;)
Thursday
Apr042013
The Commentariat -- April 5, 2013
April Is the Cruelest Month. Jackie Calmes of the New York Times: "In a significant shift in fiscal strategy, Mr. Obama on Wednesday will send a budget plan to Capitol Hill that departs from the usual presidential wish list that Republicans typically declare dead on arrival. Instead it will embody the final compromise offer that he made to Speaker John A. Boehner late last year, before Mr. Boehner abandoned negotiations in opposition to the president's demand for higher taxes from wealthy individuals and some corporations." The Washington Post story is here.* ...
* Lousy Reporting Award of the Day. Goldfarb writes, "[Republican critics] are also likely to focus on the fact that, unlike the Republican budget that passed the House last month, Obama's budget does not balance within 10 years. The GOP has made the failure to balance the budget a key talking point in recent weeks." The House budget balances in 10 years only if you believe in asterisks & unicorns. ...
... Susie Madrak has a quick overview of the lowlights. Really shocking. ...
... CW: maybe Obama should read the news. When he made his original proposal, Republicans & the deficit were ascendant, so at least there was some lame excuse for his bowing to Boehner. Now the opposite is true: Republicans are on the skids & the deficit is taking care of itself. So here's the latest excuse: "... the White House believes that most Americans will blame them for the fiscal paralysis." Yes, because every American adult is waking up this morning to read all about Obama's budget before reading the actual budget itself in detail & saying aloud, "My, President Obama is a reasonable fellow. I'm glad he's cutting my Medicare & Social Security just to show those Republicans a thing or two." As I recall, Obama's budget proposal to Boehner was way worse than Simpson-Bowles, with far more tax cuts & far less revenue. ...
... Paul Krugman: "The truth -- although you'll never hear this in Serious circles -- is that we really should be increasing SS benefits.... So what's this about? The answer, I fear, is that Obama is still trying to win over the Serious People, by showing that he's willing to do what they consider Serious -- which just about always means sticking it to the poor and the middle class. The idea is that they will finally drop the false equivalence, and admit that he's reasonable while the GOP is mean-spirited and crazy. But it won't happen.... Oh, and wanna bet that Republicans soon start running ads saying that Obama wants to cut your Social Security?" ...
... Yves Smith of Naked Capitalism is withering in her criticism of Obama, essentially calling him a bully who picks on little people but is too cowardly to take on anyone remotely approaching his own size. ...
... D. S. Wright of Firedoglake: "President Barack Obama has once again started his negotiations by scoring into his own net.... The loopholes for the wealthy [which Obama proposes] will not stay closed. The current tax system is designed for that type of gamesmanship. So what is likely to happen if Obama gets his dream deal? Social Security will be permanently cut and the rich will lose a deduction or two for a year before they get slipped back in. Exchanging temporary increases in taxes for permanent benefit cuts to those in need in an a two-tier economy is beyond cynical." ...
... Erik Loomis of Lawyers, Guns & Money: "It'd be nice if Obama realized for once that the Republicans will never compromise with him unless he completely capitulates to their agenda, with its ever rightward shifting goalposts. Pretending to be a nice moderate Republican is not going to work. Nor should it since if a Democratic president can't stand up for Social Security, what can he stand up for?" ...
... CW: a parting thought: Obama is delighted liberals are screaming. He will point to us & say, "See, liberals are screaming. That's proof this is a great deal."
Just Remember Obama Is "Belt-Tightening," Too. Dana Milbank: "... the White House announced that Obama, 'to share in the sacrifice being made by public servants,' would return 5 percent of his salary.... The gesture, matched by several Cabinet members, was meant to be roughly the same percentage by which domestic agencies are being cut. But the amount -- $20,000 of his $400,000 salary -- is so little for a man made wealthy by his political fame that it comes across as patronizing.... During World Wars I and II, there were 'dollar-a-year men' who left lucrative private-sector careers to serve their country in Washington. If Obama really wants to share in the furloughed workers' 'sacrifice,' he should follow that honorable example and give back all but a dollar of his $400,000 salary. When he leaves office, he'll be able to earn it back with a couple days' work." ...
... Justin Sink of The Hill: "Treasury Secretary Jack Jew and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano have joined President Obama and other top members of the administration in taking pay cuts in solidarity with federal workers facing furloughs under the sequester.... Attorney General Eric Holder and Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel are both forfeiting the equivalent of 14 days' worth of pay -- the maximum number of days faced by departmental employees." ...
... As Julianna Goldman & Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg report, you can add multi-millionaire John Kerry to that list of self-sacrificing public servants. Feeling better now? ...
... Jeremy Peters of the New York Times, in a straight news report, demonstrates he is as impressed with all this "self-sacrifice" as is Milbank: "By Thursday, the Obama administration's stampede to embrace the politics of self-sacrifice was on. Cabinet secretaries practically tripped over themselves to hand over parts of their paycheck as federal workers brace for furloughs because of the across-the-board budget cuts known as the sequester.... Of course, they can well afford it. Mr. Kerry has an estimated net worth exceeding $200 million and Mr. Hagel, Mr. Holder and Mr. Obama are all millionaires." ...
... The Real Conspiracy. Government Economic Policies Are Killing You. In 43 percent of U.S. counties, women's mortality rates are rising. According to the authors of a study published in the journal Health Affairs, "Female mortality rates were not predicted by any of the medical care factors.... Many people believe that medical care and individual behaviors such as exercise, diet, and smoking are the primary reasons for declines in health... But socioeconomic factors such as the percentage of a county's population with a college education and the rate of children living in poverty had equally strong or stronger relationships to fluctuations in mortality rates."
Paul Krugman says David Stockman is just another Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's treasury secretary: "... his analysis is pretty much standard liquidationism, with a strong goldbug streak.... Now, the fact is that these ranters have been wrong about everything, at every stage of the crisis, while the Keynesians have been mostly right."
Our Republican President, Ctd. You may be concerned about the temperature of the planet, but it's probably not rising to your No. 1 concern. And if people think, well, that's shortsighted, that's what happens when you're struggling to get by. -- Barack Obama, "justifying" his likely decision to approval the Keystone XL pipeline ...
... Charles Pierce: "This is the argument we get from the oil companies, the extraction industries, and all the politicians they have sublet over the past 40 years -- that environmental concerns are the province of the liberal elites, as though small farmers are not being killed by drought, small businesses being killed by what's killing the small farmers, and small homeowners along both seaboards being killed by increasingly massive storms."
New York Times Editors: "... twisted radicalism is playing an outsized role in the current debate" over gun safety legislation.
Alex Leary of the Tampa Bay Times: "Florida Sen. Bill Nelson reversed his opposition to gay marriage on Thursday, joining a swell of moderate Democrats to do so recently as public support for gay marriage has grown."
Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "President Obama reopened the debate Thursday over whether his administration is too influenced by men after praising the looks of Kamala Harris, California's attorney general and a possible future gubernatorial candidate. 'You have to be careful to, first of all, say she is brilliant and she is dedicated and she is tough, and she is exactly what you'd want in anybody who is administering the law, and making sure that everybody is getting a fair shake,' Obama said at a party fundraiser in Atherton, Calif., a wealthy suburb of San Francisco. 'She also happens to be, by far, the best looking attorney general in the country.'" CW: Forget the sexism. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I just took a look at photos of state attorneys general, & I found quite a number of very attractive men & women. So while Harris is certainly beautiful, I wouldn't call her "by far the best looking A.G. in the country." ...
... "Crimes Against Nature." Speaking of attorneys general, Virginia's Ken Cuccinelli is his own worst enemy, and yours, too. Josh Israel of Think Progress: "Cuccinelli II (R) filed an appeal last week after a federal appeals court struck down Virginia's sodomy law as unconstitutional." But the law is unconstitutional precisely because Cuccinelli was among state lawmakers who refused to revise it to meet federal standards after the Lawrence v. Texas decision struck down sodomy laws. ...
... We Are All Criminals Now. Adam Serwer of Mother Jones figures that "If Virginia's ban on 'unnatural' sex acts applied nationwide, the Virginia law would make 90 percent of men and women in the United States between the age of 25 and 44 criminals." Serwer asked Cuccinelli's "campaign if Cuccinelli or anyone working for his campaign had ever engaged in any of the prohibited conduct and whether Cuccinelli would fire any campaign staff who had done so. We have received no response."
Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: Chuck Schumer, former hatchet-man, makes friends with Republicans.
Kate Zernicke, in her New York Times article about Rutgers University President Robert Barchi doesn't say Dr. Barchi is totally tone-deaf, but her recounting of one incident after the other in which he outraged students, faculty, administrators & minorities sure says Barchi is a bull in a china shop. I'm not sure how well the Rutgers fiascos will work ultimately out well for Chris Christie, either. ...
... Reuters Update, by Scott Malone: "Rutgers University Athletic Director Tim Pernetti will leave his post in the wake of revelations that ousted men's basketball coach Mike Rice had verbally and physically abused players, the Star-Ledger newspaper and ESPN reported on Friday."
Get Ready for a Culture Warriors Freak-out. Jessica Dye of Reuters: "A federal judge on Friday ordered the Food and Drug Administration to make the 'morning-after' emergency contraception pill available without a prescription to all girls of reproductive age. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Edward Korman in Brooklyn, New York, comes in a lawsuit brought by reproductive-rights groups that had sought to remove age and other restrictions on emergency contraception." CW: sorry, Mr. President, that means your lovely daughters have access, too. As well they should.
A Memphis sanitation worker states the obvious: privatization is about destroying unions & depriving workers of fair pay & decent working conditions:
Tim Egan: "The scourge of 24-hour news, in which stuff that isn’t important gets its own countdown clock, is now doing to the weather what it did to public affairs and the stock market. It's making us all a little jumpy and anxious, with a twisted view of the normal rhythms of the seasons." ...
CW: If the people at the Weather Channel want to frighten their audience for good reason, maybe they should do a little less "Snowmageddon" reporting & a little more reporting like this -- Justin Gillis of the New York Times: "Glacial ice in the Peruvian Andes that took at least 1,600 years to form has melted in just 25 years, scientists reported Thursday, the latest indication that the recent spike in global temperatures has thrown the natural world out of balance."
Frank Rich on everything -- always rich.
Right Wing World *
"System X." Tim Murphy of Mother Jones: "Last week, conservative talk show host and media mogul Glenn Beck decided to let his listeners in on what he dubbed 'the biggest story in American history.' It's called System X. ... System X: a government run by a single party in control of labor, media, education, and banking; joined by big business to further their mutual collective goals.... If you don't stop it,' he warned, 'American history is over as you know it.'" System X turns out to be national core curriculum standards. As Murphy points out, reasonable people can disagree on the merits of the Common Core standards without seeing it as a bipartisan plot to steal your brains or something.
You hear some of these quotes: 'I need a gun to protect myself from the government.' 'We can't do background checks because the government is going to come take my guns away.' Well, the government is us. These officials are elected by you. They are elected by you. I am elected by you. I am constrained, as they are constrained, by a system that our Founders put in place. It's a government of and by and for the people. -- Barack Obama ...
... Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs: "Just a simple statement of fact, right? ... Leave it to the raving kooks of the right wing blogs to find a way to distort Obama's words and read things into them that he never said -- in lockstep unison, because that's how they do everything.... The hatred is rotting their brains." Johnson provides numerous examples of the Crazy.
* ... is a dark, dark place.
Reefer World
Pew Research Center: "For the first time in more than four decades of polling on the issue, a majority of Americans favor[s] legalizing the use of marijuana. A national survey finds that 52% say that the use of marijuana should be made legal while 45% say it should not."
News Ledes
AP: "An alleged white supremacist gang member who was arrested during the investigation into the killing of Colorado's prisons chiefs may have thrown a gun from his vehicle before his arrest. James Lohr was arrested early Friday after a brief chase in Colorado Springs."
New York Times: "The parents of Trayvon Martin, the unarmed teenager who was shot by George Zimmerman last year, have settled a wrongful-death lawsuit against the homeowners' association in the gated community where he was killed."
AP: "Pope Francis directed the Vatican on Friday to act decisively on clergy sex abuse cases and punish pedophile priests, saying the Catholic Church's 'credibility' was on the line. The announcement was quickly dismissed by some victims' advocates as just more talk, while others lobbying for reform in the church held out hope the new pontiff might challenge the Vatican's bureaucratic culture seen as fostering a cover-up mentality."
Reuters: "American employers hired at the slowest pace in nine months in March, a sign that Washington's austerity drive could be stealing momentum from the economy. The economy added just 88,000 nonfarm jobs last month, the Labor Department said on Friday, well below market expectations for a 200,000 increase."
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Reader Comments (14)
I'm sure one of the motives in privatizing government functions is to eliminate the unions representing government workers but I think the main motive behind it is opening up a brand new profit stream for the well-connected businesses and individuals who manage to grab these lucrative government contracts. I think it is all about diverting a steady flow of tax dollars into private pockets. Do any of you know of an example of a government function being turned over to private enterprise that has lowered any of our tax bills? Isn't that the argument used for privatization by the repugs? Don't they say we taxpayers pay too much for these services and private enterprise can do it cheaper? Could this possibly be another con job by the repugs to make the rich richer? It's kind of like the Mafia wanting a piece of the action.
And furthermore on Tommy Bones' point:
It's not one or the other, profit stream or union destruction. Once public services are privatized, destroying unions and the ability of workers to organize and bargain by itself increases profit. When profit for ownership and management is the goal, sharing with workers is necessarily counterproductive.
The process of privatization is necessarily exploitive; it moves assets and ownership from the many to the few. I call it mining the middle. Perhaps not so obvious as the giveaways of vast tracts of public lands to the railroads or the gas and oil leases that are still tendered well below any realistic market price, but we see the process at work everywhere. At various stages and in various ways, schools, the post office, parks, highways, Medicare Part D, even the ACA, which I supported as the best of a generally bad deal, are all subject to the same nefarious strategy: that of shifting public resources into private hands, most often in the name of theoretical "efficiency," but in practice in the name of greed.
Curious, too, that once services are privatized, they often cost more than they did when those awful, lazy unionized public employees were providing the service. Because many government services are by their nature monopolies, once a private entity gets its mitts on one of them, the price goes up; it's the nature of the private beast; it is greed unchecked because there is no check on greed when the consumer has no alternative.
Our parks get little money from the state. To access them, you pay a fee to the state in the form of a Discover Pass, but that fee for service is just cracking open the gate to the commons castle. It's preparing the way for private contractors to take over park management, an idea that is already being pioneered in some parks. This year in another area of our state government the future is already here. The motor vehicle department no longer administer drivers' exams; private contractors now do--for a fee. Here the castle walls have been breached, and the privatizers are inside the keep.
Can't wait 'til the Bains of the world own the water and air. Oh, that's right. In some places, they already have the water.
Along slightly different lines, it's clear that the imbalance between the private and public sectors, initiated and encouraged largely by conservatives for the last generation or so, does more than cost jobs, it costs lives.
The United States' Food for Peace program which attempts to deliver food to hard hit areas around the world may be undergoing some changes to make it much more efficient. But not if the private sector and their cheerleaders in congress have anything to say about it.
And they do.
A large part of the problem is that the money set aside for these purposes cannot be used to feed starving populations until the private sector gets their cut. This means that US farmers, food processors, shippers, etc. are used exclusively for production and delivery of food. The problem, as Andrew Natsios, former head of the US Agency for International Development says, is that the delays are tragic, causing food aid to get there only after everyone is dead.
According to an NPR story yesterday morning, the Bush Administration tried to funnel 25% of aid directly to these regions causing an uproar by the businesses who would lose part of this windfall. Now the Obama Administration is trying to take the entire $1.5 billion earmarked for this kind of aid and send it to local agencies and groups in order to ensure that the money and the food it can purchase serve their intended purpose of keeping hungry people alive.
It's highly unlikely that this will happen. It's not that American businesses are heartless. I'm sure many of them have no problem helping starving people. It's just that greed is a much stronger force than altruism and they're happy to help; after they get their cut.
Which is why a balanced private/public sector working relationship is necessary. Left to their own devices, most private sector entities would charge their grandmothers for a glass of water.
Especially if Bain owned the water.
Food for Peace NPR story
Reiterating more of CW's top of the page posts today is this agreement from Charles Pierce. See "That is also why this is the worst story in the newspapers today."
"President Obama next week will take the political risk of formally proposing cuts to Social Security and Medicare in his annual budget in an effort to demonstrate his willingness to compromise with Republicans and revive prospects for a long-term deficit-reduction deal, administration officials say."
Read more: Daily Politics Blog - Charles P. Pierce - Political Blogging - Esquire http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/#ixzz2PbCAaodU
Here we go again. And, waking up people to this outrage is apparently an impossible task. Case in point: the fact that, as of today, there are merely 149 signers to Marie's White House petition! Who cares? Obviously, no one.
I'm sure you've all heard about the idiot coach at Rutgers who was just let go for abusing his players.
Well, this is all just too much for knucklehead conservatives who think regular beatings and abuse are just a natural part of life, so get over it already, you weenie liberals.
Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin, who probably should only be allowed children under armed supervision, are all for asskickings and routine beatings.
According to Hannity his dad beat him with belts and baseball bats and frying pans and whatever blunt objects were lying around the house "...and look at me. I turned out fine." Pardon me while I pull down my Webster's to look up "fine" because I don't think we're using the same definition.
Malkin opines that sports is a tough world, so, liberal weenie asses, grow up.
You know, I played sports for a looooonnggg time, high school, college, and after, and I coached as well, men, women, kids. I've had some pretty tough coaches who, if they pulled the shit they did when I was in school, would be sitting in a cell. So I know it's tough. But not as a regular everyday thing, even back then (I had a football coach kick me in the face once). But the kind of abuse on display by the idiot at Rutgers goes way past the point of even the "toughest" coaches. But for Hannity and Malkin it wasn't nearly enough. No wonder these people orgasm at the thought of dropping bombs in innocent civilians. They're sadistic assholes. Or stupid. Or both.
My daddy beat me like a rented mule and I turned out fine
some school lunches are privatized... not working out well.
http://www.thesunchronicle.com/news/local_news/lunch-denied-to-some-attleboro-students/article_1baa66c8-9c85-11e2-a9a0-0019bb2963f4.html
"“I’m pissed that when there are people in prison who are getting meals, my daughter, an honor student, is going hungry,” he said. Had he known, he would have brought his daughter lunch money, John Greaves said."
I wrote the co - not that it will make one whit of difference.
mae finch
http://www.icij.org/offshore/secret-files-expose-offshores-global-impact.
Before coming over here this morning, I had to read up on how despots, dictators and the wealthy hide their money and so I've posted the link above.
I can't help but think this knowledge of hiding money and liability is the link that binds Barry O, with Cheney/Bush and their whole coterie of rich emotionally vacuous political barons. In a nutshell: whoever's house they did not pimp themselves and their ideals at to raise money will suffer the consequences.
The demise of the single earner family has directly led to the rise in the Republicanification of the Democratic party and the 'hate the women, poor, minorities, (fill in the blank) policies of the other guys. Most normal adults just don't have time to mess with going to meeting with blue-haireds versus seeing their kids or spouses. Policies and political benefits skew toward the old.
Mind you I'm not picking on older folks; I'd like to point out I will likely contribute over more years and collect fewer benefits than they do. And Barry O and his kind of Democrats have my back like a pirate with a cutlass.
@Akhilleus I also heard the NPR program yesterday. It reminded me of a terrific book I read a couple years ago, "Backstabbing for Beginners: My Crash Course in International Diplomacy" by Michael Soussan. The book is an expose on the oil for food program run by the UN that made public the billions in bribes related to global corporation, nations and exposed Kofi Annan's son in the mess. Its well written and believe it or not, quite funny. I read that the book rights have been bought for a movie ala Syrianna.
Since my lament this morning that no one was signing the Save Social Security petition...more than 180 have signed it at sometime today. But, it still needs 99,662 more....
Diane,
Thanks for the tip.
Bob Baer's book, "See No Evil", one of the sources for "Syriana" was excellent. If this book comes close it will make for a film experience that will piss off a lot of people.
Obama's sell out is discouraging, indeed. Whatever happened to the "Democratic" party anyway? I understand the GOP is off-the-charts conservative, but that doesn't mean the Democrats have to chase after them. If realpolitik policies where in place, Democrats would hold center left and watch their crazy colleagues slide off the plank and into the deep blue.
The carnivalesque characters of Glenn Beck, O'Reilly, Limbaugh, Granny Starver, and Tea Party darling Ted Kruz are abysmal characters and horrible influences on our country. But I can't help but thinking we've reached a point of absurdity where these ring masters will some how save the day for the common man.
Obama's capitulations are pathetic. Throwing in the towel for all that the Democratic party holds sacred and theoretically "off limits" is a travesty for the common man/woman moving forward. Sister Elephant cites Obama's out-of-touchness with reality as a possible driver of this disastrous policy decision. Perhaps I'm too cynical but I believe Obama is far too intelligent to not read between the lines (or just read the lines for that matter), but he apparently has other motivations that push him to these extremes.
Signal the entrance of the Neo-Cons.
The GOP has gone so far right wing these days that I don't believe they'll take Obama's deal seriously. They'll demand more cuts and more reverse Robin Hood until Obama has no choice but to break off talks. That's what things have come to now. We're dependent on right-wing nut cases to be so right wing that they go overboard, thus not necessarily taking us with them. That's a sad state of affairs indeed if negotiations take that track.
I can't believe I'm rooting for Limbaugh/Cruz crazy to save us from this mess. FML
Obama has become more fucking trouble than he's worth.
Liked Safari's glass half full conclusion. Is it possible the President, who according to Mr. Singer has become "too much trouble," is simply taking the "reasonable man" approach to dealing with his irrational opponents, who do have thirty forty percent of the voters on their side and who have the biggest megaphone, the one bought with the biggest bucks? I'd like to think so.
Obama has repeatedly let (in his quiet way, goaded) the Right take positions so far out of the mainstream that except for the sequester, which tho' it may have been a Presidential miscalculation, with a Right wing House, he could do little ultimately to control, over the last four years, with climate issues excepted, he has gotten most of what he wanted. Could it be his negotiation strategy is to offer one "reasonable" compromise after another, knowing the Right will reject them, in the process presenting the public with one teachable moment after another?
It did turn out, remember, that he is not a one-term President. Despite the rotten economy, a significant number of voters must have learned something.
I did send Mr. Obama a note today, telling him to simply scrap the Social Security tax cap. I don't like SS or Medicare even placed on the table as bluffs, but until I see what happens (Boehner has already rejected the proposed budget, I see; that's a start) I'll continue to smile as long as I can.
@Ken Winkes. I've written Feinstein at least 3X about scrapping the SS cap - seems like a real no brainer. However, I received some form letters, BS several months after the fact that had nothing to do with the issue. The other no brainer is the Harkin/Defazio proposal (introduced in last congress/ no bill yet in current session) for the financial transaction tax on specified trades - i.e. hedge fund / big players. It would generate mega $'s.
Obama is persistent and plays the long game. Clearly, the only leverage he has is with the public. Although his proposed deal rankles badly, he may have bet on continued Republican intransigence (pretty good bet). If Obama looks "reasonable", I think he picks up even more support from those who want "everyone to just get along." Many voters either don't put the time in or just don't have the capacity to understand issues. Lots of people have bought into the impossible dream of the horseshit fantasy of bipartisanship, happily shoveled up by the media. They'll sort out the results when it personally effects them long after the fact.