;)
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."
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Reader Comments (20)
I'm with Marie in that it seems that the new CBO prediction of reduction in total full time jobs is a good thing, as it appears to be driven by worker choice more than anything. The report is complex, indeed. Another good article, by Joan McCarter, is here:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/02/04/1274963/-No-the-latest-CBO-report-doesn-t-say-Obamacare-kills-jobs
One thought, then another:
First, we have here in the house another "duh." Douthat points to the supposedly perverse incentive of Obamacare, providing for some as it does the opportunity to acquire health insurance without working full-time. Gee, that is perverse, but nothing like the perversion, as Anonymous says, created by Medicare. Medicare's existence did have something to do with my decision to retire as I approached the magic age of 65. But then, as Marie says, someone else got my job....and someone else got his. No, the real perverse incentive is to employers, who have cut thousands of full-time workers to fewer than thirty hours. That practice, however, had been building for many years, as part of business' ploy to reduce benefits of all kinds. Hiring part-time and contracted workers had been the practice de jour for a long time before the ACA. The Act merely perversely incentivized (in this case, another name for greed) those who were already perverse to become more so.
Next, re "unassailable businessmen's virtue," I'd recommend January 28th Tom Tomorrow. As usual, he hits it dead center.
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/tom-tomorrow
Finally, I'll be off the grid for the next month and will miss you folks. Maybe by the time I get back someone in NJersey will have complied with a subpoena, told all, and Chris Christie will no longer be gracing--Christie and grace are synonymous in so many ways-- the airwaves. One can hope.
Not about Christie or CBO but Sat's book excerpt concerning Snowden in The Guardian. Given that US and UK intelligence has for some time been monitoring all global internet and phone communication, surely including that of their outspoken critics - especially people like Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras -, how was it possible for Edward Snowden to contact Greenwald by email, telling him "I have some stuff you might be interested in." but you need to install email encryption before I tell you more? to be ignored by Greenwald and then, a month later, for Snowden to contact Laura Poitras with the same offer? for Poitras to then contact Greenwald and persuade him that the person they have both been contacted by deserves being taken seriously? then, six months! after first being contacted by Snowden, persuade Guardian editors to send them to Hong Kong to meet Snowden where he is waiting to meet them in a hotel, registered under his own name using his own credit card? All this caught the entire intelligence community flatfooted, surprised and off-guard, unable to do anything to prevent what is now being called the largest intelligence breach in history. An incredible chain of events that hardly seems possible given what we have learned, thanks to Snowden's so-called whistle blowing, about the all encompassing reach of today's intelligence agencies. At minimum it suggests that even if you are doing something you shouldn't be, it doesn't matter that NSA is putting your communication in its metadata file - they won't know it's there. Anyone have a better explanation?
The announcement that the ACA will reduce the number of jobs is the final and perfect example of everything wrong with the American mind.
If anyone actually bothered to read the report, what it actually says is that the ACA will create 2 million job openings. No net loss, actually a big gain. So now it is official, the MSM is a collection of seriously unprofessional asses looking to turn everything into a 'scandal'. Or they are just too dumb to figure it out.
And the public will never bother to get the facts.
@Ken: you will be missed. Have some fun wherever you are going.
I haven't watched the debate between Nye & whatshisname who thinks Noah was one cool dude with all those animals and such and I probably won't. There are those from the scientific community who are cringing at this kind of debate, saying it gives credence to creationists. Here's a sample:
Dr. Jerry Coyne, a professor of ecology and evolution at the University of Chicago, called the debate "pointless and counterproductive'' in an article posted on his popular blog, Why Evolution Is True.
"If Nye wants to further acceptance of evolution, he should just continue to write and talk about the issue on his own, and not debate creationists," he wrote. "By so doing, he gives them credibility simply by appearing beside them on the platform."
I found the negative response to the Coke ad telling in that it once again sheds light on those in this country whose brains [read hearts] are two sizes too small, thus proving evolution has stop gaps which I believe one could call arrested development. Amen.
What's five hundred thousand here or there?
Last week I posted a link to a Forbes article that poo-poohed the number of minimum wage workers as barely registering on any scale that mattered. That number is around 1.5 million.
Part of the business-centric winger rationale for nixing the minimum wage (in fact, the writer made an argument for reducing the minimum wage!) is that it would only affect a tiny number of workers and most of those are middle or upper middle class teenagers who blow their checks on iPods and designer skateboards. We'll put aside the ridiculousness of the general argument and pretend not to notice the Titanic sized holes in it and concentrate instead on the number: 1.5 million, approved by conservatives to be negligible and not worth anyone's consideration.
Today, in the wake of the CBO report, the right (and a good deal of the MSM) is up in arms about the outrageous number of people who will LOSE JOBS because of that awful nee-groe in the White House: 2 million. Put aside, once again, the use of the word "lose" because it appears, if inferences are correct, that many of those who might not be working will do it by choice. A far different scenario than all 2 million being kicked out of their jobs by that same terrible Kenyan person, but never mind that now.
The bottom line here is the bottom line (how's that for a tautology?). In other words, on one hand, conservatives need to paint the number 1.5 million as insignificant but find that a slightly higher number is a reason for revolution.
Both cases demonstrate a classic misdirected or Potemkin argument. The utility of considering a hard number as either insignificant or massively significant is designed to diminish access to what really matters, much like a bully boy politician restricting access to an entire city.
The puerile (and insulting) silliness of both positions is painfully transparent but, as too often happens, the bovine press, happily chewing on regurgitated crap, is too lazy or stupid to notice.
@Ak: You said it, mister. I have come to the conclusion that the right wing's positions are not positions at all, but stuff they find in old sock drawers––mismatched, full of holes, thin heeled footsies that they continue to trot out as something new or revelatory. Huckabee's screed about contraceptives yet at the same time yummering about abortion––which by the way has gone down in the U.S. thanks to BIRTH control or maybe women are just holding that aspirin between their knees.
@Akhilleus. In fact, both the minimum wage law & the effects of the ACA would raise wages. That's exactly what the GOP doesn't like, because they perceive that well-paid workers are bad for the Business God.
Josh Barro (linked above) explains why the ACA's helping to move a few million workers out of the labor pool would -- via the law of supply & demand -- likely raise wages.
Re: raising the minimum wage, however many people are now working below the proposed $10.10 minimum wage -- whether it's an "insignificant" 1.5MM or some other figure -- raising the minimum wage would eventually float all boats. Let's say you're now working for $10.10 an hour in a shop where many of your coworkers are earning $7.25/hour or a bit more. If the company has to raise their wages to $10.10/hour, it likely will have to give you a raise, too. After all, you're a more valuable employee than the others because you have that special skill which you could take elsewhere.
Another thing about the ACA that I've seen no mention of: I think employers could see at least a short-term net profit gain from the take-this-job-&-shove-it effect. Many of the people who are likely to quit their jobs because they are no longer hostage to employer-based health insurance likely will be older workers. Generally speaking, older workers have more seniority, & generally speaking again, people with more seniority earn more than would the entry-level people who replace them.
NYU was happy to see the backside of my husband -- in fact, the school gave him incentives to retire -- because they could hire two or three assistant professors for what they were paying my husband. In addition, his retiring freed up a distinguished chair, & they could give that as a perk to a top-dog-in-waiting. Just as Ken Winkes pointed out that Medicare allowed him to retire at 65, so the ACA may allow some people to retire earlier &/or to change to a different job because health insurance doesn't tie them to the one they've got. The ACA is a win for workers in more ways than one.
Marie
This Costa and O'Keefe article in today's print WaPo shows up as Feb 4 online:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/house-gop-moves-closer-to-debt-limit-strategy-but-still-no-consensus-boehner-says/2014/02/04/11b36bf6-8dbb-11e3-95dd-36ff657a4dae_story.html?tid=auto_complete
Near the end of the piece, Sen. Cruz says "History makes clear that the debt limit is the only effective, or one of the few effective, lever points for meaningful spending restraint."
I seem to recall that back in September-October, multiple reviews of "history" made clear that the many times the debt ceiling has been raised showed that it has, "historically," been fairly routine. Even the big mid-'80s Gramm-Rudman-Hollings debt management effort did not "lever spending restraint."
Would it have been good journalistic practice for the authors to point out, in a news report, that Sen. Cruz was bullshitting again? Or would that have been "partisan?"
Marie, I'm good with your and others' views that ACA and minimum wage should have a net positive effect on wages and employment. But I'm not sure that there is always a net benefit when the older workers go off and make room for the younger. It is of course an inexorable process, and the old have been saying this about the young for thousands of years of progress. But I observe where I work that the older people seem to know their asses from holes in the ground to a greater extent than the whippersnappers, and the product suffers when the older workers decamp. Maybe that's just my prejudice (being older and crankier I suppose), and maybe it's because I work in an area where "a page of history is worth a volume of logic" (Chief Justice Holmes?) and experience is valued.
Whatever; if the past (and biology) teaches us anything, it is that we will age out of the job market one way or the other, and it is nice to see that some people who did not previously have the easy option (retire with some cushion) now have a better chance to do so.
@Patrick. I suspect you're right for jobs in which the workers also have to be thinkers & ass-discerners. But this is less true where physical agility is a significant part of the job skill set.
Besides, as Ken Winkes pointed out, generally the retiring person isn't replaced by a tyro. Rather, someone who's been waiting in the wings takes his job, then someone further down the ladder moves into that job, & so forth, until the new hire comes in on the lowest rung. This is a broad generalization, of course. The company, ferinstance, might instead hire an experienced but unemployed person to fill the position the retiring person vacates, & that person might rate (oh, but might not get) nearly the same pay as the retiree.
Also, I assume your questions in your previous comment were rhetorical. At any rate, we all know the answers.
Marie
Re: Tuck Chodd aka Chuck Todd: Is it just me, or is anyone else reminded of the butt of a cat with its tail in the air by that silly goatee of his? Or the backside of a Corgi?
As the old saying goes, "The higher the monkey climbs the flagpole, the more he shows his ass."
Regarding Chris Christie's days as a bullying asshole in high school, leading straight up to his days as a bullying asshole in the New Jersey State House, Maureen Dowd makes some good (if predictable) points.
Yes, we all knew people like Christie in high school. Insufferable big bullies who surrounded themselves with a protective vanguard of insufferable little bullies and a backup of sycophantic yes-boys who guffawed every time the alpha bully stuck it to some hapless schmoe in the hallways.
What is it about kids like this that so many grow up to become Republicans? How is it that the two most viable presidential candidates the GOP has had over the last few years both have backgrounds as arrogant, insufferable, solipsistic bullies? I mean it's either that or candidates who are intolerant religious nuts, gun nuts, racists, misogynists, or all of the above.
It may be a chicken and egg problem, but there seems to be an underlying structural deficiency with kids like Christie and Romney who seem to have it all but underneath feel both privileged and deserving of their place in life but also feel victimized and put upon (thus providing them with a reason to be assholes to people they don't like). George Bush was (and likely still is) an arrogant bully boy as well. But we all know from our high school experiences, especially with the advantages of adult experience and perspective, that bullies are nearly always cowards. They are afraid of something and keep it at bay with bluster and aggression.
But something attracts this kind of kid to the GOP as an adult. There are plenty of obvious reasons for this, the tough guy costume that allows for bullying and aggression which is amped up by their sense of victimhood and belief that they deserve it all but others deserve only the back of their hand.
Teddy Roosevelt apparently made the expression "Bully!" one of his trademarks. Little did he know that he was describing a future defining feature of his party.
@Akhilleus: You left out my favorite bully: Dubya. As Dr. Justin Frank wrote in 2007, "He has always had a sadistic streak: from blowing up frogs, to shooting his siblings with a b-b-gun, to branding fraternity pledges with white-hot coat hangers." Add to that, his making up unattractive nicknames for people -- does anybody think Karl Rove liked being called "Turdblossom," in response to "Yes, Mr. President"? Oh, and um, torture. He has no regrets.
Marie
Barbarossa,
Chuck (I play a reporter on TV) Todd doesn't need a flagpole to show his ass, he has only to pick up a mic and open his mouth.
Remember, this is the same guy--the NBC Political Director, mind you--who said that it wasn't his job to report things fairly. In fact, it wasn't his job to report things at all (which, correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the fucking job description of a reporter?).
He was referring to the fact that Republican lies about the ACA were getting to be so outrageous that maybe some enterprising reporter, an actual reporter, mind you, not Chuck, should maybe, you know, do some fact checking and report the findings, but that clearing up those lies was not his job, man. He doesn't get paid enough for that shit. However, he had no problem acting as a stenographer for birther assholes like Trump, simply "reporting" pretty much verbatim and without a hint of apparent skepticism, the most scurrilous and baseless GOP lines of attack. Outright lies presented as news.
The worst thing about it is that he doesn't appear to be a complete idiot. He's not Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity. He seems to have some idea of how things work, even if that's not apparent most of the time, but he's unwilling to do anymore than the bare minimum for his paycheck. To me that's worse than being an ignorant boob. That's intellectual fraud.
But that doesn't bother ol' Chuck because, really, he only plays a reporter on TV.
And NBC gets not what it deserves, but likely what it wants. Because if it wasn't for guys like Chuck and Greggers, they might be forced to hire people who knew how to ask good questions and actually report on important issues before the public. And heaven forbid that should happen.
Marie,
No, I mentioned George W. Sadist. I just didn't make a big deal out of it because my post would have been three times as long. And hey, I love that book, "Bush on the Couch". I read it straight through when it came out. Our sociopathic president. In many ways he made Romney and Christie look like a good Mormon kid and a nice Catholic boy.
Oh wait....
Re: you can take my job when you pry it out of my dead hands.
So the argument goes; social services equals social dependents.
Well, here's the question I got. If we own the government like the civics classes that we took in high school say we do; we're not dependents; we're vested. It's just a matter of how we want to spend the capital we invested over the years we've been with the country. Me? I'll take health insurance over a new weapon system. And to those that vested more in the country than I; thanks, we make a great team. If we had government health from the cradle maybe we would retire younger and open up a position or two for the ones that follow.
@Akhilleus: Oops! Sorry about that.
Marie
@AK, We had three serious bullies in our small HS. All became cops. So did one nice guy.
@JJG: Brilliantly put. Why aren't more Dem politicians broadcasting this message from the rooftops, I wonder. But then, they are not good at messaging as a group, and even individually look like shrinking violets compared to Republicans.
Seriously, it's an excellent point we almost all have skin in the game and should be able to determine the outcome. (Actually I thought I did in November 2012. Silly me )