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It's New Year's Eve.  Do you know where your champagne is?


With everything going on around the holidays I haven't had much time to reflect on the political and social happenings of the past couple weeks.  A few fairly significant items made the news; the repeal of DADT, passage of the new START, Justin Bieber nominated for Artist of the Year (suddenly I remember why I haven't watched an awards show since Steely Dan robbed Radiohead at gunpoint of Album of the Year).  Some of those things were probably more important than others, so I'll give them some additional attention in the first post of the new year.  So, hope your Christmas was Merry and you New Year is Happy.  See you next year!

Seats At The Kiddie Table

Only 9 more shopping days until Christmas.  Remember, if you don’t shop, terrorism wins.

Last Tuesday, President Obama reached a deal with senate Republicans regarding the extension of the Bush tax cuts and unemployment insurance benefits, both set to expire at the end of the year.  It certainly wasn’t pretty for Democrats.  On the face of it, Republicans got everything they really wanted - including the privilege of re-asserting the very same tax issue just in time for the next election - while Democrats got some additional unemployment insurance and a bowl of grits.  But, as additional details began to emerge, several astute observers pointed out that against an opposition united against anything and everything even remotely resembling economic stimulus, the President managed to extract almost $400 billion in additional stimulus, to take effect throughout 2011.  On Wednesday, Democrats began to complain that even though unemployment insurance would be extended for 13 months, instead of the three they though they might be able to get, and the tax cuts for the middle class would also be extended - as they all said they wanted - the fact that rich people would also benefit from the deal was difficult for them to stomach.  By Thursday, Democrats decided that the best deal they are going to get, isn’t good enough for them, and approved a non-binding resolution stating they would not bring the tax compromise to the floor for a vote.  Sigh.  Democrats, study the pretty picture below, then meet me at paragraph three.

So.  Here we are again.  Hope everybody was able to clean the unicorn rainbow crap off their lawn before the snow hit.  I’m told that if you don’t its really hard on the grass in the spring.  Anyway, about that tax cut deal.  Look, I know its difficult to be a Democrat.  Its somewhat akin to getting involve in a land war in Asia.  Sure, the cause may be nobel and the need may be great, but after a few winters it inevitably turns into a quagmire and you spend the next decade spinning your wheels trying to get out.  Believe me I understand that.  But throwing a tantrum?  Threatening to take your ball and go home?  That’s not the way to handle this.  I know, I know, Republicans have done that very same thing for the past two years and it worked perfectly for them, I know.  But they are children, and children can get away with that.  Especially when they have parents as lenient as you are.  And the tantrum simply doesn’t have the same effect when it’s thrown by the adults.  Unlike children, adults have responsibilities.  The family has to eat, the bills have to be paid, and someone has to hide the matches to keep the kids from setting the house on fire.  The fact that said someone has to be you, makes all those threats sound bitter and vindictive.  Perhaps it would help if we talked things through a little.  Maybe that would help everyone feel better.

All day Thursday, Democrats on the Hill complained that they hadn’t been part of the negotiations leading to the compromise.  While it certainly is a legitimate statement, there is a reason they weren’t invited to negotiations.  They weren’t invited because they are terrible at negotiations.  A little less than two years ago, the President came to Democratic House and Senate leaders and said hey, here’s what I’m looking for in a healthcare reform bill.  You guys go and negotiate something and get back to me.  Eighteen months later, those crack negotiators still didn’t have a piece of legislation they could agree on amongst themselves, never mind anyone from the other side of the aisle.  And in that case, over the first 12 months of debate, they didn’t even need anyone from the other side of the aisle!  It took Democrats 18 months to “negotiate” a healthcare package they could agree on.  President Obama only had 18 days remaining in the legislative session to come up with a compromise that everyone could agree to hate, but pass anyway.  Including House and Senate Democrats in that process would only have served to make the improbable, impossible.  

Aside from the fact they weren’t involved in negotiations, Democrats primary complaints about the compromise are as follows.  People who make the most money will see the greatest benefit (in terms of dollars saved) from extending the Bush-era tax cuts.  Cutting taxes for wealthy people - in and of itself - does not necessarily create jobs, as evidence by the close-to-zero net job growth witnessed during the afore-mentioned presidency.  A majority of the public actually favors the expiration of the said tax-cuts for the top two percent of income earners.  And, extending those cuts will have to be paid for with more borrowed money, adding an additional $700 billion to the deficit.  Okay, points taken.  All of those statements are absolutely true.  For the first two years of his presidency, Barack Obama made no secret about the fact that he wanted to see the tax cuts for the middle class continue and those for the top two percent expire.  But what this President seems to have the ability to do - which no other Democrat in Congress seems to share - is to deal with the world as it is, instead of how it looks through the rose-colored utopian Ray-Bans everyone else seems to be using.

The cold, hard reality is this.  Three weeks from now, Republicans will take over control of the House of Representatives and gain five additional seats in the Senate.  Any tax package designed by a Republican-controlled House to be passed by a Senate split 53-47 is going to be far less favorable to Democratic ideals than the package the President agreed to last Tuesday.  That package would likely include bigger tax-cuts, extended for a longer period of time, with little assistance - if any - to the unemployed.  In addition to that, waiting for the next Congress to take up the issue would mean that everybody would see their taxes increase on the first of the year, with the poorest workers hit with a 50% jump.  There are some Democrats in Congress who feel the Republicans are bluffing, that it is too big a political risk for them to allow unemployment insurance to expire and force a government shutdown.  Those Democrats are idiots.  They have obviously learned nothing about the Republican Party over the past two years about.  Republicans don't care about the deficit.  (If they did they would add an additional $4 trillion to the debt by insisting on extending the tax cuts.)  Republicans are also perfectly willing to cause working people (and people who would rather be working) real pain in order to make a political paint.  Millions of people lose unemployment benefits in an economy where 4-5 people apply for every open position?  They should try harder.  Tens of millions of government workers don’t get paid due to a government shutdown?  They should have found jobs in the private sector.  It will be left to Democrats to explain why everyone’s taxes went up on the first of the year when Democrats claimed they wanted to keep the current rates for lower and middle income earners.  And this is a political party that couldn’t sell beer to a college frat party, they’ll just talk themselves right out of office!

Democrats could have resolved this issue a long time ago.  Step in the way way back machine with me if you will, to several months before the midterms elections.  House Minority Leader John Boehner was caught on camera admitting that if his choice was between extending tax-cuts only for low and middle income earners or not extending any tax-cuts at all, he would vote for the former.  That very same afternoon, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi should have headed to the floor with a bill extending tax-cuts for low and middle income earners only and called for a vote.  Needless to say, they didn’t do that.  In fact, Harry Reid refused to even consider bringing the tax issues to the Senate floor because he and other Democrats didn’t want to explain to voters on the campaign trail why he feels it is necessary for taxes to increase.  Democrats didn’t want to do their jobs, but they don’t want the President to do his either.  Why does it seem like the Democratic Party is always so much more comfortable in the minority, without the responsibility of governing, where all they have to do is complain?

Fast forward to one week later.  The Senate has passed the tax-cut extension package, sending it off to the House, where who knows what will happen.  With that piece of legislation taken care of, the Senate was supposed to be able to move on to the remaining issues of the lame-duck session, like the repeal of DADT and the passage of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.  Of course, whether or not any of that is likely to happen remains hostage to the whims of infantile Senate Republicans.  During the debate over healthcare reform, Republicans delighted in citing polls showing 53%-47% opposition to the bill as evidence the President was acting against the “will of the American people.”  Now, in the face of a year-long Pentagon study, endorsements from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Republican Defense Secretary and the support of 77% of the “American people,” John McCain appears ready to insist on filibustering the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  As of today, Jim DeMint (R), South Carolina has threatened procedural motions to delay and eventually kill the appropriations bill and the arms treaty.  Apparently, the de-facto leader of the Republican Party himself has declared the tax-cut extension agreement struck with the President to be a sellout of “true conservative values,” and absolutely everything on this President’s agenda to be evil incarnate, and his minions have jumped to do his bidding.  Welcome to gridlock ladies and gentlemen.  Enjoy the next 24 months.

Some more news on the economic front, the U.S. trade deficit has declined to it’s lowest level in two years, thanks in no small part to the lower value of the dollar and a growing inflation issue in China.  Despite this, some people on the Hill continue to insist the government take steps to strengthen the U.S. dollar.  In difficult economic times, maintaining a “strong dollar policy,” for no other reason than the phrase contains the word “strong,” only serves to weaken essential American exports at a time when we cannot internally muster sufficient domestic consumer spending to accomplish a full recovery.  Cheap exports help us make up that difference.  Drop the macho act and use the weaker dollar to support economic growth.


Earlier this week, a federal judge in Virginia ruled a portion of the healthcare reform package - the individual mandate - to be unconstitutional.  Lower court decisions on this matter now stand at 2 - 1 in favor of the law, and there is no one who doesn’t not expect this matter to ultimately end up in the Supreme Court.  The judge ruled that the Commerce Clause does not grant Congress the power to mandate that individuals purchase insurance.  And the judge is probably correct.  But if that is the way the government’s lawyers chose to phrase their case, they deserved to lose that case.  There are ways to justify a mandate without resorting to the Commerce Clause.  The mandate should be structured as a tax.  Beginning in 2014, Americans would be required to pay an “Affordable Care Tax,” in the amount of whatever the penalty for not purchasing health insurance is under the current law.  However, if people then choose to purchase insurance - either on the individual market, the new exchanges or through his or her employer, they would receive a tax credit for the full amount of the “Affordable Care Tax” paid.  No mess, no fuss, no Commerce Clause, no problem.


Several notable passings have occurred over the past seven days.  First, Elizabeth Edwards, attorney and wife of former U.S. Senator and vice presidential candidate John Edwards, passed away after a protracted battle with cancer.  She was 61 years of age.  Her death was followed by that of the U.S. special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, and former assistant Secretary of State, Richard Holbrooke.  He was 69.  Both were dedicated public servants, and both will be missed.

Finally, a team of scientists at Georgetown University successfully transformed immature stem cells into pancreatic tissue to combat Type 1 diabetes.  Again, it’s very early, but it really is exciting that we may soon be able to eradicate one of the most pervasive diseases in our society.  Yay science!

Surely You Can't Be Serious

Is it December already?  Holy cow when did that happen?  Oh well, I hope all the turkey has been digested.  Because if it hasn’t, you should probably throw it away at this point.

So, apparently the Transportation Safety Administration has stepped up security at airports across the country.  Travelers will have two options; pass through the high-tech, new-fangled X-ray/electromagnetic body imaging scanners, or opt for the old-school, low-tech full-body pat-down by a TSA agent.  Some people are upset about this.

In the interests of full disclosure, I don’t fly all that often.  And by “don’t fly all that often” I mean about once every three or four years.  That said, I am not particularly offended by said security measures.  I guess if I can get from South Bend to Seattle in four hours on a none-exploding aircraft and have someone fondle me in the process I’m not really going to complain.  I suppose it might depend on whom it is doing the fondling.  But I can understand why some people aren’t thrilled about either option.  Why should some stranger making $13 an hour get to see me naked at the airport just so I can start my vacation a few hours earlier?  In the wake of four hijackings and four thousand deaths in September of 2001, Americans insisted they were ready to put up with more than a little inconvenience in order to ensure public safety.  Nine years later we seem to be having second thoughts.  What I do find amusing is where we’ve decided to draw the line separating what we are willing to accept in the name of safety.  Renditioning people to foreign countries to be “interrogated”, beating them, freezing them, photographing them naked stacked in pyramids, nipping them with dogs and drowning them until they broke were/are all perfectly acceptable security methods.  But someone “touching our junk” should be grounds to have them arrested.  Is anybody under the illusion that many of the same people demanding a halt to unreasonable bodily searches would be the first people in front of the camera demanding to know why the government failed to provide full body scanners at airports to prevent a bombing, were one to occur?

As part of his effort to focus on debt reduction following the drubbing in last month’s election, President Obama announced this week that he will request a two year wage freeze for all federal employees.  The proposal, one among several expected in the coming weeks, would save the Treasury about $60 billion over ten years.  Obviously a drop in the bucket compared to what needs to be done, but why not start with the low-hanging fruit.  Hopefully future proposals will address more significant, systemic budgetary issues, like the ballooning cost of Medicare, the bloated defense budget and the deficit-exacerbating tax cuts scheduled to expire in three weeks.  For a little perspective on how the numbers stack up, see below.  (chart from CNNMoney.com)

  

I remain completely unconvinced that most of those elected to Washington in November on a platform of fiscal responsibility, have any interest in fiscal responsibility - largely due to the fact that the people who sent them there aren’t really interested in fiscal responsibility either.  In a Wall Street Journal poll released on November 18, respondents were asked if they preferred Congress use spending cuts or tax increases to balance the budget.  A whopping 70% expressed opposition to cuts in Medicare, Social Security and defense (only 27% in favor), while 59% opposed any increase in taxes.  Apparently people think we should reduce our debt by increasing our expenditures as we decrease our revenue.  No wonder this country is getting it’s butt whooped at math.  Barack Obama and Paul Ryan might just be the only two people in DC interested in reducing the deficit.  Good luck to you both.  Let me know how it turns out.

The Pentagon released the results of its year-long “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” impact study on Tuesday.  Absolutely unsurprisingly, 92% of military members surveyed said they did not object to lifting the ban.  Additionally, 69% acknowledge they have served or are currently serving with gay or lesbian personnel.  Even though 30% of respondents indicated they felt that repeal would affect their unit’s ability to train well together, only 10% felt it would affect their own ability to train well with their unit.  That’s the old “of course most people are bad drivers, I’m just not one of them” syndrome.  Let’s get this out of the way.  This policy is stupid.  It is absolutely ridiculous that we tell some young men and women that they can give their lives in service to their country - as long as no one knows they’re gay.  In the words of one special ops soldier interviewed for the report,

“We have a gay guy [in the unit].  He’s big he’s mean and he kills lots of bad guys.  No one cares that’s he’s gay.”

A lot of people in this country were convinced that allowing blacks to serve in the military would ruin “unit cohesion.”  They were exposed as fools and racists.  A lot of people were convinced that women had no place in the military, and would ruin “unit cohesion.”  They were exposed as idiots and sexists.  Far fewer people remain convinced that allowing homosexuals to serve will ruin unit cohesion.  Repeal this law and expose those people for the frauds they are as well.

The big news of the weekend was the release of some hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. State Department cables by WikiLeaks.  Persons who have nothing better to do with their time than to comb through millions of lines of text seem to think there is nothing particularly sensitive revealed in the documents.  The information dump mostly seems to be an exercise in an international game of “tell me what you really think of that guy,” which, while amusing for it’s gossip value, has little to no bearing on the price of tea in China.  However, there is a broader point to be made.  We have entered an age of involuntary transparency.  Regardless of whether or not we think secrets should be kept, they won’t be kept.  Someone, somewhere, somehow will discover them   and post them online for all the world to see, and there is little anyone can do to stop it.  This wasn’t the first classified information dump, and it certainly won’t be the last.  According to Julian Assange, founder of WikiLeaks, several American banks and pharmaceutical companies are next on his hit list.  There is no longer any such thing as privacy, no such thing as “off the record.”  It’s all out there in the ether, waiting to be consumed by persons who were never intended to consume it.  We will have to adapt accordingly.

Finally, actor Leslie Neilsen passed away last week.  Although he starred in many serious films during his career, he was perhaps best known and loved as Dr. Rumack in Airplane! and Lt. Frank Drebin of Police Squad! and the Naked Gun series.  Call him an actor, call him a comedian, call him an all around great guy, just don’t call him Shirley.

The San Francisco Treat

You can all stop holding your breath now.  There will be another royal wedding.  Our long national nightmare is over.

I was a little heavy on the rage last week.  So I’ve decided to compensate by going light on everything this week.  Who said I don’t know how to cut a deal?

A word on bi-partisanship.  And by bi-partisanship I mean obstruction.  If you truly needed further evidence that the current Republican party has every interest in politicking and no interest in governing, consider the following.  For the past 18 months the administration has been working on a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) with Russia.  This past Wednesday, Arizona (again?) Senator Jon Kyl, the lead Republican senator on the treaty negotiations announced he will not allow a vote on the treaty during the lame-duck session, or any time after that for that matter.  His claim as to why?  The President has put no focus on the modernization of the existing U.S. nuclear arsenal, as well the usual mumbo jumbo about the President disarming America and being unwilling to work with Republicans to find solutions.  Reality, however, has a different take.  While previous arms reduction treaties - all signed under Republican presidents, reduced deployed nuclear warheads from 12,000 to 2,000, this proposed treaty will reduce the total from 2,000 to 1,550.  And at Kyl’s request, the administration committed $84 billion toward modernization over the next ten years.  Hardly disarmament.  As for the President being unwilling to work with Republicans, White House officials recounted no fewer than 29 meetings, phone calls, briefings and/or letters on the subject involving Jon Kyl or his staff, a number which neither Kyl nor his staff disputes.  Yet, after all that, Kyl still refuses to allow a vote.  Nothing obstructionist about that.

Finally, I know I’m a little late to this story, but San Francisco has decided to ban the Happy Meal.  More specifically, they have banned fast food restaurants from bundling free toys with meals marketed to kids.  I guess kids were getting fat from eating the plastic Buzz Lightyear action figure that came with their bacon double cheeseburger, large fries and large M&M McFlurry.  This is the dumbest thing I’ve heard since Oklahoma voted to ban Sharia law in the midterm elections.  (Seriously, was the implementation of Sharia law becoming a problem in Oklahoma?)  Does removing the toy from the Happy Meal magically make the meal more nutritious?  Is the toy some kind of superconducting child magnet that senses kids driving past the restaurant and rips the Happy Meal out through the drive-thru window and into their tubby little bellies?  Perhaps I’m just too old to remember correctly, but when my mother wanted to keep me from eating junk food, she simply didn’t buy me junk food, plastic Taiwanese lead-painted toy be damned.  I guess it’s too much to ask for parents to act like parents in San Francisco.

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

FYE (for your entertainment) - a midterm election proof.  Louisiana Republican Senator David Vitter, a man who admitted not too long ago to patronizing escorts and prostitutes in violation of his marriage vows, won re-election to the Senate last week by 19 percentage points.  Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold, a lifelong supporter of universal access to healthcare, was defeated in his bid for re-election last week by 5 percentage points.  Therefore, in America today, it is preferable to patronize prostitutes, than to believe that access to healthcare should be a right.

About a week before the midterm elections, there was a mayoral election in my old hometown(ish) of Toronto.  The conservative candidate, Rob Ford, won the election by 11 points over his nearest challenger.  One of Rob Ford’s pet peeves is the streetcar.  He hates them.  As mayor he plans to eliminate them completely.  And replace them with subways.  More expensive, more efficient, subways lines.  It’s nice to see that in the rest of the civilized world, debates on things like public transportation are focused on  what type of public transportation should be built, instead of whether or not public transportation is actually some sort of communist plot hatched by liberals to steal money from hard-working small businessmen to redistribute to poor people who must be too lazy to work hard enough to afford a car.

And now a thought about the midterms.

In a lengthy, but insightful and poignant posting on his blog on Tuesday (available here and here, for those interested in reading), Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic Magazine concluded that that past year or so in American politics has represented the triumph of the untruth.  Untruth propagated by a deliberate and systematic campaign to accomplish nothing but the destruction of the Obama presidency.  One need not look any further than public statements hoping for the failure of the President before he even took office, made by the de-facto chairman of the Republican Party, Rush Limbaugh.  But, if you feel you need more evidence, continue reading.  Pragmatic emergency measures taken to prevent complete economic collapse, such as the bank bailouts (administered by conservative Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and the Bush administration) and the auto bailouts (begun under that same administration), were characterized by the right as steps in the march toward socialism.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, which has helped keep me and millions others like me privately employed over the past two years, was labeled a failure, despite almost every notable economists assertion to the contrary.  Health care reform - a virtual carbon copy of a program instituted in Massachusetts by one Mitt Romney (except that this plan actually had the audacity to attempt to pay for itself) - sans public option and with 30 million more customers for private health insurers, was described as a government take-over designed to kill grandma.

All of these little untruths combined to create one overarching falsehood - that Barack Obama is some kind of angry, an-American Marxist rebel foreigner bent on turning the United State into cold war communist Russia.  It is a falsehood fairly easily exposed by an intellectual examination of the facts.  But the Republican Party is no longer interested in intellectual honesty.  Not entirely unexpected from a party now openly hostile to learning, but distressing none-the-less.  For example, last Sunday, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint appeared on Meet the Press to discuss the new GOP congressional agenda.  When asked what ideas the party had for cutting the budget, DeMint replied that he would repeal the Affordable Care Act (health insurance reform).  When asked what his issue with the Act was, he attacked it for cutting $500 billion dollars from Medicare.  DeMint, I’m guessing knowingly, admitted that his plan to reduce the deficit, actually increases the deficit!  A deficit that, according to one Richard J. Cheney, “don’t matter.”  Unless there’s a Democrat in the White House.

Republicans claim that President Obama raised taxes during his first two years in office.  Polls taken prior to the election reveal that a majority of conservatives and independents are under the impression that their taxes have increased during the Presidents first term.  The fact is that taxes are lower today than they were on January 20, 2009.  A full third of the stimulus package was comprised of tax cuts.  That amounts to $280 billion in tax cuts.  Not including the payroll tax cuts that followed.  Republicans have claimed that illegal immigration and related crime is out of control.  The fact is that both illegal immigration and violent crime - especially that committed by illegal immigrants - has declined significantly during the Obama presidency.  Believe it or not, there are still Republicans claiming the President wants to take away your guns.  The fact is, even in light of the drug cartel-related violence in northern Mexico and the recent Supreme Court decision ensuring the Second Amendment does indeed apply to the states, the administration has made absolutely no attempt to regulate weapons whatsoever.  But the facts don’t matter anymore.  The only currency the GOP appears capable of utilizing is that of irrational fear.  The fear that the conservative white Christian majority in America is somehow, suddenly, an oppressed minority.  It’s an incredible achievement for the GOP talk radio/cable news propaganda machine.  Can you imagine if the Democratic party had a fraction of the ability to shape and stay on message as their counterparts on the other side of the aisle.        

Every time I come across someone angry about the passage of the Affordable Care Act, I make certain to ask them exactly what it is about the bill they want repealed.  The conversation then tends to go something like this:  (chart from the Kaiser Foundation, via The Daily Dish)

On his appearance on The Daily Show this past Monday night, Texas governor Rick Perry tried to make a point about the over-reach of the federal government.  He made the statement that through the use of a state program of “flexible permitting” Texas has cleaned up its air “significantly” over the past two or three decades.  However, the EPA has recently come along and told the state that their flexible permitting process isn’t doing enough to combat air pollution and is threatening to replace the permitting process with one designed by the agency.  Perry insisted Texas was doing fine on its own, achieving great results and didn’t need bureaucrats in Washington interfering with them.  The wording of his statement bothered me, so I did some cursory research.  While Perry’s statement, that Texas has significantly improved its air quality over the past thirty years under their flexible permitting process, may in fact be true (as I found nothing to dispute that claim), the following is also true.  According to the most recent aggregated EPA data I could find (2004), Texas ranks worst of all 50 states in emissions of volatile organic compounds, nitrogen oxides (ozone) and known carcinogens, second to last in emissions of carbon monoxide and overall atmospheric pollutants, and 30th out of 50 in added cancer risk to individuals form said pollutants.  Which begs the question; if the air quality in Texas has improved significantly over the past 30 years under this terrific state permitting process, just how pathetic was the air quality to begin with?  And on what planet is an increase from worst to second worst a “significant” improvement?

Yesterday, General Motors announced a two billion dollar quarterly profit, suggesting they will finish the year as the second most profitable auto manufacturer in the country.  What a miserable failure that auto bailout was, huh.

In an interview promoting his new autobiography, former President George W. Bush revealed that his “worst moment” as president was having rapper Kanye West accusing him of not caring about black people, in the wake of Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina.  Really?  The worst moment of his presidency?  Not watching two skyscrapers collapse from aircraft impacts in New York City?  Not invading a foreign country under false pretext, beginning a war that has raged now almost eight years and counting?  Not failing to regulate the financial system and prevent the greatest economic disaster since 1929?  The worst moment of the eight years of your presidency was when an egomaniacal rapper in stupid plastic glasses got up on stage at an awards show and called you a racist?  Wow.

According to a recent Gallup survey on attitudes toward the death penalty, even though 81% of respondents believe innocent people have been executed in the United States, 64% continue to support capital punishment.  Is it just me, or is that statistic actually disturbing?

The co-chairs of the President’s Debt Commission, Senator Alan Simpson and former White House Chief of Staff Erskine Bowles released their draft proposal for reducing the national deficit and debt to manageable levels over the next 25 years.  (Review it for yourself here.)  I have skimmed the document and read some initial reaction and the plan seems to basically give the people what they say they want - massive spending cuts and minimal tax increases.  In addition to the easy cuts in discretionary spending, the proposal reduces the defense budget by five times more that suggested by the current Secretary of Defense, trims hundreds of billions each from Medicaid and Medicare, and raises the retirement age and adds means testing for Social Security.  On the revenue side, the plan proposes to reduce income tax rates to 8% (from 10%), 14% (from 23%) and 23% (from 33%) while eliminating all deductions.  Personally, I think this is a pretty good place to start.  If we truly want to reduce the size of government and tackle the debt, everything has to be on the table and difficult choices have to be made.  In order for congress to be forced to take up the recommendations of the commission, 14 of the 18 commission members must agree on a proposal, so the chances of this document - or anything like it actually making it to the national debate are slim to none.  But one thing this report will do for certain is determine which of these new and improved “fiscally responsible” tea party Republicans are truly serious about reducing the size of government. 

Finally, the National Hockey League has announced it will revamp the way it selects teams for the league all-star game this coming winter.  Players will be selected as they usually are.  But then the league will choose two captains, and the captains will select the players for their team, regardless of nationality and/or conference.  Pond hockey.  On a professional level.  I love this idea.  One of the things I have always disliked about professional sports is the conference/division system of organization - especially when it comes down to playoff and all-star games.  As a fan, I want to see the best teams and the best players play against each other when it matters, regardless of what division or conference they are in.  If the Chicago Blackhawks and Vancouver Canucks are the best teams in the league, then they should have the opportunity to play for the Stanley Cup, regardless of the fact they play in the same conference.  If If the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens are the best teams in football, they should have a shot to play in the Super Bowl.  Who cares if they both come from the AFC?  The best should play the best, end of story.  Congratulations to the NHL for taking the first step down this road.

The Crimson Tide

So, I voted this morning.  I know, the three of you reading this are saying to yourselves, “so what, I vote all the time, big freakin’ deal.”  I understand completely.  But I have to admit, it was actually, a little exciting.

I became a citizen of these United States late last summer, so this was my first opportunity to perform my civic duty.  Well, there was something last year about raising a tax to establish a commission to study the possibility of extending passenger rail service to some counties that couldn’t be bothered to vote on it themselves, or something like that.  But this was the first election of consequence I have had the opportunity to participate in.  Granted, it would have been better if there were candidates I felt good about supporting, instead of a list full of candidates I felt I had to vote against, but, I’m told the democratic process isn’t always pretty.

Warm and fuzzy feeling aside, by the time this is posted it will likely have been a pretty depressing day for the party in power.  Projections, made apparently by people who project things, have Democrats losing between 50 and 75 seats in Congress, and up to 12 state governorships.  Ouch.  Essentially, every gain Democrats have made since 2006 will have been wiped out.  There really is no way to spin that complete and total a loss into a positive.  Some people will try, but they’ll only look foolish doing so.

I’m sure there will be plenty of navel-gazing and analysis of what went wrong for the Democratic party.  If they’re interested, I’ll save them a little time.  Democrats are staring down the barrel of 60 seat losses for three reasons.  First, they spent more time cannibalizing each other than sparring with the opposition.  Typical Democratic behavior.  Why hunt wild game when you can eat your own young?  Second, they are the worst political sales team in the history of history.  They couldn’t sell water in the Kalahari Desert.  “Well sure this water will prevent you from dying of dehydration, but the bottle is only 15% post-consumer recycled plastic, and it may contain traces of Bisphenol A which may or may not cause cancer, and the water may have come from an over-burdened aquifer somewhere in Arizona, and 35 tons of carbon dioxide were produced by the truck that delivered it the store, not to mention the airplane that flew it out here, so we would really prefer if you didn’t buy - or drink it for that matter.”  And finally, they spent too much time waiting for unicorns to crap rainbows and not enough time making it rain, forgetting that it is in fact rain, and not unicorns, that produces rainbows.

What I do find endlessly amusing about this election cycle is what voters say they expect out of the upcoming Congress.  The results of a New York Times/CBS poll last week indicate that even though the entire media establishment is pitching this election as a referendum on the President, only 10 percent of respondents blame him for the current state of the economy.  Ninety percent said they considered government spending to be an important issue, yet majorities were opposed to significant spending cuts and/or any tax increases.  A pillar of the midterm Republican party platform has been repeal of healthcare reform.  Yet by a margin of 45% - 41%, respondents indicated healthcare reform should stand.  And most bizarre of all, in a cycle where the Republicans that will be swept into power are significantly more partisan than those ousted in 2006 and 2008, 78% of voters said they Republicans should compromise some of their positions to get things done.  All this (particularly that last result) can’t help but beg the question, are we all stupid?  In what universe should people expect less partisanship from more partisans?  Probably the same universe in which they expect lower deficits from higher spending and reduced tax revenue.

In a curious, non-political piece of news, as of November 1st, the Chicago Mercantile Exchange began selling rain futures.  That’s right, rain futures.  You can now gamble on whether on not it will rain during your Memorial Day barbecue in 2036, and make a killing off those bastard cumulonimbus clouds if it does.  The exchange already sells snow futures, fire futures, and all kinds of other exotic “products” to compliment their agricultural futures, so I guess rain insurance really isn’t that big of a stretch.  Apparently there is absolutely nothing in the world you cannot gamble other people’s money on.  Quick, who wants to be the first to organize rain futures into collateralized debt obligations and sell credit default swaps against them?  What?  Why are you looking at me like that?  What could possibly go wrong here?

A commercial for “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” just flashed across my television screen.  At one point Palin is shown riding an ATV and in the voice-over she can be heard saying, and I quote, “I’d rather be doing this than in some stuffy old political office... I rather be out here being free.”  You and me both Sarah.  You and me both. 

Finally, as my wife gleefully attended the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear this weekend, at some point between another disappointing Fighting Irish football loss and the complete waste of time that was the first 30 minutes of Sunday’s slate of NFL games, I stumbled across Chiller’s “72 Hour Horror Movie Marathon.”  For those of you without cable or satellite (I’m told you do indeed exist), Chiller is a channel dedicated to thriller, suspense and horror movies, primarily those not quite good enough to achieve theatrical release.  As Chiller and I crossed paths, “Assault of the Sasquatch” was ending and “Halloween Night” was about to begin.  Between the two films I lost count of how many arms were severed, eyeballs were stabbed, kneecaps were shot out, heads were smashed beneath the wheels of pickup trucks and torsos were run through with “Dead End” road signs.  But I did happen to notice that the very first time an uncovered female breast popped up on screen (no pun intended), it was subjected to the disappointing white digital fuzz of censorship.  Forgive me for asking, but what kind of society do we live in, in which it is perfectly acceptable for adults to view dismemberment and mutilation of human beings, but completely unacceptable to for those same adults to catch a peek of a  female nipple?  I just don’t know how to make sense of that.  I guess, the rent is too damn high.

Ring My Bell

I’m sure there’s plenty of whacky political news to harp on about this week.  Like Alaska Republican senatorial hopeful Joe Miller having a reporter handcuffed and arrested by private security at a political rally for attempting to ask him some questions.  Or Kentucky Democratic senatorial hopeful Jack Conway insinuating that only Christians are fit to hold public office.  Or maybe Delaware Republican senatorial hopeful Christine O’Donnell apparently being unaware that the First Amendment to the United States Constitution explicitly prohibits Congress from making any laws respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof - in precisely those words.  Or even the circus of absurdity that is the New York gubernatorial race.  (We might actually touch on that one later.)  But I don’t want to talk about any of those.  Instead, I want to talk about football.  I don’t want to talk about scores or which teams are good and which would be better off playing in the CFL (I’m looking at you, Cowboys.)  I want to talk about America’s pastime, in terms of life and death.

This past weekend was a bad weekend to be a brain.  On Saturday afternoon, Rutgers defensive lineman Eric LeGrand was attempting a tackle on a kickoff return when his head impacted another player at an awkward angle.  LeGrand tumbled to the ground, awkward and stiff, his neck broken.  The latest word is that he is paralyzed from the neck down.  On Sunday, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison twice, in the span of about ten minutes, slammed head first into the helmet of the ball carrier, resulting in both offensive players being removed from the game with concussions.  Minutes later at the other end of Pennsylvania, Atlanta Falcons cornerback Dunta Robinson speared Eagles receiver DeSean Jackson in the chin with his helmet, resulting in concussions for both men.  Jackson’s was so severe he will not be able to return to the field this coming Sunday.  Later on in Foxborough, Massachusetts, Patriots safety Brandon Merriweather left his feet and fired the top of his helmet into Ravens’ tight end Todd Heap’s face, knocking him out of the game.  And in the night game between the Colts and Redskins, Washington tight end Chris Cooley left the game after another helmet to helmet collision.  Penalties were only called on two of those hits.

I know people assume that football is a violent sport, and that things like this happen all the time..  And to a certain extent that is true.  But even in a sport were violent collisions are routine, last Sunday was particularly gruesome.  Even former Patriots safety turned NBC analyst Rodney Harrison, voted “dirtiest player in the game” by his peers during his playing days, went on air during halftime Sunday night and called for the league to start suspending players for the type of hits that had been dished out all day long.  If Rodney Harrison thinks you’ve gone too far, it’s time to pay attention.

We are a violent nation.  We live for conflict and we love to fight.  We were born of war, we came of age in war, and we couldn’t survive barely more than a decade of the 20th century without engaging in one - hot or cold.  We glorify battle and lionize soldiers, irrespective of their conduct, choosing to believe that whatever actions they take on the battlefield must be justified because they because they are risking their lives so the rest of us don’t have to.  We prefer to have a select group of people fight our wars for us, and agree it would be a nice bonus if none of our guys were killed in the process.  

Sports are war games for civilized people.  Two opposing sides, risking their health and safety in combat until one defeats the other.  And no American sport is more analogous to combat than football.  Even the terminology is barbaric.  The offensive and defensive lines are said to “battle in the trenches,” quarterbacks are “gunslingers,” throwing “bombs” from “shotgun” formations.  Defensive players patrol the field like “heat-seeing missiles,” “blowing up” receivers who venture into their territory.  And it is this mentality that has lead to the current situation.

I typically avoid qualifying my statements, but in this case I feel I have to.  I love NFL football.  I own six jerseys, primarily of defensive players.  I have two fantasy football teams, one chock full of defensive players.  I pay a ridiculous amount of money for NFL Sunday Ticket so I can spend ten solid hours every Sunday watching every single game played between September and February.  I accept that it is a violent game, that it is inherently dangerous, and that sometimes really bad things happen to the people who play it.  But this business of hitting people in the head to knock them out of games has got to stop.  And if the players aren’t interested in stopping it, the league has to step in and do it for them.

Defensive players are going to complain - they’ve already started.  Steelers assassin James Harrison - guilty of knocking out two Cleveland Browns last Sunday - admitted in an interview Monday morning that he is indeed “out to hurt people.”  In reference to the hit that briefly knocked Joshua Cribbs unconscious, Harrison said, “I thought Cribbs was asleep... he’s knocked out, but he’s going to be okay.”  He has already announced - through his agent - that he plans to appeal the $75,000 fine levied against him, claiming he is now “confused about how to play football.”

James Harrison is not the sharpest pencil in the box.  This is the genius whom, when invited to the White House two years ago as part of the Super Bowl winning Pittsburgh Steelers (as every president invites the winners of every major sports championship to visit every year), refused to attend because, “if the President wanted to meet the Pittsburgh Steelers, he should have invited us before we won the Super Bowl.”  Perhaps he doesn’t understand that people who are knocked unconscious are not just “asleep,” that an impact hard enough to bounce the brain off the side of the skull is infinitely more hazardous to one’s health than the act of taking a nap.  Perhaps he doesn’t know that science now confirms that repeated blows to the head can lead to loss of motor function, dementia, Alzheimer's or worse, and do so much more quickly that previously thought.  Perhaps he doesn’t care.  Perhaps he’s not interested in being able to remember the name of his wife, or where his kids go to school, or how to put on his socks before tying his shoes.

But I do.  I care.  I think that even the remains of James Harrison’s questionable intellect deserve to be protected from idiots like him.  People watch football games to see incredible athletes do incredible things; a sixty-yard tackle-breaking touchdown run, a forty-yard toe-tapping sideline reception in double coverage, an interception returned for a touchdown against Peyton Manning in the Super Bowl.  But incredible players can’t do incredible things sitting on the bench for weeks on end after being hit in the head by some jackass trying to make an ESPN highlight reel.  This nonsense has got to stop.  The head is not a battering ram, and the helmet is not a weapon.

I’m not sure what the solution is.  The league has decided that effective immediately, helmet-to-helmet hits will result in suspensions - for multiple games if necessary.  That’s probably a good place to start.  Obviously fines weren’t working.  What’s five or ten thousand dollars to guy making ten million a years?  But taking them off the field for a game or two, that means something.  If you are a great player, and you have to sit because you cracked someone in the head with your helmet, you’ve not only forfeited your game check, you’ve let your teammates down by not being there for them when they need you.  In the culture of football, that means more than a couple grand.  And if that doesn’t work, maybe we go back to playing the game without helmets altogether.  I guarantee that the first time a linebacker leaves his feet and slams his skull into the head of an opposing running back will also be the last time.

And now for something completely different.  Where the primary season gave us gems like Basil Marceaux Dot Com, the general election has gifted us Jimmy McMillan, of The Rent Is Too Damn High Party, candidate for governor of the great state of New York.  Where Basil Marceaux Dot Com’s platform was, let’s say, complicated, and loosely federated (“ending the slavery of traffic stops”, planting “vegetation on vacant land and selling it for gas”, investigating “why democracy invaded the U.S State on July 16, 1866, and so on), Jimmy McMillan’s message is plain and simple.  Yup, you guessed it.  The rent is too damn high.

A roof over your head, food on the table and money in your pocket.  The rest will take care of itself.  You gotta love an honest politician.  The manicured mutton chops don’t hurt either.

Housekeeping

Usually I try to update this blog once a week, on Tuesday or Wednesday night.  For the next several weeks that will shift to Wednesday or Thursday night, to accommodate the schedule of my paying job.  That being said, the paying job is siphoning additional time this week, and as such, I will forego an update this week.  Check back next week.

Promises to Keep

Is it Friday yet?  It’s not?  Really?  Sigh.

I checked the opinion polls today.  Apparently my previous post had absolutely no impact on Democratic voter enthusiasm.  In fact, if Gallup’s latest voter tracking polls are to be believed, I may have consigned the Party to an 87-seat loss in the House of Representatives.  Now I know things aren’t great out there, but 87 seats?  Come on.

But that was last week.  This is a whole new seven-day period.  As such, I would like to mention something that failed to get the attention it deserved during my fruitless search for rainbow-crapping unicorns.  About two weeks ago, Republicans released something they called a “Pledge to America.”  Standing in front of a palate of pressure-treated lumber at a hardware store just outside of D.C., House Minority Leader John Boehner declared this pledge to be a blueprint for Republican fiscal responsibility should they take over Congress in November.  I would like to take this opportunity to call shenanigans on John Boehner.  What he calls a “blueprint to restore America,” I might call, quite generously, intellectually dishonest.

In short, the Republican “plan” aims to reduce the deficit by repealing any unused TARP funds, trimming 100 billion dollars of discretionary spending, de-funding healthcare reform, and, or course, cutting taxes.  The idea is that “…with common sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and defense…” these steps will set the United States back on sound fiscal footing and reverse the march toward socialism we’ve apparently been on since January of 2009.  If you are partial to that worldview I suppose all that sounds pretty good.  But even a cursory evaluation of the details reveals the absolute fiscal fraud the self-proclaimed party of fiscal responsibility has become.

First, as we discovered late last week, funds expended under the TARP program have been almost completely repaid.  The amount currently outstanding totals approximately $50 billion, and by the time the Republicans retake the House, the taxpayers may even have turned a profit on their investment.  There isn’t going to be any unused TARP money to repeal.  Strike one.

Second, I know it sounds like a lot of money, but $100 billion worth of discretionary spending amounts to virtually nothing in a 3.5 trillion dollar budget.  It is, in fact, less than 3% of the annual budget.  No Republican seriously believes that cutting 3% from the budget will set America’s fiscal house in order.  But the reason they can get away with it is because so few people actually understand where their tax dollars actually go.  There is a common misconception that if we simply trim a little from the welfare budget and reduce the amount we spend on foreign aid; we wouldn’t need to borrow money from anybody.  Sadly, like so many other things about politics, it isn’t that simple.  Below is a pie chart from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, quantifying what tax dollars actually pay for.

Taken together, Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense/Security (including veterans benefits) total nearly 70% of Federal spending.  If Boehner’s statement regarding “common sense exceptions for seniors, defense and veterans” implies that the programs making up more than two-thirds of the budget are off limits to anything but token reduction, (and that certainly is what it implies), it’s pretty easy to determine how less-than-serious he is about deficit reduction.  Add that to his comment to Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday two weeks ago about not wanting to talk about solutions, and this “pledge” becomes comical.  Strike two.

Finally, Republicans propose to cut costs by de-funding healthcare initiatives and lowering taxes.  The healthcare initiatives they propose to cut have yet to be funded.  Pretty easy to take back something you haven’t yet delivered.  But refusing to fund healthcare changes would leave Republicans with no way to address the current almost (and in some cases actual) double-digit growth in healthcare expenditures.  Add to that the cost of extending the Bush tax cuts for all income earners (about 750 billion dollars), and the continuation of at least one foreign military conflict and we could likely have a budget deficit under a Republican House that was larger than it was under Democratic control.  Strike Three.

The truth about the “Pledge to America” is that it isn’t.  There is only one fiscally honest Republican in the House of Representatives and his name is Paul Ryan.  Ryan’s solutions for reducing deficit and debt are not my solutions, but at least he understands that in order for anything to be accomplished without any sort of tax increase (if that is even possible), Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid and Defense must all endure dramatic cuts, all of which would be deeply unpopular.  And it is telling that not a single other Republican on Capitol Hill has signed on to Ryan’s proposal.

It would be nice if Americans could talk about these things like adults, instead of fourth graders throwing rocks at each other on the playground.  If your family was to encounter financial hardship and needed to take additional steps to make ends meet, you could either reduce your expenses, increase your income, or some combination of both.  I would suggest that reducing expenses AND pursuing employment offering higher levels of compensation might be the best course of action to take.  A similar approach of decreased expenses and increased revenues would probably be beneficial to America’s current fiscal situation.  But the further down the road of nonsensical pledges we travel, the harder it is going to be to return to any semblance of fiscal sanity. 

Pots of Gold

Primary season is finally over. The candidates have been selected, the match-ups have been set, and now the real mud slinging can begin. Word on the street is; things look bad for the Democratic Party. They will likely lose control of the House of Representatives in November, and if they try really really hard, they could lose the Senate too. Nice work Democrats. Is there nothing you can’t screw up?

I guess none of this is particularly surprising. In mid-term elections – especially those coming in the midst of an economic downturn – the party in power always loses seats. People get angry when things aren’t going well and lash out at those they feel are responsible. There are only so many ways to express my incredulity at the fact that so many “independent” voters are so willing to return control of the government to the party and principles that spent the previous decade running it into the ground, so I’m not going to try to find another way this week. This week I want to focus on Democratic voters.

That’s right donkeys; I’m talking to you. Why the long faces? What’s got you so depressed that you would rather stay home on Election Day than vote for a Democratic candidate? Did you like it better when you were in the minority, and all you had to do was complain? Life was so much simpler then, wasn’t it. Are you playing a little rope-a-dope? Attempting to lull Republicans into a false sense of pomposity, then slug ‘em hard with the left hook of enthusiasm two weeks before the finish line? Because on the scrap heap of bad ideas, that one is somewhere below choosing to kick the ball away at the start of overtime in the Super Bowl. Are you perhaps convinced that midterm elections just don’t matter all that much anyway? I’m sure President Clinton could quickly disabuse you of that notion. Or is it that many of you are suffering from a near fatal case of unrealistic expectations?

This past Tuesday, President Obama hosted a town hall meeting with a group of supporters in Washington D.C. hoping to pump up the troops and get a little feedback. What he got was a room full of well-dressed people complaining that in the first 40% of his presidency, he simply had not done enough for them. I don’t fault them for being well dressed; it would be silly to show up to a meeting with the President in flip-flops and pajamas. But I would like to take issue with this idea that Barack Obama has somehow failed his supporters.

This President has accomplished three things that no Democratic president in the last 50 years (or more in some instances) has achieved. Burning an enormous amount of political capital in his first month in office, he passed an $800 billion economic stimulus package that kept many of us working when we otherwise would have lost our jobs, and according to an overwhelming majority of economists, kept this economy from sliding into the abyss. Burning whatever political capital he had left, he then signed into law the first major healthcare/health insurance reform since the passage of Social Security. Seven other presidents have attempted that and failed. He succeeded. And after that, running on fumes, he managed to slip through a financial reform bill, attempting to ensure that Wall Street can never again take us for the ride they took us on two years ago. Barack Obama accomplished an astonishing amount given the dung heap of an economy he had to work with and the absurd level of resistance he faced from his opponents.

But you wanted more than that, didn’t you, Democrats. Sure, you got healthcare reform, but you wanted a single payer system. You got financial reform, but you wanted Wall Street broken up like AT&T in 1984. You got $800 billion in stimulus money, but you wanted $1.5 trillion. You wanted an end to our foreign wars, but you got a reduction in one and escalation in the other. You wanted Guantanamo Bay detention center closed, but you got a Congress that refused to do it. You wanted comprehensive immigration reform, but you got a Congress that would rather demagogue and campaign on the problem than attempt to solve it. You wanted 10% annual economic growth and a Rolls Royce in every garage, but you got four consecutive quarters of 3% annual growth and a garage in foreclosure. In short, you wanted unicorns that crap rainbows, and what you got was a dose of reality.

During the Presidential election campaign you claimed you wanted to be talked to like adults. You claimed you could, indeed, handle the truth. It appears as though those statements were inaccurate. Nobody said recovery would be easy. In fact, it was made abundantly clear to everyone that climbing out of the most devastating recession since the Great Depression was going to be pretty damn hard. The fact that we haven’t recovered eight million lost jobs in 18 months is not a knock on the President; it’s third grade mathematics. The reason you didn’t get a Citigroup break-up, or a Gitmo closure, or a public health insurance option is because there simply were not 60 votes in the United States Senate to give them to you. The President doesn’t get a vote, and he can’t force any Senators to vote a certain way. It’s not his fault you belong to a party that couldn’t vote unanimously to back out of a parking space. The reason you didn’t wake up to a unicorn crapping a rainbow in your backyard January 21, 2009, is because unicorns don’t crap rainbows, and there is no such thing as a unicorn. Welcome to the real world. It sucks. Deal with it. Quit moping, get off the couch and vote.

Finally, Jon Stewart has announced that he will be holding a “Rally to Restore Sanity” on the Mall in D.C the day before Halloween. Not to be outdone, Steven Colbert revealed 4 minutes later that he would host a “March to Keep Fear Alive” at the same time and location. Regular readers of this blog know that I have great respect for Jon Stewart. I find it absolutely incredible that the most intelligent political analysis on television comes from a guy who makes fart jokes for a living. And accordingly, I wish him success with his rally. But I can’t help but worry that there simply isn’t much sanity left to restore.