Sunday, September 18, 2011

Headlines - Sunday September 18

10 Signs God Is Furious With the Right
Whatever disaster strikes, there's always an upside in religious rightland, always somebody to point the finger at with glee. Let's turn the tables.
 
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The good old Tony Blair that we all know and love. What kind of "peace envoy" would be involved in an oil-for-convicted terrorist deal? The Independent
 
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Greg Sargent at the WaPo on "The Big Disconnect":

Okay, we now have a fourth national poll revealing this striking disconnect: Americans strongly disapprove of Obama on the economy, and are deeply pessimistic that it will get any better — even as they strongly approve of the actual fiscal policies the President is championing.

The
new New York Times poll finds that Obama's numbers on the economy are awful. Only 34 percent approve of his handling of the economy. Only 40 percent approve of his handling of jobs. Seventy two percent think the country's on the wrong track. A plurality thinks we're heading into another recession. But the poll also finds that Obama's new jobs plan, and the provisions within it, have clear public support…

What we're seeing here, again, is more evidence that Republicans benefit from blocking policies Americans support. As long as the economy remains abysmal, the public is likely to strongly disapprove of Obama's overall performance, even if Republicans are the ones blocking job-creation ideas the public itself thinks will reduce unemployment…

Is there a way out of this trap? Perhaps. As Aaron Blake and Chris Cillizza
noted the other day, the fact that the public still gives Obama's individual policies high marks suggests that despite all the overall disapproval of Obama on the economy and jobs, the public is still prepared to hear him out on the topic. Even if things look very bleak right now, there's still an opportunity for him win this battle, by getting some actual policies passed — they are popular, after all — or by driving home to the public who's responsible for goverment paralysis in the face of the crisis.

Steve Benen at the Washington Monthly expands on the Republicans "Picking and Choosing on the American Jobs Act":

... As David Axelrod put it this week, in reference to members of Congress, "We want them to act now on this package. We're not in a negotiation to break up the package. It's not an a la carte menu. It is a strategy to get this country moving."

Yesterday, House GOP leaders sketched out a response in a new memo. Wouldn't you know it,
Republicans aren't inclined to embrace the whole package, as is…
Read the rest of this post »
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Not content with mere election-stealing, repugs are now stealing entire states.

Kevin Drum:

Policy fights are one thing, but Republican strategists have long understood that there's a deeper level to politics, one where the goal isn't merely to fight the opposition's agenda but to actively subvert the infrastructure and funding that allow the opposing party to exist at all. There are several ways Republicans do this. They try to defund the Democratic Party by undermining the interest groups that support it - for example, by passing anti-labor laws that weaken unions or tort reform laws that cripple defense lawyers. They work to change the rules to deprive Democrats of votes - for example, via voter ID laws or crack-and-pack redistricting schemes. And they ferret out political norms that everyone has always followed and then break them to their advantage - for example, with mid-decade redistricting or by institutionalizing the filibuster.

It's all pretty ruthless. So what's next? Well, most states allocate electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008, and that victory gave him 21 electoral votes. The odds are good he can do it again in 2012. So the GOP's latest masterstroke is to do away with winner-take-all in the Keystone State. Nick Baumann explains:

Under the Republican plan-which has been endorsed by top Republicans in both houses of the state's legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett-Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote....Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight-six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for carrying the state. This would have an effect equivalent to flipping a small winner-take-all state-say, Nevada, which has six electoral votes-from blue to red. And Republicans wouldn't even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.

And it's not just Pennsylvania:

It doesn't necessarily end there. After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democratic and went for Obama in 2012. Implementing a Pennsylvania-style system in those three places-in Ohio, for example, Democrats anticipate controlling just 4 or 5 of the state's 16 congressional districts-could offset Obama wins in states where he has expanded the electoral map, like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, or New Mexico. "If all these rust belt folks get together and make this happen that could be really dramatic," says Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which coordinates state political races for the Dems.

Needless to say, there's no legitimate reason for this. "Pennsylvania Ponders Bold Democrat-Screwing Electoral Plan," reads Dave Weigel's Onion-esque headline, and that about sums it up. It's just a cynical ploy to change the electoral map to arbitrarily favor the Republican Party. If Pennsylvania looked likely to swing Republican, they'd change the rule back without blinking.

But here's what really so disheartening about the whole thing. As recently as a couple of decades ago this would have been a bridge too far for most of the party's mandarins: conservative pundits and senior GOP officials would have sounded off against it because it was just too raw a deal even for flinty political pros. But now we live in the era of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Fox News. There's really no one left who might object to this merely out of a decent respect for institutional integrity and fairmindedness.


Steve Benen:

In a close national race, an obnoxious scheme like this can alter the entire presidential election, all because Republicans are afraid to fight on a level playing field. The appropriate response from the GOP should be to nominate a strong candidate and present a worthwhile agenda, not to shamelessly rig an election.

As Republicans have become increasingly radicalized, the "war on voting" has become far more intense. We see this in the voter-ID laws and restrictions on voter-registration drives, not to mention GOP efforts to undermine labor unions. But divvying up "blue" states' electoral votes, while leaving "red" states as winner-take-all, is fundamentally offensive to how our democracy is supposed to operate.

SNIP

Republicans are simply out of control. They know no limits; they have no shame.


David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

The article is actually incorrect on one point: there is a way for cooler heads to fight back from a legal perspective, and that way is to push for the National Popular Vote act to be ratified in states totaling at least 271 electoral votes.

But beyond that, the Republicans know their goose is cooked long-term, from a demographic perspective. Most of the tea party and Fox News base will be gone or senile within a generation. With Latino population growth and unabated GOP racism, Texas will be a blue state within 10-15 years or even sooner. That by itself spells doom for the Republicans at the Presidential level as they are currently constituted. Congress won't be quite as problematic for them and yes, it's true as I have argued before that that doesn't mean permanent majorities for Democrats in a binary system. But the basic demographics do make the road that much tougher for Republicans to take the White House now and on into the future.

Increasingly, the GOP is going to need to turn to blatantly dishonest gimmicks like this to remain viable at a presidential level. But there's a big problem.

If the GOP-controlled "blue states" do this, and if President Obama wins the popular vote by a few million votes and would have won the election under the current rules but "loses" to Rick Perry under the GOP rules, I can practically guarantee mass civil disobedience. It would ignite hot flashes in what is already a cold civil war. In 2000 Democrats took the theft of the election lying down, mostly because the 1990s had been a fairly comical time politically speaking, political tensions except among the activist classes didn't run nearly as high as they do today, and even most Democrats figured that Bush wouldn't be so bad. The sort of acquiescence we saw in 2000 won't happen again. It would be the beginning of the end of the current system.

Unfortunately, the only thing scarier than contemplating riots and a potential 2nd civil war, is what the reaction of a President Rick Perry would be to such a scenario. You don't exactly have to guess.

Benen often tosses a sarcastaic thanks a lot to the 2010 voters who gave us this mess. But the real architects of this latest crisis are the Democratic voters who sat at home in November, out of either despair or petty vengeance on a Democratic Party that revealed itself to be almost as corporate-owned as the repugs, if not quite as venal.

Next year, Disappointed Democrats, we liberals who held our noses and voted for the not-repugs would appreciate if you would think about something other than your tiny, fragile ego, like your fellow Americans who do not deserve the serfs-and-lords tyranny Rick Perry will force down our throats.

So get the fuck off your ass and vote.

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The freakazoids have been getting an unjustified free ride for far too long. Tax exemption for god-botherers is stupid, unfair and in the reality-based world a direct violation of the Establishment Clause - even when they kept their traps shut about politics.

But when they blatantly violate even the weak, pathetic IRS rules on political involvement - then they are begging for the ax.

Steve Benen:

First up from the God Machine this week is a look at formerly apolitical preachers who are, at levels unseen in a long while, mobilizing their congregations for the 2012 election cycle.

[Iowa pastor Mike Demastus] is part of a growing movement of evangelical pastors who are jumping into the electoral fray as never before, preaching political engagement from the pulpit as they mobilize for the 2012 election.

This new activism has substantial muscle behind it: a cadre of experienced Christian organizers and some of the conservative movement's most generous donors, who are setting up technologically sophisticated operations to reach pastors and their congregations in battleground states.

The passion for politics stems from a collision of historic forces, including heightened local organizing around the issues of abortion and gay marriage and a view of the country's debt as a moral crisis that violates biblical instruction. Another major factor: Both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Bachmann, contenders for the GOP nomination, are openly appealing to evangelical Christian voters as they blast President Obama's leadership.

Both Republican and Democratic strategists say that pastors have already helped unleash an army of voters to shape the GOP primary contests in Iowa and South Carolina, two states with large numbers of conservative Christians. They are making plans to do the same in states that are even more important to next year's general election. Those include Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Virginia and Colorado, where evangelical voters make up about a quarter of the electorate and their participation could greatly aid Republicans.


Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called it the "congregational version of the 'tea party.'"

The religious right, as a political movement, has clearly fallen on hard times as powerhouse groups and leaders, prominent in the '80s and '90s, have faded from public view. But the concept of organizing churches into a political machine hasn't gone away at all, and with technological advances and a reinvigorated right-wing base gearing up for 2012, this is an initiative that can make a difference, both in Republican nominating contests and the general election.

The one thing to keep an eye on, though, is federal tax law - tax-exempt institutions, including churches, are legally prohibited from intervening in political campaigns, either in support of or opposition to candidates and parties. If pastors are organizing voter-registration drives, they're well within the law. If they're organizing "Rick Perry for President" efforts, the IRS may be stopping by for a visit.


Anybody who pays attention knows that the freakazoid motherfuckers have been violating IRS rules on political involvement for decades; hell, here in Kentucky they call out Democratic candidates by name from the pulpit week after week, saying flat out that voting Democratic is the direct path to hell. Worse than abortion. Worse than being gay. Worse than enjoying sex.

Best and fastest way to stop them is to yank their tax exemption and take their money. All of it.

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Theft by Private Contractor

No, this isn't about specific incidences of overcharging. The most efficient public contract is still far more expensive than paying public employees. Even unionized ones.

Kevin Drum:

So how about those overpaid government workers? We should probably just can the whole unionized lot of them and contract out their jobs to the lean-n-mean private sector. That'd save the taxpayers some serious dough, wouldn't it?

Maybe not. There's a reason that private contractors are called Beltway Bandits, after all. The Project on Government Oversight took a look at how much private contracting really costs once you look at actual billing rates, and the private sector didn't come out looking too good:

The result of POGO's analysis was shocking. In 94 percent (33 of the 35) of the occupational series POGO analyzed, the average annual contractor billing rate was much more than the average annual full compensation for federal employees: on average, contractors may be billing the government approximately 1.83 times what the government pays federal employees to perform similar work. When the average annual contractor billing rates were compared with the average annual full compensation paid to private sector employees in the open market, POGO found that in all occupational classifications studied, the contractor billing rates were, on average, more than twice the costs incurred by private sector employers for the same services.

The most egregious example of an outsourced occupational classification that resulted in excessive costs rather than cost savings is claims assistance and examining-administrative support positions that involve examining, reviewing, developing, adjusting, reconsidering, or recommending authorization of claims by or against the federal government. To provide these services, on average, federal employees are fully compensated at $57,292 per year, private sector employees are fully compensated at $75,637 per year, and the average annual contractor billing rate is $276,598 per year.


$276,000 per year! Nice work if you can get it. Federal labor unions might be tough bargainers, but they're pikers compared to the suits on mahogany row. Those are the guys who really know how to work the system. If you're on the lookout for overpaid chair warmers with cushy jobs, that's your first stop.


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Big Oil doing what Big Oil does best. When your pockets are as deep as they are in that industry, kicking the little guy and dodging responsibilities to society is easy. The Guardian

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'Shared sacrifice': Should Congress cut its pay, benefits? http://www.cnn.com/2011/POLITICS/09/16/congress.salary/index.html?hpt=hp_c1

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h/t Dick

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2011/09/13/Why-a-Working-Class-Revolt-Might-Not-Be-Unthinkable.aspx#page1
 
...that the economy and, as a direct result, the unemployment numbers will not improve as long as a Democrat remains in the White House; Republicans in Congress - and their financial and media supporters - will simply not allow that to happen.  The 2012 election will be a 'Morton's Fork' (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morton%27s_fork).  If Mr. Obama is re-elected, the Republicans will vigorously redouble their obstructionist tactics and our economic depression will worsen.  If a Republican is elected, we can look forward to increased restrictions on labor unions, additional tax advantages for the wealthy and profound reductions in the socio-economic benefits provided by the erroneously-named 'entitlement programs'; social security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, unemployment benefits and social welfare programs, further deepening the depression and substantially increasing hardships for the poor and middle class, while having an ever-increasing negative effect on employment.  Blame for the worsening economic climate will, of course, be heaped upon Mr. Obama's 'failed policies', and ever deepening spending cuts will be called for.  A never-ending downward spiral, because no one in Congress has even a fundamental understanding of economics, but all have a keen perception of the personal benefits that inevitably accrue to those who follow orders.
 
It is becoming increasingly hard to guess what kind of world will eventually emerge from this New Politic, but it will certainly not be as before.

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Texas healthcare system withering under Gov. Perry

 

 

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