Family Feud

(Editorial cartoon by Kevin Siers / The Charlotte Observer (May 29, 2013) and published at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

As I've noted several times in the past months, the Republican Party is fractured, and the party just can't seem to overcome the split enough to shift the balance in the Senate. The Tea Party is still calling the obstructionist tunes, and the rest of the nation is getting turned off by their behavior.  Doyle McManus noticed the same problem and came up with some numbers that show how damaging that split has been and potentially may continue to be.

The Republican National Committee issued a scathing report warning that the party was in "an ideological cul-de-sac" and resolved to act friendlier toward women, minorities and low-income voters. Strategist Karl Rove said the lesson was to nominate more moderate candidates and set about raising money to do just that.

But tea party and other conservative leaders, undaunted, drew the opposite conclusion.

"It was not conservatives" who lost those Senate races, 19 of them wrote in a joint attack against Rove's efforts. "Not one moderate challenger won." The solution, they argued, was to swing further right, not toward the center. ...

The approach of congressional primary elections makes the tea party a major force too. The groups have a track record of turning out in force for low-participation primaries, and adherents are an essential source for donations and volunteers in Republican campaigns.

"Tea party supporters are responsible for almost all of the total campaign activity performed by party supporters on the Republican side," a team of political scientists led by Ronald B. Rapoport of the College of William & Mary reported in a recent study. "Tea party supporters are not just a faction within the Republican Party; they are a majority faction."

The problem, of course, is that this majority faction inside the party holds views often at odds not only with a majority of all voters but with the rest of the GOP.

According to polling that Rapoport and his colleagues oversaw, 63% of tea party Republicans want to limit immigration; only 48% of non-tea party Republicans agree. Among tea party adherents, 76% want to abolish the U.S. Department of Education; only 10% of non-tea party Republicans agree.

Most strikingly, when asked whether it was more important to cut the deficit or create jobs, 63% of tea party supporters opted to cut the deficit first. Among non-tea party Republicans, the priority was reversed, with 53% putting jobs first.   [Emphasis added]

Is all of this good for the country?  Not really, not if it means the 114th Congress will be as gridlocked as the 112th and 113th Congresses were.  The nation's business will remain undone as long as the Tea Party controls the House the way it currently does.

And it certainly does not mean happiness-ever-after for the Democratic Party because it will be smeared with the same brush unless it contests each and every election in which a Tea Party member is the Republican candidate.  Yes, Michele Bachmann won't be back, but it's possible her replacement will be another Tea Party wackaloon.  It's time to re-institute Howard Dean's "50 State" strategy and put up reasonable and well-funded candidates to run against the Tea Partiers.

Now, if progressives would only pay attention.

Contractions

(Click on image to enlarge and then kindly return.)


Wow!  David Horsey is on a tear.  I found absolutely no nits to pick in his latest column, this time on the sequester debacle.

Unwisely, during one of the manufactured budget crises of 2011, President Obama and House Speaker John A. Boehner agreed that the penalty for failing to reach a comprehensive budget agreement by the end of 2012 would be automatic, across-the-board budget cuts. Their foolish assumption was that no one would be stupid enough to let such a thing happen. As it turns out, plenty of our elected officials are, indeed, that stupid.

Much of the stupidity – though certainly not all – has been exhibited by the most conservative members of the Republican caucuses in the House and Senate, the so-called tea party Republicans. So intent are they on whittling government down to the size it was back in the days of McKinley and the Robber Barons that even the prospect of major cuts in the defense budget did not phase them. Other steep cuts in dollars for scientific and medical research, education, hunger programs, national parks, infrastructure maintenance, food inspection, airport security and a host of other small but useful governmental activities caused them zero concern since, in the tea party version of reality, all those things are simply more big, bad government. ...

Too ignorant to understand the damage they are doing, zealots on the right are congratulating themselves for being so bold and principled. Yet, as irresponsible as Republicans have proven to be, Democrats are not without blame. There are more than a few on their side of the aisle who are pleased that the military budget has taken a big whack. Never before would Republicans have allowed such a thing to happen, so Democrats who have long wanted to reduce the Pentagon’s bloated budget see this as a bit of a gift. ...

If the federal budget is going to be reduced and reallocated, the task needs to be done intelligently and with the full understanding that federal dollars fertilize every aspect of the U.S. economy. Republicans and Democrats in Congress should have been in high gear trying to avoid this self-inflicted damage, but both sides looked way too relaxed as the budget ax fell.   [Emphasis added]

And so we got the worst kind of train wreck, one in which the vulnerable will suffer more than even the Defense Department.  And Horsey is right:  both sides are guilty of deliberate malfeasance.

As Atrios put it, Contractionary Policy Is Contractionary.  Without putting money into the economy in a way that helps put Americans back to work, we'll continue to slide backwards, just as the EU is currently demonstrating.  

I'm old enough to remember a phrase that wasn't considered crazy at the time:  "Prime the Pump."  We could use a little of that pump priming right now.  Not later.

Finally

While Congress slipped out of town Thursday without addressing the sequester issue, they did manage to pass one piece of legislation that has been hanging around since the last Congress:  the Violence Against Women Act.  House Republicans in the 112th Congress didn't quite get the message of November's election back then.  Apparently enough of them have since then.

The editorial board of the Los Angeles Times took note of the bill's passage in what for members of that "center-left" group was pretty strong language.

After more than a year of bitter partisan fighting, Congress on Thursday finally reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, including new provisions that will extend the law's protections for gay, lesbian, transgender and Native American victims of domestic violence. It's about time.

There is no rational explanation for why lawmakers took so long to reauthorize this legislation, which was first enacted in 1994 and had been renewed twice with broad bipartisan support. Admittedly, the revised law covers a broader group of victims. That was apparently too much for some Republicans in the House, who sought to substitute a weaker bill for the one passed by the Senate, arguing that the new protections either went too far or were prone to fraud.

What the newly reauthorized legislation will actually do is provide help to all victims of domestic violence, regardless of their sexual orientation, immigration status or where the assault took place. ...  [Emphasis added]

What the editorial doesn't mention is that 138 Republicans in the House still voted against the bill.  If you go here, you can check to see just who was still digging in their heels.  There aren't too many surprises.  Among those voting against the bill are Tea Party champions Eric Cantor and Michele Bachmann.  House Speaker Boehner is discovering that herding cats, is even more difficult when at least some of them have painted a target on his back.

Well, at least the 113th Congress got something done.

There Be Monsters

(Editorial cartoon by Jeff Parker for Florida Today and featured 1/4/13 at Cagle Post.  Click on image to enlarge and then return.)

I've held up this post for a little over a week now because I was so angry and so disgusted that I could feel my blood pressure rising just thinking about it.  I've waited long enough.

One thing I've noticed is all the tut-tutting and tsk-tsking done by Americans in response to some pretty horrific crimes committed against women in other nations.  We sneered at the Taliban's shooting of Malala Yousafzai, the teenaged Pakistani woman who advocated for education for her and for all Pakistani women.  Malala has since been released from a British hospital, but the Taliban still have her targeted so she and her family will remain in England.

And we've frowned with disgust at the reports of the gang-rape and murder of a woman in India who made the mistake of getting on the wrong bus. 

"Savages!  What deplorable behavior"  were the cries from the oh-so-smug Americans in response to these events.

To which I say, "Oh, yeah?  Read the news lately?"

Like about  the two Los Angeles Police officers who pressured women into sex after pulling them over?

Two Los Angeles Police Department officers are under investigation for allegedly preying on women over a period of five years, luring them into an unmarked car and forcing them to perform sex acts, according to court records.

Detectives from the LAPD's internal affairs unit suspect that Officers Luis Valenzuela and James Nichols targeted at least four women whom they had arrested previously or who worked for them as informants, according to a search warrant reviewed by The Times.

Or about the guy who doused a homeless woman sleeping on a bus stop bench with a flammable liquid and then set her on fire?

A homeless woman was doused in a flammable liquid and set ablaze in Van Nuys on Thursday in what police called a random "horrific" attack.

She was whisked to a hospital, where she remains in critical condition. The seemingly random attack even shocked LAPD veterans, who said they were trying to make sense of it.

LAPD Deputy Chief Kirk Albanese said it was unclear whether the suspect, Dennis Petillo, 24, even talked to the woman before he allegedly set her ablaze.

Or about the guy who raped his buddy's sister and got away with it because she wasn't married and there's a strange loophole in California law that allowed for the judicial dismissal of the case against him?

A man enters the darkened bedroom of a woman after seeing her boyfriend leave late at night. He pretends to be her boyfriend. Before she’s aware of what’s happening, he’s having sex with her.

Was she raped? The equally horrifying answer: no.

In a conviction reversal that might inspire some California lawmaker to take up this mantle and change the state’s penal code, a Los Angeles man’s rape conviction was overturned this week on that simple fact; the man pretended to be the woman’s boyfriend, not her husband. If she had been married, his conviction would have been upheld.

And, lest you think the depravity only exists in California, there is also the news out of Steubenville, Ohio of a gang rape of a drunken girl who was transported from party to party, where on-lookers watched as she was violated sexually and urinated on.  I'm reasonably certain that I could read other local papers from other states and come up with equally as vile stories.

Monsters?  Yes, and not in just the rest of the world.  And what is our response to this barbaric behavior?  Well, let's see ...

The 112th Congress ended its session without renewing the Violence Against Women Act. 

First of all, the initial act should never have had a sunset clause.  Violence against women should be outlawed.  Period.  Full stop.  Second, the version which expired was a watered-down version of the original insofar as it excluded Native American women.  But the House Republicans wouldn't even bring it up for a vote. 

What War Against Women?

And where do I go to sign up on our side.

Welcome To Their World

David Horsey apparently is just as disgusted as the rest of us when it comes to the 112th Congress, surely one of the most incompetent and lazy congresses in history.  What they couldn't kick down the road our congress critters simply ignored.  Nothing much got done, especially this past year.

In theory, our senators and representatives are elected to promote the best interests of the people who elect them. In practice, a great deal of the elected officials’ time is spent serving the interests of the people who paid for the campaigns that got them elected. But in the past, even the most bought-and-paid-for members of Congress found ways to come together and do the right thing in times of national crisis.

The 112th Congress, though, manufactured an artificial crisis while failing to provide timely aid to people suffering from the devastation of a crisis that is all too real.

The manufactured crisis was the "fiscal cliff." In 2012, after damaging the nation’s credit by playing politics with the debt ceiling and nearly letting the government default on its debts, Congress set a time bomb for itself – big tax hikes and draconian budget cuts timed to kick in after the stroke of midnight on Jan. 1, 2013. This was supposed to focus everyone’s attention so that they would come up with a serious, bipartisan plan for reducing the ever-growing federal deficit.

We all know how that went. Nothing got done for most of the year, then weeks of squabbling and brinksmanship ensued following the November election. Only after the deadline arrived Tuesday was a bill passed that blocked most of the tax increases and delayed reconsideration of the budget cuts for two months.

In other words, Congress could summon the will to do only the very easiest thing: preserve George W. Bush-era tax cuts for about 99.5% of Americans while letting taxes rise a little for households earning more than $450,000 annually. Everything else – all the hard choices – got kicked down the road to the next Congress, thereby guaranteeing another fiscal freakout just weeks from now when the debt ceiling has to be raised again.

Yes, David, that about gets it.

And, as David mentions later in the column, the 113th Congress is pretty much the same as the 112th Congress so we can fully expect the same kind of performance for the next year at least.  Oh, a little disaster aid will flow to the Northeastern states affected by Sandy, but only if there are cuts in programs to offset it.  And there will be the mandatory tea bag waving (as witnessed by the introduction of a bill to repeal Obamacare in the first session of the House) just to eat up some electrons and spill some ink and flex some flaccid muscles.

While I'd love to be wrong, I am not optimistic about that.

Up Next, Number 113

(Editorial cartoon by Glenn McCoy / Belleville News-Democrat (January 2, 2013) and featured at McClatchy DC.)

No, I've not posted a Glenn McCoy cartoon to make fun of it.  He may be a conservative, but I think his cartoon captures the essence of the last few days nicely.  Neither side should be pleased by the lazy, shoddy legislating going on in Washington.  The best they could manage was to repair a u-joint fixture leak with plumber's putty and a shrug.  It also helped that his rendering of what I'm sure he intended as a "pink Cadillac" looks more like a "pink Mercedes," but that's an aesthetic opinion.

The 112th Congress finally is over, but not until it kicked the can on all sorts of issues to the next Congress.  The deal made might have made Wall Street happy (and judging from yesterday's numbers, it made Wall Street very happy), but the rest of us are pretty much disgusted.  I don't imagine that bad taste will improve over the next two years, but I would love to be wrong.  Just the first six months of the new Congress are going to be daunting.  Here's what it looks like the 113th Congress will be facing the first several months of its session.

First 60-90 Days:

Thanks to the fiscal cliff deal, the "deficit" cuts are front and center.  The Republicans want cuts, deep cuts, because ... well, because deficits.  Deficits don't matter when the GOP runs the government, but you can bet they do when the Democrats have the White House and one chamber of Congress.  The GOP wants cuts, deep cuts, to government spending, but only that spending which benefits the 99% of us.  That means Social Security (chained CPI) and Medicare/Medicaid (raising age for eligibility, lowering funds for the destitute seeking medical treatment) are on the line.  So is funding for education, the EPA, Department of Transportation, and (of course) PBS.  The Defense Department budget can't be touched because, well, defense.  And certain parts of the Department of Homeland Security can't be touched because, well, terror.

What our president and our Democrats will do is hard to tell, but so far, the "conceder-in-chief" and the DLC Dems seem willing to sell us out on all sorts of issues.

Of course, there's also the issue of the debt ceiling, about which I spoke yesterday.  The Republicans have already indicated that will be their point of attack, their wedge.  It didn't work out so well the last time they used it, but that won't stop them from trying it again.  And again.

Hurricane Sandy relief also will be a major issue early in the session, primarily because House Speaker Boehner refused to put it up for a vote before the 112th Congress left town.  New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and NY Congressman Peter King (both Republicans) raised enough holy hell over this that Boehner has promised to bring the bill up for a vote immediately.  Of course, come this afternoon, Boehner may no longer be the House Speaker, so it's hard to tell whether that $60 billion request will be considered.

Next 60-90 Days:

The next set of issues will have to be heard, although not necessarily disposed of in deference to the above.  As I noted earlier in the week, our congress critters are not long on multitasking skills.  Still, the Democrats do have a couple of pressing issues which they need to at least introduce. 

The whole "fiscal cliff" meme has clogged the national discourse, pushing a couple of issues out of sight of the voters.  One important issue which has disappeared from view is that of gun control.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein has promised to submit a bill which at least reinstates the prior assault weapons ban in mid-January.  Some of my liberal friends worry that the issue has faded from the national consciousness because of all the hot coverage of economic issues.  My gut feeling is that by mid-March we will have had at least one more mass shooting incident to rev up national consciousness.  That would fit with our recent history.  And isn't that a shame.

The other issue which the White House will hopefully do some serious leaning on is that of immigration reform.  Various immigration groups have begun to lean on the White House, especially since those groups turned out their people (now a serious demographic in this country) in 2012.  The White House has responded by easing up on some of its enforcement policies, and, most recently, has tried to find a way to return deported family members to the US so that their presence is legal.  That's a start, but it still leaves the future of ten million undocumented people in the country in limbo.  This needs to be addressed.

That's only the first six months of what the 113th Congress faces, but, assuming it can be more productive than the 112th Congress (which wouldn't be all that difficult if our congress critters were held to the same productivity rules as the rest of us), that's the bare minimum of what we should expect over the next two years.

I have to admit that while all of this plays out, I am going to spend at least part of my time reveling in the fact that pitchers and catchers will report for Spring Training in less than two months.  I have my limits.

Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2012/12/31/178687/mcclatchy-cartoons-for-the-week.html#storylink=cpy

How We Got There

Whether the fiscal cliff has been avoided or not, I think it's pretty interesting how we got to that cliff mark (again).  It's also pretty interesting that our elected federal officials used the same anvil-laden parachute to float us down (again).

As Michael Hiltzig pointed out, the whole episode is laced with "cons" being employed by those officials.  His column from yesterday lists and explains those cons (and the entire column should be read), but the one which intrigued me the most was the one that set the whole thing in motion.

The debt ceiling con:

The original of this con is what put us at the fiscal cliff in the first place, for the automated spending cuts being dealt with now were put in place as the GOP's price to raise the federal debt ceiling and stave off a government default in 2011. The debt ceiling was not designed as a constraint when it was created in 1917 — it was convenient blanket authority for the Treasury to issue debt so that Congress wouldn't have to vote permission each time a new bond had to be floated.

Approval was always routine — the limit was raised 91 times between 1960 and the showdown in 2011. Now it's a hostage-taking situation, destined to return in the next month or two when Republicans who didn't get what they wanted in this week's cliffhanger menace the creditworthiness of the U.S. again.

For a brief shining moment, President Obama dreamed of folding an end to the debt limit into a fiscal cliff deal, but that didn't happen. The idea that the debt limit discourages fiscal irresponsibility is a scream. It doesn't now, and never has, stopped Congress from enacting any spending plan or tax break it pleases, creating a budget demand that has to be paid for with, yes, debt. If Congress wants less debt, it can cut spending or raise taxes. The debt limit is a dangerous weapon in the hands of irresponsible legislators, and it's time to take it out of their hands.  [Emphasis added]

So there is some justice in this world.  The Republicans got backed into a corner of their own making.  Have they learned anything from this lesson?  Not hardly.  Their whinging and wailing over the Senate bill was accompanied by dire warnings that the debt ceiling would be where they will take out their frustration at being busted for ... using the debt ceiling to take out their frustration at being busted for ...

Well, you get the picture.

Craziness abounds.

Granny Bird Award: Charles Agbu

This edition of the Granny Bird Award, given from time to time to those who harm the rights and lives of elders, goes to Charles Agbu, who has copped a plea in a Medicare fraud case.

A Carson pastor pleaded guilty Monday to submitting more than $11 million in Medicare reimbursement through fraudulent clinics and by promising patients expensive equipment, according to the Department of Justice.

Charles Agbu, 58, of Carson, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and one count of money laundering in U.S. District Court.

Agbu, a pastor at Pilgrim Congregational Church, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $500,000 fine when he is sentenced in May.

Agbu admitted to owning Bonfee Inc., a fraudulent medical equipment supply company, and acknowledged that he paid patient recruiters to approach Medicare beneficiaries and convinced them to give him their Medicare information in exchange for specialized power wheelchairs, officials say.

Agbu would then bill Medicare officials for the wheelchairs without delivering them to his clients. He also admitted to paying for fake prescriptions and other fraudulent documents in order to be able to continue  billing Medicare for medical equipment, authorities say.  ...

The case was brought by the Medicare Fraud Strike Force, a special unit of investigators launched in May 2009 by the Justice and Health and Human Services departments.   [Emphasis added]

Apparently "Pastor" Agbu wasn't too familiar with the Ten Commandments, especially that one about lying.  Some attribute for a man of God.

While the article isn't clear as to how much money the good "pastor" reaped by his scam, the fine does seem a little low, even by plea-deal standards.  That 20 years in prison, however, does seem appropriate and I hope the judge gives him all 20 years.  That will at least send a message.

Finally, at a time when the vile idiots in Washington are considering cuts to Medicare/Medicaid, perhaps that could be accomplished by tightening up the language of the original legislation which left loopholes for this kind of fraud to be accomplished.  The Center for Medicare/Medicaid Services, the agency charged to oversee such billings needs to be ramped up so that it can spot these scams before they hit the $11 million mark.  And more money to the agencies investigating such fraud (DOJ and HHS) would also be helpful in rooting out the wrongdoers, recovering their ill-gotten gains, and slamming their backsides in prison for long terms.

Let your congress critters know that these are the only kind of "cuts" to Medicare/Medicaid which are acceptable and do it today.   

Please Drop Dead

(Editorial cartoon by Mike Luckovich and published 8/24/12 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Click on image to enlarge and then kindly return.)

When I read the news about the "fiscal cliff" and rumors of a "grand bargain" to avoid it, I get nervous. It does indeed appear that the White House and the Democrats are only too happy to deal away Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid. The latest has to do with raising the eligibility age for Medicare to 67.  The excuses are always the same: people live longer now, thereby using up the money more quickly; as the Baby Boomer generation hits 65, many more people than anticipated will be getting the benefit, thereby using up the money more quickly; healthcare costs are rising and Medicare will soon be eating up more and more of the budget. All of that is bovine excrement being spread to hide the fact that our owners want the programs ended and all of us dependent on private insurers who will charge accordingly.

The Los Angeles Times published an editorial which, I assume, attempted to be "balanced" by listing all of these arguments as if they had merit. However, to be fair, the editorial did get around to addressing the real issues behind the rising costs of Medicare and Medicaid and suggesting more rational approaches to solving the problems.

Many of the steps lawmakers are considering treat Medicare's growing costs as an isolated phenomenon. In fact, they're symptoms of larger problems in the healthcare system. The United States spends far more per capita on healthcare than any other country, including Western European nations with much older populations. The extra spending yields better results in some areas, worse in others.

One factor in the elevated costs is advancing medical technology, or rather the fact that new and more expensive technologies are continually introduced with no consideration of whether they're more effective than what's already available. Another factor is the way healthcare is organized, delivered and paid for. Historically, there has been little coordination among the various doctors, specialists and hospitals who see a given patient. The payment system is even more Balkanized, creating a confusing matrix of prices and reimbursement rates that seem to have no relation to the value of the service performed.

More fundamentally, the system rewards providers for treating the ill and injured, not for keeping the public hale and hearty. Its financial incentives encourage providers to deliver as much treatment as possible. And there's little or no connection between what providers are paid and how effective their care is. As a result, the industry has an incentive to deliver an increasing number of treatments of greater complexity — to build more capacity, then find a way to fill it.

Bingo!

For those who would scream that this approach is just another form of health care rationing, I would point out that private insurers have been rationing health care, or at least the portion they are willing to pay for, for a long time.  And that rationing has often been capricious and malicious, requiring multiple appeals and threats from state insurance commissioners for those claimants with the time and money to protest. The kind of rationing to which the editorial refers are open and transparent and make sense. They also will save billions over the years.

Digby suggests that the rumor to raise the eligibility age for Medicare may be just a trial balloon being floated by the White House to see if it will fly. If Digby is right, and she usually is, then we really need to continue to phone, email, fax, write our representatives and the White House to let them know that the balloon is made of lead and not worthy of consideration.

I urge you to do some kingbirding and continue to bug Washington until it gets the message.

He's Going To Cry

(Click on image to enlarge, then please return.)


Poor House Speaker Boehner.  I almost feel sorry for him, although not quite.  As David Horsey's cartoon and column points out, he has to negotiate with the White House while his own party is hopelessly split.

On one side of the growing rift stand pragmatic conservatives such as Ann Coulter and Bill Kristol who say Republicans should give ground and let President Obama raise taxes on the wealthiest 2% of Americans. On the other side stand hard-line conservatives such as Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), a gaggle of right-wing pundits and tea party diehards who shout, “Never give in!” Straddling this divide is Boehner, trying to hold his caucus together while offering a middle path that would raise revenue from the rich while holding down tax rates.

Boehner’s scheme to come up with $800 billion by closing tax loopholes for the wealthy has broad, if tenuous, support in the GOP caucus, but it is not a plan that has much chance of survival. It brings in only half the revenue that would come in if Bush-era tax cuts are allowed to expire as they are set to do on Jan. 1. President Obama and the Democrats are far more inclined to let that happen than to buy into Boehner’s vague plan for which no details have yet been provided. Meanwhile, conservative purists are already calling Boehner a traitor to the cause for offering to take away deductions and tax credits from the upper class. ...

...That means all of the automatic tax hikes and budget cuts characterized as the “fiscal cliff” will begin to unroll, leaving it to the new Congress in the new year to forge an agreement with the president to roll back the draconian measures before the economy takes a dive.

And Boehner's woes won't end there.  In the next congress he can expect a challenge to his leadership from people like Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan, both of whom have their own political career aspirations.  It's hard to imagine either of them willing to throw their far-right supporters under the bus just so Boehner can make a deal.  It's not hard to imagine what that far-right constituency will demand next:

If they cannot stop a tax hike for the wealthy in January, the more strident conservatives are already identifying the February deadline for raising the debt ceiling as their next point of leverage. Should the president not give them what they want in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other non-military programs, the most zealous conservatives appear willing to put the good credit of the United States at risk again. The last time they did that in 2011, the nation’s credit rating was downgraded. This time the result could be worse.

Besides doing damage to the country, the GOP brand will be tarnished even further. Boehner and the pragmatists know that.  Unfortunately the ultra conservatives don't care.

Interesting times we live in.

Just A Convenient Stepping Stone

Another member of Congress has announced his resignation.  This time it's Senator Jim DeMint, who still has several years to go in his current term.  He's moving on to head up the Heritage Foundation.

Republican Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, one of the most influential leaders of the tea party wing of the party, will retire in January to head a conservative think tank in Washington.

DeMint has been a renegade on and off Capitol Hill, and earned a reputation for often rousing – and clashing – with his colleagues over his hard-line positions. The two-term senator carried those views to the campaign trail, where his political action committee endorsed right-flank candidates – often against the party’s wishes.

DeMint had from the start indicated that he would self-impose term limits on his senate career, but most people assumed that he would at least serve out all of his time.  I suppose there were several elements that entered into his decision, among them the failure of the GOP to take the Senate, but I can't help thinking that the presumed increase in pay and "prestige" also enter into it.

Like I said on Tuesday, our congress critters aren't even pretending any more:  service in Congress is just a temporary job, a place from which they can move on to bigger fame and fortune.

Sad, sad, sad.

You Break It, You Own It

Oops!

Their bad.

The GOP has just discovered that maybe they screwed up big time, and this time they just might have to pay for it (maybe).  As David Horsey points out in both his cartoon and his column, Republicans were too clever by half and the President and (perhaps) the Senate might be willing to call them on it.

At its heart, the current impasse over a budget deal comes down to the GOP’s unwillingness to let George W. Bush-era tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans expire. Obama insists this has to happen and House Speaker Boehner says it will not. The obvious weakness in the Republican position is that the Democrats know they will get what they want – more revenue from the wealthy – either because the Republicans capitulate and make it part of a budget package before Jan. 1 or because that date arrives with no agreement and the tax cuts disappear automatically. This makes them strongly inclined to play hardball. The chairwoman of the Senate Budget Committee, Washington state's Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, has made it clear she is willing to brave the fiscal cliff rather than do a deal with Republicans that, as she has said, “throws middle-class families under the bus” while, once again, rewarding the rich folks who have done so exceedingly well in recent decades.

Republicans have to know protecting the upper-income tax cuts is a lost cause, yet they are loath to deal them away. That would amount to raising taxes, something most Republicans have pledged never to do. Perversely, this gives them an incentive to postpone a deal until after the start of the year. They can claim they did not cave to Obama, while Grover Norquist will not be able to hold them accountable for the tax hike. ...

When Republicans created the fiscal cliff as a means to force a grand bargain on the budget, they must have assumed Democrats would go soft in a game of chicken. Instead, it appears Obama, Murray and the Democrats have looked over the fiscal cliff and are not all that frightened by what they see. Politically speaking, the scariest thing at the bottom of that cliff is the trap Republicans have set for themselves.  [Emphasis added]

Of  course, this doesn't mean that some kind of deal won't emerge before the end of the session.  While the tax cuts for the wealthy might go, cuts to "entitlements" might be be forged and traditional middle class deductions (mortgage interest payments) might be given up.  Democrats will still have room to screw up, and if they have the room, this crop will fill it.

That's why I think it's important that we annoy the hell out of our current reps with phone calls, faxes, signed petitions and whatever else progressive groups are floating.  And that kind of pressure needs to be doubled for the next Congress as well.

As I said back in June, it's time to do a whole lot of kingbirding:

Nature notes: Watched a tiny eastern kingbird assail a bald eagle who must have done some nest robbing. Irate little bird actually surfed the back of the eagle furiously pecking his head for about 1000 feet. Saw similar outrage directed at a raven. Tough day for nesting kingbirds.

I consider that an excellent metaphor for the very least we can do, so much so that I've created a new label, "Kingbirding." I suggest that as often as we can we peck mercilessly at the heads of the rapacious thieves stealing from our nest for as long as we can. If nothing else, it will annoy them, causing them to spend their oh-so-precious-time trying to shake us off. Faxes, letters, emails, telephone calls, vigils, letters to the editors: they may be just momentary distractions, but at least we are doing something.

And we'd better.

Tyrannus Rex

So, has Grover Norquist reached his use-by date, like Karl Rove?

I don't think so, but David Horsey does, and so do many others.  This is one of those times I'd love to be wrong.

Norquist has never been elected to anything. Nobody ever said he should be in charge of the GOP’s true religion (although he claims President Ronald Reagan urged him to found his lobbying group, Americans for Tax Reform). But he certainly has been the Republicans’ key political theologian, making opposition to tax increases the party’s central tenet for more than 25 years.

He got 95% of Republican candidates for Congress, the presidency and state offices to sign a pledge never to raise taxes and he enforced it by getting retribution at reelection time on anyone who failed to keep the promise. Now, though, he is facing a dramatic rebellion in the ranks. The country is teetering on the so-called fiscal cliff thanks to Republican-backed legislation from 2011 that will automatically begin slashing the federal budget and raise taxes on Jan. 1 if an alternative plan is not adopted by Congress. This has everyone a bit freaked out, including quite a few GOP senators and representatives who have expressed a willingness to consider revenue increases for the sake of making a budget deal with the Democrats.   [Emphasis added]

I do understand the logic.  Republicans are suddenly faced with a problem of their own making, a big one.  In fact, it's a very big one.  They've just lost an election and, while they still hold the House, they've lost ground in both houses of  Congress and the electorate appears to be in a very pissy mood when it comes to tax breaks for the 1%.

And President Obama, who has that second term Mitch McConnell was determined to deny him, has suddenly gotten a little surly.  He seems to think that he has a little political capital to spend so he's whipping that out against the GOP on the fiscal cliff issues.

House Republicans said on Thursday that Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner presented the House speaker, John A. Boehner, a detailed proposal to avert the year-end fiscal crisis with $1.6 trillion in tax increases over 10 years, an immediate new round of stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and a permanent end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

The proposal, loaded with Democratic priorities and short on detailed spending cuts, was likely to meet strong Republican resistance. In exchange for locking in the $1.6 trillion in added revenues, President Obama embraced $400 billion in savings from Medicare and other entitlements, to be worked out next year, with no guarantees.

He did propose some upfront cuts in programs like farm price supports, but did not specify an amount or any details. And senior Republican aides familiar with the offer said those initial spending cuts might well be outnumbered by upfront spending increases, including at least $50 billion in infrastructure spending, mortgage relief, an extension of unemployment insurance and a deferral of automatic cuts to physician reimbursements under Medicare.

This is a great opening gambit, one that should have been used four years ago when the Democrats had control of both houses as well as the presidency.  It would have made a difference then.  But, no, Mr. Hopey-Changey was all into bipartisanship, and the Democrats for all sorts of reasons played along.  That's why a single payer system or even a public option system for health care were never on the table. 

Gitmo is still open.  We are still operating under Bush rules for reading our emails and checking our library habits.  Oil companies are still drilling in sensitive areas, even after a catastrophic spill in the Gulf Coast.  Our use of drones has been expanded.  Wall Street is still calling the tunes.  No change, and for most of us, no hope.

 So, is the opening gambit a sign that times have changed?

I tend to think not.  Sometime before Christmas, a deal will be reached.  Our current crop of Democrats in the 112th Congress will have their collars tweaked by our owners, as will the President. Social Security will suddenly be on the table, as will Medicare/Medicaid, all before Christmas.  And we know what that means.  In 2014 both Karl Rove and Grover Norquist will be back in action.  With a vengeance.

Like I said at the start, I'd love to be wrong, so I called the DC offices of Senators Boxer and Feinstein and Congressman David Dreier and made my wishes clear.  I figure one for three is the best I'll do, but maybe that will be enough to get us to the 113th Congress.  Maybe we'll have better luck there.

Sweet Gig

(Click on image to enlarge. Then come back. Please.)

So, our congress critters have returned to DC. The conventions are over, the election is still seven weeks away, a budget has still to be passed. So, maybe the 112th Congress will actually do some work? Not likely, as David Horsey points out.

...The lawmakers are taking a break from campaigning just long enough to make sure the government does not go broke by the end of the month. It’s nice of them to drop by to do the people’s work. This year, such a thing has been a rare occurrence. ...

The list of accomplishments for this Congress is short and risible. The lawmakers earned an easy feather in their cap by shaving 2 percentage points off the payroll tax for the last two years. However, with deficits mounting higher by the second, the expectation is the tax holiday will not be extended past Dec. 31.

Lawmakers also managed to agree on raising the debt ceiling last year – but only after an exercise in brinkmanship between Democrats and Republicans that prompted Standard & Poor’s to downgrade the U.S. credit rating. And the provisional budget arrangement that came out of that debacle set up automatic draconian cuts that will kick in at the turn of the year if a new deal is not reached. ...

The 112th Congress has passed far fewer bills than any Congress in recent years. Our current crop of lawmakers may, in fact, have achieved the lowest productivity of any Congress in modern history.

One would have to go back to the pre-Civil War period to find a batch of national legislators as deeply divided and rigid in their positions. Compromise is now a dirty word and, as the debt ceiling fight proved, there is a large faction among the House Republicans who would close the government and bring down the economy rather than vote for the tiniest of tax increases.

And so this sorry crowd has slinked back to Washington for a few days to see if they can do the absolute minimum – pass a continuing resolution that will allow the federal government to pay its obligations for a few more months. Then, they will all head back home to continue campaigning for re-election.

The mystery is why they want their jobs at all. [Emphasis added]

C'mon, David. Don't be so naive.

These folks get six-figure salaries, a health care plan for themselves and their families most of us can only dream about, and a real, live pension plan. They have staffs which do most of the hard work for them, and they don't have to pay the salaries or benefits. They work four days a week at most, and they get vacations that double those given to the public school teachers that they love to demonize. They are also pretty much guaranteed cushy jobs after their government "service" with the lobbyists and corporations they've served so well.

What's not to like? Of course they want these jobs.

And we keep electing and re-electing these slugs.

Maybe it's time for a change, you think?

Do Nothing

(Editorial cartoon by Joel Pett / Lexington Herald-Leader (August 7, 2012) and featured at McClatchy DC. Click on image to enlarge and then kindly return.)

Congress is on vacation. Again. When our representatives return in a few weeks, there will be less than two months before the election, and then about two months remaining in the 112th Congress. In other words, not too much of any real substance will be accomplished.

That is not too surprising, after all. Not too much beyond the ACA has been enacted since 2008. And as far as I can see, both sides of the aisle have engaged in political posturing and dithering to avoid any meaningful legislation since 2010. I'm not alone in that assessment, as this CNN article from back in June makes clear.

According to a CNN analysis of congressional records that looked at bills that became law and the number of days lawmakers worked, members of the House have spent more than 150 days and Senate just over 140 days in session so far, comparable to previous Congresses at this point in the term.

But of the thousands of measures introduced, only 132 passed both. About one-fifth of those measures were to approve official names for post offices.

In the previous Congress, the House worked 286 days and the Senate worked 349 days. That Congress passed 383 bills, according to Library of Congress records. Each Congress spans a two-year cycle.

The logjam means important pieces of legislation -- such as the transportation funding bill and measures to address high student loan rates and, yes, even the budget -- haven't passed. ...

At this point, the foot-dragging and finger-pointing is all about embarrassing the other party, [Thomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution] said.

"It is about generating blame for something, about trying to put the other side in a difficult political position." [Emphasis added]

All of this "foot-dragging and finger-pointing" is mostly because there is an election coming up, but there are other elements involved: keeping the wealthy business donors happy and keeping defense contractors happy have always been a priority.

These yahoos are getting over $100,000 a year in salary and thousands more in benefits to work part-time to accomplish nothing.

Nice gig, eh?

In The Cross-hairs

(Picture found here.)

Yesterday, Arizona Congresswoman Gabriel Giffords made her last appearance at the House of Representatives. According to all accounts, it was an emotional occasion.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords returned to the House floor one final time as her colleagues approved her bipartisan border security bill on the day she officially stepped down from office.

Friends have said the Arizona Democrat has never been one to tackle her goals halfway. It was fitting, then, that she closed out her career with a legislative victory.

The day was bittersweet as emotional colleagues said farewell to the well-liked congresswoman, described by Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) as an "extraordinary daughter of this House," who announced she would step down this week to focus on her recovery.

House Speaker Boehner accepted her formal letter of resignation with tears in his eyes, although that in itself in not unusual. The accolades from both sides of the aisle were, however, unusual, especially for this Congress. It's clear that Rep. Giffords was indeed well-liked and well-respected, no mean feat in the bitterly partisan 112th Congress.

Giffords, who suffered massive head injuries in a shooting by a crazed young man, might have been better honored if her colleagues had been so moved by the atrocity that they passed some stronger gun and ammunition laws. Alas, they were obviously not that distraught. After all, that would be tampering with the will of the NRA.

Ironically, on the day that the Giffords appearance was taking place at the nation's capital, another appearance took place in Missouri's:

Just hours before Giffords made her way into the nation's Capitol, an unknown provocateur was stalking the halls of the Missouri Capitol, tagging the doors of lawmakers—most of them Democratic women—with images of rifle crosshairs.

The picture which heads this post shows the stickers in question. The stickers are more than a little reminiscent of the symbol used by Sarah Palin in targeting incumbents up for re-election in 2010.

Palin and other conservatives strongly rejected the notion that their imagery and rhetoric had anything to do with the bloodbath in Arizona a year ago. And no one can know what was truly in the deranged mind of Jared Loughner. But common sense says that when enough targeted political vitriol mixes with enough guns, bad things will eventually happen.

Exactly so, especially when the mood of the entire electorate is sour beyond belief. It's clear that we are in for some hard times.

Elder Belle's Blessing: Congressional Progressive Caucus

(Photo by Patrice Carlton and published at National Geographic.)

The Progressive Congressional Caucus is the latest recipient of this award, given to people who have gone out of their way to enhance the health and well-being of elders. Thanks to Ronnie Bennett at Time Goes By, I learned of the CPC's efforts in proposing a real jobs bill, one that also protects Social Security and shores up Medicare. Here is part of Ronni's summary:

On Tuesday, the Congressional Progressive Caucus led by its chairman, Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva, introduced H.R. 3638, the Restore the American Dream for the 99 Percent Act.

The Economic Policy Institute says the bill would create 5 million jobs over the next two years and reduce the budget deficit by $2 trillion over the next decade.

H.R.3638 contains the kinds of provisions that would get the country moving forward again. You know, stuff Congress should have been enacting during these past four years instead of lining the pockets of the already rich while American family budgets are circling the drain. And it aligns with much that the #occupy movement has brought to the nation's attention.

What follows this introduction is a summary of the various provisions of H.R.3638, so click on the link to Time Goes By for the details. Then follow the links provided by Ronnie, and check out the press release from the CPC which will lead you to even more specifics on the bill.

The provisions which directly affect elders are summarized deftly by Ronni:

PROTECTING MEDICARE, MEDICAID AND SOCIAL SECURITY

• Public option: allowing a public option to operate with private in the health care exchanges saves $88 billion

• Negotiate drug prices: allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices with pharmaceutical saves $156 billion

• Enhancing Medicaid rates: the fastest way to support state governments would be to restore the increased federal Medicaid matching rates

• Scrapping Social Security cap: Social Security by law cannot contribute to the deficit; however people making over $106,800 do not pay taxes on the additional income. To ensure long-term solvency, this requires anyone making over $250,000 to pay the normal social security tax on their upper income.

It's not just these provisions which affect elders, however. Putting the country back to work and providing the nation with a sane economic policy affects us as well. We have families, and we want our children and grandchildren, as well as our friends and neighbors, to do well now and in the future.

The CPC and we have a rough road ahead in getting this bill passed in both houses of Congress, but we can move in that direction by contacting our representatives and senators urging them to do the right thing for a change. All of the nostrums we've been sold the past decades have failed us miserably. Now it's our turn.

Information For The Privileged

It's no secret that members of Congress somehow come out of their service far wealthier than they went into it. What isn't as well known is how they manage that increase in personal worth. As reported in a recent "60 Minute" program, one way has been to engage in a practice that would be illegal if done by the rest of us, and apparently some in Congress want to keep it that way.

House Republican leaders have foolishly sidetracked a bipartisan ethics bill in Congress to ban members from using inside information they gain in private hearings and discussions in stock trades. Insider trading is illegal generally, but Congress’s apparent exception from the ban was never a concern on Capitol Hill until a recent report on “60 Minutes” questioned whether various members were profiting from back-room knowledge.

That report caused lawmakers in both houses to fast-track enactment of an explicit ban. The House version picked up 225 co-sponsors in a matter of days after gathering dust for years in the good-ideas hopper. However, committee action, scheduled this week, was abruptly postponed when Eric Cantor, the Republican majority leader, said unnamed members considered the measure “flawed and being recklessly moved solely in response to media pressure,” according to Mr. Cantor’s spokesman. [Emphasis added]

Apparently Mr. Cantor and some of his cohorts are unfamiliar with the role that a free press has in a functioning democracy. Either that or they want to subvert it for their own personal gain. The "60 Minutes" program raised important questions when it comes to those charged with representing us and not just the financial behemoths. That kind of "media pressure" is exactly what our press is supposed to exert when it is functioning properly.

I suspect that what the House Republicans blocking the bill really object to is being caught with their hands in the corporate cookie jar and having to face a sugar-free diet when it comes to their "just desserts."

Interestingly, the Senate has no such qualms. The governmental affairs committee has approved a bill which explicitly bans such insider trading. Presumably the bill will come to a vote soon (no doubt after the holiday recess), and will hopefully be passed.

Maybe in addition to "media pressure" some "constituent pressure" is in order. It is, after all, an election year.

Wah! Wah!

Pity the poor Congress critter: at least that's the message members of the 112th Congress are currently peddling, according to this article:

To its many issues — dysfunction, occasionally impaired judgment, an inability to get things done — Congress can add one more: Low self-esteem.

Following yet another failure to come up with a plan to reduce deficits, the mood on Capitol Hill has switched from frustration and disillusionment to open self-loathing. Few came forward to defend the "super committee's" decision to deadlock rather than agree to a deal on the deficit. ...

In the self-flagellation is a mix of frustration and empathy — an attempt to show voters that lawmakers understand why people don't like them. They feel your pain. You think watching them flail and flounder to accomplish once-routine tasks is hard? Try being a part of it.

Oh, please. Somebody call the wahmbulance.

With all the finger pointing going on, somebody's gonna lose an eye.

The Republicans blame the Democrats for being recalcitrant, for refusing to face the fact that more government is too expensive and too intrusive. The 2010 elections were proof that Americans wanted less spending and more belt-tightening at the top. Tax hikes while Americans face 9% unemployment will only make things worse because employers won't be able to afford new workers and their share of payroll taxes. Cutting taxes on those who could generate jobs is the only way, yet the Democrats insist on including higher taxes with each proposal.

The Democrats blame the Republicans for being obstructionist. Scores of administration appointments still haven't been confirmed and aren't likely to be. Because most members of the GOP have pledged fealty to their monarch, Grover Norquist, funding for any kind of economic relief via any kind of tax hikes are out of the question. What did the Dems expect when the Senate Minority Leader made it explicitly and abundantly clear that the primary goal of his party was the denial of a second term to President Obama?

And so very little got done except the health care reform bill, which primarily benefits the insurance industry and doesn't contain a public option, an extension to the tax break for the wealthy, and a tiny sliver of the jobs bill which only passed because it contained the magic word "veterans."

What all of this inaction showed is that neither party is capable of governing, nor wants to. They'd rather take pot shots at each other while dialing for dollars to fund their next campaigns. And that means both parties will be working for those who benefit from the inaction, the 1% who like things just the way they are, rather than the 99% of us who are struggling to keep from drowning.

A pox on both of their houses.

AWOL

One of the basic rules attached to accepting employment is that the employee show up for work. Apparently that rule only applies to us little people, according to this article in the New York Times:

According to an analysis of House attendance, nearly 20 current members have missed more than 10 percent of the votes this year. ...

While a 10 percent rate of absenteeism might not seem all that significant, the vast majority of lawmakers try to miss as few votes as possible, with the view that their constituents consider voting a basic function of serving in Congress. [Emphasis added]

If one assumes that an employment year consists of fifty weeks of at least four days of work, that means there are two hundred work days. Not too many of us have twenty sick/personal leave days as part of our employment deal. Additionally, the congressional employment year has far fewer work weeks, what with summer and holiday breaks, and the work week rarely goes beyond three days. Given the reduced requirement, it isn't asking too much of our congress critters to show up to fulfill the terms of their employment contract with the electorate.

There are, of course, very legitimate excuses for being absent, among them personal illness or family illness. It's pretty hard to fault Rep. Gabrielle Giffords for missing all but one vote this year as she recovers from a gunshot wound to the head. But some of the excuses offered are ludicrous and range from going home to participate in a charity fishing contest to meeting with constituents, the ones who sent the representative to Washington to handle the business of the country. My favorite excuse is that some votes are just not important. Why then are they being held?

It seems to me that if the rest of us can drag our sorry backsides out of the rack day after day to make a living, so can the people we're paying six figures to represent us in Washington.