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Republican woman breaks into mostly male winners circle

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

A rarity: a woman beats the odds, and appears to qualify for more than honorable mention at the Darwin Awards. Not surprisingly, she's a Republican:

A low-level Republican official in Michigan was adjusting a gun in her bra holster last month when she accidentally shot herself to death, local newspapers reported.

Christina Bond, 55, shot herself in the eye in St. Joseph, Mich., on New Year's Day, the Kalamazoo Gazette newspaper reported in January. Although investigators at the time said the death was accidental, it wasn't until Wednesday that the St. Joseph Public Safety Department explained to the Gazette how the event unfolded.

Bond “was having trouble adjusting her bra holster, couldn't get it to fit the way she wanted it to,” St. Joseph Public Safety Director Mark Clapp told the newspaper. “She was looking down at it and accidentally discharged the weapon.”

Given her age, she probably couldn't have done much harm to the gene pool going forward, but you never know.

Filed in American Life, Crazies | | Comments (0)

Rubes waking up?

Wednesday, February 18, 2015

On a number of occasions (too lazy to provide links) I've given thanks to the scores of grifters who divert right wing funds from their intended use (subverting the Republic) into their own undeserving pockets. It’s dirty work, but thank God someone's doing it. Newt, Sarah, Ben and their lesser known direct mail kindred deserve our thanks and our scorn. (Do I contradict myself? Take it up with Walt Whitman)

Sadly, it appears that some on the right have suddenly realized that maybe the grifters are not pulling their political weight:

But there are signs that some of the most rigidly conservative rightwing writers out there are getting sick of it and are ready to speak out. On Tuesday, Jonah Goldberg of the National Review highlighted a report from John Hawkins of Right Wing News that exposed how many of the Tea Party-style PACs are basically taking money gullible donors think is going to elect conservative politicians and using it for basically anything but that. Ten of the 17 PACs examined by Hawkins took in more than $50 million and only spent about $3.6 million of it on campaigns. SarahPAC, run by Sarah Palin, was a typical offender, spending only $205,000 of their $3 million, or about 7 percent of the funds.

via Talking Points Memo

Thing is, Jonah's not really upset about it, he's just jealous. Still, it's unsettling that the right is noticing what was obvious to the rest of us. It's marginally possible they'll be able to do something about it, and divert some of the money shelled out by the rubes to actually influencing elections. And don't fool yourself into thinking that the rubes we're talking about are only the yahoos living in trailers watching Fox News. Even the Koch Brothers and their ilk have thrown money at more highly placed con artists, like Karl Rove. The only thing keeping the Republic on life support is the fact that these people waste so much of the money they spend to influence elections. If they ever get their act together, the country will truly be toast.

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Don’t play that card!

Monday, February 16, 2015

The Republicans are slow walking the confirmation hearings for Eric Holder's replacement. According to reputed moderate Chuck Grassley, she must show that she is not Eric Holder. This is a curious thing, because if not for the fact that he is Obama's attorney general and/or that he is black, Holder is a guy that ordinarily the Republicans should love. Just as two examples, he has deported more people than anyone before him, and he has brought more cases against whistle blowers than all of his predecessors combined. This makes things a bit difficult for both the Republicans and Loretta Lynch, the nominee, because she must prove that she is not that part of Eric Holder that the Republicans don't like, while at the same time proving she is that part of Eric Holder that the Republicans like.

The problem is that it would appear that she can't help but being one big part of the part of Eric Holder the Republicans don't like, unless she gets skin color change surgery, which I'm not sure exists.

There are still people alive who remember the Clarence Thomas hearings, but apparently none of the Democrats on the Judiciary committee are among them. Not that they weren't alive then; some of them were already old at the time. Apparently, they simply choose not to remember.

What I remember is that there was resistance mounting to the hypocritical disaster that is Clarence Thomas, which he and the Republicans stopped in its tracks by accusing the Democrats of being racists. Despite Anita Thomas, despite his manifest distaste for those who shared his skin color, the Democrats shut their traps and, by and large, voted for one of the worst Supreme Court justices of all times. (At least up to that point)

Now we have a situation in which only race can explain the actions of the Republicans; not just distaste for the candidate because of her race, but the ever present bitterness that a person of her race (Obama's white half, of course, counts for nothing—one drop and all that) has twice been elected president. Yet, despite the fact that this is the only logical explanation for what the Republicans have done to Obama and are doing to Lynch, not a word to that effect will the Democrats breathe. Should they do so, they will be accused of playing the “race card”, and that's a card (like the “class warfare card) that only Republicans can play.

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Sinners casting stones

Thursday, February 12, 2015

When I saw this article's (White House to File Case Against China at W.T.O. Over Subsidies for Exports) title in this morning's Times, I immediately smelled a rat. The stench grew stronger as I read. I could tell by the title that this “case” was a PR move intended to smooth the way for the Trans Pacific Partnership corporate protection treaty. And, indeed, my suspicions were confirmed:

The Obama administration accused China on Wednesday of providing illegal export subsidies to critical industries, flexing its muscle on trade as it presses Congress to expand President Obama’s authority to secure major trade accords.

…

The administration wants Congress to give it the power to negotiate a Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is intended to lower trade barriers while adding a range of measures that protect patents and other forms of intellectual property across a dozen Pacific nations. Crucially, it is pressing Congress to accept, as it has for past trade deals, that any agreement be subject to a yes-or-no vote with no amendments allowed.

If you've been following this debate at all, you know that the TPP is primarily designed to give corporations a free hand to exploit the rest of us, soak up whatever income remains to us, exempt transnational corporations from domestic law, and destroy the environment. You can read one of Dean Baker's many treatments of the subject here. It is a mystery why a Democratic administration is trying to do this. Well, it's actually not a mystery; Obama has handed economic policy to Wall Street, and this is of a piece with that.

But, you may say, it's still all to the good if Obama is going after those nefarious Chinese. They must be doing something horrible.

Well, of what does their crime consist?

The administration accused China of providing almost $1 billion in illegal subsidies over three years by offering so-called common service platforms to help exporters. The administration is also contending that China set up 179 “demonstration bases” for exporters in these industries, providing at least $635,000 apiece at some of the bases.

An objection immediately popped to my mind, and a few paragraphs later, I see it has occurred to others:

The administration’s case might be tricky, though. Mr. Froman said that by receiving free or discounted back-office services, Chinese export companies were able to lower their cost of doing business, thus helping reduce what they charge foreign customers for their goods. But the W.T.O. could see such indirect subsidies as widely used, even in the United States. (Emphasis added)

Ya think? Subsidies can take many forms. For instance, here in Groton, when the Town Council gives a business a tax break, it is effectively subsidizing that business by “lower[ing its] cost of doing business”. Cities and states across this great nation are competing with each other to lower the cost of doing business for every swine with enough muscle to get to the trough. Maybe China is being more transparent about the subsidy, but there's no functional difference-it is shifting the cost of doing business from the businesses involved to Chinese taxpayers, just as our federal government, states, cities and towns have been doing for years with various tax breaks, not to mention actually building stadiums for professional sports teams (and letting the NFL avoid taxes as a non-profit) and bailing out criminal enterprises known as banks, which certainly lowered their costs of doing business.

Who knows, maybe the huge TPP cloud with have a slim silver lining. Maybe the administration's legal theory will be extended to its logical conclusion and our states, cities and towns will be barred from giving these subsidies. That would, at least, stop one race to the bottom.

Filed in Corporate Crime, Economics, Inequality | | Comments (0)

This year’s grifter

Monday, February 9, 2015

Mike Huckabee has written a book, in which he proclaims the superiority of the Bubba, and he's getting some pushback. Jon Stewart pointed out the inconsistency between the Huckster's condemnation of Beyonce, given his own former role as a side guitar man for a performance of Cat Scratch Fever. Here, Huck is defending himself for his anti-dance views in his teenage years.

What interests me about all this is the fact that most members of the media either don't understand what Huckabee is doing, or prefer to make believe they don't understand. Not to put too fine a point in it: Huckabee is not running for president, he is grifting.

Gail Collins almost gets there, but she really doesn't get it, or she wouldn't have said:

While Mike Huckabee is almost certainly not going to be the Republican presidential nominee, he is a real candidate.

She's absolutely right in the first portion of that sentence, and absolutely wrong in the second, because Mike Huckabee, were he pumped full of truth serum, would admit what he knows perfectly well: that he is not a real candidate, as he has no hope of winning, nor does he desire to do so. Like Sarah, he knows that there's lots of money to be made out there on the hustings, and he's going to grab his share. What better way to grab a goodly share of the sucker's money than by playing to their sense of victimhood and assuring them that they are, in fact, better than all those people who are smarter than they are? But, contrariwise, what better way to assure you'll never be president than by systematically insulting a huge percentage of the population? Sure, Ted Cruz plays to the stupid Southerners, but he doesn't do it by openly bashing the rest of us. Like any politician that wants to get elected, he speaks in deniable code, so he can turn around and bash the media if anyone openly decodes what he says. Huckabee is not doing that, or, more accurately, he is making what he knows is an ineffectual Palin-like gesture in that direction. There can be no surer sign that he's joined Sarah as a grifter, milking the Republican base for every dollar he can get. Grifting is a multi-million dollar Republican industry, and Huckabee wouldn't have left Fox unless he'd concluded that he could make more money grifting than bloviating. That why he's happy to let Jon Stewart make him look like a fool in the eyes of the rational. He sells 10,000 books every time he (and by extension, all those “Bubbas”) get laughed at by Stewart's audience. No one actually reads those books, by the way.

We Democrats can take some pride in the fact that there is no Huckabee or Palin analog on the left. Long may that remain the case.

Filed in Grifters | | Comments (0)

Schiavo redux

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

It has been great fun watching Republicans try to deal with the vaccination issue. The natural reaction of a Republican politician is to go with the crazy. If you are perceived as a moderate, like Chris Christie, you may literally embrace the chance to establish your insane bona fides, which is, of course, exactly what Christie did.

Now, normally, Republicans get a free pass on this sort of stuff. For instance, Republicans are allowed to question climate science, without much pushback, so they had every right to expect they could disregard medical science without any problems.

But in rare cases, it doesn't work. The disconnect between the words they emit and reality may be too great, or, and this is classically the case, they may emit ignorant noises about an issue that people viscerally understand. The firestorm they've faced (I mean poor Rand Paul had to take a needle) is similar in kind if not in degree to what took place after they decided to interfere in the Terry Schiavo case. They literally never saw that coming, though yours truly did (no link available to my old dead blog, but see here). Just as [almost]everyone can imagine themselves presented with a Schiavo situation, [almost] everyone can understand the need for vaccines. (Oh, by the way, aren't these the same folks who went into full panic mode about Ebola?) This has left the poor Republican presidential wannabes totally perplexed. They are caught in the middle between the bat-shit crazies, and an aroused rational mega-majority. What's a politician to do?

I'm not sure this would work, but they might want to borrow some irrationality from Senator Tillis. They could say that they are against requiring anyone to be vaccinated, but if you don't get vaccinated, you have to wear a sign that tells the world that you have not been vaccinated. I know it doesn't make any sense, but we are talking about Republicans here.

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Republican Logic

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

United States Senator (yes, let that sink in) Thom Tillis, believes that we should not have regulations requiring restaurant workers to wash their hands after using the bathroom, but we should have regulations requiring their employers to let the public know that their employees are not required to wash their hands after using the bathroom.

Awe inspiring. Congratulations North Carolina!

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Catch-22, alive and well

Monday, February 2, 2015

This article starts out hopefully, but there's a catch:

ALEXANDRIA, Va. — A federal judge expressed skepticism Friday about the constitutionality of the government’s no-fly list, suggesting that those who find themselves on it should be allowed a meaningful opportunity to clear their names.

The lawsuit challenging the no-fly list, filed by Alexandria resident Gulet Mohamed, has been winding its way through federal court for four years, and US District Judge Anthony Trenga has consistently rejected government efforts to get the suit tossed out.

The government says that Mr. Mohamed may not have a hearing because at any such hearing it would be required to reveal state secrets in order to justify his placement on the list. To prevent such an outcome, he may be deprived of his right to travel without any due process whatsoever. This is far worse than the Through the Looking Glass situation to which I referred in a recent post; this time it's sentence first, no trial afterward. He is declared guilty at the unfettered discretion of the executive branch.

What is truly amazing here, is the number of constitutional provisions this “state secrets privilege” would appear to violate. In addition to the obvious due process problems, its use in this situation sounds suspiciously like a bill of attainder, except for the government doesn't even have to go to the trouble of passing a bill. It completely evades the checks and balances process that is supposedly the bedrock of our constitution, for it is the position of the executive that neither Congress nor the courts can second guess the executive's decision.

This is a legal doctrine that was born in fraud (despite the Circuit court's contortions to avoid admitting that fact) and has consistently been invoked to prevent the disclosure, not of state secrets, but of facts embarrassing to the state, or in the case of the no-fly list, the government's inability to actually prove it has a legitimate basis for its actions.

So as I said, there's a catch, and that would be Catch-22. (Is that masterpiece of a book still a rite of passage for any thinking college student? If not, it should be). Straight from Wikipedia, here's a quote that fits perfectly:

Other forms of Catch-22 are invoked throughout the novel to justify various bureaucratic actions. At one point, victims of harassment by military police quote the MPs' explanation of one of Catch-22's provisions: “Catch-22 states that agents enforcing Catch-22 need not prove that Catch-22 actually contains whatever provision the accused violator is accused of violating.” Another character explains: “Catch-22 says they have a right to do anything we can't stop them from doing.”

The latter is the Catch-22 the government is invoking in the no fly case. The district court judge may try to stop it, but odds are good that the Circuit Court will step in and rule that “they have the right to do anything we can't stop them from doing”. Or is it, in this case, “we won't stop them from doing”. Either way, it's another brick in the wall.

Filed in Creeping Totalitarianism | | Comments (0)

Krugman hearts Obama

Monday, February 2, 2015

Back in 2008 Paul Krugman put off a lot of liberals by being rather cool toward Obama; it seemed pretty clear he preferred Hillary. Lately, however, he's been one of Obama's biggest cheerleaders. Consider today's column in which he lauds Obama for proposing a non austere budget:

On Monday, President Obama will call for a significant increase in spending, reversing the harsh cuts of the past few years. He won’t get all he’s asking for, but it’s a move in the right direction. And it also marks a welcome shift in the discourse. Maybe Washington is starting to get over its narrow-minded, irresponsible obsession with long-run problems and will finally take on the hard issue of short-run gratification instead
…
It goes without saying that Mr. Obama’s fiscal proposals, like everything he does, will be attacked by Republicans. He’s also, however, sure to face criticism from self-proclaimed centrists accusing him of irresponsibly abandoning the fight against long-term budget deficits.

So it’s important to understand who’s really irresponsible here. In today’s economic and political environment, long-termism is a cop-out, a dodge, a way to avoid sticking your neck out. And it’s refreshing to see signs that Mr. Obama is willing to break with the long-termers and focus on the here and now.

All well and good, but this “good” budget just puts one of Obama's major failings into stark relief. We tend to forget that when he was elected, had he and the Democrats played hardball, particularly with the budget (Can you say “reconciliation”? Republicans can.) he could have gotten almost anything he wanted. Now, maybe the Democrats would have wussed out on him (they do tend to do that), but we'll never know, because he spent the entire time he had large majorities in both houses Desperately Seeking Susan's vote, and Olympia's, as well as the votes of the other non-existent “moderate” Republicans.

He could likely have gotten better than he got back then; he will get nothing now, so his proposed budget is nothing more than a symbolic gesture that will do him and his party no good. It's one thing to come out for things people understand (e.g., free college tuition); it's another to embrace this or that economic theory that people don't understand. Had he passed a free-spending budget in 2009 he would have reaped rewards not because what he was doing sounded good, but because it would have worked; the economy would have done far better, and he could have (rightfully, in that case) claimed credit. As it was, the good that his insufficient stimulus (but he got Susan's vote!) did was like the pony in all that horseshit; it was there somewhere but it was awfully hard for anyone but an economist to find.

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Judge Posner Rules

Monday, February 2, 2015

A friend of mine sends out daily emails with links to interesting stories. A recent email sent me to this article, in which we find that Judge Richard Posner has ruled against the union of the Administrative Law Judges that decide Social Security Disability cases:

The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that administrative law judges for the Social Security Administration can’t pursue a grievance against their agency.

As the National Law Journal (sub. req.) reported, Judge Richard Posner compared the ALJs to workers on “a poultry processing assembly line” in rejecting their claim that high caseloads interfere with their decisional independence.

The union for the ALJs, the Association of Administrative Law Judges, had sued SSA acting commissioner Carolyn Colvin in her official capacity over a policy setting a goal of 500 to 700 “legally sufficient judgments” per judge, per year. According to the opinion (PDF), the union contends that this is really a quota because judges are penalized for not meeting it.

Such a high caseload encourages judges to approve benefits, the union argued, because an approval can’t be appealed, and therefore the opinion doesn’t have to be “appeal proof,” as Posner phrased it. As a result, the union argued, judges are encouraged to find for applicants, and their independence is compromised.

Inasmuch as most of my legal practice consists of representing Social Security claimants, I find this interesting on a number of levels. Posner is, or at least was, considered a fairly conservative judge, but he's written a number of opinions raking ALJs over the coals for the absurd reasoning in which so many of them engage. He's written a number of opinions about boilerplate language that many of them used (and still use to some extent) when assessing a claimant's credibility. They are required to assess the claimant's credibility in every case. Naturally, in almost every case, the claimant is not to be believed, for reasons that would leave most rational people baffled. The offending boilerplate essentially consists of a statement that boils down to this: I don't believe the claimant's testimony about his or her level of functioning because the claimant's testimony was inconsistent with my ultimate decision in this case. It's a little like Alice in Wonderland, except instead of having the sentence first and the verdict afterward, it's verdict first, trial afterwards. Or, as Judge Posner would have it, circular reasoning. Posner's contempt for the intellectual laziness and obvious result oriented decision making (i.e., judges searching for a way to deny meritorious claims) pretty obviously slipped over into his decision; not so much that it colored the results, but that it led to the chicken killing analogy.

I don't know if Posner did, but he could have pointed out that the ALJ's argument doesn't seem to comport with the facts. If, in fact, the caseload of the ALJs is pressuring them to grant cases, it doesn't show up in the stats. Benefit awards have declined precipitously over the past few years. My own theory is that the decline in awards is a function of a couple of things: the 60 Minutes smear job that covered a few judges with high grant rates, but ignored the judges that deny almost everyone and the consequent pressure from the higher ups to redress the non-existent problem 60 minutes uncovered; and the retirement of reasonable judges and their replacement with judges recruited from within the system, who know what their superiors expect from them.

The judges don't write their own decisions; they have people for that. Of course, the judges can modify whatever the decision writers come up with, but some are too lazy to do much editing. Many of us suspect that when the decision writers disagree with the judge they put language in the decisions that almost guarantees a successful appeal. But often, they have no choice but to make the decisons self destroying, as it is often impossible to write a coherent denial when the evidence is massively against you. The sheer irrationality of some of the decisions is truly mind boggling. I won't bore with war stories, but I could.

So, this is one time I'm not siding with a union. The ALJs may be overworked, but it hasn't stopped them from denying meritorious claims, much less weak claims.

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