The Commentariat -- Oct. 23, 2013

... Steve Benen: "I put together the chart above..., which should terrify Republican officials. By a nearly four-to-one margin, Americans believe GOP lawmakers in Congress aren’t concerned with the nation’s best interests. That’s just astounding."

Annie Lowrey of the New York Times: "The Internal Revenue Service plans to delay the start of tax-filing season by a week or two because of the government shutdown, the agency said on Tuesday. But taxpayers will still have to turn in their 2013 returns by April 15 as usual."

Catherine Rampell of the New York Times: "A Labor Department report showing lackluster hiring in September — 148,000 jobs — is expected to further put off the Federal Reserve’s decision to reduce its stimulus efforts."

"Falling Behind." New York Times Editors: "A particularly alarming report on working-age adults was published last week by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.... The research focused on people ages 16 to 65 in 24 countries. It dealt with three crucial areas: literacy..., numeracy..., and problem solving.... Americans were comparatively weak-to-poor in all three areas.... Americans who are 55 to 65 perform about average in literacy skills, but young Americans rank the lowest among their peers in the 24 countries surveyed.... The United States ... has yet to take on a sense of urgency about this issue. If that does not happen soon, the country will pay a long-term price."

** Greg Botelho of CNN: "President Barack Obama didn't know of problems with the Affordable Care Act's website -- despite insurance companies' complaints and the site's crashing during a test run -- until after its now well-documented abysmal launch, [Kathleen Sebelius] told CNN on Tuesday." ...

... Denver Nicks of Time: "In an interview with CNN's Sanjay Gupta, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius offered platitudes but few answers on what's wrong with HealthCare.gov.

She has the president’s confidence. And she knows that. -- Denis McDonough, White House Chief of Staff

Really? Why? -- Constant Weader

... Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the New York Times: HHS Secretary Kathleen "Sebelius, the former Kansas governor and onetime insurance commissioner who is the public face of Mr. Obama’s health care overhaul, is facing a barrage of criticism over the problem-plagued rollout of its online insurance exchange. For Republicans, still reeling from their failed 'defund Obamacare' strategy and the resulting government shutdown, she has proved a convenient target.... Even her Democratic defenders agree that the secretary did not help herself with a fumbling appearance earlier this month on 'The Daily Show With Jon Stewart.'” (Parts 1 & 2 of the October 7 interview are here.) ...

Jon Stewart reviews Healthcare.gov (October 21):

... Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times is appalled "that the government and its army of private contractors made incredibly elementary errors in building the exchange.... [It’s] like creating a newspaper site without knowing whether you can show articles.... The federal government has computer experts who can track every phone call every American makes every day, but it couldn’t manage to get this right?" ...

... Thank the Fates! Darrell Issa Is on the Case! Jonathan Easley of the Hill: "Republicans on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday charged that the federal ObamaCare site is floundering because federal officials tried to hide the 'sticker shock' of insurance premiums. In a letter to two top technology officers at the Office of Management and Budget, Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) accused the administration of making the 'political decision' to mask the costs of insurance premiums online, which he says contributed to the botched website development.... Oversight ranking member Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said Issa’s letter 'mischaracterizes the briefing we received and omits key information that directly contradicts [Issa's] accusations.'” CW: That Rep. Cummings. He's so hung up on facts. ...

... Brian Beutler of Salon: "Let’s stipulate that the conservatives crying crocodile tears for uninsured Americans who’ve been badly inconvenienced by broken Obamacare websites are engaged in a world-historical performance of organized concern trolling. If you’re a reporter or a news junkie or a constituent, you should be absolutely clear that these people don’t want Healthcare.gov to work and are making wild, unsupportable claims to discourage people from becoming insured." ...

... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: Gov. Steve Beshear (D-KY) says "his state-operated exchange, Kynect, is working well.... Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) dismissed the state’s progress, however, insisting that Obamacare has 'completely failed' and arguing that the governor is praising the program for political purposes:

Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel diagnoses the problems with Healthcare.gov & suggests how the administration should go about fixing it. CW: They don't seem to be following doctor's orders.

Jerry Markon of the Washington Post: "When the new health-care law was being cobbled together, Congress decided to establish a network of nonprofit insurance companies aimed at bringing competition to the marketplace, long dominated by major insurers. But these co-ops, started as a great hope for lowering insurance costs, are already in danger.... One co-op ... has closed, another is struggling and at least nine more have been projected to have financial problems, according to internal government reviews and a federal audit. Their failure would leave taxpayers potentially on the hook for nearly $1 billion in defaulted loans and rob the marketplace of the kind of competition they were supposed to create. And if they become insolvent, policy holders in at least half the states where the co-ops operate could be stuck with medical bills."

Quit Disrespecting Us! Elise Viebeck of the Hill: "House Republicans demanded a briefing on ObamaCare's rollout after news broke Tuesday that the administration would huddle on healthcare reform with House Democrats. 'This snub is all the more offensive after [Health] Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius declined to testify at a House hearing this week,' spokesman to Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) Brendan Buck said in a statement." ...

For months now, House Democrats have held briefings on the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, and tomorrow’s Caucus meeting is yet another in this series of discussions. While we appreciate House Republicans’ newfound interest in the implementation of health reform, it is clear they are not interested in anything other than continuing their desperate drive to sabotage this law, which so far has included shutting down the government. -- Nancy Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill, responding to the GOP complaint

Josh Rogin of the Daily Beast: "A White House national security official was fired last week after being caught as the mystery Tweeter who has been tormenting the foreign policy community with insulting comments and revealing internal Obama administration information for over two years Jofi Joseph, a director in the non-proliferation section of the National Security Staff at the White House, has been surreptitiously tweeting under the moniker @natsecwonk, a Twitter feed famous inside Washington policy circles since it began in February, 2011 until it was shut down last week. Two administration officials confirmed that the mystery tweeter was Joseph, who has also worked at the State Department and on Capitol Hill for Senators Bob Casey (D-PA) and Joe Biden. Until recently, he was part of the administration's team working on negotiations with Iran." The article includes a few of his tweets. CW: So, um, it took the NSA & the White House national security staff two years to find one of its own inside the White House? WTF??? Make that the National Stupid Agency & the National Ignoramus Administration.

CW: Not sure who wins the HeckuvaJob Brownie Award, but Sebelius & James Clapper are falling all over each other to take the prize. For those of you who think only Republican administrations are incompetent, think again.

NEW. Dan Bilefsky of the New York Times: "James R. Clapper, the United States director of national intelligence, late Tuesday disputed reports in a French newspaper that American spies recorded data from 70 million phone calls in France in a single 30-day period, calling the reports 'misleading.' ... Mr. Clapper did not address additional allegations in Le Monde that the National Security Agency had monitored 'French diplomatic interests' at the United Nations and in Washington."

Gubernatorial Race

Rasmussen Reports, the right-leaning, unreliable polling outfit, reports: "Democrat Terry McAuliffe has jumped to a 17-point lead over Republican Ken Cuccinelli in the Virginia gubernatorial race following the federal government shutdown that hit Northern Virginia hard and Hillary Clinton’s weekend visit to the state. The latest Rasmussen Reports telephone survey of Likely Virginia Voters finds McAuliffe with 50% support to Cuccinelli’s 33%. Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis is a distant third with eight percent (8%) of the vote. Three percent (3%) like some other candidate, while five percent (5%) remain undecided." ...

... David Atkins of Hullabaloo: "Terry McAuliffe isn't exactly the most attractive candidate, either, and he's practically a symbolic embodiment of establishment Washington. If the shutdown were creating a universal distaste for Washington establishment politicians and a craving for straight-talking outsiders (as many in the media are suggesting), then Cuccinelli should be doing much better. But no. It appears that the shutdown fiasco is almost unilaterally hurting conservatives and Republicans at this point. And that's as it should be." ...

... James Hohmann & Maggie Haberman of Politico: "Michael Bloomberg’s pro-gun-control super PAC will drop $1.1 million on ads for Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the final two weeks of the Virginia governor’s race. The billionaire New York City mayor’s money will be siphoned through Independence USA PAC into broadcast television commercials in the D.C. market, according to two sources tracking the air war."

Local News

The 47% Downeaster.About 47 percent of able-bodied people in the state of Maine don’t work.... About 47 percent. It's really bad. -- Gov. Paul LePage (RTP-Maine), a/k/a America's Worst Governor ...

... Mike Tipping of the Bangor Daily News: "The quote is stunning, both for how ridiculous it is on its face as well as how closely it mirrors a comment made by 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, who also took aim at 47% of the population.... LePage’s statistic is completely wrong. Currently, around 65% of Mainers over the age of 15 are working or are unemployed and actively seeking work. Of the remaining 35%, almost all are retired, are caring for children or other family members, are pursuing education or training or have a disability that prevents them from working."

The Commentariat -- Oct. 22, 2013

Michael Shear & Robert Pear of the New York Times: "In remarks in the Rose Garden, Mr. Obama acknowledged serious technical issues with the Web site, declaring that 'no one is madder than me.' He offered no new information about how many people have managed to enroll since the online exchanges opened on Oct. 1." CW: Shear (who is a Fox "News" contributor), & Pear couldn't seem to write a positive sentence about the President's remarks. Looks as if "crummy Website" is going to be the Big News till Darrell Issa dredges up something else:

... Ah, here's Joan Walsh of Salon: "As predictably as night follows day, on Monday the media establishment pivoted away from obsessing about GOP extremism and the party's alleged 'civil war' to the 'train wreck' that is, allegedly, the Affordable Care Act." ...

... William Saletan of Slate: "Blocking affordable health care. Denying coverage under Medicaid. Shutting down the government. Harming the economy. That's an all-out indictment of the opposition party. Even Republican criticism of the Web site debacle -- which everyone acknowledges -- has become, in Obama's words, 'rooting for failure' at the expense of middle-class families. Obama may not win this fight. But he has certainly entered it swinging." ...

... ** Alec MacGillis of the New Republic: House Republicans are preparing to hold hearings to probe why Healthcare.gov doesn't work; no matter that they don't want it to work. "Unspoken in all of those questions [MOCs will be asking HHS officials] is something that Republicans have simply shut out of their assault on Obamacare until now: That there are people out there, millions of them, who do not have coverage and will be helped by the law if it can be made to function properly.... Despite themselves and without fully realizing it, Republicans are perilously on the verge of becoming advocates for expanded health care coverage." CW: So maybe the Healthcare.gov fiasco has a silver lining. ...

... Single Payer! Ezra Klein: "The core problem for the GOP is that they're complaining about problems they don't actually want fixed. So the criticisms have an oddly self-negating quality: Republicans are furious that more people can't sign up for this law they want to repeal altogether.... The case that can be made against the difficulties of implementing a system this complex isn't a case for the status quo. Nor is it a case for Republican health-care ideas, insofar as they exist. After all, Rep. Paul Ryan's health-care plan -- and his Medicare plan -- would also require the government to run online insurance marketplaces. It's a case for a much simpler, government-run health-care system." (Related: Humor Break below.) ...

... Dave Weigel of Slate: Republican calls for HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius's firing over the botched Healthcare.gov rollout means she can keep her job. CW: I wish I could say I thought she was a great secretary, but this isn't her first Big Mistake. Obama& had to step in & rescue her when she mishandled the religious exception provisions of the ACA. He stepped in again -- and stepped in it -- when Sebelius overruled the FDA on over-the-counter sales of the morning-after pill (a fabulous Reagan-appointed judge later ruled against the administration). ...

... Lydia DePillis of the Washington Post: Why all the problems with Healthcare.gov? Because the government doesn't know how to structure bids for software contracts, which leads to a style of development & coding that builds in fundamental errors & does little testing until it's too late. ...

... Guaranteed Failure. Lean Sun & Scott Wilson of the Washington Post: "Days before the launch of President Obama's online health-insurance marketplace, government officials and contractors tested a key part of the Web site to see whether it could handle tens of thousands of consumers at the same time. It crashed after a simulation in which just a few hundred people tried to log on simultaneously. Despite the failed test, federal health officials plowed ahead. When the Web site went live Oct. 1, it locked up shortly after midnight as about 2,000 users attempted to complete the first step." ...

... Humor Break. Sarah Sees a Conspiracy! She Can See Canada from Her Porch. Travis Gettys of the Raw Story: "The former half-term Alaska governor and failed vice presidential candidate suggested Sunday in a Breitbart.com column that design flaws were intentionally implemented to make the system more difficult to use and drive Americans to accept a government fix. President Barack Obama admitted Monday that the site needed to be overhauled and announced a 'tech surge' to make those repairs, but Palin said the eventual fix would be a Canadian-style socialized health care system." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Liberals admit ObamaCare's failures while conservatives refuse to concede its successes.... The coverage of the Obamacare website debacle is a helpful illustration of the epistemic imbalance between left and right.... Only the negative liberal coverage has pierced the conservative information bubble.... The imbalance in honesty has magnified the impact of bad Obamacare news and blunted the impact of good Obamacare news."

... Jim Siegel & Catherine Candisky of the Columbia (Ohio) Dispatch: Gov. John Kasich [a conservative Republican] forced implementation of the Medicaid expansion in Ohio, after the GOP-controlled state senate refused to ratify it/ (The general assembly had voted for it.) Kasich transferred the decision-making process from the senate to an oversight board, then packed the board with pro-expansion members. State senators plan retaliatory moves.

** Sam Stein & Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post write a fascinating piece on how President Obama & Speaker Reid worked together to fend off Republican demands. CW: As often is the case, I have to wonder why Leader Pelosi gets almost no mention. This is the story smarmy Bob Woodward probably wished he'd got.

If CNN did sports reporting, every game would be a tie. -- Cenk Uygur

... Here's one for Akhilleus. Paul Rosenberg, in Salon, applies logical & rhetorical constructs to Tea Party "reasoning" & MSM reporting. He concludes, "Our politics are a disaster because the media -- and the president -- pretend conservatives are dealing with facts." ...

... CW: Notice how Rosenberg's piece relates to Chait's discussion of the liberal & conservative criticism of the ObamaCare rollout. What I think this all demonstrates is that conservatives are for the most part extremists while only some liberals are extremists. Liberals are tethered to reality; conservatives are tethered to ideology & refuse to accept reality; when reality hits them in the face, they deny it & turn to "beliefs." Thus, as contributor Nancy wrote in yesterday's thread, there was no way to convince her neighbor that Obama hadn't shut down the government & that he could not raise the Social Security eligibility age by fiat. The neighbor just "believed" that was the case because she doesn't like "that Obama." Contra Pat Moynihan, Nancy's neighbor feels entitled to her own facts. Note to Nancy: I did stop a conservative neighbor of mine cold by pointing out that he was basing his opinions on impressions, not on facts. It hadn't occurred to him that his impressions were inferior to my facts. I think he got it. Momentarily, anyway. ...

... Dan Balz & Scott Clement of the Washington Post: "The budget confrontation that led to a partial government shutdown dealt a major blow to the GOP's image and has exposed significant divisions between tea party supporters and other Republicans, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. The survey highlights just how badly the GOP hard-liners and the leaders who went along with them misjudged the public mood. In the aftermath, eight in 10 Americans say they disapprove of the shutdown. Two in three Republicans or independents who lean Republican share a negative view of the impasse. And even a majority of those who support the tea party movement disapprove." ...

... Good News for Republicans! Thanks to Democratic Messaging. Todd Lindberg of the New Republic: "To the extent the GOP's internal struggle is understood as a contest between conservatives and radicals, in which the conservatives prevail, it will likely help the party regain some of the ground it has been losing at the center.... So long as the Tea Party is losing, division might be just what the GOP needs" because it makes non-Tea Party Republicans seem moderate & reasonable. ...

... Steve M. of NMMNB adds a cogent point: "What has to happen before voters decide the GOP can't be trusted at all? Does the party actually have to push us into default and start a global depression...? That's the difference between the majority of the U.S. electorate and the voters of Wingnuttia. You edge a millimeter toward a slope that's a hundred miles away, and isn't the slightest bit slippery, and wingnut voters immediately foresee a cataclysmic slide. Propose firearm background checks that aren't even truly universal, and wingnut voters think mass gun confiscation is imminent within weeks. Pass a market-based, Heritage Foundation-developed health care plan, and they think we're living under the Khmer Rouge.... But if Republicans take us nearly to the brink of disaster, a disaster from which we're rescued at the last second, centrist voters still don't develop a sense of alarm about the party." ...

... AND right on cue, as if he might be in the employ of Prince Rebus, Obama's former speechwriter Jon Favreau, now penning his bright ideas for the Daily Beast instead of the POTUS, writes a piece titled, "The Tea Party, Not Democrats or Republicans, Is the Problem. Blah blah blah." Favreau doesn't see red states & blue states; he sees the United States of America. Rah rah rah. ...

... Not irritated enough yet? Why, let's check in with Alan Greenspan. That should help. BBC News: "Mr Greenspan confessed to sympathies with the aims of the Tea Party, the Republican faction that fought the government during debt ceiling talks. But the former central banker said the movement's tactics were 'undemocratic'.... 'What Britain has done with its austerity programme has worked much better than I thought it would,' Mr Greenspan said. 'As far as I can judge, it [the economy] is coming out pretty much the way they [the coalition government] had expected.'" Ayn Rand lives!

Declan Walsh & Ihsanullah Mehsud of the New York Times: "... a new Amnesty International investigation ... found, among other points, that at least 19 civilians in ... North Waziristan had been killed in just two of the drone attacks since January 2012 -- a time when the Obama administration has held that strikes have been increasingly accurate and free of mistakes. The study is to be officially released on Tuesday along with a separate Human Rights Watch report on American drone strikes in Yemen.... On Wednesday, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, a vocal critic of the drone campaign, is to meet with President Obama in the White House. And on Friday, the drone debate is scheduled to spill onto the floor of the United Nations, whose officials have recently published reports that attacked America's lack of transparency over drones."

Local News

This Is a Big Deal. Salvador Rizzo of the Star-Ledger: "Gov. Chris Christie dropped his legal challenge to gay marriage in New Jersey [Monday], only hours after same-sex couples began exchanging wedding vows throughout the state. Christie's unexpected decision to withdraw his appeal of a major case at the state Supreme Court marks the end of a decade-long legal battle. It means that a lower-court ruling allowing gay couples to marry in New Jersey stands as the law." ...

... Darrell Isherwood of NJ.com: "... some national social conservative leaders lashed out at the governor." CW: Here's an example of the "purity fallacy" Rosenberg wrote about:

Do we have any illusions, given the nature of the decision, that there was a high likelihood that his appeal would succeed? No. But that's irrelevant. You do what's right regardless of the cost. -- Brian Brown, President of the National Organization for Marriage

Freeeedom!

It comes as a surprise to me that many liberals oppose self-determination, especially since home rule is the central theory on which this country was founded. Remember the Declaration of Independence?:

That to secure these [inalienable] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, – That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness….

It should be obvious that vast swaths of the country, emanating from the South and creeping westward and northward, do not now nor did they ever want to adhere to laws imposed by representatives of the majority of U.S. citizens. Moreover, those Southerners and others believe it is their inalienable right to ignore – or nullify – majority rule. In 1830, Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina wrote to a friend,

The truth can no longer be disguised, that the peculiar domestick institution of the Southern States [i.e., slavery], and the consequent direction, which that and her soil and climate have given to her industry, have placed them in regard to taxation and appropriations in opposite relation to the majority of the Union; against the danger of which, if there be no protective power in the reserved rights of the States, they must in the end be forced to rebel, or submit to have their permanent interests sacraficed, their domestick institutions subverted by Colonization and other schemes, and themselves & children reduced to wretchedness.

Two years later, South Carolina’s legislature formalized Calhoun's theory in an Ordinance of Nullification:

We..., the people of the State of South Carolina, in convention assembled, do declare and ordain ... that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities..., are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens....

This is the same theory under which the Southern states seceded in 1860 and 1861, and under which they imposed Jim Crow laws in violation of the post-Civil War Constitutional Amendments. Nearly two hundred years later, many states have passed laws that nullify federal laws and Supreme Court decisions: they violate Roe v. Wade, Planned Parenthood v. Pennsylvania and the Voting Rights Act. States and communities have passed laws and put into common practice violations of the First Amendment, laws and court decisions imposing the separation of church and state. In today's New York Times, the editors point out that four states – Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Louisiana – are violating an order from the Defense Department – based on a Supreme Court decision – to provide equal protection to same-sex couples in the military. As the editors note, “The [national] guard units say they are merely adhering to state constitutions that ban same-sex marriages and do not recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states.... Under the Constitution’s supremacy clause, federal law takes precedence.” The editors are absolutely right about U.S. law, but the powers that be in those states don't see it as the New York Times does. Those Southern National Guard units stand today with the South Carolina nullifiers of old.

At least one writer in yesterday's comments thread suggested a sort of Rodney King solution – we should all just get along. That is a lovely thought, similar to one expressed by Barack Obama in his 2004 Democratic convention speech. Now President Barack Obama has found out the hard way that his lovely image of “one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America” is illusory. Legislators in and from red states have done all they can to nullify laws passed during his administration, most notably of course the Affordable Care Act. They have done this, as Paul Krugman notes today, out of “sheer spite – the desire to sabotage anything with President Obama’s name on it,” and to the disadvantage of their neediest citizens. Southerners do not believe Barack Obama is the legitimate President of the United States; as Garry Wills writes, they say they “object to Obama because he is a 'foreign-born Muslim'” but “they really mean 'a black man.'” Public Policy Polling found that

49% of GOP voters nationally say they think that ACORN stole the [2012] election for President Obama. We found that 52% of Republicans thought that ACORN stole the 2008 election for Obama, so this is a modest decline, but perhaps smaller than might have been expected given that ACORN doesn't exist anymore.

Almost 200 years after the South Carolina legislature passed the Nullification Act, 150 years after Southern states seceded from the Union and Northern states forced them to return – Southerners and some Westerners continue to hold the views that inspired these early acts of nullification. Today's Southerners are not going to try to “get along” with “Northern aggressors.” Laws imposed by the representatives of the majority of Americans did not adhere to Southern views then or now. Southern conservatives think the federal government is illegitimate – a fraud perpetrated by liberal election cheats.

I don't agree with any of those Southern conservative views. I believe in a woman's right to choose, in everyone's right to vote, in everyone's right to equal protection, in the separation of church and state, and in the legitimacy of the elections of Barack Obama. But I also believe in the principles articulated in the Declaration of Independence: that governments derive their power from the “consent of the governed.” It is clear that Southerners do not consent to certain Constitutional provisions and laws deriving from them. Perhaps the majority of Southerners do not “consent” to the U.S. government. They live in a country that has for two centuries deprived them of self-determination.

That is why I propose secession – not to punish Southerners but to free them to make their own constitutions and their own laws. For most of the history of our country, the North has aggrieved the South. Northerners have forced Southerners to live in a country whose values they eschew. We should give them a way out. It has happened before, and it has happened on a massive scale during my lifetime. The break-up of the Soviet Union came in the form of a “Velvet Revolution,” one in which nary a shot was fired, but the “inalienable right” to self-governance was restored to millions of Europeans and Asians. Is it likely to happen here? No. But until it does, this country will be crippled by a fundamental and unbreachable divide. You can suppress people, but you cannot suppress their beliefs. Attempts to suppress beliefs and values serve only to solidify those beliefs and to give them exaggerated importance. After 200 years, let us not insist upon prolonging this noble experiment. It failed when we forgot why we started it in the first place.