Friday Reads: Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire Edition
Posted: February 10, 2012 Filed under: Environmental Protection, morning reads, unemployment | Tags: fracking, taxing the rich 31 Comments
Bonjour!
I think the season of the political lie is upon us. I have never seen so many tired old tropes being trotted out on TV in all my years of fascination with the bloodsport of politics. I’m going to try to concentrate on folks out there fighting the memes and lies with facts. My first selection is from Baseline Scenario. Simon Johnson explains that unemployment insurance isn’t around to keep lazy people on extended vacations. In the process he takes on the lie that our government is broke.
Fire insurance is mostly sold by the private sector; unemployment insurance is “sold” by the government – because the private sector never performed this role adequately. The original legislative intent, reaffirmed over the years, is clear: Help people to help themselves in the face of shocks beyond their control.
But the severity and depth of our current recession raise an issue on a scale that we have literally not had to confront since the 1930s. What should we do when large numbers of people run out of standard unemployment benefits, much of which are provided at the state level, but still cannot find a job? At the moment, the federal government steps in to provide extended benefits.
In negotiations currently under way, House Republicans propose to cut back dramatically on these benefits, asserting that this will push people back to work and speed the recovery. Does this make sense, or is it bad economics, as well as being mean-spirited?
(For details on the current benefit situation, see this information from California, as well as this on the political background. After a two-month extension of benefits at the end of last year, the terms of continuing it are currently before a House-Senate conference committee.)
The United States has lost more jobs than in any other recession in the last 70 years – and jobs have been slower to return, as this chart shows.
In raw numbers, we lost more than eight million jobs, most of which have not returned. Paul Solman of the PBS NewsHour prefers a measure he calls U-7, which includes “the underemployed and those who want a job but have been out of work so long that the government no longer counts them; this currently stands at 16.9 percent of the workforce (see this story and also, for background, a discussion Paul and I had in the fall on the “shape” of the recovery, in which we rely on the B.L.S. data.)
However you want to count it, the financial crisis of 2008 brought on a jobs disaster — and the scale of this disaster is still with us. We like to say that the recession is “over,” but this just means that the economy is growing again. In no meaningful sense is the jobs crisis over.
Typically in the United States, most people are unemployed for relatively short periods of time, with a lot of movement in and out of unemployment. The fraction of long-term unemployed as a percentage of all unemployed is usually 10 to 15 percent. In the early 1980s, it briefly reached almost 25 percent.
Again, however, our experience since 2008 has been dramatically different – the share of long-term unemployed in total unemployed is close to 45 percent. And it appears to be staying at or near that level for the foreseeable future.
The House Republicans now propose to change many rules under which the federal government provides “extended benefits” to people who have exhausted their state benefits.
In most countries, unemployment insurance is managed primarily by the central government and its agencies – in our federal structure we have preferred, as with other kinds of emergencies (such as natural disasters) to have the states provide the first line of defense, with the federal government providing back-up. It is the federal government that has the strongest ability to borrow at low interest rates; most states are much more strapped for cash.
Do not be deceived by claims that the federal government is “broke,” in the sense that it cannot afford to provide additional support to states and people at this level. This is a myth, pure and simple.
Paul Krugman takes on Charles Murray’s new whine about declining morality in the poor down trodden white folks and how it’s hurting our country. Krugman shows that one of the traditional measures of social problems is teenage pregnancy and it’s way down. So, is violent crime. So what is it that Murray is really complaining about?
Reading Charles Murray and all the commentary about the sources of moral collapse among working-class whites, I’ve had a nagging question: is it really all that bad?
I mean, yes, marriage rates are way down, and labor force participation is down among prime-age men (although not as much as some of the rhetoric might imply), But it’s generally left as an implication that these trends must be causing huge social ills. Are they?
Well, one thing oddly missing in Murray is any discussion of that traditional indicator of social breakdown, teenage pregnancy. You can see why — because it has actually been falling like a stone:
So, is economic stagnation really the result of less church going? I doubt it.
Jonathan Chait takes on another right wing lie. That’s the one about how the job creators pay so much in taxes they are really down trodden billionaires! Veronique de Rugy doesn’t stand a chance.
De Rugy wrote a column centered around the claim that the United States has a more progressive tax system than any other advanced country, and as her sole piece of evidence cited the fact that rich people pay a higher share of the tax burden in the U.S. than in other countries. I wrote a response, noting that this reasoning is completely idiotic. Rich Americans pay a bigger share of the tax burden because they earn a bigger share of the income, not because the U.S. tax code is more progressive.
De Rugy’s reply is an incoherent collection of hand-waving that does not come close to addressing this very simple and fatal flaw with her claim. She introduces a series of other fallacies, like conflating the marginal tax rate (the percentage tax you pay on your last dollar) with the total tax rate (the overall percentage of your income paid in tax), using “income tax” as a stand-in for total taxes, and trying to broaden the debate into a bigger philosophical dispute. But it’s not a philosophical dispute. It’s a simple case of her making up false claims based on extremely elementary errors.
And this is why I am forced to be so mean. There are just a lot of people out there exerting significant influence over the political debate who are totally unqualified. The dilemma is especially acute in the political economic field, where wealthy right-wingers have pumped so much money to subsidize the field of pro-rich people polemics that the demand for competent defenders of letting rich people keep as much of their money as possible vastly outstrips the supply. Hence the intellectual marketplace for arguments that we should tax rich people less is glutted with hackery.
No discussion of reprehensible lies would be complete with out Santorum and without the numerous conspiracy theories and untruths told about the concerns of environmentalists. Don’t you know, science professors just want to get rich so they make up shit about climate change and fracking?
SCOTUS and the Free Exercise Clause
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: religion, religious extremists, right wing hate grouups, SCOTUS 42 Comments
A large portion of my family--Jewish and French Huguenot people from Alsace Lorraine also known as the Rhinelands–came over to the British colonies because their homes, lives, businesses and farms had been handed to the Catholic Church as part of hundreds of years of persecution by the state of France and its state religion. Many had fled to other places–specifically England–as the persecution of French Protestants and Jews was extraordinary in the late 1600s during the Nine Year War. This was nothing new since it also occurred in the 16th century. It was still occurring under Cardinal Richlieu and Louis XIII. French Protestants (Huguenot) and Jews did not really receive full rights in France until the establishment of the Napoleonic Code in 1804. The stories of these horrors were handed down in my family from generation to generation along with the pride all felt in being early American colonists who participated in the writing of the Constitution and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. I grew up with a strong sense of what religious persecution meant as well as what was behind the so-called Free Exercise Clause of the US Constitution. It’s been burned into our family memory. While not a lawyer myself, I come from an extremely long line of barristers and lawyers. My uncle argued a lot of constitutional cases for the Roosevelt administration. I grew up with huge debates around family tables. I have spent the last few days completely distraught about the recent suggestion that a birth control provision for hospitals, universities, and other organizations run by the Catholic Church smacks of religious persecution. It simply does not represent the truth of the Supreme Court findings on what is and is not “free exercise” and what the government can and cannot regulate when it comes to religious institutions, practices and believers.
There seems to be a raging misunderstanding in the press right now about what constitutes separation of church and state and free exercise of religion. It is extremely bothersome to me because the free exercise clause and its meaning is well established. There is very little ambiguity about what it is and what it is not.
In 1878, the Supreme Court was first called to interpret the extent of the Free Exercise Clause in Reynolds v. United States, as related to the prosecution of polygamy under federal law. The Supreme Court upheld Reynolds’ conviction for bigamy, deciding that to do otherwise would provide constitutional protection for a gamut of religious beliefs, including those as extreme as human sacrifice.
The Court stated that “Laws are made for the government of actions, and while they cannot interfere with mere religious beliefs and opinions, they may with practices.”
This ruling has stood the test of time. It continued to be applied in the 1960s under the Warren Court. There were some decisions that moderated the original finding that come under the heading of “accommodation”. Oddly enough, the free exercise clause narrowed again in the 1980s and Antonin Scalia was one of the driving forces. In the 1990 case of Employment Division v. Smith. the court found that a law against peyote use was fine even though it had a religious use by some Native Americans. A 1993 law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was passed in order to broaden the interpretation. However, many parts of that law were struck down as unconstitutional. Here are a few examples of cases that didn’t pass muster with SCOTUS. Now remember, by the time these cases came up in the late 1990s, the court had clearly shifted to the right.
In the case of Adams v. Commissioner, the United States Tax Court rejected the argument of Priscilla M. Lippincott Adams, who was a devout Quaker. She tried to argue that under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, she was exempt from federal income taxes. The U.S. Tax Court rejected her argument and ruled that she was not exempt. The Court stated: “…while petitioner’s religious beliefs are substantially burdened by payment of taxes that fund military expenditures, the Supreme Court has established that uniform, mandatory participation in the Federal income tax system, irrespective of religious belief, is a compelling governmental interest.”[15] In the case of Miller v. Commissioner, the taxpayers objected to the use of social security numbers, arguing that such numbers related to the “mark of the beast” from the Bible. In its decision, the U.S. Court discussed the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, but ruled against the taxpayers.[16]
For some time, members of specific religious communities–like Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Christian Scientists, Quakers, and the Catholic Bishops–have taken cases to the Supreme Court based on the Free Exercise clause and lost. This is why I am so confused by the complete lack of understanding in the TV Press of the current attack on birth control coverage in the HCRA. Since I am not a lawyer and have only had undergraduate classes in constitutional laws, I will defer to some one who is a well known constitutional lawyer, David Boies. He has been appearing on The Last Word show and has calmly explained why all the hysteria about free exercise of religion is just that; badly motivated hysteria.
The high, in terms of reason and clarity, came from famed attorney David Boies on MSNBC’s “The Last Word.” Lawrence O’Donnell has let male “liberal” pundits like Mark Shields wax a little shrill on his show, but to his credit, he offered the best rebuttal to all the shrieking I’ve seen so far: Boies calmly and clearly explaining the new regulations as an issue of labor law, and the government’s regulation of employers (relatively minimal, compared to other countries) on issues of health, safety and non-discrimination.
I’ve tried to make the same points: What if Catholics didn’t believe in child labor laws? Would we let church-run agencies flout them? Boies used the example of a religion that believed people shouldn’t work after age 60: Could they legally ban older people from employment? Of course, they could do neither. This is indeed an issue of religious freedom: the freedom of non-Catholics not to be bound by the dictates of the Catholic Church in the workplace.
But Boies, fresh off his 9th Circuit victory defending gay marriage, brought the legal knowledge.
Lawrence O”Donnell writes directly about this conversation.
Constitutional expert David Boies said there’s no basis for a constitutional fight with the birth control mandate. On The Last Word, he compared the current debate that’s heating up in Washington to simple tax law or labor laws.
“There isn’t a constitutional issue involved in this case,” he told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Wednesday. “You don’t exempt religious employers just because of their religion. You are not asking anybody in the Catholic church or any other church to do anything other than simply comply with a normal law that every employer has to comply with.” Boies, who represented Vice President Al Gore in Bush v. Gore, said “this case would have trouble getting to the court.”
So, I have one other reason that I’d like to bring all this up. We know that a few specific religious groups have a problem with Roe V. Wade and Griswold V Connecticut. We know that these people have been trying to stack the courts with sympathetic whackos for about 40 years now. It seems they’re attacking Reynolds too. If you read BB’s morning post and Peggy Sue’s last post you can see that many Republicans would just like to outlaw the judicial branch. Newt Gingrich makes it a campaign staple.
Did you know that THREE of the SCOTUS justices turn 80 in the next five years? Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Antonin Scalia, and Anthony Kennedy are the three justices. So, let’s think about what is at stake if any of these Republican presidential wannabes get to appoint a SCOTUS or three. How about major appointments to courts like the one that just overturned Prop 8?
Rick Santorum, the Guillotine And Other Lies
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: Bailout Blues, Banksters, birth control, double-speak, Health care reform, Human Rights, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Rick Santorum, Women's Rights 36 CommentsWe live in the Age of Hyperbole. We live in an age of Orwellian half-truths. I give you Rick Santorum, the current King of Double Speak, choosing to frame the controversy of equal access to healthcare, specifically contraception, with the ghastly violence of the French Revolution.
Yes, ladies and gentleman! The guillotine will roll out and Christians everywhere will be frog-marched from dank prisons to meet the National Razor [Hattip to Think Progress].
Can we please, drown these fools out with our own outrage? Santorum and his ilk, Christian demagogues all, have played the victim card to the hilt. They are no better than the Taliban shouting their moral codes with righteous, wearisome and downright dangerous fear mongering. But this? This takes the cake. A Marie Antoinette moment. Only in this case, the dismissed segment of society are women, those who would have the audacity to demand reproductive freedom, control of their own bodies, control of who and what they are.
Has the Revolution begun? Time will tell. We will soon be told by the President how the latest deal with the Banksters is a ‘historic’ moment, a sweeping reform bringing aid and comfort to distressed homeowners. As ‘Big’ as the tobacco deal one pundit breathlessly exclaimed.
For myself? I stand with the young woman in the street, waving the makeshift sign:
Thursday Reads: Male Politicians and Pundits should Worry about their “Erectile Dysfunction” and STFU about Women’s Health (and Other News)
Posted: February 9, 2012 Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, 2012 primaries, morning reads, religious extremists, Reproductive Health, Reproductive Rights, Republican politics, Republican presidential politics, Team Obama, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Rights | Tags: autonomy, Birth Control, chastity belt, Chris Matthews, contraception, EJ Dionne, history of birth control, Mark Shields, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, privacy, Rick Santorum, sponges, Tim Kaine 50 Comments
Morning News by Ellen Day Hale (1855-1940)
Good Morning!
I thought this painting was appropriate, since we are being dragged back into the 19th Century by both Democrats and Republicans these days. We all know about the war on women being waged by Willard “Mitt” Romney, Rick “the Dick” Santorum, Nasty Newt Gingrich and Ron “White Power” Paul. But Democrats have now been empowered the Catholic Church’s attack on Obama’s attempt to protect women’s health care.
But now “liberal” pundits like Chris Matthews, Mark Shields, and E.J. Dionne have joined the battle to remove any semblance of privacy and autonomy from women.
Today former DNC Chairman and Governor of VA–and likely Senate candidate Tim Kaine came out against the requirement that contraception be included in health insurance policies.
Pat J is right. We need a women’s freedom party. Aren’t any of these dinosaurs aware that birth control (and abortion) have been with us during most of recorded history? Check out this series of photos in Newsweek drawn from the history of birth control.
Did you know that Aristotle recommended birth control methods for women in the 4th Century BC?
The philosopher recommended that women “anoint that part of the womb on which the seed falls” with olive oil in order to prevent pregnancy. His other top picks for spermicides included cedar oil, lead ointment, or frankincense oil. If the lips of the cervix were smooth, he noted, then conception would be difficult.
Sponges used for contraception
Ancient Egyptian women used sponges.
Long before Seinfeld’s Elaine Benes weighed the merits of a man to determine his spongeworthiness, women were using sponges as a method of preventing pregnancy. The sponge has its roots in early Egyptian civilization, and this photo depicts the variety of models available in the early 20th century. Those sponges were made of a variety of materials, and were sometimes drenched in lemon juice or vinegar to act as a spermicide. Today’s sponges (called, in fact, Today’s Sponge) are synthetic, and use a chemical spermicide.
Another early method was the chastity belt. Perhaps religious nuts like Rick Santorum and Mark Shields would find that one acceptable?
At Wonkblog, Sarah Kliff thinks the Obama administration “sees political opportunity in the contraception battle,” because of the data shown in this chart:
(Public Religion Research Institute)
Kliff writes:
while Catholic leadership has blasted the new regulation, polls show that a majority of Catholics are actually more supportive of the provision than the rest of the country. A poll out Tuesday from the Public Religion Research Institute finds 52 percent of Catholic voters agreed with the statement, “employers should be required to provide their employees with health care plans that cover contraception and birth control at no cost.” That’s pretty much in line with overall support for the provision, which hovers at 55 percent – likely because Catholics use contraceptives at rates similar to the rest of Americans.
A majority of Catholics – 52 percent – also agree with the Obama administration’s decision to not exempt religious hospitals and universities from the provision. “Outside the political punditry, most Catholics agree with the administration on the issue,” says one Obama campaign official, explaining the view that this could be a political win.
And a lot of this likely isn’t about Catholic voters at all.
Rather, it may well be about the demographics that are most supportive of this particular health reform provision: young voters and women. In the PRRI poll, both groups register support above 60 percent for the provision.
Those two demographics are important here for a key reason: they were crucial to Obama’s victory in 2008. Third Way crunched the numbers earlier this month and found that the “Obama Independents” — the swing group that proved crucial to his 2008 victory — are, as Ryan Lizza put it, “disproportionately young, female and secular.”
Let’s hope Obama keeps all that in mind instead of bending to the will of the old gray white male Catholic Bishops and the elderly male fake-liberal pundits who won’t STFU and let women make their own choices.
Even some of the saner folks in the GOP are warning their wingnut colleagues that a fight against contraception would be a “disaster” for their party.
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