Category: Politics

OK, I Don’t Have Much to Add on the Assassination and Shooting Spree

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Click for full size

These are on the days preceding the shooting

But Brad Delong finds a rather alarming data point.

Here are two members of Congress, both Democrats, from the same state, but in the 4 days before the shooting, Gifford’s hits on her wiki page skyrocketed.

There are a number of caveats here:

  • Even with the delta, the number is pretty small, under 400 hits peak over a 4 day period.
  • This could have been triggered by something as innocent as a mass email to constituents.
  • It could be one person, obsessively visiting the page.

It could also be:

  • The result of some obscure right wing media figure calling her out.
  • The result of a small group of people involved in a conspiracy. (Unlikely, this seems to be the archetypal Lone Gunman).

Anyone aware of any event that might support some the more prosaic explanations?

Delay Sentenced to 3 Years in the Slam

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Schadenfreude, sweet schadenfreude!

And 10 years probation on money laundering and conspiracy charges.

The only cloud to this silver lining is that his active work on behalf of human traffickers in the Northern Marianas, creating what was for all intents and purpose a consequence free zone for slavery and forced prostitution, is not a part of this sentence.

I may be a bad person for doing a happy dance about this, but then I am a bad person, because I am doing a happy dance.

The desire for retributive justice is something that is a nearly universal human characteristic, and it is only through conquering our baser animal instincts through the application of higher order thought, and empathy, but I guess that I am simply not so evolved.

Needless to say, the fact that I am unevolved will come as no surprise to those who know me well.

The New Labour, Now Without Labour!

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The new head of the British Labour Party is moving to sever financial ties with unions and to diminish their influence in decision making:

Ed Miliband is to distance Labour from its trade union paymasters by diluting the party’s financial dependence on them and reducing their role in electing the party leader.

Labour has proposed introducing a ceiling on donations to any political party which could be as low as £500, The Independent has learnt. The move could break the long-running deadlock between the parties on agreeing a new system of financing politics.

Seems reasonable, if he can get the Tories to forswear big money from the rich bankers who fund them, but there is also this:

He also wants to change Labour’s culture by allowing the public a vote when the party chooses its leader. He plans to give 25 per cent of the votes to non-party members who register as Labour supporters. MPs, trade unionists and party members would also each have a quarter of the votes in Labour’s electoral college. At present, MPs, union and party members each have a third of those votes.

Mr Miliband’s moves are bound to cause tensions with the unions. They are all the more surprising because he depended on union support to defeat his brother, David, for the Labour leadership in September.

So, it appears that Milibrand’s vision of the Labour Party is one in which actual labo(u)r has a significantly diminished role.

I suggest that he look south and east to Israel, where the Israeli Labor party most recently polled in 4th place in elections, as compared to a party, ad its predecessors, that controlled the government for the first 29 years of Israel’s existence.

Basically, if you take labor out of a labor party, you have nothing left.

All You Need to Understand About Republicans

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It should be noted that Paul Ryan, the soon to be head of the House Budget Committee, is requiring his staff to read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

While I’ve not read this book, I did her (mercifully shorter) treatise on her philosophy The Virtue of Selfishness in high school, and Kung Fu monkey has the final word on Rand and her Randroid followers:

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Indeed, and he will be drafting our budgets. <Facepalm>

H/t Paul Krugman.

If Our Savior is Jon Stewart, We Are Screwed

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The New York Times describes how Jon Stewart pretty much single handedly saved the Zagoda from a Republican filibuster:

Did the bill pledging federal funds for the health care of 9/11 responders become law in the waning hours of the 111th Congress only because a comedian took it up as a personal cause?

And does that make that comedian, Jon Stewart — despite all his protestations that what he does has nothing to do with journalism — the modern-day equivalent of Edward R. Murrow?

Simply put, the policy here, medical care for 911 first responders, and the politics here, blocking medical care for 911 first responders would be seen unequivocally evil by the bulk of the American electorate, but somehow or other, the Democrats could not be bothered to hammer the Republicans with this, because, I guess, little Barry Obama doesn’t want Republicans to think that he’s mean.

This is something that Bill Clinton would have hammered every single day.

I do understand that it’s tough to get the attention of the press on this, what with, as Stewart observes, “it’s not every day that Beatles songs come to iTunes,” but this is absolutely pathetic.

Well, The Next Time I Ask What the F%$# He is Smoking, I’ll Know the Answer

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Everyone’s favorite hypocritical and corrupt televangelist cum politician, Pat Robertson has come out in favor of legalizing marijuana:

For a second it looked as if someone had mischievously switched teleprompter scripts on Pat Robertson, the tele-evangelist and founding member of the Christian Coalition. There he was on The 700 Club, a religious affairs TV talk show talking breezily about why America should legalise marijuana.

But this is the season for compassion and Mr Robertson – who usually makes waves nowadays only when he finds celestial or satanic cause for assorted disasters like the Haiti earthquake (a pact with the Devil to eject the French two centuries ago) or Hurricane Katrina (legalised abortion) – seemed to be serious. He said incarcerating people for taking “a couple of puffs” of pot might not be effective public or social policy.

Here’s a surprise, he’s significantly to the left of Barack Obama on this, probably because he’s at a point in his life where good government policy trumps electoral success.

A Sign of Sanity from Senate Democrats

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All of the returning Democratic Senators, and all of the retiring ones except for Christopher Dodd, have signed a letter asking for filibuster reform:

All Democratic senators returning next year have signed a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., urging him to consider action to change long-sacrosanct filibuster rules.

The letter, delivered this week, expresses general frustration with what Democrats consider unprecedented obstruction and asks Reid to take steps to end those abuses. While it does not urge a specific solution, Democrats said it demonstrates increased backing in the majority for a proposal, championed by Sen. Tom Udall, D-N.M., and others, weaken the minority’s ability to tie the Senate calendar into parliamentary knots.

This change can only come about if a fairly obscure change is made to the Senate rules first: The Senate currently describes itself as a continuing body, meaning that any changes in the rules at the start of a new Congress require a ⅔ majority.

If the President of the Senate, Vice President Biden, were to rule that the Senate Wasn’t a continuing body, then that could be approved by a simple majority vote, as could the filibuster rule changes.

I would not something else interesting about the various proposals, it looks like Reid will accept a proposal to have committee chairs elected by secret ballot, as opposed to the current regime, where there is only a vote if another Senator publicly objects.

Hopefully, the old guard in the Senate won’t block these changes.

This is Not a Gaffe, This is a Campaign Strategy

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There is a lot of hand wringing and out rage over Haley Barbour’s comments supporting the activities of the white supremacist White Citizens’ Councils in the 1960s.

I think that this misses the point.

Not only does Barbour have a long tradition of appealing to bigots, but it is clear that he wants to run for president, and a not so veiled appeal to the tradition of white bigotry in the South goes a long way towards appealing to that demographic in the primaries.

Federal Judge Rules Insurance Mandate Unconstitutional

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Note however, that the judge, Henry E. Hudson, is a well known serious wingnut, and even he did not have the stones to issue an injunction, nor did he rule the rest of the law unconstitutional, and two other Federal District Court judges dismissed the cases pretty much before the ink was dry on those petitions.

Of course, this does mean that it is likely to make it to the Supreme Court, where Justice Roberts is busy trying to recreate the bogus “Freedom of Contract“. (See also Schechter).

In any case, the Obama administration’s response is predictable:

The administration acknowledges that if the insurance requirement falls before taking effect in 2014, related changes would necessarily collapse with it, most notably provisions that would prevent insurers from denying coverage to those with pre-existing conditions or charging them discriminatory rates.

Once again, the Obama administration is capitulating before the fight has even started.

Let’s assume that the Supreme Court rules the mandate unconstitutional.  What happens then is that, if nothing is done, the insurance industry is in risk of collapse in the very short term (less than 18 months).

It’s time to ask for single payer, or a public option, not to wring your hands and repeal the bill.

With the threat of a veto, and the ensuing collapse of health insurers across the US, you can get some decent non-insurance company friendly provisions, like the public option and a repeal of ERISA preemption.

But of course, in Obama’s world, the predators that are the health insurance industry are “partners” to be protected, not a profit driven source of pain and suffering, so he will go to the mat for them.

Quote of the Day

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Courtesy of Jane Hamsher:

It’s hard to “fight” when the head of your party runs his political operation with the emotional maturity of an overheated teenage boy in the latest installment of Twilight.

Positively brutal, but true.

Ms. Hamsher has come to the same conclusion as me, that Barack Obama wants to extend the Bush tax cuts for everyone, because ……… I don’t know why, but my guess is because in his heart of hearts he makes Bill Clinton look like “Red” Ken Livingston.

Added to the List of People I Do Not Want to Piss Off,

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My sincerest apologies for not mentioning the Rude Pundit earlier.

He is a very profane genius.

One of his more recent gems is about the Republican response to Obama’s capitulation, “Senate Republicans Have a Celebration Orgy“:

The Senate Republican cloakroom was filled with whores yesterday. No, not the senators themselves, who were taking the afternoon off from letting the Chamber of Commerce sodomize them, the better for their assholes to regain some elasticity. There were real, actual, non-metaphorical prostitutes there, female and male, paid for by Karl Rove’s American Crossroads GPS and its billionaire donors.…

In the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, I implore you tor ead the rest.

And the Long Term Consequences of Obama’s Capitulation are Worse

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First, it appears that the Republicans have structured the deal to force states into bankruptcy in order to destroy the public employee unions:

Congressional Republicans appear to be quietly but methodically executing a plan that would a) avoid a federal bailout of spendthrift states and b) cripple public employee unions by pushing cash-strapped states such as California and Illinois to declare bankruptcy. This may be the biggest political battle in Washington, my Capitol Hill sources tell me, of 2011.

That’s why the most intriguing aspect of President Barack Obama’s tax deal with Republicans is what the compromise fails to include — a provision to continue the Build America Bonds program. BABs now account for more than 20 percent of new debt sold by states and local governments thanks to a federal rebate equal to 35 percent of interest costs on the bonds. The subsidy program ends on Dec. 31. And my Reuters colleagues report that a GOP congressional aide said Republicans “have a very firm line on BABS — we are not going to allow them to be included.”

This is juxtaposed with proposals mooted among the Conservative Nomenklatura, most notably in The Weekly Standard, that Congress enact laws allowing states to declare bankruptcy, which in turn would allow them to unilaterally break union contracts.

Additionally, you have the withholding tax holiday, which legitimizes schemes to defund Social Security as a prelude to gutting it, as Nancy Altman, co-director of Social Security Works, so ably notes:

Given that unwillingness to raise taxes by less than a nickel on every dollar earned over $1 million, I find it unfathomable that a more conservative Congress, in two years, in an election year, will increase the payroll tax by 2 percent on the very first dollar, and every other dollar up to the cap, earned by virtually every single worker in the country. Consequently, I think we have to assume that the payroll tax holiday will be extended beyond the two years the president is proposing and quite likely could become permanent.

That means that the federal government will have to continue to transfer $120 billion to the Social Security trust funds each and every year even as it has to transfer more and more interest payments as the trust funds continue to grow and as interest rates return to more normal levels. Unless Congress acts to restore Social Security to solvency, the Treasury bonds held in trust will have to be redeemed, again on top of that new $120 billion transfer from the general fund, starting fifteen years from now, assuming Congress even continues to make the $120 billion every year before that point. These dollars will be competing with dollars for defense, environmental protection, education, school lunches, Food Stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, SSI, Pell grants for low income college students, and every other good and service financed by the federal government.

A permanent two percent cut in Social Security contributions doubles the 75 year projected shortfall. Scrapping the cap (eliminating the $106,800 maximum on earnings), tonally eliminates the shortfall today. If FICA is cut by 2 percent, scrapping the cap gets Social Security only halfway there.

I’m a cynic, and I believe that this is a feature, and not a bug.

On labor, the Obama administration has pointedly sat on its hands with regard to the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), and the Obama Department of Education is more virulently anti-union than Bush’s Education Department ever was, as mind boggling as it sounds.

As to Social Security, anyone who appoints Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles to a “deficit reduction” (catfood) commission, clearly wants to gut that gem in the crown of the New Deal.

These flaws in the “compromise” are features, not bugs. 

After seeing this happen repeatedly, I think that actual intent is a more coherent explanation than simple incompetence.

Obama wants these things to happen.

H/t Yves Smith for the first link.

The Invisible Bond Vigilantes Have Appeared

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Interest rates on Treasuries have surged in the wake of the tax cut capitulation:

Treasury prices dropped Tuesday, pushing 10-year yields up by the most since June 2009, after Congress and the White House compromised on a tax package that is expected to raise the deficit and increase the government’s borrowing needs.

The drop in prices, which move inversely to yields, extended further after the government’s first of three auctions this week drew tepid demand from investors.

Go figure. Barack Obama has managed to capitulated his way into pushing interest rates up.

That will help the economy.