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Gay Marriage Gets Supreme Court Review for the First Time

Ah, It Was HIS Waterloo

Jim DeMint to resign to head Heritage Foundation

The most telling quote from the piece?

The mistake the GOP made over the past four years, DeMint told reporters, was focusing too much on what the party was against rather than putting forth “bold ideas to get people inspired and behind us.” 

Right. I wonder if any of the commenters over at The Smallest Minority will take this quote to heart regarding yours truly:)

With this resignation, the age of the "Angry White Man" has now officially concluded.

Fiscal Cliff Explained ... on FOX

Biggest Conservative Campaign Donor a Liberal

Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire who spent hundreds of millions of dollars to get Republicans elected, is a liberal. He said so himself in an interview published in The Wall Street Journal.

“Look, I’m basically a social liberal, I know nobody will believe that,” Mr. Adelson said, as Dr. Adelson nodded.

“Number one, I’m supporting stem-cell research,” he said, pointing to a chart of the new Adelson medical research foundation that is funding some stem-cell based science.

“I’m pro choice,” he said. Republicans are pro-life, but he and his wife are not pro-life in politics, he said.

“You can take your own religious beliefs …and live your life with your own beliefs. But to make it a portion of the government’s policies?” He shook his head.

“Abortion shouldn’t be brought up as a political issue,” he said.

 He's also for the DREAM Act and socialized health care:

Finally, he said casually: “And by the way I’m in favor of a socialized-like health care.”

Asked he was sure he was in the right party, he and his wife laughed.

“Look, nobody agrees with 100 % of their planks” in the GOP platform, he and Dr. Adelson both said. [They endorse the Israeli system of socialized medicine.]

Then what the hell is he doing in the Republican Party?According to Politico he has six core issues:

1) Paranoia. He thinks Obama will retaliate against him for spending hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat him. He thinks the investigations into money laundering in his Vegas casino and violation of bribery laws at his Macau casino are evidence of this, and tried to buy a change to the federal corrupt practices act in this last election.

2) Union busting. He hates them. He runs the only non-union casino in Vegas. He appears to compensate employees well, but like any Big Man he doesn't like his authority to be challenged and wants his employees to be beholden to him and no one else.

3) Latkes. One of his major gripes is that Bush ran out of potato pancakes at the last Hanukah party he attended at the White House.

4) Czars. Adelson and the right has this fantasy that there's a shadow government accountable to no one because Obama has appointed "czars" to oversee particular aspects of the government. The Congress and Republican presidents have been appointing such czars for decades, especially "drug czars." Nixon and Reagan were famous for doing this. In management speak it's called "delegation of authority," and is no different that a company hiring another manager to run a new project. Of course, these czars answer to the president and the Congress and the courts, so they're hardly above the law.

5) Control. Adelson wants to control the message the right is putting out. By dangling money in front of these guys, he can control what they say. By threatening to cut them off he dictates what they do.

6) Israel. He wants to dictate American policy on Israel, and buying a Republican -- any Republican -- into the White House would give him what he wants.

There you have it. Adelson is a Republican not because he believes in any of the planks in the party's platform, or has an enduring belief in any of the party's ideology and philosophy, but because he feels persecuted by Democrats and Republicans will give him more stuff.

In other words, Adelson is just another one of those people who voted for Romney because he promised them "stuff."

Why aren't these Tea Party guys drumming Adelson out of the Republican Party?

A Nickel on the Dollar

The other day execs from defense contractors told Congress that they're fine with having their taxes raised back to what they were during the Clinton administration. They should be: their salaries are paid by our tax dollars. Other CEOs, such as Lloyd Blankfein (Goldman Sachs) and Randall Stephenson (AT&T) said that a budget deal will require raising the marginal rate.

Many Republicans still refuse to bend to that reality, saying that it will destroy job creation and stifle everyone's incentive to earn more money. At issue is Obama's proposal to allow the top two marginal rates for the wealthiest taxpayers (married couples making more than $250,000) from 33% and 35%, to 36% and 39.6%. What exactly would that mean?

First, to be clear: these are marginal increases, so someone making $250,000 does not simply pay 39.6% of their salary. First you get to make a bunch of deductions, including the standard deduction, child allowances, mortgage, charitable contributions, state taxes, etc. This generally decreases wealthy people's taxes by a bunch right off the bat. (We'll ignore capital gains taxes for now, which Obama is proposing to raise from 15% to 20%, which is still a fabulous deal for the wealthy.)

So, let's say your taxable income after all those deductions is $250,000 a year. If you make $251,000 your taxes will go up by all of $46. Yes, by the magic of marginal tax rates each dollar you earn over $250,000 will cost you less than a nickel.

The Republican disincentive argument is so much hot air. Who in their right mind would turn down a promotion and a raise because their taxes will go up a nickel for each dollar more they earn?

But because there are so many rich people who make so much money, this nickel on the dollar would raise $800 billion over the next 10 years. That alone won't solve the deficit: some loopholes must be closed and programs will have to be cut, including defense, other discretionary spending and entitlements.

Why tax the wealthy instead of regular Americans? Why is that fair?

The wealthy will take a penny of that nickel and stick it in some foreign bank account. Another penny will go to buy an interest in a casino in Macau or a factory in China. Two more cents will be used to flip stock in the Wall Street casino (the companies will never see a penny from that "investment" and cannot hire a single worker from the sale of that stock). The last cent might be invested in something that might create a job here at home, an IPO, corporate or municipal bonds, take a cruise to the Greek Islands like Newt Gingrich after announcing a run for the presidency, or buy a yacht or a third mansion.

On the other hand, middle-class Americans will immediately spend four cents of that nickel on things right now: clothes (from Walmart), food (from Walmart, Kraft and Nabisco), drink (from Coca Cola and Anheuser Busch), cell phones (Apple and AT&T), and housing (which benefits construction companies across the country). The remaining penny might be spent to buy down debt, put into savings for retirement, college or a vacation, and nearly all of it will ultimately be spent here in the United States.

In short, tax cuts for the middle class are immediately converted to profits for corporate behemoths like Walmart, AT&T and Apple, and therefore the wealthy who reap the profits.

By contrast, the Republican plan to eliminate loopholes would hit middle-class Americans just as hard as the wealthy, reducing their disposable income and therefore corporate profits.

The president and the Congress need to understand the larger-scale workings of the economy instead of getting bogged down in arguments over class warfare and government picking winners and losers. Almost every cent middle-income Americans get in tax relief is going to wind up as profit on a corporate balance sheet, which means higher salaries, big bonuses and increased dividends for the wealthy.

It's a great return for the country for only a nickel on the dollar.

Ballistic, Benched, and Befuddled!

I guess the Civil War in the GOP has officially begun.

“You saw just a conservative purge in the House, you’ve seen the Washington insiders all saying, ‘Well we have to back off of our principles, and get away from certain issues and compromise on others,’” former GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum told POLITICO. “Tomorrow we should all call John Boehner’s office to remind him to call Congressman Amash,” tweeted RedState.com’s Erick Erickson. 

We knew it was only a matter of time before they started to turn on each other and I predict it's going to get worse as Speaker Boehner is going to have to cave. If he doesn't, the public will blame the House Republicans in the next election.

Speaking of blame, Roger Ailes is tired of Dick Morris and Karl Rove being wrong all the time so they have been told to grab some wood at Fox News. Life in the bubble is shrinking and it's largely due to a complete ignorance of facts. The American people know this and that's why the Right lost the election.

Of course, the bubble isn't fully shrunk yet as someone needs to explain to me why 38 Senators are convinced that the UN is going to use disabled people around the world to create a New World Order. Any takers?

Boehner's Cynical Offer

Yesterday John Boehner made a cynical counterproposal to the president's proposal to keep the Bush tax cuts for everyone but the wealthiest taxpayers.

Boehner's plan includes $800 billion in revenues gained by eliminating unspecified loopholes in the tax code. This is essentially a retread of the Romney/Ryan plan, which also refused to specify anything concrete.

The problem with closing loopholes is that there are thousands of them in the tax code. Half the legislation Congress passes provides tax relief to encourage one sort of economic behavior or other. Those are the very loopholes Boehner wants to eliminate.

Reagan's tax reform in the 1980s was this exact kind of rate deduction and loophole closure. Lo and behold, 30 years later we have a tax code encrusted with thousands upon thousands of tax deductions, incentives and loopholes.

That's why Boehner's proposal is the height of cynicism. Boehner knows quite well that any loopholes Congress closes in a budget deal will be as fleeting as the morning dew: they'll all be immediately replaced by new deductions and incentives to "help the job creators create more jobs."

Tax rate increases are the only durable method to raise revenues, and that's why the Republicans are so adamantly against them. They know closing loopholes is just a temporary cosmetic fix. And that's why conservative Republicans are pushing back against the very plan they supported just a few weeks ago when it was the centerpiece of the Romney campaign. They have to provide the public the illusion that they will somehow be making a compromise by accepting the elimination of loopholes. The whole loophole thing is just another Republican scam.

The only people who've gotten bonuses and salary increases over the last four years have been the 1%. Middle- and low-income workers' wages have declined in real terms. For that reason, raising tax rates on the 1% is is the only way to make the wealthy pay their fair share.

So, yes, the president should accept Boehner's offer to close loopholes. The tax code is larded with crap that benefits the few at the expense of the many. But the wealthy still need to pay taxes at a higher rate, because they've increased corporate profits by laying off some workers and milking the remaining workers for increased productivity while holding their wages down.

And the biggest loophole of all, the 15% rich man's special tax rate on dividends and capital gains, should be at the top of the president's list of rates to increase.

Worth A Bazillion Words

The Role Reversal

As I write this on Dec. 3, sitting in my office in Minnesota, it is 52 degrees outside.  It's raining. On Nov. 10 four tornadoes hit Minnesota. There was a little snow just before Thanksgiving, but highs in the 40s and 50s have melted it all.

For 25 years we've been going to volleyball matches at the University of Minnesota. For years November and December were bearish months: it snowed half the time and traffic was always snarled. Traffic is still snarled these days, but for the last 10 years our drive has been marred by snow less than a handful of times.

Twenty-five years ago we had to wait till May for the snow to melt to play volleyball outdoors in the sand. We've been able to play in early March and April for several years now.

When I was a kid I had to walk a mile to school in hip-deep snow. Unlike my father, only one way was uphill.

I'm engaging in that age-old pastime of geezerhood: talking about how it used to be in the old days, complaining about how much it's changed, and how everything is going down the drain and kids these days don't know how easy they have it.

It's not just me. Scientists have documented global temperature increases, increased frequency of tornadoes, increased intensity and size of hurricanes like Sandy and Irene, which are fueled by higher ocean temperatures. They've documented the earlier springs and later falls and their effects on wildlife migration and reproduction. They've documented the opening of the Northwest Passage and the drastically smaller ice cap.

But, incredibly, millions of Republicans my age have completely forgotten what life was like 20 or 30 years ago. They insist that global warming is a hoax and that everything is completely normal and just like it always was.

In Doha, Qatar, the UN climate conference is in full swing. They've just released a report saying that rising CO2 levels will cause a global temperature increase of 4 to 6 degrees C by 2100. That will cause sea levels to rise more than three feet, 60% faster than was previously projected (actual measurements are in line with that faster pace).

Our local public radio station ran a segment this morning about young voters, how they propelled President Obama to re-election, and what they want the president to do. One of their top concerns was global warming.

Why are these kids willing to acknowledge the reality of global warming, while people who actually lived through those colder, snowier times refuse to acknowledge scientific evidence, as well as the evidence of their own senses?

Why have the roles of the young and the old reversed in this country? Why are supposedly responsible adults acting like spoiled children, putting their fingers in their ears and babbling to keep from hearing the truth?

I'm probably the first geezer to say this, but it seems our kids have more sense than their parents.

Heed His Warning

It's easy after the last election for Democrats to feel confident. The president only dropped two states from 2008. Gains were seen in both the House and Senate (netting 8 seats in the former and 2 in the latter). The GOP hasn't gotten above 300 electoral votes since 1988 with the Democrats winning 4 of the last 6 presidential elections.

And, as the absentee ballots are counted, we see that the president got 65.3 million votes so his lower totals than 2008 weren't as low as originally thought (Mitt Romney is now at 60.7 so he did get 1 million more votes than McCain in 2008).

But, as Rahm Emanuel notes in this piece, we can't rest on our laurels.

We cannot expect Republicans to cede the economic argument so readily, or to fall so far short on campaign mechanics, the next time around. So, instead of resting on false assurances of underlying demographic advantages, the Democratic Party must follow through on our No. 1 priority, which the president set when he took office and reemphasized throughout this campaign: It is time to come home and rebuild America.

Right. This is no time for end zone dances. We have to deliver.  What's a key way we do that?

If we want to build a future in which the middle class can succeed, we must continue the push for reform that the president began with Race to the Top, bringing responsibility and accountability to our teachers and principals. 

Honestly, it starts with education and that means high stakes testing for every subject across the board, especially social studies. Many on the Right take the view that Democrats coddle those in the education system. Clearly, they have not read the fact sheet on Race to the Top. If they did, they would see that the president and many of his supporters (including me) wholeheartedly support this endeavor.

If the students that are in school now receive a higher quality education, they are going to be a very strong backbone of this country in the next decade. Take some time to look through the fact sheet listed above and see how these changes have to made to our education system in order for our economy to improve.

For the Democrats, this should be one of the main policies to vigorously pursue in the president's second term. This is one of a few key policies that is going to help win election after election. 

Texas: King of Corporate Welfare

The New York Times is running a series of articles about how much money states and localities are spending to induce corporations to locate in their area. Corporations receive more than $80 billion of taxpayer money every year, in the form of cash grants, income tax credits and exemptions, property tax abatements, sales tax breaks and free services.

This is redistribution of wealth on a massive scale, welfare for the wealthy. We spend more on this corporate welfare than we do on food stamps (which was $78 billion last year).

The state with the biggest giveaways is Texas: Texas taxpayers foot $19 billion in annual giveaways to corporations. That's $759 per capita and 51 cents for every dollar of the state budget. By comparison Minnesota is a piker: only $239 million, or $45 per capita and a penny per dollar of the state budget.

Companies like GM, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Twitter, Walmart, Shell Oil and major league sports franchises are the usual recipients of this largesse. But the Times finds that the local governments giving all that money away have no idea how many jobs are actually created and how much they actually benefit.
When Minnesota has done this it hasn't turned out so well. The state gave Northwest Airlines sweetheart deals to relocate call centers and maintenance facilities in the state, only to get screwed after Delta bought them out and moved those jobs out of state. Promises corporations make are rarely kept and consequences for breaking them are even rarer.

Companies that play by the rules, pay their taxes and remain loyal to their home states get the shaft, and wind up paying for state officials to lure competitors into the area. To get the same deals those local companies have to threaten to leave, soliciting other states and localities to bribe them away. It's a cynical game that states can never win as they impoverish themselves.

At the end of the day corporations won't make moves that make no business sense. Companies have to locate where resources, transportation and customers dictate. That means most of the states competing for these companies don't have a chance to win, and they're foolishly wasting their time and money even trying. They're just being used as leverage to squeeze the sweetest deal out of the places where the companies actually need to locate.

This is crony capitalism at its worst. It's government picking winners and losers. It's legal, out-in-the-open bribery and extortion. But worst of all, it's a massive transfer of billions of dollars from middle-income and small-business taxpayers to giant multinational corporations.

Obama Stops Doing the Republicans' Job

Timothy Geithner delivered Obama's plan for the fiscal cliff to congressional Republicans yesterday, and they don't like it:

“If the president is going to lead on this critical issue, he has to propose a plan that can actually pass,” said Republican Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri. “This is simply not a serious proposal.”

The real problem the Republicans have is that Obama is now negotiating exactly the same way they do: he's only proposing tax cuts and stimulus, and is totally ignoring Republican demands. Since Republicans seem to think cutting the budget is so easy, he's going to let them propose those cuts.

In the past Obama has tried take Republicans requirements under consideration and work them into his legislation. That's why he abandoned single-payer health care and adopted Romneycare as the basis for health care reform. He naively hoped that would coax some Republicans to vote for it. But they rejected the plan anyway as a basic tactic to deny him any victories whatsoever, and continue to whine about it to this day.

Again and again Obama has crafted proposals to meet Republicans half way even before he started talking to them. Naturally, Republicans turn Obama's already-compromised proposals into starting points, and demand even more concessions.

Obama has finally learned his lesson. He has proposed only those things that he thinks are important: extending tax cuts for everyone but the top 2% and eliminating the idiotic debt limit authorization process. The latter will prevent Congress from blackmailing the president (be he Democrat or Republican) every time it becomes necessary to increase the debt limit.

So instead of negotiating with himself trying to figure out what Republicans want, Obama is laying his requirements on the table. Now it's up to Republicans to propose the budget cuts and entitlement "reforms" they want to make up the rest of the budget balancing act.

Yes, Obama is going to let Republicans take all the heat from Social Security and Medicare recipients by forcing John Boehner to propose the cuts he wants. If Republicans want to keep taxing Mitt Romney at at one-half to one-third the rate middle-income Americans pay, Obama is going to make them propose that. If Republicans want to keep bloated weapons procurement programs afloat, Obama is going to make them propose cuts to veterans' programs, NASA, highway construction, farm subsidies, education, and programs that people need to feed their children.

Instead of constantly negotiating with himself beforehand, Obama is finally making Republicans do their job. It's up to Republicans to stop stalling and calling for Obama to "lead." He's done so. Now it's the Republicans' turn.

The Factory is Closing

A story in the Washington Post reports that the US birth rate has declined drastically since the recession started:

The overall birthrate decreased by 8 percent between 2007 and 2010, with a much bigger drop of 14 percent among foreign-born women. The overall birthrate is at its lowest since 1920, the earliest year with reliable records. The 2011 figures don’t have breakdowns for immigrants yet, but the preliminary findings indicate that they will follow the same trend.

This has raised some concerns that there won't be enough young people to support the aging population. We've been depending on immigrants (who have a higher birthrate than native Americans) to prop up Social Security to keep the population growing.

For most of this time of steep decline Republicans have been on an anti-immigrant tirade. The primary claim has been that Mexicans come here to have "anchor babies" so that they can enjoy the fabulous welfare and medical benefits America has to offer. In response states like Arizona passed laws of questionable constitutionality in response to this fear mongering. The reality is different:

But after 2007, as the worst recession in decades dried up jobs and economic prospects across the nation, the birthrate for immigrant women plunged. One of the most dramatic drops was among Mexican immigrants — 23 percent.

At the peak of anti-immigrant hysteria the exact thing that Republicans were decrying was declining. But since Mitt Romney's devastating loss to President Obama Republicans have been doing a total 180 on immigration. Now they want to make nice with Hispanics.

The truth is, the recession hit the poorest people — including immigrants — the hardest. Immigrants don't come to this country to bear their children, they come here to get jobs that pay more than they can make at home. The fact is, health care in Mexico is free. Many Americans have gone to Mexico to take advantage of this. So there's little incentive for pregnant women to leave their extended families and free health care in Mexico to come to the United States where they're in constant danger of being deported and they have to register with the government to obtain welfare benefits.

Republicans have always tried to frame the immigration debate in terms of illegal aliens coming to this country to steal our jobs (or steal our welfare, they can never decide which). But the real problem has always been that employers created an attractive nuisance by hiring illegal aliens for more than they can make in their home countries, while paying wages lower than native Americans can afford to accept. The proof is in the pudding: when the recession made those jobs dry up, illegal immigration declined.

But the other side of this is that when people move to America they become Americans:

Latino immigrants who have been here longer tend to adopt U.S. attitudes and behavior, including having smaller families, Suro said. He added that the decline in the birthrate among Mexican immigrants is probably so sharp because the rate was so high that there was more room for it to fall.

As a Salvadoran said while pregnant with her third child:

“To have more babies, it costs more,” she said as her 2-year-old son Emanuel played nearby.

Pointing to her belly, she said she plans to have her tubes tied after giving birth. “The factory is closing,” she said with a smile.

Hey, Check Out The New Sidebar!

I've made some changes to the sidebar and brought the site more in line with the 21st century. Scroll down and you will see the latest political news, world news, business news, US news and (for my local homies) Minnesota news.  A little further down is a list of the tags (finally) on the front page. Click on any tag (US Debt, US Deficit, for example) and you can see all my posts on said subject.

One other note...since the election, we've doubled our traffic here at Markadelphia and get between 400 and 500 page loads a day with over 7,000 page views in the last month. Mega!

Where is the Sense?

Peter Bergen's recent piece pretty much jibes with what I have been saying all along regarding the GOP mental meltdown over Benghazi. Mr. Bergen is CNN's national security analyst and the author of "Manhunt: The Ten-Year Search for bin Laden -- From 9/11 to Abbottabad."

What is the Republican theory of the case against Rice? It appears to boil down to the idea that leading Democrats covered up the involvement of terrorists in some way connected to al Qaeda in the Benghazi attack during the run-up to the close presidential election because President Obama and others in his administration had for some time said that al Qaeda was close to strategic defeat.

I guess that's it but, again, I have to wonder...where was the outrage after 9-11? Then we had 3000 civilians killed on our home soil in the worst attack in US History. This was an attack in a massively destabilized country on a CIA listening station (not an embassy or consulate as is commonly thought) with a US Ambassador, who knew the risks, two CIA contractors and a Navy seal losing their lives. To the Right, this means that all of our women and children were raped/tortured/killed by Islamists whilst they were shitting on the flag.

Anyway, Bergen raises an interesting question, which I put to all of you..

Does this case make sense? First, you would have to accept that Obama, Rice and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton all knowingly deceived the American public about what had happened at the Benghazi consulate.

Second, it was the intelligence community, not officials at the White House or State Department, that eliminated from the talking points used by Rice after the Benghazi attack the suspected involvement of the Libyan jihadist group, Ansar al-Sharia.

That's right. How do we know this?

According to accounts of former CIA director David Petraeus' closed door testimony about Benghazi to congressional intelligence committees earlier this month, the intelligence community eliminated references to Ansar al-Sharia in the talking points so as not to tip off members of the terrorist group that the CIA believed that they were responsible for the attack.

The conspiracy therefore was not to mislead the American public but to mislead America's enemies.

Hmmm...sounds familiar, eh?

If Rice had gone beyond her unclassified talking points and said that Ansar al-Sharia was suspected to be behind the Benghazi attacks, no doubt she would now be being hounded for the unauthorized disclosure of classified information.

Exactly.

Bergen also raises a third point that isn't discussed enough.

Third, it is worth recalling that whenever there is a news event in a chaotic country on the other side of the world, first accounts about the event are often wrong. Remember the erroneous reports about another big news event last year; the death of Osama bin Laden. Initially, it was portrayed by the Obama administration that bin Laden had died during a firefight with U.S. forces in Pakistan and had used his wife as a human shield. As more accurate information subsequently came in from the field, administration officials clarified that bin Laden put up no resistance and had not used his wife as a shield. This is not conspiracy; this is the fog of war.

If the Obama administration had said, "We don't know what happened" how would that have honestly looked? McCain and his little band of pants squirters know this and they are just playing politics.

Some more great points...

It is also worth recalling that the situation in Benghazi was so chaotic and dangerous that it took three weeks for the FBI to get in to the city to investigate what had happened at the consulate. And it took even more time for the facts to emerge that the Benghazi mission wasn't really a consulate in any conventional sense, but was more of a CIA listening station and that two of the four Americans who had died in the attack weren't diplomats as initially portrayed but were, in fact, CIA contractors.

Facts, folks, are stubborn things.

I have no doubt that the witch hunt is going to continue and accusations will be flying around about cover-ups and the suffix "gate" is going to be attached to all of this. But I predict that right around that time or maybe a little after, we're going to catch some of the guys that were responsible for the attack and then the truth will come out.

And that's when McCain and the others are going to realize why the GOP keeps losing elections.

Let Warren Unburden Them

Warren Buffett's recent opinion piece seen in many papers and online over the last few days is a fine example of how completely ridiculous the Right is in regards to federal government tax policy. He begins with an anecdote.

Suppose that an investor you admire and trust comes to you with an investment idea. "This is a good one," he says enthusiastically. "I'm in it, and I think you should be, too." Would your reply possibly be this? "Well, it all depends on what my tax rate will be on the gain you're saying we're going to make. If the taxes are too high, I would rather leave the money in my savings account, earning a quarter of 1 percent." Only in Grover Norquist's imagination does such a response exist. 

Only in all their imaginations does such a response exist. I can say with near certainty that anyone on the Right that says they do this or has known people to act in this fashion is lying. As Mr. Buffett has said many times previously, people invest to make money. Government tax policy doesn't enter into it.

And facts are facts...

Between 1951 and 1954, when the capital gains rate was 25 percent and marginal rates on dividends reached 91 percent in extreme cases, I sold securities and did pretty well. In the years from 1956 to 1969, the top marginal rate fell modestly, but was still a lofty 70 percent -- and the tax rate on capital gains inched up to 27.5 percent. I was managing funds for investors then. 

Never did anyone mention taxes as a reason to forgo an investment opportunity I offered. Under those burdensome rates, moreover, both employment and the gross domestic product (a measure of the nation's economic output) increased at a rapid clip. The middle class and the rich alike gained ground. 

They both gained ground because there was less inequality. The money that was used from the higher tax revenues paid for investments in infrastructure and education (the GI Bill, for example). This, in turn, led to a higher skilled labor force and an economy that was robust and innovative. This is not the case today.

The group's average income in 2009 was $202 million -- which works out to a "wage" of $97,000 per hour, based on a 40-hour workweek. (I'm assuming they're paid during lunch hours.) Yet more than a quarter of these ultrawealthy paid less than 15 percent of their take in combined federal income and payroll taxes. Half of this crew paid less than 20 percent. And -- brace yourself -- a few actually paid nothing. 

This is how money has been transferred upwards as Stiglitz mentions in "The Price of Inequality."

So what does Warren think should be done about this?

We need Congress, right now, to enact a minimum tax on high incomes. I would suggest 30 percent of taxable income between $1 million and $10 million, and 35 percent on amounts above that. A plain and simple rule like that will block the efforts of lobbyists, lawyers and contribution-hungry legislators to keep the ultrarich paying rates well below those incurred by people with income just a tiny fraction of ours. Only a minimum tax on very high incomes will prevent the stated tax rate from being eviscerated by these warriors for the wealthy. 

And what will the result be?

Our government's goal should be to bring in revenues of 18.5 percent of GDP and spend about 21 percent of GDP -- levels that have been attained over extended periods in the past and can clearly be reached again. As the math makes clear, this won't stem our budget deficits; in fact, it will continue them. But assuming even conservative projections about inflation and economic growth, this ratio of revenue to spending will keep America's debt stable in relation to the country's economic output. 

I agree and, as Warren notes, this will involve major concessions by the Right and the Left. All sides in this debate have signaled a willingness to bend so I do have some hope.

And what about that figment of the Right's imagination who is overly obsessed with "uncertainty?"

In the meantime, maybe you'll run into someone with a terrific investment idea, who won't go forward with it because of the tax he would owe when it succeeds. Send him my way. Let me unburden him. 

 Maybe I should send ol' DJ from TSM to Mr. Buffett...hee hee...:)

Vampire Capitalists Drain Life from Hostess

Everyone is lamenting the death of the Twinkie now that Hostess is declaring bankruptcy. The right is blaming the unions for staking their favorite snack food in the heart. However, the untold story is that greedy CEOs, hedge funds, and a private equity firm not unlike Bain Capital all had a hand in the demise of Hostess.

But like a zombie in The Walking Dead, Hostess will rise from the grave and start producing deathless Twinkies once again. How do I know? We've seen this horror show once before.

An article in Fortune from last July goes into detail on the current fiasco and its genesis. The last time Hostess declared bankruptcy was in 2004. A private equity firm, Ripplewood Holdings, bought up the assets:

Hostess was able to exit bankruptcy in 2009 for three reasons. The first was Ripplewood's equity infusion of $130 million in return for control of the company (it currently owns about two-thirds of the equity). The second reason: substantial concessions by the two big unions. Annual labor cost savings to the company were about $110 million; thousands of union members lost their jobs. The third reason: Lenders agreed to stay in the game rather than drive Hostess into liquidation and take whatever pieces were left. The key lenders were Silver Point and Monarch. Both are hedge funds that specialize in investing in distressed companies -- whether you call them saviors or vultures depends on whether you're getting fed or getting eaten.

The unions already took a big hit at Hostess, so the current dilemma is not all their fault: we can also blame the vulture capitalists and greedy CEOs, of which Hostess had six over eight years:

[Brian] Driscoll, the CEO, departed suddenly and without explanation in March. It may have been that the Teamsters no longer felt it could trust him. In early February, Hostess had asked the bankruptcy judge to approve a sweet new employment deal for Driscoll. Its terms guaranteed him a base annual salary of $1.5 million, plus cash incentives and "long-term incentive" compensation of up to $2 million. If Hostess liquidated or Driscoll were fired without cause, he'd still get severance pay of $1.95 million as long as he honored a noncompete agreement.

When the Teamsters saw the court motion, Ken Hall, the union's secretary-treasurer and No. 2 man, was irate. So much, he thought, for what he described as Driscoll's "happy talk" about "shared sacrifice." Hall says he tracked Driscoll down by phone and told him, "If you don't withdraw this motion, these negotiations are done." Hostess withdrew the motion a few weeks later when Driscoll left -- the same Driscoll who, Hostess told the court in its motion, was "key" to "reestablishing" Hostess's "competitive position going forward."

The unions are not blameless either, as is clear from their demands for featherbedding (different drivers must be used to deliver different products). But you can certainly see why they're so intransigent in the face of such blatant incompetence and greed in management, after giving up so much the last time.

Thus, there's a whole host of reasons why Hostess is in trouble. Not the least of which is that demand is down for its products because they're simply bad for your health.

But bankruptcy doesn't mean the end of the Hostess brands, just like the last time. In bankruptcy the recipes, trademarks and facilities of Hostess will be liquidated. Which means private equity firms and hedge funds—maybe even run by the same guys—will be able to buy them for pennies on the dollar. And go right back into business, but this time with a much bigger hammer to smash the unions with.

And that's really the point here. These days the balance of power between unions and management is heavily weighted toward management. In the past labor staged strikes, but that's increasingly rare. Now we hear almost exclusively about lockouts. From Hostess, to tire factories, to sugar beet processing plants, to operas and symphony orchestras, to national basketball, football and hockey leagues, management doesn't care if they drive their organizations into the ground with lockouts, as long as they can break the unions.


Despite what Mitt Romney says, corporations, private equity firms and hedge funds are not people. Like vampires, they can die and be resurrected from the dead only to suck the life out of the people who work for and invest in them.

The entire purpose of corporations is to insulate management from personal financial responsibility for their decisions. Hedge funds and private equity firms use other people's money to engineer takeovers. Corporate bankruptcy laws encourage the hedge fund managers to destroy the company in order to start over with a clean slate. All the while these ghouls pay the ridiculously low 15% capital gains tax rates on their salaries because of a loophole in the tax code.

These vampire capitalists drain the life out of companies like Hostess, yet always increase their own wealth, without ever having to risk their own financial well-being. They can then dissolve into corporate bankruptcy, only to reform in their crypts under a new corporate logo.

Those of you who thought you had staked the last vampire capitalist when Mitt Romney lost the election were wrong. Go get your garlic, holy water and crucifixes. There's more work to do.

Florida Republicans Admit Voter Suppression

An article in the Palm Beach Post reveals that Republican efforts in Florida to change election laws to restrict early voting were intended to suppress the votes of Democrats and minorities:

“The Republican Party, the strategists, the consultants, they firmly believe that early voting is bad for Republican Party candidates,” [former Florida Republican Party chairman Jim] Greer told The Post. “It’s done for one reason and one reason only. … ‘We’ve got to cut down on early voting because early voting is not good for us,’ ” Greer said he was told by those staffers and consultants.

“They never came in to see me and tell me we had a (voter) fraud issue,” Greer said. “It’s all a marketing ploy.”

Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist concurs:

Crist said party leaders approached him during his 2007-2011 gubernatorial term about changing early voting, in an effort to suppress Democrat turnout. Crist is now at odds with the GOP, since abandoning the party to run for U.S. Senate as an independent in 2010. He is rumored to be planning another run for governor, as a Democrat.

Crist said in a telephone interview this month that he did not recall conversations about early voting specifically targeting black voters “but it looked to me like that was what was being suggested. And I didn’t want them to go there at all.”

On the bright side, it's not necessarily about racism: “The sad thing about that is yes, there is prejudice and racism in the [Republican] party but the real prevailing thought is that they don’t think minorities will ever vote Republican,” Greer said.

But a GOP consultant who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of retribution said black voters were a concern.

“I know that the cutting out of the Sunday before Election Day was one of their targets only because that’s a big day when the black churches organize themselves,” he said.

According to the article, other former Republican campaign consultants confirm the accusations of voter suppression, which the Florida Republican Party denies. Instead they're attacking the men who ratted on them. They've indicted Greer for taking money from the party, which he admits is true but says they knew about it. And Crist became a persona non-grata when he ran as an independent for Senate.

The simple fact is, more people in this country are inclined to vote Democratic than Republican. Two-thirds of Americans self-identify as liberal or moderate, which means they're much more likely to be Democrats given the stridently radical stands of the current Republican Party.

Minority voters tend to be on the lower end of the economic scale, which means they have a harder time getting to the polls on election day. Things that make it easier for them to register and vote make it harder for Republicans to win. So Republicans want to make it harder for them to vote by restricting registration and taking away early voting.

Come on, now. Was that really so hard to admit?

Tom Ricks Pokes The Bubble

I guess this is what happens when you bring reality into the bubble...you have a 90 second interview!

I still don't get the anaphylaxis over Benghazi. The Right bitches about letting our enemies know too much information (pulling out of Irag, Afghanistand timelines) and then they turn around and bitch when we don't say enough (Susan Rice's comments following the attack). Which is it?

That's I LFMAO when I read stuff like this. What is John McCain "significantly troubled" about? The fact that he's attempting to still be politically relevant? Susan Rice was going on the intel she had at the time from the CIA (the public story). Or she deliberately made misleading statements in order to deflect attention away from the investigation that is going on behind the scenes. I'm predicting that when we catch these guys, we're going to find out and Sens McCain, Graham, and Ayotte are going to look pretty fucking dumb.

Of course, we all know what this is really about...a deflection away from the American Taliban who make the GOP look bad when they release moronic and highly bigoted videos. All that bluster makes for good theater!

I Guess The Answer Is Yes

The other say I asked if we were seeing the beginning of the end of Grover Norquist. I think it's safe to say now that the answer is yes.

Elections have consequences and the main one that we seem to be seeing so far is a return to sanity. While there has not been any sort of deal yet on avoiding the so called "fiscal cliff," the signals from many Republican leaders say that they are willing to be flexible. That's a good thing.

Right up until the election, I was pretty pessimistic at the thought of there possibly being a day when we no longer had to manage the fantasies of the Right. Now, there is indeed a glimmer of light. Sure, there will still be people like Bill Whittle running around and making money off of his merry band of followers but they won't have any effect on elections.

And that is a very, very good thing!

Uh Oh

Is this the beginning of the end for Grover?

Rewarding Bad Behavior

Israel and Hamas have agreed to yet another truce after the Hamas terrorists who run Gaza unleashed a barrage of missiles on Israel and Israel retaliated with targeted assassinations of Hamas leaders and bombings of terrorists who hide their missile launchers among Palestinian civilians. The toll after this latest skirmish was 161 Palestinians and five Israelis.

The ostensible reason Hamas started this conflict, which would be Rocky XLII if we numbered them like movie sequels, is the five-year blockade of Gaza. The blockade has left residents of the tiny strip of land starving and without any means to generate income. Israel imposed the blockade to prevent terrorists bringing missiles into Gaza. But as the daily rain of missiles upon Tel Aviv proved, the blockade is an abject failure.

Ironically, this outburst of terrorism has empowered Hamas, raising their status among Palestinians, and has opened the door to ending the blockade.

Meanwhile, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian National Authority, which controls the West Bank, has been trying peaceful means to move Israel towards a two-state solution. Hamas and the PA have been competing for the devotion of the Palestinian people for years now. Europe and Abbas have been using diplomatic means, trying to get the UN to recognize Palestinian statehood, but American UN Ambassador Susan Rice has vigorously blocked it as the Israelis demanded. Despite Republican assertions that the Obama administration is Israel's worst enemy.

Again and again, Israel has stymied all peaceful Palestinian attempts at resolving the issue, but has caved to terrorist demands. Every time Palestinians kidnap an Israeli soldier the Israelis ultimately cave in and release hundreds of Palestinians from prison to get one guy back. They'll even do it for a corpse. Admittedly, most of the Palestinians the Israelis release are innocent schmucks "arrested" for just this purpose. But, still...

For years now Israel has stiffed the peaceful Abbas, but now it looks like Israel will again reward terrorist Hamas by cutting a deal on the blockade. What message does this send to the Palestinians? Violence works. Terrorism works. Kidnapping works. Negotation and diplomacy? Not so much.

You have to wonder why Israel chooses to proceed this way. Are they just that stupid, or is there a more cynical reason? Do Bibi Netanyahu and the conservative Likud Party have a symbiotic relationship with Hamas? Do Likud and Hamas constantly rekindle these deadly conflicts solely to prop up their own popularity?

If so, Hamas and Likud are trading human lives for political power. To be sure, Hamas is far more disgusting in the treatment of its own people as human shields. But Israel does the same thing by having its citizens to build illegal settlements on Palestinian territory, intentionally placing themselves in grave bodily danger, which then requires the Israeli military to protect settlers on that stolen land, requiring further assimilation of Palestinian land as "buffer zones."

While Hamas is using human shields to launch attacks on Israel, Israel is using human swords to carve up Palestinian lands.

In the end, there appears to be no incentive for Likud to agree to peace. As long as Israel can portray Palestinians as dangerous terrorists like Hamas, they can avoid a diplomatic solution that would require them to give up land. It'll only cost a few Israeli lives each year to keep the conflict going, maybe even fewer if they can get all the bugs out of Iron Dome. And a random bus bombing every few months will remind Israelis how much they really need Likud in power to protect them from random bus bombings.

The status quo allows Israel to continue to slowly expand its borders every year, and allows Hamas to gain popularity among Palestinians. It's win-win for everyone. Except the millions of Palestinians who live in abject poverty, the hundreds of Palestinian children who die from malnutrition and the dozens of Israelis killed by terrorists each year.

The irony here is that if America saw more photos like this of Mitt Romney, he may have gotten a few more votes.

Giving Thanks

I am thankful for...

My beautiful children who amaze me every day...
My wife who gets better and better looking as she gets older (love that bubble butt:))
My students who hit me with a metaphorical shovel to the head on a consistent basis...
My family who, despite all the crabbiness, are damn fine people to spend a life with...
My friends who make me laugh...
Comic books which stoke my inner geek...
Music which soothes my soul in ways that nothing else can...

And finally, the American people, for not believing the lies and electing the right man for president!

The Productivity Dividend

Getting back to Stiglitz.

Many years ago Keynes posed a question. For thousands of years, most people had to spend most of their time working just to survived-for food, clothing, and shelter. Then, beginning with the Industrial Revolution, unprecedented increases in productivity meant that more and more individuals could be freed from the chains of subsistence living. For increasingly large portions of the population, only a small fraction of their time was required to provide for the necessities of life. The question was, How would people spend the productivity dividend?

This is that quote from Chapter 4 that I wanted to pull out and examine on its own. The reason for this is that it ties directly into our economy. In the United States, people spend that productivity dividend on consumption and, as Stiglitz notes, their consumption relative to others. This is where that whole "Keeping up with the Jones'" comes into play. In particular, he notes that Europe opted for more goods AND more leisure while America opted for less leisure and more goods.

So, are we really working harder and harder "for the family?" Or are we simply playing a continual game of catch up with no end regarding consumption? No doubt that our economy is heavily based on consumption but is that a good thing? Should we consider more leisure time and less of keeping up with the Jones'? As we  consider how to mend our economy, we should examine the basic question of the productivity dividend.

Another idea that came out of this quote was the issue of fear and anxiety about the future. There are many on the Right that believe America is going to end soon because of the president and the Democrats. Would they be worried about this if they had to provide the basics (food, clothing, shelter)? Further, would anyone worry as much about all the silly stuff we fret over if this were the case?

I doubt it.

I Guess That Settles That

Analysis: Tax Cuts Don't Lead to Economic Growth, a New 65-Year Study Finds

The paper is a good reminder to be humble about taxes as a tool for growing the economy. They remain, above all, a tool for collecting revenue and tweaking incentives for specific economic behavior. Congress has cut tax rates repeatedly over the last 60 years, while the country and the global economy have undergone considerable changes that probably had a greater effect on growth.

Yep, pretty much. And what did the GOP do when they saw this?

Nonpartisan Tax Report Withdrawn After G.O.P. Protest

Stomped their feet and stormed down the hallway...yelling at dad the whole way!!!

A Bubble That Has Burst

From Andy, over at electoral-vote.com

Older, male, white voters are having a lot of trouble understanding the election results. They and everyone they knew just assumed that the country would never re-elect a tax-and-spend liberal. Fox News told them this was impossible. Now reality is beginning to kick in--things have changed and are not likely to go back to the way they used to be. They are also flummoxed by the voters accepting same-sex marriage and legalization of marijuana in some states. Many of them see the country as Mitt Romney does, with makers and takers and the takers are taking over. 

This is a fundamentally different situation than in the past. Then, a loss was just a loss--maybe the other side had a better candidate or ran a better campaign. Even after George McGovern and Michael Dukakis' massive defeats, Democrats didn't think this was the end of the America that they had always known. It was simply a lost election and they could try again in 4 years. The difference now is probably that way back then, everyone watched one of the three television networks and read the same newspapers. Now it is possible to live entirely in a bubble of your own choosing and simply have no idea of what is really going on in the country. 

Someone who watches only Fox News and listens to talk radio and reads redstate.com on the Internet is going to be completely detached from reality, so an election result like this comes completely out of the blue for them. For Democrats, this is not true. Someone who watches only MSNBC, reads the New York Times and follows Websites like Huffington Post, Talking Points Memo, and Daily Kos, knew that it would be a fairly close election but that Obama and the Democrats had a small, but consistent, lead. The electoral vote predictors at all those places as well as here were pretty close to the final result. The new reality is that when you hide in a virtual cave of your own making, emerging out into the sunshine can be frightening.

When people look back on this election, they will note that this was the moment that the bubble burst. If you get your information from Drudge, Fox, other right wing sources and spend time frequenting places like Kevin Baker's site, The Smallest Minority, you likely think that Americans are stupid for voting for the president and the Democrats. Of course, this is not true. It's not really a question of intelligence. As I have said all along, it's a question of willful ignorance brought on by insulation. This election showed that they can't do that anymore. People saw that what they were saying wasn't real and what they were advocating was truly awful. Can you blame them with garbage like this?

Barack Obama has repeatedly circumvented the laws, including the Constitution of the United States, in ways and on a scale that pushes this nation in the direction of arbitrary one-man rule. 

Now that Obama will be in a position to appoint Supreme Court justices who can rubber stamp his evasions of the law and usurpations of power, this country may be unrecognizable in a few years as the America that once led the world in freedom, as well as in many other things. 

This "transforming" project extends far beyond fundamental internal institutions, or even the polarization and corruption of the people themselves, with goodies handed out in exchange for their surrendering their birthright of freedom.

Have you noticed how many of our enemies in other countries have been rooting for Obama? You or your children may yet have reason to recall that as a bitter memory of a warning sign ignored on election day in 2012. 

What on earth is he talking about? A country that may be unrecognizable? What enemies are rooting for him? Good grief...

Their shock (and sadly with it, their behavior) is about to get worse. The economy is improving and things are getting better, despite the dire predictions of all of America becoming like Detroit. What will they do then? People will stop paying attention to them in droves and they will go back to being a small group of people playing make believe around the 21st century equivalent of a short wave radio: the internet.

In today's world...indeed.

I've been meaning to point out this post over at The Moderate Voice for several months but lost track of it as election season heated up. The first paragraph grabbed me right away for obvious reasons.

There are myths proclaimed by some right-wing partisans and Ayn Rand acolytes that “rugged individualists” working alone have been responsible for America’s great accomplishments and that government is the enemy of progress. In their quest to reduce taxes, particularly for the wealthy, and cut the size of government, this myth has been promulgated by ideologues to gain support from the middle-class, needed to elect legislators who share their vision.

Yeah, and the American people recognized those myths for what they were 12 days ago.

Businesses could not function without the nation’s infrastructure (though it currently needs work). Building the interstate highway system, bridges and tunnels and maintaining them, was and is a federal concern. The integrity of America’s ports and airports, and air traffic control, all comes under the aegis of federal agencies. Products and people could not move if it were not for the government. Apportioning the broadcast spectrum for TV, radio, cell phone companies and so forth, insuring the safety of transmission lines, pipelines, and so forth, are all functions of the federal government. 

In short, they didn't build that. Not that the government isn't completely wonderful, though.

The federal government is inefficient in many of its operations, but its expansion has occurred during both Democratic and Republican administrations. Those who rail against the government should focus on fixing it and not just making it smaller so they can pay less in taxes. And the money saved should go to paying down the deficit. For different reasons, both the weak and strong among us need a robust federal government in today’s world. 

In today's world...indeed.

The Way Forward on Gun Violence

Police have arrested a man for plotting another movie murder spree:

A southwest Missouri man accused of plotting to shoot up a movie theater during the new "Twilight" film was charged Friday after his mother contacted police, telling them she worried her son had purchased weapons similar to those used during the fatal Colorado theater shooting.

I realize that the Twilight films are bad, but are they that terrible?

This incident shows us a new way to reduce gun violence. Forget FBI background checks and waiting periods: anyone who buys a gun should be required to have a note from their mom.

It's win all the way around: it would promote traditional family values and respect for parents. It would put a big dent in the illegal gun market; straw buyers would have to explain to their mothers why they need to buy a fifth Glock semiautomatic pistol in a month. And all those gangstas in the hood would never get their mommas to sign off on gun purchases, because those women know exactly what happens to young men with guns.

Of course, this is tongue-in-cheek. But it's clear this problem is only growing worse.

In the last 15 years hundreds of people have died at the hands of mentally unstable people who should never have been able to get firearms. From Columbine, to Tucson, to Aurora, to Oak Creek, to Minneapolis, where this September a guy who was just fired shot eight people and leaving five dead, including himself a UPS man who was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Every other week another five or ten people are killed by some nut with a gun, who then kills himself or is shot by a cop.

I agree that we don't need a nanny state watching over our every move. Maybe we just need a nanny.

What David Said

Most of the media agree that the behind closed door testimony of former CIA Director, David Patraeus, still leaves much in doubt about what happened in Benghazi last September 11th. I disagree. In fact, I'd say it confirms what I have been saying all along: the administration withheld information they had on the attacks for reasons of national security.

But he said the administration initially withheld the suspicion that extremists with links to Al Qaeda were involved to avoid tipping off the terrorist groups.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this so the Right's mental meltdowns over Benghazi strike me as odd. They're saying that the administration purposefully misled the public on whether or not the attack was Al Qaeda linked and, instead, kept talking about the movie trailer. This seems odd to me for two reasons. First, since when did the Right embrace Julian Assange and call for more openness when it comes to military intelligence? It seems to me that they are now acting just the way he does which, in my view, is dangerous on a number of levels. The reason why we win and lose wars is due to intelligence and some government secrets, in particular with the military.

Second, throw a dart somewhere and you're likely to hit a conservative pundit bitching about how we announce things to our enemies (pulling out of Iraq, Afghanistan etc) and how that's bad. So why should we announce, mere days after the attack when an investigation is still under way, that we know it's Al Qaeda and we're coming to get them? This would be a terribly stupid thing to do.

I also don't get why there is all this bile being heaped upon Susan Rice. The Patraeus testimony confirms that when she made her remarks, she was going on what the intelligence said at the time...the intelligence that was not classified, mind you. Besides, she's the US ambassador to the UN, not a member of the CIA or the State Department. The attacks on her are tremendously unjustified.

Petraeus also said some early classified reports appeared to support Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when she said five days after the deadly raid in Libya that it had grown out of a protest that was hijacked by extremists — comments that some Republicans contend were meant to downplay the significance of the attack before the presidential election. Even now, the intelligence community has evidence that some attackers were motivated by protests earlier that day in Cairo over an anti-Islamic video, sources familiar with the intelligence said.

I realize that there are still a lot of sour grapes after the complete incompetence pre and post the 9-11 attacks regarding the Bush Administration. But Benghazi isn't even in the same ballpark, folks. And we aren't even done with the investigation yet on what exactly went wrong and why. Obviously, the Right's not going to be patient about this and have even more sour grapes about the election.

Perhaps they might want to learn a thing or two about what happened on November 6th and withhold further comment until we hear more testimony from the people who were more actively involved.

We Have a Winner!

In the last 20 years we have seen a dozen Mitt Romneys parade across the landscape. There was the greedy young man with money coming out of his ears. There was the pro-choice Mitt Romney who ran against Ted Kennedy. There was Mitt Romney the gubernatorial candidate who supported gay rights. There was the severely conservative Mitt Romney who would instantly sign any and all anti-abortion bills that came across his desk. There was the self-sacrificing Olympics-saving Mitt Romney. There was the one-percent Mitt Romney talking sneeringly to wealthy donors behind closed doors about the lazy 47%, quickly followed by the candidate-of-the-100%-in-the-last-few-weeks-of-the-campaign Mitt Romney.

Now that the election is over and the Etch a Sketch has been shaken for the final time, we have a winner! Ding ding ding! The envelope please...

The sneering 1% Mitt Romney!

In a conference call with 400 wealthy donors Romney said that Obama won by promising gifts to the 47%: blacks, Hispanics, young women and college students. Some of his comments include:

With regards to the young people, for instance, a forgiveness of college loan interest was a big gift. Free contraceptives were very big with young, college-aged women. And then, finally, Obamacare also made a difference for them, because as you know, anybody now 26 years of age and younger was now going to be part of their parents’ plan, and that was a big gift to young people. They turned out in large numbers, a larger share in this election even than in 2008.

You can imagine for somebody making $25,000 or $30,000 or $35,000 a year, being told you’re now going to get free health care, particularly if you don’t have it, getting free health care worth, what, $10,000 per family, in perpetuity — I mean, this is huge.

These comments demonstrate Romney's utter lack of empathy and total inability to  imagine the lives of somebody making that $30,000 a year. Such people often have to work multiple jobs because employers intentionally limit their hours to avoid having to pay full-time benefits such as health care. A single mom with two kids who works two jobs for 56 total hours a week at Walmart and Papa Johns Pizza at $10 an hour will still only make $29K and get no benefits. $29K is not enough to pay for a car, gas, rent, food and clothing, much less any kind of preventive health care for the kids.

How can such a person ever get ahead in Romneyworld?  Every waking hour of every day is spent working, sleeping, taking care of kids or driving them to grandma's for daycare.

The time when just anyone with gumption could open a pizzeria or corner store to get a start in business is gone, destroyed by the ilks of Sam Walton and "Papa" John Schnatter and their nation-wide chains that wiped out millions of mom-and-pop operations across the country.

John Schnatter gained notoriety this past summer when he said that his pizzas would cost more because of Obamacare. Exactly how much? Less than a nickel a pizza.

Hundreds of thousands of independent small businesses have been destroyed by giant corporations like Walmart and Papa John's. Yes, big companies are more efficient and sell stuff cheaper. That's because they employ fewer people than the competitors they destroy and don't pay their workers a living wage.


Romney thinks America is still the way it was in Forties, Fifties and Sixties when S. Truett Cathy (Chick-Fil-A), Ray Kroc (McDonald's) and Sam Walton founded their empires. But more and more money and power are concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer businesses, and those businesses have monopolies on vast sectors of the economy. Companies like Chick-Fil-A, McDonald's and Walmart have locked out the majority of small entrepreneurs.

Go to any mall in the suburbs in any part of the country and you'll see the same set of 30 chain stores selling products made in Asia. Sixty years ago you would have seen dozens of independent small businesses selling American-manufactured goods in the downtown of every small city. These days most suburbs don't even have downtowns.
 I hope the 1% Mitt Romney isn't the last one we'll see. Maybe one day he'll realize the reason he lost the election was because wealthy supporters like John Schnatter and the Walton heirs created all those people who need the things Obama is fighting for.

A Hypocritical Pile of Poo

If you skip a meeting on classified intelligence on Benghazi to bitch about how the administration missed key intelligence points, you are a weenis. Furthermore, I've had it with the Right bitching about Benghazi. Where do they get the stones to bitch about intelligence failures after 9-11 and Iraq? Condeleeza Rice was handed a report that said "Al Qaeda determined to attack in US" in August of 2001. President Bush was briefed on this report. A month later 3,000 innocent civilians died and the sound from the Right?

Crickets.

Yet when three members of our armed forces and a highly trained ambassador who knew the risks being in what was essentially a war zone were killed, the Right acts as if all of our nation's women and children were raped and slaughtered. What a hypocritical pile of poo...

Great Economic News

The United States has exported 187 billion dollars worth of goods-an all time high and up 3.1 percent-for the month of September. This narrows the trade deficit to its lowest point in two years, at 41.5 billion.

Driving this uptick was the sale of the iPhone 5 as well as oil exports. A recent article in the New York Times (highlighting an IEA report) show the US is set to become the world's top oil producer in five years. In fact,

The United States will overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s leading oil producer by about 2017 and will become a net oil exporter by 2030, the International Energy Agency said Monday.

Wow. Imagine how different a world that is going to be. It's going to give me an enormous amount of satisfaction to have the power shift in the way it is going to do so. So how has this happened?

That increased oil production, combined with new American policies to improve energy efficiency, means that the United States will become “all but self-sufficient” in meeting its energy needs in about two decades.

Hmm...

Avoiding Innocent Victims: 10 Rules for Affairs

The Petraeus affair may have claimed an innocent victim in the person of Gen. John Allen, the man who was expected to be the next head of NATO. He claims he was never alone with Jill Kelley, and I'm inclined to believe him.

This highlights a serious problem ushered in by the Internet.  Because anyone can send you email, a crazy person can become infatuated with you and inundate you with gushing and suggestive emails. If that person happens to be important in your social circles, as Jill Kelley was in Gen. Allen's, you may feel obligated to respond cordially to their incessant barrage of spam. According to reports, they exchanged 20-30,000 emails, though that number is almost certainly inflated.

If you're completely innocent, even an apparently benign cyberstalker like Kelley can cause you major grief. A malicious and competent one can destroy your life by setting up dummy email accounts that look like they belong to you and filling them with all sorts of false evidence.

This problem isn't really new. In the past a delusional admirer could flood your mailbox at home and at work with love letters suggesting all manner of liaisons. But at least you could burn the evidence; in the age of the Internet nothing ever goes away--except that spreadsheet you were working on when your computer crashed.

If Allen's career has in fact been trashed, the blame can be squarely placed on Paula Broadwell's insanely jealous crusade against the flirtatious Jill Kelley, and Petraeus' foolish decision to engage in an affair with a loose cannon.

This has prompted me to draw up 10 rules for high-ranking officials looking to have an affair.

10: Don't communicate via email, Twitter, Facebook, or Dropbox (though MySpace is probably safe by now). In fact, don't use the Internet at all. 

9: Don't use your normal cell phone or landline to contact your paramour. Get a burner cell phone and don't use your credit card to buy it. 

8: Don't have suggestive conversations at work or at home. 

7: Do choose paramours of equal rank and social standing: that is, people who have as much to lose as you do if the affair becomes public. 

6: Don't wear cologne, perfume, lipstick or makeup, or anything that will leave a strange scent on your paramour, and shower after trysts (but don't go out with wet hair!). 

5: Don't do the deed in public, in your home, at your office, or in your car. 

4: Don't change your daily routine, don't go anywhere out of the ordinary, and don't be seen in public with your paramour, especially kissing or touching in any way. 

3: Don't have an affair with a jealous clingy person, or someone who would cheat on you. Which is sort of an oxymoron, isn't it?

2: Don't leave bodily fluids on blue dresses. 

And the top rule:

1: Don't have an affair with someone who's already written one book about you, and will stand to make millions selling a second book about an affair with you.

Looking over this set of rules, it reads more like a set of contact protocols for a CIA agent than a prescription for romantic liaisons. You'd think our master spy would be more adept at this sort of thing...

Site Update

Hey folks, quick site update. We've started getting comments that are making it through the spam filter so I had to change the settings so you have to register to comment. I'm truly sorry about this but I can't stand seeing anymore comments selling xanax and cleaning them out every hour on the hour. So, no more anonymous posters.

Petraeus Falls off the Pedestal

The most amazing thing about the whole Petraeus affair, now spilling over to Gen. John Allen, is how utterly unamazing it is.

These men, at the pinnacle of power in the military and the intelligence community, turn out to be regular schmoes just like the rest of us. The story is sounding more and more like a bunch of teenage kids having a war on Facebook.

It goes like this: Petraeus starts an affair with Paula Broadwell, using Dropbox to get around the email trail. Allan starts an affair with Jill Kelley, exchanging thousands of emails. Broadwell sees that Kelley is also emailing Petraeus daily and sends Kelley threatening emails. Kelley complains to an FBI friend about the emails. Mr. FBI becomes obsessed the case and with Kelley, and sends her shirtless photos of himself.

What is it about using the Internet that makes everyone's IQ drop 100 points? How can people using government computers and who are constantly surrounded by aides and guards and secret service protection details possibly think they can keep these affairs secret?

You'd think we'd learn to expect this sort of thing after Tiger Woods, Anthony Weiner, Chris Lee, John Edwards, John Ensign, Newt Gingrich (two or three times), Bill Clinton, Larry "Wide Stance" Craig, David Vitter, Ted Haggard, Mark Sanford, Mark Foley and half the Republican House leadership during the Clinton impeachment debacle, and on and on and on and on.

And that's just in the last several years. The history books are full of sordid stories of presidents, prime ministers, princes, priests, popes and prophets undone by their inability to keep their penises in their pants.

Looking on the bright side, at least Petraeus and Allen weren't having affairs with subordinates.

The takeaway, for the nth time, is that it is a colossal mistake to put men like Petraeus on a pedestal. Yeah, he's a smart guy. But he's just a guy, like anyone else.

Nobody—nobody—is worthy of the adulation that we're so eager to heap upon them. Not Petraeus, not the pope, not the president, not Mohammed. Their work can and should be praised on its merits, but their persons deserve no worship. They're all just human beings, every bit as flawed as the rest of us.

Regular schmoes have affairs too, but no one is watching them. They have little to lose and will only disappoint their families and friends if they get caught. 

So the question is, why do these important men keep doing this? Does our elevating them to godhood make them lose perspective, buy into the hype and think they can do no wrong? Or do they consider themselves regular schmoes just doing a job, unworthy of the attention lavished upon them and therefore under no particular compulsion to lead an exemplary life?

I don't know. Maybe it's having their brains pickled in testosterone for fifty years...

Crickets

I'm quite curious these days as to why many on the Right are so quiet on the whole Patraeus affair, especially since it has now spilled over into other areas of the Defense Department. Even more puzzling is how they continue to focus the blame on the president when we are now finding out that there was obviously something really off between the CIA, the DOD and the State Department in terms of Benghazi and David Patraeus.

Is the Defense Department such a sacred cow that any improprieties can be conveniently ignored? Patraeus?

I never thought I'd link a Brietbart article on this site but when the source of much of their Benghazi meltdown is the woman who brought down the Director of the CIA, I guess I don't really have a choice. 

This article reveals a very key point that throws a giant wet blanket on the cover up wank fest going on with the Right. If the attackers were trying to get into some sort of CIA secret holding facility, wouldn't it make sense to keep this issue quiet because of national security? After all, the Right continually reminds us how people like Julian Assange and his commie buddies are traitors. So, why is it now OK and absolutely necessary to find everything out about Benghazi?

Oh, yeah...so they can win the argument and prove the president wrong.

The Real-Life John Galt

Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged is the story of John Galt, a titan of industry who refuses to be exploited by the tyranny of a government that taxes him too much. President Obama's reelection has purportedly prompted a real-life John Galt to action, in the person of Robert E. Murray, CEO of Murray Energy.

The day after the election Murray read a prayer in front of staff members and fired 150 workers from two of his coal mines because, he says, Obama will destroy the coal industry. (The fictional John Galt is an atheist, by the way.) But the fact is, Murray's coal mines are losing money not because of taxation and environmental regulation, but because his filthy and inefficient nineteenth-century product is losing market share to a much cleaner and more efficient twentieth-century product.

Many companies have force-fed employees pro-Romney propaganda in this election cycle, a tactic Romney promoted. Other CEOs besides Murray threatened to fire workers if Obama won, though it's not clear how many have carried through. One nameless Las Vegas businessman claims to have done so, but David Siegel, the Florida timeshare billionaire who threatened mass firings, has instead given employees a raise.

Murray, however, delivered on his threat. He has long used the threat of firings to blackmail employees to donate to Republicans. He set up a PAC and "encouraged" employees to contribute to it with payroll deductions, which have totaled $1.4 million since 2007.  The tactic is a nifty way to get around campaign finance laws, which limit how much money Murray can personally give to candidates. Murray is also the CEO who shut down a mine in Ohio and forced employees to attend a Mitt Romney speech without pay. Not all employees donate voluntarily:

The Murray sources, who requested anonymity for fear of retribution, came forward separately. But they painted similar pictures of the fund-raising operation. “There’s a lot of coercion,” says one of them. “I just wanted to work, but you feel this constant pressure that, if you don’t contribute, your job’s at stake. You’re compelled to do this whether you want to or not.” Says the second: “They will give you a call if you’re not giving. . . . It’s expected you give Mr. Murray what he asks for.”

Murray Energy is in financial trouble, to be sure, but it's not because of excessive regulation or any "war on coal." It's due to competition from cheap, clean-burning natural gas obtained from fracking.

As I've written before, the price of gas has been so low recently that energy companies are losing their shirts, according to none other than the head of Exxon, Rex Tillerson.

Because of that, more and more utilities are turning to natural gas turbines instead of coal-fired power plants. Natural gas is cheaper and safer to produce, easier to use, more flexible, and cleaner. It can generate electricity, heat homes and cook food. It doesn't cause mercury pollution or acid rain. It emits less CO2 per kilowatt hour produced. It's more easily transported through pipelines or in liquid form. It doesn't produce filthy coal slurry that poisons rivers and streams, as has happened at least seven times with Murray's coal operations. It doesn't leave toxic clinkers after burning. Coal mining requires miners to work in filthy conditions a mile underground, or decapitate entire mountaintops to expose coal seams. Natural gas turbines can be turned off and on almost at will, and don't have long startup times like coal-fired plants. And gas turbines use much less water than coal to produce the same amount of electricity, which is important as the nation is still in the grip of a drought with no end in sight.

By switching electricity generation from coal to natural gas the United States has reduced CO2 emissions to what they were 20 years ago.

I'll be the first to admit that natural gas fracking has its problems. In their rush to exploit the new technology many operators have taken shortcuts that have spilled toxic fracking fluids, polluted groundwater and even caused earthquakes. But by slowing down, developing better regulations and licensing only conscientious operators, the problems with fracking can be minimized, all while making natural gas profitable again. And of course, we should be working hard on developing twenty-first century technologies that eliminate the problems of fracking.

But instead of acknowledging the reality of technological and competitive forces that have undermined his antiquated business model, Murray blames his losses on the president and the laws that keep Americans safe and healthy.

It's a blatantly dishonest bait-and-switch argument by a greedy coward. And that's all these John Galt wannabes really are.