Maybe We Should Also Profile People That Laugh

This has to be one of the dumbest things I have ever read:

Don't like the way airport screeners are doing their job? You might not want to complain too much while standing in line.

Arrogant complaining about airport security is one indicator Transportation Security Administration officers consider when looking for possible criminals and terrorists, CNN has learned exclusively. And, when combined with other behavioral indicators, it could result in a traveler facing additional scrutiny.

CNN has obtained a list of roughly 70 "behavioral indicators" that TSA behavior detection officers use to identify potentially "high risk" passengers at the nation's airports.

[...]

But one addresses passengers' attitudes towards security, and how they express those attitudes.

It reads: "Very arrogant and expresses contempt against airport passenger procedures."

In addition to being profiled for carrying killer Pert Plus and bottled water, we now also arouse suspicion by having an opinion about the ridiculous three-ring circus to which we are subjected every time we wish to board a plane. And no, I don't care that there are 69 other things that TSA "officers" examine, this is just fucking stupid. I can't imagine that a criminal or would-be terrorist is going to spend a lot of time yelling and causing a scene over our ridiculous security protocols. You know who might complain about those same things though? Your average American. Innocent people. People who just want to get from Point A to Point B to see their family or go on vacation without a lot of bull shit hassle or what is increasingly bordering on unreasonable searches. I guess the TSA wasn't happy any longer shitting on your fourth amendment rights - now they want to go after the first amendment too.

I shudder to think of what airport security will look like in 3-5 years from now, because this shit will only get worse. And by then, we'll also be throwing a few more billion dollars at it too.

Anniversary of an Uninteresting Event

It never happened, you know, because mutant microbes ate all the oil.

Of War, We Don't Speak Anymore

About a month ago, I wrote:

So in the somewhat likely event that this drags on longer than anticipated, and the major players (France, Britain) in our coalition grow uneasy and want to back off, you know who won't hesitate to fill that void.

Via Atrios, we now have not-at-all predictable news that the continued mission is proving a strain on NATO resources:

Less than a month into the Libyan conflict, NATO is running short of precision bombs, highlighting the limitations of Britain, France and other European countries in sustaining even a relatively small military action over an extended period of time, according to senior NATO and U.S. officials.

The shortage of European munitions, along with the limited number of aircraft available, has raised doubts among some officials about whether the United States can continue to avoid returning to the air campaign if Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi hangs on to power for several more months. 

[...] 

But, they said, the current bombing rate by the participating nations is not sustainable. “The reason we need more capability isn’t because we aren’t hitting what we see — it’s so that we can sustain the ability to do so. One problem is flight time, the other is munitions,” said another official, one of several who were not authorized to discuss the issue on the record.

European arsenals of laser-guided bombs, the NATO weapon of choice in the Libyan campaign, have been quickly depleted, officials said. Although the United States has significant stockpiles, its munitions do not fit on the British- and French-made planes that have flown the bulk of the missions.

And I also said:

So what is the plan exactly? We bomb the fuck out of their military and defensive infrastructure, declare mission accomplished and then just walk away? What happens when Qaddafi doesn't go peacefully, and we decide it's time for boots on the ground? Or better yet - what happens when we deem Qaddafi a Dangerous Lunatic that Must Be Stopped and that it's time for regime change?

Via Glenn Greenwald, we now also learn that regime change is now the stated goal of the mission: 

The bombing continues until Gaddafi goes

Our duty and our mandate under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 is to protect civilians, and we are doing that. It is not to remove Gaddafi by force. . . . However, so long as Gaddafi is in power, Nato and its coalition partners must maintain their operations so that civilians remain protected and the pressure on the regime builds. Then a genuine transition from dictatorship to an inclusive constitutional process can really begin, led by a new generation of leaders. For that transition to succeed, Colonel Gaddafi must go, and go for good .

Funny how that happens, the way these things unfold so predictably. But remember - we are broke. We need to focus less on "war" kinetic military action and more on tax cuts for the rich to get us out of this fiscal mess.

Carcinogenic Water - It's a Gas

Natural gas, frequently hailed as a cleaner, safer alternative to our dependence on oil, is not without its own litany of issues:

Millions of gallons of potentially hazardous chemicals and known carcinogens were injected into wells by leading oil and gas service companies from 2005-2009, a report by three House Democrats said Saturday.

The report said 29 of the chemicals injected were known-or-suspected human carcinogens. They either were regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act as risks to human health or listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Methanol was the most widely used chemical. The substance is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the candidate list for potential regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

And this is by far my favorite part about the chemicals used in this process:

The report said many chemical components were listed as "proprietary" or "trade secret."

We have Bush/Cheney to thank for that btw. So we have known carcinogens being introduced into sources of drinking water, and energy companies deem these same chemical mixtures to be proprietary. A trade secret can be defined as information which, if released to the general public or obtained by a competitor, could cause the owner of that information significant, adverse economic harm. In other words, energy companies derive economic benefits and  profits from their continued ability to inject enormous volumes of carcinogenic and otherwise unknown fluids and chemicals into our water tables.

The New York Times had a good story on fracking a few months back, which revealed that the effects on groundwater are not limited to carcinogens, but also radioactivity. That and  public wastewater treatment plants are ill-equipped to properly process these substances, so massive amounts of toxins are being poured into our lakes and rivers:

In Pennsylvania, these treatment plants discharged waste into some of the state’s major river basins. Greater amounts of the wastewater went to the Monongahela River, which provides drinking water to more than 800,000 people in the western part of the state, including Pittsburgh, and to the Susquehanna River, which feeds into Chesapeake Bay and provides drinking water to more than six million people, including some in Harrisburg and Baltimore.

Lower amounts have been discharged into the Delaware River, which provides drinking water for more than 15 million people in Philadelphia and eastern Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania is really the epicenter for all of this, and its new wingnut governor is making sure that the industry is regulated only by the invisible hand:

Gas producers are generally left to police themselves when it comes to spills. In Pennsylvania, regulators do not perform unannounced inspections to check for signs of spills. Gas producers report their own spills, write their own spill response plans and lead their own cleanup efforts.

A review of response plans for drilling projects at four Pennsylvania sites where there have been accidents in the past year found that these state-approved plans often appear to be in violation of the law.

At one well site where several spills occurred within a week, including one that flowed into a creek, the well’s operator filed a revised spill plan saying there was little chance that waste would ever enter a waterway.

Sound familiar?

BP PLC's 582-page regional spill plan for the Gulf, and its 52-page, site-specific plan for the Deepwater Horizon rig are riddled with omissions and glaring errors, according to an Associated Press analysis that details how BP officials have pretty much been making it up as they go along. The lengthy plans approved by the federal government last year before BP drilled its ill-fated well vastly understate the dangers posed by an uncontrolled leak and vastly overstate the company's preparedness to deal with one.

In the spill scenarios detailed in the documents, fish, marine mammals and birds escape serious harm; beaches remain pristine; water quality is only a temporary problem. And those are the projections for a leak about 10 times worse than what has been calculated for the ongoing disaster.

There are other wildly false assumptions in the documents. BP's proposed method to calculate spill volume judging by the darkness of the oil sheen is way off. The internationally accepted formula would produce estimates 100 times higher.

More specifically, Gov. Corbett's early decisions have ensured that there will essentially be no regulation of the natural gas industry whatsoever:

Gov. Tom Corbett wants to hand authority over some of the state’s most critical environmental decisions to C. Alan Walker, a Pennsylvania energy executive with his own track record of running up against the state’s environmental regulations.

Walker, who has contributed $184,000 to Corbett’s campaign efforts since 2004, is CEO and owner of Bradford Energy Company and Bradford Coal, which was once among Pennsylvania’s largest coal mining companies. He also owns or has an interest in 12 other companies, including a trucking business and a central Pennsylvania oil and gas company.

Walker was Corbett’s first appointee—he chose him to lead the Department of Community and Economic Development in December, before taking office. Now, as Corbett stakes much of the state’s economy on Marcellus Shale gas drilling, a paragraph tucked into the 1,184-page budget gives Walker unprecedented authority to “expedite any permit or action pending in any agency where the creation of jobs may be impacted.” That includes, presumably, coal, oil, gas and trucking.

And regulators must now obtain approval from Corbett political appointees before they are actually permitted to do their jobs:

Oil and gas inspectors policing Marcellus Shale development in Pennsylvania will no longer be able to issue violations to the drilling companies they regulate without first getting the approval of top officials.

That’s according to a directive laid out in a series of emails received by the Department of Environmental Protection staff last week and leaked to ProPublica. The emails say the new edict applies only to enforcement actions related to Marcellus Shale drilling and that failure to seek prior approval “will not be acceptable.”

The memos require that each of the hundreds of enforcement actions taken routinely against oil and gas operators in Pennsylvania each month now be approved by the department’s executive deputy secretary, John Hines. The memos are raising concerns that the state’s environmental inspectors can no longer act independently and that regulations could be overridden by the political whims of the state’s new governor, Tom Corbett.

When I read about stories like these, it makes me hopeful that people will eventually realize and remember what colossal assholes Republicans are once they're in power. Certainly voters in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida are starting to get that memo. There's literally no depths to which they won't sink. With the modern Republican party, we are no longer talking about an opposition movement that seeks a more "common sense" version of Democratic policies, no matter how hard they try to market their ideals as such. This current group has moved the party so far to the extreme right that many of their policies have the effect of dismantling swaths of society. They want to codify pervasive income inequality as a central tenet of American society, kick the poor and elderly off of Medicaid and Medicare, prohibit your right to unionize, deny the existence of and do nothing about climate change, dictate to women what they can and can not do with their bodies, substitute religion for science, and turn a blind eye to private enterprise and allow them to do whatever they want because the resultant free market trickle down will always outweigh the societal or environmental cost, even if it means poisoning your water and destroying our oceans. And they are one of our two national political parties.

Realizing this is the start. Remembering it at the ballot box is what really matters, but I am hopeful that the current bunch of teatards and wingnut governors and state legislatures will actually prove to be a Democratic net benefit going into 2012.

Integrity of Elections!

That's all that this is about! It has nothing to do with Obama! Or race!

PHOENIX — The Arizona Legislature gave final approval late Thursday night to a proposal that would require President Barack Obama and other presidential candidates to prove they are U.S. citizens before their names can appear on the state's ballot.

Arizona would become the first state to require such proof if Gov. Jan Brewer signs the measure into law.

Republican Rep. Carl Seel of Phoenix, the author of the bill, said the bill wasn't about opposition to Obama. "This bill is about the integrity of our elections," Seel said.

Thirteen other states have considered similar proposals this year. The proposals were defeated in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maine and Montana.

The bill won final approval from the state House in a 40-16 vote.

It's good to see that Arizona remains undeterred in its quest to continue its prominence as one of the dumbest states in our union.

Birtherism hit a frenetic peak shortly after Obama's election, but more or less declined as a prominent GOP talking point going into the 2010 midterms. Donald Trump has changed that. A simple Google search of his name now includes purported presidential ambitions and birther conspiracies among hits on real estate, bad hair, and his inane TV show. It's once again hitting the wingnut mainstream, or at least it will very shortly, as Trump is now leading GOP presidential candidate straw polls.

It's kind of annoying to be rehashing this debate, because these same points were more or less argued back when this non-issue first began it's decline. As John Cole astutely notes, the birther issue is all about race. The most prominent jackholes spewing this nonsense will never admit that, and will bristle at the accusation and screech that the race card is being played against them (This is just about the integrity of elections!) but it is absolutely about race. Two years ago, a black man with an African/Middle Eastern name and heritage was elected president on a Democratic ticket. That event, and that event alone, has precipitated the cries for Obama's birth certificate. You didn't see this under Clinton, you didn't see this under Carter, and you didn't see this under any of the other recent white male presidents on the Republican ticket. It is a cynical effort to cast Barack Obama as "other," as "not like us," as "strange" or "different," or as "un-American." You never saw anyone having Very Serious concerns about "integrity of elections" when a white male was on the presidential ticket. 

And I know, I know - all of this makes me shrill, and I need to put it back in the deck, and there is nothing wrong with validating Very Serious and Principled concerns that a Marxist Socialist Fascist Kenyan Muslim Manchurian candidate usurper does not undermine the fragility of white America our democracy.

I Think There is a Word to Define This

What do they call it again when you sell a product to an individual or institution knowing full well that you are misrepresenting the product's quality, features, or safety?

Rather than assess risk accurately, two major rating agencies sold their top seals of approval to their investment bank clients, blessing products that the agencies themselves knew to be undeserving, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations concluded in a report released Wednesday. By repeatedly debasing their standards, these agencies helped banks sell shoddy securities to unsuspecting investors, inflating the value of assets that turned out to be worth far less, the report has found.

The senate panel, led by Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), levels a two-part charge against the rating agencies: Not only did these companies help inflate a dangerous bubble, the report says, but they also bear responsibility for popping it, as their abrupt downgrades of mortgage-linked securities in 2007 helped set off the panic that caused markets around the world to collapse.

These downgrades, the report says, were the "most immediate trigger" to the financial crisis, forcing a parasitic financial apparatus of lenders, regulators, rating agencies and investment banks to reckon with the weak economic underpinnings of its profits. The basic outline of this catastrophe has been widely reported, but Wednesday's release presents in vivid detail the roles of the key players, including those of Moody's Investors Service and Standard & Poor's Financial Services, the two leading rating agencies.

Like the banks they served, these two rating agencies focused on short-term profits above the integrity and long-term health of their institutions, a trove of internal documents uncovered by the Senate panel show.

Oh right, I remember now - I think that is commonly referred to as fraud, or at least that's what it is referred to in circles outside of Wall Street and DC. It's more or less the cost of doing business for banksters, as is noted in the NY Times this week as they again highlight that not one criminal prosecution of prominent financial executives has taken place since the financial crisis began. But you know, prosecuting white collar crime is "hard," and the FBI has terrorism to worry about and stuff. It's really a matter of priorities; there has not been any significant prosecution of these individuals because the Justice Department does not want to prosecute and does not give a shit sufficiently enough to allocate the necessary resources. One witnessed a very different situation following the savings & loan crisis of the 1980s:

But several years after the financial crisis, which was caused in large part by reckless lending and excessive risk taking by major financial institutions, no senior executives have been charged or imprisoned, and a collective government effort has not emerged. This stands in stark contrast to the failure of many savings and loan institutions in the late 1980s. In the wake of that debacle, special government task forces referred 1,100 cases to prosecutors, resulting in more than 800 bank officials going to jail. Among the best-known: Charles H. Keating Jr., of Lincoln Savings and Loan in Arizona, and David Paul, of Centrust Bank in Florida.

[...]

As the crisis was starting to deepen in the spring of 2008, the Federal Bureau of Investigation scaled back a plan to assign more field agents to investigate mortgage fraud. That summer, the Justice Department also rejected calls to create a task force devoted to mortgage-related investigations, leaving these complex cases understaffed and poorly funded, and only much later established a more general financial crimes task force.

It's just not a priority, and that won't be changing any time soon. This is the rule, not the exception. Glenn Greenwald expertly pointed out yesterday this flawed  and pervasive double standard in the American justice system, one that extends well beyond the banksters. And let's not forget that while there have been no criminal prosecutions, there have similarly been no civil cases or sanctions either. The banksters and all their friends on Wall Street made billions fucking over the country and the global economy. They continue to lavish even larger bonuses and compensation upon themselves. And all of this is going on while millions are foreclosed upon or struggle to keep their homes, and our government subjects them to bullshit lobbyist/bankster-written programs (like HAMP) before they are entitled to any remediation or aid. Because as I have said before, we don't want to throw good taxpayer money after bad, or reward unscrupulous or irresponsible individuals. As with our justice system, the state is only interested in siding with you or lending extraordinary economic aid if you are a plutocrat.

I Thought It Was Because We Are Broke?

Remember when we had to fuck over the unions because those dirty thug teachers, fire fighters, and police officers were bankrupting the state of Wisconsin with their commie pensions and collective bargaining? No one could have predicted that Gov. Scott Walker is full of shit:

KUCINICH: Let me ask you about some of the specific provisions in your proposals to strip collective bargaining rights. First, your proposal would require unions to hold annual votes to continue representing their own members. Can you please explain to me and members of this committee how much money this provision saves for your state budget?

WALKER: That and a number of other provisions we put in because if you’re going to ask, if you’re going to put in place a change like that, we wanted to make sure we protected the workers of our state, so they got value out of that. [...]

KUCINICH: Would you answer the question? How much money does it save, Governor?

WALKER: It doesn’t save any. [...]

KUCINICH: I want to ask about another one of your proposals. Under your plan you would prohibit paying union member dues from their paychecks. How much money would this provision save your state budget?

WALKER: It would save employees a thousand dollars a year they could use to pay for their pensions and health care contributions.

KUCINICH: Governor, it wouldn’t save anything. [Goes on to present letter from LRF and is denied unanimous request for it to be placed in the public record by Issa]

And you know it's just coincidental that he bent over backwards to take a personal phone call from someone purporting to be David Koch. I am sure he is not just doing his corporate masters bidding or pursuing an overly ideological agenda aimed at screwing the masses in the name of his pet issues. 


Make no mistake, Republicans are doing this at the federal level too. Republicans are using the ignorant public's fear over economic hardship and deficits to propose policies that would make both of those measures just that much worse. And their policy proposals, notably the Very Serious laughably termed Paul Ryan Path to Prosperity, seek the same aims as we saw in Wisconsin: kicking the working poor and middle class in the teeth while lavishing enormous tax breaks on the wealthy and corporations. But none of this is about returning our country to economic growth or bringing down the deficit. The modern Republican party does not care about either of these things, despite their frequent use of that straw man to disguise their true intentions from the myriad of low-information voters in this country. Their policies are cynical, ideological aims that seek nothing else but to continue the enactment of demonstrably failed policies that have the effect of weakening economic growth, exploding the deficit, and enriching the few at the expense of the many.

If You're Constantly Looking Over Your Shoulder

You can't see what's right in front of your damned face:

But they’re [Democrats] sacrificing more than they let on. By celebrating spending cuts, they’ve opened the door to further austerity measures at a moment when the recovery remains fragile. Claiming political victory now opens the door to further policy defeats later.

And policy defeats are what will matter. The Obama White House is looking toward the Clinton model. After all, Clinton also suffered a major setback in his first midterm, Clinton also faced down a hardline Republican Congress, Clinton also suffered major policy defeats, and yet Clinton, as the story goes, managed to co-opt the conservative agenda and remake himself into a successful centrist. The Obama administration has even hired many of Clinton’s top aides to help them recapture that late-90s magic.

That story misses something important: Clinton’s success was a function of a roaring economy. The late ‘90s were a boom time like few others -- and not just in America. The unemployment rate was less than 6 percent in 1995, and fell to under 5 percent in 1996. Cutting deficits was the right thing to do at that time. Deficits should be low to nonexistent when the economy is strong, and larger when it is weak. The Obama administration’s economists know that full well. They are, after all, the very people who worked to balance the budget in the 1990s, and who fought to expand the deficit in response to the recession.

Right now, the economy is weak. Giving into austerity will weaken it further, or at least delay recovery for longer. And if Obama does not get a recovery, then he will not be a successful president, no matter how hard he works to claim Boehner’s successes as his own

I have never understood Obama's obsession with filling his administration with Clinton veterans or constantly looking to Clinton's experiences to navigate his own. Sure, history can prove to be a helpful guide, but originality and situational awareness are also pretty fucking valuable traits in politics. History has its limitations, one of the primary of which being context. What worked in the past doesn't always have the same effect today, just as the economic policies of the 90's won't produce the same results in the economy of the 21st century. 

You would think the White House would want the economy looking a whole lot better going into 2012. Their apparent strategy at this point is to do nothing and cede the policy debate to the Republicans and just idly hope that the economy pulls itself up by its bootstraps in the run up to 2012. Unemployment is categorically ignored as are any discussion of economic stimulus. Also absent are any policies of closing the deficit by raising revenue in addition to cuts. The debate over this budget deal (and just wait, the future budget deals to come) have from the very beginning been about how much to cut, and how much Democrats would agree to continually as the GOP raised the bar ever higher. 

I'm not sure what they will say if things still look bleak next year. Granted, both parties seem to have completely forgotten about unemployment anyway, so maybe the fact that the economy is still in the shitter won't be a campaign issue in 2012 since no one in DC is especially bothered by it. 

The Road Ahead

John Cole previews 2012:

This is just proof to me that I need to help raise more money, volunteer more time, and walk more precincts in 2012. It isn’t disheartening or demoralizing, it’s motivating.

And btw, we’ve talked about the Ryan plan to gut medicare and medicaid and give the proceeds to the rich while feeding the warpig, and it is important to recognize this is not some one-off. This is what they want. They are also coming for your pension, they are after your social security, they want to destroy your union so you can not organize against them, they will go after your minimum wage next, they want to get rid of the EPA so their donors can pollute your water, air, land, and food and not have to worry about being punished, they want to deregulate Wall Street more so they can screw you again and not face any consequences, they want to tell you what you can do with your body, and they are spending lots of time and money making it harder and harder for you to vote. The Ryan plan isn’t an isolated incident, it was just shots fired on another front. If you are disheartened by the budget deal the other night, which is one small skirmish in a big war, you probably should just give up and go buy yourself a ton of lube.

Agreed, but it would also be nice if our team in Congress actually, you know, fought for some form of a competing, rational economic vision a bit more ambitious than acting as an idle back stop to the severity of the Republican plan.

The American "Dream"

It really is becoming increasingly just a dream. And on a related note to my last post, notoriously shrill Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz has an excellent piece in Vanity Fair about the state of our economic poorhouse:

One response might be to celebrate the ingenuity and drive that brought good fortune to these people, and to contend that a rising tide lifts all boats. That response would be misguided. While the top 1 percent have seen their incomes rise 18 percent over the past decade, those in the middle have actually seen their incomes fall. For men with only high-school degrees, the decline has been precipitous—12 percent in the last quarter-century alone. All the growth in recent decades—and more—has gone to those at the top. In terms of income equality, America lags behind any country in the old, ossified Europe that President George W. Bush used to deride. Among our closest counterparts are Russia with its oligarchs and Iran. While many of the old centers of inequality in Latin America, such as Brazil, have been striving in recent years, rather successfully, to improve the plight of the poor and reduce gaps in income, America has allowed inequality to grow.

[...]

Some people look at income inequality and shrug their shoulders. So what if this person gains and that person loses? What matters, they argue, is not how the pie is divided but the size of the pie. That argument is fundamentally wrong. An economy in which most citizens are doing worse year after year—an economy like America’s—is not likely to do well over the long haul.

[...]

None of this should come as a surprise—it is simply what happens when a society’s wealth distribution becomes lopsided. The more divided a society becomes in terms of wealth, the more reluctant the wealthy become to spend money on common needs. The rich don’t need to rely on government for parks or education or medical care or personal security—they can buy all these things for themselves. In the process, they become more distant from ordinary people, losing whatever empathy they may once have had. They also worry about strong government—one that could use its powers to adjust the balance, take some of their wealth, and invest it for the common good. The top 1 percent may complain about the kind of government we have in America, but in truth they like it just fine: too gridlocked to re-distribute, too divided to do anything but lower taxes.

When you look at the sheer volume of wealth controlled by the top 1 percent in this country, it’s tempting to see our growing inequality as a quintessentially American achievement—we started way behind the pack, but now we’re doing inequality on a world-class level. And it looks as if we’ll be building on this achievement for years to come, because what made it possible is self-reinforcing. Wealth begets power, which begets more wealth. 

[...]

The personal and the political are today in perfect alignment. Virtually all U.S. senators, and most of the representatives in the House, are members of the top 1 percent when they arrive, are kept in office by money from the top 1 percent, and know that if they serve the top 1 percent well they will be rewarded by the top 1 percent when they leave office. By and large, the key executive-branch policymakers on trade and economic policy also come from the top 1 percent. When pharmaceutical companies receive a trillion-dollar gift—through legislation prohibiting the government, the largest buyer of drugs, from bargaining over price—it should not come as cause for wonder. It should not make jaws drop that a tax bill cannot emerge from Congress unless big tax cuts are put in place for the wealthy. Given the power of the top 1 percent, this is the way you would expect the system to work.

That's a heavy amount of excerpting, but it's really difficult not to excerpt even more. Read the whole thing. It's extremely poignant. 

In one of the opening lines of the article, Stiglitz highlights that the top 1% of the population control over 40% of the wealth (not income). This is the backdrop against which we have the debate about Republican policies that seek to cut taxes for the rich even further, gut federal spending, and to abolish Medicare and shift ever-rising healthcare costs onto a population ill equipped to afford them.

The Ryan Budget Proposal

Apparently it is much worse than what I wrote about the highlights that were released in advance of the full budget plan:

The plan would condemn millions to the ranks of the uninsured, raise health costs for seniors and renege on the obligation to keep poor children fed. It envisions lower taxes for the wealthy than even George W. Bush imagined: a permanent extension for his tax cuts, plus large permanent estate-tax cuts, a new business tax cut and a lower top income tax rate for the richest taxpayers.

Compared to current projections, spending on government programs would be cut by $4.3 trillion over 10 years, while tax revenues would go down by $4.2 trillion. So spending would be eviscerated, mainly to make room for continued tax cuts.

[...]

They certainly won’t solve the two most pressing problems in the nation’s health care system: the relentlessly rising cost of care and the shamefully high number of uninsured Americans — now hovering around 50 million. Mr. Ryan is also determined to repeal the new health care reform law. Never mind that the law would make real progress on both fronts, covering more than 30 million of the uninsured and pushing to make health care delivery more efficient and effective and less costly.

One of Mr. Ryan’s most damaging ideas is to change Medicare and Medicaid from entitlement programs — covering everyone who is eligible for a defined set of services. Instead, Washington would contribute set amounts that would almost certainly grow more slowly than medical costs. You will hear a lot about how squeezing outlays will mean more efficiency. The real result is that the most vulnerable — the elderly, the poor, the disabled — will have to pay more for care or forgo treatment.

[...]

Mr. Ryan would largely privatize Medicare starting in 2022. New enrollees would be given “premium supports” to help them buy private insurance. The rich would get lower subsidies, the sickest and poorest would get additional assistance. Once again, the federal payments would likely grow more slowly than costs forcing individuals to buy skimpier coverage or pay more.

And it is laughably titled "The Path to Prosperity." Sure, the Path to Prosperity if you're incredibly fucking wealthy and can afford your own retirement and health care costs now that Republicans are seeking to effectively abolish Medicare, cripple Medicaid to the greatest extent possible by federal action, slash federal spending (except for defense of course), and do all of this while cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations. 

I already said this before, but the most terrifying aspect out of all of this is that the enormous pussies in the Democratic party do not offer serious alternatives, or not in the manner in which Ryan proposes such utter batshit. That is to say, the Democratic alternative is almost always a less evil version of whatever the Republicans are proposing.  Rarely ever do they stake out a position equally far to their end of the ideological spectrum and then negotiate downward from there. And they think that this piss-pants approach to negotiation is good policy, or that what voters really want is compromise and agreement over, you know, getting fisted by the GOP. Fortunately, not all of our Democrats are useless:

WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) laid out the Democrats' plan of attack on the Republican budget proposal, telling progressive bloggers on a conference call Wednesday that the plan "has to be snuffed out" immediately to prevent changes to Medicare.

[...]

Her approach will be similar to the House Democrat strategy in 2005, when President George W. Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. At the time, Democrats held town hall after town hall to criticize the president's plan, but did not offer their own proposal -- the lack of which Pelosi said was "the most important" part of the 2005 strategy's success.

"We couldn't have our own proposal on Social Security, because it would confuse the public [about] which one does this and which one does that, and once you put another proposal on the table you're conceding that there must be some big problem," Pelosi said. "And we're saying that we have a proposal on the table. It's called Social Security."

Pelosi said the main difference between that fight over Social Security and the current budget fight over Medicare is the amount of time Democrats have to raise awareness about the plan.

"This has to be done in a matter of days," she said. "This thing has to be snuffed out. The public needs to know that this is what [Republicans] would do left to their own devices. [...] They would end Medicare for seniors."

Exactly. You don't negotiate or compromise with a policy that is clinically insane and threatens to plunge us even deeper into our national aspirations of third world/banana republic status. You call it what it is - Republicans want to end Medicare, gut Medicaid, slash non-discretionary spending while exempting defense, cut taxes for the rich, and they want to do it on the backs of seniors and the poor and middle class.

If the Democrats cede any ground on this issue, then they may as well just give up on being a national party. This is not a moment to flog their bipartisanship fetish or compromise. Poll after poll shows that the public is diametrically opposed to every policy that Ryan is so fucking "courageous" for proposing. This is the hill to die on, and could very well fuel a resurgence in the 2012 election if they play their cards right. 

But what's almost more disgusting than the plan itself is how the media has slobbered all over the plan, visibly unable to contain their excitement at the mere thought of Republicans fucking over 90% of Americans. It has been called everything from "courageous" to "serious" to "commendable." Apparently fucking over poor people and seniors while lavishing even more wealth on the rich is what qualifies for good economic policy these days. Many commentators and pundits have admitted that they do not necessarily agree with the policy, and admit that it has very little chance of being enacted. But nonetheless, they scream with glee about how courageous Paul Ryan for the very act of proposing such a regressive, draconian budget. In a normal reality-based world, with an independent press with a vested interest in conducting objective oversight of Washington, we might hear it reported that economic policies that involve tax cuts for corporations and the top 1% of the population and tossing future generations off of Medicare as health care costs spiral out of control are regressive, wrong-headed, and should be categorically rejected. Or you know, if any of the individuals in our very serious media were to actually be adversely affected by the Ryan travesty, maybe they would actually give a shit. But we do not live in that world, and we do not have that press corps. This is America - the land where stagnating wages, extreme income inequality, regressive tax policies, and millions going hungry or bankrupt from getting sick or injured constitutes sound, commendable economic policy. All we have to do is wait for the free market to touch us or pull on those bootstraps a little harder and we too can reach the economic heights of our plutocrat overlords. 

It is times like these that our lack of a functioning press is so incredibly dangerous and desperately needed. 

The True Cause of State Budget Deficits

Here's a hint - it's not teachers, police officers, and fire fighters and their lavish, outsized salaries and benefits:

WASHINGTON — In his new budget proposal, Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich calls for extending a generous 21 percent cut in state income taxes. The measure was originally part of a sweeping 2005 tax overhaul that abolished the state corporate income tax and phased out a business property tax.

The tax cuts were supposed to stimulate Ohio's economy and create jobs. But that never happened once the economy tanked. Instead, the changes ended up costing Ohio more than $2 billion a year in lost tax revenue; money that would go a long way toward closing the state's $8 billion budget gap for fiscal year 2012.

[...]

States cut taxes in hopes of spurring economic growth, but in state after state, it hasn't worked.

There's no question that mammoth state budget problems resulted largely from falling tax revenues, rising costs and greater demand for state services during the recession. But questionable tax reductions at the state and local level made the budget gaps larger — and resulting spending cuts deeper — than they otherwise would have been in many states.

A 2008 study by Arizona State University found that that state's structural deficits could be traced to 15 years of tax cuts, mainly income-tax reductions that "were not matched by spending cuts of a commensurate size."

In Texas, which faces a $27 billion budget deficit over the next two years, about one-third of the shortage stems from a 2006 property tax reduction that was linked to an underperforming business tax.

In Louisiana, lawmakers essentially passed the largest tax cut in state history by rolling back an income-tax hike for high earners in 2007 and again in 2008.

Without those tax reductions, Louisiana wouldn't have had a budget deficit in fiscal year 2010, the 2011 deficit would've been 50 percent less and the 2012 deficit of $1.6 billion would be reduced by about one-third, said Edward Ashworth, the director of the Louisiana Budget Project, a watchdog group.

But it's okay - because what these conservative geniuses are really doing is broadening the base and creating more revenue by cutting it. I don't think it speaks very highly of conservative policymakers that Arizona State can figure this out but they can't. Just saying. But what does history have to say about this Republican fetish? You know - historical data, facts, and figures. Those evil liberally biased boogeymen:

After the nation recovered from the 1990-91 recession, 43 states made sizable tax cuts from 1994 to 2001 as the economy surged. Twenty-eight states, in fact, reduced their unemployment insurance payroll taxes after 1995.

But states that cut taxes the most ended up with the largest budget shortfalls and higher job losses when the economy slowed again in 2001, according to research by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

So in other words, that study is bullshit because it focused on too narrow of a time period and the tax cuts just haven't trickled down yet. Republicans cut taxes for long-term growth, not short term gains...duh.

It's good to see that actual journalism still exists today, however rare it might be. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that tax cuts stimulate the economy and provide endless prosperity for all in the manner that Republicans claim they do. Our economy has thrived just fine even during periods of much higher taxation, even under Republican rock stars like Eisenhower (I know, I know - he doesn't count because his name isn't Reagan). But regardless, expect this to continue to be a major facet in our national economic policy for years to come. As we saw in December, not even the Democrats can be counted on to oppose regressive economic policies.

The Apex of Conservative Budgetary Batshit

Congressional Republicans have proposed their collective legislative wet dream of long-term fiscal policy:

A Republican plan for the 2012 budget would cut more than $4 trillion over the next decade, more than even the president's debt commission proposed, with spending caps as well as changes in the Medicare and Medicaid health programs, its principal author said Sunday.

[...]

Ryan said Obama's call for freezing nondefense discretionary spending actually locks in spending at high levels. Under the forthcoming GOP plan, Ryan said spending would return to 2008 levels and thus cut an additional $400 billion over 10 years.

Here are the highlights from their plan:

A "premium support system" for Medicare. In the future, older people would choose plans in the marketplace and the government would subsidize those plans. Ryan said that would differ from the voucher system he has proposed in the past. Those 55 and older would remain under the present Medicare system.

Translation: A market solution that will allow the Invisible Hand to magically dictate enormously higher prices just as the government announces it will be shifting costs to the consumer and moving away from the current Medicare system of direct payments from the Treasury.

A statutory cap on actual discretionary spending as a percentage of the economy. While Ryan did not specify the amount during the interview, he said it would be at a lower level than proposed by Obama and would return the government to its "historic size."

Otherwise known as a statutory imposition of the conservative ideology that will make the federal government fiscally ungovernable and unable to respond to economic cycles. This is very similar to Republican-imposed two-thirds vote requirements for raising taxes in state legislatures, which has had disastrous consequences for the state of California. As the economy shrinks, government spending would be lawfully required to shrink accordingly, which is antithetical to classical economic theory of managing a contracting economy.

Pro-growth tax changes, including lower tax rates and broadening the tax base. Ryan said overhauling taxes would boost the economy. The plan will not propose tax increases.

Or for those of us that didn't live under power lines or grow up eating paint chips as a kid, that's massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy which magically raises more revenue by virtue of ensuring that those with the most money pay the very least.

Ryan didn't mention how the budget plan would address Social Security.

Their plan is so regressive and controversial that they're not ready to comment just yet.

Republicans are very serious about the budget and the deficit - so serious that they have exempted cuts to defense spending, raising revenues, and wants to ensure that the government is bound by their ideology and thus limit its options for dealing with future crises. This is all very obvious and dull, but it should be concerning given the shit show that the budget negotiations have been up until this point. The Republicans demand that we cut $60 billion, the Democrats counter that maybe they could live with $55 billion. Ok, fine, you're right: $58 billion. What? No? Okay god...you drive a hard bargain: $65 billion. 

The Republicans have moved the goalposts so far to the right in this instance that it's just somewhat terrifying to me to see what the Democratic "counteroffer" will be.

Obama Admin to Congress

Go fuck yourselves, we bomb whoever we want, bitches:

The White House would forge ahead with military action in Libya even if Congress passed a resolution constraining the mission, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a classified briefing to House members Wednesday afternoon.

Clinton was responding to a question from Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA) about the administration's response to any effort by Congress to exercise its war powers, according to a senior Republican lawmaker who attended the briefing. 

The answer surprised many in the room because Clinton plainly admitted the administration would ignore any and all attempts by Congress to shackle President Obama's power as commander in chief to make military and wartime decisions. In doing so, he would follow a long line of Presidents who have ignored the act since its passage, deeming it an unconstitutional encroachment on executive power.

It's a good thing that we have three branches of government. In fairness, that whole "checks and balances" thing envisioned by the founding fathers was so 18th century.