of its members are restaurants and banks, and uses that false image to promote a comprehensive anti-worker agenda. And in his speech to them, Romney basically promised to enact that entire agenda if he's elected.

How Serious Is The Democratic Crossover Vote Threat In Michigan? | TPM2012

2012-02-25T10:05:00.000-08:00

If you know anyone in Michigan (or VT, TN, or ND), please tell them to vote for Santorum in the GOP (open) primary!--SS

How Serious Is The Democratic Crossover Vote Threat In Michigan? | TPM2012:

"Republicans tried to tamp down on crossover voting when they designed the Feb 28 primary, but the peculiarities of the state rules made that effort basically futile. Democrats will allow members of their party to vote in Tuesday’s primary and still participate in the March 5 Democratic caucus, so Democrats can ask for GOP ballots on Tuesday with impunity. Crossover voting is a rich part of the Michigan primary tradition (this Detroit News column explains the tit-for-tat crossover efforts both parties have engaged in over the years pretty well), and so was born Operation Hilarity, the DailyKos-led effort to drive progressive voters to the polls for Santorum and serve up a loss to Romney."

Raising Organic Family Farms: The Farm Favorite

2012-02-24T14:22:00.000-08:00

We need your vote to help our organic farmer friends!--SS

Raising Organic Family Farms: The Farm Favorite:

Our friends and local organic farmers Dave and Sonia of Nectar Hills Farm could use your vote at the Raising Organic Family Farms "The Farm Favorite" contest.

From Feb. 22 – March 16, 2012, encourage your friends, family and social networks to vote for your story on Raising Organic Family Farms. Raising Organic Family Farms is excited to announce the launch of the “Farm Favorite “ people’s choice grant recipient. [...] The story with the most votes will receive the grant or scholarship requested as well as an additional $500 Farm Favorite grant from Raising Organic Family Farms.

We're encouraging our readers to go vote for Dave and Sonia, who struggle to make ends meet while they provide our local area with organic grass-fed beef and many other organic meats, produce, honey, apple cider and more. Here's more of their story from Raising Organic Family Farms:

Nectar Hills Farm is incredibly picturesque, with 200+ acres of pastured rolling hills, natural bubbling streams and crooked heirloom apple trees. It is the epitome of wild beauty. From the front steps of the 150 year old farmhouse it is easy to make out herds of sheep and scottish highlander cattle, seen as moving specks along the vast countryside. Curious pigs root through scattered brush with their babies in tow and two large emu birds step cautiously and proudly around the barnyard. Chickens and ducks cluck and waddle across the driveway enjoying their free range to the fullest, while the lone peacock seems to always be on his own personal mission. Grapes hang on a vine outside the kitchen door and near that stands a peach tree with fresh and fuzzy fruit. Throw in a few rescued dogs, a couple of friendly cats, several goats and three handsome horses and the joyful lively abundance has just begun to be summed up.

It's an encouraging story that should appeal to anyone who thinks that organic, local food is an important part or any sustainable economy. Go vote!

The wrong way to argue about gas prices

2012-02-24T10:43:00.000-08:00

Republicans really don't understand basic economics.--SS

The wrong way to argue about gas prices:

President Obama was in Miami yesterday talking about gas prices, making a pitch for an "all-of-the-above" energy policy that would rely on oil production, alternative energy, and improved fuel-efficiency standards. Anticipating the Republican response, Obama added, "Anybody who tells you we can drill our way out of this problem doesn't know what they're talking about, or just isn't telling you the truth."

If an "all-of-the-above" policy sounds vaguely familiar, there's a good reason: as recently as 2008, it's what Republicans said they wanted, too. But like health care mandates, cap and trade, the DREAM Act, the payroll tax cut, and contraception coverage, the GOP is now against what they were for a few years ago.

Regardless, Republicans aren't just demanding expansive drilling. They're also pushing a talking point that's quickly become ubiquitous on the right.

"The president would like everyone to forget that gas prices have doubled over the past three years while he consistently blocked and slowed the production of American-made energy," a spokesman for House Speaker John A. Boehner, Brendan Buck, said in a statement.

The second part of this is just silly; oil production has increased every year under Obama's presidency, and is now higher than it was at any point in Bush's second term. But it's the first part that's important.

At first blush, the GOP line may seem compelling. Indeed, at a certain level it's just a matter of arithmetic -- either the price has doubled or it hasn't.

But for those who care about context and a more thorough understanding of the situation, the relevant details make all the difference.

It's true that when President Obama took office, gas cost about $1.81 a gallon, roughly half of where it is now. The price had fallen sharply in late 2008 for a very good reason: there was a global economic catastrophe. GOP officials may not understand this -- or they may chose not to -- but gas was cheap because the economy had fallen off a cliff. As the economy improved, demand went up, and the price of gas started climbing. It's Economics 101.

As Matt Yglesias explained yesterday, "It turns out that driving to work, ferrying stuff from the warehouse to the store, hauling containers across the Pacific Ocean, and flying around to meetings all takes oil. If you manage to orchestrate a situation in which millions of people lose their jobs, retail sales plummet, stores close, and economic activity generally grinds to a halt, this frees up a lot of extra oil. Cheap oil leads to cheap gasoline, so if you did have a job at the depths of the recession your commute got cheap. And good for you. But this should all serve as a reminder that there's little constructive action the American government can take to lower the price of gasoline."

This may seem unsatisfying, and it may make Republican talking points appear ridiculous, but reality in this area is stubborn.

The end of a short-lived grace period

2012-02-24T09:43:00.000-08:00

Because threatening to kill people is so damn funny.--SS

The end of a short-lived grace period:

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination attempt against Gabrielle Giffords, there was an effort on the part of many to show restraint when it came to rhetoric about politics and violence. That grace period is now long gone.

Republican pollster Frank Luntz, for example, is comfortable joking about using his car to run down President Obama. Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) thought it was funny to say, "In Arizona, sometimes to gain office you have to have shot someone." Rep. Paul Broun (R) of Georgia held a town-hall meeting last year in which a constituent asked, "Who is going to shoot President Obama?" -- a line which reportedly prompted a "big laugh" from the crowd.

Right-wing humor is just so droll.

Rep. John Sullivan (R) of Oklahoma became the latest to use this kind of political/violent rhetoric this week, sharing some thoughts on the federal budget at a town-hall meeting on Wednesday:

"I supported the Paul Ryan budget and sent it over to the Senate. Now I live with some Senators, I yell at them all the time, I grabbed one of them the other day and shook him and I'd love to get them to vote for it -- boy I'd love that. You know but other than me going over there with a gun and holding it to their head and maybe killing a couple of them, I don't think they're going to listen unless they get beat."

Sullivan's office later acknowledged his "poor choice of words," and extended an apology "to anyone he offended."

KOKI-TV in Tulsa aired this video of Sullivan making the remarks. Note the gun gesture with his hand when he talks about murdering senators who oppose the Paul Ryan budget plan.

In my heart of hearts, I sincerely doubt the Republican congressman would commit acts of violence against other lawmakers, but in the larger context, and just days after Luntz's "joke" about violence towards the president, I have to admit I liked the post-Giffords grace period better.

Santorum's Dutch death panels

2012-02-24T09:08:00.000-08:00

Don't Euthanize me, bro!--SS

Santorum's Dutch death panels:

Appearing recently at the American Heartland Forum, Rick Santorum shared an interesting perspective on the fate of the elderly in the Netherlands. It's an absurd perspective, of course, but it speaks to a larger issue.

"In the Netherlands, people wear different bracelets if they are elderly," Santorum said. "And the bracelet is: 'Do not euthanize me.' Because they have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands but half of the people who are euthanized -- 10% of all deaths in the Netherlands -- half of those people are euthanized involuntarily at hospitals because they are older and sick. And so elderly people in the Netherlands don't go to the hospital. They go to another country, because they are afraid, because of budget purposes, they will not come out of that hospital if they go in there with sickness."

In other words, in the mind of this Republican presidential hopeful, there are (cue scary music) Dutch Death Panels, including the "involuntarily" euthanization of the elderly in hospitals in the Netherlands.

Glenn Kessler took a detailed look at all of Santorum's claims, reviewing the bracelets, the legal euthanasia safeguards, and the alleged "involuntarily" euthanizations. Kessler's conclusion?

"There appears to be not a shred of evidence to back up Santorum's claims about euthanasia in the Netherlands. It is telling that his campaign did not even bother to defend his comments."

The moral of the story: Rick Santorum, as part of his culture-war crusade, doesn't mind making stuff up. He makes outlandish claims in a sincere way -- Santorum actually seems to believe his own nonsense -- but that doesn't change the fact that the guy really has no idea what he's talking about.

And there's a larger truth here, too. As an extension of the fight over health care reform, the right desperately wants the public to fear the government, not just in general, but literally fear the possibility that bureaucrats might start killing innocent Americans -- just like those rascally Europeans.

It's shear madness, of course, and constitutes demagoguery on an almost comical scale, but as Santorum's Dutch gibberish helps remind us, conservatives are heavily invested in the message anyway.

George W Bush in 2012 Election - The Man Who Wasn't There - Esquire

2012-02-23T09:53:00.000-08:00

Charles Pierce dives into the heart of GOP denial.--SS

George W Bush in 2012 Election - The Man Who Wasn't There - Esquire:

"I think they were booing George W. Bush.

"He is the man who isn't there. Until NCLB came up last night, the years 2000-2008 had been successfully written out of the narrative of the 2012 election. For these jamokes, time effectively began in January of 2009. It was Year Zero on the Kenyan Muslim Socialist Calendar. I do not believe that Bush's political non-personhood is an accident. It is now an article of faith among the Republican base that Bush's failures stem not from the fact that he was a manifest incompetent, but that he was too liberal a president. Putting through Medicare Part B without paying for it is a greater sin to these people than running two wars off the books was. No Child Left Behind had the endorsement of Teddy Kennedy! (Aieeeeeeee!) If only Bush had tried conservatism, the fairytale goes, then conservatism would have succeeded, as it always does. It never fails. It is only failed. C-Plus Augustus failed conservatism."

Man Nominated As Delegate To Gingrich Campaign Pleaded Guilty To 'Voter Fraud'

2012-02-22T10:02:00.000-08:00

Why is it that the only proof I can ever find of voter fraud is of Republicans doing it?--SS

Man Nominated As Delegate To Gingrich Campaign Pleaded Guilty To 'Voter Fraud':

A man who would be designated as an Illinois delegate for Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich pleaded guilty to voter fraud charges back in 1991, TPM has learned.

Back in 1991, Charles Augustyniak pleaded guilty to a voter registration violation after he tried to register his mother, father and brother (who lived in Du Page County, Illinois) as Cook County voters. As punishment he had to speak at training sessions for deputy registrars "explaining how he committed his crime and discussing correct procedures for voter registration," according to a newspaper report from the time.

Augustyniak is listed as a delegate on a petition on the Illinois for Newt website. In an interview with TPM he said he hadn't thought about the incident in a number of years.

"There was no fraud perpetrated, it's technically a misdemeanor election code violation which I admitted to," Augustyniak said in an interview. "My folks were in the process of retiring and were living with me for awhile, that's what that was all about."

Augustyniak explains that his parents moved in with him for a few months as they were selling their home in Du Page County but before they moved to Alabama in early 1991.

"They wanted to claim that they perpetrated some fraud, and I didn't think I wanted to put my mid-60 year old parents through that," Augustyniak said.

"It's something I haven't thought a whole lot about in over 20 years, if people want to look at my public record, I don't even think i've had a traffic ticket, but I don't really think it's any kind of an issue," Augustyniak continued.

Augustyniak said that he continued to speak to deputy registrars about his violation even after he had completed his required hours of community service.

The Gingrich campaign in Illinois didn't respond to a request for comment. Gingrich has supported conservative anti-voter fraud measures in the past, having been critical of the Justice Department for blocking South Carolina's voter ID law while calling for voter ID laws in all 50 states.

Gas, Past Tense, Made Facially

2012-02-21T17:13:00.000-08:00

Graphs are hard.--SS

Gas, Past Tense, Made Facially:

What the price of gas has done over the last 12 months (top green line there):

What FOX News makes out of the green line:

“Man, Mr. Murdoch’s third period math class is effin’ hard. But just leave out the uninteresting data points AND BLAME PRESIDENT MELANIN MCDARKGUY LOL HOMEWORK’S DONE. I bet I get a B plus for this one.”

Capitalism Works When Workers Are Productive

2012-02-21T15:56:00.000-08:00

When Matt's good, he's very good.--SS

Capitalism Works When Workers Are Productive:

I think I understand what David Autor is trying to say here about rising wages at Foxconn, but it's pretty misleading:

“This is the way capitalism is supposed to work,” said David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “As nations develop, wages rise and life theoretically gets better for everyone.

“But in China, for that change to be permanent, consumers have to be willing to bear the consequences. When people read about bad Chinese factories in the paper, they might have a moment of outrage. But then they go to Amazon and are as ruthless as ever about paying the lowest prices.”

The implication here seems to be that the reason the average American in 2012 earns a much higher wage than the average American in 1912 is that consumers have become much more willing to pay high prices. But of course that's wrong. The issue is the greater productivity of workers. This happens two ways. One is that when production of air conditioners becomes more efficient, the real wage of everyone who buys air conditioners goes up. The other is that as production of air conditioners becomes more efficient the producers of air conditioners make more money and the owners, managers, and workers bargain with one another to get a share of the returns.

The big story in China is that China has lots of very poor people living and working on farms. Average productivity, in other words, is very low so owners and managers have been able to get away with paying very little money. But as more and more high productivity factories get built, average productivity is rising and workers have more ability to bargain for higher pay in the factories. But this dynamic isn't going to result in higher prices for consumers of manufactured goods, it's going to lead to a bounty of manufactured goods as the world's total capacity to create manufactured goods increases. That is how capitalism is supposed to work—more output per worker means more goods per consumer which means that when the consumer is at work he's earning a higher wage.

Rand Paul Opposed Synthetic Drug Prohibition To Protect You From Radical Islam

2012-02-21T14:43:00.000-08:00

Something in the water in Kentucky?--SS

Rand Paul Opposed Synthetic Drug Prohibition To Protect You From Radical Islam:

Late last year Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) cited the fact that many prisoners convert to Islam as cause for blocking legislation that would make synthetic drugs illegal.

Paul explained in a December letter sent to Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Chuck Grassley (R-IA) recently obtained by the Bowling Green Daily News that he was blocking the bill because the "stigma of incarceration can make it practically impossible for many people to find work after they are finally released from prison."

But there was also another reason.

"In addition, there has been much discussion in the Senate regarding combatting radical Islam. Notably, Islam is currently the fastest-growing religion among prisoners in the United States. Sending people - often young people - who may already come from broken homes and difficult family situations into a brutal prison environment is potentially a breeding ground for radicalization," Paul wrote.

Paul's stance got a quick response from the Kentucky Democratic Party.

"Rand Paul says that he is helping to keep drugs on Kentucky's streets because he wants to make sure criminals aren't converting to Islam - you simply cannot make nonsense like this up," chairman Dan Logsdon said in a statement. "If he's so worried about prisoners converting to Islam that he is willing to place the lives of Kentucky's children at risk by allowing dangerous drugs on our streets, my advice to Senator Paul is that he just go ahead and make crime legal so we won't have prisons any more. Rand Paul needs to regain whatever toehold he had on reality and realize that what he is doing is going to hurt Kentucky's children in a very real way and he is going to have to live with that."

Rove repeats a tired lie

2012-02-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

Karl Rove's got nothing.--SS

Rove repeats a tired lie:

Karl Rove must be feeling a little antsy about 2012 -- he's not only repeating falsehoods on national television, he's telling old lies that were debunked years ago.

Here was Rove on Fox News last night, telling Sean Hannity about President Obama giving a loan to Brazil.

"The president gave a loan to Brazil. Brazil which is eating our lunch economically internationally, why do they need our money? They have plenty of their own. [Obama] gave them a loan and told them, as you've just alluded to, went down there and said we want to be your best customer."

This again? Are Republicans still pushing this bogus story? I remember writing an item setting the record straight in 2010, after having seen it debunked in 2009.

In far-right circles, President Obama loaned $2 billion to a Brazilian oil company to drill for oil in Brazilian waters, to benefit China. In reality, a Brazilian oil company, PetroBras, received a loan from the independent Export-Import Bank.

The loan was approved by appointees of -- you guessed it -- the Bush/Cheney administration.

The Export-Import Bank agreed to the loan, by the way, in large part because PetroBras agreed to use U.S.-made oilfield equipment and services on the project, which made the deal beneficial for both countries. The notion that Obama is just handing over money to Brazil is just silly.

It's possible Rove is bringing up this old argument because of rising gas prices, but for those who take reality seriously, this canard isn't improving with age.

The Incredible Shrinking Man

2012-02-20T15:57:00.000-08:00

My thoughts for President's Day.--SS

The Incredible Shrinking Man:

Back around Jan 4 of this year, Willard Romney hit peak approval. He's been heading down fast ever since.

[Click through for a graph]

For the record, Jan. 4 was when the story of Mitt not releasing his taxes got started. Put that in your general election pipe and smoke it.

Will Femia found (via Steve Benen) another interesting data point today.

Romney is having Trump campaign for him in Michigan. That's right. I said "for."

Santorum to win MI shares at Intrade are $4.26 a share right now. Seems like a good bet, considering how popular Trump is.

If you're trying to head off a guy in your home state who does well with the kind of middle class voters who define Michigan, and you bring in Donald Fucking Trump, then you are an even worse campaigner than I thought.

Why Everything Sucks, Vol. CDXXI

2012-02-20T11:13:00.000-08:00

Doghouse Riley: "Suckiness is a product of the 70s, a fact which is evidently lost on the 1.75 generations of adult Americans who didn't really live through them, or who only recall them through the unquenchable thirst for Oompa Loompa references." We need to take Rick Santorum to the juicing room.--SS

Why Everything Sucks, Vol. CDXXI:

John Dickerson, "The Deepest Darkest Fantasies of Democrats and Republicans: Both parties are using the contraception debate to paint the other side as scary radicals. In others words, politics as usual." February 17

David Weigel, "A Kinder, Gentler Rick Santorum: Now that the man in the vest is surging in the polls, he’s toning down his talk on homosexuality, gay marriage, and abortion....

Go read it all.

Why would a politician attack pre-natal testing?

2012-02-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Please nominate this man!--SS

Why would a politician attack pre-natal testing?:

Associated Press

The anti-pre-natal testing candidate.

Over the last few years, there's been no shortage of attacks from the right against the Affordable Care Act, but going after provisions related to pre-natal testing appears to be a new one.

Rick Santorum accused President Obama of requiring free prenatal testing in the health care plan he signed in 2010 because it would detect if children were disabled, encourage more abortions and save money.
"One of the things that you don't know about ObamaCare in one of the mandates is they require free prenatal testing," Santorum began telling about 400 people here. "Why? Because free prenatal testing ends up in more abortions and, therefore, less care that has to be done, because we cull the ranks of the disabled in our society. That too is part of ObamaCare -- another hidden message as to what president Obama thinks of those who are less able than the elites who want to govern our country."

CBS's Bob Schieffer pressed Santorum on this point yesterday, saying, "You sound like you're saying that the purpose of pre-natal care is to cause people to have abortions." The Republican presidential hopeful didn't back down, arguing, "[A] lot of pre-natal tests are done to identify deformities in utero and the customary procedure is to encourage abortions."

Even for Santorum, this is low.

For one thing, medical experts know Santorum's line is nonsense. As MSNBC's First Read explained, "There is value in pre-natal testing, because it can detect potential problems in utero or at delivery and allow parents and doctors to get the proper care for their child."

For another, trying to turn pre-natal care into yet another culture-war battle is ridiculous. University of Chicago professor Harold Pollack, an expert in health policy, added, "Santorum's comments are only made uglier by their utter lack of foundation. There is no evidence whatsoever that liberals -- let alone President Obama -- are less solicitious or caring about the disabled than other Americans. I've never heard any liberal health policy wonk promote genetic technologies to 'cull the ranks of the disabled' or as part of any cost-cutting plan. That ugly meme is completely made up. By any reasonable measure, the proliferation of genetic diagnostic technologies coincides with great progress in public acceptance and support for people with disabilities."

Thomas Friedman's Candidate for President: The Leader of the Economic Sleepwalk Tour

2012-02-19T12:09:00.000-08:00

Another Friedman Unit.-SS

Thomas Friedman's Candidate for President: The Leader of the Economic Sleepwalk Tour:

Thomas Friedman gave readers his pseudo endorsement of a candidate for president today. The person is David Walker, who headed up the Government Accountability Office from 1998 to 2008 before leaving to take the helm as president of the Peter G. Peterson Foundation. He later left that organization to head up another Peter Peterson funded venture.

Walker has been in the public over for more than a decade as a result of his crusade against the government budget deficit. In fact, he led a "fiscal wake-up tour" around the country in the years 2004-2008 to try to call attention to the problem of the budget deficit.

The great irony of this tour is that the deficit was not actually a big problem at the time, falling to just over 1.0 percent of GDP by 2007. The real problem facing the country was the housing bubble, which was growing ever larger. Unfortunately, people like David Walker and his merry band of deficit hawks, financed by the the likes of Peter Peterson, sucked up much of the oxygen for coverage of economic issues. There were many news shows and stories devoted to their apocalyptic warnings of budget doom. There was no time to waste talking to people yelling about things like an $8 trillion housing bubble.

Of course one of the ironies of this story is that the bursting of the housing bubble led to an economic collapse which resulted in much bigger deficits than anything that Walker and his crew ever warned about. One of the other ironies is that being completely wrong about the nature of the problems facing the economy does not seem to have affected Walker's standing in public debates one iota, at least it sure hasn't in Thomas Friedman's world.

Has Anyone at the Washington Post Heard of Exchange Rates?

2012-02-18T13:56:00.000-08:00

I am always amazed at how people who are supposed to know these things actually know so little.--SS

Has Anyone at the Washington Post Heard of Exchange Rates?:

It doesn't seem so from an article that it ran on export subsidies offered in the form of loan guarantees from the export-import bank. The article highlights the purchase of Boeing plans with government subsidized loans by an Indian airline. The Indian airline then drove Delta out of a key route.

While the article talked to several economists on the wisdom of using loans guarantees to subsidize exports, it never once mentioned reducing the value of the dollar as an alternative. In fact, a decline in currency values is supposed to be the mechanism through which countries adjust to trade deficits in a system of floating exchange rates. For this reason, it is bizarre that the issue was never raised as an alternative route toward increasing net exports.

The article also implied that these loans are somehow a unique way in which the government picks winners and losers. The government has a wide range of policies (e.g. patent protection, too big to fail bank subsidies, protection for highly paid professionals) that put in a situation of picking winners and losers. This is a standard practice in the U.S. economy, not an exception as the Post article implies.

Just a suggestion: 'Panel Chosen to Discuss Viagra Distribution'

2012-02-18T09:57:00.000-08:00

Fair's fair.--SS

Just a suggestion: 'Panel Chosen to Discuss Viagra Distribution':

Courtesy of Portland, Maine's West End News

Ed King of Portland, Maine's West End News found this old Women's Christian Temperance Union photo and thought he could do something with it. (History buffs: Temperance started in Portland, and the group lives on.)

State-Sanctioned Rape: Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Laws in Virginia, Texas, and Iowa | RH Reality Check

2012-02-17T15:10:00.000-08:00

The GOP is quickly becoming a rump party.--SS

State-Sanctioned Rape: Trans-Vaginal Ultrasound Laws in Virginia, Texas, and Iowa | RH Reality Check:

"Virginia is poised to send two of the most abhorrent anti-choice bills to Governor Bob McDonnell to sign. The governor, eyes trained on a vice presidential bid, has indicated he will sign at least one if not both of the bills.

The first is a bill requiring the use of trans-vaginal ultrasound prior to a woman obtaining an abortion, the other is an egg-as-person bill. Like other failed "personhood" bills, the Virginia provision would outlaw not only abortion but also forms of hormonal birth control.

Although the Governor has said he will consider the personhood bill he has been clear he would sign the forced ultrasound bill. But let's start calling this what it really is: state sanctioned rape. "

Go read the whole thing.

Romney targets labor unions, which could be risky come fall | McClatchy

2012-02-16T18:03:00.000-08:00

Romney targets labor unions, which could be risky come fall | McClatchy:

"Yet should it work, the union-bashing campaign offers uncertain prospects in a general-election campaign, particularly in the unionized, industrial Rust Belt. States there such as Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin will be key battlegrounds. A changing political and economic landscape there makes it impossible to predict how voters would react."

No it doesn't.

Balloon Juice » Wingnut Medical Science

2012-02-16T12:29:00.000-08:00

More evidence that Republicans have been eating lead paint, or something.--SS

Balloon Juice » Wingnut Medical Science:

"NH Republican Jeanine Notter asserted that the pill causes cancer. Prostate cancer. In men. You do the math:

[click through to see the video]

Is it possible that maybe the public is just punking us all by electing these morons for entertainment purposes?"

Mitt Romney reminds voters he really, truly hates unions

2012-02-15T17:29:00.000-08:00

Mitt Romney reminds voters he really, truly hates unions:

(Larry Downing/Reuters)

During the course of the Republican presidential primary, Mitt Romney has made a number of attempts to establish that one of his conservative values is that he hates unions. Unlike all the issues on which Romney makes news by changing his position, he's been consistent in his opposition to unions, and every now and then he sallies forth to remind us that he does have this one authentic claim to conservatism.

A Wednesday press release expands on the anti-union focus of Tuesday's op-ed on the rescue of the auto industry, just in case we missed the anti-union message what with all the scoffing at Romney's ideas about how GM and Chrysler should have just gone bankrupt.

The release attempts to draw a nefarious connection between the fact that unions supported Obama's election in 2008 and a remarkably overblown account of how union-friendly Obama's administration has been. For instance:

In February 2009 – The Same Month He Signed The Stimulus Bill – President Obama Issued An Order That Federal Agencies Should “Consider Requiring” Union-Friendly Project-Labor Agreements.

Telling people you "encourage" that they "consider requiring" a type of agreement that does not mandate union labor, instead setting the same standards for all workers at a given worksite? Wow. That is a heavy hand Obama brought down in favor of unions, restoring something that had been policy under Bill Clinton.

Romney doesn't just over-inflate Obama's union-friendly actions in the scariest-sounding terms his press shop could come up with, though. The release also details Romney's support for basically the entire anti-union wish list, from amending the National Labor Relations Act to give businesses more power and make it harder for workers to join unions to promoting so-called "right to work" laws to prohibiting unions from using the dues their members have chosen to have deducted from their paychecks on political work.

Basically, Romney's message is "You might not trust that I'm truly conservative on issues from abortion to health care, but by jiminy, I do not flip flop in my hatred for workers and their unions." And you know what? I believe him on this one.

And P.S.: Obama's 54-38 lead over Romney in a PPP poll of Michigan, with 52 percent supporting the auto bailout, suggests that union members—and more generally, people in a state heavily dependent on the industry Obama saved—aren't much more fond of Romney than he is of them.

Announcing Operation Hilarity: Let's keep the GOP clown show going!

2012-02-15T15:13:00.000-08:00

Donald Segretti would love this!--SS

Announcing Operation Hilarity: Let's keep the GOP clown show going!:

It's time for us to take an active role in the GOP nomination process. That's right, it's time for those of us who live in open primary and caucus states—Michigan, North Dakota, Vermont and Tennessee in the next three weeks—to head out and cast a vote for Rick Santorum.

Why would we do such a crazy thing? Lots of great reasons!

Republican turnout has sucked, and appears to be getting worse by the contest. Unlike the 2008 Democratic primaries, which helped President Barack Obama and the Democrats to build a national organization, the GOP is an organizational disaster, with waning voter interest. That means that it takes fewer votes to have an impact than if Republican turnout was maxed out.

Several of the contests have produced razor-thin margins of victory. Rick Santorum won Iowa by 34 votes, Mitt Romney "won" Maine by 194 votes. It won't take many of us to swing contests the way we want them to swing.

The longer this GOP primary drags on, the better the numbers for Team Blue. Not only is President Barack Obama rising in comparison to the clowns in the GOP field, but GOP intensity is down—which would have repercussions all the way down the ballot.

The longer this thing drags out, the more unpopular the Republican presidential pretenders become. Just look at Mitt Romney's trajectory, which followed Herman Cain's trajectory, and Newt Gingrich's trajectory, and Michelle Bachmann's trajectory, and so on.

Rick Santorum will inevitably follow the same path once he gets properly vetted. Mitt Romney has been unable to stem the bleeding despite his tens of millions. Just imagine Santorum, with the far more radical record and a continued inability to raise real money.

It's a no-brainer! The following states have completely open contests coming up:

2/28: Michigan (Primary)

3/6: North Dakota (caucus)

3/6: Tennessee (primary)

3/6: Vermont (primary)

If you live in one of those states, pledge to participate in Operation Hilarity by voting or caucusing for Rick Santorum. Click here for Michigan, here for North Dakota, here for Tennessee and here for Vermont.

If you live anywhere else, please contribute $5 to our Facebook ad effort to turn Democrats out in those elections. You can see a sample ad at the top right of this post.

And if you're squeamish about this, just remember what's at stake—not just the White House, but Nancy Pelosi's gavel and a Senate run by Mitch McConnell. The weaker the GOP standard bearer, the better our chances in November. Rush Limbaugh and his ilk have had no problem meddling in our own contests. And if there's one thing Daily Kos is about, it's about fighting fire with fire.

And in any case, it's freaking hilarious. I mean, Rick Santorum? Really? The Republicans have offered up this big, slow, juicy softball. Let's have fun whacking the heck out of it.

Please, contribute $5 to help us turn out Democrats in open Republican primaries and caucuses.

Will Romney Run Out of Money?

2012-02-15T10:00:00.000-08:00

Nothing would fit the rich-guy-trying-to-buy-the-presidency narrative better than Willard digging into his own pocket to finance his campaign.--SS

Will Romney Run Out of Money?:

BuzzFeed notes Mitt Romney's fundraising machine "has depended almost exclusively on big checks from the wealthy individuals... But Romney has proved unable to tap into the emotion-drived small-dollar contributions that helped power Barack Obama in 2008, and which fueled even his more Establishment rival, Hillary Clinton, this time four years ago when she too began to run out of big donors."

"The result: Republican fundraisers say that despite his success so far, they think Romney is fast approaching a wall, and that he will likely be forced to pay for the campaign out of his own deep pockets."

ABC Does Unpaid(?) Commerical Announcement for the Republicans on the Evening News

2012-02-14T15:47:00.000-08:00

ABC Does Unpaid(?) Commerical Announcement for the Republicans on the Evening News:

ABC News took budget reporting to new levels of irresponsibility last night telling its viewers to think of the federal budget like the family budget by knocking off 8 zeros to make spending $38,000, instead of $3.8 trillion. While this approach could be useful to put some items in context (spending on TANF, the main welfare program, would be around $190; the $1 million Woodstock museum that served as a main prop for John McCain's presidential campaign would cost 1 cent), it is fundamentally misleading in explaining the significance of the deficit and debt.

Unlike ABC's family, the government is expecting to be around in perpetuity. This means that it never has to pay off its debt. At the least, it would be more appropriate to make a comparison to a corporation, which may forever add to its debt as it grows. No shareholder would complain if General Electric borrowed a huge amount of money to expand a profitable division. Government spending fosters growth by financing education, infrastructure and other public investments which will make the country richer in the future.

However, there are even more fundamental differences between the government and a family. The U.S. government's debt is in notes printed by the government. If ABC wants to make the family analogy, its family has an obligation to pay off the $9,000 it has borrowed in 9000 sheets of paper that say "I owe you $1."

Most families can't borrow on such terms, but the government can and does. If ABC can't explain this distinction in its 2 minute and 2 second news segment, then it should look for a different analogy.

Finally, the government has the responsibility to support the private economy. The collapse of the $8 trillion housing bubble (which ABC News neglected to tell its viewers about as it was growing) left a gap in annual demand of close to $1.4 trillion.

When the bubble burst annual spending on residential construction fell by close to $600. Consumption, which had been fueled by housing bubble generated equity, fell by close to $500 billion. The collapse of a bubble in non-residential real estate led to a fall off in this sector of close to $150 billion. And, cutbacks in state and local spending, forced by the decline in tax revenue, reduced annual demand by another $150 billion.

It would be wonderful if private sector demand would spring up and replace this lost demand, but the world doesn't work this way. If the government were to quickly cut back its deficit it would lead to lower output and higher unemployment.

To make the family analogy, suppose that the family's spending was responsible for keeping the local butcher, barber, and doctor in business. If the family decided to stop using its credit card, one or more of these businesses would go under.

If ABC wanted to do honest reporting on the budget, it would have crafted its family analogy along these lines.

One last point, ABC said that President Obama broke a promise by not cutting the deficit in half. It would have been useful to point out that the downturn was far more severe than President Obama, and most private economists, expected at the time he made this promise. This is the main reason that the deficits have not followed the course that expected.

Quote of the Day

2012-02-14T12:24:00.000-08:00

Hee hee.--SS

Quote of the Day:

"This week, President Obama will release a budget that won't take any meaningful steps toward solving our entitlement crisis. The president has failed to offer a single serious idea to save Social Security and is the only president in modern history to cut Medicare benefits for seniors."

-- Mitt Romney, quoted by the Boston Globe, blaming President Obama for failing to curb the growth of entitlement spending while at the same time criticizing him for cutting Medicare benefits.

Paul Krugman: "Has there ever been a candidacy this cynical?"

America's Cod Collapse

2012-02-13T16:22:00.000-08:00

Stop buying cod.--SS

America's Cod Collapse:

Where a dynamic global capitalist economy meets a scenario of ill-defined property rights, over-exploitation of finite resources results. Hence our troubles with climate change and hence our troubles with cod:

But data released last year indicated that the fish was so severely overfished that even if all fishing on it ended immediately, it would not rebound by 2014 to levels required under federal law.

As a result, fishermen were looking at an 82 percent cut in what they were allowed to catch last year, a reduction that would have wiped out not only regional fishermen who rely on cod. Restrictions on cod severely limit fishing on other groundfish species with which the cod swim, like flounder and haddock.

Obviously that would have put the cod fishermen out of business, so they're happy to hear that NOAA will instead promulgate a special emergency rule offering only a 22 percent cut. That's a great compromise solution except for the fact that it still leaves the fishery on the road to destruction. If appropriately managed with quota-trading systems and the like a technically competent modern government can create a market solution for the tragedy of the commons created, but once a fishery reaches a state of extreme depletion it's very politically difficult to set quotas low enough.

The Help's Same Old Story

2012-02-13T11:51:00.000-08:00

Good piece on the Help.--SS

The Help's Same Old Story:

Much has been written about The Help’s whitewashing of American history in the Jim Crow South. The film’s revisionist plot follows the efforts of an altruistic white savior, played by Emma Stone, as she writes a book about the daily lives of maids in 1963 Mississippi. Certain realities of the time, including the death of prominent civil-rights leader Medgar Evers, are brushed aside, glossed over, or completely misinterpreted. Tulane political-science professor and MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry has called the movie “ahistorical” and “deeply troubling.” With the Academy Awards two weeks away and The Help, which was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture, poised to win big, what does the film’s success say about Hollywood’s unwillingness to properly tell black stories?

James McBride, who co-wrote the upcoming film Red Hook Summer with Spike Lee, recently penned an open letter to Hollywood in which he noted the irony of Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer receiving acting nominations (best actress, and best supporting actress, respectively) for their roles in The Help 70 years after Hattie McDaniel became the first African American to win an Oscar for best supporting actress in the same role—as a maid. McBride’s point underscores how little we have progressed on portrayals of race in America.

It’s difficult to look at the Oscars and not consider why a mostly white Hollywood establishment is choosing to honor black actors for roles that either criminalize them by casting black men as amoral monsters, such as Denzel Washington’s Oscar-winning role in Training Day, or exploit their bodies by casting black women as over-sexualized objects of male desire, as in Halle Berry’s award-winning turn for Monster’s Ball. If The Help’s phenomenal star, Viola Davis, wins for her performance, she’ll be one in a long list of black actors rewarded for playing a role that represents the black experience through a white person’s lens.

In 2001, when Washington won his second Oscar (for lead actor, he had previously won best supporting actor for his performance in Glory) for his raw portrayal of a dirty cop in the movie Training Day, you couldn’t help but wonder why the Academy chose to recognize this performance and not others. While Washington’s exceptional performances as Malcolm X and as Rubin “Hurricane” Carter earned him Oscar nominations, it was his role as a criminal that received the Academy’s ultimate praise. But it was also this role, as dirty cop Alonso Harris, that reinforced the idea that black men, even as cops, are constantly living beyond the letter of the law.

That same year, Halle Berry won the best actress award for her gritty performance in Monster’s Ball. Berry was the first, and so far only, African American to win the award. Berry’s performance in Monster’s Ball was stellar. However, critics honed in on her animalistic and drunken sex scene with her white co-star Billy Bob Thornton, with some arguing that the scene alone won Berry the award. In many ways, the scene plays out a fantasy in which an average beer-drinking guy like Thornton’s character is able to sleep with Halle Berry while she allows him to physically dominate her.

Washington’s and Berry’s performances were exceptional, but their roles fit the standard perceptions of black men and women in the American fabric: black man as criminal and black woman as oversexed jezebel. Hollywood’s embrace of these roles doesn’t reflect progress but regression.

Should Davis receive the best actress award for The Help; her win will be similar to Washington’s: Davis was previously nominated for Doubt, where she played a mother concerned about her son’s relationship with a priest suspected of pedophilia. The Academy’s choice to honor Davis’s role as a maid instead of previous work is a telling detail.

The Academy Awards and Hollywood writ large need to do a better job of recognizing and green-lighting roles and projects that reflect the authentic black experience. One recent example of a forward-thinking movie about black America is the independent film Pariah, the coming-of-age story of a black teenage girl struggling with her sexual identity while growing up with an ultra-religious mother. Pariah received awards from the Black Film Critics Circle, Hollywood Foreign Press, American Film Institute and Broadcast Film Critics Association but was ignored by the Oscars. The Academy’s choice to honor The Help is a reminder of how much further we have to move in order for the stories of people of all colors to be told with truth and substance. Davis’ past work shows that she is an exceptional actress whether playing a maid or a monarch. It’s time Hollywood finally gave her the opportunity to perform beyond the stereotypes.

Romney Has Close Ties to Lobbyists

2012-02-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

Big surprise.-SS

Romney Has Close Ties to Lobbyists: New York Times:

"They have hosted fund-raisers and raised millions of dollars for his campaign. They employed some of his top operatives after his first White House run, helped create the platform for his second bid and have deployed regularly to attack his Republican rivals on the campaign trail. For a candidate running against the entrenched interests of Washington, Mitt Romney keeps an awful lot of lobbyists around."

Comparing taxes under Obama’s and Romney’s budgets

2012-02-13T10:51:00.000-08:00

Go read this whole thing from Ezra. I'm just going to paste the important part.-SS

Comparing taxes under Obama’s and Romney’s budgets:

[...]

Obama’s plan would raise revenues to 19.2 percent of GDP. Most of that would come from people making more than $250,000 a year. Back in September, the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center ran the numbers on his proposal — which is unchanged in the budget — and they estimated that taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent would pay an average federal tax rate of 1.8 percent, those in the middle 20 percent would pay 15.2 percent, and the top 1 percent would pay 36.3 percent.

Romney’s plan cuts taxes to about 17 percent of GDP. Most of those cuts would accrue to upper-income Americans. According to the Tax Policy Center, under Romney’s plan, taxpayers in the bottom 20 percent would pay a rate of 3.4 percent, those in the middle 20 percent would pay a rate of 15.6 percent, and the top 1 percent would pay 25.9 percent.

So low- and middle-income families would pay a bit more under Romney’s tax plan, but high-income families would pay a lot less. Taxes would also fall far short of spending. A realistic estimate of federal spending over the next decade is in the 22-23 percent of GDP range. Romney’s revenues are five to six points below that, and because Romney has promised to balance the budget without cutting defense spending, he would have to cut every domestic spending program, including Social Security and Medicare, by more than 35 percent to make his numbers work.

[...]

How Much Do We Spend on the Nonworking Poor?

2012-02-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

When the GOP starts talking about "strapping young bucks" and "welfare queens" you should throw the facts in their faces.--SS

How Much Do We Spend on the Nonworking Poor?:

The Republican primary field has recently decided to revive the Welfare Queen trope, perhaps in hopes that a bit of that old Reagan magic will rub off on them. The argument, as usual, is that there's a vast stream of federal money going to people who are sitting on their asses eating Cheetos instead of going out and earning a living instead. These people are being bred into dependence on Uncle Sam's tit and having their work ethics destroyed.

So CBPP decided to add up the numbers and figure out how much money the federal government spends on the nonworking poor. The answer: about 10% of all federal welfare spending. How did they come up with that? CBPP's methodology uses Census data to figure out exactly where program dollars are going, but you can get pretty much the same answer using a simpler, easier-to-understand technique. Step One is to list every federal welfare program. Step Two is to deduct spending on the elderly, blind, and seriously disabled. That's Social Security, Medicare, SSI, and about two-thirds of Medicaid. Step Three is to deduct spending that goes to the working poor. That's unemployment compensation, EITC, and child tax credits. Step Four is to add up the rest. This overstates how much goes to the nonworking poor, since these programs are open to both working and nonworking families, but it gives you a rough idea.

It comes to about $235 billion, the bulk of which is Medicaid and SNAP (formerly food stamps). That's 12% of all federal welfare spending and about 6% of the whole federal budget. Once you account for the fact that some of these program dollars go to the working poor, you end up with CBPP's estimate of 10%, or about 5% of the whole federal budget.

Is that too much? I guess you have to decide for yourself. But I'll bet most people think we spend a lot more than 5% of the federal budget on this stuff. They might be surprised to know the real numbers. The CBPP's chart is below, with spending on the nonworking poor highlighted.

Three Major Journals Publish Articles on Limited World Oil Supply

2012-02-12T11:56:00.000-08:00

Big oil is run by Republicans who can put the breaks on any recovery anytime they want.--SS

Three Major Journals Publish Articles on Limited World Oil Supply:

In the past month, three major peer-reviewed journals have published articles relating to limited world oil supply:

In Science, Technology is Turning U. S. Oil Around But Not the World’s, by Richard A. Kerr;

In Nature, Climate Policy: Oil’s Tipping Point has Passed, by James Murray and David King; and

In Energy, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, by Gail Tverberg.

The fact that these articles have been published is significant, because articles in the mainstream press, such as Bloomberg’s recent article, Peak Oil Scare Fades as Shale Deepwater Wells Gush Crude, seem to suggest that our oil problems are past. While the US oil supply situation may be a little better, the world supply situation is still very bad, and oil prices are still very high around the world.

Furthermore, high oil prices tend to have a recessionary effect, and can lead to debt defaults. These issues are described in both the second and third articles above. Thus, there is a substantial chance that high oil prices are contributing to the debt default problem in Europe, and to forecast low world economic growth.

In this post, I briefly describe these articles.

In Science, Technology is Turning U. S. Oil Around But Not the World’s, by Richard A. Kerr

This article points out that even the optimistic estimates, such as BP’s recent Energy Outlook to 2030, see little growth in non-OPEC conventional oil production between now and 2030 (Figure 1).

Figure 1. BP oil forecast to 2030, from BP Energy Outlook to 2030

We are thus dependent on growth in OPEC crude oil and in OPEC natural gas liquids, neither of which is assured, given political uncertainties in the Middle East. While technology advances are making possible some new US oil production, this growth is needed to offset declines in existing fields around the world. There is a great temptation by those using new technology to make forecasts using an “overabundance of optimism.” History shows that US oil production has mostly fallen since 1970 (Figure 2).

Figure 2. History of US production of crude oil, in figure created by EIA (similar to, but not the same as, figure shown Science article).

In Nature, Climate Policy: Oil’s Tipping Point has Passed, by James Murray and David King

According to the authors:

There is less fossil-fuel production available to us than many people believe. From 2005 onwards, conventional crude-oil production has not risen to match increasing demand. We argue that the oil market has tipped into a new state, similar to a phase transition in physics: production is now ‘inelastic’, unable to respond to rising demand, and this is leading to wild price swings. Other fossil-fuel resources don’t seem capable of making up the difference.
Such major spikes in fuel price can cause economic crises, and contributed to the one the world is recovering from now. The future economy is unlikely to be able to bear what oil prices have in store. Only by moving away from fossil fuels can we both ensure a more robust economic outlook and address the challenges of climate change. This will be a decades-long transformation that needs to start immediately.

The article talks about how high oil prices erode family budgets, and points out that it seems likely that it wasn’t just the ‘credit crunch’ that triggered the 2008 recession. The oil price crunch was also involved.

A call-out from the article summarizes a current problem:

The price of oil is likely to have been a contributor to the euro crisis in southern Europe.

In Energy, Oil Supply Limits and the Continuing Financial Crisis, by Gail Tverberg

This is an article I wrote in early 2011, that wasn’t officially published until January 2012. The article can temporarily be downloaded free, as the fifth item down on this list of articles from the January issue.

In this article, I explain why one would expect high oil prices to cause economic disruptions of many types. If consumers are spending more on high-priced oil (and high-priced food, because both costs tend to rise together), they will cut back on discretionary expenditures, such as going out to restaurants and taking vacations and buying new cars. Workers in affected industries will be laid off.

There will also be indirect impacts. People who have been laid off from work will tend to default on their loans, as will people who are living paycheck to paycheck and find that the cost of commuting has rising, and the cost of food has also risen. Holders of sub-prime mortgages will be disproportionately represented in the group of those with defaults, since they were among the least qualified loan applicants.

High oil prices can also be expect to affect housing prices. In part, this occurs because people who spend more on necessities (commuting and food) are less likely to want to buy a move-up home. As a result, there will be a cut-back in demand for homes, and thus in resale prices. Also, at the time that oil prices rose in the 2004-2006 period, the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in an attempt to try to bring oil prices back down. These higher interest rates also tended to reduce demand for move-up homes. I also show that the timing in the drop in US home values matches with what a person would expect, if it were high oil prices, and actions taken by the Federal Reserve in response to high oil prices, that were really behind the drop in home prices.

Filed under: Financial Implications, News Related Post, Published Articles

The overly partisan brain test

2012-02-12T11:51:00.000-08:00

GOP denial has become a cottage industry.--SS

The overly partisan brain test:

(Click for larger image)

Amend Constitution

2012-02-11T16:59:00.000-08:00

Sen. Bernie Sanders has precisely the amendment Mort is looking for:--SS

Amend Constitution:

I read your latest blog entries, and do share much of your perspective when it comes to the country's current political situation. Where I diverge (I think) is when it comes to believing that there's a real distinction between the two major Parties, or at least enough of a difference to justify dutifully casting my vote and hoping the system itself will lean toward real change. John G. in Mass.

I’ll keep casting my vote and I will remain hopeful that the President, whoever that may be, and the Congress, whichever party dominates, will do their best for our country. I will hope that I will hear from the party leaders interesting and positive responses to ideas put forward by the opposition even though Boehner, Reid, Pelosi and McConnell have given me no reason for this hope.

However, since it is so difficult to remain hopeful, I have another hope. I hope we the people will rise up not in anger but in mass with positive solutions to some of the problems we face. This is still a democracy and we are still in charge. The Tea Party went the route of electing people they thought would fix things. I’m sure many Tea Party voters are disappointed with the results or lack thereof. Voting in politicians who spout the rhetoric we want to hear is not the solution because once in they find themselves in a system that resists change and soon they are seduced by the benefits of their position. Voting in “the right people” is not the solution. We must put pressure on the people in office to do our bidding. Corporations and rich people have undue influence because not enough of us are voicing our intent to vote the bums out. We are allowing money to talk. The Occupy Wall Street folks are on the right track. Now they need a mission which I think should be an amendment or two to the Constitution that will cut the influence of money in our government. Votes are what the politicians need. Republicans have gotten candidates to sign pledges to get votes. We should be getting candidates to sign pledges to put forward Constitutional amendments. Amendments are then put before the states and in our states we the people can overcome the money (I think).

PS: It is tempting to call for a new Constitutional Congress. I suspect those called to the CC would be the same people who are being influenced by money today and that the money would be there as well. Better to take one or two issues at a time, the simpler the better.

Ludwig von Mises and the Great Depression

2012-02-11T15:03:00.000-08:00

Another economics lesson from David Glasner that Austrians will ignore.--SS

Ludwig von Mises and the Great Depression:

Many thanks to gliberty who just flagged for me a piece by Mark Spitznagel in today’s (where else?) Wall Street Journal about how Ludwig von Mises, alone among the economists of his day, foresaw the coming of the Great Depression, refusing the offer of a high executive position at the Kredit-Anstalt, Austria’s most important bank, in the summer of 1929, because, as he put it to his fiancée (whom he did not marry till 1938 just before escaping the Nazis), “a great crash is coming, and I don’t want my name in any way connected with it.” Just how going to work for the Kredit Anstalt would have led to Mises’s name being associated with the crash (the result, in Mises’s view, of the inflationary policy of the US Federal Reserve) is left unclear. But it’s such a nice story.

Ludwig von Mises was an extremely well-read and diligent economist, who had some extraordinary insights into economics and business and politics. As a result he made some important contributions to economics, most important the discovery that idea of a fully centrally planned economy is not just an impossibility, it is incoherent. He made other contributions to economics as well, but that insight, perhaps also perceived by Max Weber, was first spelled out and explained by Mises in his book Socialism. That contribution alone is enough to ensure Mises an honorable place in the history of economic thought.

Mises also perceived how the monetary theory of Knut Wicksell, based on a distinction between a market and a natural rate of interest, could be combined with the Austrian theory of capital, developed by his teacher Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk into a theory of business cycles. Von Mises is therefore justly credited with being the father of Austrian business-cycle theory. His own development of the theory was somewhat sketchy, and it was his student F. A. Hayek, who made the great intellectual effort of trying to work out the detailed steps in the argument by which monetary expansion would alter the structure of capital and production, leading to a crisis when the monetary expansion was halted or reversed.

Relying on their newly developed theory of business cycles, Mises and Hayek warned in the late 1920s that the decision of the Federal Reserve to reduce interest rates in 1927, when it appeared that the US economy could be heading into a recession, would distort the structure of production and lead eventually to an even worse downturn than the one the Fed avoided in 1927. That was the basis for Mises’s “prediction” of a “crash” ahead of the Great Depression.

Of course, as I have pointed out previously, Mises and Hayek were not the only ones to have predicted that there could be a downturn. R.G. Hawtrey and Gustav Cassel had been warning about that danger since 1919, should an international return to the gold standard not be managed properly, failing to prevent a rapid deflationary increase in the international monetary demand for gold. When the insane Bank of France began accumulating gold at a breathtaking rate in 1928, and the US reversed its monetary stance in late 1928 and itself began accumulating gold, Hawtrey and Cassel recognized the potential for disaster and warned of the disastrous consequences of the change in Federal Reserve policy.

So Mises and Hayek were not alone in their prediction of a crash; Hawtrey and Cassel were also warning of a looming disaster, and were doing so on the basis of a theory that was both more obvious and more relevant to the situation than theory with which Mises and Hayek were working, a theory that, even giving it the benefit of every doubt, could not possibly have predicted a downturn even remotely approaching the severity of the 1929-31 downturn. Indeed, as I have also pointed out, the irrelevance of the Mises and Hayek “explanation” of the Great Depression is perfectly illustrated by Hayek’s 1932 defense of the insane Bank of France, showing a complete misunderstanding of the international adjustment mechanism and the disastrous consequences of the gold accumulation policy of the insane Bank of France.

Mr. Spitznagel laments that the economics profession somehow ignored Ludwig von Mises. Actually, they didn’t. Some of the greatest economists of the twentieth century were lapsed believers in the Austrian business-cycle theory. A partial list would include, Mises’s own students, Gottfried Haberler and Fritz Machlup; it would include Hayek’s dear friend and colleague, Lionel Robbins who wrote a book on the Great Depression eloquently explaining it in terms of the Austrian theory in a way that even Mises might have approved, a book that Robbins later repudiated and refused to allow to be reprinted in his lifetime (but you can order a new edition here); it would include Hayek’s students, Nobel Laureate J.R. Hicks, Nicholas Kaldor, Abba Lerner, G.L.S. Shackle, and Ludwig Lachmann (who sought a third way incorporating elements of Keynesian and Austrian theory). Hayek himself modified his early views in important ways and admitted that he had given bad policy advice in the 1930s. The only holdout was Mises himself, joined in later years after his arrival in America by a group of more doctrinaire (with at least one notable exception) disciples than Mises had found in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s. The notion that Austrian theory was ignored by the economics profession and has only lately been rediscovered is just the sort of revisionist history that one tends to find on a lot of wacko Austro-libertarian websites like Lewrockwell.org. Apparently the Wall Street Journal editorial page is providing another, marginally more respectable, venue for such nonsense. Rupert, you’re doing a heckuva job.

Trade Deficits and National Income Accouting for Deficit Hawks

2012-02-11T10:22:00.000-08:00

Dean Baker has a sad.--SS

Trade Deficits and National Income Accouting for Deficit Hawks:

The trade deficit jumped by $1.8 billion in December, putting the monthly deficit more than $8 billion above its year ago level. This item got almost no attention from the business press. If there were articles on the rise in the WSJ and NYT, I couldn't find them. The Post did have a somewhat respectable piece, which ran in the business digest in the print edition.

It is remarkable how little attention is given to the trade deficit by people who routinely get nearly hysterical about the budget deficit. Just to remind folks of the basic accounting identity:

X-M = (S-I)+ (T-G)

This means that the trade surplus is equal to the sum of the excess of private saving over private investment (S-I) and the government surplus (T-G). Or, to take the reverse, when we have an annual trade deficit of $600 billion, as is the case now, the sum of private and public savings must be -$600 billion. This is an accounting identity, there is no way around this.

That leaves two choices. We can have large negative savings on the private side, as we did in the peak years of the housing bubble when there was a bubble driven boom in construction and the saving rate fell to zero due to a housing wealth driven surge in consumption. Alternatively, we can have large government deficits.

That is it; that is the full range of choices. This means that if the deficit hawks are upset about our large budget deficit, then they should be very concerned about the growth in the trade deficit. We should have front page stories, hysterical columns and editorials, and enraged pundits denouncing irresponsible politicians for allowing the trade deficit to explode. (Meet the over-valued dollar as the leading villian the story.)

But, we don't see this. Even people who are trying to find out about the economy by taking the time to read the major newspapers carefully will not get the fundamentals about the economy. That is sad.

Robin Supak Won the Otsego Land and Trust Amateur Photography Contest

2012-02-10T14:18:00.000-08:00

Robin Supak Won the Otsego Land and Trust Amateur Photography Contest:

"Sonia Sola, Arthur, and Daisy, Nectar Hills Farm, Late August, 7 p.m."

Robin Supak won this year's amatuer division of the Otsego Land Trust "On the Farm, In the Garden" Photo Contest! Amateur Category- Robin Supak, "Sonia Sola, Arthur, and Daisy, Nectar Hills Farm, Late August, 7 p.m." taken at Nectar Hills Farm, Schenevus, New York.

You can see more pictures of upstate New York's Nectar Hills Farm on their web site, including many more of Robin's pictures. Nectar Hills Farm is all organic, and their grass-fed beef is better for you, the animal, and the planet.

This photograph can be found in the Catskills Mountains Sunsets category here at our computer backgrounds galleries.

Willard Romney

2012-02-10T12:21:00.000-08:00

Romney:

romney
(rom-ney) v.
1. To defecate in terror.

Architecture 2030 E-news 30

2012-02-09T17:22:00.000-08:00

"Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."--Dick Cheney

Architecture 2030 E-news 30:

"AMERICANS WILL SAVE TRILLIONS

In its most recent estimate, the AEO 2011 forecasts that American consumers will spend $3.66 trillion less on energy between 2012 and 2030 than was originally projected in 2005.
If, by 2030, we embrace the most efficient building technologies available, these savings will top $6 trillion."

The Debt Splits the Left, Because the Media Do Such a Horrible Job of Reporting on Economic Issues

2012-02-09T12:19:00.000-08:00

Willard lies with impunity.--SS

The Debt Splits the Left, Because the Media Do Such a Horrible Job of Reporting on Economic Issues:

This column reports on the fact that people on the center and left of the political spectrum have a range of views in the debt/deficit, which the right seems fairly united in arguing for less government spending. It is worth noting that one reason why there may be divisions and confusions on this issue is that the media routinely allow politicians to say complete nonsense on this topic without correcting it.

For example, the piece tells readers:

"Mitt Romney takes up the same theme, with more subtlety, warning that Obama and the Democratic party are fostering a European-style welfare state with a growing 'contingent of long-term jobless, dependent on government benefits for survival.'"

In fact, the generous European welfare states of northern Europe do not have a growing "contingent of long-term jobless, dependent on government benefits for survival." Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria and Norway, the countries with the most generous welfare states, all have lower unemployment rates than the United States both short-term and long-term.

Competent reporters would ridicule Mr. Romney for making such an obviously false assertion, which suggests that either he has no idea of what he is talking about, or is deliberately misrepresenting reality to deceive voters. However, since this assertion generally goes unchallenged, Romney will continually repeat it, leading many in the public to believe that it is true.

The Gold Bubble

2012-02-09T10:43:00.000-08:00

You have 15 minutes to move your cube.--SS

The Gold Bubble:

It's hard to beat Warren Buffett for some old-fashioned fundamentals-based investment analysis so I loved his take on gold which includes the insight that if you gathered up all the outstanding gold in the world and melted it down you'd get a large cube measuring 68 feet per edge. At current market prices, the cube is worth $9.8 trillion:

Let's now create a pile B costing an equal amount. For that, we could buy all U.S. cropland (400 million acres with output of about $200 billion annually), plus 16 Exxon Mobils (the world's most profitable company, one earning more than $40 billion annually). After these purchases, we would have about $1 trillion left over for walking-around money (no sense feeling strapped after this buying binge). Can you imagine an investor with $9.6 trillion selecting pile A over pile B?

None of that is to deny that people have made money in the past betting on gold and may do so again in the future. But rather than being the ultimate hedge against risk, gold is something like the ultimate pure speculation play. You're betting that in the future more people will want to bet that future people will want to bet on gold.

Is Arch Coal About to Mine Historic Blair Mountain?

2012-02-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

If you don't know about the Battle of Blair Mountain, you should.--SS

Is Arch Coal About to Mine Historic Blair Mountain?:

In 2011, we saw the power everyday people can have when we work together to stop a devastating project like the Keystone XL pipeline. But Keystone XL isn't the only major fossil fuel project that the industry is pushing. From building a major new coal plant in Kosovo to fracking in the north-eastern United States, the fossil fuel industry is going to any length to keep this dirty energy economy going.

One of the biggest fights here in the US is over mountaintop removal -- the dangerous form of coal mining that involves literally blowing off the top of mountains to get at the coal underneath. Blair Mountain in West Virginia has become ground zero for the struggle to end mountaintop removal -- a Keystone XL style symbol of an industry run amok.

We just got the press release below from our allies at Friends of Blair Mountain, the Sierra Club, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and others who are working to save this important national treasure. According to some reports on the ground, it seems like Blair might be under threat once again (for a detailed look at all the different news coming out, check out this article by Ken Ward). Please take a minute to read about the latest threat to the mountain and share it with your friends to help spread the word:

Is Arch Coal About to Mine Historic Blair Mountain?

Local and National Groups Rally to Townspeople’s Defense

Logan, WV - Residents of Blair, West Virginia have noticed increased activity from mining company Arch Coal around the historic Blair Mountain Battlefield site. Members of the town have become more and more concerned about Arch’s activities and fear they are moving forward with plans to mine the Blair Battlefield site. There have been reports of proposed buy outs of resident’s property, increasing industrial activity in the area and other preparations indicative of a move towards mining operations on the battlefield itself. Blair Mountain is the site of the largest civil insurrection in American history since the Civil War. In 1921 more than 10,000 coal miners fought forces backed by mining interests in an attempt to organize unions in Logan and Mingo County.

“In the late 1990s, Arch Coal came through and destroyed much of Blair with one mountaintop removal mining operation. The town went from about 700 people to about 90 today. Mountain top removal poisons the drinking water, destroys communities and makes people sick.” says Friends of Blair Mountain executive director, Brandon Nida, who currently lives in Blair. “For the sake of all that is good and right, we must save the people in this town, protect their homes, and save this historic mountain from the decimation and poison of mountaintop removal mining.”

Arch Coal, the second largest coal producer in the United States, has four planned operations that intrude into the Blair Mountain battlefield. They have already begun operations on the Left Fork surface mine, which sits directly adjacent to the battlefield.

According to retired coalminer Joe Stanley, “We know that they are moving quickly in the Blair area. We know that they have land agents trying again to buy from people who have already refused them. And we know they are blasting on the Left Fork permit. So, time is running out for the people of Blair and the battlefield.”

Appalachian filmmaker and Friends of Blair Mountain board member Mari-Lynn Evans says, “Arch Coal is moving the chess pieces in so that they can come in and blast away our heritage. If we wait until they are on the battlefield, it is too late. And they know that.”

The Battle of Blair Mountain was the largest civil uprising after the Civil War, fought due to protracted grievances between coal miners and the coal operators. It was finally brought to a halt after five days of heavy fighting along the Logan-Boone county lines. Federal troops were called in to quell the conflict.

"Blair Mountain is a national treasure and a critical piece of America's history," said Mary Anne Hitt Director of the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign. "Workers fought and died on its slopes for the simple right to represent themselves and win fair working conditions. We will not stop our fight to defend that land and their memory no matter what tactics Arch Coal may use to try and destroy it."

“Not only is our rich West Virginia history being destroyed by out-of-state coal operators, but the people around me here in Blair are being sickened, blasted, and generally run out of town. It’s not easy watching a town being killed, and unless something is done soon to stop the out-of-control companies, there won't be a Blair left in six months, or a Blair Mountain,” says Brandon Nida.

###

Jeremy Lin Has Burst From N.B.A. Novelty Act to Knicks Star - NYTimes.com

2012-02-08T11:07:00.000-08:00

Here's a perfectly timed story for Asian Americans that someone should print out and shove in Pete Hoekstra's racist face.--SS

Jeremy Lin Has Burst From N.B.A. Novelty Act to Knicks Star - NYTimes.com:

"He is a Harvard graduate playing in the National Basketball Association. He is an Asian-American in a league devoid of them, which makes him doubly anomalous. No team drafted Lin in 2010. Two teams cut him in December, before the Knicks picked him up."

[...]

Jeremy Lin’s utterly distinctive, mostly transient N.B.A. existence has taken a rather sudden turn over the past few days.

On Saturday night, Lin came off the bench and powered the Knicks to a 99-92 victory over the Nets at Madison Square Garden, scoring a career-best 25 points with 7 assists. Two nights later, he made his first N.B.A. start and produced 28 points and 8 assists in a 99-88 win over the Utah Jazz.

Knicks fans now serenade Lin with chants of “Je-re-my!” and “M.V.P.!” while the franchise uses his likeness to sell tickets and teammates and coaches gush with praise.

Go read the whole thing.

Dear Ronald Reagan: Thanks for Wrecking America

2012-02-08T09:53:00.000-08:00

Charles P. Pierce at his best.-SS

Dear Ronald Reagan: Thanks for Wrecking America:

Turns out yesterday would have been Ronald Reagan's 101st birthday. In all the excitement over the tsunami of Santorum that engulfed the country, it plumb got right by me. So, let me say, in my own belated way, and because behind-the-times was the basis for Reagan's entire career, happy birthday, ya silly old coot.

How do you like your party now, Ronnie? A Mormon everyone hates, a world-historical balloon animal 10 years past his sell-by date, a survivalist crank from Texas, and a guy who is pretty much a dick. That's the party you and your boys created. That's the end product of the "conservative movement" of which you were the amiable and occasionally coherent figurehead, a prop in your own life. You know how you know that's the case, Ronnie? Look how hard they're trying to memorialize you in concrete and marble. They stuck your name on National Airport, and on the biggest and ugliest building in Washington, D.C., to celebrate your devotion to smaller government. What was it that Bogart said in that detective movie?

The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter.

You taught us that "deficits don't matter." (Dick Cheney himself reminded us of that.) You sold missiles to the terrorist-sponsoring mullahs in Iran so you could sponsor our own priest-slaughtering terrorists in Central America, thereby laying the groundwork for all the secret deceptions in foreign policy that led to the Iraq war, which was designed and launched by some of your own old Iran-Contra hands, and thereby also laying the groundwork for the destructive increase in presidential power that continues (alas) to this day, under a Democratic president.

Go read the whole thing!

What's Worse, They Curse

2012-02-07T18:16:00.000-08:00

George Carlin would love this. Trust me. Go read it.--SS

What's Worse, They Curse:

Lessons on Economics and Politics for the Post: Democracies Have Unions

2012-02-07T13:54:00.000-08:00

Unions make things better.--SS

Lessons on Economics and Politics for the Post: Democracies Have Unions:

Washington Post columnist Charles Lane has decided that public sector unions are undemocratic. This will be a surprise to every democracy in the world, since all of them have public sector unions.

The basic argument seems to be that since unions prevent elected officials from paying as little as they miight want to their workers, they interfere with democracy. This is a bit hard to follow. If a pension fund manager refuses to manage the state's pension fund for a $100 an hour wage, or a doctor refuses to work for $50 an hour for Medicaid, are these people interfering with democracy because they are not accepting the pay offered by an elected official?

Lane then complains that public sector unions make campaign contributions to the state officials with whom they negotiate. This is a reasonable complaint for someone who knows nothing about U.S. politics. It is standard for all sorts of people who do business with the government (e.g. defense contractors, construction companies, pension fund managers) to make campaign contributions to the people with whom they negotiate. It might not be pretty, but this is a problem that goes well beyond unions.

Lane then complains about the "rubber rooms" demanded by NYC in its negotiations with the teacher unions. The city required that teachers awaiting hearings on discipline charges come to school and sit for 8 hours a day. This may be stupid, as Lane suggests, but his complaint is with the city, not the union.

If Lane thinks that unions are an obstacle to good education then he needs to do more homework. Nordic countries like Finland, that rank at the top in most education measures, have much higher unionization rates among their teachers than the U.S. This suggests that the problem is more likely to lie with the Lane's friends on the other side of the negotiating table.

Lane is also confused about basic economics. He complains that the clout of public sector unions allow their members:

"to enjoy retirement and health-care benefits that are often better than those available to the middle-class citizens whose tax dollars support them" adding "even after Walker’s bill, Wisconsin public employees pay just 5.8 percent of their salary toward their pensions and a modest 12.6 percent of their health-care premiums."

In economics, we look at a workers' total compensation packages. It is understood that benefits that are ostensibly paid by employers are a trade-off for higher wages. When the total compensation packages of public sector workers are compared to those with comparable education and experience in the private sector, they actually get somewhat lower pay.

Nevada Caucuses Flop

2012-02-06T14:05:00.000-08:00

Rump Party.--SS

Nevada Caucuses Flop: Las Vegas Sun: "In the casinos, they call it going bust. After months of reassurance that they could play with the big boys despite a trail of mishaps, the Nevada GOP played all of its cards Saturday and lost big time in a messy, disorganized election that saw low turnout and complaints of voter fraud and unexplained ballots."

"But the biggest tell that the volunteer-run caucuses didn't go as planned was that more than 24 hours after voters finished casting their ballots, no one officially knew who had won."

The Las Vegas Review Journal notes turnout was just 32,930, way below the 44,000 that turned out in 2008 and not even close to the 70,000 predicted by party leaders.

The process takes its toll on Romney

2012-02-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Right now at Intrade, you can buy shares of Obama to win in November for $5.74 / share (pays off @ $10 / share). It costs $5 / mo to keep an account there. So, 100 shares would pay $950 ($1000 minus the $50 (ten months) in fees) for an investment of $574, for a profit of $376, and an ROI of 65.5%. You're welcome.--SS

The process takes its toll on Romney:

As the race for the Republican presidential nomination continues, Mitt Romney is confronted with some good news and some bad news. The good news is, he's the clear frontrunner who just racked up two more wins in Florida and Nevada by large margins.

The bad news is, the more voters see Romney, the less popular he becomes. Consider this tidbit from the new Washington Post/ABC News poll:

Overall, 55 percent of those who are closely following the campaign say they disapprove of what the GOP candidates have been saying. By better than 2 to 1, Americans say the more they learn about Romney, the less they like him. Even among Republicans, as many offer negative as positive assessments of him on this question.

Given the circumstances, it would appear the ongoing GOP race isn't doing the frontrunner any favors. Evidence of Romney's "likability problem" has been building in recent weeks, but these new results are just brutal -- the former governor and his campaign are gearing up for the general election phase, but find the public already souring on Romney's persona.

TPM recently published this chart showing Romney's favorable/unfavorable ratings. It's a little out of date -- it does not, for example, reflect the data from the new Post/ABC poll -- but it's hard to miss that spike in the red line, which points to Romney's unfavorable numbers.

TPM

Steve Kornacki recently noted, "[I]t's possible that Romney is simply experiencing the low point that practically every nominee goes through at some point in the primary process."

That may well be the case. It's also possible, though, that a national audience is getting its first good look at Mitt Romney -- his flip-flops, his layoff-driven riches, his out-of-touch gaffes -- and just doesn't find him appealing as a presidential candidate.

Slow Growth, Not Low Interest Rates, Punishes Savers

2012-02-06T12:41:00.000-08:00

Republicans really want to stop the recovery.--SS

Slow Growth, Not Low Interest Rates, Punishes Savers:

There's an idea gaining advocates out there—including, it seems, the President of the St Louis Fed—that a policy of ultra-low interest rates "punishes" savers. This is either totally mistaken or else a deeply misleading way to put the point.

Let's start with misleading. If the outlook for economic growth is very poor, then interest rates are overwhelmingly likely to be low. What's more, if the outlook for economic growth is very poor then the outlook for savers is very bad. What "saving" means is that you buy up some assets that you ho[p]e to sell later. Maybe that's a patch of land with a house on it. Maybe it's some shares in Pacific Gas and Electric. Maybe it's a bond issued by the city of Chicago or a claim on future deliveries of crude oil. If you're good at following instructions and own a diversified portfolio you own a whole great big bunch of stuff. If the economy performs well over the next ten years, then your stuff, in general, will have a higher resale value than if the economy performs poorly. That's what holding a diversified portfolio is all about. Rather than your financial future being pegged to the wisdom of your particular gambles, it's pegged to the overall performance of the economy. If the economy sucks and rates are super-low, you're screwed.

But consider totally mistaken. You bought up a diverse pool of stuff in early 2007 and your stuff isn't worth nearly as much as you'd hoped at the time because the economy performed much worse than you expected. And now James Bullard rides into town and says "let's help savers by raising interest rates!" So up the rates go. Construction employment stops rising. Retail sales fall as debt service as a share of disposable income rises. Car sales fall. People start getting laid off. The jobless people can't pay their mortgages, so defaults and foreclosures rise. Banks are failing, and FDIC-forced mergers lead to more layoffs. Modestly successful small businesses have a hard time getting loans to expand. Retail vacancies rise and commerce real estate defaults spike up. How does this help savers?

Now maybe you have some story about how tight money at a time of massive excess capacity will somehow boost economic growth. It sounds like an interesting, albeit wrong, story. But a desire to help savers makes no sense as an independent consideration. It's just not possible for "savers" to detatch their fate from the fate of the economy as a whole.

Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot - NYTimes.com

2012-02-06T10:22:00.000-08:00

Hey, kids! These idiot science deniers and conspiracy nuts want to make your world a distopian hellscape of mad-max proportions! Guess which party they vote for!--SS

Activists Fight Green Projects, Seeing U.N. Plot - NYTimes.com:

In Maine, the Tea Party-backed Republican governor canceled a project to ease congestion along the Route 1 corridor after protesters complained it was part of the United Nations plot. Similar opposition helped doom a high-speed train line in Florida. And more than a dozen cities, towns and counties, under new pressure, have cut off financing for a program that offers expertise on how to measure and cut carbon emissions.

But wait! There's more crazy!

In January, the Republican Party adopted its own resolution against what it called “the destructive and insidious nature” of Agenda 21. And Newt Gingrich took aim at it during a Republican debate in November.

And even more!

Fox News has also helped spread the message. In June, after President Obama signed an executive order creating a White House Rural Council to “enhance federal engagement with rural communities,” Fox programs linked the order to Agenda 21. A Fox commentator, Eric Bolling, said the council sounded “eerily similar to a U.N. plan called Agenda 21, where a centralized planning agency would be responsible for oversight into all areas of our lives. A one world order.”

Go read the whole thing. It will ruin your day. There's even a picture of some of the assholes!

Nevada caucuses: State GOP rolls snake eyes - Reid J. Epstein - POLITICO.com

2012-02-05T15:10:00.000-08:00

Republicans are really bad at counting votes.--SS

Nevada caucuses: State GOP rolls snake eyes - Reid J. Epstein - POLITICO.com: "Chuck Muth, a former Nevada GOP executive director, wrote on his blog that the night was the “Nevada GOP’s national embarrassment.”

“You can say this about Nevada Republicans: they are consistent,” Muth wrote. “They never blow an opportunity to blow an opportunity. And hoo-ahhh … did they ever blow this one!”

Clark County GOP Chairman Dave Gibbs did not return messages left on his cell phone Sunday morning."

Republicans have a real problem with counting votes

2012-02-05T13:00:00.000-08:00

Republicans have a real problem with counting votes:

It is now 2:45 pm eastern on the day after the Nevada GOP held their caucuses, and they have still yet to fully count all the votes (only 70.4% reporting).

I have some relatives in Nevada, including a wingnut brother-in-law that my children refer to as "Uncle Annoying," and from what I know of him, I don't find it the least bit surprising that a bunch of people who nominated Sharron Angle to run for the Senate can't seem to get their act together enough to, you know, count.

This speaks volumes about the competency and credibility of a statewide organization that hopes to use the power of the Latter Day Saints to guide Willard Rawmoney to a victory in their state this November.

Ron Paul tells Piers Morgan only ‘honest rape’ merits abortion | The Raw Story

2012-02-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

"Honest rape?"--SS

Ron Paul tells Piers Morgan only ‘honest rape’ merits abortion | The Raw Story:

"“If it’s an honest rape,” Paul replied, “that individual should go immediately to the emergency room, I would give them a shot of estrogen.” He claimed, however, that if a woman is “seven months pregnant” and says that she was raped, “It’s a little bit of a different story.”"

The Race for Respect

2012-02-05T10:19:00.000-08:00

If you're unfamiliar with Margaret and Helen, read up. They are a delight!--SS

The Race for Respect:

Margaret, tell Howard he is full of shit. Democrats aren’t trying to take his money. Show me a Republican who makes less than a million a year and I’ll show you a moron who watches Fox News. Newt wants to spout off about a food stamp President and welfare queens which is just another way of saying, “Hey. Who let the black guy into the White House?” And Romney wants us to believe that the poor in America are doing just fine and dandy. Good Lord where did the Republican party dig up these idiots?

Obama isn’t making plans to take your hard-earned money and give it to some poor person who is sitting at home with too many kids just living high on the hog off the government. Despite what Gingrich wants you to think, Obama isn’t a Socialist. I doubt most of the Gingrich voters even know the definition of socialism. After all, it has three more letters in it than Muslim. I do know this – taxes piss everyone off. Nobody likes to be taxed. But we all kind of like our roads, schools, healthcare, national security, law enforcement, energy… Those things represent the majority of what our taxes go to. And speaking of majority, the majority of welfare recipients are children. You know, those precious little bundles of life that the Republican base likes to ignore once the cord is cut.

And now we get to hear it all over again as Mitt and Newt head to Nevada. God help our friends out West. If ever there was a time for things that happen in Vegas to stay in Vegas, this would be it. And you my poor dear, Margaret. Your beautiful state of Maine is also up this week. I’d bake you a sympathy pie, but it won’t be long before the mud-slinging gets to my state as well. At least Perry has been put down.

Mitt and Newt are beginning to bore me. Let’s talk about something else today.

Three cheers for Virginia State Senator Janet Howell who gave the Old White Guys Club a taste of their own medicine. Virginia law makers are trying to pass their own version of the Texas law that requires a woman to have an ultrasound before terminating a pregnancy. Good ‘ole Senator Howell added an amendment that would require men to have a rectal exam and a cardiac stress test before obtaining a prescription for erectile dysfunction medication. I like how that lady thinks. Considering most of them have their head up their ass, a finger up the butt just might knock some sense into their brain. I wish politicians would figure out how to run the country rather than trying to run my uterus. Am I the only one to notice the hypocrisy of the Republican party? They want smaller government all right… just small enough to crawl up my vagina!

And shame on the Susan G. Komen Foundation for letting some Republican nut case from Georgia convince them to start picking on Planned Parenthood. With men like those Virginia State Legislators in the world, we women need to stick together. The folks at Komen might want to remember that is wasn’t all that long ago that breast cancer was another one of those women’s health issues that was feared and discussed in hushed tones, as if it were shameful. Women should be allowed to make medical decisions with their doctors and not with their politicians. Planned Parenthood is one of the largest providers of breast cancer screenings and mammogram referrals in the nation, and that asshat Karen Handel over at Komen is about to find out that Planned Parenthood is also one of the most trusted names in women’s healthcare. I surely would like to introduce Ms. Handel’s ass to my boot. A boot, I might add, that walked in many a Komen Race for a Cure. Now the only walking I’ll be doing is from my door to my mailbox to drop a check in the mail to Planned Parenthood. Women turning on other women when we already have the likes of Rick Perry to deal with… Well I never.

Maybe we should stop Walking for a Cure and start Walking for Respect. I mean it. Really.

Post Column Defending Europe Gets the Story Wrong

2012-02-05T09:16:00.000-08:00

Fox on 15th Street continues to try to blame European Socialism for Europe's problems. It's typical GOP BS.--SS

Post Column Defending Europe Gets the Story Wrong:

An opinion column in the Post defending Europe against charges of being a continent of broken down socialist states, by Martin Klingst, the Washington bureau chief of the German newspaper Die Zeit, got the basic story of its economic crisis wrong. It told readers that Europe's fiscal calamities, "stem in part from the unaffordable benefits for its citizens," later adding, "it is also true that a number of E.U. countries have irresponsibly expanded their welfare systems and can no longer afford their bills."

In fact, the 5 crisis countries (Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) all rank near the bottom in terms of the generosity of their welfare states. The European countries with the most generous welfare states, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, France and Germany, are mostly weathering the economic crisis relatively well.

The problems in the crisis countries stem in part from real estate bubbles that were allowed to grow unchecked by the European Central Bank (ECB), massive tax evasion (especially Greece and Italy), and the inflation fighting obsession of the ECB, coupled with its insistence that it would not act as a lender of last resort. The latter policy has caused the interest burden of these countries to soar. This has meant that a country like Spain faces a far higher debt burden than the U.K., which has a central bank that acts as a lender of last resort, even though the U.K. has a much higher debt burden.

It'll Get Funny Fast

2012-02-05T09:08:00.000-08:00

It's the ability to say shit like this with a straight face that makes me think this neo-confederate will be the VP nominee.--SS

It'll Get Funny Fast:

If the economy is clearly on the rebound by the Fall -- still a big if -- Republican arguments for the presidency will start to get really comical. This morning Gov. McDonnell (R) of Virginia -- a major rising star -- said the improving economy is due to Republican governors, not President Obama.

Chris Christie and the Nation-State Project

2012-02-04T14:04:00.000-08:00

Republicans don't want to know about a history that undermines their bigotry. Bigotry is their Raison d'être.--SS

Chris Christie and the Nation-State Project:

I'm late on this, but given this blog's focus on history, I'd like to use Chris Christie's remarks to pursue a broader question:

Christie last week vowed to veto a gay marriage bill if it came to his desk but said proponents have the option to put the matter on the ballot. He added, "People would have been happy to have a referendum on civil rights rather than fighting and dying in the streets in the South."

I think this comes from an unfortunate sense that Civil Rights movement was merely about being able to be served a cup of coffee next to white folks. I don't minimize the sit-ins. They had great power--but their power is greater still when you understand that they were a component of a broader strategy to destroy a system of white supremacy. Key to the assault, obviously, was securing the right to vote

Let me make this as visceral as possible: Many of the actual people who were beaten and killed "in the streets"--Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, for instance--were attempting to secure the very right which Christie, bizarrely, believes they should have exercised. It's almost as if he doesn't know what the Civil Rights movement actually was.

On a broader level, I go back and forth on whether I should be disturbed by the ignorance so many of us display of our own history. I don't mean this in terms of mere dates and rote facts, but in terms of the texture of the thing. (See yesterday's De Tocqueville thread.) In the defense of Americans, can any nation, en masse, come to a deep understanding of itself which eschews mythology? Are the Russians any better in how they see themselves? The French? The Dutch? The Ghanaians? The Kenyans? The Japanese? The paucity of my travels are rather embarrassing, and so I am not fit to answer.

In his (excellent) book The Substance Of Hope, my friend Jelani Cobb says that "nations are narratives." The point being we tell ourselves a story to make ourselves possible. The story unites us. And I wonder if the problem of African-American History is that it so coldly and cruelly counters the American narrative. I have spent the past two decades thinking about that history and it's ultimately made me more of a believer in the American project, not less of one. But that's a relatively recent development and one at least partially tied to what happened in 2008.

But with that said, I don't think it's too much to ask those who would consider seeking national office to to be more learned. I don't think it's too much to ask our leaders to understand why Andrew Goodman was lynched.

This week in the War on Voting: A new Republican Southern Strategy, a lot like the old one

2012-02-04T13:57:00.000-08:00

If you're not familiar with the disgusting tactics of Lee Atwater, go look up the southern strategy on Wikipedia.--SS

This week in the War on Voting: A new Republican Southern Strategy, a lot like the old one:

A Republican strategy Richard Nixon would love.

Ari Berman has another must-read article on the systematic effort of the GOP to disenfranchise millions, focusing in this installment on redistricing—and resegregation—in the South.

In virtually every state in the South, at the Congressional and state level, Republicans—to protect and expand their gains in 2010—have increased the number of minority voters in majority-minority districts represented overwhelmingly by black Democrats while diluting the minority vote in swing or crossover districts held by white Democrats. “What’s uniform across the South is that Republicans are using race as a central basis in drawing districts for partisan advantage,” says Anita Earls, a prominent civil rights lawyer and executive director of the Durham-based Southern Coalition for Social Justice. “The bigger picture is to ultimately make the Democratic Party in the South be represented only by people of color.” The GOP’s long-term goal is to enshrine a system of racially polarized voting that will make it harder for Democrats to win races on local, state, federal and presidential levels. Four years after the election of Barack Obama, which offered the promise of a new day of postracial politics in states like North Carolina, Republicans are once again employing a Southern Strategy that would make Richard Nixon and Lee Atwater proud.

If there ever was a strong argument for a 50-state strategy for Democrats, in which strong parties are fostered and competitive in every single state, this is it. The GOP is hell-bent on cheating its way to a permanent majority, whether by voter suppression or a return to segregation. And it's largely happening because of the concerted effort by Republicans in the last 30 years to begin working at the local level, dominating local politics and creating a strong infrastructure to take over first state legislatures, then governorships, secretaries of state, and federal offices.

The fight is in the courts, too, with no fewer than five suits currently pending against Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. Section 5 is the provision that requires states covered by the act to receive pre-clearance from the Justice Department or a three-judge District Court in Washington for any election law changes that affect minority voters. One of these challenges could well make it to the Supreme Court, where its fate is at best uncertain.

For more of the week's news, make the jump below the fold.

How Romney Uses the Mormon Church

2012-02-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

If a church starts telling people how to vote, should they be able to keep their tax exempt status?--SS

How Romney Uses the Mormon Church: BuzzFeed: "The secret to the grassroots success lies, in part, in the unique national structure and scrupulous record-keeping of the Utah-headquartered Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. While the church itself is politically neutral, it contains the structural groundwork for one of the most organized and effective voting blocs in the country -- something Romney is poised to capitalize on."

"In contrast with most other religions in the country, the Mormon Church is nationally organized in a strict, top-down fashion, like a corporation. Every congregation in the U.S. reports back to church headquarters in Salt Lake. Whenever an individual is baptized -- either as a child or as a convert -- local ministers take down the person's name, address, phone number, and e-mail address... The church expressly forbids using these directories for non-religious purposes, but that doesn't deter many politically active Mormons from working their ward lists to get out the vote. Reports abound of members blasting out congregational e-mails soliciting support for partisan causes and candidates."

Apparently Unaware of Global Warming, L.A. Times Remains “Perplexed by the Mild Weather Across the U.S.”

2012-02-04T12:54:00.000-08:00

Duyah, I wunder wat cood be causin dis hear warm spell?--SS

Apparently Unaware of Global Warming, L.A. Times Remains “Perplexed by the Mild Weather Across the U.S.”:

One thing you can say about the Los Angeles Times, they are consistent in their miscoverage of global warming.

On January 27, they committed “journalistic malpractice,” as climatologist Michael Mann tweeted, for omitting any mention of global warming whatsoever in their article seeking to explain why the U.S. “seems to have largely escaped winter.”

On Groundhog day, coincidentally enough, they did it again. Hmm. Maybe this is like the movie and they are just going to keep making the same mistakes over and over and over again…..

As the L.A. Times “explains” in the article:

“It’s mild,” said Pastelok, a meteorologist from AccuWeather, in one of the bigger understatements of the season.
“The departures have been way above normal this season, maybe in a top five or top 10 category,” he said when asked to rank how unusual the winter from the Plains eastward had been in terms of temperatures and lack of snow.
The situation has stymied forecasters, who study previous years’ patterns to predict the future. This year has been unique because even when there have been cold snaps, they have been extremely brief and followed by long, mild stretches.

If only scientists had predicted years ago that spewing billions and billions of tons of heat trapping greenhouse gases into the air would cause more frequent extreme heat waves — ones that covered a bigger area and lasted far longer than before.

And no, confusionists and their enablers, those scientists didn’t say that global warming would be responsible for 100% of all heat waves. But we are now pushing so far beyond the historical norm that we are seeing unprecedented uber-extreme heat waves (see Hansen et al: “Extreme Heat Waves … in Texas and Oklahoma in 2011 and Moscow in 2010 Were ‘Caused’ by Global Warming”).

The good news is that while the L.A. Times remains clueless, NBC news got the story just right — global warming piles the heat on top of whatever natural variability, like La Niña, we see. Here’s their excellent story on the heat wave so unusual, people were “calling it JUNuary”:

Again, one can always tell the difference between good journalism and not so good journalism by whether they quote real climate scientists who have actually studied the issue in question.

In this case, they went to the source, Dr. Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). You can read about his work here: “Record high temperatures far outpace record lows across U.S.” NCAR explained their findings in a news release:

Spurred by a warming climate, daily record high temperatures occurred twice as often as record lows over the last decade across the continental United States, new research shows. The ratio of record highs to lows is likely to increase dramatically in coming decades if emissions of greenhouse gases continue to climb.
“Climate change is making itself felt in terms of day-to-day weather in the United States,” says Gerald Meehl, the lead author and a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). “The ways these records are being broken show how our climate is already shifting.”

Of course, it’s not warm winters that cause the big problem, it’s the blistering summers.

Here’s a Stanford release for Climatic Change study (PDF here) I wrote about in June:

Stanford climate scientists forecast permanently hotter summers
The tropics and much of the Northern Hemisphere are likely to experience an irreversible rise in summer temperatures within the next 20 to 60 years if atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations continue to increase, according to a new climate study by Stanford University scientists….
“According to our projections, large areas of the globe are likely to warm up so quickly that, by the middle of this century, even the coolest summers will be hotter than the hottest summers of the past 50 years,” said the study’s lead author, Noah Diffenbaugh, The study, based on observations and models, finds that most major countries, including the United States, are “likely to face unprecedented climate stresses even with the relatively moderate warming expected over the next half-century.”

I interviewed Diffenbaugh for my book, Hell and High Water, and in 2008 wrote about his earlier work in a post titled, “When can we expect very high surface temperatures?”

Bottom line: By century’s end, extreme temperatures of up to 122°F would threaten most of the central, southern, and western U.S. Even worse, Houston and Washington, DC could experience temperatures exceeding 98°F for some 60 days a year.

The peak temperature analysis comes from a Geophysical Research Letters paper that focused on the annual-maximum “once-in-a-century” temperature. The key scientific point is that “the extremes rise faster than the means in a warming climate.”

The results, depicted above (in °C), are quite remarkable, especially when you consider that this is just the A1B scenario. In 2100, A1B hits about 700 ppm with average global temperatures “only” about 3°C (5 F) warmer than today.

In fact, on our current emissions path, a 3C temperature rise will happen much sooner (see Hadley Center: “Catastrophic” 5-7°C warming by 2100 on current emissions path and M.I.T. doubles its 2095 warming projection to 10°F — with 866 ppm and Arctic warming of 20°F). And remember, the worst-case scenario is that this happens by mid-century [see Royal Society special issue details ‘hellish vision’ of 7°F (4°C) world — which we may face in the 2060s!]

On our current emissions path, these record temperatures could be seen closer to 2060 than 2100:

… values in excess of 50°C [122°F] in Australia, India, the Middle East, North Africa, the Sahel and equatorial and subtropical South America.

As you can see from the map, extreme temperature peaks are only slightly lower over large parts of this country. The study notes:

Such temperatures, if lasting for some days, are life threatening and receive relatively little attention in the climate change debate.

On our current emissions path, we may well exceed the A2 scenario and hit A1FI, 1000 ppm (see here). In a terrific March 2010 presentation, Climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe has a figure of what the A1FI would mean:

Mother Nature is just warming up.

The time to act is yesterday.

Science stunner — On our current emissions path, CO2 levels in 2100 will hit levels last seen when the Earth was 29°F (16°C) hotter: Paleoclimate data suggests CO2 “may have at least twice the effect on global temperatures than currently projected by computer models”

Chart Of Darkness

2012-02-04T10:03:00.000-08:00

So many facts, so little time.--SS

Chart Of Darkness:

The problem with this Zero Hedge “implied unemployment rate” chart that the wingers are screaming about as proof of a massive “Democrat Party scam” is the fact that Tyler Durden ran the numbers back for 30 years and it exists all the way back to the Reagan era, and it shows that the “real” unemployment rate under President Bill Clinton was actually under two percent by the time he left office. Slick Willie was such a monster that he lowballed his numbers every month for both of his two terms and spotted himself a higher 4.0% plus unemployment rate instead, and then George W. Bush came along and quadrupled it from 2 percent to 8 percent. (Why Bush the Elder didn’t learn from his boss, I dunno.)

Not only that, but the implied rate under St. Ronaldus (nearly 14%) was far worse than anything currently under the Obama administration (falling from 12%), meaning that if we’re measuring who the worst President in history is by the implied unemployment rate and by how far the numbers are “lying” then that particular crown goes to Jellybean. His guys basically shaved 3.5 points off the unemployment rate for the entirety of his first term and still got him re-elected overwhelmingly in 1984 as a result. Of course, since that’s the benchmark, it doesn’t count. President Obama took a far worse collapse and is handling far better than Reagan did with his recession, so of course everyone has to ignore 95% of the chart.

You know, because President Obama is judged by a different standard for reasons that nobody on the right can seem to articulate…

Turns out Komen Foundation Senior VP Karen Handel is a fundie anti-gay bigot. Also

2012-02-03T17:34:00.000-08:00

Hey, Republicans! Keep this stuff up! There's an election coming for Pete's sake!--SS

Turns out Komen Foundation Senior VP Karen Handel is a fundie anti-gay bigot. Also:

Karen Handel showing her Christian compassion for poor women on Twitter

And I really didn't need to know this to consider Komen Senior VP Karen Handel a thoroughly loathsome human being (the retweet said volumes in just a few characters) but John Aravosis has dug up Handel's bigoted, Christian fundamentalist views on LGBT people from less than two years ago, though they read as though they are from the 1960s.

First, I want to say though I anticipate never having to confront the dilemma of an unwanted pregnancy myself, I unequivocally stand by a woman's right to make her own reproductive choices, and against this insane environment that is demonizing Planned Parenthood.

In fact, the first night I heard about it I was so enraged I, like so many others, burned up my Twitter feed yelling at @komenforthecure and retweeting anyone who, like me, was equally outraged at this outrageously stupid decision.

I was so enraged—and I am not making this up—a New York Times reporter contacted me to talk about grassroots pushback. Who knows? I might get quoted. I think I pointed him to more newsworthy subjects though.

More below the fold.

Romney vs. Romney vs. Reality

2012-02-03T12:35:00.000-08:00

Facts are not Willard's friend.--SS

Romney vs. Romney vs. Reality:

While accepting Donald Trump's endorsement yesterday, Mitt Romney repeated one of the central arguments of his entire candidacy: "[President Obama is] frequently telling us that he did not cause the recession, and that's true. But he made it worse."

Part of the problem with the claim is that Mitt Romney strongly disagrees with Mitt Romney. The likely Republican presidential nominee has said, consistently and frequently in recent weeks, that the U.S. economy is improving under President Obama. To be sure, the former governor doesn't believe Obama deserves credit for these developments, but Romney has nevertheless said, over and over again, that the economy is "getting better."

He can argue that the economy is better, or he can argue the economy is worse. Even Romney should realize, however, he can't argue both at the same time.

The more glaring issue is how wrong Romney -- at least yesterday's version -- has the facts wrong.

Here's a chart, for example, showing the change in private-sector job totals by month since the start of the Great Recession, with red columns showing the months when George W. Bush was president and the blue columns showing the Obama era.

And here's a chart showing private-sector job totals by year over the last two decades.

And here's a chart showing economic growth by quarter since the start of the recession.

And here's a chart showing the Dow Jones Industrial Average since Obama took office.

The question reporters might want to pose to Romney is simple; in what universe did Obama make the recession "worse"?

Initial Republican response to jobs report: uh...er...

2012-02-03T11:58:00.000-08:00

I guess all the Austrians have gone back to Austria.--SS

Initial Republican response to jobs report: uh...er...:

Republicans haz a sad over job news.

Zeke Miller points out that on the usual first Friday of the month for the past year or so, reporters and bloggers could expect their in-boxes to get Republican head-shaking, finger-pointing responses to the latest government jobs report within minutes of its announcement at 8:30 AM ET. This morning? It was the cricket chorus while the pre-written GOP press releases were scrapped and hastily rewritten to deal with the fact that the latest report was the strongest in a very, very long time.

It must have been a tight-lipped half-hour for what blogger Brent Budowsky so aptly labels the "Hope America Fails" Republicans. Because, while there are concerns to be found when one drills down into the jobs data, the headline figures, the "optics" of the report as it were, are excellent election-year news for the Democrats and for President Obama. Not to mention the millions of Americans struggling to find work.

So it was no surprise that the first public Republican reactions, coming in at 9:08 AM, sounded a bit like stutters. House Speaker John Boehner:

“While there are flickers of hope in our recovery and certainly they’re welcome,” the speaker said. “But the American people were promised by the president that unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. And here we are 36 straight months with unemployment over 8 percent.”

And House Majority Leader Eric Cantor:

“After several years of bad jobs news, we are finally seeing some good news in today’s jobs report,” Cantor said in a statement. “These numbers are encouraging, especially for those millions of Americans out of work, but we should aim even higher. We shouldn't settle, we can do more, this is America.”

Republican Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers said Ronald Reagan led a faster recovery from a “more difficult, deeper recession” that he inherited (a claim disputed by economists who say the two recessions were extremely different and uncomparable in many ways).

And Mitt Romney:

“We welcome the fact that jobs were created and unemployment declined,” Romney said in a statement. “Unfortunately, these numbers cannot hide the fact that President Obama's policies have prevented a true economic recovery. We can do better.”

This from the guys whose party has been voting against even modest Democratic efforts to put Americans back to work following the most devastating economic downturn since Model T's were the most common car on the road. From a guy who doesn't care about poor people and who enjoys firing people. From congressional leaders who have done their damnedest to curtail programs like unemployment insurance meant to ease some of the pain of those without work. From the cohort of politicians which seeks to cut big holes in the safety net designed to shield Americans from the worst effects of recessions and the other vagaries of an economy riven by top-down class warfare.

Their hemming and hawing would be hilarious if their policy initiatives weren't so pernicious. May every month until November make them equally speechless.

Ben Bernanke Is Wrong About Debt and Interest Rates

2012-02-02T12:28:00.000-08:00

Facts and logic that Rethugs will choke on.--SS

Ben Bernanke Is Wrong About Debt and Interest Rates:

Ben Bernanke's testimony on the fiscal outlook is largely unobjectionable, but this business about how "the prospect of unsustainable deficits has costs, including an increased possibility of a sudden fiscal crisis" is nonsense. He says, "As we have seen in a number of countries recently, interest rates can soar quickly if investors lose confidence in the ability of a government to manage its fiscal policy." This is not, in fact, something that we have seen in any countries recently. Countries that borrow in their own currency—the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan, Sweden, etc.—face no risk of sudden-stop lurches in interest rates because their central banks control their interest rates. What we did see recently was that people used to think the European Central Bank would stand behind Italy and Spain the way the Bank of England stands behind the United Kingdom. The ECB turns out to be run by sociopathetic madmen. I grant that it is possible that the U.S. Federal Reserve system is also run by madmen, in which case Bernanke should warn us about that, since while the CBO Director is perfectly capable of talking about the budget, only Bernanke can talk about Bernanke's personal policy preferences.

Under standard assumptions, however, the risks a country in America's position face are:

A fall in the value of the dollar as foreign savers lose their taste for dollar-denominated financial instruments.

A rise in the price level, as the monetary base expands rapidly in the face of central bank efforts to stabilize interest rates.

Under the present circumstances it's actually far from clear that expansions in the monetary base do cause inflation, but a rise in the price level would be welcome. A fall in the value of the dollar would also be welcome.

If you look at the long-term budget predictions and try to peer beyond the veil of accounting, what you see is this: If in the future there are more old people and more possible health care treatments to give to old people, then in order to give all those treatments to old people someone will have to pay the taxes to pay the people to pay for the treatment. Since people don't like paying taxes and people also don't like denying medical treatments to old people, this gives us a very real dilemma about possible future states of the world. But there's no way that this future dilemma can cause problems right now for country with high unemployment, low inflation, and a large trade deficit.

Susan G. Komen's Founder Is Major GOP Donor, Ex-Bush Ambassador | Mother Jones

2012-02-02T12:21:00.000-08:00

Susan G. Komen's Founder Is Major GOP Donor, Ex-Bush Ambassador | Mother Jones:

"Komen's founder is pretty conservative, too. Komen CEO Nancy G. Brinker, who founded the foundation in memory of a sister who died from breast cancer, was the chief protocol officer for the United States from 2007 to 2009 under the George W. Bush administration, and before that served as his ambassador to Hungary.

Brinker is also a major Republican donor, and has given more than $175,000 to Republican candidates and the Republican National Committee since 1990, according to donor data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. Her late husband, Norman Brinker, was the chairman of Brinker International Restaurants, which owns the chains Chili's, Maggiano's, and Macaroni Grill. Norman Brinker gave more than $440,000 to Republicans between 1990 and his death in 2009."

Mitt Romney hauls out the weak-on-defense canard over Afghanistan withdrawal plans

2012-02-02T10:29:00.000-08:00

Ron Paul fans should note that come November, you'll have two choices. One choice wants to get out of Afghanistan, and the other doesn't.--SS

Mitt Romney hauls out the weak-on-defense canard over Afghanistan withdrawal plans:

Pew Center for the People & the Press

GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday the announcement from the Obama administration that U.S. combat troops will be withdrawn from Afghanistan next year puts "in jeopardy the mission of the United States of America and our commitments to freedom." That's the standard Democratic-patriotism-is-suspect line Republicans have been using since 1949 when Mao Zedong took over China.

“Today, [President Obama's] secretary of defense unleashed such a policy,” said Romney. “The secretary of defense said that on a day certain, the middle of 2013, we’re going to pull out our combat troops from Afghanistan.” [...]
“He announced that. He announced that. So the Taliban hears it, the Pakistanis hear it, the Afghan leaders hear it,” said Romney. “Why in the world do you go to the people that you’re fighting with and tell them the date you’re pulling out your troops? It makes absolutely no sense.”

Romney has no skin in this fight. Indeed, when it comes to matters of national defense, he has shown himself to be as tin-earred as he is on poor people, taxes and income inequality. Queried during his campaign for the 2008 nomination about what his sons would be doing to "support this war on terrorism" since they weren't in the military, Romney responded, “[O]ne of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping to get me elected.”

Getting him elected apparently would keep U.S. combat troops fighting a lot longer in Afghanistan than the majority of Americans want, according to the latest poll on the subject by the Pew Center for the People & the Press.

There is plenty to criticize the administration over with regards to its Afghanistan policy. Getting Osama bin Laden did not require tripling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and spending tens of billions of dollars more than had already been spent. Putting Afghanistan on a secure footing against the Taliban, rooting out corruption and establishing a trusted central government backed by a military that that country can actually pay for was never in the cards, as many critics said when the escalation began in 2009. Now, more people than before realize this.

Romney says he will listen to what the generals say about Afghanistan. That's what Obama did. It didn't work. And now, too slowly to be sure, the troops they advised be sent there are coming home. Romney thinks this is a bad idea. An idea that puts us in danger. Most Americans don't agree.

Romney’s ‘super PAC’ political support group benefits from wealthy donors, hedge fund managers - The Washington Post

2012-02-01T15:40:00.000-08:00

Romney’s ‘super PAC’ political support group benefits from wealthy donors, hedge fund managers - The Washington Post:

"The top $1 million contributions came from Robert Mercer, co-executive of Renaissance Technologies, one of the world’s largest hedge funds; Julian H. Robertson Jr., the retired head of Tiger Management Corp., another top hedge fund; and Paul Singer, head of the New York-based Elliot Management Corp. Singer is a major Republican party campaign bundler, and his firm has attracted controversy for one of its investment tactics, the practice of buying up sovereign debt of Third World and economically distressed nations."

Mitt Romney Praises Safety Net He Wants To Shred

2012-02-01T12:32:00.000-08:00

Logic.--SS

Mitt Romney Praises Safety Net He Wants To Shred:

The fact that Mitt Romney isn't concerned with the fate of poor people is hardly shocking news, but his stated explanation for why he's indifferent to the most intense economic suffering in the country is interesting.

“I’m not concerned with the very poor. We have a safety net there,” Romney told CNN. “If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.”

There's a certain logic to that position. Except that if you read Romney's policy agenda what he appears to think about the social safety net for the poor is that it should be drastically curtailed. He proposes the following five points:

Immediately cut nonsecurity discretionary spending by 5 percent.

Reform and restructure Medicaid as block grant to states.

Align wages and benefits of government workers with market rates.

Reduce federal workforce by 10 percent via attrition.

Undertake fundamental restructuring of government programs and services.

In other words he wants to cut the safety net, cut the health care part of the safety net, muck around with the federal workforce, and then cut the non-health care part of the safety net. To further clarify, he states that he "will immediately move to cut spending and cap it at 20 percent of GDP" while increasing defense spending. Which is to say he wants to cut social safety net spending. What's more "as spending comes under control, he will pursue further cuts that would allow caps to be set even lower so as to guarantee future fiscal stability," thus cutting social safety net spending even further.

There's nothing remarkable about this, really, since I don't think most Americans assume that cutting spending on poor people is what Republicans are all about. But it's extremely strange for Romney to be running on agenda of sharp cuts to the social safety net while citing the safety net's existence as a key reason to be indifferent to the plight of the poor. It's quite true that we have a safety net for poor people right now, but we won't have one for long if Romney's budget ideas are implemented.

A Theory of American Governance

2012-02-01T11:20:00.000-08:00

Yglesias finds the bottom line: if rich people want safe air travel, we get safe air travel. If they want loose regulation on finance, we get loose regulation on finance. It's all about influence.--SS

A Theory of American Governance:

Francis Fukuyama has one:

Conversely, I would argue that the quality of governance in the US tends to be low precisely because of a continuing tradition of Jacksonian populism. Americans with their democratic roots generally do not trust elite bureaucrats to the extent that the French, Germans, British, or Japanese have in years past. This distrust leads to micromanagement by Congress through proliferating rules and complex, self-contradictory legislative mandates which make poor quality governance a self-fulfilling prophecy. The US is thus caught in a low-level equilibrium trap, in which a hobbled bureaucracy validates everyone’s view that the government can’t do anything competently. The origins of this, as Martin Shefter pointed out many years ago, is due to the fact that democracy preceded bureaucratic consolidation in contrast to European democracies that arose out of aristocratic regimes.

That seems descriptively correct to me. A case in point is the endless problems caused by the congressional confirmation system even though research keeps showing that relying more on high-level civil servants would produce better-run agencies over and above the benefits of reducing the quantity of nomination follies. But a causal account ought to explain not only why American democracy produces worse governance than British democracy, but better governance than Italian democracy. I'm not sure that the sequencing theory can, in fact, explain that. It also seems notable to me that America's largest public agency, the military, is absolutely the best in the world. I don't think it's a coincidence that its also an agency that's run along more professionalized more "European" lines. Elected officials influence which senior military officers get which assignments, but fundamentally all senior military assignments go to professional military officers. And increasingly presidents have chosen to appoint senior military officers to run other agencies whenever it's plausible. So it's not as if it's impossible for the American political system to hit upon the high-level equilibrium.

I'm a big fan of Paul Romer's essay (PDF) that draws a different kind of contrast between the way the FAA regulates aviation safety and the way OSHA regulates workplace safety and the implications for financial regulation. In this context, I think the issue is that there just aren't any socially, economically, or politically influential actors who want civilian aviation to be unsafe. Airlines know that the public's irrational fear of airplanes is a business problem for them and so despite disagreements around the margin embrace the goal of making air travel safe. Financial regulators operate in a very different context where there are plenty of socially, economically, and politically influential actors who don't want macroprudential regulation to be done properly. Given that, we're not going to get it done properly.

Kentucky Bridge Collapse - Why Sensible Infrastructure Fixes Collapse in Congress - Esquire

2012-01-31T14:41:00.000-08:00

Charles P. Pierce on infrastructure spending.--SS

Kentucky Bridge Collapse - Why Sensible Infrastructure Fixes Collapse in Congress - Esquire:

"Officials in Kentucky now say that the navigation lights should have been sufficient for the ship to notice that it was going under the wrong part of the bridge. But, still, the bridge would have been 80 years old this year. It was scheduled to be replaced anyway, and very preliminary work of a new four-lane bridge over the lake already had begun. You wonder how many patch-and-fill projects there are around the country, how many bridges with balky lighting and obsolete construction. Of all the mysteries of our politics, why this country can't simply fix itself is one of the most enduring. And the mystery is not why sensible proposals die in Congress. They die for the reasons they always die — because, in Congress, sensible proposals end up in the hands of nonsenical people. The mystery is why the American people don't rise up, merely out of raw self-interest, and scream, "Fix the damn bridges. Fix the damn roads. Hell, fix the damn dams." This shouldn't be hard to do. Infrastructure spending creates jobs and it keeps you and your car from falling into a lake. Scoreboard!"

Go read the whole thing.

An increasingly unappealing field

2012-01-31T12:39:00.000-08:00

Hey, GOP voters! Sit down, shut up, and eat the gruel the party is feeding you.--SS

An increasingly unappealing field:

At this point in the nominating process, it stands to reason that Republican voters would start finding the field of candidates more appealing. The presidential hopefuls have been available for nearly a year; GOP voters have gotten to know them and their agendas pretty well; and the various party constituencies should have settled on a favorite by now.

And yet, as the Pew Research Center found, rank-and-file Republicans are finding themselves less satisfied with their presidential choices, not more. As the Pew report, released yesterday, explained, "In fact, more Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters say the GOP field is only fair or poor (52%) than did so in early January (44%)."

Pew Research Center

In other words, this field of candidates isn't just unappealing to the party's own voters; it's increasingly unappealing.

Or as Paul Begala recently put it, "[W]hen I look at the economy, I think Obama can't win, but when I look at the Republicans, I think he can't lose. The economy is starting to get better; the Republicans aren't."

This is usually about the time when some on the right -- see Douthat, Kristol, et al -- begin to argue that there's still an ever-so-small chance that some "white knight" candidate will come rushing in to save the party. In case this isn't already obvious, Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush supporters can forget it: too many filing deadlines have passed, making it "effectively impossible" for a late entrant to have a realistic shot at the nomination.

And what about talk of a brokered/deadlocked Republican convention? That's not going to happen, either.

There are four candidates left -- Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul -- and one of them will win the 2012 Republican nomination, whether the party's voters like it or not.

Climate change policy: Oil's tipping point has passed

2012-01-31T10:22:00.000-08:00

Now why would oil and gas companies lie about their reserves?--SS

Climate change policy: Oil's tipping point has passed:

This is a reprint of a news release written by Sandra Hines and posted on the website of the University of Washington on Jan 26, 2012.

Stop wrangling over global warming and instead reduce fossil-fuel use for the sake of the global economy.

That’s the message from two scientists, one from the University of Washington and one from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, who say in the current issue of the journal Nature (Jan. 26) that the economic pain of a flattening oil supply will trump the environment as a reason to curb the use of fossil fuels.

“Given our fossil-fuel dependent economies, this is more urgent and has a shorter time frame than global climate change,” says James W. Murray, UW professor of oceanography, who wrote the Nature commentary with David King, director of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment.

The “tipping point” for oil supply appears to have occurred around 2005, says Murray, who compared world crude oil production with world prices going back to 1998. Before 2005, supply of regular crude oil was elastic and increased in response to price increases. Since then, production appears to have hit a wall at 75 million barrels per day in spite of price increases of 15 percent each year.

“As a result, prices swing wildly in response to small changes in demand,” the co-authors wrote. “Others have remarked on this step change in the economies of oil around the year 2005, but the point needs to be lodged more firmly in the minds of policy makers.”

J Murray, U of Washington/D King, U of Oxford/Nature

Source: US Energy Information Administration Annual Energy Outlook 2011

For those who argue that oil reserves have been increasing, that more crude oil will be available in the future, the co-authors wrote: “The true volume of global proved reserves is clouded by secrecy; forecasts by state oil companies are not audited and appear to be exaggerated. More importantly, reserves often take 6 - 10 years to drill and develop before they become part of the supply, by which time older fields have become depleted.” Production at oil fields around the world is declining between 4.5 percent and 6.7 percent per year, they wrote.

“For the economy, it’s production that matters, not how much oil might be in the ground,” Murray says. In the U.S., for example, production as a percentage of total reserves went from 9 percent to 6 percent in the last 30 years.

“We’ve already gotten the easy oil, the oil that can be produced cheaply,” he says. “It used to be we’d drill a well and the oil would flow out, now we have to go through all these complicated and expensive procedures to produce the oil.”

The same is true of alternative sources such as tar sands or “fracking” for shale gas, Murray says, where supplies may be exaggerated and production is expensive. Take the promise of shale gas and oil: A New York Times investigative piece last June reported that “the gas may not be as easy and cheap to extract from shale formations deep underground as the companies are saying, according to hundreds of industry e-mails and internal documents and an analysis of data from thousands of wells.”

Production at shale gas wells can drop 60 to 90 percent in the first year of operation, according to a world expert on shale gas who was one of the sources for the commentary piece. Murray and King built their commentary using data and information from more than 15 international and U.S. government reports, peer-reviewed journal articles, reports from groups such as the National Research Council and Brookings Institution and association findings.

Stagnant oil supplies and volatile prices take a toll on the world economy. Of the 11 recessions in the U.S. since World War II, ten were preceded by a spike in oil prices, the commentary noted.

“Historically, there has been a tight link between oil production and global economic growth,” the co-authors wrote. “If oil production can’t grow, the implication is that the economy can’t grow either.”

Calculations from the International Monetary Fund, for example, say that to achieve a 4 percent growth in the global economy in the next five years, oil production must increase about 3 percent a year.

“Yet to achieve that will require either an heroic increase in oil production, ... increased efficiency of oil use, more energy-efficient growth or rapid substitution of other fuel sources,” according to the commentary.

“Economists and politicians continually debate policies that will lead to a return to economic growth. But because they have failed to recognize that the high price of energy is a central problem, they haven’t identified the necessary solutions: weaning society off fossil fuel.”

The commentary concludes: “This will be a decades-long transformation and we need to start immediately. Emphasizing the short-term economic imperative from oil prices must be enough to push governments into action now.”

Reference:

Nature Commentary: “Climate policy: Oil's tipping point has passed”, James Murray1 & David King

Nature, Volume 481, Pages: 433–435, 26 January 2012, doi:10.1038/481433a

Romney Can't Quote Bean Bag

2012-01-30T15:33:00.000-08:00

Romney is an awful campaigner.--SS

Romney Can't Quote Bean Bag: Dan Amira notes Mitt Romney has spent much of the presidential campaign butchering one of the great political phrases of all time: "Politics ain't bean bag."

"As far as we can tell, Romney has not accurately recited the aphorism a single time during this entire campaign. Nitpicking? Sure. Romney is usually only off by one letter. Still, 'politics ain't bean bag' has been repeated for over 115 years now. It's four words long. It shouldn't be too difficult to master."

It was first uttered by Mr. Dooley, an Irish-American character created by writer Finley Peter Dunne in an 1895 newspaper column. The full quote: “Sure, politics ain’t bean-bag. ‘Tis a man’s game, an’ women, childer, cripples an’ prohybitionists ‘d do well to keep out iv it.”

Compensation

2012-01-30T13:09:00.000-08:00

Looks like TNC's final piece on Ron Paul's neo-confederatism, and it is certainly worth reading the whole series.--SS

Compensation:

IV. Morality

One rather unfortunate argument made to me, over the past few weeks, grudgingly acknowledges Ron Paul's willingness to cover up his profligate race-baiting, as well as the foolishness of his claim that rich planters should have been financially compensated for trafficking children. The argument then pivots to note that such issues are ancient history and of little importance when weighed against the great present evil of our time--the drug war.

I confess that I too get that old feeling in my leg when I hear Paul denounce both wars abroad and at home. Moreover, Paul does so with a kind of forthrightness and directness that you don't really see among national politicians. The appeal is strong, invigorating, and should be acknowledged. I am not sure whether it is the shame of our politics, or the shame of our electorate, that such topics seem so off-limits and so off-stage.But the selective abandonment of uncomfortable history is neither a viable option for my tribe, nor is it particularly wise for the greater tribe which\believes our criminal justice system to be a great failure.

It is often said that Americans aren't interested in history, but I think it's more accurate to say that people--in general--aren't interested in history that makes them feel bad. We surely are interested in those points of history from which we are able to extract an easy national glory--our achievement of independence from the British, the battle of Gettysburg, our fight against Hitler, and even the campaign of nonviolence waged by Martin Luther King. For different reasons, each of these episodes can be fitted for digestibility. More importantly that can be easily deployed in service our various national uses. Thus it is not so much that we are against history, as we are in favor of a selective history. The fact is that Martin Luther King is useful to us, in a way that Bayard Rustin is not (yet.)

Likewise, Ron Paul, and his followers are not against deploying history, so much as they are for deploying history in ways which advantages their candidate. When Paul invokes his own history of service to attack our wars abroad, no one says "That's all ancient history." The connection is obvious and advantageous. Paul's own service gives his claims a kind of moral weight, that Newt Gingrich's lack. Moreover, it buttresses Paul's credibility in an effort to sway those who remain undecided. Of course a necessary truth, follows this line of reasoning: As sure as Paul's service in the military lends respectability to the critique of our international wars, his service in the aims of white supremacy detract respectability from the critique of our national wars.

Indeed, one of the quicker ways to delegitimize the critique of the War on Drugs, in the eyes of black people, would be making Ron Paul the prominent face of the movement. That black people even need to be swayed doesn't seem to occur to Paul's supporters who, admittedly, are unoriginal in viewing African-Americans as the slick paint-job on a pre-fab argument. But the fact is that black people are far from united in their feelings about the criminal justice system in general, and drug crimes in particular.

A look at California, and the effort to legalize marijuana, is instructive. According to the Drug Policy Alliance, in the 25 counties of that state, blacks are arrested at "double, triple or even quadruple the rate of whites" for marijuana possession. Blacks make up less than 10 percent of L.A. county's population, but they account for 30 percent of its marijuana arrests.It is unlikely that this arrest rate reflects usage, as government data has consistently found that young whites use marijuana at higher rates than young blacks.

The effects are considerable:

They go before a judge who tells them they have been charged with a misdemeanor, and that if they plead guilty they will be fined up to $100. The judges routinely recommend defendants waive their right to a trial. Most people, wanting to get released and put this experience behind them, accept this recommendation and plead guilty.

Most people find the money to pay the fine and court costs and give it little thought until they apply for a job, apartment, student loan or school, and are turned down because a criminal background check reveals that they have been convicted of a "drug crime."

Twenty years ago, misdemeanor arrest and conviction records were papers kept in court storerooms and warehouses, often impossible to locate. Ten years ago they were computerized. Now they are instantly searchable on the Internet for $20 to $40 through commercial criminal-record database services. Employers, landlords, credit agencies, licensing boards for nurses and beauticians, schools, and banks now routinely search these databases for background checks on applicants. The stigma of criminal records can create barriers to employment and education for anyone, including whites and middle class people. Criminal drug arrest and conviction records can severely limit the life chances of the poor, the young, and especially young African Americans and Latinos.

And yet, with this backdrop, efforts to decriminalize marijuana have only limited support in the black community. Last year, when activists in California attempted to legalize marijuana through Proposition 19, only 47 percent of the black community supported the measure. I find that unsurprising. Unfortunately, black people have disproportionate contact with crime and criminals. That contact often doesn't breed sympathy, but severity. And as Adam Serwer once noted, it isn't just true of marijuana:

The fact was that crack panic had gripped many black leaders as firmly as everyone else, and the belief that it was some kind of nigh-supernatural demon drug lead the Congressional Black Caucus to support the bill, unaware of the real nature of crack or the harm the law would ultimately do. It was precisely because crack seemed to be so prevalent in black communities that black legislators supported the tougher penalties.

Those of us who are invested in the effort to roll back the drug war, take the support of the black community for granted at our peril. These are my people. And I have always known them to reflect many of the characteristics of any other group of Americans who are disproportionately less wealthy, less educated, more religious, and more Southern. Black America, like the rest of America, will have to be convinced. I would submit that, in that fight, invoking the dude who attacks Lincoln with the Confederate flag as a backdrop, who inveighs against the Civil Rights act, and once ran a white supremacist racket may be something less than a trump card.

I would also submit that it is worth exploring the uncomfortable origins of the greater fight. Our criminal justice system is a moral, and practical, catastrophe. Once again:

The United States has 756 people in jail per 100,000 people. No other country has more than 700, and only two are over 600 Russia (629) and Rwanda (604).

Of the 2.3 million people in American jails, 806,000 are black males. African-Americans--males and females--make up .6 percent of the entire world's population, but African-American males--alone--make up 8 percent of the entire world's prison population. I know there are people who think some kind of demon culture could create a world where a group that makes up roughly one in 200 citizens of the world, comprises one in 12 of its prisoners. But I kind of doubt it.

Some thought should be given to how we came to tolerate such large numbers of African-American removed from society and remanded to the soothing hands of the state. I don't think it's too much to say that were the rest of country imprisoned at the same rate as black men, our criminal justice policy would look different.

So what are the origins of that discrepant attitude? Are they wholly unconnected with a general animus visited upon blacks, in this country, since the mid-17th century? Are they unconnected to the willingness to protect an older system of torture and coercive violence which blots the origin myth of our country? Does that feeling share any relation to the sense that the violent end of that system was, somehow, a greater tragedy than the system itself?

And what does it mean for a man, in this day and age, to go before his country and claim that a group, even today viewed through the lenses of stock price...

Our growth is generally dependent upon our ability to obtain new contracts to develop and manage new correctional and detention facilities. . . . The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by our criminal laws. For instance, any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration could affect the number of persons arrested, convicted, and sentenced, thereby potentially reducing demand for correctional facilities to house them.

...should have always been viewed as such? Nothing says privilege like watching a presidential candidate argue that slaveholders should be compensated, in a world where compensation for slaves, and the descendants of slaves, has never enjoyed a scintilla of respectability.

In the present business, there are those of us who are not so recent to inveighing against the evils of mass incarceration. We spent the 90s watching the prisons bulge with our brothers. Where was Ron Paul? Did he then voice his concerns about the impact of a "racist drug war" in his periodicals? Or was he off cashing in on that old American hatred that give that has always given our drug wars their animating force?

It would be so much easier if the racism in Ron Paul's newsletters. his flirtation with the Confederacy, his opposition to civil rights legislation, his denunciations of Lincoln had no connection to our incarcerated present. But our histories don't exist to make our world easier. We are forced to grapple with them. Morality compels us.

More: You can view the other portions of this series here, here, here and here. I'm pretty sure this is the last one.

More on Corporations as Slaves

2012-01-29T15:25:00.000-08:00

More on Corporations as Slaves: Following my previous post on why for-profit corporations cannot be persons for purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment, Sandy Levinson reminded me of another important fact. Not only can people buy and sell for-profit corporations like slaves, but they can also liquidate them. In the (in)famous 1830 case of State v. Mann, the North Carolina Supreme Court, in an opinion by Judge Ruffin, held that the owner of a slave had complete authority to use violence against a slave, even to take the slave's life. On the other hand, people who were not owners (or in the position of an owner, as Mann was in the case) could be sued for injuring or killing a slave.

In the same way, the owners of a for-profit corporation can liquidate or dissolve the corporation whenever it is convenient (subject always, of course, to various the regulatory requirements of state corporate law). Like slavemasters, they have the power of life or death over their corporations. On the other hand, the owners can sue other people who attempt to injure the corporation, and of course, the owners can take various steps to avoid hostile takeovers.

All of which suggests an interesting perspective on the First Amendment rights of for-profit corporations. Traditionally, slaves in the antebellum South lacked independent rights of their own, although their masters had rights against third parties who harmed them. That is, in most cases, legal protection of slaves was actually the protection of the property rights of their masters. Ordinarily slaves would not have had free speech rights of any kind; indeed, they would have been incompetent to testify in court.

If for-profit corporations have free speech rights, it is not because corporations are persons. It is because it makes sense to give the people that control them (who are not necessarily their owners) the power to use the corporate form to amplify their voices. Conversely, to the extent that it makes sense to limit the speech of for-profit corporations, it is not because constitutional rights of corporations are violated; it is because the rights of the people who control the corporations should not extend so far.

Post Uses News Section to Push Its Editorial Line on Austerity, Again

2012-01-29T11:12:00.000-08:00

More from Fox on 15th St.-SS

Post Uses News Section to Push Its Editorial Line on Austerity, Again:

The Washington Post reminded readers why it is known as Fox on 15th Street when it referred to an agreement among European leaders that it said would "limit the perennial budget deficits that are the root of the crisis."

Both parts of this statement are demonstrably false. Of the five countries now facing an imminent debt crisis, only Greece and Portugal had consistent deficit problems prior to the economic collapse in 2008. Italy had a declining ratio of debt to GDP and Spain and Ireland were running budget surpluses.

The root of the crisis was a speculative bubble in the real estate markets in Spain, Ireland and much of the rest of Europe. With few exceptions, the people who profited from this bubble and the people in policy positions who let it go unchecked are still in the same positions as they were before the crisis. Like the Post, many of them are trying to shift blame to profligate government spending.

The Post Gives Another Defense of the One Percent, Mobility

2012-01-29T11:06:00.000-08:00

Pravda on the Potomac is at it again.--SS

The Post Gives Another Defense of the One Percent, Mobility:

There is a big market in defending the One Percent these days and the Post is rising to the challenge. It presented a front page Outlook piece by James Q. Wilson that tells readers that inequality is not a really big deal because of the all the mobility in U.S. society. Furthermore, it tries to tell us we would be worse off with less inequality because inequality fell in Greece over the last three decades.

Wilson's main source for his claims about mobility is a study from the St. Louis Fed which in turn relies on data from a study from President Bush's Treasury Department. Wilson tells us that less than half of the people in the top one percent were still there 10 years later. This reflects the findings of the study. However 75 percent of the top one percent were still in the top 5 percent 10 years later and almost 83 percent were in the top ten percent.

Much of the mobility found in this study was likely simply the result of life-cycle effects. Earnings peak between ages 45 and 65. If we assume that people in these age groups are twice as likely to be in the top one percent as people who are younger or older, then we would expect 25 percent of the people in the top one percent to fall to a lower income category over a 10 year period simply because they have aged out of their peak earnings years.

Unlike most other studies of income mobility, the Treasury study did not restrict itself to prime earners (ages 25-55 at the start of the 10-year period). This would lead it to find greater mobility than other studies. Also, since this study is based on tax filing, some of the mobility may reflect the ability of individuals to game the tax system so that they show very low income in either the first or last year.

Wilson's claim about Greece as an example of a country that has not seen an increase in inequality is the sort of argument by anecdote that people make when the data will not support their case. There were other countries, such as France, which have not seen an increase in inequality without obvious negative economic impacts. In fact, the rise in inequality across most European countries has been quite modest over the last three decades.

In addition, the most obvious factor that undermined Greece's economy seems to have been its decision to join the euro. This prevented it from allowing its currency to devalue in order to remain competitive. It is difficult to see how greater inequality would have improved its situation. Furthermore, since one of the country's main problems is a huge amount of tax evasion, data on income inequality is probably not very reliable.

It is also worth noting that this piece exclusively discusses the loser liberalism approach of taxing the income of the top 1 percent to redistribute income to the rest of the population. It does not address an agenda of reversing the policies that lead to the enormous upward redistribution of the last three decades. The Post appears to have a ban of any discussion of this approach.

That Uncertainty Word—I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means

2012-01-29T10:30:00.000-08:00

Any time Republicans say regulations are why we're not getting more jobs, they're lying.--SS

That Uncertainty Word—I Don’t Think It Means What You Think It Means:

In numerous posts, I’ve argued that the evidence doesn’t come close to supporting the conservative talking point that what’s holding back hiring is Obama-driven regulatory uncertainty.

Well, here’s another data nugget: the share of layoffs, job losses, and UI claims that employers report are due to government regulations or interventions. They are tiny—expect in one case in the table, never more than half of one percent. And in the most recent quarter, they were all about zero (technically, the number reported was too small to meet BLS sampling criteria).

Source: BLS, Table 2

My point is not simply to dispense with an erroneous talking point, but to try to stop the key-dangling-look-over-here-not-over-there routine re the major economic problem we still face: inadequate demand.

Moreover, the policy implications of getting the diagnosis wrong are steep. The regulatory diagnosis points toward dismantling stuff like financial and health care reform—particularly nuts, btw, since neither has really been implemented yet. The insufficient demand diagnosis points toward stimulus.

And if we can’t read the right signs, we’re going to stay lost.

Data Note: A layoff is an event involving the filing of 50 or more initial UI claims by an employer during a 5-week period, with at least 50 workers separated from a job for more than 30 days. Separations include job losses from such an event, whether or not the worker claimed UI.

Fighting the Bullshit

2012-01-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Must. Fight. Bullshit.--SS

Fighting the Bullshit:

Karl Smith says lefty intellectuals have a problem dealing with bullshit. Case in point: Mark Zandi spending several hundred words this week demonstrating, yet again, that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac weren't responsible for the 2008 financial meltdown:

Mark, Mark. Clonazepam. It’s a beautiful thing. Let go.
I am betting that maybe five people in the US actually believe Fannie and Freddie caused the housing bubble. Maybe half a dozen more are actively lying about it.
The rest are just Bullshitting. That is, they don’t really care what the truth is one way or the other. This is just a way to gesture in the general direction of the federal government and say Urrhh!!!

Ah, but what's the proper response to bullshit? Karl is almost certainly right that among actual conservative economists, only a few actually believe that Fannie and Freddie played a big role in the financial collapse. But those few true believers have a significant effect on:

Other conservative thought leaders, who don't know anything themselves but are happy to parrot congenial talking points.

Conservative legislators, who need intellectual justification for their speeches on the House floor.

The media, which is willing to continue suggesting that this is a genuine controversy as long as conservative thought leaders and conservative legislators keep pushing it.

Millions of rank-and-file conservatives, who listen to Fox News and read the Wall Street Journal editorial page and honestly believe this stuff because they're getting it from people they trust.

Does Mark Zandi know this? Of course he does. He's not an idiot. But what's the proper response? If you ignore the bullshitters, then the anti-GSE narrative gets set in stone whether or not it's bullshit. If you fight it, at least it remains fluid for a while — possibly long enough for things to settle down.

So sure, it's kabuki. All of us who write about politics for a living understand that 90% (at least) of what we do is just shadow boxing. Controversies are invented, then debunked, then invented all over again, and debunked. Sometimes the inventors know perfectly well what they're doing, while other times they've talked themselves into actually believing their own nonsense. In either case, these things are mostly just proxies for the issues that really matter.

But so what? The Reichstag fire was wholly invented too, and look what happened after that. As demeaning as it is, fighting back against bullshit is every bit as important as fighting back against the real stuff.