Priorities

We've got them:

WASHINGTON — The Senate on Thursday approved a nearly $60 billion measure to pay for continuing military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq as House Democrats struggled to round up votes for a major package of business tax breaks and safety-net programs for the long-term unemployed. Senators delivered a bipartisan 67-to-28 vote for the war financing bill [...]

Endless wars - good. Taking care of our own - bad:

On June 1, several programs, including extended unemployment benefits, will expire. By the end of the week, 19,400 people will prematurely stop receiving checks, according to data from the Department of Labor. How long will it take the Senate to finish the bill? With Republicans promising to stand in the way, leadership will need to file at least one time-consuming "cloture" motion to break the filibuster and to set up a vote by the end of the week in the best-case scenario. By the end of the following week, the number of premature unemployment exhaustions will climb to 323,400. The week after that, 903,000. By the end of the month, 1.2 million.

War funding has got to be one of the only issues that can get 67 votes in the Senate.

Fumes

I wonder if this is going to carry any long-term effects:

Reporting from Venice, La., and Los Angeles

Some fishermen who have been hired by BP to clean up the gulf oil spill say they have become ill after working long hours near waters fouled with oil and dispersant, prompting a Louisiana lawmaker to call on the federal government to open mobile clinics in rural areas to treat them.

The fishermen report severe headaches, dizziness, nausea and difficulty breathing.

[...]

At a recent meeting fishermen complained to a BP representative about illness, Barisich said, but got little response. "BP has the opinion that they are not getting sick," he said. Barisich said the company is not providing respirators because "if they give us that type of equipment then they admit there are health hazards.

I am sure that in the event that it does, these fishermen will receive the proper care for their debilitating injuries, paid for with BP's full cooperation and without any red tape or litigation involved whatsoever. Giving these workers the proper PPE would have probably been entirely too cost prohibitive anyway.

Fed Up

The Bearded Finance Wizard speaks:

The Federal Reserve and other central banks must protect their ability to make key economic decisions free from political interference, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said Wednesday.

[...]

Politicians generally prefer holding interest rates low, which stimulate the economy and hiring.

"Such gains may be popular at first, and thus helpful in an election campaign, but they are not sustainable and soon evaporate...," Bernanke said

"Thus political interference in monetary policy can generate undesirable boom-bust cycles that ultimately lead to both a less stable economy and higher inflation."

I was always under the impression that it was the Fed that completely abdicated its responsibility in fighting a number of speculative bubbles over the past two decades, fueling the fire with pervasive, low interest rates. These comments were made in reference to the number of legislative items in Congress right now calling for greater oversight of the Fed. If political oversight leads to undesirable boom-bust cycles, then what's the excuse for our recent economic history?

Get Out of Jail Free

More of this please:

Rep. George Miller (D-CA): Every time we have a catastrophic event like this involving British Petroleum or other parts of the oil and gas industry, we’re told that this is an unpredictable cascade of unforeseeable errors, that this is unprecedented, that nobody could have foreseen this. This is sort of like the bankers on Wall Street. Nobody could have foreseen the risks that they engineered themselves, so nobody’s responsible. I don’t believe this was some “black swan” or “perfect storm” event. There wasn’t something that could not have been foreseen. And I don’t think this is something you can promise will never happen again.

The congressman brings up an excellent point. It's too bad that it won't do a bit of good. No matter how big the disaster, no matter how many people are completely ruined by the fall out, the formula remains the same. Congress calls a couple of hearings, summoning the perpetrators before the C-SPAN cameras to talk about how angry they are and wag their fingers in disgust. Perpetrators do their best to act contrite, admit no wrongdoing, and spew banal mea culpas, one of which is almost always, "No one could have predicted." It's the veritable get out of jail free card for storied interests in this country. Throw that line out there, wipe your hands of the situation, and you're back to doing whatever the fuck you want by Monday morning.

They say that sealing the oil spill is only half the battle, and the real work begins with the cleanup efforts. What will be almost as bad as the destruction itself is watching BP walk away from this unscathed.

A New Low

Deeper and deeper:

Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) stopped Democrats' efforts on Tuesday of passing a measure to increase oil companies' liability for accidents resulting from offshore drilling.

Menendez tried Tuesday morning to pass, by unanimous consent, his bill to increase the liability cap for oil companies' offshore drilling accidents to $10 billion, up from the current $75 million cap.

Inhofe objected, saying that it was important to calibrate the amount by which the cap should be raised, pointing out that President Barack Obama hasn't even yet set a hard figure.

It's obvious, from his own admission, that Inhofe is objecting out of deeply held conservative principles. And when Republicans unanimously opposed the stimulus bill, that was because of deeply held conservative principles and a new found fetish for fiscal responsibility. When they opposed health care, the same reasons applied. And every subsequent bill and agenda that they have drug their heels on kicking and screaming, from the simple extension of unemployment benefits to financial regulation - it's all because they just want to get it right! It has nothing to do with the fact that they have no interest whatsoever in governing, in offering serious alternatives (no, tax cuts do not cure cancer, sorry), or in allowing the adults to clean up the mess that they created during their eight years of finger painting and nap time.

And for all their free market wankery, there shouldn't even be a limit on liability for oil companies, as John Cole so aptly states. The fact that we can't even get such an obviously necessary bill through the Senate as millions of gallons of oil are spilling into the Gulf just shows how completely screwed we are.

Fourteenth Amendment Be Damned

I mean really, what is it good for?

PHOENIX -- E-mails to and from Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce reveal the immigration enforcement debate may not stop with SB-1070, the controversial immigration law.

Pearce, R-Mesa, the author of Arizona’s immigration law, has been writing to some of his constituents about what he plans to accomplish next.

In e-mails obtained by CBS 5 News, Pearce said he intends to push for a bill that would enable Arizona to no longer grant citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants born on U.S. soil.

Pearce wrote in one e-mail: "I also intend to push for an Arizona bill that would refuse to accept or issue a birth certificate that recognizes citizenship to those born to illegal aliens, unless one parent is a citizen."

Unconstitutionality notwithstanding, it's amazing to me how quickly we look to obviate the Constitution whenever it becomes convenient. I must have missed the fine print or the asterisk where it says, "Unless the person totally sucks or you disagree with them or they are brown or just kind of piss you off in general." A citizen is a citizen. Period.

We are now reaching a point in our failed national discourse where elected officials at all levels of government are looking at carving out specific provisions for who can and can not be called a citizen or retain their citizenship. Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced a bill that would strip American citizenship from anyone who joins a terrorist organization or takes up arms against the US. Even Attorney General Eric Holder has publicly expressed support for stripping American terror suspects of their Miranda rights. I mean, you know you've really gone off a ckuff when Glenn Beck becomes a voice of reason.

So in addition to American born terrorists, let's add immigrants to that list as well. And why stop there? We can always add more carve outs as we go for anyone else that we deem unworthy along the way. But remember - this is the stuff of the real America, where we value strict interpretation of the Constitution and limited government. Attempting health care reform or increased government spending during a massive recession is the true source of government overreach and tyranny.

It's a shame that we didn't have a law like Pearce's on the books at Ellis Island, what with all those dirty immigrants coming here for the sole purpose of hatching litters of anchor babies.

(h/t ThinkProgress)

Bleak Outlook Is Bleak

Krugman's latest column discusses the potential of the US facing a Japan-style 'lost decade.' Didn't that kind of, sort of, already happen?

Under Clinton, the median income increased 14 per cent. Under Bush it declined 4.2 per cent.

Under Clinton the total number of Americans in poverty declined 16.9 per cent; under Bush it increased 26.1 per cent.

Under Clinton the number of children in poverty declined 24.2 per cent; under Bush it increased by 21.4 per cent.

Under Clinton, the number of Americans without health insurance, remained essentially even (down six-tenths of one per cent); under Bush it increased by 20.6 per cent.

Admittedly, the Census data above does not focus on the same metrics that Krugman attributes to Japan's lost decade. But if this is what the past 8 years has wrought, then I can't even imagine what we have to look forward to.

Hell, while we're on the subject:

The Census' final report card on Bush's record presents an intriguing backdrop to today's economic debate. Bush built his economic strategy around tax cuts, passing large reductions both in 2001 and 2003. Congressional Republicans are insisting that a similar agenda focused on tax cuts offers better prospects of reviving the economy than President Obama's combination of some tax cuts with heavy government spending. But the bleak economic results from Bush's two terms, tarnish, to put it mildly, the idea that tax cuts represent an economic silver bullet

[...]

That leaves Bush with the dubious distinction of becoming the only president in recent history to preside over an income decline through two presidential terms, notes Lawrence Mishel, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. The median household income increased during the two terms of Clinton (by 14 per cent...), Ronald Reagan (8.1 per cent), and Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (3.9 per cent).

[...]

"What is phenomenal about the years under Bush is that through the entire business cycle from 2000 through 2007, even before this recession...working families were worse off at the end of the recovery, in the best of times during that period, than they were in 2000 before he took office," Mishel says.

NOW They Want To Pay For It

How convenient:

A Senate Republican is working to persuade his colleagues to vote against President Obama's war supplemental spending bill if it isn't paid for, threatening to rebuild a left-right coalition that nearly took down the last war funding measure Democrats pushed through Congress.

Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) has been meeting with GOP senators to press his case that the war-funding bill must be paid for with cuts in spending.

Republicans are persuaded that, in principle, the war should be paid for. But finding the money to do it is another question, pitting two traditional GOP positions - pro-military spending and anti-tax - against each other.

Interesting that now that the Democrats are in charge, the GOP actually cares about paying for the obscene mess that they created. And they want to pay for it with spending cuts, because they take away your Republican membership card if you ever speak the word 'raise' and 'taxes' in the same sentence together. This should not be surprising coming from the party that singlehandedly destroyed an enormous projected budget surplus and replaced it with an even more enormous deficit by means of unfunded tax cuts and open-ended wars, but that certainly doesn't minimize the insulting nature of such a hypocritical proposal. This is also certainly nothing new; the GOP deficit peacocks have been posturing about the debt and a newly found obsession with paygo for some time now. I just find it especially egregious that they have the audacity to suddenly become very concerned about paying for the bullshit wars that they started and were never concerned about funding in the first place.

The irony here is that I absolutely believe that our continued meanderings in Afghanistan should be paid for, however I find it a little ridiculous that a Republican is the one lecturing Congress about it.

The Washington Post Gets Tea Bagged

Your liberal media (h/t Balloon Juice):

Tommy Christopher reports that Dale Robertson, a self-described tea party activist who was basically drummed out of the movement over holding a quasi-racist sign, has signed up with the Washington Times as a contributor to its tea party blog. Christopher’s quick rundown explains just how strange this is:

Robertson, you may recall, was thrust back into the limelight in March, when he was quoted by the paper as never having seen any racial slurs at tea parties, despite having been photographed holding a sign that featured the N-word. He told us the photo was a fake, which our expert then disputed, before a sea of journalists came forward to point out that Robertson had already admitted to holding the sign.

I could spend a lot of time writing about how ridiculously stupid and inane our media has become, but there are a lot of people who do a much better job of that than I ever could. I think Jon Stewart and any number of the major blogs have that nailed. What I simply can not understand is how the media has become so obsessed with presenting both sides of an issue even when a given side is patently wrong, misguided, or laughable.

At what point did waving a sign bearing the n-word qualify you to work for a major news organization? I was always under the impression that waving such a sign qualified you as a racist asshole and a social pariah (aside from the deep South). Granted, this is the Washington Post, the same paper that employs global warming denier and the fact-challenged George Will and torture fetishist Mark Thiessen.

For the record, I don't recall anyone getting hired on at the New York Times for waving a "Bush Lied, People Died" sign during Iraq war protests. Those people were universally decried as dirty fucking hippies and their protests of millions strong dismissed as focus groups. But get a couple hundred of middle-aged, highly educated, wealthy, lower-tax bracket, predominantly white male Republicans together and you've got yourself a movement! Quick, somebody get the guy with the mullet waving an Obama-as-Hitler sign a job at CNN!

Also, this.

This Seems Familiar

Stop me if you've heard this one before:

Five days after appearing before Congress to testify about its responsibility in one of the worst oil spills in US history, the Swiss company that owned and operated the oil rig that sunk into the Gulf of Mexico announced that it would shell out $1 billion in dividends to shareholders.

The revelation that Transocean is distributing a $1 billion profit to shareholders as one of its drill sites leaks millions of gallons of oil into the sea is sure to inflame an already smarting debate over offshore drilling and the company's role.

Complete abdication of corporate responsibility, gross negligence resulting in systemic catastrophe, large sums of cash paid in spite of the foregoing...ah yes, Wall Street:

One year after the finance industry received its massive government bailout, Wall Street firms paid out 17 percent more in bonuses, amounting to more than $20 billion, New York State’s comptroller said on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press and Reuters.

It is almost as if there is a direct relationship in these industries between shitty performance and outsized compensation.

Minimizing the Egregious

Pro-tip for BP CEO Tony Hayward: relativism is probably not the best PR strategy when your company is responsible for an oil spill that, by some accounts, is already far worse than the Exxon Valdez spill.

Hayward recently added some erudite context to the crisis that likely only stems from years of experience in the industry:

"The Gulf of Mexico is a very big ocean. The amount of volume of oil and dispersant we are putting into it is tiny in relation to the total water volume"

Lucky for us the Gulf of Mexico is so big! Not just big, but 'very big.' That leaves much more room for the wholesale destruction of the ecosystems while BP bitches about the costs and liabilities of cleaning up their mess and fiddles with top hats, underwater robotic open-heart surgery, untold volumes of toxic chemicals, and God knows what other solutions with which they are currently fumbling.

I wonder what other great analogies could be made from Hayward's logic? Maybe the Iraq war isn't so bad, what with it representing such a tiny slice of the global population. The amount of lives lost and money spent in funding it are tiny in relation!