I'm In Ur Base, Killin Ur Doodz

Via TPM, just in time for Memorial Day, the Pentagon is already ratcheting up its justification of the next round of decade-long, speciously planned exportation of Jebus, freedom, and democracy:

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

The Pentagon's first formal cyber strategy, unclassified portions of which are expected to become public next month, represents an early attempt to grapple with a changing world in which a hacker could pose as significant a threat to U.S. nuclear reactors, subways or pipelines as a hostile country's military.

In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. "If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks," said a military official.

It's probably just a coincidence that the origin of cyber attacks are often difficult to determine, prone to misdirection, and without allegiance or connection to a given nation. Sounds strangely like our current wars of choice, does it not? Uniform-less combatants that we pursue until the ends of the earth in pursuit of Absolute Safety utilizing a grossly overmatched military force with a 20th century strategy that costs a fuckton of money - hackers quickly become tomorrow's terrorist.

This shift in policy is obviously not aimed at any two-bit hacker with a Dell and a cursory knowledge of Trojan horses. But it's a reaffirmation of our continued insistence on using American military power as a response to pretty much anything. And you are going to love the yard stick for how this will be applied:

The report will also spark a debate over a range of sensitive issues the Pentagon left unaddressed, including whether the U.S. can ever be certain about an attack's origin, and how to define when computer sabotage is serious enough to constitute an act of war. These questions have already been a topic of dispute within the military.

One idea gaining momentum at the Pentagon is the notion of "equivalence." If a cyber attack produces the death, damage, destruction or high-level disruption that a traditional military attack would cause, then it would be a candidate for a "use of force" consideration, which could merit retaliation.

So in other words, use of force will be commensurate with the damage which the cyber attack caused. And in case you haven't been paying attention, we are not particularly adept at measured, 'equivalent' responses. A single terrorist attack that killed 3,000 American citizens gave way to two wars that continue to this day  almost a decade after the fact, not to mention the trillions of dollars we have pissed into the wind, the complete erosion of our moral character through indefinite detention and torture, and the ways in which average Americans now accept the persistent extraconstitutional intrusions into their privacy, civil liberties and even the very act of boarding a fucking airplane. And that list goes on and on - it is by no means conclusive, but just a small list of the number of insanities we allowed 9/11 to entrench in American policy.

The DoD is just gearing up for the 21st century and beyond. If we ever get out of Afghanistan and Iraq, we are going to need another hopeless military conflict to softly caress our national trigger finger and something else on which to spend our $800 billion defense budget. The cyber attack policy is just the framework for that.

Memorial Day

Remember not just the departed, but also the fact that there is no abiding purpose for which we should remain in Afghanistan or Iraq. And maybe that makes me not a real 'murikan or a dick, but I think it's also important to not get wrapped up in the mindless nationalism that inevitably accompanies such holidays. Today should serve as a day of remembrance, and in the midst of our introspection, also powerful reminder that war is an incredibly destructive, unnecessary, disgusting act and something we ought to do a better job of avoiding.

*Update*
This.

Fiddling While America Burns

Krugman:

Yet a strange thing has happened to policy discussion: on both sides of the Atlantic, a consensus has emerged among movers and shakers that nothing can or should be done about jobs. Instead of a determination to do something about the ongoing suffering and economic waste, one sees a proliferation of excuses for inaction, garbed in the language of wisdom and responsibility.

So someone needs to say the obvious: inventing reasons not to put the unemployed back to work is neither wise nor responsible. It is, instead, a grotesque abdication of responsibility.

[...]

So what did the O.E.C.D. have to say about high unemployment in its member countries? “The room for macroeconomic policies to address these complex challenges is largely exhausted,” declared the organization’s secretary general, who called on countries instead to “go structural” — that is, to focus on long-run reforms that would have little impact on the current employment situation.

[...]

So there are policies we could be pursuing to bring unemployment down. These policies would be unorthodox — but so are the economic problems we face. And those who warn about the risks of action must explain why these risks should worry us more than the certainty of continued mass suffering if we do nothing.

The message out of Washington (and really, the developed world) is that if you're out of work, struggling to keep your home, or otherwise destitute - you are on your own. Get a job, you lazy slob - the free market Jebus will touch you soon enough. We have scary things for the grown-ups to deal with, like the deficit. They have made the concerted decision to fundamentally ignore the lower 90% of the country. As Krugman said, most politicians don't even speak of unemployment anymore - including Obama.

And it also bears mentioning that enacting "unorthodox" policies of which Krugman spoke are only for real emergencies - bailing out the banksters so they can get their bonuses and make their next payment on their house in the Hamptons, bombing brown people in Libya, re-authorizing the unchecked, sweeping power of the Patriot act. These are the things that must be done. Enacting policies that would actually benefit average Americans or improve their quality of living requires months of debate, hand wringing, the gnashing of teeth, and cutting a deal with the Republicans to include a bunch of tax cuts while they whine incessantly about how much the legislation is going to cost.

Random Thought

Does anyone else find it completely insane and disgusting that the economic debate in the richest country/largest in the world centers entirely around not whether or not we should dismantle the safety net, but that the safety net must be dismantled to prevent Economic Enemy Number One from destroying the world? Or that Washington spends its days clutching its pearls over the deficit, and not the millions of unemployed Americans, or the severely depressed housing market? 

It's almost as if our elected class treats Medicare and Social Security as such irritable nuisances because their considerable personal wealth and cushy federal benefits belie their need for their existence. Perhaps they care little for the filthy, lazy, unemployed masses that struggles to keep their home or stares down at the grim prospect of never being able to sell it because they, the elected class, will never have to worry about securing employment themselves (there's always lobbying or becoming a bankster after they tire of the Beltway), and the only housing problem they know is the vexing decision of which of their many homes they should occupy on a given weekend.

There are alternatives to these policies and solutions to these problems - they have chosen to ignore those options. 

That's What She Said

Rick Santorum is apparently just weak at the knees at the mere thought of putting Santorum Sauce all over the "lips of every young Republican."

More sexual innuendo and hilarity on this over at Balloon Juice. And Santorum's tweet immediately made me think of this:

The Ring
Tags: SOUTH
PARKmore...

How about that young Republicans? You want Santorum's white foam in your face? Btw, South Park Studios is an outstanding website. You can pretty much search and find every clip from the show's entire library.

The Ryan Plan - Just Needs a Little Don Draper

I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record with Republicans and the Ryan plan, but I can't help it because I think it will remain one of the most significant political events of this year for the Democrats, along with the Wisconsin union busting bill. That being said, this cracks me up:

“I think we need to be stronger in marketing who we are and our message, and not just Medicare but in every aspect — with the jobs situation, with the economy, with national security. That’s what we need to do,” freshman Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) said.

[...]

But behind the scenes, several sources reported grumbling.

One source familiar with the internal discussions over the Ryan budget plan described members as frustrated that their leadership failed to prepare them for the outrage they have heard from constituents in their districts over the Medicare changes.

“Members know that you don’t piss off senior citizens, and they know that this was handled badly, that there was no messaging, that Ryan’s not making his case and they are all looking down the road thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’s coming,’ ” the source said.

Uh-huh. That's all they need - more messaging, a sexier marketing campaign. They just needed to tell voters what they really meant about Medicare, and more effectively convey that they are just good looking, sharp dressed fellows with the nation's best interests in mind, and suddenly people won't care that they want to turn Medicare into a shitty voucher program. And did these shit for brains really not stop to think that voting to end Medicare would seriously piss off an enormous majority of the country?

Don't Do It

Via Steve Benen and Balloon Juice, Senate Republicans - having realized the incredible stupidity of their vote on the Ryan budget - are trying to bait Democrats into sharing their fate:

In a Capitol briefing with reporters Friday, McConnell declared affirmatively that unspecified Medicare cuts are on the table in bipartisan debt limit negotiations, led by Vice President Joe Biden, and, he expects, will be part of the solution. But in response to a question from TPM, he went further than he has in the past in laying down a marker on that issue. Medicare cuts must be part of that deal to get his support — even if negotiators manage to find trillions of dollars in savings elsewhere, even if his other priorities are met.

“To get my vote, for me, it’s going to take short term [cuts, via spending caps]… Both medium and long-term, entitlements.,” McConnell said. “Medicare will be part of the solution.”

To clarify, I asked “To clarify, if [the Biden group] comes up with big cuts, trillions of dollars worth of cuts, but without substantially addressing Medicare, it won’t get your vote?”

“Correct,” McConnell said.

Having Democrats on the hook for voting along with Republicans to cut Medicare eliminates the contrast between the two parties and thus effectively defuses the clear advantage that Democrats derive from the GOP's vociferous support for the Ryan plan. The debt ceiling will be raised. It has to be raised. The corporate masters that hold the GOP's leash will not let them obstruct this. If the Democrats go along with McConnell's demands, they are politically impotent and they do so because they want to cut Medicare. This is an empty threat and should be derided and ignored as such. 

Legalizing Freedom Bombs

Looks like we are planning on making an honest war out of Libya:

WASHINGTON—President Barack Obama on Friday invited Congress to approve U.S. intervention in Libya, expressing "support" for a bipartisan resolution drawn up by a group of senators authorizing the military operation.

Under the 1973 War Powers Resolution, passed amid the turbulence of the Vietnam War, presidents must obtain congressional approval for the use of force within 60 days, or else begin withdrawing. That deadline was Friday for the Libya operation.

[...]

"Congressional action in support of the mission would underline the U.S. commitment to this remarkable international effort," Mr. Obama wrote in a letter to congressional leaders. "It has always been my view that it is better to take military action, even in limited actions such as this, with congressional engagement, consultation and support."

[...]

The president cited a resolution of approval drawn up by Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee; Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Sen. John McCain (R., Ariz.), the top Republican on the Armed Services panel; and others. Mr. McCain predicted recently that the resolution would get 80 votes in the Senate.

It's only mean old man McCain's estimate, but name one legislative item that would garner 80 votes in the Senate. America loves itself some war, and it's the one national priority for which we will always justify the cost.

Senate Republicans Now On The Record

I really didn't think these dipshits would be this stupid:

The GOP continued its bloody walk into the Medicare buzzsaw Wednesday, when 40 out of 47 Senate Republicans voted in support of the House GOP budget, and its plan to phase out and privatize the popular entitlement program.

The test vote failed by a vote of 57-40. But the roll call illustrates that Medicare privatization -- along with deep cuts to Medicaid and other social services -- remains the consensus position of the GOP despite the growing political backlash against them.

They've seen the town halls, they've read the polls, they even knew that the Ryan Path to Fucking Over Everybody But Rich People and Corporations Prosperity was political taboo and had no chance of ever becoming law well in advance of the House vote. But they still overwhelmingly voted in favor of it. Sens. Scott Brown, Olympia Snowe, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and Rand Paul were the only Republicans with enough of a brain (or conscience? Nah...) to oppose the measure. Paul hardly counts, since apparently his opposition was rooted in the principle that the Ryan plan does not go far enough in fucking over future generations, and expect Brown and Snowe to see lunatic mouth-breathing teabagger primary opponents next year for their egregious lack of fealty to the GOP dogma.

I still fail to see the GOP strategy or end game behind this one. Maybe it plays well with their low-information Fox News addled base. Again, if the Democrats don't fuck this up - and that's a big, huge, enormous if given their recent political track record - this will be an electoral cudgel of massive proportions in 2012. The Republicans do not seem to understand that elections are just as much about capturing independents as they are about turning out your base. The Ryan plan is overwhelmingly unpopular with the electorate, and it doesn't matter how they try to spin or sell it. Between the Ryan plan and the gross overreach of all the batshit wingnut governors as they dismantle their states and workers rights (while cutting taxes, of course), the GOP is singlehandedly riling up the opposition and giving independents plenty of reasons to flee to the Democrats in 2012. 

New Dispatches from ObviousTown

Ezra Klein reads the latest:

Are you a fan of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ deficit chart, but you wish it focused on public debt instead? Well, wish no more. The Washington-based holding tank for superwonks has remade its deficit chart into a debt chart.

The takeaway hasn’t changed. “The Bush-era tax cuts and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — including their associated interest costs — account for almost half of the projected public debt in 2019.” If you’ve been reading this blog, you knew that already. What you might not have known is this: After you add the financial crisis and associated rescue packages to the total, “public debt due to all other factors fell from over 30 percent of GDP in 2001 to 20 percent of GDP in 2019." In other words, cut the financial crisis and the major initiatives from the Bush-era out of the picture, and we’d be in pretty good shape. In fact, we’d be in great shape. “Without the economic downturn and the fiscal policies of the previous Administration, the budget would be roughly in balance over the next decade. That would have put the nation on a much sounder footing to address the demographic challenges and the cost pressures in health care that darken the long-run fiscal outlook.”

And the ever useful deficit chart that he references is this one:

But we are broke because Obama spent a bunch of money and called it a stimulus and wants to give healthcare to poor people, teachers and firefighters are selfish fucks and are laughing all the way to the bank with their outsized compensation all thanks to union thugs, and unemployed people are lazy and lay around on the couch all day while waiting for their next ill gotten welfare check to come in the mail. Oh, and the way to solve all of this utter ruin forced down our throat at the hands of the Socialist Kenyan is more tax cuts for our plutocrat overlords.

I think that about covers it.

Accidental Education

Speaking of the Onion, this piece is similarly hilarious:

WASHINGTON—According to bewildered and contrite legislators, a major budgetary mix-up this week inadvertently provided the nation's public schools with enough funding and resources to properly educate students.

Sources in the Congressional Budget Office reported that as a result of a clerical error, $80 billion earmarked for national defense was accidentally sent to the Department of Education, furnishing schools with the necessary funds to buy new textbooks, offer more academic resources, hire better teachers, promote student achievement, and foster educational excellence—an oversight that apologetic officials called a "huge mistake."

[...]

Said House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), expressing remorse for the error, "I want to apologize to the American people. The last thing we wanted was for schools to upgrade their technology and lower student-to-teacher ratios in hopes of raising a generation of well-educated, ambitious, and skilled young Americans."

[...]

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) called for a full investigation into how the nation's schools were able to secure the necessary funds to monitor teachers and pay salaries based on performance.

"The fact that this careless mistake also ended up financing new teacher training programs, allowing educators to become more than just glorified babysitters, is disgraceful," Reid said. "Now we are left with a situation where schools can attract talented professionals who really want to teach our children, which will in turn create smarter and more motivated students who wish to one day make a contribution to society."

[...]

"Once these kids learn to read and think critically, you can never undo that," Boehner said. "In 20 years, we could be looking at a nightmare scenario in which vast segments of our populace are fully prepared to compete in the new global marketplace."

"It could take a whole generation to cancel out the effects of this," Boehner added.

A little sad, but funny. And true.

America's Israel Infatuation

Pretty much agree with everything Greenwald said, and don't have much to add because it's completely true. Fealty to Israel is a prerequisite for success in American politics, even when it contradicts and undermines your own President and national interests.That last one is a bit of a misnomer, because the default position in American politics is that America's national interests always directly align precisely with Israel's national interests. There is no critical thinking on this matter - one is always synonymous with the other.

And for biting satire on this subject, nobody does it better than the Onion:

WASHINGTON—State Department diplomat Nelson Milstrand, who appeared on CNN last week and offered an informed, thoughtful analysis implying that Israel could perhaps exercise more restraint toward Palestinian moderates in disputed territories, was asked to resign Tuesday. “The United States deeply regrets any harm Mr. Milstrand’s careful, even-tempered, and factually accurate remarks may have caused our democratic partner in the Middle East,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in an unequivocal condemnation of the veteran foreign-service officer’s perfectly reasonable statements. “U.S. policy toward Israel continues to be one of unconditional support and fawning sycophancy.” Milstrand, 63, will reportedly appear at an AIPAC conference to offer a full apology as soon as his trial concludes and his divorce is finalized

They're Trying to Build a Prison

Weird...privatizing prisons yields little cost savings, despite fervent wingnut claims to the contrary:

PHOENIX — The conviction that private prisons save money helped drive more than 30 states to turn to them for housing inmates. But Arizona shows that popular wisdom might be wrong: Data there suggest that privately operated prisons can cost more to operate than state-run prisons — even though they often steer clear of the sickest, costliest inmates

[...] 

“Unlike the private contractors,” the analysis said, the state “is required to provide medical and mental health services to inmates regardless of the severity of their condition.” Medical costs averaged up to $2.44 a day more for state inmates, a third higher than private prisons.

In Arizona, minimum-security state inmates cost 2.6 percent — or $1.39 per day — more than those in private prisons, before accounting for extra costs borne by the state. But after eliminating these, state prisoners cost only three cents more per day, the analysis found.

And state medium-security inmates cost 4.4 percent less before adjustments and 8.7 percent less afterward. That is more than $2 million annually at one prison, or $1,679 per inmate. Using 2009 corrections data, state auditors calculated the difference at up to $2,834 per inmate.

Charles L. Ryan, the Arizona corrections director, said private prisons “often negotiate restrictions on the type of inmates” and limit “inmates with medical conditions to a specific cost level.” 

So essentially, the entire prison privatization model centers around accepting only healthy or low-maintenance prisoners and then skimping on the level of basic care provided. Sounds strikingly similar to the health insurance industry. 

And this next part of the article is disgusting, and a perfect illustration of why some things in America should not be allowed to turn a profit:

The measures would be a shot in the arm for an industry that has struggled, in some places, to fill prison beds as the number of inmates nationwide has leveled off. 

Heckuva job, NYT - way to blithely state that locking up more people would be a much needed boon for the poor, beleaguered prison industry. Clearly what we need is to throw even more people behind bar (you know, despite already having the highest incarceration rate of the developed world) so that we can generate some more profits for the destitute prison industry. The shareholders demand a reasonable return on their investment!

If ever there were an argument to be made for a role of government, operating prisons/corrections should be paramount among them. There are just some industries/functions that should not be handled by private industry. It should be patently obvious to anyone with a pulse that profiting off of incarceration is wrong and produces horrible incentives. Take for instance another shining example of the ever-revolving door between private industry and public office: a number of Gov. Jan Brewer's top advisers are heavily connected to the private prison industry. And I suppose that we should probably just accept that their pervasive connection, material support, and assistance in drafting Arizona's anti-immigrant bill, SB1070, was purely an innocent coincidence. These titans of the prison industry just love justice and protecting our borders.

If you want cost savings in the department of corrections, I have a revolutionary idea: don't incarcerate innumerate sums of people for stupid, trivial offenses. Crazy, I know. Abolish mandatory, minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenders, decriminalize marijuana possession (a needed step in the eventual overall direction of the eventual legalization and taxation of the substance) and maybe your prisons won't be bursting at the seams. Overall violent crime rates continue to decline, yet prison populations remain flat or continue to rise, and again, are the highest in the world. There's something to be said about the relationship between those two figures. 

And fuck it - while I'm on the topic, I'll briefly note again the sheer alacrity with which we throw people in jail for smoking a joint, but we're perfectly fine with looking the other way on warrantless wiretaps, torture, indefinite detention, and the wholesale destruction and looting of the US economy by the banksters. It's a sad statement on our country's purported love of "liberty and justice for all."

We Are Broke: Big Oil Edition

Assholes:

As expected, a Democratic bill that would have stripped big oil companies of multi-billion annual tax subsidies failed to overcome a Republican filibuster Tuesday evening. The heavily partisan 52-48 vote fell well short of the 60 required to achieve cloture. Three Democrats -- Sens. Mary Landrieu (D-LA), Mark Begich (D-AK), and Ben Nelson (D-NE) -- voted with Republicans to maintain the subsidies. Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and Susan Collins (R-ME) voted with the Democrats.

Clearly the Republicans have not learned their lesson from their vote on the Ryan Medicare phase-out plan. Now they are also on the record for retaining up to $21 billion a year in subsidies to oil companies that make about that much in quarterly profits when crude oil spikes. It will be interesting to see if Democrats can turn this into as much of a campaign issue as they have with the Ryan Plan. Also, fuck the three Dems that voted against it too. Shame on them, though it's not surprising given the states from which they hail. They are bought and paid for just as much as the GOP caucus.

This is another lesson in the holy grail of bipartisanship in that no budgetary measure will ever pass Congress unless it sufficiently fucks over the poor or middle class. Federal spending and programs that benefit the lower 90% of the population are too expensive, because we are broke. Billions of dollars given freely to enormously profitable corporations are just a cost of doing business, if we don't give them the money then the price of gas will be infinity unicorn dollars per gallon, and if we don't give them the money their fee-fees will be hurt and they will pack their shit and leave for the safety of a country that is more friendly to corporations. And we don't want any of that, now do we?

Republicans Fee-Fees Hurted By Big Meaniehead Dems

Republicans are spraining their vaginas crying about Democrats rightfully taking advantage of their support of the Paul Ryan Path to Fucking Everybody Over But Rich People and Corporations Prosperity:

Nearly a dozen House Republican freshmen held a press conference outside the Capitol Tuesday morning to "wipe the slate clean," and "hit the reset button."

"Yeah, I mean there's been -- again, this is a both-sides issue," said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) when asked if GOP candidates and the NRCC had engaged in 'MediScare' tactics last year. "To say that one side is blameless in trying to use issues to win votes is just dishonest."

On Tuesday, Kinzinger and 41 of his colleagues sent a letter to President Obama, asking him to rein in Democratic attacks on GOP members who voted for the House budget, which includes a plan to privatize Medicare and cap spending on the program.

"We ask that you stand above partisanship, condemn the disingenuous attacks and work with this Congress to reform spending on entitlement programs," the letter reads. 

I swear to Jebus that there is a direct relationship between immense power/wealth/status and being a colossal delicate flower. Wall Street banksters and Fortune 500 CEOs crying that Obama is mean to them, Congress members of both parties whining to Obama that he needs to be directly involved in the budget (after he already released his proposal), and now the GOP drowning the Oval Office in tears because Democrats are doing what politicians do - engaging in smart politics.

Republicans already voted for Ryan's shit sandwich of a budget and continue to feel the ramifications of it daily, no matter how they try to argue the contrary. The fact that they are crying about Democratic attacks mean that they are working. They've hit a nerve. The House GOP is already feeling the heat from their constituents on their regressive plan, and the last thing they want is for the Dems to continue to hold the spotlight on them on this issue.

Paul Krugman had a good post about this very subject on his blog, noting what I've said many times before - that facts have a well-established liberal bias:

Today was another VSP day at the Washington Post, with both the editorial page and the fact-checker tut-tutting at Democrats who insist on describing the Republican plan to dismantle Medicare as a plan to dismantle Medicare.

Because it is, you know, a plan to dismantle Medicare. When you transform a program that pays seniors’ medical bills into a program that gives them a voucher that almost certainly isn’t enough to buy adequate insurance, you can call the new scheme Medicare, but it isn’t the same program.

Anyway, Republicans are proposing to destroy Medicare; saying that clearly isn’t scare tactics, it’s simply pointing out the truth.

Also, I've got a few things that might help the Republicans cure their sad:

Just a thought. I hear they are super effective.

Deficits and Inflation and Weak Dollars, Oh My!

I wrote yesterday about Washington's rush to solve non-existent problems, while fundamentally ignoring widespread economic calamity, but Krugman tends to state these things better:

From G.D.P. to private-sector payrolls, from business surveys to new claims for unemployment insurance, key economic indicators suggest that the recovery may be sputtering.

[...]

It’s not as if our political class is feeling complacent. On the contrary, D.C. economic discourse is saturated with fear: fear of a debt crisis, of runaway inflation, of a disastrous plunge in the dollar. Scare stories are very much on politicians’ minds.

Yet none of these scare stories reflect anything that is actually happening, or is likely to happen. And while the threats are imaginary, fear of these imaginary threats has real consequences: an absence of any action to deal with the real crisis, the suffering now being experienced by millions of jobless Americans and their families.

[...]

Unemployment isn’t just blighting the lives of millions, it’s undermining America’s future. The longer this goes on, the more workers will find it impossible ever to return to employment, the more young people will find their prospects destroyed because they can’t find a decent starting job. It may not create excited chatter on cable TV, but the unemployment crisis is real, and it’s eating away at our society.

Yet any action to help the unemployed is vetoed by the fear-mongers. Should we spend modest sums on job creation? No way, say the deficit hawks, who threaten us with the purely hypothetical wrath of financial markets, and, in fact, demand that we slash spending now now now — which might well send us back into recession. Should the Federal Reserve do more to promote expansion? No, say the inflation and dollar hawks, who have been wrong again and again but insist that this time their dire warnings about runaway prices and a plunging dollar really will be vindicated.

What do you think the economic policy priorities in DC would be if say, in a parallel bizarro world, there was enormous unemployment among CEOs, banksters, politicians, and lobbyists? Think there would be a price tag too large to get our plutocrat overlords to their former glory so they could return to making their tax cuts rain down on us?

The GOP: Objectively Anti-Consumer Protection

Assholes:

Nearly every Republican senator is vowing to block any presidential nominee to head the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) unless major changes are made to the agency.

In a letter sent to the president Thursday, 44 GOP senators said that any pick to become the first director of the CFPB, regardless of political affiliation, will be unacceptable unless the bureau is significatly altered to reduce its "unfettered authority."

[...]

"The CFPB as created by the deeply-flawed Dodd-Frank Act is set to be one of the least accountable and most powerful agencies in Washington," said Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "The reforms outlined are necessary before we will consider any nominee to head this agency.”

"This about accountability," added Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. "The bureau, as currently structured, lacks any semblance of the checks and balances inherent in the Constitution."  

Specifically, the lawmakers are demanding the top of the CFPB be changed so that instead of being run by a single director, it is headed by a board of directors. They also want the CFPB's budget to fall under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators — currently the CFPB is set up to receive its budget from the Federal Reserve. And finally, they want other regulators to be able to block CFPB regulations if they deem it could endanger the safety and soundess of banks.

Right, because we all know how much Republicans care about "accountability" or reining in "unfettered power," which is they only care about it when they're not in power, or the issue in question is preventing their corporate masters from doing whatever the fuck they want.

And the "significant alterations" they are seeking would do nothing short of rendering the agency useless, which is their ultimate goal. It has nothing to do with accountability. Proposing a board of directors is their attempt to fill it with know-nothing batshit GOP ideologues to grind the agency to a gridlock of 111th/112th Congressional proportions. There is recent precedent for this; the Republican appointees to the financial crisis commission voted to remove any mention of the terms "Wall Street" or "deregulation" altogether from their commission report, and blamed the entirety of the financial crisis on poor people and minorities and the government. Placing the CPFB's budget under the jurisdiction of Congressional appropriators is another attempt to bring the agency to Congressional heel and ensure that it receives little or inadequate funding to execute its charge. You know, because we are broke, and we can't finance consumer protection when we have really important things to pay for like endless wars and tax cuts. There's actually a good argument to make that more of our financial regulation agencies should be free from Congressional budget appropriations and receive their funding through the Fed as the CPFB would.

Going on three years on now with no indictments or criminal prosecutions of any high-level parties involved with the financial crisis, and to add insult to injury, half of our Senators have their heads in the sand or are running around with their fingers in their ears screaming LA-LA-LA-LA-LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU.

Washington's Perverse Economic Priorities

The latest example of Washington's rush to solve a non-existent problem while completely ignoring that which ails millions of Americans - corporate tax reform:

The Obama administration is quietly gearing up for a high-profile launch in May or June on what may turn out to be the most heavily lobbied issue of the year: corporate tax reform.

“This will be a feast for K Street,” said one top aide.

At a time when the two parties can find little common ground legislatively, strategists on both sides tell POLITICO they hope to advance their jobs agenda by finding a way to lower corporate tax rates.

“This would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and is something both parties should support in theory,” a senior administration official said, predicting “a numbers game” in which companies and industries ferociously litigate the fine points.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner plans to ignite the debate by unveiling a white paper that advocates lowering the top corporate tax rate from the current 35 percent to less than 30 percent and as low as 26 percent, according to aides. The proposal is likely to fall between 26 percent and 28 percent.

To pay for that, the proposal will call for closing loopholes and slicing exemptions. The two main ones are a tax deduction for domestic manufacturing and accelerated depreciation for capital equipment.

Got that? Reducing corporate taxes is a "jobs agenda." Pervasive unemployment, a housing market in a continued tailspin, GDP in the shitter and barely strong enough to keep us from backsliding into another recession, and Washington's idea of an economic priority is...corporate tax reform. But it would send a reassuring signal to the economy, and we all know how important it is to stroke the delicate fee-fees of the economy (and our plutocrats) while categorically ignoring the economic hardships of millions of Americans. I hear markets get a real boner for that kind of thing. And why shouldn't we tackle corporate tax reform? You know, because our poor, beleaguered corporations are just struggling so hard right now! They can't compete or innovate globally with our punitive Highest Tax Rate in the World!

All told, the Fortune 500 generated nearly $10.8 trillion in total revenues last year, up 10.5%. Total profits soared 81%. But guess who didn’t benefit much from this giant wave of cash? Millions of U.S. workers stuck mired in a stagnant job market. [...] Nevertheless, we’ve rarely seen such a stark gulf between the fortunes of the 500 and those of ordinary Americans.

And they are now even considering the much maligned, corporate giveaway that creates zero jobs, unless you define jobs as bonuses for executives and dividends for shareholders.

One possibility for the administration white paper is a move toward a more territorial system that is consistent with taxation schemes in the rest of the developed world, focused on taxing profits earned in the U.S. Such a provision would probably include a transitional measure that allowed companies to move profits earned abroad back to the U.S. at a lower tax rate — say, 10 percent.

It's amazing what a few million dollars in lobbyists can buy you, and it's maddening to watch them fuss over lowering the marginal rate when pretty much zero corporations actually pay the top marginal rate to begin with. Whatever the "grand bargain" ends up being, expect it to be supremely corporation-friendly and likely put them in a position to be paying even less than they are now. The Chamber of Commerce will send their army of lobbyists in and crack the whip at their foot soldiers in Congress, who will promptly do their bidding, sell it as an enormous bipartisan success, and then head off to a cocktail party to discuss the intricacies of their post public service employment in the same companies to which they just gave an enormous slobbery legislative blow job.

There's no shortage of reasons why this is completely ridiculous, one of them being that corporate taxes as a share of federal revenue are at record lows:

And the evil socialists at the Congressional Budget Office have found that a significant number of American corporations pay no taxes at all:

But by taking advantage of myriad breaks and loopholes that other countries generally do not offer, United States corporations pay only slightly more on average than their counterparts in other industrial countries. And some American corporations use aggressive strategies to pay less — often far less — than their competitors abroad and at home. A Government Accountability Office study released in 2008 found that 55 percent of United States companies paid no federal income taxes during at least one year in a seven-year period it studied.

I'm not saying that the current system is perfect. But it's disgusting to focus on corporate welfare while millions are struggling, even if you try to assuage what's left of your conscience by couching it in an enormous pile of horse shit by calling it a jobs program.

Too Late - They're Already Pregnant

All but six House Republicans voted to end Medicare:

After House Republican leaders pushed through a budget that contained a politically charged plan to overhaul Medicare, the chairman of the House tax-writing committee suggested Thursday that he did not intend to draft legislation turning the proposal into law any time soon.

The comments by Representative Dave Camp, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, coupled with remarks by other top Republicans, suggested that the party’s Medicare proposal was firmly on hold even though lawmakers had taken a risky vote to support it in the House.

At a health policy forum at the National Press Club, Mr. Camp noted that Democrats had resisted the Republican approach and said he was “not interested in talking about whether the House is going to pass a bill that the Senate shows no interest in.”

His statement followed similar comments by other Republicans, including Representatives Eric Cantor of Virginia, the majority leader, and Paul Ryan, the budget chairman who developed the Medicare plan. They both said Republicans recognized that they were unlikely to win approval of their sweeping Medicare proposal in the debt-reduction talks that began at Blair House on Thursday.

No one could have predicted that ending Medicare while lavishing trillions of dollars in tax cuts on millionaires and corporations would prove to be an enormous political pile of shit for House Republicans. Like I said before, these morons got drunk with power off of their electoral success in 2010 and figured they could sell ketchup popsicle to a woman with white gloves. Spoiler alert - they can't, they're now waking up to that reality, and they're terrified of the price they could pay in November of next year. 

All of this is rather amusing to me, because you hear plenty (and I write plenty of it too) about how organized and how politically shrewd Republicans are, and how Democrats are a bunch of feckless, rudderless pussies. And in large part, it is very true. But you would think that Republicans should have seen this one coming. Medicare is an overwhelmingly popular program, and these idiots think that they just need to try a little harder to sell the public on the awesome idea of "premium support" and turning them loose to the wolves in the notoriously dysfunctional and corrupt health insurance industry. They can try all they want, and they can try to shrug their shoulders and walk away and heave deep sighs about how it won't pass the Senate or the White House, but the fact of the matter is that they voted to end Medicare. It already happened. The attack ads will write themselves next fall. 

The fact that it will never pass the Senate or Obama's desk doesn't matter. They voted for it. If that was their calculation, then they never should have brought it up for a vote in the first place. And it also serves as a reminder as to why we should never let these assholes gain simultaneous control of the House, Senate, and White House.

Economic News From NoShit Town

Really? I never knew that small businesses do not live and die by tax cuts.

Michael Teahan, like his father, mother, and uncles before him, is a small business owner. The 52-year-old has spent most of his adult life running his own businesses: a restaurant, a coffee bar and various companies involved in the espresso machine business.

[...]

Teahan currently operates Espresso Resource, a company that imports espresso machine parts from Europe to sell to U.S. restaurants and coffee shops. And he’s doing very well for himself: The two-man operation clears about $1 million a year in total sales, Teahan says -- enough to secure himself annual income in excess of $250,000.

That makes Teahan one of the few small business owners to actually benefit from the Bush administration's tax cuts for the wealthy. He says the cuts save him about $12,000 a year, compared to what he paid before they were enacted. But as debates over the federal budget deficit have intensified, Teahan has found the political discussion increasingly divorced from the reality of his experience as a small business owner. 

Tax cuts for the wealthy, according to Teahan, will do nothing to bolster his firm. They won’t affect his hiring decisions, they won’t encourage him to buy new equipment or help him move into a bigger warehouse. He says all of those decisions -- the nuts and bolts of actually running a small company -- depend on the his customers' economic conditions, not his personal tax rate.

"What we do in business, how we spend our money, how we allocate our resources -- that has very little to do with tax policy," Teahan says. "I map my business based on my customers, and what my customers want to buy, and what they can afford to buy."

And other small business owners interviewed for this piece agree:

"We are fed by our consumers, not by our tax breaks," says Rick Poore, owner of Designwear, Inc., a screen-printing business based in Lincoln, Neb. "If you drive more people to my business, I will hire more people. It's as simple as that. If you give me a tax break, I'll just take the wife to the Bahamas."

[...]

"The economic premise, that people won’t hire because they might have to pay more taxes if they make more money, is beyond laughable,” says Lew Prince, owner of the Vintage Vinyl record store in St. Louis, Mo. "You hire when you think there’s a way you can make more money with that hire. The percentage the government takes out of it has almost nothing to do with it.”

It's so weird to think that what small businesses need most is more customers. I just can't wrap my head around it. But in all reality, these guys are probably Democratic shills - union thugs planted by MoveOn to push a socialist agenda. Real 'murikans know that tax cuts are what we need to grow our small businesses and expand our economy, and to remove the uncertainty caused by the Marxist Kenyan Muslim.

In all seriousness, it's been apparent for some time now that we are experiencing an issue with aggregate demand, and tax cuts will do little to solve that. Businesses need customers, and most consumers right now are deleveraging from the easy credit boom of the early 2000s, or are just in general loathe to spend. Or on another front, they may be one of the millions of unemployed, about whom DC no longer gives a shit. Businesses need more demand, more customers in order to hire, and tax cuts don't supply either of those things. And you know what else? If businesses are hiring and thus serving to reduce overall unemployment, that also reduces the deficit as you have bring more people back into the revenue base. Imagine that. Republicans do not care about the deficit, however, as evidenced by their fetish for unfunded tax cuts. And I can't say that either party really cares to do much for boosting aggregate demand or solving unemployment. The general consensus on both sides of the aisle appears to be wait and see, or more specifically, gut federal spending while waiting, and that's just an incredibly stupid approach. But it's not like Nobel laureates know anything about economic policy...we should probably just entrust our fate to the feckless morons in Congress instead.

Sigh

I have no words:

Of all the newspaper headlines covering the death of Osama bin Laden, the most provocative may have been the New York Daily News.

Their "Rot in Hell" Monday headline, with a full front-page photo of bin Laden, was mentioned by the cable news networks and generated buzz on the on-line social networks.

So do Americans think that the founder and leader of the al Qaeda terrorist network is now in hell?

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll released Tuesday, 61 percent of the public says yes, with one in ten saying no and nearly a quarter unsure.

"Not all Americans believe in hell - a point of view reflected in the relatively large number of 'don't know' responses - and many religions don't include punishment in an afterlife as part of their teachings," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Nonetheless, the six in ten who say bin Laden is in hell reflects how strongly many Americans feel that bin Laden was an evil figure."

"This is one question on which there is little partisan division - at least six in ten Democrats, independents and Republicans all believe bin Laden is in hell," adds Holland.

Well thank Jebus for that. We may not agree on much, but OMG LOOK there's bipartisan consensus that bin Laden is in Hell! And our poll data confirms that Americans think that the man responsible for blowing up the WTC and killing 3,000 Americans is an evil figure! Hard hitting, ground breaking, in your fucking face news!

Next up, we go to your Twitter pages to find out if you think Obama is a meanie poopy face doodie head for not releasing photos of a bullet-ridden mangled bin Laden corpse, and Wolf Blitzer breaks out the Minority Report ginormous touch screen to manipulate data and show us stuff with things. All that and more stupid unnecessary ill informed jackassery - after this.

(h/t HuffPost)

A Rare Moment of Clarity

Digby is right - this is serious business:

On Friday, April 8, as members of the U.S. Congress engaged in a last-minute game of chicken over the federal budget, the Pentagon quietly issued a report that received little initial attention: A National Strategic Narrative...The piece was written by two senior members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in a "personal" capacity, but it is clear that it would not have seen the light of day without a measure of official approval. Its findings are revelatory, and they deserve to be read and appreciated not only by every lawmaker in Congress, but by every American citizen.  

The narrative argues that the United States is fundamentally getting it wrong when it comes to setting its priorities, particularly with regard to the budget and how Americans as a nation use their resources more broadly. The report says Americans are overreacting to Islamic extremism, underinvesting in their youth, and failing to embrace the sense of competition and opportunity that made America a world power. The United States has been increasingly consumed by seeing the world through the lens of threat, while failing to understand that influence, competitiveness, and innovation are the key to advancing American interests in the modern world.

Courageously, the authors make the case that America continues to rely far too heavily on its military as the primary tool for how it engages the world.

[...]

The report places considerable emphasis on the importance of achieving a more sustainable approach to security, energy, agriculture, and the environment. Again, it is important to stress that this narrative was penned by senior military thinkers, not the Sierra Club. The simple fact is that any clear-eyed analysis pretty quickly comes to the same conclusion: The United States has established an incentive system that just doesn't make any sense. It continues to pour tens of billions of dollars into agricultural and oil subsidies every single year even as these subsidies make the gravity of the environmental, health, and land-use problems the country faces in the future ever graver. As the report argues, America cannot truly practice the use of "smart power" until it practices "smart growth" at home. While some may be quick to argue that the Pentagon should not be considering issues like smart growth and investments in America's youth, this goes to another key point from the authors: America won't get its approach to policy right if it leaves foreign policy and domestic policy in tidy little silos that ignore the interconnection between the two.

Wow. That's not the sort of thing you'd expect to hear out of the nation's top military brass, officials who arguably have the least incentive to attempt to stymie our ever expanding defense and national security complex. And it flies in the face of the Republican stereotype of the military as hard drinkin', chain smokin,' Jebus lovin', Real Amurikan Hero that don't giba shit 'bout the environment or none o'that other librul sissy shit. It's always hilarious to watch them try to carve out a position when one of the sacred establishments contradicts their boyhood fantasies. 

I don't think this report has been given much coverage, but even if that weren't the case, I doubt it would really change much. It flies in the face of the status quo and contradicts every aspect of the conventional wisdom which the media loves to gleefully cheerlead. And consider recent events - Adm. Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, came out on the record and strongly against the stupidity and harm of Don't Ask, Don't Tell. In a sane world, that would have been evidence for most people, yet we were still subjected to studies and trial periods and endless handwringing by Republicans and the media. I will leave you to consider the meltdown and gridlock that would be caused by a national debate on scaling down the military industrial complex and looking at energy, environmental, and education policy as national security issues. But regardless, it's good to know that there's still a shred of sanity in Washington, however rare it might be.