Payroll Tax Cut Extension

Credit where credit's due. Obama and the Dems faced the Republicans down, got a big win, made them look like chumps, and demonstrated a bit of stones for a change.

Heck, look at this:

Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer reached out to the White House early in the standoff to convey their view: They can win without giving an inch. The White House agreed, giving way to a no-compromise strategy championed internally by senior adviser David Plouffe, who, like the president, was in a fighting mood, according to multiple sources.

Their thinking, according to White House and congressional aides: Obama and Senate Democrats already negotiated through McConnell. They made concessions. Eighty-nine senators, in a rare moment of overwhelming bipartisanship, approved the deal. And the public, according to polls, was on their side. Case closed.

“We were resolved to hold the line on this from the moment the speaker’s office indicated they were going to cave to the pressures from the fringe element of their caucus,” said a Senate Democratic aide. “We felt we had such a resounding vote in the Senate that they were going to be trapped. It was going to be impossible for the Senate Republicans to walk away from it. They were doomed to be divided because of that.”

I don't even think that the Senate unanimity had much to do with it. The Republicans have been more than successful without it in the past. The simple truth here is that fighting for legislation that is publicly popular works. Yes, you need to be smart and canny about how you do it, and I was impressed by the full-court press the White House executed to get this thing passed. The lesson's still clear. With any luck at all, they'll remember that going forward into 2012.

This is a bit bittersweet, though. You can't help but wonder about how different the world would be if the White House had been willing to do this from the beginning.

The Republicans Want to Cause a Bond Panic....

...just so that they can gut what remains of America's social safety net, and by extension its middle class.

And, as digby points out, along with Stan Collander,  the Dems appear to be perfectly willing to go along with it.

He says that just because the Republicans get their wish for a failure of a clean vote, it does not necessarily follow that they would vote for a "dirty" one either. He feels this vote is entirely a kabuki dance that's necessary (because of the polls saying people don't want to raise the debt ceiling) for the Republicans to record a "no" vote no matter what's in it.

So basically, the Democrats are sacrificing their position so that Republicans can be comfortable voting to raise the ceiling with spending cuts in a couple of months. If Collander is right, the Democrats are even stupider than usual. It's a twisted good cop/bad cop scene where the Republican base applauds its leaders for being tough guys and the Democratic base hand theirs a hankie and commiserates with their powerlessness. (And then the leadership goes out and has a cup of coffee and a donut, or in more common parlance -- Tipnronnie have a drink together.)

Digby has a point. That seems fits both bases quite nicely. The Republican base gets to celebrate a Republican victory, whereas the Democratic base gets to mourn one.

Collander does allude to an end game that seems to be making its way into the beltway ether:

Many Members publicly insist that a big “no” vote on a clean bill will have little to no effect on financial markets. But here’s another dirty little secret: There is a growing suspicion that, like what happened the day after the House rejected the Troubled Asset Relief Program in September 2008 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell by almost 7 percent, such a vote could quickly change market perceptions of the situation and have a substantial negative effect on interest rates and equity prices.

It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.It’s even possible that’s part of the plan. Former Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag said last week that it is going to be difficult to get Members of Congress to agree to increase the debt ceiling without some kind of “turbulence” in the bond market. A big “no” vote on a debt ceiling increase bill could easily accelerate that type of disturbance in the financial force. Indeed, it might be what’s needed to precipitate it and the leadership may be counting on that happening.

 So that's where it stands. After all the bullshit about building confidence by cutting spending, we now have a Republican party that's preparing to DEMOLISH confidence by cutting spending.  Notice the common theme, there? It isn't about building a strong economy. It's about driving taxes to zero for their ultra-monied friends and clientele, while simultaneously driving wages to rock-bottom by making people so desperate that they'll accept absolutely anything.

Digby again:

I don't know what kind of sick nihilism makes a scenario like that remotely possible, but again, I don't believe it. We are talking about Big Money here and there are a lot of things that aren't working right in this country right now, but the greed mechanism isn't one of them. I don't believe "the markets" are going along with that plan. And I don't think even the Republicans are going to take that kind of risk going into an election year.

But if these people are actually planning a financial panic in order to destroy the safety net, can someone explain to me just how it is they can possibly be considered anything but criminals? This isn't a joke. Panics have a way of getting out of hand --- it's not like you can wave a magic wand and it stops. At the very least can we at least admit that every single sentence they've ever uttered about the desperate need for market "confidence" and "uncertainty" was unadulterated rubbish? (If this happens keep an eye on the short sellers because somebody's going to make money on it and you have to assume the people who caused it are among them ...)

The Democrats can turn this clean vote against the Republicans if they want to. The polls may say that the people don't want the debt ceiling raised, but they also don't want the government shut down, Medicare to get privatized and the economy to get worse. If the Democrats have even a modicum of guts they'll relentlessly hammer this vote home for the next two months as a sign of the Republicans' willingness to do anything to destroy Medicare, even destroy the economy. There are several months of negotiations ahead and they could tie this albatross around their necks right along with the dead Ryan plan if they want to. The real question is whether they want to.

Well, that's the rub, isn't it? I disagree with digby that this is implausible. It's extraordinarily plausible, and will pay off big for the Republicans and their buddies. Going along with this program of tax cuts WILL mean that the Democrats will get punished. The Republicans will get away with selling the cuts by lying about their economic impact and because they'll retain the support of their deluded base. The Dems will watch as their base simply doesn't bother to vote. The "swing" voters won't help the Dems, either; they'll go to whichever party can promise that they won't be homeless in two years, and the Republicans will be more than happy to swoop in with supply-side horseshit about how this engineered panic will ultimately help "job creators".


It's a lie, of course.  the whole POINT of this thing is to demolish the middle class and loot the wreckage left behind for every nickel. The middle-class will be poor, the poor will be destitute, and America's income distribution will look like something out of the third world. But, hey, that's what Republicans are ABOUT, now, isn't it?

Digby's right in saying that the Dems could turn this around. The Republicans are taking it on the chin for this anti-Medicare bullshit of theirs. The Dems could absolutely savage the Republicans for using this sort of game to threaten America's economy. They probably won't do it, though. If they had THAT sort of sense, they wouldn't have gotten their asses kicked last year after a recession which should have discredited the Republicans once and for all.

Edit: And, yes, the Republicans are probably gunning for a bond panic.  They've been hoping for one for years, because rising interest rates would give them the cover they need to insist that America's turning into Zimbabwe. When the current situation just isn't supporting your story, why not create the situation yourself?

Osama's Dead, and Obama Got Him

Yep. It's true. That bastard's toast, and it was the demmycrat that was responsible.

Not even in a figurative sense, either. Go read Chris Bowers' Twitter feed. Obama was given the information back in February, chaired the meetings that set out the operation while they confirmed the location, and gave the go-ahead on Friday.

Bowers quotes officials as saying "Administration officials believe bin Laden's death will put Al-Qaeda on path of decline that will be difficult to reverse." Can't disagree there. They were already on the downslope; this is going to be a body blow that will likely be the end of the organization. We can only hope.

It's instructive, though. Eight years of Republican rule, and nothing happens. After a little over two years, it's the Democrats that get it done. It's just another reminder of how incompetent the Republicans really are. I can only hope that, when 2012 rolls around, the American people will remember that too.

(Edit: fixed tags.)

Apparently the Republicans Want Floridians to Drink Soiled Water

Sounds strange, but take a look at the budget's policy riders if you don't believe it. Specifically, look at section 4035, which "prohibits funds for the EPA to impose and enforce federally mandated numeric Florida water quality standards". Yep. Right there, in black and white. That's what they want.

You may be confused. You may ask yourself "why would the Republicans be deliberately harming Floridians, considering how important that state is?" You may ask "who the hell is against water quality standards"? Sure, contraception, Republicans hate contraception and its role in women's emancipation. But water quality standards? That is, without a doubt, 100% within the purview of government. It's like policing, or the military, or food quality...

...oh, right. If you look at Section 1268, they're also trying to screw the FDA, too.

So, once again, there you have it. That's the party that American voters chose in large numbers. The party that doesn't care if there's poison in your water, or mercury in your cement (Sec. 4008), or radioactive coal ash in your air (Sec. 4045). If you get sick, or your loved ones get sick, or your CHILDREN get sick? Not their problem. F.O.A.D.

All that, and they still haven't done a damned thing to bring jobs back to America. But, then, they were never going to, were they?

Edit: Oh, and before the Dems get too smug: this was in the compromise bill. Which means the Dems signed off on all of this.

Shutdown Coming

So, the government's going to shut down because anti-choice nuts are freaking out over the funding of Planned Parenthood. I'm guessing that this isn't what people had in mind when they threw the Dems out. But, rest assured, that's what you were gonna get.

On the plus side, though, the Republicans appear to be living up to every negative stereotype that you could possibly think of them. Not only are they basically working as the footsoldiers for plutonomy and working hard to screw over everybody who makes less than 500k a year, but they're having a gigantic tantrum because people dare to have a different opinion on an issue that motivates their base. They're doing no better at improving the lot of the country than the Dems did; in fact, they're objectively and unmistakeably worse, just as everybody would have expected.

That's probably going to help Obama and the Dems in 2012—assuming they don't compromise themselves into oblivion between now and then. Poor comfort for all the people who are going to get screwed over by this prospective shutdown. But at least everybody knows the score.

E.J. Dionne Asks "The End of Progressive Government"?

This has been in the works ever since the Republicans started lying their way into a House majority. Hell, it may have been in the works since Citizens United opened the floodgates of corporate cash. But now, finally, here we are.

Americans are about to learn how much is at stake in our larger budget fight, how radical the new conservatives in Washington are, and the extent to which some politicians would transfer even more resources from the have-nots and have-a-littles to the have-a-lots.

And you wonder: Will President Obama welcome the responsibility of engaging the country in this big argument, or will he shrink from it? Will his political advisers remain robotically obsessed with poll results about the 2012 election, or will they embrace Obama’s historic obligation — and opportunity — to win the most important struggle over the role of government since the New Deal?

This week, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will announce the House Republicans’ budget plan, which is expected to include cuts in many programs for the neediest Americans.

The Ryan budget’s central purpose will not be deficit reduction but the gradual dismantling of key parts of government. Remember that Ryan wants both to preserve the Bush tax cuts and, over the long run, to enact more breaks for the wealthy, including the elimination of the capital gains tax.

Ryan’s plan reportedly will include steep Medicaid cuts, disguised as a proposal to turn the program into a “block grant” to the states. The net effect would be to leave even more Americans to the mercies of the private insurance market.

In deference to the GOP’s success in turning last year’s health-care law into “Obamacare,” let’s call this proposal Ryancare — and let’s make sure we look carefully at its impact on the elderly and the disabled, the main beneficiaries of Medicaid.

Put the two parts of the Ryan design together — tax cuts for the rich, program cuts for the poor — and its radically redistributionist purposes become clear. Timid Democrats would never dare embark on class warfare on this scale the other way around.

No shit. What's so enraging about this is that the Republicans are likely to accomplish more with their majority in one House than the Dems did with both Houses and the Presidency. The Republicans have stood their ground over and over again, and the Dems have caved over and over again.

And this is part of the reason:

But while I am assailing his ideas, let me put in a good word about Ryan himself:he is, from my limited experience, a charming man who truly believes what he believes. I salute him for laying out the actual conservative agenda. Here’s hoping he is transparent in the coming weeks about whom he is taking benefits from and toward whom he wants to be more generous. If he thinks we need an even more unequal society to prosper in the future, may he have the courage to say so.

WHY? Why praise a man who is trying to tear apart every program that has ever helped the non-wealthy in America? And why, especially, praise him for being "charming" and for consistency? He is a VILLIAN. Not only that, but he is a villian who, by all credible standards, knows absolutely nothing about economics and will most assuredly do more harm than good.

HIS HEALTH CARE PROPOSAL WILL KILL PEOPLE, DIONNE. DO NOT "SALUTE HIM" FOR HOW "CHARMING AND HONEST" HE IS ABOUT THAT.

(What the hell is it about the American media that they must embrace amoral, potentially-deadly bastards as long as they're honest about it?)

You want to know why the Republicans are winning? There it is. It may not be what Dionne thought it was. Dionne almost certainly was just trying to play a silly little trick where he damned with faint praise, and he spends a fair amount of time tearing the policies apart.

But what it really is is the same goddamned thing that happens every time: reasonable progressives giving quarter to bastard conservatives, ones that would never, ever return the favor. The same thing he's saying that Obama must not do, he's doing. The same Republican policies of minority rule, gutted revenue, and destroying social security and medicare that he's decrying, he's actually aiding. He can castigate the policies all he wants; it's completely irrelevant.

In the interest of being "nice" and "fair", he's handing his enemy a rope and an instruction manual on noose-tying. Ryan doesn't deserve it. "Charming and honest" or no, he deserves nothing but scorn.

No quarter. Not ever.

Tea Partiers Buck Republicans to Kill Patriot Act

Er...I don't think anybody was expecting THIS.

A measure to extend key provisions of the Patriot Act counterterrorism surveillance law through December failed the House Tuesday night, with more than two-dozen Republicans bucking their party to oppose the measure.

The House measure, which was sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.) and required a two-thirds majority for passage, failed on a 277-to-148 vote. Twenty-six Republicans voted with 122 Democrats to oppose the measure, while 67 Democrats voted with 210 Republicans to back it. Ten members did not vote.

The measure would have extended three key provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire on Monday, Feb. 28, unless Congress moves to reauthorize them. One of the provisions authorizes the FBI to continue using roving wiretaps on surveillance targets; the second allows the government to access "any tangible items," such as library records, in the course of surveillance; and the third is a "lone wolf" provision of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorist Prevention Act that allows for the surveillance of targets who are not connected to an identified terrorist group.

The vote came as several tea party-aligned members of the new freshman class had been expressing doubts about the measure.

Not that I have any more respect or admiration for the teabaggers. They're still a blight on the country. But it is interesting to see that they can and do buck some of the Republicans' default positions. Should make the next two years more fun.

Edit: Okay, true, most of the teabaggers voted for it. And it'll be coming up again as a regular vote, so it'll likely pass.

Still, for the Republican party, even a minor rebellion like this is somewhat of a big deal.

Healthcare Repeal Shot Down in Senate

Less important, of course, but it's still something notable, if only to show how the Republican house is willing to waste everybody's time tilting at windmills.

Refreshingly Simple Answers

Why are the Republicans calling the Affordable Care Act a "Job-killing law", even when it's been endlessly proven that that's a lie?

Well, Jay Bookman called it: they're doing it because they know that it doesn't matter if it's a lie. The point is repetition and association. They know that even people who don't believe you will tend to assume that you must have a point if you saying something over, and over, and over again. They also know that the most important thing to Americans is unemployment, that the media will give "equal time" to them no matter how much of a mountain of shit they're peddling, and that Obama will "meet them halfway" no matter how out to lunch they are.

So they're going to keep lying and everything the don't like a "job killer" over and over again. Because truth is meaningless when repetition will hold the day.

"A Mob Intent on Violence" and the Second Amendment Solution

Here's Bob Filner:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yep, that describes the Republicans pretty well.

Oh, perhaps you were expecting me to say "the Tea Party"? HELL with that. The Republicans embraced the Tea Party throughout the election and continued to do so right until it became inconvenient now that they've been reminded that violent nutballs are not just volunteers, donors, and convenient campaign props but are actually violent nutballs.

Here's the thing: it doesn't matter whether the Arizona shootings were inspired by "left-wing" grievances, "right-wing" grievances, both, or neither.  Everybody has issues. Everybody has grievances. You're never going to achieve consensus. What matters is how the Republicans and their pet Teabaggers advocate the resolution of those grievances.

No, what's fucked up about the Rebaggers, what makes them dangerous, is their method of conflict resolution. They don't care about democratic activism, or rhetoric, or debate. That shit's for pansies. No, they're doing everything but out-and-out telling America that the solution is to grab a gun, the biggest clip you can find, lock 'n load, and start airing out anybody who gets in your way. Good ol' "Second Amendment solutions", as they put it.

So you get crazed mobs like this. You get people who can't accept that their chosen candidate was beaten by a filthy lieberal Jew Democrat, and who are told (according to Filner) by various psychotic right-wing blogs that "democracy has failed them" and that it's time to grab the AKs and go to town.

You get people like Loughner, who was deluded into thinking that he could resolve his grievances (real or imagined) with Rep. Giffords at the point of a gun.

You get self-described "foot soldiers" like Scott Roeder, who decides to resolve his grievances against abortion providers through first degree murder. 

You get ex-felons like Byron Williams who do their damnedest to kill every member of the ACLU and Tides Foundation that he can lay his hands on because Glenn Beck all but told him to.

And you get people like Jim David Adkisson, who slaughtered 3 people in a Unitarian church in Knoxville because "all liberals should be killed because they're ruining the country".

That's what you get when you have an entire party, an entire movement, that is built upon telling people that the only thing between them and prosperity, safety, security and happiness is firing as many rounds as they can into the Other.

Ross Douthat is a Pathetic, Pathetic Man

The man is so desperate to try to create some sort of association between the Arizona shooter and "leftists"—and so inept at doing so—that he has written an article about political violence that doesn't mention word one about Timothy McVeigh.

Sure, he mentions the Black Panthers, the Weathermen, and other leftist boogiemen. But when it comes to actual, horrific, politically-driven violence? Not a goddamned word. Doesn't even dodge around it or try to change the subject. Just ignores it entirely.

Yes, he also engages in a fair bit of good ol' fashioned false equivalence. He babbles (there is no better word) about how Democrats supposedly use "crosshairs" and "targets" as well, and does it while conveniently ignoring how the Republicans and their Tea Party buddies pair it with the sort of violent, eliminationist, hateful rhetoric that you'd normally expect to find on Stormfront instead of on the websites of the "mainstream" right. THAT, you'd expect from a water-carrier like Douthat.

But seriously? Not a single word about McVeigh?

That's just plain pathetic.

Jeffrey Goldberg Full of It On Arizona Shootings

...which, admittedly, isn't exactly a rare thing.

But why on earth would he try to claim this?

Imagine if the Ft. Hood shooting had been covered the same way as the Giffords shooting? During Ft. Hood, commentators and politicians were falling over themselves to preemptively announce that Nidal Hasan's religious faith had nothing to do with the shooting.

Which commentators would those be? Because I happen to recall rather a lot of blather about the extent to which this guy's religious faith had EVERYTHING to do with the shooting, especially once it came out that he wasn't happy about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

Goldberg either doesn't get it, or won't admit it. It may be unseemly to tie together the act of a lone nut and the right's incredible and disgusting eliminationist attitude towards anybody more liberal than Glenn Beck. But I haven't the slightest doubt that, were the guy to turn out to be progressive, liberal, or leftist, the right would be up in arms about it?

And do you know how I know? BECAUSE THEY'RE ALREADY DOING IT.

No links, because to hell with those guys, but we're already seeing wingnuts seize on the brief impressions of a few twitterers who knew the guy 3 or 4 years ago to try to blame progressives for what happened. We've already got delusional asshats trying to tie together a DailyKos commentator who said "Giffords is dead to me" and the killer, despite the simple fact that the communications we do see from the man are nowhere near as lucid as the posts that are supposedly from him.

The conservative movement and its various hangers-on are always, ALWAYS purely instrumental when it comes to their outrage over things like this. If it's one of theirs, they'll apologize their asses off, and do whatever they can to shift the blame. If it's not one of theirs, they'll scream to the heavens about the evils of the liberal-progressive-socialist-leftist-whatevers that were (naturally) entirely responsible for this.

Those of us who are disgusted and repelled by said movement need not adopt these tactics. At least, not necessarily, though damned if they don't work like a charm on the Usual Suspects in the media. But we should never, EVER forget what's going on, and why. NEVER give them the benefit of the doubt.

Because if you do, they'll just grab it, pocket it, and scream that much louder about how repulsively evil you are.

Bob Herbert on a Tear

Oh, now THIS I like. Bob Herbert's ripping up the Reps, saying "Get Ready for a [Rep] Rerun":

You just can’t close the door on this crowd. The party that brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, that led us into Iraq and the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that would like to take a hammer to Social Security and a chisel to Medicare, is back in control of the House of Representatives with the expressed mission of undermining all things Obama...
...Maybe the voters missed the entertainment value of the hard-hearted, compulsively destructive G.O.P. headliners. Maybe they viewed them the way audiences saw the larger-than-life villains in old-time melodramas. It must be something like that because it’s awfully hard to miss the actual policies of a gang that almost wrecked the country.

Good lead paragraph, but I think that second bit is slightly off. What motivated the public is fear, resignation, and rage.
There was fear from the still-employed lower-and-middle class about whether or not they'd lose their jobs and what little wealth they had left. Fear, suspicions, and isolation is ever the friend of the Republican.

There was resignation from progressives, liberals, and youth. They (we?) have lost all faith in the ability of Obama and the Democrats to actually enact positive change. The fact that a sixty-seat majority in the Senate couldn't get anything done was devastating, and the spectacle of Obama being perfectly willing to arm-twist progressive Dems but NOT conservative Dems or wingnut Reps was even more so. Obama's thorough abandonment of his base and supporters and repeated "hippy-bashing" was just final blow. So they just didn't bother to donate, campaign or vote.

But more than anything, there was rage. Americans know they've gotten a raw deal. They know they're being exploited. They know that the "Masters of the Universe" fucked things up, and got ordinary Americans like them to shoulder the burden. They're pissed that they got castigated for wanting to own a home in a nice neighbourhood and then finding out they got fleeced by the lying banks and mortgage houses. They're incandescent with fury over the lack of jobs. And they know it's all because the people that got paid the big bucks because they were supposedly the most talented, skilled, and thoughtful people in America were actually a pack of asshats mostly concerned with lining their pockets and those of their friends. It isn't about the "socialist Democrats"; bankers aren't socialists and the public absolutely despises that gang. It's about the Powers That Be and their utter betrayal of America's trust.

But what follows, well...Herbert really surprised me.

The mantra for Mr. Issa and the rest of the newly empowered Republicans in the House, including the new Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, is to cut spending and shrink government. But what’s really coming are patented G.O.P. efforts to spread misery beyond Mr. Obama and the Democrats to ordinary Americans struggling in what are still very difficult times.

It was ever thus. The fundamental mission of the G.O.P. is to shovel ever more money to those who are already rich. That’s why you got all that disgracefully phony rhetoric from Republicans about attacking budget deficits and embracing austerity while at the same time they were fighting like mad people to pile up the better part of a trillion dollars in new debt by extending the Bush tax cuts.

This is a party that has mastered the art of taking from the poor and the middle class and giving to the rich. We should at least be clear about this and stop being repeatedly hoodwinked — like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football — by G.O.P. claims of fiscal responsibility.

There’s a reason the G.O.P. reveres Ronald Reagan and it’s not because of his fiscal probity. As Garry Wills wrote in “Reagan’s America”:

“Reagan nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it. As the biographer Lou Cannon noted, it was unfair for critics to say that Reagan was trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor, since ‘he never seriously attempted to balance the budget at all.’ ”

We’ll see and hear a lot of populist foolishness from the Republicans as 2011 and 2012 unfold, but their underlying motivation is always the same. They are about making the rich richer. Thus it was not at all surprising to read on Politico that the new head of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Fred Upton of Michigan, had hired a former big-time lobbyist for the hospital and pharmaceuticals industries to oversee health care issues.

This is almost astonishing. Sure, a blogger can say such things. But a New York Times columnist isn't supposed to write comments that are so, well...classist. You're allowed to call the Republicans out-of-touch, or zealots, or zombies, or whatnot. But to actually call it as it is? To say that they're just there as agents for the cash-soaked bastards who screwed things up so badly in the first place?

Astonishing.

I wonder if they'll make him write a retraction.

"Haves" and "Have Nots"

Well, you'd think that anybody using THAT line would be a progressive, or even a liberal, right? Nope. Republican.Scott Walker, come on down:

“We can no longer live in a society where the public employees are the haves and taxpayers who foot the bills are the have-nots,” Mr. Walker, a Republican, said in a speech. “The bottom line is that we are going to look at every legal means we have to try to put that balance more on the side of taxpayers.”

Scott Walker is governor of Wisconsin.

Wisconsin.

A state where the gap between the rich and the middle class, once so low that the state prided itself on its relative equality, has yawned ever wider over the last few decades, as the top fifth decile's income rises 36% since 1990, while the poor's income barely budges despite the enormous growth in productivity. (And remember, if it follows American trends, Wisconsin's wealthiest 5% would have had their income go up by sixty percent.)

THAT is "haves" vs. "have nots". It has nothing to do with public sector unions.

Well, okay, that's false. It absolutely does. Unions, and especially the public sector unions, are just about the last thing that is protecting the middle class from utter annihilation by the modern robber barons and their various mouthpieces and hirelings. The prospect of a nasty strike is the only thing stopping corporate executive management from getting rid of pensions, health care, and anything approaching a decent salary for their employees. And since that's who Republicans work for...

Makes sense that they'd be pushing now. After all, America has what the Marxists always referred to as a "reserve army of the unemployed", including a lot of highly-skilled young college grads so desperate for work that they'll work for free and call it an "internship" if you dangle the prospect of a job in their face. And they're the lucky ones. If you're older, or uneducated, or (god forbid) black, you're just straight-out screwed.

It must be frustrating not being able to take advantage of this situation by slamming wages and salaries into the ground as hard as you possibly can. Certainly the shareholders—who are principally members of the same hyper-wealthy fraction of Americans that executive management belongs to—are going to want them to do it. Their job is to to "maximize shareholder value", is it not? That's how you do it these days. Innovation and market development is for chumps. Screwing the employees on one side and customers on the other: that's the ticket these days.

So, yes, looking at it through that light, it makes sense. Scott Walker knows that his job as a Republican governor is also to "maximize shareholder value". It shouldn't be. His job should be to help the people of Wisconsin. But in this zombie-ruled world, that just ain't happening.

Hey, Bill Kristol: (Plus: State of the Union and Onion Panels)

America already has health care rationing, you twit. It's just that it's rationed on the basis of wealth.

I realize that may not bother you much, being the wealthy son of a wealthy, well-connected man. But that's small comfort to the poor kids whose share of health care resources you 
got to gobble up because you won the lucky sperm contest however many years ago it was.

C&L notes, quite rightly, that the insurance companies are the agents of rationing. But, really, it comes down to money.

(Well, that, and the process of demolishing any sort of public-spiritedness left in America by making people so terrified of the future that they work seventy-hour weeks for inadequate pay and hoard gold like fantasy dragons in case their kids get sick. But that's about money, too. Terrified workers don't buck for better pay.)

Edit: And while you're watching C&L and getting annoyed, here's Chris Matthew's panel sounding like an Onion New Network parody of themselves.  It'd be nice if even Andrew Sullivan had said "uh, actually the Dems got shellacked because of the weak job situation and because the base stayed home, it has nothing to do with this 'center' bullshit". But, as per usual, there were no real progressives on there. Just conservative Villagers, babbling the same old bullshit and punching the same old hippies.

I suspect that the State of the Union tomorrow will, in the eyes of historians fifty years from now, be cited as the moment when America completely lost its shit and the zombie conservativism that caused so much damage finally came back and finished it off. I don't think it'll be the election, since the election was basically a primal scream against the serial fuckups of the wealthy lackwits that these panelists are apologizing for. I think it'll be when said lackwits deliberately misinterpreted the message to finally rip away what little comforts the poor and (soon-to-be-extinct) middle class had left.

Republicans Abandoning the Poor And Unemployed? Fancy That!

Yes, as seen on the Krug-blog, Bob Corker is now saying that the Fed should give up on doing anything about unemployment whatsoever. Instead, they should focus on price stability.

The former is unsurprising. Republicans see the unemployed as little more than a nuisance to be avoided only when they can't be distracted into fighting amongst each other over who's the most virtuous and/or faithful. But has nobody told this idiot that trying to maintain price stability is precisely what the Fed is trying to do? "Price stability" doesn't just mean "inflation". It means fighting core deflation, too. Sure, he's one of that class of idiot that thinks that Inflation Is Comin' Real Soon Now, No Really It Is. The Fed would still be making moves like QE2 if it disagreed with him. It IS still a semi-autonomous body.

Then again, maybe price stability isn't what people like Corker want. They're Republicans. They are, to a man, nestled deep in the pocket of the wealthiest 1%. The wealthiest 1% are universally creditors, not debtors. Why wouldn't they want deflation? It'd just make their bonds THAT much more valuable.

Sure, it'll screw everybody else. But I think the last ten years has showed us that they could give a rat's ass about the rest of the country, or the rest of the planet. Barring a sort of weak, puddle-deep Noblesse Oblige that nudges them into giving money to whichever charity makes them momentarily feel better, I see every reason to believe that they and their Republican creatures would gladly let the rest of us rot.

"Currency Debasement"?

Good Lord, the Republican shills taking shots at QE2 really are barely-concealed Goldbugs, aren't they?

They clearly think, against all logic or reason, that a healthy level of currency inflation is somehow equivalent to clipping coins.

Additional Deficit Commission Bit

I hadn't noticed until I checked out Krugman's post that they recommended reducing the top bracket from 35% to 23%, and the lowest bracket from 10% to 8%.

How ridiculous can one group of people be? Poor people are struggling and have seen little wage increase in the last few decades, while the wealthiest are walking away with every bit of the wealth generated by said decades' drastic increases in American productivity...

...and you're going to make it WORSE?

Welcome to the America of the right-wing populist, folks. He lionizes you while he and his paymasters walk away with everything you spend those long, hard hours producing. The more he gets, the worse it gets. You're lucky you're getting paid at all: by this time in 2020, you'll probably get nothing for your time and effort except a pathetic allowance of Wal-Mart company scrip.

One Of the Big Differences Between Liberals and Conservatives

When liberals win big, as in 2006 and 2008, you never hear people say that it's a triumph for liberalism.

When conservatives win big, as they did this year, you CONSTANTLY hear people say that it's a triumph for conservatism.

If it were just the media, then that'd be annoying but understandable. They take their cues from Fox, and Fox is a propaganda arm of the conservative movement. What's bizarre is that liberals never claim victory either. They are, as we see over and over again with that "progressive" bullshit, totally afraid to claim victory for their ideology. Hell, they're unwilling to even DISCUSS their ideology. They'll talk about the economy, they'll talk about warfare, they'll talk endlessly about political missteps and tactics and strategies and all that horse-race crap that only the media actually cares about. But you never hear them say "this shows that the American public is actually pretty liberal; it's just had the word demonized by agitprop from the well-heeled-and-amoral."

Meanwhile, every two-bit conservative from Canada to Mexico is crowing about how the 2010 results are a victory for conservatism. People like Mike Pence babble on and on about how the results are "a victory for conservative values". They're shouting their ideology from the rooftops.

The results aren't any sort of victory for conservatism, of course. How could they be? It's been a grand total of two years since Obama swept the nation. People's beliefs don't change that fast. No, they're a reaction to an unbelievably shitty job market, combined with the regression from the Democratic wave of 2008 and a metric tonne of Citizens United-spawned attacks ads. Americans are no more "conservative" in values than they were two years ago, and every time you actually poll them about their REAL beliefs, they end up coming across as fairly liberal. Hell, most want to repeal Obama's health care legislation because they want to add a public option. That ain't "conservative".

And what'd be nice if a liberal was actually out there saying that. If one of these talking heads said "most Americans are liberal, but don't realize it, because they've been told all their lives that liberals eat babies for breakfast". I know it's not popular and, perhaps, not politically savvy to tell the American people that they're being bamboozled by agents and apologists of that 1% of the population that's walking away with a full quarter of America's income. Such talk always seems to raise the spectre of the Cold War Commies in the American mind. Class inequality was the cause of The Enemy.

Nonetheless, it's true. And wouldn't it be nice if liberals calmly, forthrightly, and unapologetically spoke the truth for once?

REPEAL HEALTH CARE! (FOR THE PUBLIC OPTION!!?)

Yep, that's right. You know all those people who say they want to repeal the health care legislation? The ones that wingnuts are always trumpeting?

What they AREN'T telling you is that, for more than half, it's because they want a public option added.

Many have assumed that those advocating for repeal wanted Congress to take no further action on health care reform. However, this survey found that 48 percent of Americans actually would like for Congress to continue working on health care system reforms as opposed to focusing on other topics. In fact, the survey found that 63 percent of those individuals who supported repealing the legislation also were in favor of Congress continuing to work on health care system reforms.

When asked how important they thought it was for Congress to work on “establishment of a public option that would give individuals a choice between government provided health insurance or private health insurance,” 67 percent of Americans rated this as an important topic to address. This finding is even more striking given the fact that 59 percent of those in favor of repealing the health care reform legislation rated the public option as important to pursue. Another surprise is that 67 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents also agreed that the public option was an important topic to be addressed by Congress.

They do want health care reform. They just don't necessarily want this form of health care reform. Which is understandable, since the Senate passed a dog's breakfast of a system that is largely a handout to health insurance corps.

That's why it's important to get past the hype and look more closely into what people really want. Even THEY might not be totally sure what they really want; but it's not the pro-business status-quo that the Republicans are selling. They want something better, and it's tragic that neither the Republicans nor Dems appear to be willing or able to give it to them.