Hullabaloo

Saturday, May 25, 2013

 
They just openly influence peddling now

by digby


Oh here's some good news. The nation's CEOs have decide they need to be more engaged in government than they already are:

The high-profile examples run the gamut: from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg — who attached his name to immigration reform this year along with a slew of Silicon Valley execs — to JPMorgan Chase’s Jamie Dimon, who's had a high-profile, if on-again-off-again, relationship with Washington.

Others come to town with less fanfare. Goldman Sachs President and Chief Operating Officer Gary Cohn made the trek up to Capitol Hill in November to meet with House Financial Services Chairman Jeb Hensarling of Texas and other Republicans as the fight over debt and spending flared.

President Barack Obama, who has struggled to win over the business community, has hosted CEOs regularly in his second term. Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer and Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein met with Obama in February to talk immigration and debt. In May, energy leaders, including Edison Electric Institute President Tom Kuhn, met with Obama privately to discuss the industry’s response to mega storms.

Executives say the reason for their change is simple: the stakes have gotten higher.
Just look at the range of big policy questions on Washington’s plate from debt and spending, to the tax code, to health care and immigration.

Paul Stebbins, executive chairman of World Fuel Services, a Fortune 100 company, told POLITICO that the long-term debt outlook has been a key factor.

“I think this has changed the sensibility of how CEOs engage in the process,” said Stebbins, who is a member of the CEO-group Fix the Debt. “This goes far beyond my K Street lobbyist is going to help me get some tax thing. It’s a much deeper issue about the future of the country.”

“This isn’t a short-term, ‘we’ll be done by September.’ This is long term,” he said of how CEOs will continue to engage in Washington.

That's not reassuring.

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digby 5/25/2013 04:00:00 PM

 
Easy pickings

by digby

Here's one way to get your arrest quotas up:

US News
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Weird News
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More ABC News Videos

....they say they were "thrilled" when their son -- who has Asperger's and other disabilities and struggled to make friends -- appeared to have instantly made a friend named Daniel.

“He suddenly had this friend who was texting him around the clock,” Doug Snodgrass told ABC News. His son had just recently enrolled at Chaparral High School.

"Daniel," however, was an undercover cop with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department who " hounded" the teenager to sell him his prescription medication. When he refused, the undercover cop gave him $20 to buy him weed, and he complied -- not realizing the guy he wanted to befriend wanted him behind bars.

In December, the unnamed senior was arrested along with 21 other students from three schools, all charged with crimes related to the two officers' undercover drug operation at two public schools in Temecula, California (Chaparral and Temecula Valley High School). This March, Judge Marian H. Tully ruled that Temecula Valley Unified School District could not expel the student, and had in fact failed to provide him with proper services.

“Within three days of the officer’s requests, [the] student burned himself due to his anxiety,” Tully said. “Ultimately, the student was persuaded to buy marijuana for someone he thought was a friend who desperately needed this drug and brought it to school for him.”
[...]
“Sending police and informants to entrap high-school students is sick,” says Tony Newman, director of media relations at the Drug Policy Alliance. “We see cops seducing 18-year-olds to fall in love with them or befriending lonely kids and then tricking them into getting them small amounts of marijuana so they can stick them with felonies. We often hear that we need to fight the drug war to protect the kids. As these despicable examples show, more often the drug war is ruining young people's lives and doing way more harm than good.”

Remember this when you hear tales of undermanned and underfunded police departments. It probably pays to look into their "priorities" first.


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digby 5/25/2013 02:00:00 PM

 
There are scandals and then there are *scandals*

by digby

This Toronto Mayor scandal is a doozy:

This investigative report reveals that:

Doug Ford, Toronto Mayor Rob Ford’s brother, sold hashish for several years in the 1980s.
Another brother, Randy, was also involved in the drug trade and was once charged in relation to a drug-related kidnapping.
Their sister, Kathy, has been the victim of drug-related gun violence.

Today, Mr. Ford is a member of Toronto’s city council – and no ordinary councillor. First elected in 2010 as his brother was swept into the mayor’s office, he has emerged as a truly powerful figure at City Hall –– trying to overhaul plans for Toronto’s waterfront less than a year after arriving. He also has higher aspirations, and has said he wants to follow in the footsteps of his father, Doug Ford Sr., by running in the next provincial election as a Conservative.

Meanwhile, he serves as his brother’s de facto spokesman. As Toronto is gripped by allegations that its mayor was captured on a homemade video smoking what appears to be crack cocaine and his office descends into disarray – his chief of staff was fired on Thursday – Doug Ford has been the only person to mount a spirited public defence of his largely silent sibling. On Friday, after the Mayor finally made a statement about the accusation, he was the one who fielded questions from the press.

Well before the events of the past week, The Globe and Mail began to research the Ford brothers in an effort to chronicle their lives before rising to prominence in Canada’s largest city. Over the past 18 months, it has sought out and interviewed dozens of people who knew them in their formative years.

What has emerged is a portrait of a family once deeply immersed in the illegal drug scene. All three of the mayor’s older siblings – brother Randy, 51, and sister Kathy, 52, as well as Doug, 48 – have had ties to drug traffickers.

Just ... wow. It takes a very special kind of ego to run for office when you and yur whole family are drug dealers.

I'm quite sure Martin Scorcese is already working on the screenplay.

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digby 5/25/2013 12:30:00 PM

 
Acceptance, change and wisdom

by digby

James Fallows has written the most fascinating political profile I've read in a long while --- about none other than Governor Jerry Brown. I live in California but political journalism is so bad here that it's very difficult to get a real sense of what's going on in state government. This piece cleared up more questions about Brown's overall approach than anything else I've read.

It would appear that he is one of political characters uniquely suited to the moment. But as Fallows notes, there may be some lessons about political skill, experience and talent that could be learned by all of us as we make decisions about who to represent us:

The truth is that a reliance on rules and a mistrust of mere politicians have come close to ruining public life in California. “When given a choice between human judgments and formulas, we’ve always chosen the formulas,” Joe Mathews says. He is critical of Brown in many ways, and yet he says, “I would rather let the Jerry Browns of the world make decisions for me than some crazy set of rules someone thought would help.”

California has once more led the way for the nation: through the past generation in showing the damage that disdain for politics can do, and in the past three years in its demonstration of the all-fronts embrace of politics needed to repair the damage. That California’s broken government is still functioning is largely because Jerry Brown has spent his life studying its machinery. In California, new governors are expected to propose detailed budgets within weeks of their election. Brown had the advantage of having already been through eight budget cycles. From his years as mayor, he knew the budget tricks that cities try to pull on the state, for instance the redevelopment-agency con. From the many campaigns he had won, and lost, he had learned the difference between fights that were tough but winnable, like the push to pass Proposition 30, and those that mean certain defeat, like challenging California’s direct-democracy system. With the perspective of 30 years, he has seen which of his early programs have proved to be farsighted and effective, notably his environmental and clean-energy initiatives; and which have gone nowhere, notably his fascination with colonizing space.

From his earliest days, the mother tongue Jerry Brown heard spoken around him was that of politics. California is an exceptional state, and his career in politics is not likely to be duplicated. But a country conditioned to dismiss the skills of deal making, persuasion, and sheer immersion in politics can learn a great deal from what he has achieved.

Maybe political experience matters after all.

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digby 5/25/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
QOTD: Robert Borosage

by digby

There is an idiocy about our current national politics that is simply stupefying. We are sitting idly, watching, and suffering, as our nation disintegrates into a run-down backwater. Our airports are a global disgrace. Our railroads, broadband, energy grid are all outmoded by international standards. A bridge falls every other day. Our sewage systems are overwhelmed by normal use, and collapse in the extreme weather that has become the national norm. Sinkholes now are becoming a life-threatening peril.

At the same time, over 20 million people are in need of full-time work. The construction industry has still not recovered from the housing collapse. The federal government can borrow money at interest rates near zero. Yet instead of grabbing this opportunity to rebuild the country, Washington is focused on cutting budgets, an austerity that clearly costs jobs and impedes the recovery.

Any business leader with a wit of sense would say this is the perfect time to borrow money to rebuild the country, making investments now that will make us more competitive in the future. That’s why the head of the Business Roundtable, former Republican governor John Engler, says it. At the top of his wish list for the economy is borrowing money to invest in roads and infrastructure. The resulting growth will more than repay the virtually free money. We’ll end up with a more competitive economy, a healthier and modern infrastructure that will make lives easier and safer, more jobs, more income, more taxes and less debt.

We can't. Because socialism.

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digby 5/25/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
There's a difference between "passing the Senate" and "clearing a Republican filibuster"

by David Atkins

Journalists need to stop saying that bills with at least 51 votes but not 60 votes "don't have the votes to pass the Senate." They do have the votes to pass the Senate. They just don't have the votes to pass a Republican filibuster. Case in point: Immigration reform and The Hill:

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) said Friday that the “Gang of Eight” immigration bill doesn’t have enough votes to pass the Senate.

The bill won approval from the Senate Judiciary Committee in a 13-5 vote, but Menendez said it lacks the 60 votes necessary to clear the Senate — despite the bill's four Republican co-sponsors.

That is simply inaccurate reporting. Accurate reporting would say that immigration reform "lacks the votes to overcome a Republican filibuster in the Senate." Accurate reporting would put the onus on the obstructionist party and on the arcane, anti-democratic rules that allow the obstructionist party to block every piece of legislation it wants to on a whim.

If a bill has 51 votes, it can pass the Senate. It's just that the obstructionist minority is using what should be a desperation tactic as a run-of-the-mill procedure to stop anything positive from getting done. And they're allowed to do it without even having to stand in the well and make speeches laying out their unpopular positions for all the world to see. Journalists covering D.C. shouldn't let the fact that the extreme has become the habitual stop them from reporting the truth.

It's 51 votes to pass. It's 60 votes to clear an obstructionist filibuster.


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thereisnospoon 5/25/2013 07:30:00 AM

Friday, May 24, 2013

 
Big Mac Hero

by digby

I'm not a major McDonalds fan, but this is great

Life is good for this Ohio hero.

Just one day after a group of Cleveland restaurants announced plans to give local man Charles Ramsey free burgers for life, McDonald's quietly confirmed that it will offer him free food for a year.

Ramsey's quirky interviews detailing his efforts to help free kidnapping victims Amanda Berry, Gina DeJesus and Michelle Knight earlier in May made the dishwasher famous -- especially the part about him eating a McDonald's Big Mac moments before the rescue.

The three women had been abducted, held in a squalid house and abused for roughly a decade, allegedly by homeowner Ariel Castro. On May 6, Ramsey heard Amanda Berry's screams from his neighboring porch and helped break down Castro's door.

As word of Ramsey's heroics spread, the Internet inundated McDonald's with suggestions to offer him a reward.

Ramsay was really just being a decent human being, but I guess it's rare enough these days that it deserves a reward.


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digby 5/24/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
Map 'O the Day: two countries edition

by digby

Plus ca change and all that rot:

That’s a very detailed, county-level map of the 1880 presidential election results, published in 1889.

It's trite to point it out after all this time, I know, but America has always been two political cultures. So when we see gridlock as we have now, we shouldn't be so surprised.

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digby 5/24/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
Priorities

by David Atkins

Jon Stewart is funny, but depressing:

Sigh...



thereisnospoon 5/24/2013 02:40:00 PM

 
Political grifter on offense

by digby

So Sarah Palin wrote an "op-ed" for Breitbart, which is, I guess, a step above Facebook...

“These Obama administration scandals are a sad and stark reminder that only limited government can ensure liberty. At our core, we Americans just want to be left alone to live freely, peacefully, and productively. Last year the Obama campaign told us that government is something we all ‘belong’ to. I guess they’re right because when the government is powerful enough to target, intimidate, and harass us, we do “belong” to them.

Most of the right wing hysteria is wishful thinking by people who want more than anything to be martyred for the cause. But that is Sarah Palin talking. With the amount of "political" money that's flowed through her hands over the past few years, I can see why she'd be concerned. The real con artists do have something to fear...

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digby 5/24/2013 01:30:00 PM

 
Fox News host Andrea Tarantos wants her listeners to punch Obama voters in the face

by David Atkins

Fox News host Andrea Tarantos was on the radio delivering that time-honored respectful conservatism:

“He said he would change the country. He said it. He said it. And a lot of people voted for him. And if you see any of those people today, do me a favor: punch them in the face.”...

“To be clear, I didn’t say punch Obama in the face...But if someone voted for him. If anyone that you know who voted for President Obama, smack them down.”

Here's the audio:


What a charming person. And what a charming "movement" American conservatism is. I feel totally safer as an American knowing that so many are armed, too. Sheepdogs and wolves, amirite?



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thereisnospoon 5/24/2013 01:09:00 PM

 
Political stunts and political smarts

by digby

There has been a fair amount of jaded criticism from the wonkosphere over Elizabeth Warren's alleged student loan "stunt"  but apparently it's gaining political steam anyway:

A little more than two weeks after introducing her first bill, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is already seeing a wave of strong support.

Back on May 8, Warren announced her plans to set student loan interest rates at the same level big banks receive from the Federal Reserve. Come July 1, some student loan rates are set to double from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent, prompting Warren to push for legislation that reduces the level to 0.75 percent.

By Thursday, Warren's website showcased that more than two dozen organizations have endorsed the measure. Among the notable supporters were major universities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and groups like American Federation of Teachers.

Coupled with the support from outside sources is a strong core of political colleagues behind the bill. Sens. Mark Begich (D-Alaska), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) have joined on as co-sponsors, and Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) has introduced a corresponding House version of the bill.

I realize that Warren's "stunt" will not fix the problem for all time or change the very face of student debt forever as the wonks seem to believe is necessary for any legislation to be deemed worthy, but this short term fix is well worth doing anyway. I'm quite sure Warren understands the details --- she's quite the wonk herself, obviously. But she also clearly understands the value of using her position and the process to change the way people think about the role of government and develop trust between politicians and their constituents. This is good politics, something is short supply in the Democratic party especially when it comes to making a progressive case on economics. Good for her.


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digby 5/24/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
Hungry

by digby

The following chart measures the growth of hunger over the past few years in Europe and the US:

If you can't afford food, there's really nowhere to go but up. That's why it's so shocking just how many more hungry people there are now in what were formerly known as the world's well-off nations. According to a new Pew report released today, almost a quarter of people (24 percent) in the United States and Greece answered "yes" to the question, "Have there been times during the last year when you did not have enough money to buy food your family needed?"

The good news is that the stock market is roaring and the top 1% have been doing really well. So that's good.


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digby 5/24/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
Infrastructure and unemployment: this just isn't that complicated.

>by David Atkins

This is what a country in disrepair looks like:

The Washington State Patrol chief says the Interstate 5 bridge collapse into the Skagit (SKA'-jiht) River at Mount Vernon was caused by an oversize truck...

The bridge was not classified as structurally deficient, but a Federal Highway Administration database listed it as being "functionally obsolete" - a category meaning that the design is outdated, such as having narrow shoulders and low clearance underneath.

The bridge was built in 1955 and has a sufficiency rating of 57.4 out of 100, according to federal records. That is well below the statewide average rating of 80, according to an Associated Press analysis of federal data, but 759 bridges in the state have a lower sufficiency score.

According to a 2012 Skagit County Public Works Department report, 42 of the county's 108 bridges are 50 years or older. The document says eight of the bridges are more than 70 years old and two are over 80.

Washington state was given a C in the American Society of Civil Engineers' 2013 infrastructure report card and a C- when it came to the state's bridges. The group said more than a quarter of Washington's 7,840 bridges are considered structurally deficient or functionally obsolete.

Shoring up all these bridges would be a major investment of mostly blue collar manpower. And as it turns out, the country has a desperate need for jobs, especially ones that don't require a college degree.

It would take a perverse, malevolent government not to take the opportunity to fit those two puzzle pieces together. Wouldn't it?


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thereisnospoon 5/24/2013 07:30:00 AM

Thursday, May 23, 2013

 
First they came for the news anchors ...

by digby

I hope everyone realizes that any conservative who's been audited by the IRS over the past four years now believes it was done at the specific behest of the anti-Christ:

Local St. Louis news anchor Larry Conners was fired on Wednesday for what the station called "taking a personal political position [that created] an appearance of bias."

After news broke about the IRS targeting Tea Party groups during the 2012 election, Conners took to his KMOV Facebook page to air a personal concern about the scandal. According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Conners, who spent 27 years as an anchor at KMOV, suggested that he might have been targeted by the IRS after interviewing President Obama in 2012. Conners wrote:

I don’t accept 'conspiracy theories,' but I do know that almost immediately after the interview, the IRS started hammering me. ... Can I prove it? At this time, no. But it is a fact that since that April 2012 interview … the IRS has been pressuring me.

He was fired. Which now makes him the Sir Thomas More of the Tea Party. The humanity.

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digby 5/23/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
Monstrous interference

by digby

The House Judiciary sub-committee on the Constitution and Civil Justice held a hearing today on H.R. 1797, the so-called District of Columbia Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act sponsored by Representative Trent Franks (R-AZ). This bill would ban women from obtaining abortion care after 20 weeks in the District of Columbia, and Representative Franks has stated that he plans to amend it to apply nationwide.

Here's some of the testimony:

Testimony of Christy Zink before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution and Civil Justice

Good morning, Mr. Chairman, Representative Nadler, and other members of the committee. My name is Christy Zink.

Late afternoons in May, my family is on the lookout for Monarch butterflies. It’s spring migration time, and the butterflies have winged their way from Mexico, through Texas, moving, now, up through the country. My daughter learns as we all do, by sharing the stories of what she knows. Monarchs identify food with their feet, she tells me; they sip nectar through proboscis, a word we work together to spell out on paper. In our yard, as we spy out for the Monarchs, her brother keeps his own watch. A toddler, he names what he sees in quick bursts: “Grass.” “Truck.” “Tree.” For me, it’s as if I’m learning along with him, trying out those words anew. My family teaches me every day, and I hold dear the privilege it is to raise my children and be student to their wonder.

All families know this delight in their own way. There are families, like mine, who understand that joy in more complicated ways, earned through hard lessons and harder decisions. I’m here today to share my story with you so that you can understand why this bill that purports to prevent pain is, instead, harmful to families and to women in situations like the one I faced, and why all women in this country need access to safe, quality medical care.

In addition to the pregnancies with my two children, I was also pregnant in 2009. I wondered who my child might grow up to be. Would she inherit her father’s love of the pitcher’s duel in baseball? Would he make a habit of skipping to the last page of a book, peeking at the end, as I do? I looked forward to the ultrasound when we would get a chance to have a look at the baby in utero, to learn a little bit more. I certainly hadn’t imagined that we’d learn terrible news, and that, after that doctors’ visit, my husband and I would have to make the most difficult decision of our lives.

I took extra special care of myself during that pregnancy. I received excellent prenatal attention from an award-winning obstetrician. Previous testing had shown a baby growing on target, with the limbs and organs all in working order. However, when I was 21 weeks pregnant, an MRI revealed that our baby was missing the central connecting structure of the two parts of his brain. A specialist diagnosed the baby with agenesis of the corpus callosum. What allows the brain to function as a whole was simply absent. But that wasn’t all. Part of the baby’s brain had failed to develop. Where the typical human brain presents a lovely, rounded symmetry, our baby had small, globular splotches. In effect, our baby was also missing one side of his brain.

Living in a major city with one of the best children’s hospitals in the country, my husband and I had access to some of the best radiologists, neurologists, and geneticists not just in this city or in the country, but in the world. We asked every question we could. The answers were far from easy to hear, but they were clear. There would be no miracle cure. His body had no capacity to repair this anomaly, and medical science could not solve this tragic situation.

This condition could not have been detected earlier in my pregnancy. Only the brain scan could have found it. The prognosis was unbearable. No one could look at those MRI images and not know, instantly, that something was terribly wrong. If the baby survived the pregnancy, which was not certain, his condition would require surgeries to remove more of what little brain matter he had, to diminish what would otherwise be a state of near-constant seizures.

I am here today to speak out against the so-called Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act. Its very premise—that it prevents pain—is a lie. If this bill had been passed before my pregnancy, I would have had to carry to term and give birth to a baby whom the doctors concurred had no chance of a life and would have experienced near-constant pain. If he had survived the pregnancy—which was not certain—he might never have left the hospital. My daughter’s life, too, would have been irrevocably hurt by an almost always-absent parent.

The decision I made to have an abortion at almost 22 weeks was made out of love and to spare my son’s pain and suffering.

I am horrified to think that the doctors who compassionately but objectively explained to us the prognosis and our options for medical treatment, and the doctor who helped us terminate the pregnancy, would be prosecuted as criminals under this law for providing basic, safe medical care and expertise. This bill does not represent the best interests of anyone, especially families like mine. What happened to me during pregnancy can happen to any woman, regardless of her health, race, ethnicity, economic status, or where she lives. This proposed law is downright cruel, as it would inflict pain on the families, the women, and the babies it purports to protect.

It’s in honor of my son that I’m here today, speaking on his behalf. I am also fighting for women like me, to have the right to access safe, legal, high-quality abortion care when we need to beyond 20 weeks—especially for those women who could never imagine they’d have to make this choice. Women across this country need to be able to make this very private decision with their partners, their doctors, and trusted counselors. I urge you not to pass this harmful legislation.

I guess it's a joke that the sub-committee on the constitution and social justice is proposing a bill that directly contravenes numerous Supreme Court rulings, but that's just how they roll these days.

I suppose it should surprise no one that the sub-committee members all have one (small) thing in common:

*not meaning to diss the good Democrats on the committee who stand up for women's rights. But that picture does tell a certain story, doesn't it?

digby 5/23/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
On climate and the environment, America isn't a "center right" nation

by David Atkins

Once again, we learn that a majority of Americans do care about climate and the environment:

Global warming and clean energy should be priorities for Congress and the president, a majority of Americans said in a recent survey.

In the survey, released Tuesday by Yale and George Mason universities, 70% of American adults say global warming should be a priority for the nation’s leaders, while 87% say leaders should make it a priority to develop sources of clean energy. Those support levels have dropped by 7% and 5% respectively since fall.

Six in 10 Americans want the U.S. to reduce greenhouse gas emissions regardless of other countries’ emissions efforts, according to the survey. Only 6% say the U.S. should not reduce its greenhouse emissions.

Of course, this doesn't mean the electorate is informed enough to know what the major climate and environmental issues of the day are:

The study also shows only half of Americans have heard of the Keystone XL pipeline. Among those who have heard of the pipeline, 63% support the project. The study also shows 58% of Americans support expanded drilling for oil and natural gas off the U.S. coast.

Still, the key legislative pieces of climate reduction are popular:

A majority of Americans supports policies like taxing carbon, giving tax rebates to people who purchase energy-efficient vehicles or solar panels, and funding renewable-energy research, the survey shows.

The big question, as with the gun control debate, is whether the broad majority who support progressive policies will actually care as badly about their beliefs as the strident conservatives do. That disconnect between popular opinion and minority conservative activism is part of what leads legislators to believe that their constituents are more conservative than they really are.


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thereisnospoon 5/23/2013 03:00:00 PM

 
Who says the IRS didn't succumb to political pressure?

by digby

Thanks goodness they kept their heads when it came to the really important stuff:

The tax matter at issue was whether these donors had sidestepped the gift tax. Created in 1924, the gift tax acts as a safeguard of sorts, backstopping both the estate tax and the income tax. Before its creation, people could donate all their money before they died to avoid the estate tax or give away their assets to relatives in lower income tax brackets. The gift tax does not apply to donations to traditional charities (the Red Cross), trade groups (the US Chamber of Commerce), or political nonprofits formed under the 527 section of the tax code (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and America Coming Together). In the 1980s, the IRS said that the gift tax did cover contributions to 501(c)(4)s, yet for decades the agency never bothered donors about the gift tax on their donations to such nonprofits.

That changed in early 2011, when the IRS told five big donors to 501(c)(4) groups that they were being investigated for possibly dodging the gift tax. One of these letters read, "Donations to 501(c)(4) organizations are taxable gifts and your contribution in 2008 should have been reported on your 2008 Federal Gift Tax Return." That was a potentially a big deal. The way the gift tax works, a donor who in 2008 gave more than $2 million to one or more nonprofits could owe hundreds of thousands of dollars to the taxman—a doozy of an unexpected tax bill. If the IRS vigorously applied the gift tax to these sort of donations, donors would be less likely to give (or would give less) to nonprofits, tax experts say.

In May 2011, news of the IRS' big-donor probe went public. Republicans reacted furiously. On June 3, 2011, Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.), the chairman of the House ways and means committee, sent a letter to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman demanding the names and titles of IRS staffers involved in the gift tax probe, and the criteria used to pick which donors to scrutinize. "Every aspect of this tax investigation, from the timing to the sudden reversal of nearly thirty years of IRS practice, strongly suggests that the IRS is targeting constitutionally-protected political speech," Camp said. (The IRS denied that the probe was influenced by politics in any way.)

The following month, Miller halted the agency's donor audits. In a public memo, he wrote, "This is a difficult area with significant legal, administrative, and policy implications with respect to which we have little enforcement history." The IRS would study the gift tax, Miller added, and if it launched future audits of donors, it would do so only after alerting the public.

If nonprofit donors had once worried about getting slapped with a big tax bill, Miller's memo eased those fears—just in time for the 2012 campaign season, in which politically active nonprofits raised and spent hundreds of millions of dollars. Miller's memo "gave donors a green light" to finance 501(c)(4)s, Colvin says. "Ever since then donors have been able to give to c-4 organizations who may or may not be active in politics."

Miller, who lost his job in the latest IRS scandal, was not a political appointee, unlike Shulman, who was named to his post by President George W. Bush. (The staffers who launched the short-lived gift tax probes weren't political appointees, either.) Yet Marcus Owens, the former IRS director, says Miller's decision to stop the audits smacked of politics after receiving so much pressure from Congress. "The deputy commissioner's office does not normally step in to stop audits," he says. "It's getting too close to politics at that point."

Ya think? And yet, somehow, I don't think this is going to cause quite as much of a stir on the right as the Tea Party "screening" do you?

I was watching Megan Kelly and Dana Perino on the Fox the other day going on about how terrible it had been to target altruistic social welfare groups like Karl Rove's American Crossroads. I guess this is what they were clutching their pearls over...


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digby 5/23/2013 01:30:00 PM

 
Pope Francis puts works before faith. Amen.

by David Atkins

I have to admit to having been highly skeptical of the new Pope, given his history in Argentina and the conservative bent of the cardinals who elected him. But this is certainly progress:

"The Lord created us in His image and likeness, and we are the image of the Lord, and He does good and all of us have this commandment at heart: do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must! Because he has this commandment within him. Instead, this ‘closing off’ that imagines that those outside, everyone, cannot do good is a wall that leads to war and also to what some people throughout history have conceived of: killing in the name of God. That we can kill in the name of God. And that, simply, is blasphemy. To say that you can kill in the name of God is blasphemy.”

...

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! ‘Father, the atheists?’ Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class! We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all! And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: we need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.”

It's not a reversal on LGBT or reproductive rights. But it is an amazing and eye-opening improvement in theological outlook that prioritizes works over faith.

If by chance there is a God who cares about what we hairless monkeys do down here, it's almost certain that S/He cares far more about what we good do than what version of Him/Her we pray to (or not). To do otherwise would entail a level of detached vanity that would be unbecoming and illogical for a presumably benevolent divine being.


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thereisnospoon 5/23/2013 12:00:00 PM

 
All religions or no religions

by digby

I have long thought that a necessary approach to dealing with the insistence on the part of certain Christians that their "religious liberty" is impinged if the government requires something their creed does not agree with is to have competing religions demand the same "freedom." You'd think we could avoid this nonsense after 500 years of bloody European history but apparently not.

Anyway, it's at least a good way to illustrate why the state should just insist that everyone play by the same rules in the public sector while letting the church do its thing in the private sphere:

The governor of Georgia has ordered that Bibles recently removed from lodges at government parks throughout the state be returned, reports state.

Republican Governor Nathan Deal issued the order after the Georgia Department of Natural Resources removed the Bibles following an atheist complaint about their presence.

Ed Buchner, 67, the former leader of the organization American Atheists, expressed his disapproval last month after finding a Gideon’s Bible in a cabin at one of the state parks. He said that he believed the Bibles violated the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

“Out of an abundance of caution to avoid potential litigation, the commissioner removed the Bibles from the rooms – though they were still available on site – after a complaint from a visitor,” explained Deal.

However, the governor states that both he and the state Attorney General, Sam Olems, believe that the Bibles stand on “firm legal footing.”

“These Bibles are donated by outside groups, not paid for by the state, and I do not believe that a Bible in a bedside table drawer constitutes a state establishment of religion,” he said. “In fact, any group is free to donate literature.”

Well, now. I'll just let Wonkette take it from here:

Oh? said some sharp kids at American Atheists. Did you say any group? Hey, guys, as it happens, we are a group, and we would just love to donate some literature to be placed in bedside table drawers in Georgia state parks! And so they will be sending the Georgia Department of Natural Resources “enough popular atheist books to place one in every state park cabin in the state.”

In a press release, the group acknowledged that it would really prefer that state-owned facilities be oppressively neutral on matters of religion, but if Georgia wants to play this way, sure!

“American Atheists does not believe the State of Georgia should be placing Bibles or atheist books in state park cabins; however, if the state is going to allow such distribution, we will happily provide our materials,” said President David Silverman.

I'm fairly sure this literature will never make it to those cabins. And frankly, I think it would be better if it were a Muslim group or a b'hai or something fairly exotic that nonetheless these people understand to be a religion. But still, the point has been made.


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digby 5/23/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
Sins of the uncles

by digby

The only good Iranian ...

Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Wednesday introduced legislation that would "automatically" punish family members of people who violate U.S. sanctions against Iran, levying sentences of up to 20 years in prison.

The provision was introduced as an amendment to the Nuclear Iran Prevention Act of 2013, which lays out strong penalties for people who violate human rights, engage in censorship, or commit other abuses associated with the Iranian government.

Cotton also seeks to punish any family member of those people, "to include a spouse and any relative to the third degree," including, "parents, children, aunts, uncles, nephews nieces, grandparents, great grandparents, grandkids, great grandkids," Cotton said.

"There would be no investigation," Cotton said during Wednesday's markup hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "If the prime malefactor of the family is identified as on the list for sanctions, then everyone within their family would automatically come within the sanctions regime as well. It'd be very hard to demonstrate and investigate to conclusive proof."

The amendment immediately sparked objections from several members of the Foreign Affairs Committee, who noted that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees due process rights to anyone charged with a crime under American law.

"An amendment is being offered literally to allow the sins of the uncles to descend on the nephews," Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) said. "The amendment that's being offered doesn't even indicate a requirement of knowing violation. … I really question the constitutionality of a provision that punishes nephews for the sins of the uncles."

Article III of the Constitution explicitly bans Congress from punishing treason based on "corruption of blood" -- meaning that relatives of those convicted of treason cannot be punished based only on a familial tie...

"Iranian citizens do not have constitutional rights under the United States Constitution," Cotton said. "I sympathize with their plight if they are harmless, innocent civilians in Iran. I doubt that that is often the case."

Don't they require a course in the constitution for freshman orientation for idiots like these? Somebody forgot to tell him that Iranian citizens actually do have rights under the Constitution, as do all "persons".

Not all bigots are morons, but this bigoted moron proves that at least one is. And this one is in the US House of Representatives.

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed:

Chairman Ed Royce (R-Calif.) suggested that Cotton withdraw his amendment and narrow its language.

After some back-and-forth with Grayson and Royce, Cotton relented and withdrew the amendment.

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digby 5/23/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
It's long past time for an international minimum wage

by David Atkins

I've been beating the same drum for some time now, but I must point out with pride that the once-unthinkable movement toward international progressive regulation is gaining steam. It's going to be a hard sell for many progressives who have long resisted a global economy by advocating a retreat to protectionism and localism, to switch course and fully embrace an international, hyper-connected progressivism. But what has come out of Pandora's Box cannot be stuffed back in without the destruction of civilization as we know it. The only reasonable path toward a progressive future is forward, not backward. Part of that progressive future must include an international minimum wage, as Hamilton Nolan elegantly argues:

The deadly collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh has sparked calls for better worker treatment. The revelation that Apple manages to avoid almost all taxes has drawn vague calls for tax reform. A more direct path to fairness: let's just have a reasonable international minimum wage.

We live in a global economy, as pundits are so fond of proclaiming. The global economy is the delightful playground of multinational corporations. They're able to drastically lower their labor costs by outsourcing work to the world's poorest and most desperate people. And they're able to escape paying taxes, like normal businesses do, by deploying armies of lawyers to play various countries' tax codes off against one another. The result is that money that should, in fairness, go to workers and governments ends up in the pockets of the corporation. The global economy is extremely advantageous to corporations, who owe no loyalty to anyone or anything except their stock price; it is disadvantageous to normal human beings, who exist in the world and not as a notional accounting trick.

In America, we accept the minimum wage as a given. It enjoys broad support. It is the realization of an ideal: that there is a point at which low pay becomes a moral outrage. (Where that point is, of course, is up for continuous debate.) Do not mistake the minimum wage for some sort of consensus of nonpartisan economists; it is a moral statement by our society. A statement of our belief that the economically powerful should not have a free hand to exploit the powerless.

Yet we are all hypocrites. We protect ourselves with a minimum wage, while at the same time enjoying the low consumer prices that come with ultra-low wages being paid to workers abroad. Our own purchasing habits reward companies for paying wages that are sure to keep their workers in poverty for life. We soothe ourselves by saying that these desperately poor workers are still better off than they would be without a job; yet we would reject that argument if an employer here tried to use it to pay us less than the minimum wage. We simply do not care if people halfway around the world who we do not see are exploited, if it saves us money.

Many business interests say that raising the wretched wages in one country will simply send the factories to another, even poorer country. That's a great reason to institute an international standard that would render that strategy moot. Bangladesh, where more than a thousand garment workers died in the Rana Plaza collapse thanks to the cutthroat quest to drive down prices, represents the bottom of the international manufacturing economy. The minimum wage of garment workers there is less than $50 per month. For all of our lofty rhetoric about a connected world and freedom and opportunity, we happily acquiesce to a system which keeps these workers— desperate, poor, and with little bargaining power— trapped in poverty. Can you live on $50 per month in Bangladesh? Yes, clearly. You can live in poverty.

Opponents of all sorts of "living wage" laws say that those who would advocate such a thing misunderstand the inherent economic forces of capitalism. Not true. We understand them all too well. We understand that, as history has amply demonstrated and continues to demonstrate, absent regulation, economic power imbalances will drive worker wages and working conditions down to outrageous and intolerable levels. People will, indeed, work all day for two dollars if that is their only option. That does not make it morally acceptable to pay people two dollars a day. Capitalism must be forcefully tempered by morality if we are to claim to be a moral people. [Emphasis added]

Another way of putting it is that, as I have said before, human life and dignity are incredibly cheap on the open market:

But the biggest problem with this worldview is the failure to recognize that human life and dignity are drearily cheap on the open market. Absent laws to prevent such exploitation, the open market looks like Dickensian England: abundant child labor, eighty hour work weeks, mass immiseration, horrific discrimination, and a host of other evils. It turns out that consumers don't much care how a product was made so long as it works, and businesses are more than happy to institute revolting practices in order to create even more decadent wealth for owners and investors. Contrary to social conservative claims, there is no amount of religious fervor or charitable giving that even makes a dent in the horror of purely market-driven economics.

Which leads to the other great failure of rational actor theory in libertarian economics: the artificial separation of government and the governed in a democratic society. At least in representative democracies, the government exists as a mutual compact of citizens who choose to prevent the ills and excesses of the coldhearted markets by funding a protective system of checks and balances, social programs, guaranteed infrastructure, worker protections, product regulations, and a host of other goods and services that reduce the ability of the powerful to exploit the powerless on the open market. The choice to pay taxes to regulate meat companies so that consumers don't have to do the research and take on the purchase risk of which companies' hamburgers might be tainted, is just as equally valid a decision as the choice between going to Burger King or McDonalds.

There will be great resistance to this idea, not only among multinational corporations whose profits would be impacted, but also among policymakers. That's because politicians in developed countries have attempted to disguise stagnant wages by, among other things, exploiting "free trade" and cheap labor overseas to deflate the price of imported goods. In some cases an increased international minimum wage won't affect prices at all (there's only so much the developed world will pay for a pair of jeans, after all), but in some cases it might. Certainly, multinational corporations will attempt to maintain their current, immoral record profits by passing on the cost of an increased minimum wage to consumers. But some corporations will exercise competitive advantage to take slightly less profit in exchange for greater market share.

We live in a time of great imbalance. Multinational corporations have global power and reach beyond that of any nation-state. The plutocratic class both human and corporate is rootless and able to shift its home base wherever it pleases, threatening to take jobs with them. Products are manufactured cheap in developed countries, sold at outrageous markups in developed countries, and then the profits are lightly taxed by nation-states competing with one another for plutocratic favor--or worse, offshored in advantage-seeking tiny tax havens. Such a system cannot long continue. Balance must be achieved and the multinational corporate class brought to heel. An effective response to climate change demands it if nothing else.

Just as federal minimum wage standards prevent corporations from exploiting poor states while selling to rich ones in the U.S., so too can an international minimum wage compel the same dynamic among federal powers. It's an idea that is long past due.
thereisnospoon 5/23/2013 07:30:00 AM

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

 
Senatorial hobgoblins: Consistency? What a silly old-fashioned concept.

by digby

The Manly Right Wingnuts of the Senate are making it clear who's boss. And it isn't the old warhorses of the GOP --- or even those pansies in the House leadership.

"Let me be clear. I don't trust the Republicans," Cruz said, casting it as a broader distrust of a government that has rung up more than $16 trillion in debt. "And I don't trust the Democrats. And I think a whole lot of Americans likewise don't trust the Republicans and the Democrats because it is leadership in both parties that has gotten us in this mess."

Who's he talking about? John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and the rest of the house GOP leadership who he believes are going to give away the store if the Senate allows them to reconcile the budgets the two houses passed in a conference committee. He and Rand Paul, Marco Rubio and Mike Lee want to force them to agree ahead of time not to raise the debt ceiling.

In other words, these four think the House Republicans are too soft. What that makes them is something we aren't allowed to talk about on the internets.

Old timers like John McCain and Susan Collins are all flummoxed. They point out that the GOP has been complaining for years that the Dems refuse to do a budget through the normal process and now they're prepared to do it. Cruz and company merely laugh at such old fashioned nonsense. Silly old man. Consistency is for leu--zurs.

Update: Ed Kilgore at the Washington Monthly has a full analysis of the strategy and motivation. Let's just say that the idea that these guys are "independent" in the sense that they will work with Democrats is wildly off the mark.
digby 5/22/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
From the "what in the hell is wrong with people?" file

by digby

Oh, here's some good news:

A tour company exposed by The Post on Sunday for bringing tourists to the South Bronx to gawk at food pantry lines, a “pickpocket” park and a housing project, yesterday announced it would stop all tours “effective immediately.”

What? I thought "slumming" went out with the Charleston but apparently, it's still quite a thriving business worldwide:

The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first use of the word "slumming" to 1884. In London, people visited "slum" neighborhoods such as Whitechapel or Shoreditch in order to observe life in this situation. By 1884 wealthier people in New York City began to visit the Bowery and the Five Points area of the Lower East Side, neighborhoods of poor immigrants, to see "how the other half lives."

In the 1980s in South Africa, black residents organized "township tours" to educate the whites in local governments on how the black population lived. Such tours attracted international tourists, who wanted to learn more about apartheid.

In the mid-1990s, international tours began to be organized with destinations in the most disadvantaged areas of developing nations, often known as slums. They have grown in popularity, and are often run and advertised by professional companies. In Cape Town, South Africa, for example, upwards of 300,000 tourists visit the city each year to view the slums.

Why do I have a feeling that most of the people taking a tour like this sees it as "education" the same way they see going to a zoo is about "education." I think the proper word is "entertainment.'

Or worse:

In 1675 Bedlam moved to new buildings in Moorfields designed by Robert Hooke, outside the City boundary. In the 18th century people used to go there to see the lunatics. For a penny one could peer into their cells, view the freaks of the "show of Bethlehem" and laugh at their antics, generally of a sexual nature or violent fights. Entry was free on the first Tuesday of the month. Visitors were permitted to bring long sticks with which to poke and enrage the inmates. In 1814, there were 96,000 such visits.

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digby 5/22/2013 04:30:00 PM

 
The coming war over climate change and judicial nominations

by David Atkins

Jonathan Chait and Greg Sargent both have great pieces today on the coming war over climate change and judicial nominations. Chait's article in particular is tremendous and worth reading in full. Here's an excerpt:

The biggest piece of President Obama’s second-term agenda is his widely expected plan for the Environmental Protection Agency to issue new carbon regulations for power plants, a move that could bring the United States in line with the greenhouse-gas-reduction goals it agreed to in Copenhagen and open the way for an international treaty to control climate change. If the administration unveils such a plan, conservatives will undoubtedly challenge its legality. The legal challenge won’t take place for two years, but the two sides are preparing for war already. The field of battle will be the Federal Appeals Court in Washington, D.C.

The D.C. Circuit, as the appeals court covering legal issues arising within the nation’s capital, has assumed a large and growing influence in the ideological wars over the scope of government, and over the last decade its appointments have provoked bitter conflict. During George W. Bush’s second term, Democratic senators filibustered D.C. circuit nominees they considered extreme, causing Republicans to threaten to eliminate the filibuster for judges. Democrats called the threat the “nuclear option,” and the two sides negotiated a resolution when Democrats backed down and agreed not to filibuster judges except in extraordinary circumstances. Bush’s judges on the D.C. Circuit have inserted themselves even more heavily into the policy debate by striking down a slew of regulations in health care, pollution, labor, and other areas, turning the court into one of the right’s most potent weapons during the Obama era.

This in turn is creating yet another fight over the "nuclear option" when it comes to judicial appointees. Chait notes that the D.C. circuit is overloaded and depends heavily on a panel of retired judges to consider many of its cases--and the retired judges are all Republican. The outcome of the fight over court appointees will affect many things, but climate policy most of all:

The Republicans don’t have the votes to actually pass their plan to eliminate all vacancies. Its function is to serve as justification for filibustering any nominees at all, however moderate or well qualified, for the remaining three vacancies. These are the battle lines forming for what appears to be a major partisan war this summer: Republicans insisting not only that they need not approve vacancies in the D.C. Circuit but that Obama’s attempt to fill them represents a kind of tyranny, and Democrats threatening to limit the filibuster as a routine weapon to obstruct appointments. Many things depend on the outcome of this fight, but the prospect for limiting climate change is surely the biggest.

Sargent has details on events as McConnell and Reid circle one another for the coming fight:

Reid is eying the possibility of changing the rules via the “nuclear option” — a simple majority vote — to end filibustering on nominations, but not on legislation.

Lending some weight to this threat, the Huffington Post reports that Reid is delaying the push to confirm Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau until July, after immigration reform is done. A Reid aide tells HuffPo that this is about postponing a major war over all of Obama’s nominees until July — which is also Reid’s target to trigger the nuclear option if necessary.

This — along with Reid’s public statements today — amounts to the sharpest line yet drawn by Reid. The Senate Majority Leader has been striking a delicate balancing act. His challenge has been to slowly escalate the threat level by giving his threats ever more specificity, while simultaneously maintaining an aura of credibility about them. The current threat comes very close to saying that if Republicans obstruct Cordray — and others, such as Gina McCarthy to head the EPA, and Thomas Perez as Labor Secretary — then Reid will push the nuke button.

Indeed, as Sahil Kapur notes, if the GOP blocks those nominations, the pressure on Reid to press the button will get very intense indeed. Major Democratic constituencies (labor, environmentalists) have a big stake in these nominees, and the consumer protection bureau represents a major component of one of Obama’s signature domestic initiatives — Wall Street reform.

The issue of filibusters and obstructionism tends to bring out the worst hypocrisy among political partisans on both sides. I certainly complained about the threat of the "nuclear option" when the shoe was on the other foot during the Bush Administration.

In the end, though, Bush got appointees that were ideologically inclined toward his worldview. Republicans are being far more obstructionist than Democrats were--and that's taking a moral relativist view about the relative worth of the two political ideologies. As long as Republicans are going to get their nominees because Democrats believe in having a functional government, and Republicans feel free to obstruct at will because they don't care, we might as well go nuclear and know that if one party gets hold of the White House and a majority of the Senate, the other side is basically out of luck. It's certainly better than the current dynamic.


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thereisnospoon 5/22/2013 03:15:00 PM

 
A tale of two crises: a lesson in priorities

by digby


This article in the Atlantic tells two stories about our recent history:

The first story is called: How Washington Saved the Economy. You might begin in 2008, when the Federal Reserve went on an unprecedented spree of asset-buying to un-gunk the banks, push down interest rates, and spur investing in mortally weakened economy. This was followed, in 2009, with an equally historic stimulus package aimed at filling holes in state budgets and sending cash back to families and businesses. The government ran steep $1+ trillion deficits to keep as much money in the weak private sector as possible.

There is little question that monetary and fiscal stimulus blunted the recession -- and saved the economy.

The second story is called: How Washington Permanently Scarred the Labor Market. You might begin this story in 2011, when Congress (led by Republican obstructionism) embarked on a historic quest to crush deficit spending by any means necessary. Hold the economy hostage over the debt ceiling? Check. Kill the American Jobs Act while scheduling a too-awful-to-be-a-real-law sequester? Check. Allow the too-awful-to-be-a-real-law sequester to become a real law? Checkmate.

The deficit fell fast. As unemployment ebbed, the ranks of long-term jobless calcified, creating two separate job markets. One broken market for people out of work for more than six months. And another slowly healing market for everybody else. But the combination of a thermostatic recovery and a deep aversion to stimulus crushed any hope that the long-term unemployed would get the help they needed. Long-term unemployment isn't special just because it's longer; it's special because it's self-perpetuating. Skills atrophy, networks dry up, and employers discriminate, creating a vicious cycle of joblessness that can't be cured by normal economic growth.

There is little question that, in the last two years, Washington has essentially left the long-term unemployed to fend for themselves -- and permanently scarred the labor market.

The article goes on to examine why the first crises was met with such a strong bipartisan solution while the other has just been ... left to flounder. The author, Derek Thompson, suggests three explanations:

(1) It's the basic fact that, without a financial system, there is no economy.

This explanation blames pretty much nobody in Washington.

In 2007 and 2008, the entire economy stood on the brink of collapse, and the only way to save it was by a historic all-hands-on-deck response from the Federal Reserve and Congress. In retrospect, you could say that we went too far to protect the biggest banks (some of which are even bigger, today) without ensuring similar financial protection for homeowners. And yet, while millions of underwater homeowners are an acute tragedy, you might say, they won't guarantee a lasting national depression. Without enough gainfully employed homeowners, you won't have a strong housing market. Without a banking system, you won't have a housing market, period.

(2) It's all the Republicans' fault.

This explanation blames half of Washington.

Let's be crystal-clear about this: There is no doubt that Republican policies are disproportionately to blame for the shift away from stimulus. That's an easy story to tell, and I don't think Republicans would even dispute it. After all, they've argued that cutting spending would help the economy. The GOP has thoroughly convinced itself that spending-side efforts to fix unemployment are unworkable.

But there's something else, too.

In the last year, there has settled, even among the Democrats, a kind of reserved defeat that shows a stunning lack of urgency toward the crisis of long-term joblessness. From abandoning the payroll tax cut in late 2012, to quietly acceding to sequester, to going silent on unemployment, nearly all of Washington -- not just the right -- has essentially stopped talking about the most important economic issue of our time.

High-ranking Treasury officials officials I've spoken with on background couldn't name any specific proposals they have to help the long-term unemployed. Instead, they've argued that general economic growth stuff, such as infrastructure spending, should be enough to put these 4 million people back to work. But the economic literature objects: Fighting vast long-term unemployment with general economic growth policies is like fighting pneumonia with Vitamin C.

So, why aren't even Democrats scrambling to fight for the long-term unemployed?

I'm pretty sure you know the last explanation don't you? It's very simple: $$$$$

This explanation blames everything about Washington. Money might not buy elections. But it does buy the attention of electeds. It subtly but substantially biases them toward the issues that most concern the rich.

Read on. Thompson takes you through the entire money morass of DC, elections and the more subtle but even more powerful incentives playing out in today's Versailles on the Potomac. It's deeply disturbing.

This blog post by Matt Bruenig at DEMOS illustrates the dichotomy in terems of the recent high-fiving over the recovery of the stock market to pre-recession highs:

{These] stock market moves are sadly interpreted by many as an indicator that the economy is back. This interpretation is helped along by local news stations in particular, which seem to think reporting on the economy should primarily consist of relaying the Dow Jones and S&P 500 movements of the day. Needless to say, these recent stock market moves do not indicate the overall health of the economy, certainly not for those Americans who work for a living.

For starters, the index prices do not even tell us that much about how well the stock market itself is doing. The price-to-earnings ratio for the two major stock indices are still lagging behind their pre-recession levels. This suggests that stock prices would be even higher if the investors were more confident about the future profit levels of the firms represented in those indices.

More importantly, stock prices only track investor expectations of future profits. When you buy stock in a company, you buy an ownership share in the future profits of that company. If stock prices are going up, it means investors expect higher future profits. But higher future profits have no necessary relationship to gains for working people. In fact, one of the ways businesses might book higher profits, and thereby increase their stock valuation, is by reducing the amount they pay to their workers.
[...]
Of course the fixation on stocks is rather predictable. All sorts of people hold stock, but the wealthy especially. According to the 2010 Survey of Consumer Finances, while 17.9 percent of all families have stock holdings, 52.4 percent of those in the wealthiest 10 percent of families do so. Just 4.3 percent in the poorest 25 percent of families hold stock. The numbers are even more skewed when you look at the amount of stock held. In 2010, The median family held $17.8 thousand of stock, the median family in the wealthiest 10 percent held $131 thousand of stock, and the median family in the poorest 25 percent held just $1.1 thousand of stock.

The joy over the return of the stock market is a thinly veiled celebration of the returning net worths of the wealthiest among us, that being who economic and financial reporting is primarily targeted at. Just remember that the next time you see the state of the stock market is used to describe the overall state of the economy.

The decoupling of the business of America from the workers of America is quite a story that took place over the course of a relatively short period of time. It just goes to show what a concerted effort by people with money and power can do. Of course, there are some examples in history that show what a concerted effort by the masses can do too. I wonder if that pendulum's going to swing ...


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digby 5/22/2013 01:30:00 PM

 
How to force Apple and other multinationals to pay their fair share

by David Atkins

I've often written of the need for stronger international regulation to counteract multinational corporate influence. The burgeoning outrage surrounding the tax practices of companies like Apple and Google that use legal accounting gimmicks to avoid taxes in developed nations by pretending they operate elsewhere or don't do business in those countries serves as a perfect example. If there were international law regulating what constitutes "doing business" in a country, as well as regulations controlling the abuse of offshore tax shelters, it would go a long way toward solving the fiscal situations of many nation-states in a cooperative rather than competitive way.

Traditional protectionist approaches don't work because it's simply too easy for corporations to shelter their profits and headquarters in low-tax countries. The European Union is facing this difficulty as the low-tax havens of Ireland and Luxembourg undercut any nationalistic approach to solving the problem:

At a time when unemployment in the European Union is at record levels, nations eager for jobs remain hesitant to alienate multinational companies by raising their taxes. Instead, countries such as Spain, Greece, and Hungary have imposed hefty sales tax increases, a hit borne most severely by poor people.

“I am skeptical whether the different countries have the political courage to take on the corporate tax avoidance game,” said Sven Giegold, a member of the EU parliament from Germany’s Green Party. “You need consensus of the participating partners, and I do not see the leadership to force through a global model.”

In December, the European Commission, the governing body of the EU, declared war on tax evasion and avoidance, which it said costs the EU 1 trillion euros a year. It encouraged its members to create “blacklists” of tax havens.

Still, the commission instructed them to single out only non-EU countries as havens -- even though member-nations such as Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Ireland encourage multinational companies to legally dodge billions of dollars in taxes around the world...

Similarly, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, an influential publicly funded think tank on international tax policy, used to cite potentially harmful tax behavior by member states, including Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Ireland, Belgium and others. It stopped issuing those reports in 2006 because of “a lack of political interest” from member nations, said Pascal Saint Amans, director of the OECD’s Center for Tax Policy and Administration.

“The Europeans say one thing and do another,” said H. David Rosenbloom, the head of the international tax program at New York University’s law school and an attorney at Caplin & Drysdale in Washington. “The EU can’t do anything as long as it’s got Luxembourg and the Netherlands and Ireland” within the union....

“What is clearly needed, however, is greater coordination in taxation, to prevent one national regime from undermining another, and to address loopholes and mismatches. That is precisely what the Commission is proposing,” she said.

It's very important to read that two or three times. European countries are raising sales taxes and slashing corporate taxes not because they have villainous, corrupt leaders, but because it's too easy for multinational corporations to play countries off one another by shifting badly needed jobs away from higher tax countries. America has a similar problem with state-by-state corporate taxes: after all, there's a reason that every credit card company seems to be headquartered in Delaware, and it isn't the nice weather.

Trying to force each nation-state to enact some sort of corporate tax reform is not only politically unrealistic, it's also a fool's errand. All it takes is a few nation-states taking advantage of every one else to spoil everything.

But in the absence of a badly needed stronger international regulatory model, there is a possible short term solution that may work:

Perhaps the best compromise of that sort has been served up by University of California economist Alan Auerbach, who argues that policymakers need to get outside the worldwide versus territorial debate. His proposal relies on what he calls “the destination principle”: taxing companies where their products are used. Under this scheme, foreign sales wouldn’t be taxed by the US government, but more than that, all cross-border transactions—including foreign expenses—would no longer affect tax payments.

That means that companies get something they want—their legitimate foreign sales earnings would only be taxed by the foreign country. But they’d also lose the ability to move US profits overseas through the kinds of artificial transactions Apple is accused of. Combined with domestic changes to reduce the tax preference given to debt financing and simplified expensing, Auerbach says these reforms would not only make for a clearer system, but also one that makes it more lucrative for companies to invest in the US.

There may be complications involved in that model of which I'm not yet aware (manufacturing in a developing country but only paying taxes in developed countries with consumer bases might create its own host of problems), but it seems to be at least the basis of an elegant solution that is fairer to both corporations and nation-states in a globalized world. But, of course, implementing it effectively would require simultaneous cooperation from the nation-states with the largest consumer bases, which in turn would likely require at least international trade compacts and treaties. Not an easy thing to do, obviously.

But few nations are going to be able to solve this problem on their own, even with theoretically progressive politicians in charge.


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thereisnospoon 5/22/2013 12:00:00 PM

 
Double trouble: Get ready for the next IRS "scandal"

by digby

Yes, they're already on it:

On top of the troubles the administration is facing over its handling of the attack on the Benghazi mission, the Internal Revenue Service's targeting of conservative groups, and the Justice Department's seizure of Associated Press phone records, Republicans hope to target Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

They are questioning her soliciting of funds on behalf of a non-profit group, called Enroll America, from two private entities, a practice which if not unprecedented is at the very least unusual. Federal law bars officials from soliciting any organization or individual with whom they do business or regulate.

Enroll America is run by the president's former campaign backers to do something Congress refused to fund: sell "Obamacare" to the public.

An HHS statement last week said that since March Sebelius solicited financial donations for Enroll America from H&R Block Inc, the tax preparation company, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a philanthropic entity devoted to public health issues. Asked Monday for a list of all solicitations before or after March, an HHS spokesman referred Reuters to the department's original statement.

Neither H&R Block nor the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation are regulated by HHS, the department's spokesman said, so there was nothing improper or illegal about soliciting them.
[...]

The Enroll America issue is complicated by the fact that Republicans in Congress have succeeded in blocking proposed government spending that otherwise could have been used to achieve the ends pursued by the independent group.

That has given lawmakers, such as Republican U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander, an opening to allege a violation of the federal "anti-deficiency" act, which bars agencies from accepting "voluntary" services except when authorized by law.

In defense of the help the department is getting from Enroll America, an HHS spokesman said it is permitted by a section of the Public Health Service Act that allows the secretary to encourage support for new and innovative health programs.

Some conservative legal experts say finding a clear-cut violation of the law is a long shot. "I would be skeptical of the claim that it's illegal, unless someone made a really compelling case. However, the appearance is such that it at least raises questions," said Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western University who opposes healthcare reform.

But legal issues may be the least of the concerns for supporters of the healthcare law.

They worry that a political storm over Obamacare, with congressional hearings likely, could discourage private donors to Enroll America and jeopardize the administration's ability to find the funds needed to reach a public that is already largely unaware of the healthcare reforms.

I wrote about this building pseudo-scandal the other day, and it appears it's gaining steam. I noticed that on Fox yesterday it came up several times as "yet another case of the Obama administration shaking down private industry." When I first read about it, the suggestion was that Sebelius was appealing to insurance companies rather than trying to find corporate sponsors for the purpose of educating the public about Obamacare, which is slightly different, but still not particularly scandalous.

After all, if the congress would agree to fund the outreach as any sane government would do for a big new government program, this wouldn't be necessary.  But naturally, they are trying to make it fail so they don't want the public to be informed of what the new benefits are and what they need to do to get enrolled in insurance and obtain the subsidies.

But this administration rationale doesn't make sense to me to be honest:

"The danger" to the health program, said former Obama healthcare adviser Nancy-Ann DeParle, "is that people don't come and enroll and get insured. That leaves the health plans in the exchanges trying to cover people without any young, healthy people, and it drives the price up."

I think we can probably count on the insurance companies to handle that, don't you? After all, these young healthy people who are mandated to buy insurance are the new money machine for the insurance companies. The reason they agreed to offer coverage for pre-existing conditions and preventive care was so they could get all these young healthy people paying for their product. I have a feeling they'll be more than willing to "reach-out" to this population and help them navigate the new system.

As for using an outside group, sponsored by the private sector, to help educate the public about the new IRS rule well, Houston, we've got a problem, and it's not the one the Republicans cite in that article. (Indeed, one would have thought the GOP would be thrilled to have the private sector step up instead of Big Gummint, right?)

No, the article talks about Sebelius going to H&R Block and there's a reason for that --- somebody has to educate millions of people about how these subsidies are going to work. If it can't be the government, then logically you'd think that the tax preparation industry might want to step up and do it. It's advertising for their services, after all. Unfortunately the IRS "Tea party" hysteria is flowing directly into this one with the right wing already screeching incoherently about how the IRS is going to kill conservatives in their sleep by denying them access to health care or some such nonsense. I'm going to guess that these companies are not going to be too anxious to step into that quick sand unless there's a huge financial incentive to do so --- and I don't think there is.

So Sebelius is in a tough position with this one. However, I would bet anything that there will be plenty of information available via this here internet to guide most people through. Certainly the government web-sites and offices will be able to provide information. I'm just not sure that it's entirely necessary to have a huge TV/radio/newspaper campaign. Yes, it would be nice for the administration to be able to tout all the improvements in the system and make it as easy as possible. But I don't think the lack of that will actually inhibit people from finding out what they need to find out. Between the insurance companies, the internet and the usual tax forms, I'd guess we'll muddle by.

I sure hope so because from the looks of things the Republicans are going to have a field day shutting down this Sebelius plan and keeping the IRS on its heels. Implementation was never going to be easy, but they're going to do everything they have at making sure it's as difficult as possible. (And they call themselves patriots...)

As for whether the administration gets credit for the health care improvements in the public's mind --- well, if it all works out, the smartest thing they ever did was stop resisting the term "Obamacare." That will last a very long time.

If it doesn't they were screwed anyway, so no harm no foul.




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digby 5/22/2013 10:30:00 AM

 
Your Daily Grayson

by digby

Howie filled in the background of the House maneuver in this post and concluded:

House Rules define an earmark as legislation authorizing a grant to an entity outside of statutory, administrative, or competitive award process. Section 6 of H.R. 3 grants a right-of-way and a temporary use permit, outside of an established statutory, administrative, or competitive award process, to only one entity: the Keystone XL pipeline. The bill also is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of powers, and offends the principle underlying the prohibition of bills of attainder.

Speaker John Boehner has two days to consider and respond to Grayson’s resolution.

“The Keystone XL Pipeline deal is an earmark to a foreign corporation, plain and simple,” Grayson said. “House Republicans claim to have been incredibly keen on ridding our legislative system of Congressional earmarks-- yet here they are-- hypocritically sneaking one in for a foreign corporation. They seem to believe that the ‘no earmarks’ rule does not apply to them. That’s just unacceptable.”

I'm pretty sure the Republicans (and a fair number of Democrats) think that giveaways to oil companies are what they've been sent to congress to do. They certainly don't think of them as "earmarks" which I believe are defined as "any local project that doesn't benefit one of my rich donors."

I'm all for congressional authority and I would guess that in this case, the President might even welcome them taking that Keystone hot potato off his hands.  But this is a a crude (pardon the pun) usurpation of executive power,  in order to favor a specific, and extremely controversial, project is brazen, even by this congress' standards.


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digby 5/22/2013 09:00:00 AM

 
Wolf Blitzer makes America cringe

by David Atkins

This is hard to watch:



I don't know what Blitzer's personal religious views are, but he comes across in this segment as attempting to talk down to the "little people" of Oklahoma as one of them by using their religious vernacular. Blitzer doesn't seem like the Bible-thumping type, but he is extremely condescending and constantly out of his depth. Fantastically for her, the tornado victim he was interviewing had the courage of her convictions and embarrassed the heck out of him.

CNN is such a mess.


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thereisnospoon 5/22/2013 07:30:00 AM

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

 
Another great survival story in the midst of devastation: a mom reunited with her young son

by digby

He was apparently kept safe by his teacher. You can just feel her overwhelming relief:

And people are going the extra mile to help:

Kevin Durant is doing what he can to help. The Oklahoma City Thunder star has donated $1 million to the American Red Cross for disaster relief, according to Red Cross Oklahoma. Durant on Monday encouraged his Twitter followers to text “REDCROSS” to 90999 for $10 donations to help tornado victims. It's easy.  I just did it. If you're in Oklahoma, these relief agencies and volunteer organizations are all looking for help.
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digby 5/21/2013 06:00:00 PM

 
Stock market highs --- and high unemployment: the new normal?

by digby

The Washington Post rather blandly reports today that nobody in the government gives a damn about unemployment anymore because the stock market is roaring and the wealthy donor class in both parties is partying like rock stars. No really:

Washington has all but abandoned efforts to help the economy recover faster — and lawmakers don’t seem worried that voters will punish them for it.

There are no serious negotiations underway between the White House and congressional leaders on legislation to spur growth, and no bipartisan “gangs” of senators are huddling to craft a compromise job-creation package.

Yet economic growth remains slow by historical standards, and 11.5 million Americans are still looking for work. More than 4 million people have been unemployed for longer than six months. A Washington Post-ABC News poll found in April that two-thirds of Americans said jobs were difficult to find in their communities.
[...]
“I’m disappointed that there isn’t more of an effort being made” on the economy, said John Engler, the Republican former governor of Michigan who is now president of the Business Roundtable. “I don’t know if people have concluded that there’s been a reset — we’ve accepted these higher levels [of unemployment] and that’s a new normal. I hope not.”

Why? CEOs and stockholders are doing just fine. I'm sure they'll get to job creatin' any day now:

One key Washington constituency is feeling a new normal: stock market highs.

Fifty-two percent of white Americans earning $50,000 a year or more are optimistic about the national economy, a 13-percentage-point increase from December, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll. Thanks largely to that shift and to persistent optimism among higher- income nonwhites, economic optimism among all Americans is at its highest level since early 2009.

The change tracks the performance of the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, which has risen 20 percent in the past six months. Higher-income Democrats and, perhaps most notably, Republicans are all feeling the effects. Obama’s approval rating for handling the economy among higher-income Republicans and GOP-leaning independents, while dismal, has more than doubled over the past six months.

Well, as long as they're happy. But it does raise the question: with all this confidence, why aren't they creating more jobs?

Oh right. I forgot. They're worried about regulations now. But hey, at least we've made sure that labor costs stay low even as the moneyed elite are cleaning up on their investments. I'm sure they'll get to dismantling all the consumer and safety regulations in due time:

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), vice chairman of the Congress Joint Economic Committee, said her efforts have moved past a “crisis mentality” and talk of “stimulus” and into measures to boost America’s economic competiveness in the long term, including skills training for workers, infrastructure improvements, export promotion and streamlining some government regulations.

She’s optimistic some of those initiatives could win enough bipartisan support in both the Senate and the House to become law this year. “If it was up to me,” she said, “this is all we’d be doing.”

There ya go.

The tone of this piece is so blase --- simply observing the phenomenon as if it's an act of nature --- that I have to assume this is just Village conventional wisdom. 7+ percent unemployment for years on end is kind of a shame, but there's no need to get all hot and bothered about it. It's just the way it is. The new normal. Is that sustainable?

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digby 5/21/2013 04:30:00 PM