The Miserable Ones

Jean Vanjean* is alive and living in America. His real name is Tom Barrett.

Charles Pierce highlights a Human Rights Watch "report, 'Profiting from Probation: America’s ‘Offender-Funded’ Probation Industry,' [which] describes how

more than 1,000 courts in several US states delegate tremendous coercive power to companies that are often subject to little meaningful oversight or regulation. In many cases, the only reason people are put on probation is because they need time to pay off fines and court costs linked to minor crimes. In some of these cases, probation companies act more like abusive debt collectors than probation officers, charging the debtors for their services....

Human Rights Watch estimates that, in Georgia alone, the industry collects a minimum of US$40 million in fees every year from probationers. In other states, disclosure requirements are so minimal that is not possible even to hazard a guess how much probation companies are harvesting from probationers....

* In Augusta, Georgia, a man who pled guilty to shoplifting a US$2 can of beer and fined US$200 was ultimately jailed for failing to pay more than US$1,000 in fees to his probation company. At the time he was destitute, selling his own blood plasma twice a week to raise money.

* In another Georgia town, a company probation officer said she routinely has offenders arrested for non-payment and then bargains with their families for money in exchange for the person’s release.

* In Alabama, the town of Harpersville shut down its entire municipal court after a judge slammed the municipality and its probation company for running what he called a 'judicially sanctioned extortion racket.'

This is not breaking news. Ethan Bronner of the New York Times wrote a story on these probation mills in July 2012. (If you're interested in the follow-up to the case brought by attorney John B. Long, mentioned in the story, here's what I found. The law is a long and winding road.)

Pierce writes,

This is yet another product of the immensely stupid notion of privatizing the proper functions of government, which is based on the colossally stupid notion that private industry is more honest and more efficient than the public sector, which is itself based on the transcendentally stupid decision by too many states that it is better to light their balls on fire than raise taxes in order to pay for anything anywhere at any time.

But the problem is larger than even Pierce lets on. It goes to the heart of libertarian-conservative philosophy: the notion that, as Ronald Reagan infamously said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." What these winger-philosophers want is to return us to the days of laissez-faire. Laissez-faire, in fact, will always suit those is power, because it is they who decide who has the privilege of being left alone, who has freeeedom! to act as s/he wishes. Those who do not belong to this privileged class -- which grows smaller and smaller with each success of the philosopher kings -- will necessarily lose some of their freedoms. Thus, poor people who run afoul of the law in the most minimal ways -- traffic violations, petty thefts, public drunkenness, jaywalking, public protests -- can and do lose their most basic freedoms. The idea that the punishment must fit the crime is abandoned. When the courts become cash cows, all manner of justice disappears. There is no redress.

The privatization of the probation function is horrific, but it is the tip of the iceberg. What has made government relatively honest, if not always optimally functional, was civil service reform. Removing the patronage systems of Tammany Halls large and small meant that governments returned to functioning as servants of the people, and elections more closely reflected the will of the people. Privatization circumvents civil service & returns the levers of corruption to the powerful. We've seen this in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie has not only undermined public unions but also used his power to reward friends and family. As Paul Krugman wrote in June 2012,

In 2010, Chris Christie, the state’s governor — who has close personal ties to Community Education Centers, the largest operator of [New Jersey's system of halfway houses], and who once worked as a lobbyist for the firm — described the company’s operations as 'representing the very best of the human spirit.' But The Times’s reports instead portray something closer to hell on earth — an understaffed, poorly run system, with a demoralized work force, from which the most dangerous individuals often escape to wreak havoc, while relatively mild offenders face terror and abuse at the hands of other inmates.

Krugman sees the larger picture:

As more and more government functions get privatized, states become pay-to-play paradises, in which both political contributions and contracts for friends and relatives become a quid pro quo for getting government business. Are the corporations capturing the politicians, or the politicians capturing the corporations? Does it matter?

The full New York Times report on Christie's halfway house horrors is here. More recently, we've seen how Chris Christie's brother Todd has profited from a project approved by David Samson, Christie's top appointee to the Port Authority. (Samson also profited from the deal.) And the day after Hurricane Sandy left New Jersey, Chris Christie gave a no-bid contract for cleanup to a firm for which Christie mentor & former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is a lobbyist, even though local (private) firms offered to do the job for less.

So privatization is really just one more way in which the haves take from the have-nots. That the philosopher kings do so under the pretense of better serving the public adds insult to injury.

Meanwhile, none of this stops the libertarians from screaming about any perceived intrusion on their own freeedoms! Thus Rand Paul cited Ayn Rand in a screed against the "collective'"s plans to phase out energy-sapping incandescent light bulbs. Paul apparently does not know how to screw in those new-fangled coily things. Then he went on what ABC News called a "toilet tirade" because "Frankly, my toilets don’t work in my house. And I blame you [an Energy Department official] and people like you who want to tell me what I can install in my house, what I can do. You restrict my choices." Low-flow does not work for a big shit. Paul's concerns are for his choices. And what happened when Paul objected to a TSA patdown? As Politico reported in January 2013,

For Paul, TSA reform is personal. He drew viral media attention for resisting a TSA pat-down in 2012, which caused him to miss a speech at the March for Life rally. Following that incident, Paul introduced TSA privatization and flier bill of rights legislation last summer.

More recently, Paul has tapped into libertarian paranoia over NSA spying, & is suing the federal government to "protect the Fourth Amendment." Coincidentally, he is using his suit as a fundraising vehicle.

None of this freeedom! philosophy stops its adherents from restricting the freedoms of women, particularly poor women. As Erin Ryan of Jezebel lays out, "Rand Paul also famously opposes giving low-income women any sort of aid in acquiring birth control, and is staunchly anti-abortion. Rand Paul should just come out and say it: he doesn't think unmarried low income women should be having sex." Charlotte Alter of Time writes: "Rand Paul ... co-sponsored the Life at Conception act to completely outlaw abortion and opposes the Obamacare birth control insurance coverage mandate." This is fine with Paul because the women he knows can afford to pay for their own contraception and abortions. In fact, he boasts about how successful his women friends are. “I’ve seen the women in my family and how well they’re doing. My niece is in Cornell vet school and about 85% of the people in vet school are women.” If there was a "war on women," women won, he says.

Freeedom is not about you. It is all about Rand Paul and his privileged ilk.

* In the novel Les Misérables, Victor Hugo's protagonist Jean Valjean is arrested for stealing a loaf of bread and sentenced to a five-year prison term (extended to 19 years for his attempts to escape).

The Commentariat -- Feb. 6, 2014

Internal links removed.

NEW. Craig Timberg of the Washington Post: "As Americans have grown increasingly comfortable with traditional surveillance cameras, a new, far more powerful generation is being quietly deployed that can track every vehicle and person across an area the size of a small city, for several hours at a time. Although these cameras can't read license plates or see faces, they provide such a wealth of data that police, businesses and even private individuals can use them to help identify people and track their movements.... Defense contractors are developing similar technology for the military, but its potential for civilian use is raising novel civil liberties concerns."

NEW. Everything Is Obama's Fault, Ctd. Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Facing growing resistance from conservatives, Speaker John A. Boehner on Thursday cast strong doubt that he could pass an overhaul of the nation's immigration laws this year, leaving it to President Obama to win the trust of his balking Republicans.... 'There's widespread doubt about whether this administration can be trusted to enforce our laws, and it's going to be difficult to move any immigration legislation until that changes,'" Boehner said....

     ... CW: Hope you got the logic of that. As long as the Congress & the President are from opposite parties, Congress is completely impotent! Ergo, best thing to do -- throw the bums out this year. Funny how Newt Gingrich promised a Contract on America when Clinton was president. Of course, there is one difference between Clinton & Obama: the former has pasty white skin; the latter does not.

Greg Sargent: "Under questioning today before the House Budget Committee from Dem Rep. Chris Van Hollen, CBO director Douglas Elmendorf confirmed that in reality, his report suggests Obamacare will reduce unemployment":

... Dylan Scott of TPM: Paul Ryan contradicted the party line during the Q&A with Elmendorf. "'Just to understand, it is not that employers are laying people off,' Ryan said. 'That is right,' Elmendorf said. That's a pretty direct contradiction for the attack adopted by many GOPers following the report's release.... [But] Ryan ... said he was 'troubled' by the report because it suggested that Obamacare was encouraging Americans 'not to get on the ladder of life, to begin working, getting the dignity of work, getting more opportunities, rising the income, joining the middle class.'"

... Brian Beutler demonstrates how the GOP's lying about the CBO report "flow[s] naturally from the composition of the [conservative] movement itself." In other words, the suspension of reality over there is Right Wing World will continue, a few passing nods to the real world via Ryan & others notowithstanding. ...

... Like Ryan, Ross Douthat is still very upset that some people who should be in the work force may drop out because of ObamaCare. CW: There are obvious fixes for any built-in discouragement of work (more give to sliding subsidies, etc.), but don't expect Republicans to knuckle down & write corrective legislation. ...

... Ah, I see Charles Pierce also calls out Ryan & Douthat, & as usual, he displays his full contempt for both of them. ...

... Brad Friedman of the BradBlog, in Salon: "... the release of two different official reports, one from the U.S. State Department on the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline project and another from the Congressional Budget Office on the economic outlook in light of the Affordable Care Act [caused leaders of the Republican party] ... to blatantly lie about what's in each of those reports, specifically with regard to 'job creation'...." The State Department's KXL report estimated that after a two-year construction period, the pipeline would create 35 -- count 'em, 35 -- permanent employees. After the report's release, Speaker John Boehner reiterated his claim that the KXL pipeline would bring "more than 100,000 jobs."

... ** Major Media Fail. Joan McCarter of Daily Kos: "The big loser in Tuesday's Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report release ... is the traditional media. This was a textbook case of reading incomprehension, preconceived assumptions, susceptibility to spin and inability to admit an error, spread out over the airwaves, the Internet, and blowing up in real time. In the aftermath, it's fascinating to see how it all played out: who corrected themselves, who backpedaled without ever acknowledging their fuck up, who insisted that even if they were wrong they were right, and who ran with the lie and are sticking with it." McCarter gives a special shoutout to gutless ignoramus Tuck Chodd. ...

... Erik Wemple of the Washington Post has a quick rundown of many of the media outlets that initially blew the story & changed their headlines, not to mention the content of their stories. ...

... Steve Benen: "... if this were simply an instance in which conservatives pushed a bogus attack and the media fell for it, this would become an interesting anecdote in a journalism textbook about media malpractice. But as [the] day progressed, we actually saw a more alarming twist: media professionals suggesting reality doesn't matter all that much." As Politico put it,

The Republicans just got a big gift from the Congressional Budget Office: It's going to be a lot easier for them to call Obamacare a 'job killer.' ... There's a lot more fine print about what those numbers really mean, and whether the jobs were 'lost.' ... But what matters politically is how they'll look in attack ads. And in this election year, '2 million lost jobs' is a Republican ad maker's dream."

     ... CW: The Politico piece, by David Nather & Jason Millman, who are among those Politico "reporters" who come & go so often they might be interns, is the worst case of journalistic malpractice I've seen in a long time. ...

... The Other CBO Report. John Cassidy of the New Yorker: "... something the C.B.O. said that you probably missed, which is based on actual facts rather than on informed speculation: in the past five years or so -- and this has nothing to do with Obamacare -- some six million jobs (and workers) have already gone missing from the U.S. economy. That figure was in a separate report that the C.B.O. released on Tuesday, titled, 'The Slow Recovery of the Labor Market.' ... Since 2008, the Republicans have been fighting policy efforts to stimulate spending and hiring. In part, they are responsible for the millions of missing workers." CW: The Senate should be holding big splashy hearings on this report. (Although if they tried, maybe nobody would show up.)

Latest GOP Ransom Demand. Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "A new break in the GOP's debt-ceiling strategy emerged at a private lunch on Wednesday, where House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) encouraged his allies to consider linking a restoration of recently cut military benefits with a one-year extension of the federal government's borrowing authority.... Earlier this week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) signaled he would like to see a restoration of the previous level of cost-of-living benefits for military personnel, and aides said he is planning to push legislation as early as next week that would return billions of related funding cut under last year's budget agreement." ...

     ... CW: So Boehner may demand that Democrats do what Harry Reid wants. Maybe Boehner should also demand a path to citizenship for immigrants, a $12 minimum wage & Medicare for all.

Dominic Rushe & Jill Treanor of the Guardian: "New York state's top financial regulator has demanded documents from more than a dozen banks including Barclays, Deutsche, Goldman Sachs and RBS as a probe widened into trading practices in the $5.3tn-a-day global foreign exchange markets. Benjamin Lawsky, New York's financial services superintendent, made the move following the banks' decision to fire or suspend at least 20 traders following reports that employees at some firms had shared information about their currency positions with counterparts at other companies."

The New York Times Editors note that the Justice Department has mostly ignored its best argument on the contraceptive cases coming before the Supreme Court -- allowing companies to favor one religion over another -- i.e., deciding that the owners' religious beliefs should take precedence over the beliefs & practices of the employees -- would violate the establishment clause of the First Amendment. "The justices should have the parties submit new briefs focused on the establishment clause...." ...

... Linda Greenhouse on the stories behind the sex cases the Supremes are hearing this term.

Frank Rich comments on Philip Seymour Hoffman, the CBO report & Fox "News."

Brenda Woods of Atlanta's WXIA defends inclusiveness against the xenophobes who found the Coca Cola ad outrageous. "'America the Beautiful' by any other language is still America, the beautiful." Via Media Matters:

New Jersey News

Erin O'Neill of the Star-Ledger: "Housing advocates claim New Jersey and the contractor it hired for Hurricane Sandy housing recovery efforts mismanaged the application process for the state's two largest initiatives for homeowners. The Fair Share Housing Center today released an analysis of state data showing that nearly 80 percent of residents who appealed rejections from the two housing programs proved they were wrongly denied in the first place. The center obtained the data through an open public records request. 'The Christie Administration's widespread rejection of large numbers of families actually eligible for Sandy aid shows that the Sandy recovery process has been flawed from start to finish,' said Adam Gordon, a staff attorney for Fair Share Housing Center, which sued the state last year for not releasing public documents related to the recovery effort."

AP: "New Jersey lawmakers investigating a political payback scandal ensnaring Gov. Chris Christie's administration may need to get a judge to force two key figures to turn over subpoenaed documents. Christie's two-time campaign manager [Bill Stepien] and a deputy chief of staff [Bridget Kelly] have refused to turn over text messages, emails, personal calendars and other documents related to a traffic-blocking operation near the George Washington Bridge...."

Michael Barbaro, et al., of the New York Times: "... Democrats are determined to transform [Chris Christie] into a toxic figure, whose name is synonymous with the ugliest elements of politics: partisan bullying and backslapping cronyism." CW: Hmmm. I thought Christie made himself "a toxic figure," without a lot of outside help.

Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker explains why Bridgegate will go on for a loooong time.

Senate Races 2014

Scott Brown, on the front page of the New Hampshire Union Leader. The report describes him as "a longtime summer resident of Rye," [Nw Hampshire].... Gail Collins: "Brown has not officially announced his candidacy, but he did show up shirtless for the New Hampshire news media when he took part in the state's recent Penguin Plunge.... Besides Scott Brown's chest, one of the early election themes in 2014 is tons of Republican incumbents being driven crazy by Tea Party primaries."...

... Eric Hananoki of Media Matters: "Fox News contributor Scott Brown is renting out his email list to an outlet that touts shady products like Alzheimer's disease cures and Social Security tricks. Brown joins several of his Republican colleagues in attempting to cash in on their followers through dubious or shady practices. Mike Huckabee, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich have all been renting out their email lists to suspect sources. As Salon's Alex Pareene noted, 'the conservative movement is an elaborate moneymaking venture. For professional movement conservatives, their audiences and followers are easy marks.'" In an update, Hananoki notes that Brown now claims to have severed ties with "this vendor." CW: Yeah, well, property taxes in New Hampshire are really high. Brown needs all the spare change he can get.

Presidential Election 2016

The Next POTUS Will Not Be a Really Rich Guy from Massachusetts. Margaret Hartmann of New York: "CNN ... in separate interviews on Wednesday..., asked both Mitt Romney and John Kerry if they'll run again. "The answer is no, I'm not running for president in 2016. It's time for someone else to take that responsibility and I'll be supporting our nominee," said Romney. The secretary of State was similarly Shermanesque. 'I’m out of politics. I have no plans whatsoever; this is my last stop,' he said."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Ralph Kiner, baseball's vastly undersung slugger, who belted more home runs than anyone else over his 10-year career but whose achievements in the batter's box were obscured by his decades in the broadcast booth, where he was one of the game's most recognizable personalities, died on Thursday at home in Rancho Mirage, Calif. He was 91."

Guardian: "The frustration of the Obama administration at Europe's hesitant policy over the pro-democracy protests in Ukraine has been laid bare in a leaked phone conversation between two senior US officials, one of whom declares: 'Fuck the EU'. The US state department did not directly confirm that the leaked audio clip posted on YouTube captures the voices of the top US diplomat for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, and US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. However, the department's spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that Nuland, who made the disparaging remark about the EU, 'has been in contact with her EU counterparts and of course has apologised for these reported comments'." ...

     ... New York Times: The White House surmised Russia recorded & leaked the conversation. "'The video was first noted and tweeted out by the Russian government,' Jay Carney, the White House press secretary, told reporters. 'I think it says something about Russia's role.'"

Guardian: Ban Ki-Moon, "the United Nations secretary-general, has used a speech ahead of the Winter Olympics in Sochi to condemn attacks on the LGBT community, amid growing criticism of Russia's so-called 'gay propaganda' laws."

New York Times: "A federal jury in Manhattan convicted Mathew Martoma on Thursday on insider trading charges in what may be the last criminal case to emerge from a decade-long investigation of Steven A. Cohen and his SAC Capital Advisors hedge fund. The jury of seven women and five men found Mr. Martoma, a former SAC portfolio manager, guilty of seeking out confidential information related to a clinical trial for an experimental Alzheimer's drug."

The Commentariat -- Feb. 5, 2014

Annie Lowrey & Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: " A Congressional Budget Office analysis released Tuesday predicted that the Affordable Care Act would shrink the work force by the equivalent of more than two million full-time positions and recharged the political debate over the health care law, providing Republican opponents fresh lines of attack and putting Democrats on the defensive. The nonpartisan budget office's analysis, part of a regular update to its budget projections, was far more complicated than the Republican attack lines it generated." ...

... The Washington Post story, by Zachary Goldfarb, is here. CW: Goldfarb's lede, which I think is stupid: "The Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by more than 2 million in coming years, congressional budget analysts said Tuesday, a finding that sent the White House scrambling to defend a law that has bedeviled President Obama for years." My gut reaction: this is mostly great news! People who don't want to work -- but who stayed on the job only to retain health insurance -- will retire, opening up jobs for those who want/need to work. That should help push down the unemployment rate, & better yet, might mean increased wages because of a shrinking labor pool. The only bad bit, as reported in the Times, "... it will also have an effect on businesses, the report said, including by encouraging them to reduce employee hours to avoid the 'employer mandate.'" (Gee, Congress could write a law to largely prevent businesses from working around the law. Oh, wait, Congress can't do squat about anything.) I'll see what Krugman sez. ...

     ... UPDATE. Krugman responds here and here (this 2nd response he labeled "extremely wonkish," so I didn't even try to read it.

... For those of you who enjoy reading CBO reports, this is a lovely day. ...

... Dylan Scott of TPM: "... the political press ... either misrepresented what the report said -- or shrugged off the actual facts, opting instead to speculate on what the political spin would mean for the horse race." Scott runs down "the best of the bad reporting...." Not surprisingly, Tuck Chodd is one of the worst offenders, managing -- by my reckoning -- to get 3 or 4 things wrong in 140 characters or less. That's quite a feat. ...

... Ross Douthat tries for a graf or two to sound reasonable, but the thrill of dumping on ObamaCare is too much to contain, & he bursts into orgiastic conservospeak:

... we may be dealing here with something that ... actually reflects a more universal dilemma of welfare-state liberalism: Namely, that when the government moves to help people at the bottom of the income distribution, its assistance often creates perverse incentives.... That Obamacare redistributes resources to the poor is undeniable. That it helps them rise out of poverty has always been more uncertain. And this projection is a data point for the case that it might reduce financial hardship while actively disincentivizing upward mobility overall.

... CW: Yeah, Ross, being able to purchase health insurance is going to disincentive people from being hostages to employer-based insurance. Now, some people can retire early from jobs they hate & do what they want to do in their later years. Whatever that is might not be "productive," but I'll bet a few of those disincentivized people will start there own small businesses; then they can get some respect from Republicans -- see **ed links below. ...

... Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post fact-checker, does note that some people could be "disincentiveized" to work full-time because of the ACA subsidies, which are means-tested; that is, "at a certain point, a person has to choose between earning more money or continuing to get the maximum help with health insurance payments." So Douthat may be theoretically right on this point. In any event, Kessler gives Republicans & the press three Pinocchios. ...

... Greg Sargent on a means of spoonfeeding facts to wingers & stupid reporters: "CBO director Douglas Elmendorf is set to testify before the House Budget Committee tomorrow. One committee lawmaker can ask him the following question: Is it true that your report found that Obamacare will result in over two million lost jobs? And so, this doesn't have to be a partisan argument. Tomorrow we can find out what the CBO's own director has to say about it. There shouldn't be any need for this to be represented by neutral news org as an unresolvable he-said-she-said standoff." ...

... Joan McCarter of Daily Kos agrees with me: "as usual, [the right wing] ignores what the CBO really says.... In fact, the CBO actually confirms one of the things supporters of the new law said it would do: provide people who can't or don't want to work full time, who want to quit their jobs to stay at home with their children or to start a new business, the freedom to do just that. Right there in the report on page 117 (yes, that's a lot of pages for conservatives to read) it says: 'The estimated reduction [in CBO's projections of hours worked] stems almost entirely from a net decline in the amount of labor that workers choose to supply rather than a net drop in businesses demand for labor. [...]." Thanks to Victoria D. for the link. ...

... So does this person, whoever she or he may be:

To put that in context, I have no doubt that if we eliminated Social Security and eliminated Medicare, there would be many 95-year-olds that would choose to work more hours than they're working today just so they could survive, feed themselves and have health insurance. -- Anonymous "Senior White House Official"

... So do the New York Times Editors: "The Congressional Budget Office estimated on Tuesday that the Affordable Care Act will reduce the number of full-time workers by 2.5 million over the next decade. That is mostly a good thing, a liberating result of the law."

... Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post disagrees. But she covers much more of what the CBO report estimates, & her take is well worth reading. She outlines the good, the bad and the ugly of the report, & she calls the 2 million fewer employees "the ugly." ...

... Dana Milbank polishes his Village People creds, calling the CBO report "grim news for the White House and for Democrats on the ballot in November." ...

... Josh Barro of Business Insider elaborates on my theory that the reduced work force could lead to increased wages: "Here's a key implication of that finding that most people are glossing over: Obamacare will drive wages up: The price of labor, like any good or service, is determined by supply and demand.... More broadly, Obamacare alters the employer-employee relationship in a way that empowers employees. When an employee is dependent on his job not just for a wage but for health insurance, he is less able to threaten to leave if he doesn't get a raise. Severing the work-insurance link strengthens the employee's hand in bargaining -- which is bad for employers and good for workers.... This helps explain why so many business owners have been apoplectic about the law." ...

... CW: I like the way contributor Marvin Schwalb explains it in terms so simple even Chuck Todd could understand:

... what [the CBO report] actually says is that the ACA will create 2 million job openings. No net loss, actually a big gain.

... The White House could use some help from Dr. Schwalb. James Oliphant of the National Journal has a point: "The White House Is Still Terrible at Explaining Obamacare. Obama might be right about the jobs impact of the ACA, but his team's inability to relay that says everything about Democrats' 2014 problem." CW: In other words, if only the Obama could explain the ACA in 140 characters (in the same way Chuck there was able mangle & mischaracterize many aspects of the CBO report). Unfortunately, when Obama tries, it comes out like this: "And if you like your health insurance, you can keep it."

Ransom Demand of the Week. Alex Rogers of Time: "With some House Republicans spoiling for another fight over lifting the country's borrowing limit, leadership is eyeing a repeal of an obscure provision in the new health law.... Many Republicans are calling the [risk corridors] program a government bailout of insurance companies, including Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, who chairs a coalition of House conservatives. 'I think it would be a real tough position to sell to say that when we're running out of money, when we're maxing out our credit card, we should also be borrowing money from China to bail out insurance companies,' Scalise told Time last month." ...

     ... CW: What Rogers doesn't report is that the risk corridors program, rather than being a bail-out program as Scalise claims, is a money-maker for the government. As Sarah Kliff reported yesterday (linked above), the CBO "is projecting that the federal government will take in $16 billion from health plans that are essentially making a profit on the exchange -- and will redistribute $8 billion to other insurers running a loss. That means $8 billion in net savings for the federal government.... This is a pretty significant obstacle for Republican efforts to repeal the risk corridors."

** Ed Kilgore: "One of the most amusing subtexts of what is appearing to be a disastrous House GOP retreat last week is that Eric Cantor spent time trying to tutor his troops on how to talk to people who (a) don't own their own businesses, and (b) don't view themselves as second-class citizens for working for somebody else.... The small-business obsession of the GOP is what has passed for economic populism in their ranks -- a chance to identify a constituency outside the plutocracy.... Cantor may be laying out an impossible objective for Republicans in appealing to people they can't quite respect as the source of anything good other than votes." ...

... ** Paul Waldman of the American Prospect: "After years of worrying primarily about the concerns of people who own businesses, [Republicans ha]ve elevated to gospel truth that the businessman's virtue is unassailable, that his rewards are justly earned, and that no effort should be spared to remove all obstacles from his path." ...

** Tom Edsall in the New York Times on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement secret negotiations: "The case of trade reflects a larger shift in the balance of power. As multinational or 'stateless' capital diminishes the sovereignty of individual countries, including the United States, and strengthens the autonomy of international corporations, it weakens the already fragile economic security of millions of out-of-work Americans. Their plight appears to be unheeded in the world of 'advisory committees.' One can only fear what comes next." Edsall gives specifics (or as specific as one can get when only the White House & top corporatists really know what's cooked into the agreement). ...

     ... CW: More evidence that it is not just ideologically-crazed Republicans who "deify" "savvy businessmen." Many Democrats, including Presidents Clinton & Obama, are also in the pockets of the Masters of the Universe.

Ed O'Keefe of the Washington Post: "The Senate voted 68 to 32 Tuesday afternoon to approve a new, five-year farm bill that the House passed last week. The measure heads next to President Obama, who is expected to sign it in the coming days. After nearly four years of haggling between Democrats and Republicans, the $956.4 billion package was unveiled last week and sailed through Congress in just a matter of days." ...

... Washington Post Editors: "Contrary to what its apologists claim, the 2014 farm bill is not a hard-won triumph for bipartisanship. Instead, it is a case study in everything that's wrong with Congress. This is a bill of, by and for the agriculture lobby, which, through sheer power and self-interested persistence, ground down reform advocates over three years. The premise of the legislation -- that this country would be at risk of shortages and soaring food prices without multiple layers of central planning in agriculture -- is simply not true." ...

... Mark Bittman of the New York Times reiterates how horrible the farm bill is, but no one expects President Obama to veto it. He should, however, veto the Keystone XL pipeline project.

David Nakamura of the Washington Post: "The Obama administration on Wednesday will announce the creation of seven 'climate hubs' aimed at helping farmers mitigate the risk of catastrophic events, such as fires, droughts, floods and invasive pests...."

AP: "President Barack Obama is praising CVS Caremark for its decision to stop selling tobacco products at its drugstores. Obama says CVS is setting a 'powerful example,' and says the decision will help his administration's efforts to reduce tobacco-related deaths and disease and bring down health care costs." See also today's News Ledes.

Matt Friedman of the Star-Ledger: "U.S. Rep. Rob Andrews, who has served in Congress for nearly a quarter century, said today he will resign in two weeks to head the government affairs department at a top Philadelphia law firm. The surprise announcement ends the political career of the South Jersey Democrat, who for years was touted as a strong candidate for statewide office but had been politically wounded by a campaign finance scandal and was under investigation by his colleagues in the House.... Andrews said it's up to Gov. Chris Christie to decide whether to call a special election to fill his seat or allow it to remain vacant until the term expires next January." ...

... David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "In his 23 years in Congress, Rep. Robert E. Andrews (D-N.J.) has written 646 different pieces of legislation." None of them became law.

Congressional Leader Explains Journalism. Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "A senior US legislator has accused the former Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald of illegally selling National Security Agency documents provided to him by the whistleblower Edward Snowden. Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House intelligence committee, suggested Greenwald was a 'thief' after he worked with news organizations who paid for stories based on the documents." CW: If you're looking for someone more dangerous than Ed Snowden, Mike Rogers steps up to quash that First Amendment silliness.

The Drones Are Coming. But They Won't Find Jesse. Tal Kopan of Politico: "Former wrestler and Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura says he has gone 'off the grid' in Mexico to avoid drones knowing where he is. Ventura spoke with CNBC's 'Closing Bell' from an 'undisclosed location in Mexico' on Tuesday, prompting the hosts to ask him where he was and why he was there."

Ha! AP: "A U.N. human rights committee denounced the Vatican on Wednesday for 'systematically' adopting policies that allowed priests to rape and molest tens of thousands of children over decades, and urged it to open its files on the pedophiles and the bishops who concealed their crimes. In a devastating report, the U.N. committee also severely criticized the Holy See for its attitudes toward homosexuality, contraception and abortion and said it should change its own canon law to ensure children's rights and their access to health care are guaranteed."

Here's the AP report on the "debate" last night between the "Science Guy" & a "Creationist Guy." If you want to watch the Creationist Guy's video of this event (i.e., you have almost 3 hours to fritter away), it's here. Lawrence O'Donnell thought the debate was terrific. ...

     ... Update: Elizabeth Dias of Time liveblogged the debate. Reading her synopsis -- instead of watching the vid -- would save you a lot of time.

More New Jersey News

Chris Christie's "Deceptive Behavior." Abbott Koloff of the Bergen Record: "Christie's aides dug deep into the past, referencing an incident from 1979 when [David] Wildstein was a high school student and running for a seat on the Livingston school board. A teacher, they said, accused Wildstein of 'deceptive behavior.' However, they did not mention that Wildstein and the teacher, Albert Adler, later made up and said they simply had a 'misunderstanding.'" ...

... Maureen Dowd is quite good on Chris Christie's obsession with high school. ...

... Jon Stewart on the Christie-Wildstein non-relationship:

Congressional Races

Sam Frizell of Time: "Sandra Fluke, the Democratic activist and attorney who achieved fame in 2012 after radio host Rush Limbaugh called her a 'slut', has decided to run for state Senate instead of Congress." AND here's the L.A. Times story, by Seema Mehta. ...

... BUT. Nia-Malika Henderson of the Washington Post: "Spiritual guru and friend of Oprah Marianne Willamson is running for the seat which Henry Waxman is vacating.

I know [Williamson] would like to replace the Department of Defense with the Department of Peace... She thinks she can come to Washington and get things done by waving a magic wand. She doesn't understand how long it takes to get things done. It took 10 years for the Clean Air Act, 8 for Ryan White HIV/AIDS, 15 for legislating tobacco products. -- Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.)

Craig Jarvis of the Raleigh (North Carolina) News & Observer: "Singer Clay Aiken will officially announce his campaign for Congress on Wednesday, injecting a nationally known personality into what has been a quiet Democratic primary to produce a challenger to U.S. Rep. Renee Ellmers." CW: The story embeds Aiken's campaign announcement video, which is far more amateurish than "American Idol."

News Ledes

New York Times: "Four people were arrested in Lower Manhattan on Tuesday evening with more than 350 bags of heroin as part of the investigation into the death of the actor Philip Seymour Hoffman, the authorities said."

Washington Post: "The Obama administration has sharply curtailed drone strikes in Pakistan after a request from the government there for restraint as it pursues peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, according to U.S. officials. 'That's what they asked for, and we didn't tell them no,' one U.S. official said. The administration indicated that it will still carry out strikes against senior al-Qaeda targets, if they become available, and move to thwart any direct, imminent threat to U.S. persons."

New York Times: "CVS/Caremark, the country's largest drugstore chain, announced on Wednesday that it planned to stop selling cigarettes and other tobacco products by October. The company's move was yet another sign of its metamorphosis into becoming more of a health care provider than a largely retail business, with its stores offering more miniclinics and health advice to aid customers visiting its pharmacies."

New York Times: "Google reached a tentative settlement with European antitrust authorities on Wednesday, ending a lengthy competition investigation into the American tech company's practices that could have led to billions of dollars in penalties. The agreement should mean that the tech giant will avoid a fine as well as a finding of wrongdoing that could limit its future activities on the Continent."