Ted Cruz's Idiocy Aids Democrats

By some reports, Texas Senator Ted Cruz isn't ignorant.  But that's not to say he isn't (i) batshit crazy, and (ii) more interested in grand standing to the ugliest elements in the Republican Party than in actually getting things done even if a small amount of compromise is the price of accomplishing much of one's agenda.  Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin - I find it scary when she and I are in agreement - lets lose on Cruz and the manner in which he lets his grandstanding and attempts to prostitute himself to Christofascists/Tea Party loons deny the GOP the ability to acheive rational goals.  Here are excerpts from her piece in the Washington Post:

Most of the talk about Republican gadfly Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) in the last few days concerned his role in forcing a delay on passage of the $1.1 trillion spending bill. He was slapped down on his “point of order” by a 74-22 vote, including 20 no votes from Republicans.

In a scathing op-ed the conservative Washington Examiner editorial board wrote:

Cruz’s and [Sen. Mike] Lee’s parliamentary freelancing gave Reid all he needed to advance the schedule by two full days and guarantee the confirmation of these nominations. In exchange for making Reid’s job easy on ramming the nominations through, all Cruz and Lee got was a symbolic floor vote against Obama’s executive action on immigration. It drew the support of only 22 senators. . . . . . The weekend’s events demonstrate that some Republicans are not playing on the same team. This was not a simple, common occurrence of senatorial independence, but rather open defiance of caucus strategy — a decision by junior officers that their own tactical decisions take precedence over those of generals who were chosen for the job.

Criticism of Cruz usually centers on this type of grandstanding at the expense of colleagues. But he also has a propensity to vote no on every piece of major legislation that involves any compromise for the hard right. Some refer to this as making the perfect the enemy of the good, such as when House Republicans under his spell voted against the “Plan B” to minimize the elimination of part of the Bush tax cuts; the end result was worse for Republicans.

Is his concern for federal lands so great that it trumps national security? That is screwy, to be blunt, and suggests he subordinates the government’s highest priority (national security), including some key items on the war against the Islamic State, to his fetish for fiscal purity. This is why, I suspect, he will never vote on any vehicle to lift the defense sequestration cuts. Gasp — that might require a compromise!

[I]t is the philosophy of anti-governance, because getting everything one wants and taking no lumps make legislating impossible. Consistently rejecting useful and conservative legislation because of small infirmities is not the behavior of a leader dedicated to accomplishing important things, and it suggests Cruz is grossly unsuited for the Senate, let alone higher office. Imagine if he ran a state — or the country — without super-majorities of Republicans. Things would be worse than they are now. Rigidity of mind and contempt for opponents in a president have resulted in paralysis and nastiness for six years, so why repeat the experience?

The Senate is a personal platform for him, not a position to perform well in delivering the best possible results for Texans or Americans at large. Thank goodness voters found out early on that his fixation is with fame and not with tending to the real needs of the country.

Ouch!  The man is a douche bag!!

Let’s Give Mississippi - and Rural Virgina - Less Federal Money

Mississippi Republicans

I noted yesterday how compared to many other states, on a per capita receipt of federal funds, Mississippi is like a pig gobbling down food at a trough.  One Mississippi politician even remarked that without the large volume of federal that it receives, Mississippi would be a "third world nation."  I'd argue that with or without federal funds, much of the Mississippi electorate acts as ignorant as voters in a third world country.  In the wake of Tuesday GOP primary election, perhaps the solution is to give Mississippi Republicans what they want: less government spending by slashing the funds sent to Mississippi.  The same approach should be applied to rural areas of Virginia controlled by GOP elected representatives to Congress and the Virginia General Assembly.  These regions receive far more state and federal funds than they pay out.  Give them what they want and see how long they want to have to be self-sufficient.  A column in the New York Times looks at giving the Tea Party lunatics what they want by first slashing the government spending that they receive.  Here are column highlights:

Good news, Mississippi! This is your week. On Tuesday, the state had the most dramatic election of this primary season, and we are all looking your way. Actually, we are fascinated to know exactly what you had in mind.

Voters dealt a stunning rebuke to their courtly Republican senator, Thad Cochran, who is famous for his ability to direct federal cash in Mississippi’s direction. Cochran, who’s been in office since 1978, failed to win the necessary 50 percent of the ballots cast. Now he’s headed for a messy runoff with a fiery state legislator who opened his campaign by announcing: “For too long we’ve been addicted to federal monies.”

 Perhaps you did not expect a state that gets $3 back from Washington for every $1 it sends to be so bitter about federal spending.

“Sadly, Thad Cochran voted for billions in wasteful spending — like the Bridge to Nowhere,” said the anno uncer in a McDaniel campaign ad, as a grainy black-and-white picture of Mississippi’s senior senator flashed over a map of Alaska.

“Some cuts to spending have to take place, and Mississippi is a good place to lead that charge because we are still the most conservative state in the Republic,” McDaniel told Breitbart News. Notice that he did not say that Mississippi was a good place to lead the charge because federal spending accounts for 46 percent of all the state’s revenue: defense contracts, Social Security, farm aid, highway building, you name it.

McDaniel has been pretty darned vague. . . . .  

It may be up to us to suggest ways the state might want to trim back. What about the cotton farmers? “Their subsidies are even more generous than the usually ridiculous subsidies,” said Scott Faber of the Environmental Working Group. From 1995 to 2012, he noted, the state’s cotton farmers got $4.6 billion from Washington. The top 1 percent of the subsidy recipients got an average of $4.8 million while the bottom 80 percent got $20,372.

Great way to begin! Obviously this is the sort of thing a waste-hater would be adamant about.

“The Cochran campaign never effectively responded with an argument of: Look what I’ve done for the state,” said John Bruce, the chairman of the political science department at the University of Mississippi. “Their strategy was to ignore.”

One thing the Mississippi Republican establishment and the Tea Party seem to agree on is that you’re not supposed to remind people that their state is way more dependent on Washington than the average food stamp recipient.

Again, if rural and southern Republicans want spending cuts, let's start by ending the lopsided amounts of government spending they receive.  I suspect if this happened, the Tea Party would disintegrate were quickly.   They need to be careful what they ask for.

The Budget Deal's Biggest Losers: American Workers

In today's America, wealth inequality is rising and more and more families are struggling to maintain their standard of living. And for the working poor, the picture is even more bleak.  Especially in the wake of the budget deal in Congress which throws the most needy under the bus - or perhaps onto the trash heap.  Of course, leading the charge to trash the poor are the Republicans and their party base that pretends to support Christian values while acting worse than the Biblical Pharisees.  A piece in the New York Times looks at how American workers are the budget deal's biggest losers.  Here are excerpts:

The pundit consensus seems to be that Republicans lost in the just-concluded budget deal. Overall spending will be a bit higher than the level mandated by the sequester, the straitjacket imposed back in 2011. Meanwhile, Democrats avoided making any concessions on Social Security or Medicare. 

But if Republicans arguably lost this round, the unemployed lost even more: Extended benefits weren’t renewed, so 1.3 million workers will be cut off at the end of this month, and many more will see their benefits run out in the months that follow. And if you take a longer perspective — if you look at what has happened since Republicans took control of the House of Representatives in 2010 — what you see is a triumph of anti-government ideology that has had enormously destructive effects on American workers.

One of the truly remarkable things about American political discourse at the end of 2013 is the fixed conviction among many conservatives that the Obama era has been one of enormous growth in government. . . . . Once Obamacare is fully implemented, the Congressional Budget Office estimates that it will add only about 3 percent to overall federal spending. And, if you ask people ranting about runaway government what other programs they’re talking about, you draw a blank. 

Meanwhile, the actual numbers show that over the past three years we’ve been living through an era of unprecedented government downsizing. Government employment is down sharply; so is total government spending (including state and local governments) adjusted for inflation, which has fallen almost 3 percent since 2010 and around 5 percent per capita. 

And when I say unprecedented, I mean just that. We haven’t seen anything like the recent government cutbacks since the 1950s, and probably since the demobilization that followed World War II. 

[T]the most obvious cuts have been in education, infrastructure, research, and conservation. While the Recovery Act (the Obama stimulus) was in effect, the federal government provided significant aid to state and local education. Then the aid went away, and local governments began letting go of hundreds of thousands of teachers. Meanwhile, public investment fell sharply — so sharply that many observers refer to it as a “collapse” — as state and local governments canceled transportation projects and deferred maintenance.

There are three things you need to know about these harsh cuts. 

First, they were unnecessary. The Washington establishment may have hyperventilated about debt and deficits, but markets have never shown any concern at all about U.S. creditworthiness. In fact, borrowing costs have stayed at near-record lows throughout. 

Second, the cuts did huge short-term economic damage. Small-government advocates like to claim that reducing government spending encourages private spending — and when the economy is booming, they have a point. The recent cuts, however, took place at the worst possible moment, the aftermath of a financial crisis. . . . government cutbacks simply swelled the ranks of the unemployed — and as family incomes fell, so did consumer spending, compounding the damage. The result was to deepen and prolong America’s jobs crisis.

Finally, if you look at my list of major areas that were cut, you’ll notice that they mainly involve investing in the future. So we aren’t just looking at short-term harm, we’re also looking at a long-term degradation of our prospects, reinforced by the corrosive effects of sustained high unemployment. 

So, about that budget deal: yes, it was a small victory for Democrats. It was also, possibly, a small step toward political sanity . . . . the larger picture is one of years of deeply destructive policy, imposing gratuitous suffering on working Americans. And this deal didn’t do much to change that picture.

Why Four GOP Virginia Congressman Are Ready to Ignore Boehner

As noted yesterday, four Virginia GOP Congressman, Scott Rigell, Rob Wittman and Randy Forbes, from Hampton Roads, and Frank Wolf, from Northern Virginia, are ready to throw John Boehner, Eric Cantor and the Tea Party lunatics under the bus.  Unlike their Kool-Aid drinking brethren in the GOP, they understand that slashing government spending is not always a good thing, particularly in their districts.  And it also seems that some of them have finally grasp the fact that the nation and Virginia have changed and that to survive politically, they need to change as well (although Randy Forbes sadly continues to prostitute himself to "family values" hate groups).  A column in the Richmond Times Dispatch looks at the willingness of these four to commit heresy in the eyes of the fever ridden, ignorance embracing GOP base.  Here are excerpts:

They are the Four Virginia Republicans of the Apocalypse. Their apostasy on reopening the federal government likely guarantees their survival in districts between the Washington suburbs and the Virginia Beach seacoast. Perhaps the same can’t be said for their party.

Scott Rigell, Rob Wittman and Randy Forbes, all from Hampton Roads, and Frank Wolf, a Northern Virginian, account for one-half of the eight Republicans in the state’s U.S. House delegation. Unlike the other half, they favor a no-strings-attached funding measure to end the shutdown that began Oct. 1. It idled thousands of federal workers, many of them in the aforementioned congressmen’s districts.

Rigell, Wittman, Forbes and Wolf — names largely unrecognized beyond their districts — are among 22 House Republicans who would vote with the Democratic minority, apparently assuring passage of an unencumbered bill to resume financing the government.

It’s a scenario the Republican leadership claims is baseless. It’s a scenario that puts these four Virginians crosswise with one of their own: Eric Cantor, the gentleman from Henrico and the House majority leader.

No other state is as heavily represented among the Republican defectors as Virginia. That is because few other states have become the federal suckling Virginia is. Washington largesse, which accelerated here during World War II, transformed Virginia from rural Southern backwater preoccupied with race to a multihued Mid-Atlantic suburban dynamo.


The reinvention of Virginia is evident in the Rigell, Wolf, Wittman and Forbes districts. There, Virginia politics also is being reinvented.

More than a quarter of the state’s economy is attributed to Washington’s beneficence, military and civilian.


In overall federal spending, Virginia — at $17,008 per person — is second only to Alaska. On purchasing, the federal government is the biggest customer in this state. Because of its rich Uncle Sam across the Potomac River, Virginia leads the nation in procurement funding, per capita, and it is third among all states in federal salaries and wages.

Defense spending, per person, is higher in Virginia than any state . . .

Before sequestration became a reality, Virginia got a sense of its possible sting. In 2010, the Obama administration recommended shuttering the Joint Forces Command in Hampton Roads, threatening 5,800 military and civilian jobs. Pushback by the congressional delegation and state and local government forced a partial retreat by the Pentagon. There still were casualties: about 1,900 jobs.

Randy Forbes was particularly high-profile — dare one say, uncharacteristically bipartisan — in the fight to save the Joint Forces Command. He had to be. Ordinarily the only thing to the far left about Forbes is the part of his hair.

Scott Rigell is sui generis among the rebels. He was the only House Republican to oppose the caucus’s initial gamble with Obama: a funding bill that defunded the president’s health care reform. Rigell then became the first Republican in the Virginia delegation to urge a clean spending measure.

As if that didn’t signal Rigell might be angling for something bigger — say, the U.S. Senate or governor — the former car dealer pressed for a bipartisan remedy to the fiscal crisis during an appearance on “The Daily Show,” the political comedy program.  At least Rigell knows where the votes are. No joke.

On November 5, 2013, Virginians will have an opportunity to send the national GOP a strong message that this extortion and effort to destroy Virginia's economy need to stop.  How?  Vote a straight Democrat ticket and  send Ken Cuccinelli, E.W. Jackson and Mark Obenshein all down to a crushing defeat.  And better yet, tell exit polling folks why you voted anti-GOP.

GOP Backed Spending Cuts Cause Drop in Virginia’s Median Household Income

To listen to demagogues of the Republican Party, tax cuts for the wealthy and government spending cuts are supposed to magically spur the economy.  This false vision, of course, ignores the fact that when government spending cuts kick in, this means fewer goods are purchased and even more significantly, government employees are fired or laid off and their purchasing power and family income is decimated.  Especially in an economy where jobs are scare and wages are falling.  Of the 50 states, Virginia is particularly vulnerable to the impact of GOP backed government spending cuts.  And new data shows that Virginia's median household income has fallen thanks to the GOP's distorted voodoo economics.  Here are highlights from the Washington Post:

Virginia’s median household income fell more than 2 percent last year, the most significant drop in the country at a time when most states saw their incomes go flat, according to Census Bureau figures.

Several economists said the declining figure is the result of budget cutting in Washington that rippled across the state even before the sequestration-mandated cuts took effect this year.

The median income for Virginia households fell in a single year by $1,400, to less than $62,000, the Census Bureau said. Adjusting for inflation, that is almost $1,000 less than it was in 2000.

Median household income is considered a broad measure of economic well-being, and Virginia’s loss stood out in a year in which, according to the Census Bureau, incomes and poverty rates finally leveled off after four straight years of decline during the recession and an uneven recovery.

A Washington Post analysis of census data by county shows that almost every region in Virginia experienced a decline in that critical yardstick. In every county in Northern Virginia, the median income slipped, just as it did in most counties and cities around Hampton Roads and the areas around Richmond and Roanoke.

In contrast, the median household income plateaued in Maryland, which has the highest median figure in the country. It rose in the District and in Montgomery County
The federal government spends about $17,000 in Virginia for every resident in the state, one of the highest per capita levels in the country and almost double the national average. About one in 10 state workers is employed by the federal government.

“Virginia is very vulnerable to cuts in federal spending because roughly a third of its economy is tied to the federal government,”
[I]ndicators suggest that Virginia’s economy has been struggling, especially in contracting. The state’s economy grew by 1.1 percent in 2012, less than half the rate of such neighbors as Maryland and North Carolina.

“A lot of large organizations are having to cut their overhead,” he said. “It means folks are losing positions. It’s been a progressive annual decline — 2012 was worse than 2011.”

Many people who have lost jobs are support staff — such as maintenance employees — whose work cannot be billed directly to the government, Antonelli said. Often, the cuts have led to less work for subcontractors, he added.

There is more in the article.  The lesson: when you see some moron driving around with a Tea Party license plate, remember that they are part of the problem and are fueling Virginia's economic decline.  And if a government shut down does occur, things will only get worse.

Study: Single-Payer Healthcare System Would Save Billions

.

Republicans talk about wanting to cut government spending and and disingenuously pretend to care about average Americans yet oppose basically any meaningful change to the nation's sadly deficient healthcare system, preferring instead to allow hospital systems, pharmaceutical companies and other sectors of the medical field to rake in billions of dollars.  Meanwhile, millions of Americans go without medical care and millions more forgo  preventive care because of the cost.  Now, a new study confirms that a single payer system would save billions of dollars every year and provide a huge cut in government spending.  Will the Republicans support it?  Of course not - that would be the opposite of their reverse Gospel message agenda of taking from the poor to give to the rich.  The Hill has details on the study findings:

Expanding the nation’s Medicare program to cover people of all ages would save the government billions of dollars, according to a new study released Wednesday.

The study found that a single-payer health care system based on the principles of legislation by Rep. John Conyers, Jr. (D-Mich.), the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act, would save the federal government about $592 billion in one year.

That’s more than enough to pay for comprehensive benefits for all Americans at a lower cost to the public, according to Physicians for a National Health Program, which circulated the study. The extra money would go to paying down the national debt.

The savings would come from slashing administrative waste and negotiating drug prices.

The study was conducted by Gerald Friedman, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

“Paradoxically, by expanding Medicare to everyone we’d end up saving billions of dollars annually,” Friedman said. “We’d be safeguarding Medicare’s fiscal integrity while enhancing the nation’s health for the long term.”

The study comes as Republicans in Congress are pulling out all the stops to repeal President Obama’s health care overhaul. Tea Party Republicans have in recent weeks vowed to oppose any measures to keep the government running after the current funding bill runs out on Sept. 30 if it also means funding ObamaCare.

Here are some excerpts from the study on our broken system:

For decades, health care costs have risen much faster than income in the United States. As a result, total health care spending has risen from 5% of Gross Domestic Product in 1960 to nearly 18% today. While some of the increase in costs in the United States is due, as in other countries, to improvements incare , innovative technologies and greater longevity, costs have risen much faster in the United States than elsewhere because of the growing administrative burden of our private health

insurance system.

 

Because of the large number of separate insurance programs and the fragmented billing system, American physicians and hospitals incur much greater costs for billing and insurance-related activities than do their foreign counterparts. Compared with doctors in Ontario, Canada, for example, Americans spend nearly four times as much on billing and insurance related

activities ($83,000 per physician versus $22,000 in Ontario), and nursing staff, including medical assistants, spent 20.6 hours per physician per week interacting with health plans – nearly ten times that of their Ontario counterparts.

 

In addition to the administrative savings within provider offices, a single payer system could lead to dramatic savings by negotiating reduced prices for pharmaceuticals which cost approximately 60% more in the U.S. than in Europe.

 

A single-payer system would eliminate most of these costs, raising the share of spending going to providers up to the 98% rate for Medicare. With almost a trillion dollars in premiums paid into private health insurance, lowering the administrative ratio to the Medicare rate would save over $197 billion.

There's much, much more, but the foregoing gives the tone of the findings, all of which are common sense.

 

Republicans: Blinded by Self-Righteousness

Once again, one has to wonder when the swamp fever (i.e., the Christofascists and Tea Party) that has overwhelmed will be broken.  A new Pew Research Center poll released yesterday found that nearly 6 in 10 Republicans believe that the GOP need to reconsider some positions, while just over a third - again, the Christofascists and Tea Party lunatics - want the party to merely to make a stronger case for its current positions: anti-gay, anti-women, anti-immigrant, etc.  Candidly, until sane Republicans (or at least what ones are left) are willing to stand up to the Christofascists and Tea Party, or better yet, kicking them to the curb, I do not see meaningful change happening.  A column in the New York Times looks at the situation.  Here are highlights:

Two-thirds of Republicans recognize that the party needs to change in order to do better in future

But that’s where things get tricky. Fifty-four percent believe that party leaders need to move in a more conservative direction, while only 40 percent believe that they need to move in a more moderate direction.  There’s the deflator. I knew this was too good to be true. 

The poll specifically asked Republicans whether the party’s position was too conservative, not conservative enough or about right on five issues: gay marriage, immigration, abortion, government spending and gun policy. 

In all cases except one a plurality thought that the party’s position was about right. The lone exception was government spending, on which a plurality thought that the party was not conservative enough. In fact, “not conservative enough” beat “too conservative” on every issue but gay marriage.

presidential elections, but they’re torn over what that change should be. 

Tea Party supporters were significantly more likely than Republicans who don’t support the Tea Party to say that the party was not conservative enough on these issues. 

[T]he problem the Republicans still have but many don’t seem to recognize is that the extreme arm of the party has an outsize role in selecting a nominee, and they don’t like anyone who smells of moderation.  . . . . .  most don’t have a favorable opinion of Chris Christie. In fact, among Tea Party supporters Christie had the highest unfavorable rating of the seven Republican leaders mentioned in the poll. 

This is the perpetual Republican Party conundrum: moderate, or go harder right. And many still seem to believe that going harder right is the best way to go. They have learned nothing. They can see no other way. They are so convinced that their way is the right way, but it’s just misunderstood, not clearly explained, not persuasively advocated. 

That’s what can happen in political echo chambers — faltering positions are reinforced rather than rightfully abandoned. Voices for moderation are maligned as agents of moral erosion. Giving a little feels like giving up.

In this world few leaders, particularly ones that could win a national election — which would require the winning of moderates and possibly the sloughing off of some conservative Democrats — would ever be sufficiently conservative to pass the purity test. 

So long as these voices — those of the most conservative Republicans — warp nominees who emerge from primaries on the right, they are doomed to an uphill climb toward the White House. 

It is  sad that a once rational party has been hijacked by crazy people who relish ignorance, racism, homophobia and bigotry in general as all the while they pat themselves on the back for their godliness.  The hypocrisy is stunning.

CPAC 2013: Are the Social Conservatives Losing Control?

Daily Koz

While the far right elements that help orchestrate CPAC gatherings have managed to exclude homocon groups and dis-invite politicians like Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell who have accepted the reality that tax increases are needed to rebuild a crumbling infrastructure, some on the scene at CPAC believe that the death grip of the Christofascists on the Republican Party may be in trouble.  If true, it would be a positive sign for both the GOP and the nation as a whole.  For too long the Christian Taliban has been controlling the GOP on social issues and been a bar to progressive change.  A column in Daily Kos sets out some observations.  Here are highlights:

Already, one thing stands out: The Republican Party faces a devastating problem among young people.

If anything, the problems of the party with respect to converting young Americans has been understated, and it is not a mere question of demographics, but of principles. A young libertarian moderator of a discussion titled The Future of the Movement rattled off polling statistics on how the newest voting generation is fiscally conservative, but socially liberal; more to the point, even the young conservatives at the political action conference whose very theme is, ostensibly, "the next generation of conservatives" seem to fall enthusiastically in the same camp.

[T]here is little to no stomach anywhere here for the fight against gay marriage. There seems little stomach for very much of the social conservative platform, here—excepting, perhaps, abortion, but even on that the stated focus by many younger and older speakers is that it should not be "litigated" through the courts but reduced through social activism. From Dick Morris to the college conservatives to the Rand Paul fans to Jennifer Rubin, etc., the feeling is afoot that the party must change its message, and social issues are where that change needs to take place.

Still, acceptance of that apparent necessity is strongly generational. If it were up to the younger half of the crowd, Rand Paul's version of libertarianism conservatism or conservative-ish libertarians would be the dominant GOP position, period. Since they are young and the older generation is, well, not, they are likely to get their wish. It will be slow going, however; the future of the party is not the present of the party, and the present power brokers of the party, the forty-somethings and fifty-somethings and sixty-somethings that run the party now have little interest in giving up those things. Those things motivate the older voters, and they need older voters. But they do not talk about them as much, and they talk about them in much more roundabout terms, perhaps, than they once did, because being a rigid social conservative now also carries a price, too, and it is the youngest voters in both parties who are now extracting it. You can see it in gay marriage; you can see it in the uneasy, shifting immigration stances; you can see it in a conference that speaks of religion, .  .  .  .  

It is suddenly quite clear why the current conservative movement is obsessed with taxes and deficits to the near-exclusion of all other topics: those are the only topics they can agree on.  .  .  .  You want to get the crowd going, you talk about cutting taxes and cutting the federal government, any part of the federal government, wide swaths of government—but mention a social issue (gay marriage, immigration, issues of crime and punishment) and you are on thinner ice. So taxes and government spending it is.

There is a danger here, for Republicans, and certainly rougher waters than they have been used to. In any event, the gay marriage "issue" is not long for this world, and a profound shift in the party's hardline immigration stance may not be far behind. Other shifts may soon follow. On anything but fiscal issues and raw, jingling nationalism, the Republican Party may find their new base cutting out from under them.

[Young libertarians] . . . their presence demonstrates that whatever the older base's mood, it is the fiscal-not-social crowd that is most intent on holding the reins in the next generation. It is only a question of timing, of the relative steering power of the two groups, younger vs. older, and of how enthused or standoffish the younger group chooses to be when voting in the all-important primaries that flatly decide these things. Also: will there even be enough of them to make a difference? That is less clear.

Here is an image from NOM's anti-gay panel - it's not exactly a full house, but I am sure NOM will try to spin it otherwise:

Despite GOP Claims, Size of Government Shrinking

It is an interesting phenomenon: as the influence of the Christian Right has increased in the Republican Party the level of lies and outright dishonesty of the GOP and its members in Congress has increased dramatically.  For those who follow conservative Christian and "family values" groups, the phenomenon is actually what one would have expected because no one lies as much or as shamelessly as the "godly Christian" crowd and the professional Christian set which makes a living disseminating lies, hate and discord.  Among the lies favored by the GOP is the myth that government spending has exploded under Barack Obama when in fact the real explosion in spending occurred under Bush/Cheney.  Of late, the GOP claims that sequestration originated with the White House when in fact as evidenced by a recently disclosed e-mail and power point presentation, it originated with John Boehner and the GOP.  And then there is the lie that the size of government is exploding under Obama, yet again it is not true.  In fact, the number of government employees at all levels is shrinking as shown by the chart above (the peak in 2010 coincided with the hiring of large numbers of temporary census workers).   If, sequestration kicks in on March 1, the number of government employees will drop further - as will the number of private sector employees as defense contractors, shipbuilding concerns, and many other market segments lay off workers.  Here are highlights from a piece in the Virginian Pilot:

Republicans and other fiscal conservatives keep insisting on more federal austerity and a smaller government. Without much fanfare or acknowledgement, they've already gotten much of both.

Spending by federal, state and local governments on payrolls, equipment, buildings, teachers, emergency workers, defense programs and other core governmental functions has been shrinking steadily since the deep 2007-2009 recession and as the anemic recovery continues.

This recent shrinkage has largely been obscured by an increase in spending on benefit payments to individuals under "entitlement" programs, including Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits. Retiring baby boomers are driving much of this increase.

Another round of huge cuts - known in Washington parlance as the "sequester" - will hit beginning March 1, potentially meaning layoffs for hundreds of thousands of federal workers unless Congress and President Barack Obama can strike a deficit-reduction deal to avert them.

Even as the private sector has been slowly adding jobs, governments have been shedding them, holding down overall employment gains and keeping the jobless rate close to 8 percent, compared with normal non-recessionary levels of 5 to 6 percent that have prevailed since the 1950s.

"It's a massive drag on the economy. We lost three-quarter million public-sector jobs in the recovery," said economist Heidi Shierholz of the labor-friendly Economic Policy Institute. "We're still losing government jobs, although the pace has slowed. But we haven't turned around yet."

Soaring recent government deficits are partially a side effect of the worst recession since the 1930s, which took a huge bite out of tax revenues at the same time spending increased on recession-fighting programs like unemployment compensation and stimulus measures under both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama.

"The problem going forward is one of demographics and rising health care. It is the baby boom generation retiring," said Alice Rivlin, a White House budget director under President Bill Clinton. "It's the fact that everybody is living longer."

The federal budget deficit for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is estimated to be $845 billion - the first time it's dropped below $1 trillion in five years. But it's on track to rise again as more and more baby boomers retire and qualify for federal benefits and as interest payments on the national debt keep going up.

Republicans oppose any new taxes, even if for closing loopholes rather than increasing rates.

 

As a former Republican myself, I like to believe that the GOP once stood for valuing reason, logic, intellect and some level of honesty.  Those days are gone and the GOP now stands for lies, racism, bigotry and the open embrace of ignorance.  My former compatriots who remain in the GOP truly need to take a good look in the mirror at themselves and honestly ask how and why they remain in the GOP.    Again, I attribute much of the GOP's descent into rank dishonesty to the rise of the Christofascists within the party.  These modern day Pharisees have absolutely no regard for the truth.

Marco Rubio and the GOP Zombies

In previous posts this blog has noted the absence of any change in message of the Republican Party evidenced by Marco Rubio's less than inspiring GOP response to President Obama's State of the Union address.  The GOP continues to believe that all it has to change is the face of the messenger and the "tone" of the message.  Paul Krugman has a column in the New York Times that looks further at the zombie like state of today's Republican Party and its refusal to face the reality that it was the GOP's polices that lead to the 2008 economic meltdown.  When one refuses to accept reality, one is doomed to repeat past insanities.  Here are excerpts:

[T]he G.O.P. reply, delivered by Senator Marco Rubio of Florida, was both interesting and revelatory. And I mean that in the worst way. For Mr. Rubio is a rising star, to such an extent that Time magazine put him on its cover, calling him “The Republican Savior.” What we learned Tuesday, however, was that zombie economic ideas have eaten his brain. 

In case you’re wondering, a zombie idea is a proposition that has been thoroughly refuted by analysis and evidence, and should be dead — but won’t stay dead because it serves a political purpose, appeals to prejudices, or both. The classic zombie idea in U.S. political discourse is the notion that tax cuts for the wealthy pay for themselves, but there are many more. And, as I said, when it comes to economics it appears that Mr. Rubio’s mind is zombie-infested. 

Start with the big question: How did we get into the mess we’re in?   The financial crisis of 2008 and its painful aftermath, which we’re still dealing with, were a huge slap in the face for free-market fundamentalists. Circa 2005, the usual suspects — conservative publications, analysts at right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Cato Institute, and so on — insisted that deregulated financial markets were doing just fine, and dismissed warnings about a housing bubble as liberal whining. Then the nonexistent bubble burst, and the financial system proved dangerously fragile; only huge government bailouts prevented a total collapse. 

Instead of learning from this experience, however, many on the right have chosen to rewrite history. Back then, they thought things were great, and their only complaint was that the government was getting in the way of even more mortgage lending; now they claim that government policies, somehow dictated by liberals even though the G.O.P. controlled both Congress and the White House, were promoting excessive borrowing and causing all the problems. 

What about responding to the crisis? Four years ago, right-wing economic analysts insisted that deficit spending would destroy jobs, because government borrowing would divert funds that would otherwise have gone into business investment, and also insisted that this borrowing would send interest rates soaring. The right thing, they claimed, was to balance the budget, even in a depressed economy. 

Now, this argument was obviously fallacious from the beginning. As people like me tried to point out, the whole reason our economy was depressed was that businesses weren’t willing to invest as much as consumers were trying to save. So government borrowing would not, in fact, drive up interest rates — and trying to balance the budget would simply deepen the depression.

[M]ore than five years into the worst economic slump since the Great Depression, and one of our two great political parties has seen its economic doctrine crash and burn twice: first in the run-up to crisis, then again in the aftermath. Yet that party has learned nothing; it apparently believes that all will be well if it just keeps repeating the old slogans, but louder.  It’s a disturbing picture, and one that bodes ill for our nation’s future.

The GOP’s Real Problem: A Refusal to Repudiate the Bush/Cheney Disaster and the Ideology That Cause It

I exited the Republican Party as the Bush/Cheney nightmare began.  As noted many times before, one of the big reason for my exit was the fusion of the GOP and the Christofascists.  Related to it was the GOP rejection of logic and reason and the embrace of extremism that lead directly to the fiascoes in Iraq and Afghanistan.  I still remember watching the news as the cretinous George Bush announced the launch of the Iraq War - a war based on lies and a deliberate duping of the American public.  Add to the military disasters - which have needlessly thrown away thousands of American lives - the bankrupting of the country and the setting of the stage for the economic melt down, and one gets the root of the nation's current debt crisis and continued economic malaise.  Yet no one who is still in the Republican Party will take ownership and responsibility.  They - and this include some former GOP colleagues - rant about run away spending under Obama, yet the real debt explosion occurred on their lawless teams watch.  Andrew Sullivan sums up the problem well in a statement of the real historic facts that need to be daily thrown in the face of every member of the GOP when then start bloviating about the need for spending cuts.  Here are highlights:

When you have a party that hasn’t been able to repudiate the worst administration in modern times, and actually still attempt to hail it as some kind of achievement with respect to Iraq or Afghanistan or the debt, you cannot persuade anyone you have changed, or want to change.

Someone in the GOP needs to take Bush-Cheney apart, to show how they created the debt crisis we are in, by throwing away a surplus on unaffordable tax cuts, launching two unfunded wars, and one new unfunded entitlement. They need to take on the war crimes that has deeply undermined the soul of the United States. They need to note the catastrophic negligence that gave us the worst national security lapse since Pearl Harbor (9/11) despite being warned explicitly in advance, accept weak and false intelligence to launch a war they were too incompetent to fight or win, sat back as one of the worst hurricanes all but took out a major city, and was so negligent in bank regulation that we ended up with Lehman and all that subsequently took place.

These were not minor errors. They were catastrophic misjudgments which took an era of peace, surplus and prosperity and replaced it with a dystopia of massive debt, a lawless executive branch, two unwinnable wars, and a record of war crimes that had their source in the very Oval Office.

When will the Republicans hold themselves accountable for the things that have persuaded so many that this bunch of fanatics and deniers are unfit for government? When will they speak of Bush and Cheney and repudiate them?

The answer to Andrew's question unfortunately, never.  Those who saw the errors and would demand accountability have either been driven from the GOP or have exiled themselves because they could no longer stand the insanity, hate and bigotry.

The GOP Lies on Uncontrolled Government Spending Keep on Coming

I have to wonder how any once rational Republicans have managed to stay in the GOP.  Have they (i) had a "Stepford Wife" make over done to them, (ii) simply drinking the Christofascist/Tea Party Kool-Aid by the gallon, or (iii) become pathological liars?  What is particularly amazing is how documented facts and objective reality itself just simply no longer seem to matter.  The chart above says it all in response to the ongoing Republican chant that out of control Democrat spending is what most threatens America's financial stability.  No mention, of course, is made to Chimperator George Bush's unfunded fool's errands in Iraq and Afghanistan or the budget busting Bush tax cuts.  Frankly, I would be embarrassed to tell anyone nowadays that I'm a Republican.

Will the GOP Ever Learn From the Experiences of Other Countries?

If the Republicans in Congress had had their way, we would have seen extreme austerity measures and huge decreases in federal government spending.  In short, exactly what politicians in Europe pushed through.  And the results of such austerity in Europe?  As the chart above indicates, unemployment has soared in Europe while declining in America.  The same holds true for GNP growth as shown by the chart below where America is out preforming austerity stunted Europe.  But real world experience means nothing to GOP ideologues not to mention their totally untethered from reality Christofacsist base. 

A piece in The Economist looks at what Republicans should have learned from Europe, which largely made the same mistakes that were made in the 1930's in the midst of the Great Depression.  Here are highlights:

Five years later, only America has surpassed its pre-recession output. For now, it appears to be on a steady, if disappointing, growth trajectory. Japan had the worst recession of the bunch but rebounded quickly. It has since struggled amid seismic disasters and various China troubles. Britain and the euro area have until recently followed very similar trajectories, but British output turned up nicely in the third quarter while the euro area officially re-entered recession.

The really distressing thing is to try and project these lines forward a bit. Japan is in recession. Britain may be out of it, but on the other hand may not. The euro zone has not grown for over a year, is almost certainly contracting faster in the fourth quarter than it did in the third and may well continue shrinking into 2013.

And then there is America, trudging steadily upward to the beat of its own drummer. How long can the divergence between America and the rest persist? And on what terms will these lines cross again? One thing seems reasonably clear: America will not be able to rely on demand from the rest of this bunch to keep its line going up. Most of all, it will have to count on the durability of domestic demand.

And how does one prime the pump of domestic demand?  Through government spending which provides buying power to consumers who in turn purchase products that further prime the economic pump.  The Germans and British rejected this reality (and Germany forced the rejection on to other European Union nations).  Yes, the U.S. government deficit needs to be reined in.  But when and how it is done is critical.  A  heavy handed approach as has been the case in Europe kills economies as opposec to strengthen them.  Will the GOP learn from any of this?  Sadly, I'd say that chance is doubtful.

Romney Versus the Automakers and the Truth

Throughout this presidential campaign Mitt Romney's dishonesty has been shocking. Many say they have never seen a candidate so willing to lie and make up stories out of thin air.  Sadly, too often the media has aided Romney by lacking to call him what he is: a liar.  Perhaps some of Romney's most incredible lies have involved the auto industry - an industry that Romney was willing to utterly collapse and die.  As noted yesterday, both Chrysler and General Motors have felt compelled to speak out because Romney is running ads and making statements that simply are not true.  And Romney knows they are untrue.  The man simply cares nothing about the truth.  His sole values seem to be amazing more money and power for himself.  Literally not else matters, especially honesty and telling the truth.  I am honestly coming to believe the man is a sociopath.  A column in the New York Times looks at Romney's lies about the auto industry.  Here are excerpts:

When General Motors tells a presidential campaign that it is engaging in “cynical campaign politics at its worst,” that’s a pretty good signal that the campaign has crossed a red line and ought to pull back. Not Mitt Romney’s campaign. Having broadcast an outrageously deceitful ad attacking the auto bailout, the campaign ignored the howls from carmakers and came back with more. 

Mr. Romney apparently plans to end his race as he began it: playing lowest-common-denominator politics, saying anything necessary to achieve power and blithely deceiving voters desperate for clarity and truth. 

This started months ago when he realized that his very public 2008 stance against the successful and wildly popular government bailout of G.M. and Chrysler was hurting him in the valuable states of Ohio and Michigan. In February, he wrote an essay for The Detroit News calling the bailout “crony capitalism on a grand scale” because unions benefited and insisting that Detroit would have been better off to refuse federal money.

When that tactic didn’t work, he began insisting at the debates that his plan for Detroit wasn’t really that different from President Obama’s. (Except for the niggling detail of the $80 billion federal investment.) 

That was quickly discredited, so Mr. Romney began telling rallies last week that Chrysler was considering moving its production to China. Chrysler loudly denounced it as “fantasies,” saying it was only considering increasing production in China for sale in China, without moving a single American job. 

The Romney campaign ignored the company, following up with an instantly notorious ad saying President Obama “sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China.”  

Nearly 1.5 million people are working as a direct result of the bailout. Ohio’s unemployment rate is well below the national average. G.M.’s American sales continue to increase, and Chrysler said this week that its third-quarter net income rose 80 percent. These companies haven’t just bounced back from the bottom; they are accelerating. 

What Mr. Romney cannot admit is that all this is a direct result of the government investment he would have rejected. It’s bad enough to be wrong on the policy. It takes an especially dishonest candidate to simply turn up the volume on a lie and keep repeating it..  .  .  .  .  Mr. Romney is providing a grim preview of what kind of president he would be.

What I find deeply disturbing is that Romney claims to be a deeply religious man.  Yet he lies with impunity.  As with the Christofascists and the Catholic Church hierarchy, the truth simply doesn't matter.   No wonder the younger generations are fleeing organized religion in record numbers.  Increasingly, being a Christian or in Romney's case, Mormon, is synonymous with being a liar.

Why Democrats Need to Politicize Hurricane Sandy

Republicans - especially those within the Kool-Aid drinking Tea Part element of the party - love to talk about about the need for "smaller government," motivated primarily by what I view as greed.  They want to slash government agencies and services so that they can hoard more money for themselves. Their attitude is to Hell with the best interests of the nation not to mention the unfortunate who may find themselves needing assistance through no fault of their own.  

In this current presidential election the "starve government" charge is being led by Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan - two spoiled, amoral brats who were born to wealth and as a result protected from the everyday trials and financial worries that haunt us regular Americans. They promise to slash government so that the wealthy can enjoy more tax cuts.  But when confronted about specifics, their "plans" resemble a pile of Jell-o that lacks substance and any coherent framework.  Enter Hurricane Sandy and the massive damage that has been inflicted up and down the East Coast from North Carolina to New England.  Now, Mitt Romney is being challenged about his past pledges to gut FEMA and federal emergency relief agencies/programs.  And low and behold, he's shape shifting and trying to disavow his past statements and positions since he knows voters will be appalled by his callousness and willingness to allow citizens to suffer even more when hit by natural disasters such as Sandy.  

The man is a heartless liar who can empathize more with a rich friend who just saw his/her horse lose a dressage event than he can with families who have lost their homes.  He and Ryan need to be challenged.  A piece in New York Magazine makes the case for politicizing Hurricane Sandy's aftermath and exposing the agenda for what it is.  Here are excerpts:

Disasters are inherently political, because government is political, and preventing and responding to disasters is a primary role of the state. But there is an innate tension in overtly politicizing a disaster. 

What you are going to see over the next week is an overt effort by Democrats to politicize the issue of disaster response. They’re right to do it. Conservatives are already complaining about this, but the attempt to wall disaster response off from politics in the aftermath of a disaster is an attempt to insulate Republicans from the consequences of their policies.

Funding for FEMA is something the parties wrangle over, with Republicans pushing to limit the agency’s budget, and Democrats pushing back. FEMA has to fight for its share of a constricted pot of money for domestic non-entitlement spending, a pot of money that the Republicans propose to radically constrict. How radically? Romney’s budget promises require shrinking domestic non-entitlement spending as a share of the economy by about two-thirds.

The Republican proposal to eviscerate this wide array of public functions is one of the underdiscussed questions of the election. Republicans have defended it using a very clever trick. They don’t explain how they would allocate the massive cuts to all these programs. When President Obama explains what would happen if those cuts were allocated in an across-the-board fashion, Republicans scream bloody murder. And when any single one of those programs enters the political debate, they can deny plans to make any specific cuts: They won’t cut education, they won’t cut support for veterans, and so on.

[T]he most concrete statement of Romney’s view of disaster spending came in a Republican debate last summer. John King, the moderator, asked Romney whether FEMA needed to be devolved to the states. Romney agreed and went farther:

The GOP is the party arguing for splurging on a long vacation at the beach rather than repairing the roof. Naturally, they want to have this argument only when it’s sunny and never when it’s raining. There’s no reason to accommodate them.