Tag Archives: Republican Bamboozlement

Watching the CRI Sink Into Irrevelancy

Not that they were especially relevant in the first place. Their factually-challenged and ideologically-driven attempts to join the *debate* has largely been a flop, yet we find John Stapleford has been able to get more space at the NJ editorial page to try to sow their confusion to Delawareans.

Today’s missive wants us to know that we should be wary of Public-Private Partnerships. You should make a point to go read the whole thing, because this is a new level of mess from Stapleford. While I have no idea whether Stapleford is responsible for the title of the piece, there isn’t anything that Stapleford is attempting to critique here that counts as a real public-private partnership. Those are specific arrangements between a public entity and a private one to manage capital and risk to get something done. This is mostly done for infrastructure but there are other applications.

In any event, Stapleford starts with abit of nostalgia for a past Chamber of Commerce President who was skeptical of the creation of a Small Business Technical Support Center (but it happened anyway). And somehow this is meant to have something to do with the Chamber acquiescing to an increase in the gross-receipts tax a few years back. His point here is something of a real mess, but he glides right by two key things — one was that the state was facing a financial cliff and there were tax increases, program cuts and salary roll backs for state employees everywhere. There weren’t many Delawareans who weren’t hit by the effort to balance the budget. Credit to Jack Markell AND the Chamber for recognizing that everyone needed to share the pain.

The rest of his piece is too hard to really tease out any real coherent thread. He throws around more numbers that you shouldn’t expect to have any data quality. But if I squint and look at this sideways,it looks as though the academic Stapleford is trying to make us believe that the government as a consumer of goods and services in the economy is somehow not especially legit. Which is completely nuts — no matter what you think the government ought to be doing, it will be buying or leasing Xerox machines (and toner!), buying office supplies, buying gear for police, firefighters, soldiers and so on. A private sector company who has a contract to produce the uniforms of soldiers or police officers is hiring people, buying equipment and sending money into the economy. And the government as a consumer of goods doesn’t count as a public-private partnership. The government paving the road in front of your house or repairing the water main hires a contractor to do that and that contractor (his employees and suppliers) are delighted for the business. And most of them competed for that business.

This piece is worth reading for its sheer incoherence, really. There isn’t much of a point outside of a recitation of various ideologies not backed up by any data or even a real narrative. Shame that the News Journal keeps thinking that this is worthy of their editorial page. But apparently if you are in a *think tank* you are expected to produce *think pieces*. One day Stapleford just might do that — but not today.

If America Loses, Eric Cantor Wins

Last week with much fanfare House Majority Leader Eric Cantor pulled out of the negotiations on the debt ceiling. He said it was all the Democrats fault because they insisted that revenues had to be raised. Apparently stomping his feet and holding his breath until he turned blue wasn’t working. Could Cantor have another motive for pulling out of the talks besides love of rich people and hatred of taxes?

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively “shorts” long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.)

According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,000 in the same fund. Contacted by Salon this week, Cantor’s office gave no indication that the Virginia Republican, who has played a leading role in the debt ceiling negotiations, has divested himself of these holdings since his last filing. Unless an agreement can be reached, the U.S. could begin defaulting on its debt payments on Aug. 2. If that happens and Cantor is still invested in the fund, the value of his holdings would skyrocket.

“If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, investors would start fleeing U.S. Treasuries,” said Matt Koppenheffer, who writes for the investment website the Motley Fool. “Yields would rise, prices would fall, and the Proshares ETF should do very well. It would spike.”

Gee, what a coincidence, Proshares ETF stock is up more than 3% since Cantor tanked the talks. By now we’ve all heard the Republican presidential candidates with their gloom & doom about America’s future. Democrats have carefully tip-toed into saying perhaps Republicans want to sabotage the economy on purpose. Until now it looked like the motive was to get rid of the president, but could personal financial gain be another one?

Anyone Know There Is *Another* GOP Presidential Debate Tonite?

Well, there is one and go figure — the Clown Show gets to debate itself. Of course, this is one more exercise is just how much batshit crazy these guys will commit to in order to get the approval of the teajadis. It is on CNN at 8pm tonite — being broadcast from St. Anselm College in NH.

Joshua Green from The Atlantic has 7 Things to Watch For.

Are any of you going to watch? Found any good drinking games for tonite’s circus?

What do you think folks should be on the watch for during tonight’s debate?

Weekend Open Thread

It’s the weekend, and here is your Open Thread.

Quiz time! What does your car say about you? 20 questions that are supposed to get at your vehicle signification. Based on my answers, my car says:

You are a typical road user; the car plays an important role in your life but it must be reliable and easy to live with, and most of all safe.
Your car says to other people that your family, and their wellbeing, is your first priority.
If there’s money there to be spent, you’d rather it go towards ‘the more important things’ in life.

Meh.

So what do you think? Does your car say something about your personality?

Even more fun — Sean Hannity interviews some random group of so-called experts who want you to know that Sesame Street will make your children into fabulous gay socialists. Seriously, watch this bit of pathetic bullshit:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ypsojc5vFg&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Everytime you think that GOP clownshow can’t get any worse, here they go. And Ken Blackwell as an expert at anything? Jesus, this fool probably thinks Sesame Street is responsible for the fact that he can’t count.

What interests you this weekend?

I’m Shocked, Shocked to Find That Earmarks Are Going On In Here!

Earmarks — didn’t you think that they were all done with? I mean, the Republicans in Congress showily promised that this Congress would mark the End of Earmarks As We Know It.

Well, guess what is back? Earmarks! Now they’ve renamed them to Member Requests, )and created their own slush fund in order to fund these projects) but the teajadi freshmen who campaigned against earmarks and the so-called wasteful spending they represented have found a way to get their fair share of the pork:

The defense bill that just passed the House of Representatives includes a back-door fund that lets individual members of Congress funnel millions of dollars into projects of their choosing.
This can be done despite a congressional ban on these so-called “earmarks” — special, discretionary spending that has funded Congress’ pet projects back home for years, but now has fallen out of favor because of budget-conscious deficit hawks.
Under the cloak of a simple line item named the “Mission Force Enhancement Transfer Fund,” Congress has been squirreling away money that previously had not made it into appropriations bills — like $9 million for “future undersea capabilities development,” $19 million for “Navy ship preliminary design and feasibility studies,” and more than $30 million for a “corrosion prevention program.”

“Plus-ups”. The fig leaf here (besides the name change) is that they are adding funds to a line item, but it isn’t directed to a specific contractor since the work has to be competitively bid. Now these “plus-ups” are for DOD work — work that is already underway and they are *adding* funds to. If you know anything at all about the kind of contracts the DOD lets, you’ll know that if they are competitively bid, only one bidder will submit. If Lockheed Martin is manufacturing an item that got a “plus-up”, there won’t be a genuine bidding process to actually replace Lockheed. Or — if you have added a “plus-up” to acquire land, you are buying what is useful to the facility — you aren’t shopping all over town for real estate.

It is crazy and you know that they’ll campaign on the money that they sent back to their districts — which makes them earmarks. And you’d think that people trying to kill off Medicare and screaming about the debt and deficits would understand at least the symbolism on refraining from participating in the excess spending.

But you didn’t think that they really cared about spending, did you?

It’s Official: Americans Hate the Ryan Budget

There has been alot of polling on the GOP plan to kill Medicare. The latest version is from CNN:

The poll indicates that 58 percent of the public opposes the Republican plan on Medicare, with 35 percent saying they support the proposal. The survey’s Wednesday release comes as the president met with House Republicans to discuss, among other things, Medicare reform. […]

“Half of those we questioned say that the country would be worse off under the GOP Medicare proposals and 56 percent think that GOP plan would be bad for the elderly,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Opposition is highest among senior citizens, at 74 percent, suggesting that seniors are most worried about changes to Medicare even if those changes are presented as ones that would not affect existing Medicare recipients.”
“A majority of all demographic groups don’t favor the GOP Medicare proposals,” Holland adds. “That includes conservatives – 54 percent of them don’t like the plan. As a result, rank-and-file Republicans are split right down the middle, with 48 percent favoring the GOP plan and 50 percent opposed.”

We don’t like his plan to change Medicaid, either:

According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, 60 percent of those polled prefer the keep Medicaid — the federal heath insurance system for the poor — “as is,” as opposed to Ryan’s detrimental block grant program. Indeed, more than half want to see no reductions in Medicaid spending at all because of “a strong sense of the program’s importance.”

So for all of the bi-partisan handwringing about “reforming entitlements”, the thing to know is that Americans don’t want these kinds of “reforms”. And in this is a potential minefield for Democrats who sign on to “reforms” that cut benefits:

“But I still think [agreeing to benefits cuts] would be politicaly problematic for Democrats right now. They’re in a period where they’re building their advantage on health care issues. It’s an important component of the Democratic advantage on fighting for the middle class, which was central to Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008 and eroded in 2010.”

Said Liszt: “Benefits cuts could set that back.”

So Democrats, you have the advantage here and a deal to cut benefits throws the Republicans a lifeline at your own expense. Which isn’t to say that Medicare and Medicaid don’t need some shoring up. But not at the expense of the people who use these programs.

One interesting tidbit from the CNN summary:

“Overall, a plurality still says that GOP control of the House is good for the country, but the margin on that question has narrowed from a 52 to 39 percent margin in November to just a 48 to 44 percent margin now,” adds Holland.
And by roughly that same margin, Americans want Obama to have more influence over the direction the nation takes in the next few years, a view that has remained unchanged since the start of the year.
“The results of those two questions, taken together, suggest that in the 2010 election voters wanted to give the GOP enough power to act as a check on the Democrats, but did not vote to give the GOP a mandate to enact its entire agenda,” says Holland.
The poll also indicates that most Americans continue to believe that Obama is doing enough to cooperate with the Republicans in Congress. But fewer than three in ten say that congressional Republicans are doing enough to cooperate with the president.

So the GOP is busily undermining their own credibility to govern, while Barack Obama is still seen as more stable AND more cooperative than the GOP. As these polls go forward, I’d bet that this is one of the key metrics that the White House is paying attention to. This is where the “independents” live, and this is where the media is NOT paying attention. They are just interested in the food fight — not in how governing happens. The GOP is working hard at their own agenda and working hard at trying to demonize Obama, but right now he is still seen as the adult in the room.

Weekend Open Thread

How disastrous is the GOP Kill Medicare strategy? This disastrous (pdf):

Disapproval of the Republicans in the House of Representatives has surged from 46 percent in February to 55 percent in April to a striking 59 percent now. Disapproval outnumbers approval two-to-one; intense disapproval by three-to-one. For the first time in more than a year, the Democrats are clearly even in the named Congressional ballot – an 8-point swing from the election – and Obama has made a marked gain in his job approval and vote against Mitt Romney—with the President now leading by 4 points. This period captured the introduction of the Republican budget plan and vote by the House—and voters do not like what they see.

Perhaps most notably, this survey flags a major retreat from the Republican approach to deficits and spending, the economy, and jobs. As the Republicans have unveiled their plans and approach during this four-month debate on the deficit, priorities and the economy, they have pushed many voters away.

Not that the GOP has actually *had* a damn thing to say about job creation, mind you. Their entire economic strategy is to transfer as much of your money into the hands of their wealthy friends as possible. Full Stop. Apparently this is a pre-long weekend tease of a much bigger report coming on Wednesday from these folks. That should be interesting.

Also from the GOP brain trust, I present you, Lou Barletta, (R-PA) who is having a major snit about the EPA (an agency he has voted to specifically defund, because, you know, business needs *less* regulation) not doing MORE in his own district:

On Wednesday, Barletta sent a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson asking the agency to perform additional testing in the Carroll/Mill Street neighborhood.[…]“Frankly, this is unacceptable. The EPA’s own Web site indicates that one of the agency’s primary reasons for existence is to ensure that ‘all Americans are protected from significant risks to human health and the environment where they live, learn and work.’”[…]

“I was surprised to hear an EPA official basically tell the residents of the Carroll/Mill neighborhood that they would not conduct soil and water testing to find answers. It is absolutely the EPA’s job, and I’m going to make sure that job is done. The residents are scared, and they deserve answers and peace of mind.”

So we have Mr. Barletta asking for the EPA to do more in this District, at this Superfund site, while he is voting to defund this agency and criticizing it for doing its job in other areas. Nice. Make sure to read the Think Progress article — there is polling that shows that 70% of the folks in Barletta’s district want the EPA to do more, not less.

One of the things missing in Democratic messaging for some time is a reminder to folks that even as many folks find their government large and exasperating, they sure want it and they have specific reasons why they do want all of that government.

The CDC provides helpful information on how to survive the Zombie Apocalypse. After providing a history of zombies they tell you how to get prepared for the coming apocalypse.

2. Pick a meeting place for your family to regroup in case zombies invade your home…or your town evacuates because of a hurricane. Pick one place right outside your home for sudden emergencies and one place outside of your neighborhood in case you are unable to return home right away.

The thing is, that this same planning is just as useful for being able to survive a natural disaster too. Go read the whole thing — this is a really clever use of social media to give real advice for planning to survive a natural disaster.

Yes, it is a lazy long weekend, but there are still things going on out there that interest you — so tell us what’s going on!

Missing the Boat on Gingrich’s Tiffany’s Issue

I’ll admit it, I am enjoying the epic flame-out of the Gingrich 2012 campaign. Watching him contort himself to prove that he is totally consistent with his 24-hours-ago-self is like paying the extra money to see behind the scenes at the circus freak show. This latest blunder presents a golden opportunity for those of us that have been trying to show that tax cuts don’t create jobs.

Newt has been shown to have been on the hook for $500,000 to Tiffany’s in New York. He has been subjected to a number of humorous references because of it. He’s been called Blingrich by several late-night hosts and Colbert suggested that this was because Newt buys his engagement rings in bulk. Newt’s expalnation?

As a private citizen who has done well, I think I’m allowed to pick and choose what I prefer doing.

True enough. Newt likely spent money on things like a diamond and platinum necklace ($45,000) that his wife Callista was spotted wearing. It sure must be fun to go back through the Getty Images of Callista and comparing them to the Tiffany’s catalog.

But the point that we aren’t hitting on, is that this is the sort of bullshit that we are enabling. The tax cut that Newt Gingrich received from the Bush administration didn’t go to create jobs. Sure, Tiffany’s probably was able to hire a “Gingrich jewelry consultant” position, but most of the money for Callista’s jewelry probably went to buying the precious metals contained within. There are no commercial diamond mines in the US and platinum mostly comes from South Africa and Russia. So some the tax cuts that the Gingrich’s received in 2003 that were supposed to create jobs, were instead spent on raw materials mined in Africa.

This is what we have to discuss. The uber-wealthy aren’t the job creators here, and cutting them an undeserved break on their contribution to our society doesn’t spur job creation. It allows them to amass more wealth, at the expense of our nation.

Newt Gingrich needs to be held up, not for mocking, but as the poster boy for what is wrong with the alchemy of trickle down economics and the degradation of civil society that it causes.

Here’s what Newt said on Face the Nation.

I’m a guy running for president who pays all of his bills, and after-tax income at no cost to the taxpayer, and who currently owes nothing except one rental property in Wisconsin. I am debt-free. If the U.S. government was as debt-free as I am, everybody in America would be celebrating.

Newt, America could be debt free if it weren’t for the snake oil you have been selling for the last 20 years. And the problem is that the cost to US taxpayers is that we are now paying interest on that tax money that you legally evaded paying, we can’t get an interest free loan from Tiffany’s as a country.

Of course, all of this is predicated on Democrats actually using this. So, nevermind.

On Deficits and Debts; or Don’t Believe the Entitlements Hype

The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities continues its yeoman work on documenting where the federal Government’s deficits AND Debts come from.  Even though most of the readers here likely get this story, it has yet to make much of a dent in the media narrative, which continues to flog the business about entitlement spending being the thing that is running our fiscal futures off of the rails.  They released this analysis and accompanying chart of where our deficits continue to be derived from:

Stop and take a good look at that chart.  Because this tells you in no uncertain terms that the major drivers of current *deficits* (debt discussion coming up) are — Bush-era (now also Obama-era) tax cuts and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the biggest drivers of our current deficit problems.  The usefulness of this chart is being able to point out in no uncertain terms that ending or even changing Social Security or Medicare does noting to change the genuine drivers of the current deficits.  Take another good look at this chart.  Congressional Republicans (and some of their enabling Democrats) are looking not just to extend the Bush tax cuts, but to add more.  And what will happen to the deficit spending chart above?  There will be *greater* deficits, because not even changing entitlement spending (which does not now contribute to deficit spending)  is going to decrease the magnitude of the hole in the budget due to tax cuts.

As for the Federal debt,  the CBPP analyzed the drivers of that and also provide a similar chart:

Key point from the analysis:

“simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire on schedule (or paying for any portions that policymakers decide to extend) would stabilize the debt-to-GDP ratio for the next decade.   While we’d have to do much more to keep the debt stable over the longer run, that would be a huge accomplishment.”

So that the real low-hanging fruit in trying to get our long-term debt under control is actually letting the tax cuts simply expire.  The second-best low-hanging fruit is to get the economy really moving again, so that citizens and businesses can actually pay their taxes, meaning that Job Creation of some kind is the order of the day as a debt-reduction measure.

It *is* too much to expect, I know, but when the debate is largely numbers-based, it can’t be too hard for our media (AND our Democrats) to seriously challenge the idea that Social Security and Medicare (and Medicaid) are the real drivers of our financial problems.  All three have their long-term stability problems, but the numbers tell a very different story.  A story that ought to be told instead of just letting the usual suspects whinge on about the crisis of entitlement spending.  Because the real crisis is letting people with agendas against Social Security and Medicare suck all of the air out of the room working at deflecting the conversation away from the real issues here.  Time for that to stop — and when you see or hear media-types brainlessly blathering away about the “crisis in Social Security and Medicare” driving our long term deficit and debt issues, smack them back with data.  Real data.

The Reason Mike Huckabee Isn’t Running For President…

He’s busy re-writing history. Did you know that Reagan stopped all crime?

There’s a lot of history to re-write, to make sure Ronald Reagan gets all the credit for good things and none of the blame for bad things. Obviously Mike Huckabee will be very busy with this project.

(This is for real – apparently Huckabee is going to market history videos for kids.)

Sarah Palin Knows Rap

Fox News and Republican critics of Obama have been hyperventilating this week about a visit by the rapper Common to a White House poetry event. The controversy is so mind-blowingly stupid that my opinion on it is communicated in grunts and hand gestures (Jon Stewart did an amazing job covering the scandal Wednesday night). Sarah Palin has been suffering from a lack of attention lately, so she decided to jump into the controversy. She claims it isn’t just anti-Obama, she’s a rap fan.

“I’m not anti-rap. In fact, like Bret Baier, I know the lyrics to ‘Rapper’s Delight,’ too.”

Uhhhhh….yeah

Rapper’s Delight was released in 1979. The song is 7 minutes long.

I said, a hip hop the hippie the hippie
To the hip hip hop, a you don’t stop
The rock it to the bang, bang boogie
Say up jumped the boogie

To the rhythm of the boogie, the beat
Now what you hear is not a test I’m rappin’ to the beat
And me, the groove and my friends
Are gonna try to move your feet

See I am Wonder Mike and I like to say hello
To the black, to the white, the red and the brown
The purple and yellow
But first I gotta bang, bang the boogie to the boogie
Say up jump the boogie to the bang bang boogie…

How many lyrics does she know? Why all of them, of course.

Whoa — Actual Fact Checking

One source of frustration for dirty bloggers is the inability of Democrats to articulate a counter-narrative to the dominant Republican narrative. It feels like lately the tide has really turned. We are now hearing that Social Security cuts and Medicare cuts are off the table and the Senate Democrats deficit reduction plan has moved to the left of President Obama’s plan. Now we are seeing that news services (other than Politifact and similar sites) are doing actual fact-checking on claims by Republicans. Bloomberg did actual fact-checking on the following claims by John Boehner:

Boehner said in his May 9 speech to the Economic Club of New York that government borrowing was crowding out private investment, the 2009 economic-stimulus package hurt job creation, and a Republican plan to privatize Medicare will give future recipients the “same kinds of options” lawmakers have.

Bloomberg talked to actual economists and looked at actual charts and data. An economist discusses Boehner’s assertion that government spending is preventing private investment.

“Look at interest rates. Look at capital spending,” said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Inc., a research firm based in Englewood, Colorado. “It’s very hard to come to a conclusion that there’s any kind of crowding out.”

The cost of borrowing is low by historical standards. Yields on 10-year Treasury notes were 3.21 percent and yields on 2-year Treasury notes were 0.59 percent at 5 p.m. in New York yesterday, according to Bloomberg Data. Average spreads on investment-grade corporate bonds have narrowed from 1.64 a year ago to 1.39 on May 9, according to Barclays Capital.

The TED spread, the difference between what banks and the U.S. government pay to borrow for three months, fell 2.2 basis points since May 9, the biggest drop since April 5. A narrowing spread means banks are more willing to lend. The 23.87-point spread is just below the two-year average.

The article also points out that Boehner’s rhetoric on the Medicare proposal is just plain wrong. The article also discusses taxes (and the Clinton prosperity) and Boehner’s assertion that Fannie and Freddie caused the mortgage crisis.

Steve Benen hits on the reason why it’s so hard to get the establishment to examine Boehner’s claims more deeply.

These claims aren’t just wrong; they’re ridiculous. It has nothing to do with Democrats vs. Republicans, or left vs. right. This is Boehner vs. reality.

At an almost instinctual level, the political establishment tends to strongly resist this. I more or less understandable why — considering Boehner’s rhetoric at face value, and assuming he means what he says, is almost terrifying to think Boehner is so painfully confused.

But here we are. We’re left with the discomforting fact that it appears the Speaker of the House, Congress’ most powerful official, when dealing with the nation’s most important issue, is functionally illiterate, bringing the sophistication of a slow child to the debate.

Exactly. The establishment media wants to believe it’s just “politics.” I remember how much Paul Krugman was ridiculed for pointing out that Bush’s governing vision was rather radical, a conclusion he came to by actually reading Bush’s proposals. A lot of times I wish the media would ignore the politics (who’s winning and who’s losing) to discuss the merits of proposals. I guess that seems too partisan since it’s the left that is proposing actual ideas that could work (like balancing the budget with actual cuts and tax increases) but it is uncomfortable for the media to say so. They need to get over this fear, fast.

DNC On The GOP Budget Plan: It’s Not Playing Well

It looks like Democrats are poised to make the Paul Ryan budget plan the issue of the 2012 campaign. The DNC released this video featuring some of the angry town halls.

Side note: Don’t you want to punch Sean Duffy (the guy who can barely make it on $174,000) in the face when he tells constituents they can have their own townhall?

Meanwhile, the townhall problems continue for the Republicans. Rep. Allan West will now only take pre-screened questions and won’t let constituents ask them. New York Republican Charlie Gibson faced angry voters who demanded that the rich be taxed. Paul Ryan got heckled at his own townhall and snuck out the side door to avoid protesters. Don Imus questioned Eric Cantor on his plan to cut taxes for corporations that don’t pay taxes.