Friday Reads

Posted: March 11, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: collective bargaining, Domestic terrorism, Environment, Environmental Protection, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, right wing hate grouups, The Media SUCKS, the villagers | Tags: , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

Good Morning!

I’ve noticed that we seem to be seeing a lot of change recently along with a lot of people that would prefer to stick their heads in the sand and try to legislate the world back 100 years.  It really seems like science, voter sentiment, and the world are at odds with the vision of our leaders these days.  Here are some examples.

A study done by the U.S. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was just published in Geophysical Research Letters here provides some pretty clear evidence that the  polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating at a rate that is increasing exponentially.

It’s been clear for a while that the  polar ice sheet mass loss is accelerating (see Large Antarctic glacier thinning 4 times faster than it was 10 years ago: “Nothing in the natural world is lost at an accelerating exponential rate like this glacier”).

But the new study is a bombshell because of its credibility and thoroughness — and because it provides perhaps the most credible estimate to date of the sea level rise we face in 2050 on our current emissions path, 1 foot.

The JPL news release runs through the calculation that leads to the 1-foot estimate:

The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15 centimeters (5.9 inches) by 2050. When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8 centimeters (3.1 inches) from glacial ice caps and 9 centimeters (3.5 inches) from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 32 centimeters (12.6 inches). While this provides one indication of the potential contribution ice sheets could make to sea level in the coming century, the authors caution that considerable uncertainties remain in estimating future ice loss acceleration.

It is always worthwhile to make clear that the projections are uncertain.  On the other hand, one would have to say that the uncertainty is greater on the high side — since the rate of human-caused warming is itself projected to accelerate, and the poles are the place where the planet is heating up the most, much faster than expected (see “Deep ocean heat is rapidly melting Antarctic ice:  Oceanographer at AGU: Western Antarctic Peninsula is seeing “the highest increase in temperatures of anywhere on Earth”).

Senator Lindsey Graham wants Director of National Intelligence General Clapper to resign because he answered a question truthfully. It’s even unclear if Graham was even in the hearing for the entire committee interview.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in an exclusive interview with Fox News correspondent Carl Cameron, called for Gen. James Clapper to resign or be fired as Director of National Intelligence, citing his comments before the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning, on which Graham sits.

Clapper had stated his belief that the Qaddafi regime, in the long term would “prevail” in Libya, and also assessed China and Russia to be primary threats to the United States.

Graham told Cameron that he lacks confidence in Clapper’s understanding of his job, that President Obama should “repudiate” Clapper’s remarks, and that this is the third time Clapper has faltered in this way.

It’s rather evident from the news reports that the evil empire is winning against the ewoks right now.  What’s Graham’s problem? He’d prefer the varnished untruth instead?  Clapper was also asked a very specific question in terms of threats to the US from just numbers of weapons and troops. The answer?  China and the USSR, of course.  I guess they wanted to hear Iraq and North Korea.  Clapper directly answered pertinent the question.  He just didn’t spin it the way the warhawks wanted.  I guess every one decided that he should’ve discounted the huge number of weapons, troops, and WMDS held by the other two super powers and gone straight to the little guys that can’t reach us from their neck of the globe.
Clapper clarified that North Korea and Iran are “of great concern,” but questioned whether they pose a “direct mortal threat” to the United States. The intelligence chief seemed to be focused on which countries have the capability, not necessarily the intent, to threaten the United States.

WonktheVote posted a thread earlier this week showing that the threat of terrorism in the US comes more from white, right wing military groups than from radicalized American Muslims. This evidence contrasts Peter King’s McCarthyism style hearing yesterday which relied on only personal stories.  There were no people invited to testify from law enforcement, the FBI, or Homeland Security.  Understandly, so there’s more evidence on who we should fear at C&L. Dave Niewert must’ve read her!!!  Niewert document 22 cases in these kind of violence in the last tw0 years and shows a map.  They’ve occurred all over the place.

In their eagerness to promote Peter King’s dubious and nakedly Islamophobic hearings on homegrown Islamic-radical terrorism, O’Reilly and his Fox colleagues have openly sneered at suggestions that we ought to do the same for right-wing extremists and their mounting acts of violence. This case definitively underscores that need, embodied in the 22 cases we’ve documented over the past two and a half years:

Simultaneously, it’s also not very clear that the Islamic radicals pose a serious threat in terms of domestic terrorist activity. Certainly, there’s plenty of reasons to believe that the threat of homegrown Islamic terrorism is wildly overstated — not least of which is the fact that, as Zaid Jilani at ThinkProgress reported, terrorism incidents in the USA have been coming from non-Muslim sources at nearly twice the rate as that of Muslims.

Lexington at The Economist had this to say about the hearings.

It is indeed hard to find much to like in Mr King. The representative for Long Island has approached this most sensitive of subjects with the delicacy of a steamroller, plus an overactive imagination and a generous dollop of prejudice. To be clear: he may not be prejudiced against America’s Muslims (the “overwhelming majority” are “outstanding Americans”, he says) but he long ago prejudged the question his own hearings are supposed to answer, being already firmly of the view that the country’s Muslims are doing too little to counter radicalisation within their ranks. He is the author of a novel, “Vale of Tears”, in which a heroic version of his thinly disguised self busts a home-grown al-Qaeda cell at a Long Island Islamic centre. His own attitude to terrorism, though, is conveniently elastic. In the 1980s this Irish-American Catholic sympathised strongly with the Irish Republican Army, going so far as to compare Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Fein, the terrorist group’s political wing, to George Washington.

Beyond these objections to his person, prejudices and past, most of the available evidence suggests that Mr King’s central thesis is overblown, if not flat wrong. Muslim co-operation with the authorities is not perfect, but by most accounts—including those of Robert Mueller, the director of the FBI, and Eric Holder, the attorney-general—the community has in general worked hard to expose terrorist plots in its midst. In one prominent case last year, for instance, five men from northern Virginia who had travelled to Pakistan in search of jihad were convicted after their families tipped off the FBI. The Triangle Centre on Terrorism and Homeland Security, a research group affiliated with Duke University and the University of North Carolina, reported recently that 48 of the 120 Muslims suspected of plotting terror attacks in America since the felling of the twin towers in 2001 were turned in by fellow Muslims.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka calls Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker the “mobilizer of the year”.

While blasting Walker and Wisconsin’s Republican legislators for their “absolute corruption of democracy” in passing an anti-labor bill, the leader of the nation’s largest union group thanked the governor for getting activists fired up. “We probbably should have invited him here today to receive the Mobilizer of the Year Award,” Trumka said Thursday morning while speaking to the National Press Club in Washington D.C. “Wisconsin is the beginning — it’s pushing the start button” for pro-labor activism.

ED Kain at Forbe’s American Times says that the GOP’s war on collective bargainning will turn out to be its Waterloo.

And not just Wisconsin, but also Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, Florida, and the rest of the over-reaching state Republicans. Governors like Scott Walker, Rick Scott, and Jan Brewer are riding on the coattails of the Tea Party, but they’ve become blind to the dangers of their radical policies.

In Wisconsin, Democrats are already promising to step-up recall efforts. But the recalls are only a small part of what is likely going to be a huge anti-Republican backlash across the nation, as working Americans finally realize what that party actually stands for: an playing field heavily tilted toward the rich and powerful, toward corporate power, and against worker rights.

Wow, what a week!  What’s been on your mind and your reading and blog list?

Lessons in Overreach

Posted: March 9, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Barack Obama, Democratic Politics, Domestic Policy, Elections, Federal Budget, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups | Tags: , , , | 9 Comments

Politicians within the beltway seem to live in a world of their own.  No place is this more clear than in the results of the last two elections where voters in desperate need of solutions for big problems have been misunderstood as providing ‘overwhelming mandates’ for the two party’s special interests’ agendas.  The 2008 election was a resounding no to the direction the country ushered in by Dubya and his neocons.  The 2010 election was a resounding no to the continued mess of partisanship and the passage of bailouts and a health care reform that no one understood.  I don’t think voters understood why this issue was put above solving the basic unemployment and recession-based problems.   Polls appear to indicate that neither side gets the message these days even though it appears very loud and clear to many of us.

There’s several places that this is really clear.  First, the tea party is a prime example.  This movement has been a hodgepodge of people looking for ways to send a populist message to the beltway. However, the movement has funding and leadership that’s hell bent on returning the country to the excesses of Robber Baron days.  Some of the electorate voted for tea party candidates thinking more on the folksy rhetoric and less of the hardcore John Bircher philosophy championed by movement organizers.  Plus, they just wanted some gridlock until they could get their minds around what was going on with a flurry of laws passed that seemed less related to what they asked for than what US bankers and businesses demanded.  They wanted jobs.  They got bailouts of Detroit and Wall Street and forced into a health care plan that benefited big Pharma and insurance company interests.  It seems like the Democratic party just looked at the election numbers, smiled, and went their merry way.  Republicans aren’t doing much better since they just looked at the last election numbers, smiled, and went their merry way.

A Bloomberg national poll indicates that the Washington crowd just doesn’t get it. It has to be a deliberate misconnect. You can’t be so wrong so many times.  They just don’t want to listen.  People don’t like paying taxes that are then used to fund politician’s pet projects and bailouts for big businesses and banks.  They don’t mind tax cuts to the middle class but they’re getting tired of footing the bill for the beneficiaries of the nation’s army of lobbyists.  The Republicans have missed the mark with their current assaults on collective bargaining and programs that impact just plain folks.  Why can’t both parties just shut up and listen for a change?

Americans are sending a message to congressional Republicans: Don’t shut down the federal government or slash spending on popular programs.

Almost 8 in 10 people say Republicans and Democrats should reach a compromise on a plan to reduce the federal budget deficit to keep the government running, a Bloomberg National Poll shows. At the same time, lopsided margins oppose cuts to Medicare, education, environmental protection, medical research and community-renewal programs.

While Americans say it’s important to improve the government’s fiscal situation, among the few deficit-reducing moves they back are cutting foreign aid, pulling U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq, and repealing the Bush-era tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 a year.

The results of the March 4-7 poll underscore the hazards confronting Republicans, as well as President Barack Obama and Democrats, as they face a showdown over funding the government and seek a broader deficit-reduction plan.

The rejection of Dubya and cronies in 2008 wasn’t an invitation for further bailouts of fat cats, expansion of unpopular wars and invention of a health care program while current programs have such severe issues.  The Republicans need to understand that the ‘shellacking’ in November wasn’t an invitation for a full on assault on Sesame Street, Yellowstone National Park, and women’s ability to have a menstrual cycle without fearing manslaughter charges.   Here’s the message.

When given five choices for the most important issue facing the nation, unemployment and jobs ranked first with 43 percent – – down from 50 percent in Bloomberg’s December 2010 poll — with the deficit and spending cited by 29 percent, up from 25 percent. Health care was chosen by 12 percent, the war in Afghanistan by 7 percent, and immigration by 3 percent.

Asked to choose between jobs and the deficit, 56 percent called creating jobs the government’s more important priority now, while 42 percent said cutting spending was.

Why couldn’t we have gotten a decent jobs program and stimulus right off the bat during the first few months of Obama’s term?  We’d have been in a much better position politically, economically, and fiscally.  Instead, we got a bunch of worthless tax cuts that siphoned money off to investments abroad and just enough money to stem about 2 years of fiscal disaster in the states.

There are two follies that should haunt a few leaders for the rest of their natural born days.  Blame goes first to Obama for carving out the health care reform instead of focusing laserlike on job creation.  He clearly created a lot of unnecessary strife and tempests in teabots by taking his eye off the job markets.  The second heap of guilt goes to Mitch McConnell and his party of no. The Republicans seem intent on pleasing their base and burying the rest of the country in joblessness and despair.   Clearly, this is a man that will do anything to regain a Republican White House.  This includes taking our country down with the plan.

Some one needs to tell the President that ending bipartisan strife doesn’t mean selling out to other side.  That’s what brought us a health care plan that assaults women’s rights and forces every one to pay and play.  The Republican strategy of petulance has been paying off big time for them in terms of policy gains.  They need to pay for that petulance.   Giving into Republican demands is not bipartisanship.  The Republican agenda is clear now.  The political moves by Republican governors to force their will no matter what is being met resistance by Democratic legislators.   Polls are showing that the public is taking the side of these legislators.  The President needs to take a page from their playbooks rather than doing his version of bipartisanship (i.e. giving into Republican bullying on things like tax cuts for billionaires).  The leadership shown by Democrats in the heartland is being rewarded and is clearly showing the politicians in Washington the type of future the voters want.  Now, if we could only get Washington to listen before the presidential campaign silly season begins.

Wrong! Wrong! Very Wrong!

Posted: March 8, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Baby Boomers, Domestic Policy, Federal Budget, John Birch Society in Charge, Psychopaths in charge, right wing hate grouups, Social Security, The Media SUCKS, the villagers | Tags: , , , , | 22 Comments

I almost never read Robert J. Samuelson because he is basically one of those people that seems to read a few things then moves himself to expert status.   He’s one of many writers who seems to derive a livelihood by achieving intellectual dilletante status.  I couldn’t get pass this headline at his WAPO column: ‘Why Social Security is welfare’.  Why journalistic poseurs are allowed column space to promote so much wrong information is beyond me.

We don’t call Social Security “welfare” because it’s a pejorative term, and politicians don’t want to offend. So their rhetoric classifies Social Security as something else when it isn’t. Here is how I define a welfare program: First, it taxes one group to support another group, meaning it’s pay-as-you-go and not a contributory scheme where people’s own savings pay their later benefits. And second, Congress can constantly alter benefits, reflecting changing needs, economic conditions and politics. Social Security qualifies on both counts.

Samuelson is obviously confused. I wonder if he feels this way about every annuity investment sold by every insurance broker and bank in the country?  Social Security is a benefit that every worker pays for that is basically an insurance annuity set up to pay you back when you hit the stated conditions of the contract.  It has elements of insurance in it that is comparable to the government-sponsored flood insurance plan.  It has elements of a life annuity which is a similar contract that you can buy from any insurance broker.  You pay now and it pays you benefits in the future, again, when you meet the conditions of the annuity. It’s a form of longevity insurance.

Additionally, it is not means tested which means that receiving the annuity has nothing to do with your income.  It has to do with you joining the plan and paying the premiums as you work or as your parents or spouse works.  It is not a transfer payment which is the traditional form ‘welfare’ or safety net program. Transfer payments go to a beneficiary simply upon meeting certain criteria without ever having paid into the program directly.  Usually, transfer payments are means-tested which means they pay only to low income citizens. Transfer payments direct payments or services to people that don’t involve any exchange of goods and services for the benefit.  They are a one-way transfer of benefits and their main purpose is for income redistribution.  Social Security does not fall under this category at all.  If you or a qualifying family member don’t contribute to the program, you will not get your benefits.  Your benefits are also eventually based on what you contributed and not what your income says you need.  This is a huge difference.

You can read two other economics/finance writers who explain this in similar ways.  First, Economics professor Mark Thoma on Economist’s View explains the bad logic involved with this argument.  He also explains why Social Security is an insurance annuity and not a transfer payment in a similar way.

Social Security is no different, it is an insurance program against economic risk as I explain in this Op-Ed piece. Some people will live long lives and collect more than they contribute in premiums, some will die young and collect less. Some children will lose their parents and collect more than their parents paid into the system, others will not. But this does not make it welfare.

Is gambling welfare? Gambling transfers income from one person to another. Does that make it welfare? Loaning money transfers income when the loan is paid back with interest. Are people who receive interest income on welfare?

There is an important distinction between needing insurance ex-ante and needing it ex-post. Insurance does redistribute income ex-post, but that doesn’t imply that it was a bad deal ex-ante (i.e., when people start their work lives).

Angry Bear has made the same argument. (Both of these quotes are pretty old btw since Samuleson keeps rehashing this canard over and over and over.)  There is an example there of the basic insurance problem taught in finance classes in risk theory.  It shows why people basically buy insurance.  It also discusses the benefits of having insurance provided by the government when the private sector fails to provide the service.  Flood insurance and Longevity insurance make sure that people who have experienced those conditions do not become a burden on society and get shoved into the welfare system.  They pay premiums on each pay check–just as each of us do–to make sure that we don’t either outlive our incomes and wealth.

What does all of this have to do with Social Security? Those who are hard-working, fortunate, and not too profligate will have a large nest egg at retirement and Social Security will account for only a small portion of their retirement portfolio. This is tantamount to paying for insurance and then not needing it. This happens all the time — every year someone fails to get sick or injured and, while surely happy in their good health, would have been better off not buying insurance. That’s the nature of insurance: if you don’t need it, then you’ll always wish you hadn’t purchased it. Only in the context of retirement insurance is this considered a crisis.

On the other hand, those with bad luck or insufficient income will not have a nest egg at retirement. Because of Social Security, instead of facing the risk of zero income at retirement, they are guaranteed income sufficient to subsist.

This is precisely like the insurance example I worked through above: people with good outcomes will wish they hadn’t paid into the insurance fund; those with bad outcomes will be glad they did. Ex-ante, everyone benefits from the insurance. Overall, society is better off because risk is reduced; because people are risk-averse, the gains are quite large.

Additionally, Samuelson tries to force the Social Security program back into the federal deficit column when it is and was designed as a stand alone program. He also uses the current downturn–with its high and sustained rate of unemployment and hence, people NOT paying into social security at the moment–as an excuse to call the trust fund insolvent.  This is another canard.

Contrary to the Obama administration’s posture, Social Security does affect our larger budget problem. Annual benefits already exceed payroll taxes. The gap will grow. The trust fund holds Treasury bonds; when these are redeemed, the needed cash can be raised only by borrowing, taxing or cutting other programs. The connection between Social Security and the rest of the budget is brutally direct. The arcane accounting of the trust fund obscures what’s happening. Just as important, how we treat Social Security will affect how we treat Medicare and, to a lesser extent, Medicaid.

Dean Baker also calls Samuelson “inaccurate and misleading”. (h/t BostonBoomer)

It seems that for some reason he has a hard time understanding the idea of a pension. This shouldn’t be that hard, many people have them.

The basic principle is that you pay money in during your working years and then you get money back after you retiree. Social Security is a pension that is run through the government. Therefore Samuelson wants to call it “welfare.”

It is not clear exactly what his logic is. The federal government runs a flood insurance program. Are the payments made to flood victims under this program “welfare?” How about the people who buy government bonds. Are they getting “welfare” when they get the interest on their bonds? If there is any logic to Mr. Samuelson’s singling out Social Security as a source of welfare, he didn’t waste any space sharing it with readers.

There are a few other points that deserve comment. He claims that the trillions of dollars of surplus built up by the trust fund over the last three decades were an “accident.” Actually, this surplus was predicted by the projections available at the time. If anyone did not expect a large surplus to arise from the tax increases and benefit cuts put in place in 1983 then their judgement and arithmetic skills have to be seriously questioned.

In terms of the program and the deficit, under the law it can only spend money that came from its designated tax or the interest on the bonds held by the trust fund. It has no legal authority to spend one dime beyond this sum. In that sense it cannot contribute to the deficit. Mr. Samuelson apparently wants to use Social Security taxes to pay for defense and other spending.

Social Security coffers will see increased funding as long as people have jobs that pay more. Judging the cash inflows at a time when unemployment is unusually high and sustained is analysis aimed at pushing a political agenda.  It’s not a realistic view of the future stream of revenues.  The pot will replenish at a rate better than today simply by getting rid of the high unemployment rate and getting people into jobs with incomes that actually improve.  Consistently increasing the cap level by the rate of inflation would also provide an additional and reasonable source of funds.

I’ve written more than a few posts explaining the basics of social security.  It gets old when you have to repeat the same arguments to the same boneheads–like Samuelson–over and over.  I really don’t understand why some news outlets just seem to tolerate deliberate misinformation as ‘opinion’.  I certainly hope that some one with a similar sized readership will challenge Samuelson on his facts.  He plays fast and loose with them all the time.

The Republican War on Nearly Everybody

Posted: February 28, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Psychopaths in charge, right wing hate grouups, Violence against women, Women's Rights | Tags: , , , | 25 Comments

Republicans don’t seem to be able to help themselves any more. They’ve adopted the policy that no public good is a good public good.  Shortsightedness appears to rule their doctrine and policy measures.  The war on American Women is just one instance. Here’s Agent Orange telling Christian Extremists that defunding  planned parenthood is just one “battle’ that’s part of a “war” that he wants to win. Evidently forced pregnancy and death in childbirth appear to be front and center on Speaker Boehner’s list of priorities.  I’m warning you that this comes straight from the American christian version of the taliban so venture over to that site at the risk of killing some brain cells.

David Brody: “Can you commit to them that (defunding Planned Parenthood) will stay in the CR no matter what?”

Speaker John Boehner: “The continuing resolution passed 10 days ago did in fact defund Planned Parenthood and that bill has gone over to the United States Senate. They, like the House were out last week. What they’ll do with that bill I have no idea. In the short term CR though our focus is on cutting spending and making sure that we keep the government open. In order to get this through the House and through the Senate and signed by the President by March 4th, we’re not going to take any big chances on the fact that they’re looking for an excuse to shut down the government. Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer they’ve been rooting for a government shutdown. We do not want to give them an excuse to do that.”

David Brody: “But then again with Planned Parenthood and this whole situation we know what’s going to happen in the Senate. It’s not going to be part of the CR. The pro-life community wants the GOP leadership to stand firm here in conference and is that a line in the sand?”

Speaker John Boehner: “The goal here again is to cut spending and keep the government open. I met with a lot of religious leaders earlier today to talk about the strategy and I think it’s important that we understand that what we want to do here is win the war not just win a battle and there will be an opportunity sometime in order to win the big war and we’re looking for that opportunity. I don’t think this short term CR is the opportunity that will get us there.”

David Brody: “So in essence you’re saying if it comes to that you’re not going to shut down the government over the defunding of Planned Parenthood.”

Speaker John Boehner: “There are a lot of options on the table but I don’t think in the short term CR (Continuing Resolution) this is the opportunity we’re looking for.”

There is absolutely nothing pro-life about these people.  It is merely about out and out ownership of women and their bodily functions. They will not be satistified until they set up a police state whose function it will be to check the results of women’s monthly cycles and enforce breeder status on every functioning uterus. This is seriously sick.

It’s just not reproductive rights that are at stake here.  It’s the funding of nearly all services that support the health and well being of women, pregnancies, and children.  The speaker is sadly obsessed with one small part of a huge federal budget.  This can only be seen through the lens of christianist extremism.

Speaking to the Christian Broadcasting Network’s David Brody, Boehner vigorously supported a recent House vote that defunds the organization entirely, a move that would strip it of more than $75 million in government cash.

Currently, the organization is allowed to apply government subsidies to all services except abortion procedures. Critics argue that restriction is too limited, saying that applying the government’s money to other procedures leaves more of the group’s own cash on hand to allocate to abortion-related services.

“The goal here again is to cut spending and keep the government open,” Boehner said of the move to defund the organization, in an interview published Sunday. “I met with a lot of religious leaders earlier today to talk about the strategy and I think it’s important that we understand that what we want to do here is win the war not just win a battle and there will be an opportunity sometime in order to win the big war and we’re looking for that opportunity.”

The defunding vote from the lower chamber came as part of a continuing resolution that included dramatic spending cuts across a range of programs. The Democrat-controlled Senate is set to consider the spending bill this week and is likely to reject a significant amount of the GOP’s spending cuts, including those that affect Planned Parenthood.

We’ve seen the erosion of women’s autonomy and individual liberties now for decades.  There has been a method and a madness to the religious zealots who seek to enact specific religious tenets into the laws and funding of our national priorities.   This type of thinking has reached a zenith in crazyland.  Let me just remind you that Georgia legislature wants every single miscarriage investigated for possible wrongdoing.  Rational thought has left the building.

It’s only February, but this year has been a tough one for women’s health and reproductive rights. There’s a new bill on the block that may have reached the apex (I hope) of woman-hating craziness. Georgia State Rep. Bobby Franklin—who last year proposed making rape and domestic violence “victims” into “accusers”—has introduced a 10-page bill that would criminalize miscarriages and make abortion in Georgia completely illegal. Both miscarriages and abortions would be potentially punishable by death: any “prenatal murder” in the words of the bill, including “human involvement” in a miscarriage, would be a felony and carry a penalty of life in prison or death. Basically, it’s everything an “pro-life” activist could want aside from making all women who’ve had abortions wear big red “A”s on their chests.

I doubt that a bill that makes a legal medical procedure liable for the death penalty will pass. The bill, however, shows an astonishing lack of concern for women’s health and well-being. Under Rep. Franklin’s bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was “no human involvement whatsoever in the causation” of their miscarriage. There is no clarification of what “human involvement” means, and this is hugely problematic as medical doctors do not know exactly what causes miscarriages. Miscarriages are estimated to terminate up to a quarter of all pregnancies and the Mayo Clinic says that “the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn’t developing normally.”

We’ve seen this kind of insanity coming out of statehouses and congress for several months now with little pushback by Democratic legislators. What type of people would seriously think and say these things?  How have they gotten into positions where they get to make laws?

Every penny spent on Planned Parenthood is a penny well-spent.  Unplanned and dangerous pregnancies are bad for children, bad for women,and bad for the society.  There exists an incredible amount of evidence that show that every dollar spent to prevent unwanted and dangerous pregnancies save thousands of dollars and lives later on down the road. Seriously, what kind of people live in this country that cheer on actions that would lead to abundant suffering? Again, what kind of a sicko do you have to be to say these things?  Speaker Boehner is an embarrassment to the country.  The sooner we get his pathetic drunk and emotionally damaged ass out of Washington DC the better off we will all be.  Unfortunately, he seems intent on damaging the present and the future as best he can.

Right off a Cliff

Posted: February 26, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: abortion rights, Barack Obama, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, collective bargaining, Corporate Crime, Democratic Politics, education, Environmental Protection, Federal Budget, Feminists, fundamentalist Christians, GLBT Rights, Human Rights, John Birch Society in Charge, Populism, Psychopaths in charge, Republican presidential politics, right wing hate grouups, Surreality, Team Obama, The Media SUCKS, the villagers, U.S. Politics, Voter Ignorance, We are so F'd | Tags: , , , , | 11 Comments

Where are mainstream Republicans these days? What has happened to the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Eisenhower? Prior to the Reagan years, Republican women were front and center in volunteering for planned parenthood, supporting the ERA, and working for abortion rights. First Lady Betty Ford was a proud feminist and one of the first women to put women’s health issues–including women with drinking problems and breast cancer–on the map. President Richard Nixon was responsible for many of the agencies that protect the environment. The current party is chock-full of science denying Theocrats and economics-denying Corporate Fascists. It’s making a sham out of the two party system. We may now have a window open wide enough to stop some of this.  We should ready ourselves with the facts and act now.

An online conversation has been initiated with the publication of Ron Brownstein’s article in the National Journal on Thursday called ‘State’s Rights’. It is front and center in starting a discussion among Democratic bloggers, journalists, and other liberal/progressive sympathizers.  States rights was code for the right to own slaves during the first 100 years of this country’s existence.  It is now code for the right to discriminate against the GLBT community, insert the government into an individual woman’s gynecological care, and bust unions. The racial overtones have not gone away since the worst of the hateful verbiage is aimed at stopping any policy goal attempted by President Obama.

Any one who has read me over the last few years knows that I am not a big fan of this President and I’m even less of a fan of his zealous followers.  However, it would take a fairly dim bulb to not see the racism implicit in many of the Republican attacks against him. Attacks range from the extremely bizarre personal assertions that he is a secret Muslim, foreign born, and a devout socialist/communist to a complete rewrite of any policy initiative.

Obama is about as conservative of a Democrat as one can find these days which has been one of my issues with him all along.  His actions and words have not stopped the endless attacks on absolutely everything he attempts by Republicans and their monied interests.  These tactics were first used against former Democratic President Bill Clinton but have reached some kind of hyper-extortionate apex today.  It’s to the point that I firmly believe some of these Republican extremists would rather take the country down with them than negotiate something other than an ideologically pure outcome.  Brown’s article and examples focus on the current bloc of extremist Republican governors with their take no prisoners policies.  While his focus is mostly on the impact on Obama, I believe his larger point should entice us to think bigger.

But one senior Obama administration official, who also had a close view of Clinton’s interaction with Republican governors, contends that ideology is trumping interest for the governors in many of these new disputes. Health care reform, for instance, asks states for no new financial contribution to expand coverage through 2016 and only relatively small participation thereafter; because 60 percent of the uninsured live in the states where a Republican holds the governorship, their residents would receive the most new federal aid if the law survives. “One had the sense in the mid-1990s that conservative governors were doing whatever was in the best interest of their state,” the senior official said. “This time, the Republican governors appear determined to make an ideological point, even if it costs their state a great deal.”

Whatever the governors’ motivations (one man’s posturing, after all, is another man’s principle), their unreserved enlistment into Washington’s wars marks a milestone. It creates a second line of defense for conservatives to contest Obama even after he wins battles in Congress. It tears another hole in the fraying conviction that state capitals are less partisan than Washington. And it creates a precedent that is likely to encourage more guerrilla warfare between Democratic governors and a future Republican president.

American politics increasingly resembles a kind of total war in which each party mobilizes every conceivable asset at its disposal against the other. Most governors were once conscientious objectors in that struggle. No more.

I can remember attending Republican conventions in the early 1980s during the first hint of the unholy alliance between religious fanatics along the line of a Christian Taliban with the John Birch Society version of libertarians.  It was a terrifying spectacle.  At the time, the more pro-business and hoity-toity conservative elements in the party were willing to use them like pet pit bulls because they were incredibly organized at the grass roots level and they voted. Republicans traditionally had a much more difficult time turning out voters and their GOTV machines were dwarfed by the Democrats who could rely on well organized and managed union membership.  This is one of the reasons why there is also the huge attack on the last standing unions now.  They’re worth a fortune come election time and no Republican campaign strategist worth anything underestimates them.  We can clearly no longer underestimate the religious zealots or those gullible to the rants of Glenn Beck.  They’ve become a contagion.

Back in the day,  the young me argued that this form of big daddy government intervention put forth by religionists and Birchers was basically enabling powerful business monopolies and drop kicking the constitutional mandate to deny the establishing of a state religion.  It was against the very core ideology of  historical Republicanism.  I got no where.  This was especially true as Nixon’s southern strategy began to work its evil influence on bringing in the remaining racist elements of the old Dixiecrats who frankly were all for the government taking care of any one that wasn’t like them.  This added the last nail in the traditional coffin of the party of Lincoln. That sin is now manifesting in the xenophobia against Muslims and Hispanics in addition to African Americans topped by the anti-science bias from the religionists and the pro-monopoly market creation from the corporatists.

It appears that many old school Republicans now see the results of opening this Pandora’s box. They are horrified and have been trying to stuff the demons back into the chest.  Now, you see those same folks that opened their kennels filled with poodles to the pit bulls are now acting absolutely appalled by the rising influence of absolutely whacked extremists like Glenn Beck.  Scarborough, Rove, and Kristol are currently trying to put the Beckheads back into the box.  Those of us that don’t vote Republican could afford to ignore this if it were just some intraparty feud.  It’s gone beyond that with the rise of tea party hysterics and billionaire libertarian Daddy Warbucks’ propaganda machines. In many states, the Republican party infrastructure has been commandeered by the pit bulls. The poodles–like Arianna Huffington and Markos–have long left their confines. They are morphing traditional Democratic Party concerns.  The same divisive issues that used to motivate the base to do the GOTV and show up at the polls has managed to bring this new crop of Republican governors and congressional members to a critical mass.  They refuse any middle or even right of middle ground.  They won’t negotiate on the usual country club Republican issues. It’s no longer a GOTV ploy for them because they are true believers.

Steven Benen explores this quandry in his blog at WAPO today.

Keep in mind, it’s ideology, not practical concerns, that lie at the heart of these governors’ reactionary moves. The states turning down investments for high-speed rail, for example, were effectively handed a gift — jobs, economic development, improved infrastructure — but Republicans like Rick Scott and Scott Walker turned down the benefits because of a philosophical opposition, deliberately hurting their state in the process. The administration was effectively throwing a life-preserver to a Republican who’s drowning, only to be told, “We don’t like government life-preservers.”

The same is true of health care, which would be a boon to states, but which far-right governors resist for reasons that have nothing to do with public policy.

Bill Clinton faced a watered-down version of these Republican pit bulls over a decade ago.  Dealing with them is how he got his reputation for triangulation.  He seemed uniquely placed to make some small progress then–that now seems impossible now–because of his past position as a southern governor with a decidedly homespun and folksy manner.  President Obama has none of this going for him.  He is surrounded by Businesscrats that are unlikely to fill the void. The only thing he’s managed to do is to gain the ear of the Chamber of Commerce types.  These folks are hardly going to be sympathetic to social justice or middle class bread-and-butter issues.  Additionally, right wing media sources and timid main stream media sources are playing into the hands of the outrageous.  We have media enablers instead of investigative journalists.

That is why it is absolutely essential that whatever is left of the Democratic grassroots need to make one extremely loud noise right now.  It is unconscionable that a rewrite of history, science, and economic is taking place while many of us are simply standing around with gaping mouths.  I’ve spoken many times about the absolute lack of economics that is driving austerity programs.  It’s already showing signs of slowing economic growth down at a time when unemployment is unacceptably high. This is only going to multiply as the days and months unfold.  Ask yourself if we can really afford another recession?

I was also disheartened to read that science is not fairing well either. Scientific American has a thought provoking piece up on the overwhelming science behind global warming and climate change.Their title should be rhetorical but it is not: ‘Why Are Americans So Ill-Informed about Climate Change?’

Near the forum’s conclusion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology climate scientist Kerry Emanuel asked a panel of journalists why the media continues to cover anthropogenic climate change as a controversy or debate, when in fact it is a consensus among such organizations as the American Geophysical Union, American Institute of Physics, American Chemical Society, American Meteorological Association and the National Research Council, along with the national academies of more than two dozen countries.

“You haven’t persuaded the public,” replied Elizabeth Shogren of National Public Radio. Emanuel immediately countered, smiling and pointing at Shogren, “No, you haven’t.” Scattered applause followed in the audience of mostly scientists, with one heckler saying, “That’s right. Kerry said it.”

Such a tone of searching bewilderment typified a handful of sessions that dealt with the struggle to motivate Americans on the topic of climate change. Only 35 percent of Americans see climate change as a serious problem, according to a 2009 poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

It’s a given that an organized and well-funded campaign has led efforts to confuse the public regarding the consensus around anthropogenic climate change.

These extremists are even rewriting the already right wing Ronald Reagan’s legacy to make it seem more extreme to support the legitimacy of their radical agendas.  Here’s an example I found this morning on ThinkProgress on Reagan’s views on unions. Scott Walker’s fantasy world includes his vision of being Reagan’s heir. Yet, here is Reagan himself on the union movement in Poland during one of his radio addresses to the nation.

REAGAN: Ever since martial law was brutally imposed last December, Polish authorities have been assuring the world that they’re interested in a genuine reconciliation with the Polish people. But the Polish regime’s action yesterday reveals the hollowness of its promises. By outlawing Solidarity, a free trade organization to which an overwhelming majority of Polish workers and farmers belong, they have made it clear that they never had any intention of restoring one of the most elemental human rights—the right to belong to a free trade union.

The one thing that I learned early on when dealing with these people from within the Republican party itself in the pre-Reagan and early Reagan days is that they believe their courses are so righteous that they will lie and do anything to support them.  If we do not hold their actions and lies to the light of day, our country will be completely overrun by by folks that are anti-science, anti-economics, anti-rational thought, and anti-democracy.  We’ll have a theocratic plutocracy in fairly short order.

It is absolutely imperative that we put pressure on the media and Democratic politicians to fact check these people, stand up to them, and expose their lies to the public.  It is possible that we’ve caught a tipping point in their overreach process. If this is the case, it means we have to work with the momentum now.  Nothing short of our democracy and our children’s future is at stake here.  We cannot be complacent and we cannot be left with mouths wide opened.  We also cannot rely on leadership from the very top.  If you’re in one of those states that is acting up, act now!!!  Find and support your version of the Wisconsin 14.

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