Category: politics

News of US politics

Americans Realize Republicans don’t care about them

Seth Anderson0 comment

Useful as a Canadian Penny
Useful as a Canadian Penny

Not surprising, really, the GOP political motivation has been transparently directed towards demagoguery and re-election for a long, long time. Why else the so-called Southern Strategy? Why else the anti-civil rights positions regarding same-sex marriage? Why else other than fooling the rubes and (theoretically) winning elections. What’s happened is the GOP schtick has gotten tiresome, antiquated, and a smaller percentage of the voting public is convinced that tax breaks for wealthy corporations is beneficial for the rest of us…

If the tea party faction thought that they could lay claim to the idea of representing “real America” by dressing up in colonial clothes and calling President Obama some sort of foreigner, that idea is now out the window. After the Republican-controlled House of Representatives decided to shut down the government in a desperate attempt to take away the ability of the less fortunate to get health insurance, their polling took a major hit. Over half the country now thinks that it’s a bad thing that the Republican Party controls the House; three quarters of Americans believe that Republican members of Congress don’t deserve re-election.

All of those numbers would be bad in their own right, but there’s one that’s even worse, as Steve Benen at MSNBC reports:

The results cover quite a bit of ground, but there was one question in particular that stood out for me: respondents were asked whether they believe the various officials in Washington are more interested in doing what’s best for the country or what’s best for themselves politically. It’s an interesting question because it speaks to something that isn’t often polled: perceptions of motivations. I put together the chart above to capture the results, which should terrify Republican officials. By a nearly four-to-one margin, Americans believe GOP lawmakers in Congress aren’t concerned with the nation’s best interests. That’s just astounding.

Given the revulsion that the American public feels toward Congress in general, it’s unsurprising that Democrats on Capitol Hill are operating at a deficit in this regard as well, even if it isn’t nearly as steep as that faced by their Republican counterparts. But what should scare Republicans even more than their own abysmal numbers? President Obama’s. Despite every single thing that Republicans have said and done to delegitimize the President, ascribe evil intentions to him, and impute that he does not share American values, a majority of Americans think that he cares about what is best for the country more than being motivated by selfish intentions.

(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: The final blow: Americans think Republicans don’t care about them.)

The proof will arrive, or not arrive, in the fall of 2014 – all else is speculation until then.

Happiness Starts With Prohibited
Happiness Starts With Prohibited

Numbers 2013 sucks, by the way…

ABC/ Washington Post poll

ABC/ Washington Post poll


Continue reading “Americans Realize Republicans don’t care about them”

Linda Ronstadt Is Not A Republican

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Linda Ronstadt is one of those artists whose name is familiar, but I don’t have a deep understanding of their oeuvre. I own, and like, her California country-rock album Heart Like a Wheel, but I cannot say much about the rest of her output, other than Phillip K. Dick always raved about Ronstadt’s voice. That said, she sounds like an interesting cat, I’ll have to dig a bit deeper into her music.

Ms. Ronstadt was recently diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and acknowledged her singing career was over because of it. Stephen Deusner of Salon asked her a few questions…

SD: The descriptions of your childhood in Tucson are very poignant, but also very melancholy in the way the desert has changed culturally, geographically and especially politically. 

When you’re desert born, you love the desert. It’s a harsh environment. People ask me why I don’t go where there are trees and streams and mountains. But when there are too many trees around me, I can’t see and I think somebody is going to sneak up on me. It makes me nervous. And I love the desert. I love those big, wide, sweeping vistas. During the time I was gone, developers came in and scraped it all away with bulldozers. They put up the ugliest tract houses you’ve ever seen, which aren’t built to last. They’ll be tomorrow’s slums because people won’t be able to live in those houses very long. They’re starting another Dust Bowl era by scraping away the topsoil. People don’t realize how serious that is. The Dust Bowl was the biggest natural cataclysm of the 20th century, and it’s starting again and no one’s taking an interest in it. They just continue to scrape off the topsoil and turn the desert into a wasteland.

Is there anything that can be done?

They have to stop scraping up topsoil. We lose in topsoil the equivalent of the size of Texas every single year. Without topsoil you can’t even grow any food. But people are making money and they’re greedy. There’s no regulation because the Republicans who control those areas don’t want any regulation on anything. They want developers to be allowed to operate in a completely unbridled manner and make as much money as they can — even if that means taking it from other people. That’s wrong. If we’re going to have capitalism, we have to carefully regulate it.

That sounds very similar to the fracking controversy in Appalachia, where they continue to use this technique despite its horrible consequences.

They’re going to do fracking in the Central Valley in California, and there won’t be any regulation. The pollution will get into the water and destroy the farmland. It’s a terrible thing to do, but people are only thinking in the short term and the Republicans are full of climate change deniers and science deniers. They don’t want to deal with inconvenient facts.

Early in “Simple Dreams,” you write very briefly about the immigration controversy in Arizona, comparing the border to the Berlin Wall. 

What’s going on on the border is a disgrace. It’s just pure racism. They put the fence up as an affront to a country of incredibly rich cultural tradition. They didn’t put one up on the northern border. There’s no fence between the United States and Canada. So it’s just based on skin color. It’s racism.

…

Your diagnosis with Parkinson’s was so recent it didn’t even make it into the book. You’ve said that it has taken your voice. How else has it affected your day-to-day life? 

I’m now experiencing life as a disabled person. It’s quite a shock. The hardest thing is that I just can’t get things done without depending on other people to help me. It’s hard to ask, and I feel like I’m always imposing. But I really am limited. Falling and choking are big danger for people with Parkinson’s. I’ve already had a couple of spills, and I don’t want to have any more. It’s not easy moving. You try to turn around, and you’ll fall down. So going through airports and just living in hotel rooms is difficult. When I came out on this press junket, I didn’t know how I was going to survive it, but it turns out I can do a little more than I thought I could. I won’t be doing it very much in the future. There is no cure. I don’t expect them to find a cure either, unless we get the Republicans the hell out of Congress so they stop holding up stem cell research. That’s what’s most promising in terms of finding a cure for diabetes, for Parkinson’s, for MS, for all kinds of things. It’s a shame to have to suffer from something that we don’t have to suffer from.That’s what’s most promising in terms of finding a cure for diabetes, for Parkinson’s, for MS, for all kinds of things. It’s a shame to have to suffer from something that we don’t have to suffer from.

 

 

(click here to continue reading Linda Ronstadt: “There are always predators around, and you have to keep an eye out for them” – Salon.com.)

NewImage

Ronstadt

and from Mary Jordan of the Washington Post:

A 67-year-old woman in a black hoodie stepped gingerly down from a golf cart at last weekend’s National Book Festival on the Mall. Battling Parkinson’s disease, she steadied herself with two walking sticks, and headed, one careful step at a time, toward the stage.

The applause started as a small ripple as the first few people in the audience spotted her. Then it grew into a full-throated ovation by more than 500 fans as she stepped up onto the stage, smiled shyly, and flashed the luminous chestnut eyes that made America fall in love with Linda Ronstadt.

“I guess I have friends here,” she said, to the roaring approval of a crowd that skewed a little gray, many still with a bit of a crush on the woman who sang such songs as “Blue Bayou” and “You’re No Good.”

As part of the festival program, I interviewed Ronstadt onstage about her new memoir, “Simple Dreams,” which focuses on her upbringing in a musical family in Tucson and the evolution of her career. One of America’s most popular recording artists of the 1970s and 1980s, she has been called the most versatile singer of her generation, a talent who could master rock and country and mariachi. Because of Parkinson’s, she’s no longer able to sing.

As we spoke before a crowd of fans, many of whom had lined up hours early, Ronstadt’s backstage shyness faded. Onstage, she seemed stronger, a force — and very funny.

“We weren’t all having orgies and smoking a big spliff,” she said, when I asked her to talk about the “sex-drugs-and-rock-and-roll” lifestyle we all associate with rock stardom. Those stories are exaggerated, she said, and her nightlife was often cuddling up with her stuffed panda reading “Anna Karenina.” She admits that she did drugs, like so many others in her orbit then. But she said they weren’t really her thing: “My addiction was to reading.”

The jet-set days, a different city every night, were not always glamorous. Her luggage often didn’t arrive in time for the next gig, so she kept a favorite striped dress rolled up in her purse. She even wore it on “The Johnny Cash Show” and tossed it only because it was made of a “strange synthetic material that kept shrinking and shrinking” after so many washings in hotel sinks.

…

Millions of men in were in love with Ronstadt, but she never said “I do” to any of them. “I’ve had lots of nice boyfriends,” she said, describing herself as a devotee of “serial monogamy.” And, then to the delight of the crowd, she added, “with emphasis on the ‘serial.’ ” She was faithful to one boyfriend at a time, but never to one for all time.

“It just wasn’t a requirement for me. I’m not gifted that way. I have great respect for people who do make those kinds of compromises and really build each other up. The only reason to be with somebody is that they make you a better person and you make them a better person.”


Ronstadt famously dated California Gov. Jerry Brown in the late 1970s; they appeared together on the cover of Newsweek. In her memoir she said he was unlike many of the men she met through her music: “He was smart and funny, not interested in drinking or drugs, and lived his life carefully, with a great deal of discipline.”

Ronstadt said she is not political, per se, but she is a Democrat who gets fired up about the immigration debate, which hits close to home. Her father’s family has Mexican roots, and she told me she has many relatives in northern Mexico and Mexico City.

(click here to continue reading Linda Ronstadt, coping with Parkinson’s, reflecting on life in memoir, ‘Simple Dreams’ – The Washington Post.)

N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens

Seth Anderson0 comment

Eye see u Willis
Eye see u Willis

Oh, nothing to worry your pretty heads about

A series of agency PowerPoint presentations and memos describe how the N.S.A. has been able to develop software and other tools — one document cited a new generation of programs that “revolutionize” data collection and analysis — to unlock as many secrets about individuals as possible.

The spy agency, led by Gen. Keith B. Alexander, an unabashed advocate for more weapons in the hunt for information about the nation’s adversaries, clearly views its collections of metadata as one of its most powerful resources. N.S.A. analysts can exploit that information to develop a portrait of an individual, one that is perhaps more complete and predictive of behavior than could be obtained by listening to phone conversations or reading e-mails, experts say.

Phone and e-mail logs, for example, allow analysts to identify people’s friends and associates, detect where they were at a certain time, acquire clues to religious or political affiliations, and pick up sensitive information like regular calls to a psychiatrist’s office, late-night messages to an extramarital partner or exchanges with a fellow plotter.

(click here to continue reading N.S.A. Gathers Data on Social Connections of U.S. Citizens – NYTimes.com.)

PRISM
PRISM

except, as reported by Maureen Dowd of all people, the NSA has built a monster in Utah

The Bluffdale sinkhole, which has quietly started sucking in mountains of data in the shadow of mountains, is the lockbox. This squat, ugly complex of four buildings is the creepy symbol of the N.S.A.’s remorseless reach deep into our lives. I drove onto the Utah National Guard’s Camp Williams base to see the concrete data cloud up close.

Never mind puny terabytes. Or even exabytes, a handful of which can hold all knowledge from the dawn of man, according to estimates.

James Bamford, the chronicler of the untrammeled powers of the “Puzzle Palace,” as he calls the N.S.A., wrote in Wired that the Utah tower of Babel may be able to store a yottabyte. That is equal to a septillion bytes or about 500 quintillion (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) pages of text.

“It’s basically the N.S.A.’s external hard drive,” Bamford told me, noting that our phone call was no doubt being logged by the Bluffdale computers. “It holds more private information than anyplace else on earth.”

Bamford believes that the N.S.A. has transmogrified from an agency that “watched the Soviet Union to make sure it didn’t blow us up with nuclear weapons,” to one “that keeps collecting and collecting and collecting but doesn’t seem to do us any good.”

“They saw 9/11 and all these other terrorist attacks on CNN. They didn’t have a clue. The more electronic hay they stack on their haystack, the more difficult it is to find the needle.”

(click here to continue reading Creeping Cloud – NYTimes.com.)

Revolution of The Innocent
Revolution of The Innocent

because, in truth, the NSA doesn’t have to tell the truth about what it does, allegedly in our names:

Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon told me ruefully that on Thursday, “Alexander put in a lockbox information that he’s told the public he doesn’t have. This is what we’re dealing with.

“They think it’s O.K. to repeatedly say one thing to the public about domestic surveillance and do something completely different in private,” continued Wyden, who pressed Alexander about whether they’re collecting cellphone location information.

The senator is skeptical that the N.S.A. is open to reform, noting, “They’re just putting the same wine in a new bottle.”

We’ve always been at war with Eurasia, right?

Ted “Calgary” Cruz

Seth Anderson0 comment

Shaking Hands
Shaking Hands

I don’t know why exactly the blowhard Ted Cruz continues to fascinate, but he does.

Believe it or not, it looks like Sen. Ted Cruz is still a Canadian citizen. Although it has now been over a month since he promised to renounce his Canadian citizenship – which he obtained by virtue of his birth in Calgary, Alberta – there has been no indication (whether press release, statement or otherwise) announcing that he has followed through on the commitment.

(click here to continue reading Ted Cruz’s origins continue to haunt him – Salon.com.)

and his willfully ignorant schtick seems to have started grating on his fellow party members…

“It’s pretty clear they had no plan all along,” said a senior House Republican aide after the vote on Friday. “They already let Senate Democrats leave for the weekend. Where is the action?”

There are a several ways they can actually fight this battle. Senate Democrats ultimately need some Republican votes to advance any continuing resolution: 60 votes are required to begin and end debate; Democrats have 55. One option would be to take to the airwaves and grassroots to raise the heat on fellow Republicans to filibuster until Democratic leaders agree to keep the provision of the House’s bill that defunds Obamacare. Another option for Cruz and his colleagues is to raise a ruckus and demand an open debate, creating an opportunity to mount endless talking filibusters until Democrats fold.

But these options would risk a government shutdown as the eyes of the nation look upon them, subjecting them to fierce criticism for grinding federal services to a halt for the purpose of waging a divisive, ideological battle. Even worse, it risks damaging the GOP’s credibility in upcoming elections and would place the blame squarely on them.

One thing is for sure: Cruz and Lee will lose the battle. Democrats vow not to defund Obamacare, and even if Congress does so, President Barack Obama has threatened to veto it. The only question is if Cruz and Lee go down fighting and leave it all on the field, or if they relent and reveal that their Obamacare rhetoric was a bluff all along.

If, by some miracle, Senate Republicans are successful in delaying the legislation long enough to face a real government shutdown — the first since 1996 — the party is likely to pay a political price. Cruz has seemed unconcerned about the political blowback of such a scenario, likening a shutdown to an extended weekend in July.

(click here to continue reading Ted Cruz’s government shutdown posturing is exposed by fellow Republicans.)

Outhouse
Outhouse

And Cruz is not friends with some parts of the Republican leadership:

Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said Sunday morning that he’d received opposition research from other Republicans about Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) in advance of Cruz’s appearance this morning, a serious indication of how upset the GOP is with the Senator leading the risky charge to defund ObamaCare.

“This has been one of the strangest weeks I’ve ever had in Washington,” Wallace said. “As soon as we listed Ted Cruz as our featured guest this week, I got unsolicited research and questions, not from Democrats but from top Republicans, to hammer Cruz.”

“This was a strategy laid out by Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ted Cruz without any consultation with their colleagues,” said Karl Rove. “With all due respect to my junior Senator from Texas, I suspect this is the first time that the end game was described to any Republican Senator. They had to tune in to listen to you to find out what Ted’s next step was in the strategy.”

(click here to continue reading Chris Wallace: GOP Sent Fox Opposition Research on Ted Cruz | Mediaite.)

Steve Benen of Maddow blog has more:

From Ted Cruz’s op-ed this morning on a right-wing website1:

Senate Republicans should demand a 60-vote threshold for any effort that would add Obamacare funding back into the House bill. This is the battle line: Senate Republicans must stop Reid from rejecting the House bill and adding Obamacare funding with merely 51 votes.

The House bill must be protected.

That would be the House bill that Cruz has already said publicly that he expects to fail.

So, as a procedural matter, Cruz wants Senate Republicans to get behind him and vote, in near-complete unanimity, to filibuster the House bill they want to pass. Cruz will tell Reid and Senate Democratic leaders, “We’ll continue to block the bill we support until you agree to let us filibuster your amendments.”

Why would Dems agree to this? They wouldn’t.

But Cruz thinks he has some leverage. Indeed, when Harry Reid laughs in his face, Cruz will say, “Oh yeah? Either you agree to let us filibuster your amendments or we’ll continue to block the bill we support until the government shuts down.”

This plan could work if Senate Republicans were united around the idea. In fact, if nearly every GOP senator announced today, “We stand with Ted Cruz and we’ll all oppose the bill we support until Harry Reid meets our demands,” then the odds of a shutdown would increase dramatically.

But there’s no evidence this is likely to happen. On the contrary, quite a few GOP senators — none of whom actually likes Cruz — consider the whole scheme kind of silly and want Cruz to just go away. (Over the weekend, Republicans even started sending opposition research to Fox News about the junior senator from Texas.)

Making matters worse, even if Senate Republicans felt overwhelming pressure from unhinged Tea Party activists and actually endorsed this scheme, they’d make it impossible to blame Democrats for the shutdown — GOP senators have created the shutdown by filibustering their own bill.

 

 

Useful as a Canadian Penny
Useful as a Canadian Penny

Circling back to his citizenship woes, I have personal experience with Canadian rules, albeit with different end goals – I just wanted my U.S. Passport. I’ve always been a US citizen, but getting a passport was a bit of bureaucratic line-dancing. Ted Cruz is attempting to renounce his birth country for political reasons, and because a large portion of his base has spent the last 6 years gnashing their teeth that President Obama wasn’t a natural born citizen, despite the fact that Obama’s mother is from Kansas.

In order to fulfill his promise to the voters, Cruz must therefore submit proof that he is a U.S. citizen, which will be trickier for him than for most people. Cruz has thus far released only his Canadian birth certificate, which confirms that he was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1970, and additionally states that his mother was born in Wilmington, Dela. The second part is crucial – Cruz’s only claim to U.S. citizenship through his mother – but it is also hearsay. The birth certificate is primary evidence of Cruz’s own birth, but the entry about his mother merely records her assertion to the Alberta Division of Vital Statistics. Even though I don’t personally dispute what he says, “My mother said so” is not what is usually meant by “proof.”

How, then, can Ted Cruz prove his U.S. citizenship to the satisfaction of the Canadian authorities? He could submit his passport, or perhaps the document called a Consular Certificate of Birth Abroad (if his parents obtained one), but those would have the same hearsay problems as his birth certificate. The only sure-fire evidence, therefore, would be his mother’s birth certificate, presumably issued when she was born in Delaware.

But even that presents a problem. Only one of Ted’s parents was a citizen when he was born (his father is a Cuban émigré who did not take U.S. citizenship until 2005), and he therefore falls under a special section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that applies to “Birth Abroad to One Citizen and One Alien Parent.” Under that provision, Cruz only qualifies for American citizenship if his mother was “physically present” in the United States for 10 years prior to his birth, five of which had to be after she reached the age of 14. The only definitive way to prove Eleanor Cruz’s 10 years of physical presence would be with documents such as leases, school registration, utility bills or tax records.

(click here to continue reading Ted Cruz’s origins continue to haunt him – Salon.com.)

Glancing at the update U.S. Passport rules, I’m glad I jumped through the hoops when I did, tough as they were, because rules and requirements look more complex now. I mean, Jesus H., just read what I would have to do now. Thankfully my situation was taken care of several years ago. In any case, Ted Cruz is smart enough to realize he may have trouble quickly making this issue go away, especially if his mother didn’t file the proper paperwork (Consular Certificate of Birth Abroad) upon his birth. 

Footnotes:
  1. Real Clear Politics [↩]

Launch of Green Tea Coalition Drives a Wedge Through Georgia’s Tea Party

Seth Anderson0 comment

Morning profits
Morning profits

Merits further attention, especially if replicated in other states besides Georgia…

“The Tea Party has formed an unholy alliance with the left,” Debbie Dooley recalls a panicked member of Georgia’s big energy lobby lamenting. Dooley, a co-founder of the Atlanta Tea Party Patriots, doesn’t deny the charges. In fact, she is set this Tuesday to celebrate the official launch of the Green Tea Coalition – the same “unholy alliance” of right and left grassroots that has big oil interests reeling.

“It’s an unholy alliance because they see it as a threat to them,” Dooley said, speaking ahead of the launch. “In the past, the elites on both the right and the left got away with it. On the right, they’d say, ‘This person’s on the left. Stay away from them,’ On the left, they’d say, ‘They’re radical, they’re the Tea Party. Stay away from them.’ “But we got through all that bull, got to know each other, and started working together,” she said.

(click here to continue reading Launch of Green Tea Coalition Drives a Wedge Through Georgia’s Tea Party.)

Confessions I See Through To the End
Confessions I See Through To the End

especially because the core truth is that groups like the Koch Brothers do not have the country’s best interest at heart, only in protecting their own financial positions. If they could manipulate working and middle class people into supporting laws that only benefit the 1%, then that is money well spent, for the 1%.

The danger was that conservatives – whose politics have traditionally aligned with the interests of corporate America – would take some of the ideas brewing in the teapot too far. Conservative Americans had begun to wholly embrace the idea that there was such a thing as “crony capitalism,” that certain powerful industries didn’t need to be subsidized for under-performing, or bailed out for failing, and that local and individual autonomy was more important than maintaining the profit structures of big industries.

Those ideas, taken to their logical conclusions, might have led to a conservative revolution that would have severely crippled the power of industries like Koch and Southern Company. The Koch plan, then, was to jump into the fray: a corporate entity hidden among the throngs of one of the largest political movements in decades. On the fertile ground of an emergent movement, Koch would sow their genetically modified seeds of ideology. The idea was to tweak the message of the Tea Party just enough to reroute the movement’s trajectory in such a way that, far from being the bad guys, industrialists could cast themselves as the victims and even allies of average Americans.

“We don’t need taxpayer funded government subsidies and renewable energy mandates,” AFP Georgia wrote in a statement on the Georgia solar plan. “The government has spent $14 billion since 2009 propping up renewable energy projects. They wouldn’t have to do that if the technology was more market ready.”

See? AFP is on the side of the people, standing up against big government subsidies for technology that may not even be ready for prime time. The fact that solar even requires government subsidies proves it isn’t ready, so they claim.

But just don’t expect AFP to apply the same standard to Koch-style industries. Between 1994 and 2009, U.S. oil and gas industries amassed nearly $450 billion in subsidies, compared to a relatively paltry $6 billion for renewable energy over the same period.

And don’t expect AFP to rail against Southern Company’s $8.3 billion federal loan guarantee for its new nuclear projects, either – despite its being the same type of loan granted to solar power company Solyndra, which AFP spent over $8 million to defame between 2011 to 2012.

Why The US Congress Is So Dysfunctional

Seth Anderson0 comment

Your Radiant Squares
Your Radiant Squares

If you were told you needed to spend 5 hours of every day in office doing a certain activity, wouldn’t you assume that activity was the biggest reason you were hired for the job? The US Congress is dysfunctional for a lot of reasons, but this is a large one.

After the elections in November, Democratic Party leaders gave a PowerPoint presentation urging their freshman members to spend as much as four hours a day making fund-raising calls while in Washington, and an additional hour of “strategic outreach” holding breakfasts or “meet and greets” with possible financial supporters. That adds up to more time than these first-term lawmakers were advised to spend on Congressional business.

(click here to continue reading For Freshmen in the House, Seats of Plenty – NYTimes.com.)

Of course it buys happiness
Of course it buys happiness

Five hours a day fundraising, on average, probably some days more. How is this even considered serving the citizens? How does this advance the national interest? It only advances the moneyed interests…

The amount of time that members of Congress in both parties spend fundraising is widely known to take up an obscene portion of a typical day — whether it’s “call time” spent on the phone with potential donors, or in person at fundraisers in Washington or back home. Seeing it spelled out in black and white, however, can be a jarring experience for a new member, as related by some who attended the November orientation.

…

Former Rep. Tom Perriello (D-Va.), now a top official at the Center for American Progress, said that the four hours allocated to fundraising may even be “low-balling the figure so as not to scare the new Members too much.”

Congress members make the dreaded calls from a room in the office of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or a similar one at the headquarters of the National Republican Congressional Committee. After votes in the House, a stream of congressmen and women can be seen filing out of the Capitol and, rather than returning to their offices, heading to rowhouses nearby on First Street for call time, or directly to the parties’ headquarters. The rowhouses, where Larson said he prefers to make calls, are typically owned by lobbyists, fundraisers or members themselves, and are used for call time because it’s illegal to solicit campaign cash from the official congressional office. Former Rep. Walt Minnick’s (D-Idaho) career in finance enabled him to buy a Capitol Hill rowhouse that he allows Democrats to use for call time. “There’s less turmoil and background noise” in the rowhouses compared with the DCCC call center, said Rep. Brad Miller (D-N.C.), who retired from office this year.

 

(click here to continue reading Call Time For Congress Shows How Fundraising Dominates Bleak Work Life.)

Wheat Reaping Threatened by Visa Cap

Seth Anderson0 comment

Wheat
Wheat

Another reason for immigration reform: costs of commodities like wheat are going to be significantly higher if there aren’t enough workers come harvest time. You’d think the rural GOP from mid-America places like Iowa would be cognizant of this problem, instead of letting racists like Steve “Cantaloupe” King dictate immigration policy.

Alan Bjerga of Bloomberg reports:

Great Plains wheat-cutting teams, once filled by U.S. farm kids, now rely on foreigners for about one-third of the workers who cut grain sold to Cargill Inc. and others, according to trade group U.S. Custom Harvesters Inc. The highly skilled itinerant workers, a little-noted component of the immigration overhaul struggling through Congress this year, have become essential to the nation’s $17.9 billion wheat crop. “Wheat has a relatively short window to be harvested, so you need to have enough people available at the right time,” said Terry Kastens, a retired economics professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas, who surveys combine operators.

Proposals in both houses of Congress to impose a cap on the number of work visas available to agricultural laborers may leave harvesters out of luck if the quota is already filled before they arrive for the season that begins in May. Rural Economies Costs would go up without the harvesters, harming rural economies, Kastens said.

One cutting crew will serve dozens of farms, helping to keep smaller operations in business by saving capital costs for farmers who then don’t need to buy their own combines, he said.

Afrikaners — South Africans of mostly European ancestry — have a special advantage because the U.S. summer months coincide with their winter, meaning they can harvest at home and then hit the road. And they speak English. They bunk with crewmates in a mobile trailer and earn a little more than $20 an hour, hauling combines that can cost $350,000 in semi-tractor trailers across the Plains with stops in dozens of fields.

(click here to continue reading Afrikaners Reaping Colorado Wheat Threatened by Visa Cap – Bloomberg.)

The Sky Is Folding Under You
The Sky Is Folding Under You

Republicans Rally Against Reality

Seth Anderson0 comment

Ask For More, Settle For Less
Ask For More, Settle For Less

Dr. Krugman wonders if the Republicans will ever stop being cowards when faced with the realities of governing a pluralistic nation. I’m skeptical.

What’s happening now is that the G.O.P. is trying to convert Mr. Ryan’s big talk into actual legislation — and is finding, unsurprisingly, that it can’t be done. Yet Republicans aren’t willing to face up to that reality. Instead, they’re just running away.

When it comes to fiscal policy, then, Republicans have fallen victim to their own con game. And I would argue that something similar explains how the party lost its way, not just on fiscal policy, but on everything.

Think of it this way: For a long time the Republican establishment got its way by playing a con game with the party’s base. Voters would be mobilized as soldiers in an ideological crusade, fired up by warnings that liberals were going to turn the country over to gay married terrorists, not to mention taking your hard-earned dollars and giving them to Those People. Then, once the election was over, the establishment would get on with its real priorities — deregulation and lower taxes on the wealthy.

At this point, however, the establishment has lost control. Meanwhile, base voters actually believe the stories they were told — for example, that the government is spending vast sums on things that are a complete waste or at any rate don’t do anything for people like them. (Don’t let the government get its hands on Medicare!) And the party establishment can’t get the base to accept fiscal or political reality without, in effect, admitting to those base voters that they were lied to.

The result is what we see now in the House: a party that, as I said, seems unable to participate in even the most basic processes of governing.

(click here to continue reading Republicans Against Reality – NYTimes.com.)

Free Congress From Grover Norquist

Seth Anderson0 comment

Interesting discussion from Professor Robert Thurman, attempting to start a meme, questioning why signing Grover Norquist’s pledge to destroy the government is not a subversive, impeachable act. The professor has a point: signing an oath to an unelected organization whose sole purpose is to starve the “beast” of government is akin to signing an oath to violently overthrow the US Constitution. Unpatriotic at the very least, and maybe an impeachable offense. Why should we hire (i.e., elect) people who hate the country so much?

Give a listen to his ten minute speech, what do you think? 

The Oath of office1 reads:

I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Americans For Tax Reforms oath against the interest of the United States Government reads:

I, ________________________, pledge to the taxpayers of the state of _______________________, and to the American people that I will:
ONE, oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rates for individuals and/or businesses;
and TWO, oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates.

Footnotes:
  1. full name is United States Uniformed Services Oath of Office [↩]

Ted Cruz does not care about you, Republican grown-ups

Seth Anderson2 Comments

O
O

The standard bearer of the 2013 Republican Party is the excrement also known as Ted Cruz, and the Republican leadership can’t stand it. The question then becomes whether or not Ted Cruz and his ilk ever lie and bully their way into actual political power / shudder. 

A small contingent of the more Tea Party-ish Republican senators has decided to shut down the government unless “Obamacare” is “defunded.” (Or, at least, they plan to threaten to shut down the government.) Defunding Obamacare is not really as simple as it sounds. The ACA involves a lot of “mandatory” as opposed to “discretionary” spending, so you can’t really effectively repeal the program through the Continuing Resolution. (Here’s Karl Rove explaining the issue.) The plan was Sen. Mike Lee’s (R-Utah) idea, but its current most vocal proponent is Ted Cruz, R-Texas, a very smart man who purposefully talks like a very crazy man, because he understands how to become a celebrity in the modern conservative movement.

Cruz doesn’t care if the plan makes sense, either as policy or even as political tactics. If he cared about passing conservative legislation, he wouldn’t spend all of his time purposefully angering his Republican colleagues. If he cared about the Republican Party’s national image and reputation, as opposed to his own image within the conservative activist community, he would have offered rhetorical support for immigration reform, as Rand Paul did. Cruz is in it for himself and himself alone. A majority of Americans want the GOP to be more conciliatory and moderate. A majority of Republicans strongly believe that the party must be even more conservative.

 …

To all these critics, the only reasonable response is, hope you enjoy this bed you made for yourselves. Ted Cruz is the right man for the decadent decline stage of the conservative movement, which has always encouraged the advancement of fact-challenged populist extremists, but always with the understanding that they’d take a back seat to the sensible business interests when it came time to exercise power. The result has been a huge number of Republican activists who couldn’t figure out why the True Conservatives they kept voting for kept failing to achieve the creation of the perfect conservative state once in office. That led to an ongoing backlash against everyone in the party suspected of anything less than perfect ideological purity. Meanwhile all the crazies got rich simply for being crazy. There’s no longer any compelling reason, in other words, not to act like Ted Cruz, and the result is Ted Cruz.

(click here to continue reading Ted Cruz does not care about you, Republican “grown-ups” – Salon.com.)

Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit

Seth Anderson0 comment

Money Won't Change You
Money Won’t Change You

David Sirota has an excellent point about the conservative narrative about Detroit. Notice how many times pensions get mentioned in coverage of Detroit’s bankruptcy and how many times corporate welfare does. 50 times to once? Something like that kind of ratio. Basically ignored, in other words. Corporate welfare is sacrosanct; pensions, not so much.

That brings us to how this all plays into the right’s push to enact ever more regressive tax cuts, protect endless corporate welfare and legislate new reductions in workers’ guaranteed pensions.

These latter objectives may seem unrelated, but they all complement each other when presented in the most politically opportunistic way. It’s a straightforward conservative formula: the right blames state and municipal budget problems exclusively on public employees’ retirement benefits, often underfunding those public pensions for years. The money raided by those pension funds is then used to enact expensive tax cuts and corporate welfare programs. After years of robbing those pension funds to pay for such giveaways, a crisis inevitably hits, and workers’ pension benefits are blamed — and then slashed. Meanwhile, the massive tax cuts and corporate subsidies are preserved, because we are led to believe they had nothing to do with the crisis. Ultimately, the extra monies taken from retirees are then often plowed into even more tax cuts and more corporate subsidies.

We’ve seen this trick in states all over America lately. In Rhode Island, for instance, the state underfunded its public pensions for years, while giving away $356 million in a year in corporate subsidies (including an epically embarrassing $75 million to Curt Schilling). It then converted the pension system into a Wall Street boondoggle), all while preserving the subsidies.

Similarly, in Kentucky, the state raided its public pension funds to finance $1.4 billion a year in tax subsidies, and then when the crisis hit, lawmakers there slashed pension benefits — not the corporate subsidies.

The list of states and cities following this path goes on — but you get the point. In the conservative narrative about budgets in general, the focus is on the aggregate annual $333 million worth of state and local pension shortfalls — and left out of the story is the fact that, according to the New York Times, “states, counties and cities are giving up more than $80 billion each year to companies” in the form of tax loopholes and subsidies.”

The mythology around Detroit, then, is just another version of this propaganda.

(click here to continue reading Don’t buy the right-wing myth about Detroit – Salon.com.)

Stilton with candied lemon peel
Stilton with candied lemon peel

and those evil, greedy workers are always the problem. How dare they depend upon $19,000 a year pensions – that they paid with their work for 20 years or longer – when corporations need free cheese! $80,000,000,000 a year in free cheese – cheese that could be spread elsewhere…

So, for instance, from the administration of right-wing Gov. Rick Snyder, we are hearing a lot of carping about the $3.5 billion in pension obligations that are part of the city’s overall $18 billion in debt. The focus leads casual onlookers to believe that — even though they on average get a pension of just $19,000 a year — municipal workers’ supposed greed single-handedly bankrupted the city. What we aren’t hearing about, though, is the city and state’s long history of underfunding its pensions, and using the raided money to spend billions of dollars on corporate welfare.

For a good sense of some of the most expensive, absurd and utterly wasteful boondoggles in the Detroit area over the last few decades, read this piece from Crain’s Detroit or see this 2011 article entitled “Detroit’s Corporate Welfare Binge” by Detroit News columnist Bill Johnson. Alternately, recall this is in the heart of a region that infamously spent $55.4 million in 1975 (or a whopping $180 million in inflation-adjusted dollars) on a football stadium and then sold it off for $583,000. Or, just note that Detroit is the largest city in a state that, according to the New York Times, spends more per capita on corporate subsidies — $672 (per capita) or $6.6 billion a year — than most other states.

It Pays to Play
It Pays to Play

There’s more to the myth of course, NAFTA, taxes and the like.

In the conservative telling of this particular parable, Detroit faces a fiscal emergency because high taxes supposedly drove a mass exodus from the city, and the supposedly unbridled greed of unions forced city leaders to make fiscally irresponsible pension promises to municipal employees. Written out of the tale is any serious analysis of macroeconomic shifts, international economic policy failures, the geography of recent recessions and unsustainable corporate welfare spending.

This is classic right-wing dogma — the kind that employs selective storytelling to use a tragic event as a means to radical ends. In this case, the ends are — big shocker! — three of the conservative movement’s larger long-term economic priorities: 1) preservation of job-killing trade policies 2) immunity for corporations and 3) justification for budget policies that continue to profligately subsidize the rich.

Read David Sirota’s entire indictment yourself, and remember it when you next hear a bloviator discuss Detroit pensions, or austerity…

Darrell Issa saved by the news cycle

Seth Anderson0 comment

Master and Servant
Master and Servant

Remember how this faux controversy unfolded next time Darrell Issa is talking. He is not an honest man, nor should he be trusted.

In particular, the controversy over IRS scrutiny of Tea Party groups has largely disappeared from the headlines. Considering how much of a political gift that particular controversy was to Republicans, you’d expect them to be upset about this fact. But recent revelations have actually given them cause to celebrate the nation’s short attention span.

It was revealed this week, in fact, that the entire scandal was essentially a set-up. First, acting IRS commissioner Danny Werfel testified that the IRS also scrutinized and challenged groups with names that included “Occupy” and “progressive.” IRS documents released by House Democrats supported his testimony. The IG didn’t uncover targeting of liberal groups because it wasn’t asked to.

The spokesman for the Treasury inspector general noted their audit acknowledged there were other watch lists. But the spokesman added: “We did not review the use, disposition, purpose or content of the other BOLOs. That was outside the scope of our audit.”

We then learned that the entire reason the Treasury Inspector General highlighted IRS scrutiny of conservative groups, but not liberal groups, was because the IG had been instructed to do so by Issa.

(click here to continue reading Issa saved by the news cycle – Salon.com.)

See – no scandal, just partisan political bullshit to attempt to embarrass President Obama’s Administration. 

I think the bigger problem is actually the designation that allows political organizations to be tax-free at all. Why this loophole? Eliminate the 501(c )(4) category outright, because it is a joke. Corporations can funnel unlimited cash to these alleged social welfare organizations, untrammeled by disclosure; is that really good for the political process?

To be tax-exempt as a social welfare organization described in Internal Revenue Code (IRC) section 501(c)(4), an organization must not be organized for profit and must be operated exclusively to promote social welfare. Theearnings of a section 501(c)(4) organization may not inure to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual. If the organization engages in an excess benefit transaction with a person having substantial influence over the organization, an excise tax may be imposed on the person and any managers agreeing to the transaction. See Introduction to IRC 4958 for more information about this excise tax. For a more detailed discussion of the exemption requirements for section 501(c)(4) organizations, see IRC 501(c)(4) Organizations. For more information about applying for exemption, see Application for Recognition of Exemption.

To be operated exclusively to promote social welfare, an organization must operate primarily to further the common good and general welfare of the people of the community (such as by bringing about civic betterment and social improvements). For example, an organization that restricts the use of its facilities to employees of selected corporations and their guests is primarily benefiting a private group rather than the community and, therefore, does not qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. Similarly, an organization formed to represent member-tenants of an apartment complex does not qualify, because its activities benefit the member-tenants and not all tenants in the community, while an organization formed to promote the legal rights of all tenants in a particular community may qualify under section 501(c)(4) as a social welfare organization. An organization is not operated primarily for the promotion of social welfare if its primary activity is operating a social club for the benefit, pleasure or recreation of its members, or is carrying on a business with the general public in a manner similar to organizations operated for profit link].

Seeking legislation germane to the organization’s programs is a permissible means of attaining social welfare purposes. Thus, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may further its exempt purposes through lobbying as its primary activity without jeopardizing its exempt status. An organization that has lost its section 501(c)(3) status due to substantial attempts to influence legislation may not thereafter qualify as a section 501(c)(4) organization. In addition, a section 501(c)(4) organization that engages in lobbying may be required to either provide notice to its members regarding the percentage of dues paid that are applicable to lobbying activities or pay a proxy tax. For more information, see Lobbying Issues .

The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. However, a section 501(c)(4) social welfare organization may engage in some political activities, so long as that is not its primary activity. However, any expenditure it makes for political activities may be subject to tax under section 527(f). For further information regarding political and lobbying activities of section 501(c) organizations, see Election Year Issues, Political Campaign and Lobbying Activities of IRC 501(c)(4), (c)(5), and (c)(6) Organizations, and Revenue Ruling 2004-6.

Syrian Intervention Is A Bad Idea, Mr. President

Seth Anderson0 comment

California Army National Guard FMS # 5
California Army National Guard FMS # 5

Speaking of the foolish idea of the US sending our military to Syria, Ramzy Mardini makes some good points:

AMMAN, Jordan — ACCORDING to Bill Clinton, Barack Obama risks looking like a “fool” if he decides not to intervene militarily in Syria’s continuing civil war. Likening the situation to his decision to intervene in Kosovo in 1999, Mr. Clinton said Tuesday that if he hadn’t used force to stop Serbia’s campaign of ethnic cleansing, critics might have said: “You could have stopped this by dropping a few bombs. Why didn’t you do it?” Mr. Clinton believes that Mr. Obama could end up looking like a “total wuss” if he doesn’t intervene. And it seems he’s going to act.

(click here to continue reading Bad Idea, Mr. President – NYTimes.com.)

Guns Or Butter

Guns Or Butter 

Why is America so hell-bent upon getting involved in another nation’s civil war? What interest does it serve? I have yet to hear a compelling reason the US should be involved.

For nearly two years, the Obama administration has described the Syrian regime as having “lost all legitimacy” and “clinging to power.” And yet, it has surprisingly endured. That’s because neither assertion is really accurate. Mr. Assad still has strong support from many Syrians, including members of the Sunni urban class. While the assistance Syria receives from its external allies, like Iran and Russia, is important, it would be inconsequential if the Assad regime were not backed by a significant portion of the population.

Interventionists tend to detach their actions from longer-term consequences. This myopia is often coupled with a prevalent misunderstanding of the political and cultural context of where they want to intervene. Both problems are present in the current American approach to Syria.

The Syrian revolution isn’t democratic or secular; the more than 90,000 fatalities are the result of a civil war, not a genocide — and human rights violations have been committed on both sides.

Moreover, the rebels don’t have the support or trust of a clear majority of the population, and the political opposition is neither credible nor representative. Ethnic cleansing against minorities is more likely to occur under a rebel-led government than under Mr. Assad; likewise, the possibility of chemical weapons’ falling into the hands of terrorist groups only grows as the regime weakens.

And finally, a rebel victory is more likely to destabilize Iraq and Lebanon, and the inevitable disorder of a post-Assad Syria constitutes a greater threat to Israel than the status quo.

Not since the 2003 invasion of Iraq has American foreign policy experienced a strategic void so pervasive.

The responsible role of a lone superpower is not to pick sides in a civil war; it’s to help enable conflict resolution while maintaining a policy of neutrality. Instead, the United States came down on one side of a regional sectarian conflict, inadvertently fomenting Sunni hubris and Shiite fear — the same effects (but in reverse) caused by America’s involvement in the Iraq war.

I sincerely hope President Obama comes to his senses, and ignores the warmongers.  

American Intervention in Syria

Seth Anderson0 comment

First:

WASHINGTON — For two years, President Obama has resisted being drawn deeper into the civil war in Syria. It was a miserable problem, he told aides, and not one he thought he could solve. At most, it could be managed. And besides, he wanted to be remembered for getting out of Middle East wars, not embarking on new ones.

(click here to continue reading Heavy Pressure Led to Decision by Obama on Syrian Arms – NYTimes.com.)

Sounds reasonable enough to me. But war is the answer for everything, lest we forget.

MoDo - Get a Clue
MoDo – Get a Clue

I ignore the mean girl burbling of Maureen Dowd as much as possible; the only topic she writes with any clarity is sexual abuse and the Catholic Church. Otherwise, she’s predictable, and not interesting. 

To whit:

The oddity of Obama’s being taken to the leadership woodshed by the Democrat who preceded him and the Republican who failed to pre-empt him was not lost on anyone. When Obama appointed Clinton “the Secretary of ’Splaining Stuff,” he didn’t think Bill would be ’splaining how lame Barry was.

 

(click here to continue reading Bill Schools Barry on Syria – NYTimes.com.)

Yes, apparently, we are all foolish in our opposition to military intervention in Syria. President Obama is lame because he hasn’t already dropped nuclear bombs on Damascus. Only John McCain and Bill Clinton, and their ilk have all the facts, according to Dowd. Ironically, when President Clinton was in office, MoDo penned OpEd after OpEd ridiculing him. But Obama is even less of MoDo’s favorite, so now we get:

The less Obama leads, the more likely it is that history will see him as a pallid interregnum between two chaotic Clinton eras.

Yes, Hillary is going to lead the charge into Syria, and hence right into the White House. Uh huh. 

Fading One By One
Fading One By One

If the reason the US is “forced” to invade Syria is because 90,000 Syrians have died, Syria will have to get in line. More automobile accidents take place in a weekend than the number of civilians allegedly killed by chemical weapons in Syria.

“Our intelligence community has high confidence in that assessment given multiple, independent streams of information. The intelligence community estimates that 100 to 150 people have died from detected chemical weapons attacks in Syria to date; however, casualty data is likely incomplete. “

(click here to continue reading US says it will arm Syrian rebels following chemical weapons tests | World news | The Guardian.)

and

MOSCOW — The Russian government on Saturday stepped up its attack on the accusation by the United States that Syria had used chemical weapons against the rebels in its civil war, saying that evidence cited by the Americans was unreliable because the samples were not properly monitored until they reached a laboratory.

The angry criticism by Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov at a news conference in Moscow was a setback to the United States’ efforts to forge a common position with the Kremlin on how to end the conflict, which has killed more than 90,000 Syrians.

(click here to continue reading Russia Faults Proof of Use of Chemicals in Syrian War – NYTimes.com.)

Not to mention:

The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, has said that any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria using US fighter jets and Patriot missiles from Jordan would violate international law.

…

He said the evidence must meet the standards of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which specifies that samples taken from blood, urine and clothing can be considered reliable evidence only if supervised by organisation experts from the time they are gathered to when they are delivered to a laboratory.

Lavrov, after meeting with his Italian counterpart Emma Bonino, scoffed at suggestions that Assad’s regime would use chemical weapons now in light of its apparent growing advantage against the rebels.

“The regime doesn’t have its back to the wall. What would be the sense of the regime using chemical weapons, moreover at such a small quantity?” he said.

(click here to continue reading Syria no-fly zone would violate international law, says Russia | World news | guardian.co.uk.)

Hey, but to Maureen Dowd, and her boyfriend, John McCain, who cares! Invade away, and figure out why later, after the shooting has started…

Gordon Lightfoot Sounds Like A Jerk

Seth Anderson1 Comment

War Memories
War Memories

Uncut editor Allan Jones recounts interviewing Canadian curmudgeon Gordon Lightfoot sometime in the mid-70s…

How we come to be talking about it, I can’t remember, but the next thing you know, Gordon’s lambasting the young American draft dodgers who made lives for themselves in exile in Canada rather than get shipped off to Vietnam. As far as he’s concerned, Canada should have booted them all out, sent them packing back to the States or banged them up in prison.

A man, he says, is nothing without a sense of duty. If he’d been an American, he would have volunteered to fight in Southeast Asia.

“Only Americans know the anguish of that war, but what kind of leniency can you extend to a guy who skips out of his country when 50,000 men get killed in a war?”

I may in some circumstances have let this pass. But during the long wait for Gordon, I appear to have grown somewhat cantankerous. So I launch into a patently ridiculous speech about America and Vietnam and the peace movement, generally coming on here like a veteran of the Weather Underground or the SLA, a history of random bombings on an FBI rap sheet, guns stashed in every cupboard of a South Compton safe-house, Patty Hearst trussed up in a closet close-by, peeing on the carpet and going out of her mind.

“Why didn’t I write about the war?” he says, in answer to that very question. “It was none of my goddamn business,” he says. “The United States at that time was a target for every loose tongue around. I didn’t think it was my place to say anything. I have,” he goes on, “a lot of sympathy for America. I also make a lot of money there. And if you don’t mind me saying so, some of the nicest people on earth are Americans and I wish you wouldn’t dwell on this particular subject. I suggest we talk about something else.”

(click here to continue reading ‘Even worse than Lou Reed. . .’ – Uncut.co.uk.)

Yeah, screw you Gordon Lightfoot. I never liked your schmaltzy songs in the first place.