Category: Politics

Why They are Protesting Against Democracy in Thailand

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Per capita GDP


Thai vs. Australian per capita GDP


Government Debt


Social (health) spending

Look at the graphs on economic statistics for Thailand.

Why is anyone complaining about results like this?

Anti government forces Bangkok have vowed to rid Thailand of all vestiges of Thaksin — including Thaksinomics. So let’s pause to cast a medium-term eye over the country’s economic performance during the period (2001 to the present) that has been dominated by Thaksin-esque policies.

 ………

 I’m sure there are plenty of other indicators and comparisons – good, not-so-good and bad – that could be used to plot Thailand’s economic performance since 2001 (comments on other indicators would be very welcome). But the overall point is that Thailand’s voters have some sound economic reasons to keep on electing Thaksin and his allies.

 Strong economic growth, and increasing government spending on health, welfare and rural development, didn’t start with Thaksin, but he and his allies have been able to effectively place growing prosperity at the heart of their political success.

What the protesters are objecting to is not economic growth, but rather they are objecting to the fact that there are benefits accruing to the rural peasants.

So the hoi polloi are doing better.

There are new roads, new bridges, new rural clinics, and the position of the rural poor has improved.

It has improved a lot, and their lot relative to the urban elites has also improved.

So the protestors are upset that poor rural families are no longer forced to sell their daughters into prostitution in the big cities, and this is why they want to remove any vestige of Thaksin and Yingluck Shinawatra while insisting that there be no elections.

When I say that, “The Thai protesters are revolting,” I am using the last word as an adjective, not a verb.

Who Hit the Democrats with a Clue Stick?

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It seems that Democrats are looking to stop running away from Obamacare, (a good idea, the Dems own it whether they like it or not) and instead want to push for a minimum wage increase as their signature issue for 2014:

Democratic Party leaders, bruised by months of attacks on the new health care program, have found an issue they believe can lift their fortunes both locally and nationally in 2014: an increase in the minimum wage.

The effort to take advantage of growing populism among voters in both parties is being coordinated by officials from the White House, labor unions and liberal advocacy groups.

In a series of strategy meetings and conference calls among them in recent weeks, they have focused on two levels: an effort to raise the federal minimum wage, which will be pushed by President Obama and congressional leaders, and a campaign to place state-level minimum wage proposals on the ballot in states with hotly contested congressional races.

With polls showing widespread support for an increase in the $7.25-per-hour federal minimum wage among both Republican and Democratic voters, top Democrats see not only a wedge issue that they hope will place Republican candidates in a difficult position, but also a tool with which to enlarge the electorate in a nonpresidential election, when turnout among minorities and youths typically drops off.

“It puts Republicans on the wrong side of an important value issue when it comes to fairness,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the president’s senior adviser. “You can make a very strong case that this will be a helpful issue for Democrats in 2014. But the goal here is to actually get it done. That’s why the president put it on the agenda.”

This is good politics, and good policy, though having your hired guns run to the press (I’m talking to you, Mr. Pfeiffer) crowing about how this is such good politics does not serve to reinforce their message.

The minimum wage fight is an opportunity to create a space for the discussion about political values on a terrain that favors Democrats, it’s not about allowing self important political consultants crow about their genius.

Benghazi!!! Benghazi!!! Benghazi!!!

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The New York Times has just finished a nearly year-long investigation of the attach on the consulate in Benghazi, and found, “No evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault.”

Months of months of faux-Republican outrage, all for nothing:

Months of investigation by The New York Times, centered on extensive interviews with Libyans in Benghazi who had direct knowledge of the attack there and its context, turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault. The attack was led, instead, by fighters who had benefited directly from NATO’s extensive air power and logistics support during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi. And contrary to claims by some members of Congress, it was fueled in large part by anger at an American-made video denigrating Islam.

A fuller accounting of the attacks suggests lessons for the United States that go well beyond Libya. It shows the risks of expecting American aid in a time of desperation to buy durable loyalty, and the difficulty of discerning friends from allies of convenience in a culture shaped by decades of anti-Western sentiment. Both are challenges now hanging over the American involvement in Syria’s civil conflict.

The attack also suggests that, as the threats from local militants around the region have multiplied, an intensive focus on combating Al Qaeda may distract from safeguarding American interests.

Additionally, it appears that concerns about supporting US private investing in Libya led the State Department to soft pedal security concerns:

The diplomat, David McFarland, a former congressional aide who had never before met with a Libyan militia leader, left feeling agitated, according to colleagues. But the meeting did not shake his faith in the prospects for deeper involvement in Libya. Two days later, he summarized the meeting in a cable to Washington, describing a mixed message from the militia leaders.

Despite “growing problems with security,” he wrote, the fighters wanted the United States to become more engaged “by ‘pressuring’ American businesses to invest in Benghazi.”

Of course, the militiamen were naive. The US does not pressure American businesses to invest, they pressure the locals to give sweetheart deals to American businessmen, but the theory is similar.

Perhaps the State Department should reorient its priorities.

Yes, There Are Real Welfare Moochers Out There

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In this case, it is the heavily subsidized orthodox in Israel:

In mid-December, a report by the National Insurance Institute and the Central Bureau of Statistics reported that Israel’s poverty rate was shamefully high: 23.5 percent. It found that one-fifth of families — and one-fifth of retirees — in Israel are officially poor, as well as one-third of children.

Israel’s income gap is one of the highest in the world (following Chile, Mexico, Turkey and the United States). Israel, as O.E.C.D. reports have already indicated more than once, somehow manages to be a “start-up nation,” with high economic growth; yet, at the same time, it remains a backward nation with many extremely poor families.

The publication of the annual poverty report gave rise to two or three days of heated discussion. Aryeh Deri, the head of the Shas Party, called it a “poverty storm.” Shas relies on lower-income religious voters, and the report was an opportunity for a politician to demonstrate his outrage. Yet the storm quickly abated.

Israelis already know the numbers, and most have already formed opinions on this topic. Many middle-class Israelis are convinced that the poor themselves are at fault — and unless they do something about it, there’s not much that the state can do for them.

Two segments of Israel’s population stand out as the poorest of the poor: “ultra-Orthodox Jews” and “Muslim-Arabs.” Unemployment rates for ultra-Orthodox Jews (mostly ultra-Orthodox men) and Arabs (mostly Arab women) are very high. So are birth rates. The result: 59 percent of the ultra-Orthodox (also known as Haredim) are poor. Similarly, 58 percent of Arab Israelis are poor. Other groups with notably high rates of poverty are the elderly and new immigrants — but the numbers for these two groups are much lower, 23 percent and 17 percent, respectively.

Israel’s poverty doesn’t solely stem from the lack of full participation of these two groups in its economic life. But the high visibility among the poor Haredis and Arabs influences the never-ending public debate about how to put an end to poverty.

Kindling a sense of social solidarity among middle-class Israelis toward members of these groups is difficult for several reasons. First, the ultra-Orthodox and Arabs don’t mix much with most Jewish Israelis (both these groups refrain from military or other national service). Second, to be blunt, Israelis know that Haredis and Arabs are disproportionately represented in the underground economy (namely, by evading taxes). Finally, to a large extent they are poor because of choices they make — preferring their traditions over participating in the modern Israeli economy. Simply put: For Haredi Jewish men, the choice is generally to study the Torah and have many children (while the women have to provide for the families). For Muslim Arabs, it is to keep women at home and have many children (while the men go to work).

………

Only when unemployed Haredi men and Arab women go to work and black-market tax evaders are forced to pay taxes will the middle and upper classes be more open to thinking about a redistribution of wealth. Right now, the majority of Israelis have good reason — or good excuse — to object to any redistributive attempts to take from them and give to others.

I would argue that many of these problems are the issues of a segregated society.

The Heridim and Arabs live lives almost completely separate from mainstream society.

The Heridim have separate religious schools in which students are not provided with the tools to succeed in a mainstream society, and the Arabs are educated in “separate but equal” (they are not) schools in where teaching is in Arabic rather than Hebrew.

Furthermore, neither the Ultra-Orthodox nor the Arabs (the Druze excepted) do national (typically military) service, which serves as a touchstone for cultural cohesion.

Putting an end to both of these practices would go a long way toward fixing the problems with Israeli society.

Looks Like the New York Times Bromance with Chris Christie has Ended………

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It took f%$3ing with the George Washington Bridge in a fit of pique, but the Times finally begun to see that Chris Christie is not a brave truth teller, but a bully and a thug:

In 2010, John F. McKeon, a New Jersey assemblyman, made what he thought was a mild comment on a radio program: Some of the public employees that Gov. Chris Christie was then vilifying had been some of the governor’s biggest supporters.

He was surprised to receive a handwritten note from Mr. Christie, telling him that he had heard the comments, and that he didn’t like them.

“I thought it was a joke,” Mr. McKeon recalled. “What governor would take the time to write a personal note over a relatively innocuous comment?”

But the gesture would come to seem genteel compared with the fate suffered by others in disagreements with Mr. Christie: a former governor who was stripped of police security at public events; a Rutgers professor who lost state financing for cherished programs; a state senator whose candidate for a judgeship suddenly stalled; another senator who was disinvited from an event with the governor in his own district.

In almost every case, Mr. Christie waved off any suggestion that he had meted out retribution. But to many, the incidents have left that impression, and it has been just as powerful in scaring off others who might dare to cross him.

Your honor, people who used to see your crass bullying as something noble are beginning to see it for what it really is.

You are a punk, sir, and your comeuppance will be beautiful to behold.

H/T Balloon Juice.

Don’t Let the Door Hit Your Ass on the Way Out

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An Ultra-Orthodox Knesset member is saying that Heridim will leave Israel if they become subject to universal conscription:

Haredi Member of Knesset Rabbi Yisrael Eichler was interviewed on Army Radio about the situation with the looming draft of haredim and the haredi community leadership’s decision to fight that draft with all its might and the government’s decision to force haredi schools to teach some secular core subjects, Yeshiva World reported.

Eichler – who is known for making outlandish statements that slander and smear political and religious opponents – told listeners that if need be, haredim will leave Israel en masse to avoid being drafted.

“The haredi community feels choked by the situation, to the point many are contemplating forfeiting their Israeli citizenship. If you want to rule over us then do so – but regarding education and culture, we must maintain our autonomy, as it has been for the last 3,000 years,” Eichler reportedly said.

(Emphasis miine)

First is the obvious question: Who will take them.

After all, many of them have been doing little but living off the dole while “studying” Jewish religious law.

They have no useful skills that any other country would desire.

Even if they can find a country to take them in, they have been living a lifestyle largely funded by the government subsidies paid them, and working for a living at a real job full time is a lot tougher than they think.

Of course, I’m not sure that they have much to worry about in the near term, because Netanyahu’s Likud is completely dependent on the Heredi parties, they have once again put off subjecting Yeshiva students to mandatory military service.

In Judaism, at least, if one is to assume a role of a religious scholar, one is more obligated to full one’s basic duties as a citizen, not less obligated.

They should not be allowed to shirk military service.

This Week’s Spylapalooza

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It’s been a busy week for developments in spying by the US state security apparatus.

First, we have the report from the President’s hand picked panel, “Liberty and Security in a Changing World.” (PDF)

From people who know the issues, the reviews have been this weak tea.

The EFF’s conclusion was that, “The reportleft open the door for future mass surveillance and failed to address the constitutionality of the NSA’s mass spying, recently questioned by the D.C. federal court and raised by EFF in its multiple lawsuits.”

Marcy Wheeler, who is has perhaps the most knowledgeable on these sorts of issues, observes that the panel refused to address whether the NSA spying program was illegal.  There is simply nothing in the report about this.

When she looks what is in the report, she sees signs that the NSA is probably functioning as a domestic security agency:

Which is why I’m curious what’s behind the following language, offered in support of the recommendation to clearly designate NSA as a foreign intelligence organization and presented with two other things we know NSA does.

It should not be a domestic security service, a military command, or an information assurance organization.

 […] Like other agencies, there are situations in which NSA does and should provide support to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other law enforcement entities. But it should not assume the lead for programs that are primarily domestic in nature.

That seems to suggest that, in addition to supporting DHS, DOJ, and other law enforcement entities (cough, DEA, as well as probably Secret Service in its cyber-role), NSA takes the lead on certain issues that are primarily domestic.I do hope we’ll learn what this refers to. Because if NSA is operating domestically (maybe to police IP?), it will be scandalous news.

Pro Publica notes that one of the more direct recommendations of the panel is that the NSA needs to stop undermining publicly available encryption algorithms:

The National Security Agency should not undermine encryption standards that are designed to protect the privacy of communications, the panel of experts appointed by President Obama to review NSA surveillance recommended in a report released today.

 The recommendation, among the strongest of the many suggested changes laid out by the panel, comes several months after ProPublica, the Guardian, and the New York Times reported that the NSA has successfully worked to undercut encryption. The story was based on a set of documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.

Outside of the intelligence review board, we have learned that the NSA paid RSA Security LLC to incorporate insecure encryption in its products:

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a “back door” in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract. Although that sum might seem paltry, it represented more than a third of the revenue that the relevant division at RSA had taken in during the entire previous year, securities filings show.

In total, this explains the flight from services like Google to non-US algernatives.

In a perfect world,  all of this might lead the White House, and the intelligence agencies to back off regarding their expansion of power, but you would be wrong.

They are at this time attempting to quash a court ruling on the constitutionality ofits domestic spying program by invoking the state-secrets privilege.

And for your amusement, we have Mark Fiore’s comments on the difference between the data collection by the government and commercial interest.
 

Uganda Passes “Kill the Gays Lite”

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Life in prison for “aggravated homosexuality“:

Ugandan lawmakers Friday passed an anti-gay bill that calls for life imprisonment for certain homosexual acts, drawing criticism from rights campaigners who called it the worst such legislation in the world.

When the bill was first introduced in 2009, it was widely condemned for including the death penalty, but that was removed from the revised version passed by parliament.

Instead it sets life imprisonment as the penalty for a homosexual act in which one of the partners is infected with HIV, for sex with minors and the disabled, and for repeated sexual offenses among consenting adults, according to the office of a spokeswoman for Uganda’s parliament.

The bill also prescribes a seven-year jail term for a person who “conducts a marriage ceremony” for same-sex couples.

Lawmakers passed the bill unanimously, with no one voicing an objection.

President Yoweri Museveni must sign the bill within 30 days for it to become law. Although in the past he spoke disparagingly of gays, in recent times Museveni has softened his position on the matter, saying he is only opposed to gays who appear to “promote” themselves.

“In our society there were a few homosexuals,” Museveni said in March. “There was no persecution, no killings and no marginalization of these people, but they were regarded as deviants.”

The passage of the bill makes it “a truly terrifying day for human rights in Uganda,” said Frank Mugisha, a prominent Ugandan gay activist, who called the legislation “the worst anti-gay law in the world.” He urged the country’s president not to sign the bill into law.

“It will open a new era of fear and persecution,” he said. “If this law is signed by President Museveni, I’d be thrown in jail for life and in all likelihood killed.”

Understand that this is largely not a home grown movement.  As Rachel Maddow so ably demonstrated, (vid here) much of the impetus has come from the shadowy American Christo-Fascist group known as “The Family,” has been aggressively lobbying for for anti-Gay legislation.

Well, Duh

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Eric Stern, a staffer for Brian Schweitzer, demonstrates how the NRA systematically ignores its alleged values to endorse Republicans:

………But when the NRA voter guide was published, Schweitzer received an F. He called the NRA to demand an explanation. They claimed they never received his questionnaire. It must have gotten lost in the mail, they told him. Schweitzer faxed them a copy, but they said it was too late.

………

Once again he mailed in his NRA survey, confident of an A (I believe that at the time, an A-plus rating was only achievable by answering “Yes” to the question, “Do you support the right to possess guns in all places, including schools?”).

For insurance, he met with NRA staff in Washington. They assured him that he was likely to receive the endorsement. But then the voter guide arrived, and the NRA had endorsed his opponent.

Again he demanded an explanation. The NRA said they’d decided that Schweitzer’s opponent “should get the benefit of the doubt” because he was an incumbent, whereas Schweitzer had never held office.

………

Schweitzer won that race narrowly, but rose to become a powerful political force in Montana, upending the old order, turning much of the state from red to blue, and pulling in many other democrats on his substantial coattails. He also revealed a distinctive quality: he sought revenge against anyone that crossed him, often without regard to the the political cost of doing so. So he naturally couldn’t resist bad-mouthing the NRA on the Bill Maher show one evening in 2007 when the subject of gun politics was raised, accusing the group of being “a fully owned division of the Republican Party…the National Republican Agency.”

This created an enjoyable situation when, in 2008, running for reelection as a virtually unbeatable incumbent, he notified the NRA that he not only expected an endorsement this time around, but that he wanted Wayne La Pierre, the NRA president, to come do it personally.

The NRA did everything they could to come up with an excuse to not grant the request, but ultimately they blinked. La Pierre, perhaps wary of Schweitzer’s penchant of creating a commotion if slighted, came to Billings in the summer of 2008 for a press conference at which he grudgingly told the TV cameras that Montana gun owners and hunters that should vote for Schweitzer. (Schweitzer’s challenger was already projected to lose by about 30 points, but for good measure Schweitzer rented a giant billboard right across the street from the guy’s campaign headquarters, with an ad boasting of the NRA’s endorsement.)

When the NRA voting guide arrived that fall, there were Montana candidates endorsed for Senate, Congress, Attorney General….but no Governor. Schweitzer called once again for an explanation. They told him that they had no idea how this had happened. The printer must have screwed up. It was a regrettable mix up, and they would try to correct it immediately.

But of course, they didn’t.

Brian Schweitzer is seriously considering a Presidential run in 2016, and the fact that he might have a Lyndon Baines Johnson level of vindictiveness makes me look upon her more favorable.

I Think that Chris Christie now has a “-Gate” Scandal on His Hands

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Pass the Popcorn

Christie’s two recently resigned political appointees to the Port Authority have lawyered up:

Two appointees of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie who recently resigned amid a controversy over lane closures at the George Washington Bridge have retained private attorneys, according to correspondence reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

 Bill Baroni and David Wildstein, former executives at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, have sought outside counsel amid an investigation into why traffic lanes leading to the nation’s busiest bridge were closed, the documents showed.

 The hirings came as correspondence and documents related to the bridge controversy are due to be delivered soon to a legislative inquiry of the state Assembly.

 The Democrat-led Transportation Committee subpoenaed documents from people involved in the incident, including Messrs. Baroni and Wildstein and leadership of the authority, seeking more information about how the lanes were closed and why.

 Mr. Wildstein recently hired Alan L. Zegas, a criminal lawyer from Chatham, N.J., to represent him, according to an email sent from Mr. Zegas to the state Legislature Tuesday.

 Mr. Zegas was co-counsel to former Newark Mayor Sharpe James in 2008 in response to federal corruption charges brought by Mr. Christie when he served as the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey, according to Mr. Zegas’s biography.

 Mr. Baroni retained Michael Himmel, of Lowenstein Sandler LLP. Mr. Himmel works at the firm’s New York City and Roseland, N.J. offices, and specializes in white collar crime, according to his biography.

I figure that this will eventually degenerate into finger pointing, and the question is whether it will just involve Mssrs Baroni and Wildstein, or if it will go higher.

As Much as I Like Liz Warren, I Wish that Martha Coakley Had Beaten Scott Brown in the Senate Race in 2010

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She ran a truly horrible campaign, but her tenure as Massachusetts AG has generally been pretty positive.

Case in point, her most recent report showing that not-for-profits pay obscene remuneration to their top executives, and proposing changes in corporate governance:

Nonprofit groups in Massachusetts are paying their chief executives huge amounts of money and giving them lavish perks unavailable to most workers, according to a new report from Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office that calls for reform in the way groups disclose executive compensation.

The 92-page study, which covered 25 large charitable organizations in Massachusetts, mainly hospitals, insurers and colleges, found all of them paid their leaders at least a half-million dollars a year in total compensation. And many of the organizations offered their executives an assortment of other benefits, including bonuses, deferred compensation, auto allowances, financial planning, life insurance and other benefits that are more commonly associated with corporate leaders.

Even when executives retire, they often leave with hefty severance or consulting deals that allow them to earn millions more. The executives covered by the report each received between $487,000 and $8.8 million in total compensation each year between 2009 and 2011 — pay levels that Coakley’s office said should cause concern in some cases.

“It is not always clear that large compensation benefits packages are actually necessary to attract and retain talent,” the report argued.

Gee, you think?

Doubtless, there is some politics involved here, Coakley is looking to run for Governor, but when we are talking about tax-exempt organizations, there is a direct governmental interests, because it is the taxpayer who pays for these excesses.

Pope Francis Walks the Walk

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For all that Pope Francis has said about changing the focus of the church from right wing agitprop to helping the poor and doing good, it is in the bureaucracy, particularly the personnel structures where change has to be made.

Well the rubber has officially met the road, as he canned a notoriously right wing Cardinal from his position on the Congregation for Bishops, which is responsible for selecting new Bishops:

Pope Francis moved on Monday against a conservative American cardinal who has been an outspoken critic of abortion and same-sex marriage, by replacing him on a powerful Vatican committee with another American who is less identified with the culture wars within the Roman Catholic Church.

The pope’s decision to remove Cardinal Raymond L. Burke from the Congregation for Bishops was taken by church experts to be a signal that Francis is willing to disrupt the Vatican establishment in order to be more inclusive.

Even so, many saw the move less as an effort to change doctrine on specific social issues than an attempt to bring a stylistic and pastoral consistency to the church’s leadership.

“He is saying that you don’t need to be a conservative to become a bishop,” said Alberto Melloni, the director of the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Studies in Bologna, Italy, a liberal Catholic research institute. “He wants good bishops, regardless of how conservative or liberal they are.”

………

Cardinal Burke still serves as the prefect of the Vatican’s highest canonical court, but analysts say his removal from the Congregation for Bishops will sharply reduce his influence, especially over personnel changes in American churches.

“The Congregation for Bishops is the most important congregation in the Vatican,” said the Rev. Thomas J. Reese, a Jesuit priest and the author of “Inside the Vatican: The Politics and Organization of the Catholic Church.”

“It decides who are going to be the bishops all over the world,” he added. “This is what has the most direct impact on the life of the local church.”

Note that when Archbishop of S. Louis, Burke publicly announced that he was refusing communion to John Kerry.

This is a substantive change, assuming that he lives long enough,* for them to take.

*I am not suggesting a Da Vinci Code type conspiracy, I am merely observing that he is 75 years old.

It Ain’t the F%$#-Up, It’s the Cover-Up

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 Remember yesterday, when I wrote about how a crony of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie closed entry lanes on the George Washington Bridge in what appeared to be retribution for the (Democratic) mayor of Fort Lee, NJ for not endorsing him?

Well, I figured that this was an instance of some underling deciding to take initiative, kind of like when Nixon was in the White House, when he would rant in private, and say something like, “Someone should shoot that SOB,” and aide Chuck Coleson would go and buy a gun.

It’s one of the problems that one can have with evil minions. Sometimes they are too enthusiastic.

Well, maybe not so much.  Because it has now been revealed that Governor Christie made a private call to New York Governor Andrew Cuomo asking him to instruct the head of the Port Authority to quash the investigation:

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to complain about a Cuomo appointee’s handling of a growing controversy over traffic pattern changes on the George Washington Bridge, a person familiar with the matter said.

 Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs.

 Messrs. Cuomo and Christie share control of the Port Authority, which oversees Hudson River bridges and tunnels and the region’s airports and is rebuilding the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan.

 Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey have accused Christie appointees of ordering the lane closures to punish Fort Lee’s mayor, Democrat Mark Sokolich, for not endorsing the governor’s re-election campaign. Mr. Christie’s campaign has denied that, and his Port Authority team has said the lanes were closed to study traffic on the bridge.

 A spokesman for Mr. Christie said the governor talks to Mr. Cuomo regularly “on any number of mutual-interest topics. Those conversations are private.”

 A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo declined to comment.

 The call between the governors was an illustration of how the controversy has mushroomed into a headache for Mr. Christie. One of his top representatives at the authority, David Wildstein, resigned last week, citing the bridge closures. Democratic calls for the resignation of another top authority aide, Bill Baroni, have escalated this week.

It wasn’t clear how Mr. Cuomo responded to Mr. Christie’s call or if it was the first time Mr. Christie had lodged a complaint.

 The exchange appears to stand in contrast to Mr. Christie’s public remarks on the bridge matter. At a briefing on Dec. 2, the governor mocked a legislative inquiry on the lane closures and joked that he himself had moved the traffic cones that winnowed local access to the bridge.

The perspective on this whole matter has just shifted.

Yesterday, the conventional wisdom was, “Why did Christie hire such a stupid motherF%$#er?”

Today, the question is, “What does Chris Christie have to hide?”

Why Chris Christie Will Not Be the Republican Nominee

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In many ways, Christie’s putative Presidential campaign reminds me a lot of Rudolph Giuliani’s in 2008.

Governor Christie  he suffers much the same problem as Guiliani,* which is that the better that people know him, the more that they will dislike him.

He is clearly too liberal for the nut-jobs who caucus in Iowa, and his actions in the rough and tumble of New Jersey Politics show that he is someone who people in New Hampshire will dislike when they see him in person.

Case in point, it now appears that one of his appointees shut lanes to the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the Democratic Mayor for not endorsing him:

It would seem a minor whodunit for a small suburb: On the first day of school in September, three access lanes leading from Fort Lee, N.J., streets to the George Washington Bridge were unexpectedly and mysteriously shut down. Cars backed up, the town turned into a parking lot, half-hour bridge commutes stretched into four hours, buses and children were late for school, and emergency workers could not respond quickly to the day’s events, which included a missing toddler, a cardiac arrest and a car driving into a building.

 But the George Washington Bridge is the world’s busiest, and New Jersey is led by one of the nation’s most pugnacious and prominent politicians, Gov. Chris Christie — who also happens to appoint the people who control the bridge.

 So the unfolding story of the lane closings has become something of a cause célèbre, resulting in a hearing before the New Jersey Legislature on Monday, as well as a window into the proudly aggressive and often secretive dealings of Mr. Christie’s team.

 The mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, complained in a letter in September that the lane closings were “punitive” — Mr. Christie, a Republican, was leaning heavily on Democratic mayors to endorse him for re-election so he could present himself as a presidential candidate with bipartisan appeal, but the mayor was not going along.

 Mr. Christie laughed off the idea that he had been involved in a matter as small as closing bridge lanes, and his chief appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which oversees the bridge, insisted that the lane closings were simply part of a traffic study.

 But on Friday, the man who ordered the closings — a high school friend of the governor’s who was a small-town mayor and the founder of an anonymous political blog before Mr. Christie’s appointee created a job for him at the Port Authority — resigned, saying the issue had become “a distraction.”

The people of New Jersey might understand (though the indications are that they aren’t, because their commutes were f%$#ed with in a major way), the people of most of the rest of the country (pretty much everyone but New York and New Jersey) won’t.

*Also, Christie has not been zinged the way that Joe Biden zinged Rudy that, “There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, and a verb and 9/11,”

This is Just Nasty

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As you may be aware, Senator John Cornyn has gotten himself a Teabagger challenger in the primary, US Representative Steve Stockman (R-WTF).
Well, Harry Reid’s communications director just Tweeted this:

.@woodruffbets Senator Reid has always felt that Senator Cornyn is someone he can work with on a range of issues.
— Adam Jentleson (@AJentleson) December 10, 2013

Well played, Mr. Jentleson, well played.

It sounds nice, but it is read meat to the ‘Baggers who will vote in the primary.

Just When I Think that the Right Wing Cannot Get Any More Evil………

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The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) is pushing for legislation to fine homeowners for installing solar power:

An alliance of corporations and conservative activists is mobilising to penalise homeowners who install their own solar panels – casting them as “freeriders” – in a sweeping new offensive against renewable energy, the Guardian has learned.

Over the coming year, the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec) will promote legislation with goals ranging from penalising individual homeowners and weakening state clean energy regulations, to blocking the Environmental Protection Agency, which is Barack Obama’s main channel for climate action.

Details of Alec’s strategy to block clean energy development at every stage – from the individual rooftop to the White House – are revealed as the group gathers for its policy summit in Washington this week.

Great shades of Elvis.

This level of evil and the stupidity is a complete mind f%$#.

So Google Funds ALEC, but Walmart Won’t

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The American Legal Exchange Council has been dumped by a number of corporate sponsors following the “Stand Your Ground” murder of Trayvon Martin:

The Guardian has learned that the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), which shapes and promotes legislation at state level across the US, has identified more than 40 lapsed corporate members it wants to attract back into the fold under a scheme referred to in its documents as the “Prodigal Son Project”.

The target firms include commercial giants such as Amazon, Coca-Cola, General Electric, Kraft, McDonald’s and Walmart, all of which cut ties with the group following the furore over the killing of the unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in Florida in February 2012.

Alec was embroiled in the controversy surrounding Florida’s 2005 “stand-your-ground” law under which George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who shot and killed the 17-year-old Martin, initially claimed self-defence. The Florida law was picked up by Alec, and, working in partnership with the National Rifle Association, used as a template for one of its “model bills”, which was then taken up by other states across the country.

The Guardian has learned that by Alec’s own reckoning the network has lost almost 400 state legislators from its membership over the past two years, as well as more than 60 corporations that form the core of its funding. In the first six months of this year it suffered a hole in its budget of more than a third of its projected income.

So, ALEC is too evil for Walmart, but not too evil for Google.

Excuse me, while my head explodes.

I Guess that the Whole, “Don’t Be Evil” Thing is Inoperative

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Yes, the boys from Mountain View are funding the usual list of right wing rat f%$#ers:

Google, the tech giant supposedly guided by its “don’t be evil” motto, has been funding a growing list of groups advancing the agenda of the Koch brothers.

Organizations that received “substantial” funding from Google for the first time over the past year include Grover Norquist’s Americans for Tax Reform, the Federalist Society, the American Conservative Union (best known for its CPAC conference), and the political arm of the Heritage Foundation that led the charge to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act: Heritage Action.

In 2013, Google also funded the corporate lobby group, the American Legislative Exchange Council, although that group is not listed as receiving “substantial” funding in the list published by Google.

BTW, I am well of the irony that I am blogging this on a Google platform, and that my ads are served by the company as well.

Koch suckers.

Austerity for Greeks, Welfare for the Germans

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Following elections, because Angela Merkel’s traditional partner, the FDP was shut out of the Bundestag, she had to form a coalition government with her traditional opposition, the SDP.

As a part of the coalition agreement she has agreed to create a minimum wage of €8.50 and a partial lowering of the retiring age to 63:

It was a “Six-Eye Negotiation” – in German, an “Unter Sechs Augen Gespraech”. Three leaders, and so three pairs of eyes, sat down together in the small hours in a private room and haggled amongst themselves, eyeball to eyeball.

 In the 185-page agreement which resulted, the Social Democrats (SPD) came away with a minimum wage of 8.50 euros (£7.10) an hour, uniformly applied across the country. The counter-argument had been that insisting on the minimum wage in the old East Germany would dent the region’s ability to attract work.

 The SPD’s chief negotiator Sigmar Gabriel also got a lowering of the retirement age and some extra public spending. That may be welcomed by those outside Germany, who have argued that the country is “beggaring its neighbours” by not increasing German spending to match the country’s amazing excess of exports over imports.

 The SPD also secured the introduction of a minimum percentage of women on German company boards.

 For her part, Chancellor Merkel got an acceptance from the SPD that its election demand of higher taxes on the rich would not happen. She also emphasised that the new government would continue to balance its budgets – there will be no move away from the belief that spending is tied to revenue.

I think that there is a fair amount consequences, some intended, and some not, to this.

First, a minimum wage of €8.50 will raise the wages of 17% of the workforce, with much of the effect in the service industry.

When one considers the impact on wages of people whose wages are just above the new minimum wage (probably about €10.00) it means that something like ¼ of the workforce will see a raise from this, which, in the long run may have negative political consequences for Merkel’s CDU.

On the other side of the political consequences, the SDP’s capitulation on higher taxes of the wealthy may play to the advantage of the left wing Die Linke, which is really the standard bearer of the democratic Socialism now eschewed by the “3rd Way” movement of the SDP in recent years.

One of the artifacts of German taxation is that it is fairly regressive, and wages of the bottom 90% have decreased in recent years:

According to a DIW study published last year, wages fell in real terms for all but the top 10 percent of earners in Germany between 2005 and 2010. This had a particularly acute effect on those earning the least. “As a rule, the lowest earners spend the highest portion of their income,” study co-author Karl Brenke explains.

Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.Low-wage workers also end up spending a much higher proportion of their income on mandatory health insurance, as any income above €46,000 in annual salary is not subject to premium payments. Thus, while a senior engineer earning €150,000 a year is only required to pay 6.6 percent of his total income in social security contributions, a laborer who makes only a tenth as much ends up paying 20.7 percent.

The collapse of the FDP was in part a reaction to this reality, as it is the most Thatcherite of the major parties.

Note also that this coalition agreement is exactly the opposite of the normal prescription to debt crises in the Euro zone: reductions in spending, increases in retirement age, and reductions in the minimum wage.

The next country to receive a demand of austerity from IMF and the Euro zone troika will likely highlight the inherent hypocrisy of such a demand.