... the vicious anger from the far right, which is to say what is currently the right, seems totally out of proportion to these reforms. Where does that come from? It comes from the same place as the tea-party protests. It's partisan ... But it is also surely cultural - an expression of the rage some in white America feel at the new social make-up of their country.
You believe a fake America has taken over. You cannot understand this. So you start believing that we have a fascist/communist dictatorship, that there was some fraud allowing a non-citizen to become president, that the government is about to "take over" all healthcare provision ... and on and on.
To me, this is a triumph of ideology. And conservatism is now an abstract anti-government ideology, fueled by cultural, racial and sexual resentment. This is a recipe for more violence ...
This is precisely why the Birther imbroglio could be so harmful to the GOP. If Birthers are portrayed as backward, hateful, and racist, and Democrats and liberals can make "Birther" synonymous with "Republican" then who will want to call themselves Republicans? The risk isn't just being seen as taking the minority side of an opinion, it's to be seen as a lunatic or racist.
Eliminate any pooling of risk (e.g. through employers) and have everybody purchase health insurance on an individual basis.
That second item would hasten the end of insurance-provided health care since the sorting out of high and low risk people would result in unaffordable coverage - or none - for the former, followed by bankruptcy if you didn't get to age 65 (when Medicare kicks in). without serious incident.
After Orly Taitz released the quickly-debunked forged Kenyan birth certificate, it was discovered that the document was altered from a source document that didn't even come from Kenya, but was taken from Bomford's family genealogy site.
(...)
But Taitz is carrying on, having posted two days ago on her Web site that Bomford's certificate is the suspect one: "Bomford report was created to try to discredit my efforts." (Note: the Taitz site may contain malware.)
I've seen that malware warning about Taitz' site elsewhere (e.g. Little Green Footballs) and I've not gone to her site. Why risk it?
Last week (Tues, 28 July), Kevin Drum had a post on paying people who donate kidneys. He writes that "The idea, frankly, makes me very, very queasy," and I agree. While there are arguments in favor, as Kevin lists, the notion of violating body integrity for money bothers me.
On the other hand, I don't have any problem with people being paid to donate a renewable body component. (Or nearly perpetually renewable such as eggs, which run out only after a long time.)
Like blood. Which is partly the reason for this post. I used to donate very occasionally and then stopped for no good reason. But some years ago, in reply to an appeal on the internet by a blogger, I got back into the habit and this week donated my 40th pint since then, which means 5 gallons for this decade.
I'm basically punting on the organ donation issue but putting this post up to encourage others to donate blood. Doesn't have to be manic. Hospitals or the Red Cross would be delighted with 2 donations a year (max is 6/yr). Consider it.
The governor’s budget includes tax increases for shoppers, tax cuts for those making $150,000 or more as well as for corporations, sharp cuts to state spending and a cap on future education funding.
At the center of the conflict is the governor’s proposal that the state dig out of its shortfall — equal to a third of Arizona’s operating budget — with a 1 cent sales tax increase, to be put before voters on the November ballot.
Higher taxes for those making less than $150,000 (sales), tax cuts (unspecified, but probably income) for those making more than $150,000.
... those who attack the system don't actually want to change it much. For example, there's a very good case for abolishing the U.S. Senate. It often distorts the popular will since senators representing 18 percent of the population can cast a majority of the Senate's votes. And as Sen. John McCain said over the weekend, "The Senate works in a way that relatively small numbers can block legislation."
Look at what it takes to block legislation (or a censure resolution). All it takes is a filibuster and a subsequent failure to invoke cloture. Invoking cloture reqires 60 votes. So if one side has 41 votes, that's enough to block legislation. All it takes is 41 Senators from 21 states.
Under a worse case scenario, Senators from the 21 least-populous states could block legislation. How many people are in those 21 states?
If you look at the List of U.S. states by population, we find that out of a total of 300 million for the country, there are 37 million in the 21 least-populous states. That amounts to 12.4% of the population, or one in eight.
But wait, there's more!
Taking this further, it's possible that in each of the 21 least-populous states, the senator was elected with a vote of 50% +1. Effectively half the population of each state. So it could take as little as 18 milliion people (6.2%) to elect enough senators to stop action on a particular bill. That's one in 16 people. And that explains, in part, how anti-democratic (and pro-plutocratic) the Senate can be.
One in 16 is all it takes.
CLARIFICATION: Not everybody votes or can vote, but the ratios still apply.
He had a website that was seriously creepy. He wrote about an aborted attempt earlier this year:
January 6, 2009: I can do this. Leaving work today, I felt like a zombie - just going thru the motions. Get on the bus, get the car, drive home.....My mind is screwed up anymore, I can't concentrate at work or think at all. This log is not detailed. It is only for confidence to do this. The future holds even less than what I have today. It is 6:40pm, about hour and a half to go. God have mercy. I wish life could be better for all and the crazy world can somehow run smoother. I wish I had answers. Bye.
It is 8:45PM: I chickened out! Shit! I brought the loaded guns, everything. Hell!
I got that from a webpage save earlier today. Since then the domain returns a SERVICE UNAVAILABLE notice.
What I was trying to find out in my second check of the website was, did it have a robots.txt file excluding web spiders and robots?
Let's assume it didn't. Then can what he wrote be considered fair game for law enforcement to look at? Would it result in finding and thwarting potential killers?
What was one of them, a mother of a five-year-old doing anywhere near* the China / North Korea border? Sorry, but that's irresponsible. I'm no fan of North Korea, but if they entered that country's territory, they should have been aware of what trouble they could get into.
It's good that they've been released, but I haven't read any criticism of their high-risk behavior.
* - reports say they were arrested "at" the border. If they were taken from Chinese territory, China would have objected, but hasn't. So it looks as if they really did enter North Korean territory.
UPDATE: What's with the Huffington Post headlining with "BILL UPSTAGES HILLARY... ONCE AGAIN"? Look, Bill did fine. Hillary is doing fine. No problems with either one of them, but why is this story getting so much play?
Via TPM, we learn that there was a townhall meeting in Worchester, Massachusetts that was feisty. Attending were two Democratic Representatives and the dean of the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
At one point someone in the crowd called the dean of the school "Dr. Mengele" for suggesting people compare treatments to find those that are effective.
... Rep. Doggett (D-TX) is now being confronted by “angry, sign-carrying mobs” back home in his district which are being orchestrated by well-heeled lobbyists. Doggett released a statement yesterday explaining that he won’t be deterred by the mob:
This mob, sent by the local Republican and Libertarian parties, did not come just to be heard, but to deny others the right to be heard. And this appears to be part of a coordinated, nationwide effort. (...) I am more committed than ever to win approval of legislation to offer more individual choice to access affordable health care. An effective public plan is essential to achieve that goal.
"If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they're run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government."
Let's be frank. From about the 1960's to the 1980's, the Post Office and other government agencies had a "disproportionate" number of blacks. That's due to a number of factors, the primary one being that the federal government was quicker to hire blacks than private enterprise. For a long time "the Post Office" and "the DMV" was code for such staffing.
But that's changed over the years as a visit to both places will attest. Laffer is dating himself, using an obsolete slur.
Radio station owners argue that artists receive free promotion from airplay of their records. This is simply untrue. Most of the music played on AM and FM radio is at least two years old. And the practice of “backselling” — mentioning the name and performer of the song that was just played — has fallen into such disuse that a decade ago the nation’s largest radio station operator, Clear Channel, asked for $24,000 per title to mention the song’s artists on the air. It’s no surprise that companies unwilling to even recognize artists on the air would also be averse to paying performance royalties.
It's of medium length, but hits on several issues that have preoccupied me for years. Basically Lind (and I) are New Dealers and are see neoliberalism as harmful to labor.
Lind's article is for you if you've never been impressed with Bill Clinton, Larry Summers, and Robert Rubin.
An edited summary:
New Deal:
The state provides both social insurance and infrastructure.
The private sector engages in mass production.
New Dealers approve of Big Business, Big Unions and Big Government.
Finance should be strictly regulated and subordinated to the real economy of factories and home ownership.
They are economic internationalists because they wanted to open foreign markets to U.S. factory products
Support for social insurance systems like Social Security and Medicare, which were rights (entitlements) not charity and which mostly redistributed income within the middle class.
New Dealers prefer a high-wage, low-welfare society to a low-wage, high-welfare society. To maintain the high-wage system that would minimize welfare payments to able-bodied adults, New Deal liberals did not hesitate to regulate the labor market, by means of pro-union legislation, a high minimum wage, and low levels of immigration (which were raised only at the end of the New Deal period, beginning in 1965).
Neoliberals: (which include DLC folks)
Supported the deregulation of infrastructure industries that the New Deal had regulated, like airlines, trucking and electricity ...
Neoliberals teamed up with conservatives to persuade Bill Clinton to go along with the Republican Congress's dismantling of New Deal-era financial regulations.
As Asian mercantilist nations like Japan and then China rigged their domestic markets while enjoying free access to the U.S. market, neoliberal Democrats either turned a blind eye to the foreign mercantilist assault on American manufacturing.
While Congress allowed inflation to slash the minimum wage and while corporations smashed unions, neoliberals chattered about sending everybody to college so they could work in the high-wage "knowledge jobs" of the future.
Rubin helped to wreck American manufacturing, by pursuing a strong dollar policy that helped Wall Street but hurt American exporters and encouraged American companies to transfer production for the U.S. domestic market to China and other Asian countries that deliberately undervalued their currencies to help their exports.
By claiming that American workers are insufficiently educated for the "knowledge economy," neoliberal Democrats divert attention from the real reasons for stagnant and declining wages -- the offshoring of manufacturing, the decline of labor unions, and, at the bottom of the labor market, a declining minimum wage and mass unskilled immigration.
About those "knowledge jobs". For two decades that's been the refrain, as if the rest of the world can't compete. But if you recall, Alan Greenspan was totally jazzed about high speed Internet because it would allow knowledge jobs to be performed elsewhere. We all hear about the call centers in India, but there's more than that. I provide technical support to a physician who does a final review of test results. Records that are first processed in India by non-technicians and non-physicians. The only reason the physician is involved is because state law requires an in-state doctor to give the final sign-off. Reviewing these test results is a knowledge job that has been moved to a low-wage country. While there may be some cost savings, the ultimate result (over time) is less power and smaller wages for labor. This is the neoliberal dream, partially influenced by the New Left, which is less nationalist and therefore sees jobs going overseas as just fine, because those folks need work too. (The Brad DeLong position, which I oppose.)
I do not understand why self-proclaimed liberals are for free trade, high immigration (skilled or not), and think that education is the cure-all. To a degree the New Deal was a planned economy, but in a particular way. Done right, a degree of planning and control works (ask Japan, Korea, and now China). It can go overboard, but it's not too hard to tell when and follow up with reforms. The New Deal is considered a relic of an old fashioned manufacturing economy. But what applies to manufacturing can also apply to service jobs (aka knowledge jobs). The New Deal has largely been vindicated, especially in the financial realm. It's time to embrace its principles again.
CODA: Out of 50 comments at Salon, there was only one who agreed with Lind, so clearly I'm in a distinct minority. Other comments were opposed to Lind or on a totally different topic (e.g. Sarah Palin). Some commentators were upset that Lind was declaring Obama a neoliberal and therefore dissing him.
NewsBusters "Say what you want about the Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck and his antics, but to give credit where credit is due, he exposed some disturbing language from the Obama administration's "Cash for Clunker" program Web site Cars.gov."
Atlas Shrugs "... knowing all that we know about the left and their radical president - this is a powerful tool in their war on the American people and their politics of personal destruction. ... Do not hit OK if you do choose to use the cars.gov site. DO NOT."
Outraged:
Free Democracy "This is nothing but unjustifiable fear mongering, by idiots."
What makes this story interesting is, how far can Fox go with this Beck dude without getting pilloried for using a "news" channel to disseminate this kind of nonsense?
Right now, Fox News Channel is a cable version of the Weekly World News (of bat boy fame). Fox commentators like Beck are hardly different from the ravings of (deliberately over-the-top) Ed Anger.
I guess when you're paranoid (or want to use paranoia for political ends) the sky's the limit.
Kudos to Orly Taitz for finding this document. This will keep the issue alive for months, to the advantage of Republicans.
AND IT'S NOT OVER: World Net Daily, which published the above story, ends with this:
WND has reported that among the documentation not yet available for Obama includes his kindergarten records, his Punahou school records, his Occidental College records, his Columbia University records, his Columbia thesis, his Harvard Law School records, his Harvard Law Review articles, his scholarly articles from the University of Chicago, his passport, his medical records, his files from his years as an Illinois state senator, his Illinois State Bar Association records, any baptism records, and his adoption records.
What will Obama's kindergarten records reveal? Probably a lot of damning info, which explains why Obama is desperately trying to keep them from the public eye.
... all recent polls show Democrats with greater credibility on health issues than Republicans, these findings suggest that it is still possible for Obama and his supporters to halt the erosion and win the battle of public opinion -- if they can get people to understand what is being proposed.
They plainly will get no help from the Republicans, who for the most part seem to be following Bill Kristol's urgings to just "kill it," or from the interest groups financing the ads that warn about "government control of your health care."
During the six-minute, 20-second segment, Stossel informed viewers of the long waits patients must endure in countries with government-run health systems – like Canada and Britain. He recounted that some patients – including world leaders and wealthy celebrities – come to America for treatment of serious conditions ...
That's like saying that in the 1960's, because the rich and powerful were buying Rolls Royce sedans, England's automobile industry was doing just fine.
Republican governor signs bill introduced by a Democrat:
Hawaii residents now taxed on Vegas winnings even if they lose Under new law, state will tax all winnings
A new bill signed into law this month by Gov. Linda Lingle has some frequent Las Vegas visitors and local CPAs scratching their heads.
Under House Bill 1495, no longer will gamblers be able to offset their winnings with their losses for Hawai'i state income tax purposes. Previously gamblers would be taxed only on their net winnings, but now they will be taxed on gross winnings.
A Hawai'i resident who wins $10,000 in a year, for example, and loses $9,000 in the same year used to be taxed only on the $1,000 in net winnings. Under the new law, that resident would be taxed on the full $10,000 in winnings.
Even if you end up a net loser, you will still be taxed on whatever you won along the way.
Dennis Kohara, a certified public accountant in Honolulu, called the law "ridiculous." (...)
The law is expected to add about $300,000 a year to Hawai'i tax revenue.
Chong, D-49th (Mauna- wili, Olomana, Enchanted Lake), introduced the measure as a way to bring in additional revenue at a time when the state is "undergoing a significant and possibly protracted economic downturn in tandem with the national and global economic and financial crises."
He said no one wanted to increase taxes, but something had to be done to address the state's budget deficit. Chong said his bill was one of numerous measures taken to address the shortfall.
So do it. Get some Q-tips (TM) and some lighter fluid and carefully clean the tops of the keys and the channels between the rows. You'll be surprised at how dirty they are.
Then show the results to your friends. They'll be impressed!
