Bark Bark Woof Woof: June 2011

Thursday, June 30, 2011

A Little Night Music

It's finally raining. Groovy, man.

Healthcare Law Wins One More Court Appeal

You're not going to see it in the headlines, but the healthcare law passed last year withstood yet another court challenge.

The health-care law seeks to extend medical coverage to 30 million uninsured Americans and make major changes in public and private health insurance. By far the most contested provision is the individual mandate, which requires most Americans to purchase at least a minimum level of health insurance starting in 2014 and imposes a tax penalty if they don’t.

Like other legal challenges, the lawsuit filed by the Thomas More Law Center — a Christian-oriented law firm in Michigan — says Congress overstepped its constitutional authority to regulate commerce.

A three-judge panel of the 6th Circuit disagreed. The mandate is constitutional, Martin wrote, because “Congress had a rational basis to believe” that the provision would affect interstate commerce and that it was “essential” to the law’s broader goals of reforming the health-care market.

Judge James Graham, a Republican appointee, dissented, but it was the concurrence of Sutton — a George W. Bush appointee and former law clerk for conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia — that was most noteworthy.

Sutton wrote that “the government has the better of the arguments” and that “Congress . . . did not exceed its power” in passing the individual mandate. But he also appeared to acknowledge that his word would not be final, writing, “The Supreme Court has considerable discretion in resolving this dispute.”

So far, the law has withstood three challenges and been struck down by two. What's really important is that the decision was handed down by Republican-appointed judges, including one who used to clerk for that wild-eyed liberal activist Justice Antonin Scalia.

So why isn't it news?

HT to SFDB.

Staying Here

Marriage equality is the big headline issue, but there are other things that mean a great deal to the LGBT community that don't get a lot of attention, and they are just as important in the lives of people and their families. Such as...

In a decision that could have far-reaching effects on immigration cases involving same-sex couples, federal officials have canceled the deportation of a Venezuelan man in New Jersey who is married to an American man, the couple’s lawyer said Wednesday.

The announcement comes as immigration officials put into effect new, more flexible guidelines governing the deferral and cancellation of deportations, particularly for immigrants with no serious criminal records.

Immigration lawyers and gay rights advocates said the decision represented a significant shift in policy and could open the door to the cancellation of deportations for other immigrants in same-sex marriages.

“This action shows that the government has not only the power but the inclination to do the right thing when it comes to protecting certain vulnerable populations from deportation,” said the couple’s lawyer, Lavi Soloway.

The case has been closely watched across the country by lawyers and advocates who viewed it as a test of the federal government’s position on the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.

I'd be fascinated to hear from Newt Gingrich how keeping couples together destroys traditional family values.

Lighting Their Farts

Watching the clip of Mark Halperin call President Obama a "dick" reminded me of being a camp counselor and watching kids sit around the campfire trying to light their farts. It was obviously a set-up: Mr. Halperin's little smirk gives it away as if he just couldn't wait to say it, and Joe Scarborough (who is like the kid who goads the other kids into mischief and then runs away when the grown-ups show up) tossed him his cue. Much hilarity ensues, but it's juvenile to point of "Sheesh" on crack.

So Mr. Halperin apologizes, MSNBC suspends him indefinitely, the Villagers go nuts, and everyone now concentrates on this outbreak of acne-riddled behavior instead of what caused it. Steve Benen gets it.

I couldn’t care less which four-letter word Halperin uses. I do care that Halperin is presented to news consumers as a neutral observer when he clearly is not. But I really care that he and others in the media establishment look at the debt-ceiling fight and think Obama’s the one who’s a big jerk. And why do they think that? Because the president offered some relatively mild criticism of truly insane tactics.

Let me say this as plainly as I know how: Republicans are threatening to deliberately cause a global recession. The president is willing to strike a deal that leans heavily in the GOP’s direction, and Republicans are refusing. Who, in this scenario, is being dickish?

Exactly. Now, go to your room.

Short Takes

Where was I? Oh, yeah....

The attack on the hotel in Kabul raises doubts about the Afghan forces.

President Obama laid down his own rules about the deficit and debt ceiling plans at his news conference yesterday.

Greece votes to avoid default.

Gov. Scott turns on law enforcement for savings.

Incentive Pay -- Miami's police chief was offered $400K to leave his job.

Tropical Update: TS Arlene is coming ashore in central Mexico... and feeding some rain to Florida.

The Tigers lost again to the Mets.

Blog Note

Blogger had some issues this morning during my usual posting session. Now that it’s back, I can’t post from work; this post has been put up by my brother. I’ll resume posting when I get home later today.

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

A Little Night Music

In honor of Broadway composer and lyricist Frank Loesser, born June 29, 1910...

Vivian Blaine created the role of the long-suffering (and sneezing) Miss Adelaide in Guys and Dolls.

"A Pivotal Moment"

If the perception is that the Democrats are caving into the Republicans' hostage demands on the budget and the debt ceiling, there's one Independent voice that isn't: Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

He's written a letter to the president and is asking folks to sign on to it. Go here if you want to add your name to it.

Meanwhile, some Democrats are floating the theory that failure to raise the debt ceiling would violate the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. It's an interesting idea, and it's worth noting that this is the same amendment that gives a lot of Tea Partiers agita; it's the same one that guarantees citizenship to anyone born in the United States, regardless of the immigration status of their parents or how they got here.

It would be karmic justice if that same amendment put an end to this game of chicken at the risk of the full faith and credit of the United States.

Start Spreading the News

Now that New York has passed marriage equality, they'd like to cash in on it.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s “NYC I Do” campaign, set to launch soon, “will create hundreds of millions of dollars in additional economic impact to the city’s $31 billion tourism industry, and have a positive impact on tourism-industry jobs,” said George Fertitta, chief executive officer at New York & Company, the city’s marketing office.

Then the happy couple can shuffle off to Buffalo for a honeymoon at Niagara Falls.

HT to Oliver Willis.

Facts Are Stubborn Things

FactCheck.org reviews some of the statements of Michele Bachmann. Some of them are misstatements, some are manipulated to stretch the truth to the breaking point, and some of them are just plain wrong. Are they intentional -- which would make them lies -- or are they just from a basic lack of understanding? My guess is that they're a mixture of all three.

What I find most insulting is the movement on behalf of people like Michele Bachmann and Sarah Palin to revise the history to match their mistakes. We saw it when Ms. Palin fumbled over Paul Revere; her minions went into Wikipedia and re-wrote the story to match hers. The same happened yesterday when Michele Bachmann confused John Quincy Adams with his father, John Adams, and that a nine year old kid from Boston was very active in the American Revolution. (Maybe she was thinking of Johnny Tremain.) Now some of her supporters are trying to edit history to match her mistake.

On the other hand, it sure does bring home the fact that if someone who is running for president can't get their history straight, we are in serious need of a massive infusion of investment in public education.

Over To You, Chris

Jon Stewart demonstrates why it's not a good idea to try to get in the last word with a comedian.

The Daily Show - Oh, for Fox Sake
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Gimenez Wins

Carlos Gimenez won the election to be Miami-Dade County mayor.

Carlos Gimenez, a former Miami city manager and county commissioner who touted himself as the candidate with the experience to solve the most nettlesome problems, will be Miami-Dade County’s next mayor after defeating former Hialeah mayor Julio Robaina by a slim margin.

With all precincts reporting, Gimenez won 51 percent to Robaina’s 49 percent.

The difference for Gimenez proved to be early votes, where he fared better than Robaina. The two essentially fought to a draw for absentee and Election Day votes.

“I am happy,” said Gimenez, after learning he won. “But I also know that come tomorrow I have a lot of work to do.”

For his part, Robaina surprised many by conceding the race even as the contest remained close and all the votes were not counted.

Right before 9:30 p.m., Robaina took the stage in the lobby of a Doral office park, as Journey’s Don’t Stop Believing played in the background. But Robaina told the still-hopeful crowd that the election was over.

“I just called Commissioner Gimenez and congratulated him on his win,” Robaina said, to loud cries of “No!”

The vote ends a two-and-a-half-month campaign to pick a replacement for former county mayor Carlos Alvarez, who was ousted in March in the largest recall of a local politician in U.S. history.

Good luck, Mr. Mayor.

Short Takes

Suicide bombers hit the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul, Afghanistan; NATO forces struck back.

Egyptian security forces clash with protesters.

There were riots in Greece over more austerity measures.

Prices on single-family homes are starting to move up, which is a good sign.

Space junk gives the space station a close call.

Apocalypse averted -- AT&T wireless service has been restored in South Florida after a four-hour outage.

Tropical Update -- Tropical Storm Arlene is heading west into central Mexico from the Gulf.

The Tigers got clobbered by the Mets.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

A Little Night Music

Happy 85th birthday, Mel Brooks.

Stephen Colbert Takes a Razor to Rick Scott

The Colbert Report
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Style, Not Substance

David Brooks thinks that President Obama's problem is his style of leadership.

Obama’s actual governing style emphasizes delegation and occasional passivity. Being led by Barack Obama is like being trumpeted into battle by Miles Davis. He makes you want to sit down and discern.

But this is who Obama is, and he’s not going to change, no matter how many liberals plead for him to start acting like Howard Dean.

The Obama style has advantages, but it has served his party poorly in the current budget fight. He has not educated the country about the debt challenge. He has not laid out a plan, aside from one vague, hyperpoliticized speech. He has ceded the initiative to the Republicans, who have dominated the debate by establishing facts on the ground.

Oh, so it has nothing to do with the fact that the Republicans are bound and determined to do anything to nuke the Obama presidency; it's because Mr. Obama doesn't scream, shout, and throw tantrums like Rahm Emanuel or Chris Christie. My mistake.

The question comes up occasionally as to why the New York Times pays Mr. Brooks to write such drivel. Granted, every pundit -- even the good ones -- write crap now and then, but his record is amazingly consistent. (I'll be the first to admit that I write crap on occasion, too, but at least I do it for free.)

How Could You Not See This?

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made it clear yesterday that any deal to raise the debt ceiling will not include any tax increases. Period, the end; Maestro, cue the exit music.

In the hours before an evening meeting with President Obama, and in a number of different venues, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell renewed his insistence that Republicans will not accept any tax increases as part of a trillion-dollar deficit reduction package the GOP is demanding before agreeing to let the country pay all its bills on time.

But according to a top Democratic aide, Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) agreed at a White House meeting Monday morning that any such package must take "a balanced approach, and that revenues need to be a part of that approach, especially ending taxpayer-funded giveaways to corporations that don't need them."

Democratic aides aren't offering a complete list of the tax measures they want Republicans to consider, or how much each measure is expected to raise. Multiple accounts, however, indicate they want tax measures to raise $400 billion over the next 10 years -- 20 percent of the $2 trillion they hope to cut from the deficit overall.

But McConnell doesn't really want to touch the tax code to reduce the deficit at all.

It's no secret that the only reason he's doing this is to deprive the president of a deal. Mr. McConnell has said that his goal is to make Mr. Obama a one-term president, and this is just one more way to do it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I maintain that anyone with any sense of history and insight to the way the right-wing mind works could have predicted this long ago. These people do not take losing at all well, and they have never seen the election of a Democrat to be anything but a scam, a fraud, and a criminal act: "How could the American public be so WRONG as to elect HIM!?!"

I'd like to think that Mr. Obama is fully aware of this plan and has told Mr. McConnell and Mr. Boehner that if they want to take him and the economy down just to avenge the defeat of John McCain, then he's going to take them down with him; or they could put the needs of the country and the global economy first and come up with something that has nothing whatsoever to do with gaining political advantage. I'm fully confident that will happen right after I see pigs fly.

Predicatable Pat

You knew that we couldn't get marriage equality passed in New York without hearing from the Prophet of Doom:

In history there’s never been a civilization ever in history that has embraced homosexuality and turned away from traditional fidelity, traditional marriage, traditional child-rearing, and has survived. There isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality. So you say, “what’s going to happen to America?” Well if history is any guide, the same thing’s going to happen to us.

But not if we throw the One Ring into the Cracks of Doom and destroy it. Then everything will be okay. Gandalf said so.

Failure to Launch

Maybe it's just a coincidence, but the last three presidential campaigns for the GOP nomination have had less than impressive beginnings. I wonder if it's because they're so eager to get going that they stumble over the start, or if it's a sign that they're just not ready.

First up was Newt Gingrich. He's been teasing the opening for so long that by the time he finally got around to officially announcing, it was old news; we thought he already was. No sooner had he announced then he tripped over himself and the provoked the raging ire of the rest of the party by criticizing the Ryan budget and plan for taking apart Medicare as we know it. His fumble recovery -- "Anyone who quotes me is lying" -- made for great late-night TV mockery, and within a few weeks he had lost his senior campaign staff and, most recently, his fund-raisers. Last we heard he was traveling to campaign events that were only reachable by car from Atlanta or his home near Washington.

Then Jon Huntsman, the former Utah governor and ambassador to China in the Obama administration, kicked off his campaign in the shadow of the Statue of Liberty, campaigning as a comparative moderate (pro-civil unions, believes that climate change is real, is civil to the president), but is having trouble getting traction. Aside from the fact that the current mood of the Republicans is anything but moderate or tolerant and therefore unlikely to nominate a nice polite Mormon who used to work for the Kenyan Socialist Secret Muslim, whoever did Mr. Huntsman's campaign prep didn't do a good job in securing web addresses, getting the campaign literature printed with the right address and phone number, and even had trouble spelling the candidate's name.

And then yesterday Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) formally announced her bid in her hometown of Waterloo, Iowa. She found an enthusiastic crowd and she threw a lot of red meat to them, but then she got a bit of her history wrong by saying that Waterloo was the hometown of one of America's heroes, John Wayne. Except that John Wayne was born in a different small town in Iowa; the John Wayne that spent time in Waterloo was John Wayne Gacy, the serial killer.

Every campaign has its "oops" moments, and ultimately, to quote the old song, it's not where you start but where you finish that matters. In the case of these three, however, the start of their respective campaigns reminds us that it's not just the campaign that has to win over the voter, it's the candidate, and each of them has so many flaws to begin with -- Mr. Gingrich can't control his mouth, much less his stunning lack of self-awareness; Mr. Huntsman's views will never get the votes of the Republican base that is essential in the early primaries; and Ms. Bachmann will never get beyond the base in the primaries to attract the moderate and independent voters that make up general election base -- that even if each of them had started off without a hitch, a year from now they'll be in the footnotes of history along with those of the campaign of Fred Thompson, who stood a better chance of being re-elected as the New York District Attorney if he'd stuck to his old job.

Election Day in Miami - Runoff

Today is the run-off election in Miami-Dade County between Julio Robaina and Carlos Gimenez.

Tuesday night’s results will end a period of political upheaval triggered by the March recall of Carlos Alvarez as county mayor and the subsequent campaign to pick a replacement. But the winner of the race will be quickly thrust into a tumultuous, politically charged environment. That includes plugging a yawning budget deficit, renegotiating 10 labor contracts with employee unions and making good on a host of promised reforms, including the adoption of eight-year term limits for county commissioners.

And it all must be done quickly and under the stage lights of a restive public and political challengers themselves angling to be county mayor in 2012. The winner Tuesday serves the remainder of what would have been Alvarez’s term. The first-round of next year’s race will be in August 2012 — with a final election, if no candidate gets more than 50 percent in August, in November. Indeed, there will be no time to waste for the Tuesday’s winner: Election results are to be certified Friday and the new mayor must submit a new, multi-billion dollar budget for the coming year by July 15, just two weeks after being declared the winner.

The electorate has shown tepid excitement about the two candidates trying to succeed Alvarez, even as a recent poll showed the public has few regrets about tossing Alvarez out after he incurred public ire for a host of missteps amid the recession, including raising the property tax rate while hiking county workers’ salaries.

If you live in the county but aren't sure where to vote, check here for the voter's guide.

If you're not sure who to vote for, well, I can't help you. Based on the robocalls I've been getting, both of the candidates are Evil Incarnate, according to the other guy's campaign. So far neither of them have given me a good reason to vote for their candidate. It's tough to prove a negative.

Short Takes

Muammar Qaddafi is charged with war crimes at The Hague.

Syria allows the opposition to meet in Damascus.

The Supreme Court overturned California's ban on sales of violent video games to kids.

The Court also struck down part of Arizona's campaign finance law.

Officials say that the nuclear plant in Nebraska is no danger in spite of the floodwaters from the Missouri River.

A wildfire in New Mexico is getting very close to Los Alamos.

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is convicted on 17 counts of corruption.

Tropical Update: Something's stirring in the Gulf of Mexico.

The Tigers beat Toronto.

Monday, June 27, 2011

A Little Night Music

From the great Lalo Schifrin.

Some Things Never Change

Roseanne from 1992.

Sound familiar?

HT to Misty at Shakesville.

Question of the Day

For all you straight married people out there...

How exactly has same-sex marriage destroyed your own marriage?

Yes, I'm being a tad snarky, but since we're being told by paragons of marital bliss such as Newt Gingrich that marriage equality will doom "traditional marriage," I wonder how those of you already in one feel about letting Teh Gayz in on it.

A Big Deal

The passage of marriage equality in New York on Friday night is a big deal. Not only is it the largest state to do it, it was done in a state with a Republican majority in the state senate and with the work of both Republicans and Democrats who knew that regardless of political pressure from religious quarters and so-called "family values" groups, they were doing the right thing.

There will be some, perhaps a lot, of blowback from the anti-gay crowd; they're already claiming that it wasn't truly the voice of the people who passed the law because it wasn't put to a vote of the people. That's a usual straw to grasp at; representative democracy has its flaws (see Florida, state legislature), but by and large it has worked, and I'm willing to wager that if the question was put to a vote in a referendum in New York, it would have passed.

As for President Obama's "still evolving" view on marriage equality, this is a case where what he believes and what he supports isn't as important as what is happening on the ground in the states where the battle is being waged. I doubt that any New York state senator checked with the White House before the vote was taken on Friday night. Given the way the GOP thinks of Mr. Obama's views on anything, I'm cynical enough to believe that had the president come out fully in support of the passage of the law in New York, the Republicans would have used that as their excuse to defeat it.

I'm wary of predictions. But I can't help thinking that now that the state of New York has effectively doubled the number of Americans who live in a state where same-sex marriage is legal, other states may follow. Yes, there are going to be states where the anti-gay backlash may grow because all them commie-pinko New York queers passed it, but all in all, last Friday was one of those moments where you can say that it was a good day for all of us.

Justice Gets Physical

Via the Milwaukee Sentinel:

Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley late Saturday accused fellow Justice David Prosser of putting her in a chokehold during a dispute in her office earlier this month.

"The facts are that I was demanding that he get out of my office and he put his hands around my neck in anger in a chokehold," Bradley told the Journal Sentinel.

Sources told the Journal Sentinel two very different stories Saturday about what occurred. Some confirmed Bradley's version. According to others, Bradley charged Prosser, who raised his hands to defend himself and made contact with her neck.

A joint investigation by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism first reported on the incident early Saturday, stating that Prosser "allegedly grabbed" Bradley around the neck.

Before Bradley spoke to the Journal Sentinel, Prosser issued a statement that said: "Once there's a proper review of the matter and the facts surrounding it are made clear, the anonymous claim made to the media will be proven false. Until then I will refrain from further public comment."

So much for "civil discourse" in Wisconsin.

HT to Steve Bates.

In Which I Defend Michele Bachmann

Regardless of what I or anyone may think of Michele Bachmann as a presidential candidate or what her chances are of winning the Republican nomination, and regardless of what part of the spectrum her ideas and interpretations of reality may come from, Chris Wallace of Fox News asking her "Are you a flake?" was way out of bounds.

Why? Because I have yet to hear him ask any of the men in the GOP race the same question. Rick Santorum holds views as far-right and as radical as she does, yet he's considered a serious candidate.

This goes back to the theory that the Republicans are perfectly happy to have women candidates out there creating the buzz and getting the attention while the men are the only ones to take seriously as the real candidates.

Mr. Wallace has since apologized for the question. Good for him, but it still doesn't get past the fact that the GOP is still the old boys club that it always has been.

Short Takes

Libyan rebels made some advances in the western mountains.

Ex-Khmer Rouge leaders go on trial in Cambodia.

Minot is breathing a little easier today as flood waters recede.

Meanwhile, officials are keeping an eye on a nuclear plant in Nebraska that is threatened by flooding due to a collapsing berm.

Romney and Bachmann are close to each other in a new Iowa poll.

Gas prices are dropping.

R.I.P. Alice Playten, 63, character actor.

The Tigers beat the D'backs.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Sunday Reading

How It Happened -- Michael Barbaro of the New York Times has a behind-the-scenes look at how Gov. Andrew Cuomo persuaded rich Republicans to back the passage of marriage equality.

The story of how same-sex marriage became legal in New York is about shifting public sentiment and individual lawmakers moved by emotional appeals from gay couples who wish to be wed.

But, behind the scenes, it was really about a Republican Party reckoning with a profoundly changing power dynamic, where Wall Street donors and gay-rights advocates demonstrated more might and muscle than a Roman Catholic hierarchy and an ineffective opposition.

And it was about a Democratic governor, himself a Catholic, who used the force of his personality and relentlessly strategic mind to persuade conflicted lawmakers to take a historic leap.

“I can help you,” Mr. Cuomo assured them in dozens of telephone calls and meetings, at times pledging to deploy his record-high popularity across the state to protect them in their districts. “I am more of an asset than the vote will be a liability.”

Over the last several weeks, dozens of lawmakers, strategists and advocates described the closed-door meetings and tactical decisions that led to approval of same-sex marriage in New York, about two years after it was rejected by the Legislature. This account is based on those interviews, most of which were granted on the condition of anonymity to describe conversations that were intended to be confidential.

More below the fold.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. -- Want healthcare? Knock over a bank.

I pay my taxes.

I will not offend your intelligence by pretending to enjoy it; writing that check is about as enjoyable as a chainsaw root canal. But I don’t resent it, either.

I pay my taxes because this is how we the people pay for things we deem to be in our communal interest. This is how our military is sustained. This is how our children are educated. This is how our potholes are filled. This is how our libraries are stocked. This is how our police officers are supplied. This is how we take care of us. So I pay my taxes.

It is because I do, that I was appalled by the story of James Verone. He is a 59-year-old man from Gastonia, N.C. Drove a Coca-Cola delivery truck for 17 years until he lost his job three years ago. He got another job driving a truck, but that job went away, too. So Verone took part-time work at a convenience store, only to find himself physically unable to do it. Verone has a bad back, a problem with his left foot that causes him to limp, arthritis that swells his knuckles and carpal tunnel syndrome. He could not stand behind the register, bend to reach the low shelves, lift things to the high ones

And he had no medical insurance. Then, to make matters worse, he found a lump on his chest. Desperate, Verone considered his options. He filed for disability and early Social Security, but did not qualify. Meanwhile, his savings were running out like sand through an hour glass. He considered a homeless shelter. He considered asking for charity. “The pain was beyond the tolerance that I could accept,” he told a reporter from the Gaston Gazette, upon whose story this account is based. “I kind of hit a brick wall with everything.”

That’s when Verone turned to crime. On the 9th of this month, he walked into a randomly-chosen bank and passed a teller a note demanding one dollar and medical attention. He never showed a weapon, stood there while she called police, waited on a couch in the lobby for them to arrive, surrendered quietly. He went to jail, where he now has shelter, food and, yes, medical care.

I am not here to lionize Verone. His stunt could have gotten someone hurt. Indeed, the teller was taken to the hospital because her blood pressure spiked.

No, I don’t lionize him. But I do empathize.

I pay my taxes. I consider it a patriotic obligation — a sacrifice for the greater we.

But that is not how it is seen by the anti-government forces who have dominated political debate in recent years. To hear them tell it, to pay taxes is to be robbed. And every federal program our taxes support is wasteful and unnecessary, except, of course, those that directly benefit the complainer himself.

During the healthcare debate, we kept hearing that a government-run system amounted to “socialized medicine,” as if Marx would be your triage nurse and Lenin your doctor. As if, by that definition, our government-run libraries, police forces, schools and garbage pickup were not also “socialized.” As if it’s Aetna that really has your interests at heart.

If healthcare were “socialized,” a law-abiding working man would not have felt driven to this extreme. A great nation has a moral obligation to provide a safety net, to care for the most broken and vulnerable of its people.

I pay my taxes. That’s one reason I do.

Of Course It's Sabotage -- Michael Tomasky argues that the GOP is clearly out to tank the economy for political gain.

It’s about time the Democrats started saying openly what has been clear for months or even years now—that as long as economic recovery would work to the political benefit of Barack Obama, the Republicans have been, are, and will be in favor of sabotaging the economy. Senators Chuck Schumer and Dick Durbin made the point in a press conference in the Capitol Thursday. Noting that his GOP colleagues are coming out against business tax cuts (read that again: Republicans against tax cuts for businesses) that Democrats happen to support, Schumer said, “It almost makes you wonder if they aren't trying to slow down the economic recovery for political gain.” Well, not almost. Certainly. And I don’t “wonder.” I think it’s obvious. But this is a start.

Washington is a city of conspiracies, but far and away the most pernicious one is the fiction, in which one must participate if one wants to be regarded as a “serious” person, that both parties are more or less equally to blame for the present malfunctioning of our democracy. One hears this all the time at the sort of panels, dinners, and seminars I attend. The topic is our energy future, our fiscal prospects, whatever. Discussion turns to obvious remedies, which inevitably involve the government taking some minimal amount of action, or the investment of a few modest public shekels. The symposiast will then note, sighing forlornly, that we appear to be light years away from consummating even these modest actions. He will then bemoan a vague “lack of political will” or “absence of leadership” as the reason for the inertia.

Nonsense. There’s nothing vague about it. It’s crystal clear. We can’t do these things because of the extreme nature of the Republican Party and the right-wing noise machine that enforces such rigid ideological purity. Period and end of story. I think most people at these panels and dinners know this deep down. But it’s thought impolite to say it. Often it’s a technical violation of law to say it, since most of these events are sponsored by nonprofit organizations that must be scrupulous about their nonpartisanship to keep the taxman at bay. Whatever the reason, the conspiracy has produced a culture that refuses to acknowledge one of its fundamental truths.

Doonesbury -- Search engine.

Short Takes

Syria -- It's getting close to an impasse.

Chinese dissident Hua Jia has been released from prison.

Flooding -- Neighbors are helping neighbors in Minot.

Train wreck -- Six people have been confirmed dead in an Amtrak/semi collision in Nevada.

Hackers at Lulzsec say they're getting out of the business.

Cracking up -- A lot of tiny cracks in the support beams of the parking garages at the under-construction Marlins baseball park in Miami are causing headaches.

Hands across the beach -- Thousands protest off-shore drilling in Florida.

Justin Verlander and the Tigers beat the D'Backs.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

A Little Night Music

We could use some rain.

For Bill

Remembering Bill Sencenbaugh, who died on this date in 1976.

A good friend for all too short a time.

Video Of the Day

New York State Sen. Mark Grisanti (R) explains how he came to vote for marriage equality.

I can understand and appreciate the struggle that Mr. Grisanti went through before he finally came to believe in the fundamental idea that all people should have equal rights. Sometimes doing the right thing takes courage; more's the pity.

As for all of the people who objected to the bill on religious grounds, and specifically the Roman Catholic Church: bite me. You can dress up your high dudgeon (not to mention your flaming hypocrisy) with your superstitions and threats of divine retribution from a mythological being, but it's still bigotry. You're a bunch of pompous and arrogant cowards who haven't got the guts to just admit that you're terrified of people who aren't just like you. You own your bigotry, so at the least have the maturity to admit it.

HT to Balloon Juice.

Gov. Scott Campaigns for President Obama

Having a Tea Party governor here in Florida may actually have an up side.

A plurality of Florida voters say they are less inclined to support a Republican presidential candidate in 2012 because of the way their freshman GOP governor has acted since taking office, according to a PPP poll to be released Friday morning.

In the survey, 40% of registered voters said Gov. Rick Scott’s actions have made them less inclined to back the GOP presidential nominee next year, versus 26% who said his actions had made it more likely they’d vote Republican in 2012. An additional 34% said Scott has had no impact on whether or not they’ll support a Republican candidate.

A key finding within those results is that almost one in five (18%) of respondents who said they disapproved of President Obama’s job performance said they were still shying away from supporting a Republican alternative because of their dissatisfaction with Scott. Further, 45% of all independent voters said they were less inclined to vote for the GOP nominee after seeing Scott’s policies in action, versus only 18% who said Scott had made them more keen to vote against Obama next year.

The only problem with this plan is that we have to endure cuts in public education, draconian laws aimed at uteri, the decimation of the environment and the Everglades, windfall tax cuts for corporate cronies, and any other number of horrors dreamed up by Mr. Scott and yet to find the light of day.

HT to Bob Cesca.

Short Takes

Gov. Cuomo has signed the New York marriage equality law; the first weddings can take place in 30 days.

At least 45 people have been killed by a bombing at a hospital in Afghanistan.

Split the difference -- The House rejected a bill to fund the military operations in Libya, but they didn't vote to not pay for them, either.

Minot is bracing for the flood peak.

A judge in Indiana has put the law that defunded Planned Parenthood in that state on hold.

Finders keepers -- An emerald ring valued at $500,000 has been found in the wreck of a Spanish galleon.

The Tigers lost to Arizona.

Friday, June 24, 2011

New York and Marriage Equality: It Passed

Via MSNBC:

New York state senators Friday night voted 33-29 to legalize gay marriage, a breakthrough victory for the gay-rights movement in the state where it got its start.

The vote came after a veteran Republican senator earlier told The Associated Press he would vote yes, apparently giving the measure the support it needs to become law.

Sen. Stephen Saland said he had long been undecided. He voted against a similar bill in 2009, helping kill the measure and dealing a blow to the national gay rights movement.

Before he announced his intention, 31 senators were in favor, one short of a majority. New York will become the sixth state, and by far the largest, where gay marriage is legal.

Gay weddings could begin 30 days after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signs it into law, which he has said he would do.

We are winning.

A Little Night Music

In memory of Peter Falk.

From The Great Race (1965) with Jack Lemmon as Professor Fate.

New York and Marriage Equality: Not There Yet

Close, but not quite.

The New York State Legislature abruptly adjourned for the night late Thursday without voting on any of the highest-profile measures before it, including same-sex marriage.

Two days after announcing an agreement on capping property taxes and expanding rent-control regulations in New York City, lawmakers have yet to agree on the fine print. All day Thursday, legislative leaders said they would work through the night to finish their business, but at 11 p.m., the Senate majority leader, Dean G. Skelos, a Long Island Republican, said differences over reducing the costs of state regulation on local governments had held up talks.

The fate of same-sex marriage remained uncertain; the senators left for the night without deciding whether to hold a vote, but were scheduled to return at 10 a.m. Friday. Thirty-one of the 62 members of the Senate, including two Republicans, support legalizing same-sex marriage, but one more vote would be needed for the bill to pass. Some Senate Republicans would prefer not to vote on the issue at all, and it remained possible that the Legislature would adjourn for the year without taking it up.

Meanwhile, President Obama was in New York City last night at a fund-raiser with the LGBT community. As Rachel Maddow noted, it's interesting to see the president not be for same-sex marriage, but ask for money from those who are.

Penny Wise, Paul Foolish

Watch Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Al Franken (D-MN) explain to Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) the difference between spending money wisely and spending it foolishly.

PS: Sen. Franken's little crack at Sen. Paul is worth the wait.

HT to Oliver Willis.

Kansas's War On Women

Kansas is about to basically ban all legal abortions in the state.

Kansas will require annual, unannounced inspections of abortion clinics, impose new health and safety rules specifically for them and prevent them from using telemedicine systems to dispense pregnancy-terminating drugs under legislation signed Monday by Gov. Sam Brownback.

The new law takes effect July 1. Abortion opponents said the changes will protect patients, but abortion rights supporters fear they will drive one or more of Kansas' three abortion clinics out of business.

Brownback, an anti-abortion Republican who took office in January, has publicly called on the GOP-dominated Legislature to create "a culture of life," and it has responded by passing a raft of measures.

The goal, according to one anti-abortion advocate, is to end all abortions in the state. Wrong. They will still happen. They just won't be safe, and women will die. There's your "culture of life" for you.

Irony of the Day

John Yoo, the lawyer who came up with the legal memos that justified the use of torture by the Bush administration, is pounding on President Obama for his interpretation of the War Powers Act.

Just as the administration brushed aside the Constitution’s limits on the federal government’s powers over the domestic economy, so too it is ignoring a national security law it believes to be constitutional simply because it stands in the way of Democratic Party goals. [...]

Obama’s indefensible interpretation of the WPR is transparently driven by politics. … These decisions show an administration that treats the law cynically and manipulatively, to achieve purely political ends.

That last paragraph is pure comedy gold.

Cantor Won't

I've been marginally paying attention to the budget talks going on between the Republicans and the White House because I kind of knew the arc of the story before it happened.

The Democrats and the Republicans would get together with their spokespeople forecasting wary hope and partial promises that both sides were ready for "frank but productive" talks. This would be followed by some posturing, some leaks from inside the talks about a few tantalizing details, and as the deadline loomed, some key player would bolt with a dramatic flounce in order to put the pressure on both sides to reach a deal. "Breaking News" crawls on cable TV and other hilarity would ensue, then the negotiators -- the real ones -- would scramble to work out a last-minute deal in the middle of the night amongst empty pizza boxes in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, and both sides would take credit for their wins and blame the other side for their losses. It's a golden oldie.

Yesterday it was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor's star turn; he flounced, and the rest of the gang went back to work. I may not know a lot about the intricacies of economics, but I do know something about drama queens.

Friday Blogaround

Hey, it's summer. What's up in the heat?

A Blog Around The Clock links to a post about one illness threatening a way of life.
archy in radio hell.
Bark Bark Woof Woof: "The government creates NOTHING."
Dohiyi Mir: run for something.
Echidne Of The Snakes on unnatural selection.
Florida Progressive Coalition Blog: Mad Libs.
Left Is Right: border wars.
Pen-Elayne on the Web's silly site 'o the day.
Rook's Rant: the truth behind the economy.
rubber hose: getting out.
Scrutiny Hooligans: sanity rules.
Stupid Enough Unexplanation: someone tries and fails to knock down Jon Stewart.
The Yellow Something Something on the capricious application of the death penalty.

Looking for rain here....

Short Takes

Syrian forces are sending hundreds of people fleeing across the border to Turkey.

Minot, North Dakota, is still under a flood threat.

Jobless claims rose again last week.

Oil is being sold from the strategic reserve in order to knock the wind out of speculators.

Airbus gets a lot of orders at the Paris air show.

A House committee wants to annul President Obama's loosening of restrictions on travel and money sent to Cuba.

The Miami-Dade GOP is running short of cash.

The Tigers were off last night. They return to Comerica for a series with Arizona.

Friday Catblogging

"Wanna go for a spin?"

Thursday, June 23, 2011

A Little Night Music

Fact-Checking the Fact-Checkers

PolitiFact rated Jon Stewart's claim that Fox viewers are "consistently misinformed" as False. Mr. Stewart apologized, then did a little fact-checking of his own of PolitiFact's reporting on Fox News.

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Quote of the Day

Matt Taibbi on Michele Bachmann's ability to misunderstand something innocuous and turn it into a full-blown kerfuffle:

Imagine Joe McCarthy dragging Cabinet members into hearings and demanding that they publicly disavow the works of Groucho Marx, and you get a rough idea of the general style of Bachmannian politics.

It's like Emily Litella is running for president.

HT to digby.

That's What It's All About

I'll give Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) props for being candid.

McConnell admitted that his party is divided over President Obama’s military action in Libya, but that you’re only hearing about it because Obama’s a Democrat. Many of these same divisions, he said, existed under President Bush, but party loyalty “muted” the dissent.

“I’m not sure that these kinds of differences might not have been there in a more latent form when you had a Republican president,” McConnell admitted. “But I do think there’s more of a tendency to pull together when the guy in the White House is on your side.”

This doesn't only apply to Libya; the Republicans are basically reflexively opposed to anything President Obama does, even if it's something like a tax cut.

Yeah, that's politics. But what is most impressive is that the Republicans will do it even if it's bad for the economy, undermines our foreign policy, or makes no sense; if President Obama put out a message supporting baseball, hot dogs, and motherhood, Mr. McConnell would emerge from his carapace to condemn the president for hating football, hamburgers, and dear old dad.

To them it's all about politics and winning. And no, the Democrats don't do it as well. I like to think that it's because they have scruples and actually care about the well-being of nation, but I suspect that it's because they're just not as power-hungry as the folks on the right who would much rather rule than govern.

Bringing Them Home...When?

I watched the President Obama's speech on Afghanistan last night.

Yet tonight, we take comfort in knowing that the tide of war is receding. Fewer of our sons and daughters are serving in harm’s way. We’ve ended our combat mission in Iraq, with 100,000 American troops already out of that country. And even as there will be dark days ahead in Afghanistan, the light of a secure peace can be seen in the distance. These long wars will come to a responsible end.

I'm glad that he is following his promised timetable of reduction of the troops and skeptical that we will ever truly be out of there. After all, it's 2011 and we still have troops in Germany. The war in Europe was over in 1945 and the Iron Curtain fell in 1989. I have visions of American soldiers celebrating the 100th anniversary of V-E Day in Kabul.

Obama on Marriage Equality -- Eventually Inevitable

Greg Sargent says that President Obama will eventually come out in favor of gay marriage.

By declaring that his position is “evolving” on gay marriage, Obama put himself in a position that’s fundamentally untenable. He let the world know that he believes in full marriage equality, and that he will say so sooner or later. All this succeeded in doing is stoking impatience among gay advocates for him to go ahead and say what he really believes. As the new mantra has it: “Evolve already.”

I'm inclined to give Mr. Obama a little bit of slack on this. Not much, but a little. In the highly unlikely event that he is not seeing it as a political issue but as a personal one based in his faith and his own awareness of what it's like for people to live as citizens deprived of the same rights as other people, pressing him on it only makes his eventual but inevitable support seem hollow.

In the long run, the changes to the laws will come not because the president -- any president -- says so. It happens in the smaller and more intimate places such as communities of families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. The actual changes in the laws come at the state level and through people who respond directly to their constituents; vide New York.

That's not to say that the president doesn't have the power to influence and impress, but in matters of social change and evolution, it doesn't really matter if he's for or against it. The tide has already turned.

"A Different Kind of Reality"

Jose Antonio Vargas, a journalist and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, tells his story as his life as an undocumented immigrant.

It means going about my day in fear of being found out. It means rarely trusting people, even those closest to me, with who I really am. It means keeping my family photos in a shoebox rather than displaying them on shelves in my home, so friends don’t ask about them. It means reluctantly, even painfully, doing things I know are wrong and unlawful. And it has meant relying on a sort of 21st-century underground railroad of supporters, people who took an interest in my future and took risks for me.

I've lived in places and had jobs where I took it as a matter of fact that some of the people I worked with or knew socially were undocumented. (By the way, not all of them had names that sounded "foreign" or had brown skin. People come here and overstay their visa or get fake papers from countries such as Canada and Europe, too.)

A couple of things come to mind. First, Mr. Vargas's story is impressive, but I think what is more to the point is that his story is not unique; there are probably thousands of men, women, and children who can tell the same story. And second, speaking as someone who knows a little bit about having to hide something about himself for fear of retribution, I have a small sense of understanding of what his life has been like, and I admire him greatly for telling us about it.

Short Takes

Syria condemned the threats of new EU sanctions, which are in retaliation for its brutality against its own people.

Long Haul -- Fed chairman Ben Bernanke says the economy could still be sluggish for another year.

"Whitey" Bulger, a mob boss on the lam for 16 years, has been arrested in L.A.

The Jewel of Denial -- Newt Gingrich doesn't want to talk about about his second credit line at Tiffany's.

A judge in Miami has declared the state's death penalty law unconstitutional.

Residents of Minot, North Dakota, are bracing for more flood threats.

The drought in South Florida is endangering some wells.

The Tigers finally beat the Dodgers.

Wednesday, June 22, 2011

A Little Night Music

Best wishes to Glen Campbell.

Mr. Republican

Stephen Colbert finds the perfect GOP candidate.

The Colbert Report
Tags: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

(Footnote: Yes, I do know what "Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo" means. Yes, I'm an LOTR geek.)

Question of the Day

Since summer started in the Northern Hemisphere yesterday, I'm reminded that it brings with it a lot of sense-memories.

What is your favorite sound of summer?

Mine is a combination of sounds heard while sitting on the back porch at twilight: cicadas in the trees, Ernie Harwell calling the Tigers games on the radio, and the clink of ice in a tall glass of iced tea flavored with a sprig of fresh mint from the garden.

Pale Blue Dot

(Click to embiggen.)

See that tiny little pale blue dot in the middle of that brownish streak on the right side of the photograph? You have to look really closely to see it. That's the Earth as seen from Voyager 1 in 1990 from a distance of 1.7 billion miles, barely outside of the solar system.

That's us. That is, as Carl Sagan noted, everybody you've ever known, and everything that has ever occurred within human memory took place on or near that tiny little speck.

So when I read a story like this from the BBC about the danger of ocean extinction from an overabundance of carbon dioxide, it really puts into perspective how small we are in the overall scheme of things, and how easy it could be to turn that pale blue dot into a crumbling cinder.

Backwards Again In Indiana

Planned Parenthood is shutting down in Indiana now that the state has cut off funding.

To reduce costs, all 28 clinics will close tomorrow and employees will be sent home without pay. Only one clinic in Indianapolis will stay open Wednesday but will close Thursday.

The Republicans think they're saving the lives of countless unborn babies and putting the state back on the path to righteousness and purity. The Baby Jesus is happy now.

Except that in the real world, a lack of access to family planning and reproductive health services will mean that more people will be having unprotected sex and therefore the abortion rate will climb. And those abortions won't be done in a clinic; they'll be done, at best, in someone's basement or in the back of a van parked behind the Dairy Queen. The women who don't have abortions will not have access to affordable pre-natal care, which means less healthy babies born to poor women, which means it will cost the state more to keep them alive and, later, educated.

So, did those geniuses and Jesus-freaks in the Indiana state legislature and governor's mansion think of that?

Quote of the Day

Rick Santorum (do not Google "Santorum" at work) blames the left for low test scores among public school students:

We don’t even know our own history. There was a report that just came out last week that the worst subject of children in American schools is — not math and science — its history. It’s the worst subject. How can we be a free people. How can we be a people that fight for America if we don’t know who America is or what we’re all about. This is, in my opinion, a conscious effort on the part of the left who has a huge influence on our curriculum, to desensitize America to what American values are so they are more pliable to the new values that they would like to impose on America.

Okay, did I miss the staff meeting where it was announced that the Left is promoting the teaching of "intelligent design" as a counterpoint to evolution and re-writing the high school textbooks in Texas to replace Thomas Jefferson with Newt Gingrich?

Jon Huntsman Enters the Race

Jon Huntsman, the former governor of Utah and, most recently, ambassador to China for the Obama administration, formally launched his campaign for the White House.

Under cloud cover that turned the Hudson River behind him a steely gray, Mr. Huntsman vowed to provide “leadership that knows we need more than hope” and “leadership that doesn’t promise Washington has all the solutions to our problems.”

Speaking to a sparse crowd in a steady voice but with little emotion, Mr. Huntsman gave hints of a platform that would include “broad changes to the tax code,” a tackling of spending on entitlements and a shift in foreign policy — for now — away from overseas conflict. He said it was “not that we wish to disengage from the world,” but rather “that we believe the best long-term national security strategy is rebuilding our core here at home.”

Promising a cordial campaign, Mr. Huntsman said, “It concerns me that civility, humanity and respect are sometimes lost in our interactions as Americans” and added, “I don’t think you need to run down somebody’s reputation in order to run for the office of president.”

Mr. Huntsman has in the past supported civil unions for same-sex couples, believes that climate change is real, and has said he won't sign the no-new-taxes pledge. In other words, he sounds like a moderate Republican. In a time when folks like Orrin Hatch are being primaried for being too liberal, he has about as much chance of connecting with the GOP base as Lady Gaga does with the Taliban.

Sorry, Wrong Number

Newt Gingrich once said that he would run for president when he felt that there was a great call out to him from the people to run and sweep the nation with his enormous charm and incredible wonderfulness to be our leader. Well, he answered the call a little over a month ago and...

[crickets]

Now his financial team has called it quits, a couple of weeks after most of his senior staff bailed on him.

To quote E.K. Hornbeck from the film of Inherit the Wind: "He has no enemies; only his friends hate him."

Short Takes

President Obama will address the nation tonight on Afghanistan.

Senators McCain and Kerry offer a resolution for limited support of the operation in Libya.

In light of their debt crisis, Greece's prime minister survived a vote of no confidence in the parliament.

100-0: Leon Panetta was unanimously confirmed as the new Secretary of Defense.

Gov. Scott is shaking up his staff, including bringing in a chief of staff who was once accused of illegal lobbying. Should fit right in.

Miami-Dade teachers will get merit pay.

Heavy weather hits the Midwest.

The Tigers lost to the Dodgers.

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

A Little Night Music

For the first day of summer...the incomparable Ella.

Dear Editor...

Just how desperate has Gov. Rick Scott gotten for support?

Gov. Rick Scott, the rare statewide politician who doesn't read Florida news, is asking supporters to send a letter to their local newspaper editor praising his work as governor. The letter, of course, would be printed in a paper's editorial section. Scott has yet to sit for an interview with any editorial board in the state.

Scott includes a pre-written letter on his web site that refers to himself as "refreshing" and that he deserves "unwavering and enthusiastic support." A link to the letter was included in an e-mail Scott sent to supporters today boasting that Florida's unemployment rate declined for the fifth consecutive month.

The form letter is set up to be sent to the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, Jacksonville Times-Union, Orlando Sentinel, Tallahassee Democrat, Tampa Tribune and the Scripps papers along the Treasure Coast.

Here's a copy:

Dear Editor,

When Rick Scott ran for Governor he promised to create jobs and turn our economy around. I voted for Rick because he’s always been a businessman, not a politician. While politicians usually disappoint us and rarely keep their promises, Rick is refreshing because he’s keeping his word. His policies are helping to attract businesses to our state and get people back to work. Some of the special interests are attacking the Governor for making tough decisions, showing leadership, and doing what he told us he would do. Rick Scott deserves our unwavering and enthusiastic support. How can we expect to elect leaders who will keep their word and do what’s right for our state if we don’t stand up for those with the courage to set priorities, make difficult choices, and actually deliver on their promises made?

I think the word you're looking for is "pathetic."

Best Headline of the Day

From Rumproast:

NBC Leaves “Under God” Out of Pledge, Causing Foreigner to Win US Open

Wingnuts pick the funniest things to get worked up about.

Olbermann's Return

I caught Keith Olbermann's return to TV last night on Current TV. It's basically the same show he had before he was unceremoniously dumped by MSNBC last winter, the only difference being a new set, new graphics, and revised theme music but still based on the opening measures of the second movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was used by the Huntley-Brinkley Report back in the 1960's.

Other than that, not much has changed. He had Michael Moore, John Dean, and Markos Moulitsas of Daily Kos, who were regulars back on the previous show, and the format was the same. Even Mr. Olbermann acknowledged that he was picking up where he left off, getting the show going with an arch, "As I was saying...."

I watched most of it, but I kept flipping back and forth between it and a re-run of Law & Order on TNT, and when he began to run overtime -- apparently Current doesn't have as tight a schedule as MSNBC -- I switched over to Rachel Maddow.

Voter Fraud - Ctd.

I'm glad to see the issue of voter suppression getting more attention.

In the lead-up to the 2010 elections, conservative activists raised the specter of liberal voter fraud, claiming that illegal immigrants, union thugs, and the Black Panthers, among others, would try to rig the election. Tea party leaders, supported by Republican officials, deployed legions of "poll watchers" to flag suspicious activity. But after Election Day came and went, there was little evidence of rampant fraud.

Nevertheless, the right has refused to relent on the fraud issue. USA Today reports that Republican-controlled legislatures in half dozen states have passed new voter ID laws since January.

Florida, under the watchful eye of the Republican legislature and Gov. Scott, has reduced early voting periods prior to election days and made it harder to change registration at the polling place. Of course, they're using the mantra of "maintaining the integrity of the ballot box," but in reality they know that the more people vote, the more they lose. The only recourse they have is preventing people from voting in the first place.

Blowback

The South Florida Tea Party is getting nervous about how they might fare in the next election.

South Florida Tea Party Chairman Everett Wilkinson thinks the GOP budget -- and in particular its call to phase out Medicare and replace it with a marketplace for private insurance -- is a total disaster. He's saying that Republicans, including members in his sphere of influence like Rep. Allen West (R-FL), should back away from it.

In an email to fellow Tea Partiers last week, obtained by The Palm Beach Post, Wilkinson called the GOP plan a "public policy nightmare" that could trigger "huge Democratic wins in 2012," and prompt Republicans to blame the Tea Party for their losses.

"Republicans will lose if they support the Ryan Medicare plan. Americans do not support the [Paul] Ryan plan," he wrote. "Expect the GOP to then blame the Tea Party for losses."

I can hear it now: "But it seemed like a good idea at the time...."

Of course the GOP is going to blame the Tea Party for any bad news, ignoring the fact that they embraced them from the start, promoted them as the "real voice of the people," only to find out that they were a bunch of cranky white folks that reeked of entitlement, privilege, and anti-everybody-else bigotry.

Oh, wait; that describes the GOP of the last thirty years.

Summer Starts Today

For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, summer arrives at 1:16 EDT.

Of course, it's the beginning of winter for you folks in the Southern Hemisphere, and I can start getting depressed knowing that the days are getting shorter up here.

Teachers Sue Scott

The Florida teachers union and others are taking on Gov. Rick Scott and the new law that makes state employees pay into the retirement fund.

The lawsuit was filed in Leon County on behalf of 11 workers from across the state, including two nurses and a social worker in Miami-Dade County, a custodian in Madison County and a social studies teacher in Hillsborough County. The Police Benevolent Association, the largest union of law enforcement officers in the state, joined the lawsuit. The workers are asking the court to put aside, while the case moves through the judicial system, the more than $1 billion the state saves from reducing teacher pay 3 percent and ending the cost of living increase on their retirement benefits.

“This pay cut was used by legislative leadership to make up a budget shortfall on the backs of teachers, law-enforcement officers, firefighters and other state workers,” said FEA President Andy Ford. “It is essentially an income tax levied only on workers belonging to the Florida Retirement System. It’s unfair — and it breaks promises made to these employees when they chose to work to improve our state.”

The lawsuit claims the state violated its contractual obligation to state workers when it shifted money from worker pay to replace some of the state’s obligation to pay into the Florida Retirement System. The union says state law expressly provides that employees do not have to contribute part of their salaries to the state retirement system, and that the shift violates those rights.

It would be one thing if the FRS was in dire straits or if it wasn't in the context of the governor giving more tax breaks to the corporations in Florida. But FRS is not in trouble, nor has it ever been, and the concept of "shared sacrifice" doesn't even enter into the picture. Gov. Scott has been pretty transparent from the beginning that he's hostile to public employees, and this is his way of sticking it to them.

Short Takes

Syria: President Assad spoke to the country promising "dialogue", but protests continued.

Secretary of Defense Gates confirmed the story about the U.S. talking to the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Wal-Mart won a big decision from the Supreme Court, which sided with them in dismissing a massive class-action suit over discrimination against women employees.

They're running out of sandbags in Missouri.

Aging nuclear reactors sneak by safety inspections.

Big bore -- Miami's port tunnel project will get the big machine that will dig the hole on Thursday.

Tropical update: Hurricane Beatriz will brush by Mexico in the eastern Pacific.

The Tigers lost to the Dodgers in L.A.

Monday, June 20, 2011

A Little Night Music

The Refuge of A Scoundrel

As a follow-up to the post below, Mark Warren of Esquire and my brother are kindred spirits.

It is the refuge of a scoundrel to pretend to hate government, and further, to lie about the role that the American government — the richest and most powerful force for good in the long story of humanity — has played in the creation of the most profound economic engine ever, the America middle class. Notions of American greatness are inextricably intertwined with the American government, and anyone who claims that the government has only been an impediment to American progress is a liar, a fool, a rank opportunist, or a combination of the three. That GI Bill didn't create itself. That Interstate Highway System didn't build itself. Those astronauts didn't send themselves to the moon. Your grandmamma and them didn't get electricity in their farmhouse on their own initiative. Small business didn't create a vast system of free public education, because an educated population makes for good workers and consumers. That was the government. The miracle of the free market didn't end slavery, or solve the pernicious problem that followed of grotesquely institutionalized racism. Nor did the free market end child labor, and decide that food and worker safety were critical values to a civilized society, and essential to a civilized standard of living. That was the government, too.

Boo-yah.

"The Government Creates NOTHING"

My brother understands economics instinctively, so when he says something, I listen.

I keep seeing/hearing this "the government creates NOTHING" meme and it just drives me frigging crazy. It's a favorite of the right and it's just so wrong it's making me crazy. And I can't argue the most recent occurrence because it came on a board that I'm a moderator for, with a strict no politics policy. The most interesting part of this is that it comes from ... wait for it ... a right wing California real estate appraiser. He creates ... ??

The bulk of our economy "creates nothing". Banks, supermarkets, barber shops, tanning salons, plumbers, electricians, and real estate appraisers all create nothing. They move people, money, goods, etc. around, but make nothing. They do, however, offer jobs, add value and make money. This economic activity is key to our economy.

The worst part of it is that government can/does do one thing that none of these other business can do: create demand. Government builds roads, water and sewer systems, buildings, courts, provides health care, and order military hardware. All of these create demand from whole cloth (actually from taxes or borrowed money). But unlike the service businesses that are dependent on demand created by others, government can (and does) decide to do things, and that independently creates demand. No other entity has the power to create demand completely out of nowhere.

That's why this is just so wrong. It's part of the "government is evil" meme that they cite repeatedly without challenge. It interestingly came at the end of a diatribe by this clown saying "don't hate on big business, they create nearly everything in this economy". Which ignores the fact that 99.7% of the businesses (by number) in the country are classified as small businesses, that over 50% of the jobs in the country are in small business, that small businesses pay 44% of all private payroll, etc. Here is a small business owner who so completely drank the tea that he can't even see his own company's contribution to the economy.

Gag.

Not only that, when one of the last major industries in the country -- the automobile manufacturers -- were in trouble two years ago, the right-wing meme was to let them die; that'll teach them a lesson in capitalism, and kill off the left-wing labor unions while they're at it. Aside from the fact that it would have decimated one of the last few manufacturing industries left in the country -- all the others have been shipped oversees by those noble American captains of industry -- it would have destroyed the demand economies of the cities and states where the companies were located. The first to go would have been the small businesses that relied on GM and Chrysler, and not just the parts suppliers; it would have been the banks, supermarkets, barber shops, tanning salons, plumbers, electricians, and real estate appraisers.

The next favorite right-wing economic mantra is that lower taxes are the only way to stimulate the economy. Fareed Zakaria makes the case that cutting taxes and spending by the government doesn't stimulate the economy.

The Republican prescription is to cut taxes and slash government spending — then things will bounce back. Now, I would like to see lower rates in the context of tax simplification and reform, but what is the evidence that tax cuts are the best path to revive the U.S. economy? Taxes — federal and state combined — as a percentage of GDP are at their lowest level since 1950. The U.S. is among the lowest taxed of the big industrial economies. So the case that America is grinding to a halt because of high taxation is not based on facts but is simply a theoretical assertion. The rich countries that are in the best shape right now, with strong growth and low unemployment, are ones like Germany and Denmark, neither one characterized by low taxes.

I never studied economic theory beyond a class I had in high school, but it doesn't take a degree from the London School of Economics to know that tax cuts alone don't lead to prosperity. Every time in recent memory that we've tried massive tax cuts, we've gotten a recession soon after: Reagan in the 1980's and Bush in the 2000's, and we've had some of the best economic times when we've have comparatively high taxes; i.e. the 1950's, when the top tax rate was a whopping 91% under that socialist Dwight Eisenhower. What we need is a balance of both revenues and spending, and so far, all the Republican offerings have been unbalanced... in every sense of the the word.

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