Liberty Street

Liberty Street Has Moved!

2008-02-06T17:43:00.000-05:00

Liberty Street has moved from Blogger to Wordpress. The new address is http://libertystreet.wordpress.com/. All of the posts (all 2,919 of them) and comments (considerably less of those!) have been imported to Liberty Street at Wordpress -- and they all remain at Blogger as well. All of the posts and comments in other words are both at Blogger and Wordpress. The difference is that there will be no new posts here -- which means that this notice will stay on top ad infinitum.

A note of caution: I had to repopulate the blogroll manually, since only posts and comments can be imported. Some blogs were no longer at the address I had, or had not been updated in a very long time (like one or two years). I did not bring those over. But if I have inadvertently delinked any blog that is still alive and kicking, please let me know and I will put you back on immediately.

I am looking forward to "seeing" my current readers at the new site, and to meeting many new ones as well.

CNN - health insurance

2008-02-05T09:22:00.000-05:00

On CNN, Dr. Sanjay Gupta claims that 20% of those without health care in America earn more than $75,000 a year. No source for those figures was given.

Frankly, I'm dubious. All the folks that I know that do not have health insurance earn less than $30,000 / year.

This Happened in America

2008-02-03T21:36:00.000-05:00

A young woman in Ohio -- the victim of an assault -- was arrested, hogtied face down in a jail cell by seven police officers, female and male, strip-searched, and then left, completely naked, in the jail cell for six hours, using toilet paper to try and keep warm during that time. Raw Story reported this atrocity:

Hope Steffey's night started with a call to police for help. It ended with her face down, naked, and sobbing on a jail cell floor. Now, the sheriff's deputies from Stark County, Ohio who allegedly used excessive force during a strip search 15 months ago face a federal lawsuit, and recently released video won’t help their case.

Steffey's ordeal with the Stark County sheriff's deputies began after her cousin called 9-1-1 claiming Steffey had been assaulted by another one of their cousins. When a Stark County police officer arrived, he asked to see Steffey's driver's license. But instead of handing over her own ID, she mistakenly turned over her dead sister's license, which she contends she keeps in her wallet as a memento. That's when the situation became complicated.

The video below shows what happened. It is, I think, the most horrifying thing I have ever viewed. It's very hard to watch. I was shaking through most of it. The sound of Hope Steffey screaming and sobbing in terror and humiliation will stay with me for a long time.

John Cole:

Things are out of control when people can do things like this and think they are doing “the right thing.” Check their faces- an odd sort of professionalism, going through the motions pinning this defenseless woman to the ground and essentially raping her, and no one stops to think it is inappropriate for men to be in the room (not to mention against clear procedures). No one asks “why are we doing this?” No one asks “Why is this woman here” (she was the one who called for help- I bet she will not make that mistake again). No one asks why she needed to sit for hours naked, humiliated, hysterical, and alone in a cell for anyone to walk by and gawk at her in a completely vulnerable state. No one thought to give her a blanket or talk to her as she was covering herself in toilet paper to keep warm.

What is wrong with our system? What is wrong with the police that it is not a radical belief for me to think “I should probably cross the street, there is a cop walking down this side.”

The Political Cat draws a line between Hope Steffey's ordeal, and the police killing of an African-American woman a year later, allegedly in the course of a drug raid, also in Ohio.

During the course of the raid, they injured Wilson's year-old son, who was in her arms at the time. The child has since had his finger amputated as a result of the injury. Ms. Wilson's partner, 31-year-old Anthony Terry, was arrested and removed from the premises.

Obviously the common element in these two events is police brutality -- and that brutality is nourished and grows in the soil of indifference:

... If the officers who stripped Ms. Steffey had been punished immediately for their behaviour, it is possible that Ms. Wilson might be alive today. If police officers were given better staffing levels, better training, it is possible that Ms. Steffey's ordeal and the orphaning of the Wilson children would never have occurred.

And then there is this paragraph, in which Political Cat writes about the balancing act between understanding -- with empathy and compassion -- the difficulty and stress of police work, while at the same time not using that understanding as an excuse for abandoning accountability:

Law enforcement is a very tough job. Imagine yourself in the position of a cop, knowing that at any moment you could lose your life or limb or job because of one incorrect assessment, one second extra in making a decision. Understandably, cops get pretty fucked up after working a job like that day after day for years. The pressure on one's personal life, one's family life, one's relationships, has to be unreal. But that does not excuse the actions of those officers involved in either case. Ultimately, what it points to is an inability by these men and women with guns and badges to understand that people who are not white or male or do not have guns and badges are still people and should be treated humanely. We do not have to follow the precepts of the madman in charge who tells us that torture is OK, and humans have no innate rights. There is a better way. And most of all, law enforcement officers need to learn not to exercise inappropriate levels of force against others just because they can.

Well said. In fact, this being Blogroll Amnesty Day, and Political Cat being a smaller blog, and one I did not know about before finding the link on Memeorandum, I am going to add her to my blogroll.

Clinton Campaign Brings Push-Polling to California

2008-02-03T18:17:00.000-05:00

If you knew that Hillary Clinton was pushing people to vote for her under the guise of conducting legitimate telephone polling, would you be more or less likely to vote for her?

Ed Coghlan was just starting to prepare his dinner in the northern San Fernando Valley the other night when the phone rang. The caller was very friendly. He identified himself as a pollster who wanted to ask registered independents like Coghlan a few questions about the presidential race and all the candidates for Super Tuesday's California primary.

Ed, who's a former news director for a local TV station, was curious. He said, "Sure, go ahead."

But a few minutes into the conversation Ed says he noticed a strange pattern developing to the questions. First of all, the "pollster" was only asking about four candidates, three Democrats -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards, who was still in the race at the time -- and one Republican -- John McCain.

Also, every question about Clinton was curiously positive, Coghlan recalls. The caller said things like, if you knew that Sen. Clinton believed the country had a serious home mortgage problem and had made proposals to....freeze mortgage rates and save families from foreclosure, would you be more likely or less likely to vote for her?

Ed said, of course, more likely.

Every question about the other candidates was negative. If Ed knew, for instance, that as a state senator Obama had voted "present" 43 times instead of taking a yes or no stand "for what he believed," would Ed be more or less likely to vote for him?

"That's when I caught on," said Coghlan. He realized then that he was being push-polled. That malicious political virus that is designed not to elicit answers but to spread positive information about one candidate and negative information about all others under the guise of an honest poll had arrived in Southern California within days of the important election.

As Joe Gandelman points out, Clinton seems to be building a reputation for such underhanded tactics:

First, came the controversies about the innuendos about Senator Barack Obama, the apologies and the occasional resignation (after the info was thrust into the news cycle). Next came The Bill Clinton offensive and display of the race card. And now comes this L.A. Times’ blog report about push polling — again coming from supporters of Senator Hillary Clinton[.]
[...]
And the Clinton campaign? Did they immediately deny it and/or denounce it and say they not only had no part in it but they completely repudiate such tactics?
Phil Singer, the spokesman for the Clinton campaign. was contacted by e-mail last night. He answered that he was there. He was asked if the Clinton campaign was behind the push-poll, knew who was behind it or had any other information on it. That was at 5:27 p.m. Pacific time Saturday. As of this item’s posting time, exactly eight hours later, no reply had been received.

Silence is sometimes eloquent — particularly if it seems to be part of a distinct pattern.

We have been through eight years of lies, prevarications, corruption, and anti-democratic tactics. Hillary Clinton knows that she is seen by many voters as the establishment, business-as-usual candidate. If, knowing that, she still runs her campaign this way, what's she going to do if she becomes president?

It's Blogroll Amnesty Day!

2008-02-02T18:43:00.000-05:00

What is Blogroll Amnesty Day, you ask? It's an opportunity to blog about the value that smaller, non-A list blogs bring to the blogosphere, and to suit our actions to our words by linking to, and blogrolling, underrecognized blogs -- which for the purposes of B.A.D., are defined as blogs that get less traffic than our own blogs. So help yourself to a brioche and read up.

One of the great things about other bloggers' blogrolls is that you discover wonderful, intelligent, engaging, laugh-out-loud blogs you would most likely never have discovered on your own. Some of the blogs below I've known about for a while but just hadn't gotten around to blogrolling yet. Some I came across while searching on Truth Laid Bear or Technorati, and didn't know about before now. And still others I found by perusing bloggers' blogrolls.

Read. Link. Blogroll. It's the B.A.D. thing to do.

The Crone Speaks: CEPetro in a new incarnation, still much, much more than an average woman.

The Scientific Activist: "The truth isn't always black or white, but an informed public is an empowered one, so I won't shy away from the complex issues. Most importantly, though, The Scientific Activist takes on the people and obstacles standing in the way of the progress and proper application of science. Enemies of science, beware!" But for those who appreciate excellent writing and informed, intelligent commentary, enjoy!

Grammar.Police: Art, culture, grammar, and liberal politics all in one place.

Watching the Watchers: Did you know that John McCain has no objection to the U.S. occupying Iraq for the next century? You'll find out stuff like that here.

Brendan Calling: If you're a right-wing idiot, don't pick up the phone.

The Apostate: The apostate is a Pakistani woman raised Muslim in Saudi Arabia, now an atheist by belief and a paralegal by trade, living in California.

The Bilerico Project: group blogging on lgbtq issues, and more.

Bitch Ph.D.: What draws me to a blog is some mysterious combination of subject matter, attitude, writing style, and design. This one has all of the above. It's really good.

Bloggasm: Simon Owens' media blog, "with an emphasis on online media and journalism."

Blue Wren: Wren is a writer, "liv[ing] in a small mountain town with Mr. Wren, a psycho dog and a kingly cat." Or is that a kinky cat? She has gorgeous photographs of cats and her outdoor surroundings.

Mock, Paper, Scissors: This is really three separate blogs, interweaving satirical art with standard blog posting. The concept and the implementation of it blows me away. I've never seen anything quite like this blog before.

There are hundreds -- thousands -- more blogs equally as good as these 11, just waiting to be discovered and appreciated. The vast majority of blogs are small blogs. Just imagine how much more interesting and varied the blogosphere might become if we all link and blogroll five or six on a regular basis.

Just sayin'.

Every Hero Needs A Villain

2008-02-02T00:56:00.000-05:00

At least 91 people were killed today in two separate suicide bombings in Baghdad:

Two women described as mentally disabled and strapped with remote-control explosives — and possibly used as unwitting suicide bombers — brought carnage Friday to two pet bazaars, killing at least 91 people in the deadliest day since Washington flooded the capital with extra troops last spring.

Brig. Gen. Qassim al-Moussawi, Iraq's chief military spokesman in Baghdad, said the women had Down syndrome and may not have known they were on suicide missions, but gave no further details on how authorities pieced together the evidence. He also said the bombs were detonated by remote control.

The coordinated blasts — coming 20 minutes apart in different parts of the city — appeared to reinforce U.S. claims al-Qaida in Iraq may be increasingly desperate and running short of able-bodied men willing or available for such missions.

But they also served as a reminder that Iraqi insurgents are constantly shifting their strategies in attempts to unravel recent security gains around the country. Women have been used in ever greater frequency in suicide attacks because they often encounter less scrutiny by security officials.

The same folks who told us the surge worked because violence was down are now swearing up and down that the surge worked because violence is up again. In particular, they point to the fact that the suicide bombers were women with Down's Syndrome as proof that Gen. Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy is a success:

These attacks today are not the first time al Qaeda in Iraq has stooped to using female suicide bombers. They have been used several times, including twice earlier this month in Diyala.
This tells us several things.

First, it tells us that al Qaeda in Iraq recognizes that attempts to use male suicide bombers and vehicle-borne improvised explosive devices (VBIEDs), their preferred method of suicide attacks for those seeking martyrdom, are no longer effective. These attacks fail because the combination of coalition military forces, Iraqi security forces, and neighborhood militias, known as "concerned local citizens" (CLCs) creating a security system that increasingly works, and makes it very unlikely that these preferred attacks will succeed. There is also some speculation that the influx of would-be foreign suicide bombers into Iraq is drying up.

Today's attacks also tell us that al Qaeda in Iraq is getting very desperate in seeking the high-casualty attacks that they so value. They were forced to scrape the bottom of the proverbial barrel, and use not only women (which they'd prefer to subjugate), but mentally disabled women at that, suggesting that finding willing volunteers is becoming ever more difficult.

These attacks today serve to show that al Qaeda in Iraq is not quite finished, but then, that is something we already knew. What is does show us is just how desperate they are to retain relevance in a war that is going very badly for them.

Far from today's attacks being a sign of the "surge" in Iraq failing, the extraordinary lengths al Qaeda was forced to take to carry out these attacks show that the "surge" and the COIN doctrine implemented by General Petraeus are working precisely as we'd hoped.

Is Bob Owen trying to tell us that he and his fellow war and more war supporters were hoping for the kind of attack that happened today?

Bryan at Hot Air is hoping that his "liberal readers" will now see that it was all those jihadis blowing up young women with Down's Syndrome in Iraq before 2003 that forced Pres. Bush to invade, and and that they will abandon their delusion that there were no suicide bombings at all until Saddam Hussein had been overthrown and the U.S. military occupation put in place:

I also bring all of this up in the hope that liberal readers might finally extract their craniums from their backsides and realize that whatever you think of Bush, he’s not the problem. He didn’t start the war and he’s not the cause of the jihad. Animals of the type who would blow up innocent mentally disabled women to kill scores of other innocent people cannot be reasoned with. There’s nothing to talk over with people like that. They live in a state of violent depravity that puts them beyond reason barring some massive change in their own minds. We infidels aren’t going to make that chance [he means "change"] by playing nice. We have to defeat them.

Libby Spencer tries to inject some rationality into the discussion:

... For the record, assuming it's true, I think it's just horrible that whoever was behind this latest disaster used Down's women to perpetrate the bombings but I don't see it as a sign of desperation. I see it as a sign of adaptation and a brilliant one at that. Perhaps Mr. Owens can educate me on how our troops are supposed to counter this new evil tactic? That would be helpful.

and gets this response, in comments:

A "brilliant sign of adaptation". You seem very eager to give cowardly fascist murderers who used helpless pawns praise. Why don't you just slap yourself in the head a few times for writing something that stupid.

The "conversation" continues in that vein. Apparently what we need to do is scream insults at the AQ terrorists and call them names. That's much more fun than facing the real problem (Libby, in comments):

... We've got a brass heavy, stationary military force fighting roving bands of nimble guerrillas. By the time we adapt to their tactics, they're already moving on to something new.

Election News

2008-02-01T19:29:00.000-05:00

MoveOn today endorsed Obama, after the organization's membership overwhelmingly chose him over Clinton:

In a resounding vote today, MoveOn.org Political Action's members nationwide voted to endorse Senator Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination for President. The group, with 3.2 million members nationwide and over 1.7 million members in Super Tuesday states, will immediately begin to mobilize on behalf of Senator Obama. The vote favored Senator Obama to Senator Clinton by 70.4% to 29.6%.

Senator Obama accepted the endorsement stating:

"In just a few years, the members of MoveOn have once again demonstrated that real change comes not from the top-down, but from the bottom-up. From their principled opposition to the Iraq war - a war I also opposed from the start - to their strong support for a number of progressive causes, MoveOn shows what Americans can achieve when we come together in a grassroots movement for change. I thank them for their support and look forward to working with their members in the weeks and months ahead."

The Nation quotes Eli Pariser, MoveOn's executive director:

"We've learned that the key to achieving change in Washington without compromising core values is having a galvanized electorate to back you up ... and Barack Obama has our members 'fired up and ready to go' on that front."

It makes sense that he would. Obama began his career as a community organizer.

Howie Klein was part of the 70.4%. I think he makes the essential point about Clinton with this comment: "As good a candidate [as] Hillary is, she still is very much a part of the Clinton Establishment which directly gave us the Bush Regime." Exactly.

Kyle Moore has mixed feelings about the MoveOn endorsement:

Like so many spoils up for grabs in the course of an election, this is a mixed bag. Against Obama is the fact that MoveOn doesn’t have the best image in the political world and especially during a general election will definitely be used against him to paint him as a “liberal”.

Yes, and there's something else to be said about that, too: Obama IS a liberal. That's not the kiss of death -- Michael Goldfarb certainty that it is, notwithstanding.

In fact, Steve Benen has noticed something interesting:

I’ve been thinking about some of the recent endorsements Obama has picked up.

From the more conservative side of the party:

* Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)
* Former South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian

From the more centrist side of the party:

* Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.)
* Gov. Tim Kaine (D-Va.)
* Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D-Kan.)

And from the more liberal side of the party:

* Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.)
* Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.)
* Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.)
* MoveOn.org

Put it this way: do MoveOn.org members and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska agree on much?

Ultimately, this may or may not amount to much. As I’ve said before, there’s little evidence that endorsements actually translate to votes. For that matter, Hillary Clinton has plenty of high-profile supporters of her own. Indeed, Maxine Waters’ backing helps show at least some support for Clinton from the liberal wing of the party.

But I heard a pitch from an Obama supporter a while back that stuck with me: He unites the left and divides the right, while Clinton divides the left and unites the right.

In light of the MoveOn endorsement, we can probably expect to hear this line quite a bit more. After all, I never quite expected to see a candidate successfully outflank Clinton from the left and the right.

There's A List Somewhere....

2008-01-31T20:28:00.000-05:00

I started laughing as soon as I saw the headline on Memeorandum -- even before I saw Steve Benen's first sentence:

ANOTHER AL QAEDA NO. 3.... Stop me if you've heard this one: al Qaeda's #3 man has been killed.

I Do Not Understand People

2008-01-31T09:26:00.000-05:00

I found this at the BooMan Tribune and certainly must agree that it is a dichotomy, especially a nation most of whose citizens profess to believe in this.

Once upon a time a wise man told us "Love your neighbor as you love yourself." Supposedly we are a nation which was founded in part on the moral and ethical teachings of this man, a nation many of whose citizens worship him as the Son of God. Yet we ignore his teachings. We love our pets. We feel sadness, even grief, and are moved to action at the sight of abused animals. We feel their pain. Why are so many Americans, even Christian Americans, so unable to transfer those same empathic impulses to their fellow human beings?

In addition to the ASPCA advert we have witnessed the very public humiliation and jailing of the popular athlete, Michael Vicks, lately of the Atlanta football team. We are sympathetic to four-legged animals when they suffer and it not their fault. Why can't we have the same feelings for our fellow humans when it is not their fault?

We have about fifty million (that's a five, followed by seven zeros as in 50,000,000) of our fellow citizens without health insurance. Abominable.

We need a single payer health care system, similar to Medicare, for the whole country. Period. End of comment.

Honesty, Such A Lonely Word

2008-01-29T21:02:00.000-05:00

Florida Republicans are up to their usual electoral shenanigans again.

Paul Kiel at TPMmuckraker passes along a reader's experience trying to cast a provisional ballot:

I voted in Lee County, Florida this morning - being in Southwest Florida, its a Republican stronghold in the state. The poll worker who opened the door for me advised "Just show your driver's license to the desk and you can vote." Only problem is that this is patently untrue, Florida providing for casting of provisional ballots and all. When I told the nice lady at the registration desk that I had lost my wallet and was going to cast a provisional ballot, she gave me the perplexed look of the uninformed. Fortunately, there was a gentleman at the "special services" desk who knew what to do and he got me on my way to voting. Then he told me that I had to "contact the supervisor of elections and provide proof of my right to vote or they will not count my ballot." Sigh. This also is not true in Florida - no proof is required if the only basis for casting the provisional was the lack of proper identification. The supervisor is suppose to run the driver's license number provided (which I gave them) against the state database and when they match the vote is counted.

I am fortunate enough to be both interested in the political process and fairly well educated. I can, however, imagine the very real possibility that such statements will lead a less informed voter to turn away thinking that her or she is not able to vote. There is, of course, nothing my experience to suggest anything but ignorance was the root cause of the misinformed statements of these poll workers. But when the general comes around next fall and we have these well-meaning yahoos speaking out of their asses like this it can become a real problem. Whether by design or by indifference, the result will be the same.

Kathleen Sibelius, the governor of Kansas, has endorsed Barack Obama.

Andrew Sullivan watched the SOTU against his better judgment:

I tried not to watch it and failed. It felt phoned in. The contrast between the banal cheeriness of the president's demeanor and the grave threats he faces was unsettling. It's good for a president to have some emotional resilience in that job. But Bush seems almost pathologically detached from any real understanding of the effects of what he says and does. If you're him, that's probably a good thing. If you're anybody else, it's horrifying.

King George the 43rd signed the FY 2008 defense authorization bill today, and then immediately declared four provisions in that new law to be nonbinding:

Bush’s signature yesterday came with a little-noticed signing statement, claiming that provisions in the law “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” CQ reports on the provisions Bush plans to disregard:
President Bush yesterday signed the 2008 National Defense Authorization Act after initially rejecting Congress’s first version because it would have allegedly opened the Iraqi government to “expensive lawsuits.”
Even though he forced Congress to change its original bill, Bush’s signature yesterday came with a little-noticed signing statement, claiming that provisions in the law “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” CQ reports on the provisions Bush plans to disregard:

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.

In his “Memorandum of Justification” for the waiver, Bush cited his Nov. 26 “Declaration of Principles for a Long-Term Relationship of Cooperation and Friendship” between Iraq and the United States. This agreement has been aggressively opposed by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress as not only unprecedented, but also potentially unconstitutional because it was enacted without the agreement of the legislation branch.

Last but not least, here is a heartwarming story about supporting the troops.

Keep Huntin'

2008-01-29T10:58:00.000-05:00

I cannot add anything to this story at TPM.

The Blogosphere, Left and Right, Passes On a Misleading Quote With Zero Attempt To Check Out the Context

2008-01-28T18:01:00.000-05:00

Obama has gotten two more sterling silver endorsements: Teddy Kennedy and Toni Morrison. It's really annoying me that all the news articles and blog posts about the latter endorsement are repeating Morrison's comment in 1998 that Bill Clinton was "our first black president." What annoys me about it -- and actually, it's got me steamed, not just annoyed -- is that one news blog (ABC's Political Radar) dredges up the quote, and then, like good little parrots, everyone -- conservatives and liberals alike -- repeats it word for word: the same two sentences from an essay Morrison wrote for the New Yorker 10 years ago: "Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime."

The suggestion being made, of course, is that this somehow compromises Obama's chances in the presidential race because a famous black writer's approving, praiseful comments about Clinton being a "black" president will stir up white racism and raise the dread specter of racial identity politics.

Meanwhile, no one has gone back to take a look at the actual complete essay of which these two sentences are a part. Had anyone bothered to do this, it would have been clear that Morrison's comment did not refer to Clinton's policies, or to the kind of president he was.

Here is the entire paragraph in which those two sentences appear:

African-American men seemed to understand it right away. Years ago, in the middle of the Whitewater investigation, one heard the first murmurs: white skin notwithstanding, this is our first black President. Blacker than any actual black person who could ever be elected in our children's lifetime. After all, Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas. And when virtually all the African-American Clinton appointees began, one by one, to disappear, when the President's body, his privacy, his unpoliced sexuality became the focus of the persecution, when he was metaphorically seized and bodysearched, who could gainsay these black men who knew whereof they spoke? The message was clear "No matter how smart you are, how hard you work, how much coin you earn for us, we will put you in your place or put you out of the place you have somehow, albeit with our permission, achieved. You will be fired from your job, sent away in disgrace, and--who knows?--maybe sentenced and jailed to boot. In short, unless you do as we say (i.e., assimilate at once), your expletives belong to us."

"It" refers to the Monica Lewinsky scandal: Morrison is talking about the way Clinton was treated, by the media and the political establishment -- like a black man. And it made sense to many African-Americans that he would be treated as if he were black, because he had almost all the markers of a black person in this society: "... single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas." Black people identified with the humiliating treatment Clinton received -- specifically in the way his sexual life became public property -- because they identified with him -- with his background, with his personal history, with the basic details of who he was and the circumstances in which he was raised.

Barack Obama's biography is, in fact, sharply different from Clinton's in almost every way. The only significant commonality is that they were both raised by single mothers. Other than that, Obama was born in Hawaii and grew up there and in Indonesia. He never lived in the South. His mother was from Kansas; his father was African, from Kenya. His upbringing was middle-class; he did not grow up in poverty. He's not a Good Ol' Boy and his identity was not forged among Good Ol' Boys. There's no judgment attached to that for either Clinton or Obama -- it just means that they have next to nothing in common, biographically speaking, and Toni Morrison's having called Clinton "our first black president" has no implications whatsoever for Obama, should he be nominated and win the election, being in fact the first black president.

Obama, Kennedy, and Gorbachev

2008-01-27T15:17:00.000-05:00

Caroline Kennedy has endorsed Barack Obama for president, in an eloquent, movingly written op-ed in today's New York Times, "A President Like My Father":

Over the years, I’ve been deeply moved by the people who’ve told me they wished they could feel inspired and hopeful about America the way people did when my father was president. This sense is even more profound today. That is why I am supporting a presidential candidate in the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama.

My reasons are patriotic, political and personal, and the three are intertwined. All my life, people have told me that my father changed their lives, that they got involved in public service or politics because he asked them to. And the generation he inspired has passed that spirit on to its children. I meet young people who were born long after John F. Kennedy was president, yet who ask me how to live out his ideals.

Sometimes it takes a while to recognize that someone has a special ability to get us to believe in ourselves, to tie that belief to our highest ideals and imagine that together we can do great things. In those rare moments, when such a person comes along, we need to put aside our plans and reach for what we know is possible.

We have that kind of opportunity with Senator Obama. It isn’t that the other candidates are not experienced or knowledgeable. But this year, that may not be enough. We need a change in the leadership of this country — just as we did in 1960.

I have sensed that same rare quality in Obama, although I have my doubts about whether it can withstand the cesspool of self-interest, corruption, and greed that has informed our political leadership for the last eight years. Even though the administration itself will be changing, I fear that much of the harm Pres. Bush has done to the infrastructure of democracy in this country has been institutionalized.

That said, the fact that Caroline Kennedy sees Obama as someone who can inspire Americans in the way that her father did makes me think that maybe he is. After all, who is more qualified to recognize Jack Kennedy's spirit in someone else than his daughter?

Reading Libby's post on CK's endorsement, I think she is struggling with the same mixed feelings:

Back when Acidman was alive I got into a bit of blog fight with some of his fans. He asked which president we would want to date. Actually, I think he put in more physical terms but the theme was who did we find attractive as a man. Rob, rest his soul, was as politically opposite to me as is humanly possible and so were most of his 'wimmen' as he called them. The women were flooding the comment section with heavy sighs over Bush and when I said JFK, they piled on with a vengence.

I emerged from the sea of claws unscathed by reminding them we were talking about physical attraction, not politics, and JFK is the only president I found attractive in that way. Hell, I was 12 years old when he died and I had a huge crush on him. But truthfully, he's the only president that inspired me as a leader as well. History tells us he was a flawed man, but he was so charismatic, when he told us to ask what we could do for our country, we wanted to answer his call and we did.

Today Caroline Kennedy's op-ed endorsing Obama is generating a lot of buzz. I don't think endorsements usually mean all that much, but this one, from our former little princess of Camelot, I think is huge. Caroline clearly inherited her father's eloquence and these sort of comparisons trump all the bought ads in the world.
[...]
For myself, I'm still finding it difficult to trust Obama, but I feel that way about all the candidates and since we're going to get stuck with one of them, his ability to inspire the electorate is his best selling point. POTUS is a unique position and no one can really predict how any man or woman will stand up to its rigorous job demands. Perhaps the best we can hope for, is to elect someone who can inspire a disengaged electorate to get involved. It certainly seems better to me than the cynical detachment we have now.

The victory speech Obama gave last night after his huge win in South Carolina certainly sounded Kennedyesque.

I did not travel around this state over the last year and see a white South Carolina or a black South Carolina. I saw South Carolina.

I saw crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children alike. I saw shuttered mills and homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from all walks of life and men and women of every color and creed who serve together and fight together and bleed together under the same proud flag.

I saw what America is and I believe in what this country can be. That is the country I see. That is the country you see. But now it is up to us to help the entire nation embrace this vision.

Because in the end, we're not just against the ingrained and destructive habits of Washington, we're also struggling with our own doubts, our own fears, our own cynicism.

The change we seek has always required great struggle and great sacrifice. And so this is a battle in our own hearts and minds about what kind of country we want and how hard we're willing to work for it.

So let me remind you tonight that change will not be easy. Change will take time. There will be setbacks and false starts and sometimes we'll make mistakes.

But as hard as it may seem, we cannot lose hope, because there are people all across this great nation who are counting on us, who can't afford another four years without health care, that can't afford another four years without good schools, that can't afford another four years without decent wages because our leaders couldn't come together and get it done.

Theirs are the stories and voices we carry on from South Carolina. The mother who can't get Medicaid to cover all the needs of her sick child. She needs us to pass a health care plan that cuts costs and makes health care available and affordable for every single American. That's what she's looking for.

The teacher who works another shift at Dunkin' Donuts after school just to make ends meet, she needs us to reform our education system so that she gets better pay and more support and her students get the resources that they need to achieve their dreams.

The Maytag worker who's now competing with his own teenager for a $7 an hour job at the local Wal-Mart, because the factory he gave his life to shut its doors, he needs us to stop giving tax breaks to companies that ship our jobs overseas and start putting them in the pockets of working Americans who deserve it and put them in the pockets of struggling homeowners who are having a tough time and looking after seniors who should retire with dignity and respect.

That woman who told me that she hasn't been able to breath since the day her nephew left for Iraq or the soldier who doesn't know his child because he's on his third or fourth or even fifth tour of duty, they need us to come together and put an end to a war that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged.

So understand this, South Carolina. The choice in this election is not between regions or religions or genders. It's not about rich vs. poor, young vs. old. And it is not about black vs. white.

This election is about the past vs. the future. It's about whether we settle for the same divisions and distractions and drama that passes for politics today or whether we reach for a politics of common sense and innovation, a politics of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity.

There are those who will continue to tell us that we can't do this, that we can't have what we're looking for, that we can't have what we want, that we're peddling false hopes. But here is what I know. I know that when people say we can't overcome all the big money and influence in Washington, I think of that elderly woman who sent me a contribution the other day, an envelope that had a money order for $3.01 along with a verse of scripture tucked inside the envelope. So don't tell us change isn't possible. That woman knows change is possible.

When I hear the cynical talk that blacks and whites and Latinos can't join together and work together, I'm reminded of the Latino brothers and sisters I organized with and stood with and fought with side by side for jobs and justice on the streets of Chicago. So don't tell us change can't happen.

When I hear that we'll never overcome the racial divide in our politics, I think about that Republican woman who used to work for Strom Thurmond, who is now devoted to educating inner city-children and who went out into the streets of South Carolina and knocked on doors for this campaign. Don't tell me we can't change.

Yes, we can. Yes, we can change. Yes, we can.

But if Obama gets the nomination and then is elected president, we don't need him to be Kennedy, says Russ Wellen at Scholars and Rogues. We need him to be Gorbachev:

The first to make the “linkage [between Kennedy and Obama] explicit and [give] it official sanction,” according to the Telegraph of London was, Kennedy’s chief speechwriter and long-time associate, Theodore Sorensen.

“Mr Kennedy reached the hearts of voters,” said Sorensen. “And so does Obama.”

He gave short shrift to the “experience” question that dogs Obama. “Judgment is the single most important criterion for selecting a president. . .” which, Sorensen continued, Obama “demonstrated in his position against the Iraq war even before it started.”

It’s one thing when a non-politician who also happens to be Caroline Kennedy, weighs in with a New York Times oped this Sunday bearing the none-too-subtle title, “A President Like My Father.”
“I have never had a president who inspired me the way people tell me that my father inspired them,” she writes. “I believe I have found the man who could be that president.”

But it’s another when experienced Washington hands like not only Sorensen but Gregory Craig, one of Bill Clinton’s impeachment lawyers, who might logically be expected to support Hillary, are swept away by Obama.

“The election of Obama will not only change the players in Washington,” Sorensen said. “It’ll change the game itself.”

Hold on there, old-timer. That’s light years beyond what the election of Kennedy, who was more of a walking, talking zeitgeist than a man with a plan, accomplished. In fact, what Sorensen is conjuring up sounds more like a new Mikhail Gorbachev.

If you're thinking, WTF? read the whole thing. Wellen's thesis is interesting, and it makes sense.

Thoughts of a Liberal

2008-01-27T09:39:00.000-05:00

It seems that military people, especially those of us that made a career of the military, are more conservative politically than the average person in the country. Once upon a time, long, long ago I was typical of that way of thinking. But for military people to complain about excessive regulation in the private sector is certainly confusing. There is no organization that has more rules and regulations than the military.

But the more I observed, the more I saw businesses with large advertising budgets sell shoddy and defective products and try and get away with it by acting all innocent. “What ? Us? We didn’t know.” One product that took a long time to get off the market was the Dalkon Shield.

From Wikipedia, “In 1970 the A.H. Robins Company acquired the Dalkon Shield from the Dalkon Corporation, founded by Hugh Davis, M.D. The Dalkon Corporation had only four shareholders: the inventors, Hugh J. Davis, M.D. and Irwin Lerner, their attorney, Robert Cohn, and a practitioner in Defiance, Ohio, Thad J. Earl, M.D. In 1971, Dalkon Shields went to the market, beginning in the United States and Puerto Rico, spearheaded by a large marketing campaign. At its peak, about 2.8 million women used the Dalkon Shield in the U.S. The aggressive marketing and defense of the Dalkon Shield intrauterine device-- despite the manufacturer's knowledge of safety problems --resulted in a huge scandal.”

A lot of women users of the Dalkon Shield died from using it. A lot more women suffered septic spontaneous abortions. Some children were born deformed. And the manufacturer knew of the problem, and it was easily corrected, before they sold the product.

I’m not talking about toys from China with lead in the paint or asbestos in floor tiles. What pisses me off is U.S. companies making products that they know are either defective or do not do what they are advertised to do. I don’t like excessive regulation any more than you but I also do not like big industry groups lobbying Congress with big bucks and campaign donations. Who do you think a congress critter is going to listen to, my individual letter or a lobbyist with campaign contributions.

We have the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), brought about approximately 100 years ago due to egregious conditions in the meat packing industry.

Again, from Wikipedia, “Sinclair's account of workers falling into meat processing tanks and being ground, along with animal parts, into "Durham's Pure Leaf Lard", gripped public attention. The morbidity of the working conditions as well as the exploitation of children and women alike that Sinclair exposed, showed the corruption taking place inside the meat packing factories.”

The Great Depression of the 1930s was caused by unbridled greed in the 1920s. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Commission (FDIC) are two of the regulatory agencies that were put in place in order to prevent another depression. The chipping away during the 90s of the regulations those agencies had put in place concerning banking and investments have led directly to the housing bubble and the current recession.

Lacking rules, regulation and enforcement, essentially allowing “the law of the jungle” or survival of the fittest, you end up with a king or a dictator or worse. I would prefer to live with a minimum of rules. But I willingly use seat belts in my car, have liability insurance on all my vehicles. I comply with city and county zoning laws. As a society, we seem to have no complaints.

I think it is a mistake to blame the public, the consumer, the victim for buying a product when the manufacturer knew the product was defective. Be it automobile tires, roll over protection on SUVs or baby cribs, no matter how many slick lawyers they hire, those manufacturers have a moral or ethical obligation to their customers as part of the social fabric that ties us all together.

Who Needs Common Sense When You Have the Ecology Narrative?

2008-01-26T21:49:00.000-05:00

I'm not an economist, but it just makes sense to me that if you're trying to stimulate a sluggish economy, you would want to put money in the hands of those most likely to spend it. But as Paul Krugman points out, once again ideology trumps common sense:

Aside from business tax breaks — which are an unhappy story for another column — the plan gives each worker making less than $75,000 a $300 check, plus additional amounts to people who make enough to pay substantial sums in income tax. This ensures that the bulk of the money would go to people who are doing O.K. financially — which misses the whole point.

The goal of a stimulus plan should be to support overall spending, so as to avert or limit the depth of a recession. If the money the government lays out doesn’t get spent — if it just gets added to people’s bank accounts or used to pay off debts — the plan will have failed.

And sending checks to people in good financial shape does little or nothing to increase overall spending. People who have good incomes, good credit and secure employment make spending decisions based on their long-term earning power rather than the size of their latest paycheck. Give such people a few hundred extra dollars, and they’ll just put it in the bank.

In fact, that appears to be what mainly happened to the tax rebates affluent Americans received during the last recession in 2001.

On the other hand, money delivered to people who aren’t in good financial shape — who are short on cash and living check to check — does double duty: it alleviates hardship and also pumps up consumer spending.
[...]
Why would the administration want to do this? It has nothing to do with economic efficacy: no economic theory or evidence I know of says that upper-middle-class families are more likely to spend rebate checks than the poor and unemployed. Instead, what seems to be happening is that the Bush administration refuses to sign on to anything that it can’t call a “tax cut.”

Behind that refusal, in turn, lies the administration’s commitment to slashing tax rates on the affluent while blocking aid for families in trouble — a commitment that requires maintaining the pretense that government spending is always bad. And the result is a plan that not only fails to deliver help where it’s most needed, but is likely to fail as an economic measure.

The words of Franklin Delano Roosevelt come to mind: “We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals; we know now that it is bad economics.”

If you are a compassionate conservative, like David Brooks, however, the subprime mortgage crisis and looming recession are part of the "ecology narrative":

There is roughly a 100 percent chance that we’re going to spend much of this year talking about the subprime mortgage crisis, the financial markets and the worsening economy. The only question is which narrative is going to prevail, the Greed Narrative or the Ecology Narrative.

The Greed Narrative goes something like this: The financial markets are dominated by absurdly overpaid zillionaires. They invent complex financial instruments, like globally securitized subprime mortgages that few really understand. They dump these things onto the unsuspecting, sending destabilizing waves of money sloshing around the globe. Economies melt down. Regular people lose jobs and savings. Meanwhile, the financial insiders still get their obscene bonuses, rain or shine.

The morality of the Greed Narrative is straightforward. A small number of predators destabilize the economy and reap big bonuses. The financial system is fundamentally broken. Government should step in and control the malefactors of great wealth.

The Ecology Narrative is different. It starts with the premise that investors and borrowers cooperate and compete in a complex ecosystem. Everyone seeks wealth while minimizing risk. As Jim Manzi, a software entrepreneur who specializes in applied artificial intelligence, has noted, the chief tension in this ecosystem is between innovation and uncertainty. We could live in a safer world, but we’d have to forswear creativity.

The United States has generally opted for financial innovation. This has worked out pretty well. The U.S. has enjoyed 25 years of strong economic growth, in part because capital has been efficiently allocated to companies that can use it well.

Financial instruments like adjustable-rate and subprime mortgages have allowed millions of people to get homes they could not otherwise purchase, and research shows that most of these tools have been used intelligently.

Hedge funds have proliferated to help investors manage risk. These things exist precisely because investors want to smooth out volatility. In the old days, a blow to, say, the Texas economy could have dried up lending in Texas, but now funds flow globally, and money from one part of the world can shore up weakness in another.

Translation: Lenders will be protected from the adverse consequences of the risks they took in handing out mortgages to unqualified buyers who are losing their homes because they took a risk and now have to take personal responsibility for the adverse consequences.

Don't fret, dear heart. This is the way it has to be, because we cannot do anything that might put a crimp in "financial innovation":

When a new instrument enters the market, it takes a while before people understand and institutionalize it. Whether the product is high-yield bonds or mortgage-backed securities, there’s a tendency to get carried away.

In the first stage of this adolescence, investors look around and see everybody else making money off some new instrument. As Nicholas Bloom of Stanford notes: “They assume they are fine because they see everyone else buying it.” Individual bankers have a special incentive to get in on the ride because their yearly bonus is determined by how they do in the short term.

Then there’s a moment when people realize how stupid they have been. They’ve bought a pile of subprime mortgages without really knowing what they’ve purchased. The ratings agencies suddenly don’t look so reliable. The cycle of overconfidence becomes a cycle of underconfidence because nobody knows who is holding worthless paper.

Then, finally, maturity sets in. Those who have lost great gobs of money get fired. People still find the new product useful, but within parameters and with greater safeguards.

The lesson of the Ecology Narrative is that, in most cases, the market corrects itself. Maybe this year banks will change their pay structure so there’s not so much emphasis on short-term results. Maybe companies will change their boards to improve scrutiny over complex new instruments. In short, markets adapt.

In "most" cases. Eventually. Or not. But regardless, we mortals can do nothing to interfere with the process, because it operates on its own, without human intervention or action. It's simply part of the divinely ordained order of the universe.

Mister Leonard Pierce provides a beautiful illustration of "the American economy in its natural state."

The Smug and Self-Important, You Will Have Always With You

2008-01-26T19:39:00.000-05:00

That Aravosis post I linked to the other day, complaining that poor people are getting a rebate check and he's not? It's not there anymore. Pity. Just makes him look worse.

But never mind. Now there's another Scrooge Award winner -- Megan McArdle, who tells us that it's a good thing food stamps were cut out of Pres. Bush's "economic stimulus" package, because "The poor don't need more food":

1) The poor don't need more food. Obesity is a problem for the poor in America; except for people who are too screwed up to get food stamps (because they don't have an address), food insufficiency is not.

2) Food stamps only imperfectly translate into increased cash income, meaning that the poor will spend . . . more money on food.

3) If the increase in food stamps takes the form of expanded eligibility, rather than larger grants, the administrative issues and public outreach will delay your stimulus until well after it is no longer needed.

4) The limits on the type of goods available to food stamp consumers, and the growing season, mean that some (it's hard to say how much) of the food stamp spending will simply draw down perishable stocks rather than generating new economic activity. Eventually this will probably generate more economic activity, but probably well after your stimulus is needed.

5) The economy doesn't need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.

The next day, after much criticism from readers, McArdle followed up with this:

The mental model most Americans use for dealing with poverty is Dickens-with-a-hotplate. Thus the raging anger triggered by the statement--which has rich supporting evidence from places like the Census Bureau and the USDA--that however many and varied the needs of the poor may be, food is not among them. If you mentally equate poverty with hunger, then denying the hunger means denying the poverty.

But the poor don't need to be hungry to be poor. There is little to no systematic evidence that poverty-linked undernutrition--malnutrition caused by too little food intake--is an actual problem in America. "Food insecurity" numbers batted around by the FDA do not mean that people actually went hungry; they mean that people worried about going hungry, or changed their diet--usually by altering the composition of the diet, not by forgoing food--to avoid going hungry. But of actual sustained hunger, there is no evidence.

There is, on the other hand, a lot of evidence of obesity among the poor; their obesity rate is estimated at 36%, and the obesity rate among poor children seems to be about twice the rate among non-poor children. The poor people are eating more calories than they need. Yet we propose to stimulate the economy by giving the poor money that can only be spent on more food.

Becks at Unfogged, Tom at Just One Minute, and TBogg think McArdle needs to take the Food Stamp Challenge.

Hilzoy does McArdle's research for her:

"How Many People Lived in Food-Insecure Households?
In 2006, 35.5 million people lived in food-insecure households, including 12.6 million children.
Of these individuals, 7.7 million adults and 3.4 million children lived in households with very low food security.
Children’s food security is affected to some extent in most food-insecure households (see the ERS report, Food Assistance Research Brief—Food Insecurity in Households With Children). However, children are usually protected from substantial reductions in food intake even in households with very low food security. In 2006, 430,000 children (0.6 percent of the Nation’s children) lived in households with very low food security among children."

-- USDA: Food Security in the United States: Conditions and Trends

Gary Farber, in Hilzoy's comments section, writes that, in fairness, McArdle does make some good points:

Megan's point #1 is idiotic.

However, her other points are arguable, and I tend to think it's unfair to not equally note her #5:
5) The economy doesn't need a food sector more distorted by daft government programs than it already is. If you want to give money to the poor, give it to them. Even if they spend it all on drugs, it will hardly be much worse than spending it all on increasing their already astronomical obesity rates.

I don't understand how her post can be addressed and this point ignored; it seems to me to perhaps be a somewhat unfair reading, if she's willing to see a monetary stream instead of EBT cards.

I can agree with that -- although I have to say that the blatant contempt for poor people that drips from McArdle's point #5 might make her critics less willing to acknowledge the soundness of her point underneath the disdainful words.

News Below the Radar

2008-01-26T10:11:00.000-05:00

I cannot find a link to this so will give credit first. On page 7 of 26 Jan, Piqua Daily Call, Piqua, Ohio below the fold is the headline

Alcoa lays off 17 workers in Sidney

Sidney, Ohio is about 35 miles north of Dayton, Ohio

By Darrin Michael. Brown News Service (which a Google search did not find)

The story begins:

Alcoa Home Exteriors laid off 17 employees from its third shift rotation Thursday morning.

Bob Parker, general manager of Alcoa, Sidney Operations, anticipated that additional layoffs would occur with other shifts throughout Thursday’s work day.
. . .
“This will be the third time the company had layoffs this winter,” Parker said.
. . .
Parker says the layoffs are largely due to a decline in the housing industry.
. . .
The company makes vinyl and aluminum products used for the remodeling and construction of homes.

This type of action is happening everywhere. Small and uncoordinated but in total having a devastating effect on the economy.

And, I ask snarkily, $600 in June is supposed to do ‘what’ for these people? ? ?

Rules & Changed Rules

2008-01-26T08:53:00.000-05:00

First, you don't change the rules once the contest has begun. See here, here, here and here. Second, if you don't like the rules don't play the game. Leave the game, quit the contest.

I tell ya, the antics (could they be described as childish or just dead serious and underhanded ?) of both Clinton and Obama are driving me towards the only adult still in the Dem camp.

UPDATE: This at TPM.

Rebate Checks

2008-01-25T17:25:00.000-05:00

The I.R.S. is going to issue the rebate checks so says the NY Times. I hadn't thought of the extra strain processing all the outgoing checks when we are in the middle of the tax return season.

And then again, how is the gov't supposed to know who is married and how many kids they have and how much money s/he made in 2007.

Defense Cuts

2008-01-25T09:51:00.000-05:00

I did not know this. Mentally, I had been blaming Bill Clinton. I hereby apologize to Mr. Clinton.

The size of the cuts are stunning and alarming.

The Army took the largest cut, from 770,000 to 572,000-25.8 percent of its strength. The Air Force declined by 22.3 percent, the Navy by 14 percent, and the Marines by 9.7 percent.

I did not realize that there were so many more things to despise VP Cheney for.

Personal Fortune Trumps Personal Responsibility

2008-01-25T08:02:00.000-05:00

Isn't it interesting how having made "poor choices" never seems to lead to bad outcomes for the rich and well-connected?

I'm Not Poor; I Just Don't Have Any Money

2008-01-24T21:44:00.000-05:00

Get a load of this opening from the AP article about the tax rebate deal Congress did today:

With unprecedented speed and cooperation, Congress and the White House forged a deal Thursday to begin rushing tax rebates of $600 to $1,200 to most tax filers by spring, hoping they will spend the money just as quickly and jolt the ailing economy to life.

Rebates would be even higher for families with children.

EVEN higher? A one-time check for $600 is high? When you're unemployed and your benefits ran out months ago, and you're about to lose the roof over your head? Oh, wait. If you're that bad off, you probably don't have to pay taxes at all -- and that means your rebate check is $300, not $600: Even better! The less money you have, the smaller the amount on that check you receive, if you receive one at all. The logic works for me.

It gets even better. In order to get Republicans to agree to that measly $300 check for employed Americans who earn too little to pay taxes, the Democrats had to wave goodbye to extended unemployment benefits and increased food stamps.

This is what our government is willing to do for hurting Americans.

Meanwhile, some people who are unquestionably smart enough to know better are experiencing brain freeze:

According to AP, congressional leaders have reached a deal on those economic stimulus checks. And rather than being geared towards helping the economy, they're apparently geared towards redistributing wealth (that would be our wealth) to the poor. What a surprise. Folks in the middle (i.e, those who are not rich or poor) are screwed by the Democrats (and Republicans) yet again. Let me give you the details that just leaked, and again this may not be the final deal, but it sure sounds like it:
Families with children would receive an additional $300 per child, subject to an overall cap of perhaps $1,200, according to a senior House aide who outlined the deal on condition of anonymity in advance of formal adoption of the whole package. Rebates would go to people earning below a certain income cap, likely individuals earning $75,000 or less and couples with incomes of $150,000 or less.

That means that if you make $75,000 or more a year, no check for you. Forget that fact that you live in NYC or DC or San Francisco, where prices from property to food are outrageous. No, forget that. Some guy living in a mansion in Topeka making $74,999 a year will get his little gift from the US Treasury and you, living in NYC making $75,001 out of a 300 sq ft studio apartment will get nothing. How about my friend who bought an entire house in Baltimore for $275,000 when that would get you a very small studio in DC. I know someone who got an entire house in Ohio for $2000 a month when that would get you a one-bedroom apartment in DC. I have a friend who moved to North Carolina and got offered a bit over $75k a year. He said it was a king's ransom in NC. In DC, well, again, keep checking out those studios. And another friend has a 900 sq ft condo, and paid more for it than another friend's parents paid for their 6000 sq ft house.

That's because far too often the Democrats don't give a damn about anybody who isn't a minority or starving to death (both valid causes to be sure, but are they the ONLY causes out there?). If you're in the middle, you're on your own.

Well, John, I'm not a minority and I'm not starving to death -- but if it weren't for the food pantry, I sure would be very hungry most of the time. There are more difficult and stressful choices than the choices you and your friends must make between living in a 900-square-foot condo in D.C. or a 6,000-square-foot house in the suburbs. There's the choice I'm making, for instance -- between letting my rabbi or a social service agency help me with my rent month after month and feeling like I'm a lower form of life than an earthworm, and being evicted from my apartment and living on the street. You can understand why I might be less than sympathetic to your plaint that your $2,000 studio in D.C. could be a whole entire house if you lived in Ohio.

Cernig dubs Aravosis "John Avaricious":

When the Right moans about latte-sipping liberals, this is the kind of thing they mean.
[...]
I mean, wtf? The poor are getting so much help that they're now richer than middle-class jerks like Avaricious now? I'm here to tell you, from experience, that isn't the case. As for saying that aiding the poor is just as bad as aiding the rich...that's got to be the most stupid bit of false moral equivalence I've ever heard.

His commenters aren't being kind, in the main, with the most apposite being that now would be the wrong time to hold that AmericaBlog fundraiser. As Wolfrum at Shakes' Sis points out, the wingnuts will lap up this greedy rant. James at the Mahatma X Files gets closest to my own view. I am so far from agreeing with Avarosis that he's from a different dimension. If I ever accidentally link to or blogroll this latte-sipping leech from this day on, please bash me over the head until I come to my senses.

I won't go that far -- John's on my blogroll and I'm not going to take him off for one incredibly weird post -- but that said, I won't hide my disappointment in the callousness of someone who is usually sensitive and compassionate in the way he discusses the issues. He would never have made it to my blogroll in the first place if he hadn't been.

Bush's Negative Legacy :-)

2008-01-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

And from RawStory this item. A small group with a modest $8.5 million budget with a big idea.

Americans United for Change plans to undertake a yearlong campaign, spending the bulk of the money on advertising, to keep public attention on what the group says are the failures of the Bush administration, including the war in Iraq, the response to Hurricane Katrina, and the current mortgage crisis.

I find this line

"Framing his legacy helps us in the '08 elections, there is no doubt about that," Woodhouse said. "But our principal mission would be defining the failures of Bush and the ideology he represents."

"Defing failures ? ? " There is not enough ink in the world and not nearly enough trees in the world to make paper to list all of Bush's failures even one time.

Anyway, good for them. I'm glad to see someone do it.

Fairness - NOT

2008-01-23T17:00:00.000-05:00

From today's LA Times comes an easy to understand story. Anyone with any sense of fairness can see what the outcome should be. Those folks that profited from and had any hand in deceiving and/or misleading investors should be forced to pay back their ill-gotten gains.

I'll bet the justices had to work overtime to come up with this cock-a-mainy ruling.

And last year, a U.S. appeals court panel in New Orleans also rejected the Enron-related lawsuit. It ruled that Merrill Lynch and the other investment bankers had not directly deceived those who bought Enron's stock.

Lawyers for the investors appealed to the Supreme Court and urged the justices to say that all those who profit from deception should pay. That appeal was formally rejected in a one-line order this morning.

Actions do have consequences. In this case a second rate doofus of a President appointed Justices to SCOTUS.

JOBS JOBS

2008-01-22T12:40:00.000-05:00

Kathy posted about a solution to the economic problems facing this country. JOBS, JOBS and MORE JOBS. Well, I have some specific suggestions that neither President Bush, the Business Roundtable nor the Chamber of Commerce will endorse and the Democratic Congress will not even consider but will solve ALL of the fiscal woes afflicting our country.

Initiate public works programs similar to those that FDR started during the 1930s in his attempt to pull the U.S. out of the Great Depression. The three United States land management agencies controlling the most land are the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), The U.S. Forest Service (USFS) and the Department of Defense. These agencies have “deferred maintenance” requirements that run into the hundreds of billions of dollars. A public works programs that would hire 5 million people at a minimum of $15 an hour would solve a whole host of problems.

1. Most of these hires would be in relatively rural communities. The infusion of cash into rural communities would be eye-opening.
2. The $15 an hour pay would put a floor under the minimum wage. No more $7/hour cashier jobs at the local movie rental place and no more $7 hour for flipping burgers. I mean, really, minimum wage ? It’s not even minimum starvation wages. I know folks with two minimum wage jobs who still are not making it.

Eliminating all the deferred maintenance would not only pump a lot of money into the economy but it would have the real benefit of bringing all trails, foot bridges and a zillion other items up to snuff and make them safe for the using public.

How do we pay for all this? Well, first, I don’t really care how. Let’s get a program moving, then we can worry about how to pay for it. We could raise taxes on all those earning more than half a million a year. If you earn over $10 million a year, I don’t think a 70% tax rate is excessive.