We're Still Waiting, Repugs

Poor repugs, so confused.  Why hasn't that Ni**er in the White House done what they ordered him to do? Who does he think he is? How dare he act like a duly elected and re-elected popular president?

Kentucky's Obamacare Is the Gold Standard

Yeah, suck it, California: the President likes us best.

James Carroll at the Courier:

WASHINGTON – Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear’s implementation of the new health care law for the uninsured won praise from President Barack Obama during a private meeting with House Democrats Wednesday.

That’s according to Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, who was at the meeting.

Obama met with the lawmakers to discuss the partial government shutdown and the looming Oct. 17 deadline for raising the debt ceiling. During his remarks, the president also talked about health care law, which was the Republicans’ original target in the shutdown dispute.

“The president said (the Affordable Care Act) got really good rollouts in some places you wouldn’t expect it, and he said the place that has done best is Kentucky,” Yarmuth said in an interview on Thursday.

The Louisville congressman said Obama noted that irony of that, given that two of Obamacare’s most vocal critics are Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky.

Yarmuth went up to Obama after the meeting to thank the president for the Kentucky shout-out.

“The president said that Steve Beshear has done a phenomenal job in embracing the law and making sure it worked well,” Yarmuth said.

And the guv gets prouder every day.

Kentucky’s Democratic governor says implementing the Affordable Care Act is “the morally right thing to do.”

Kentucky is the only southern state both expanding Medicaid and operating a state-based health exchange.

Appearing Thursday on the WNYC's "The Takeaway," Governor Steve Beshear said Kentucky can’t afford not to do it.

“We have some of the worst health statistics in the country," explained Beshear.  "If there’s some way I can attack that and change the course of history in Kentucky on health care, I’m going to do it, and the Affordable Care Act gives me a historic opportunity and a tool to do just that.”

SNIP

You can hear the complete interview with Governor Steve Beshear by clicking here.

 More than 10,000 uninsured people now signed up for coverage as of Friday.

As of 2:30 p.m. Eastern Time on 10/11/2013

213,299

unique visitors to kynect.ky.gov; viewing 4,409,080 web pages.

191,094

people conducted pre-screenings to determine qualifications for subsidies, discounts or programs like Medicaid.

31,475

applications for health care coverage have been started; 21,931 are completed.

10,290

individuals are enrolled in new affordable health care coverage.

269

small businesses have started applications for health insurance for employees.

39,941

calls managed by kynect contact center at 1-855-4kynect (1-855-459-6328).

Meanwhile, the Kentucky teabagger dead-enders are getting desperate.

David Adams' pathetic op-ed in the Courier:

Kentucky Democrats may soon turn against Obamacare in the interests of self-preservation. 

If Kentucky’s state-run health insurance exchange survives my legal challenge headed now to the Commonwealth’s Supreme Court, it will then face a stiff immediate challenge in January.

Yeah, you wish, moron.  Go on - knock yourself out.

Increase Social Security and Medicare or No Deal

If the worst-case scenario in the current D.C. clusterfuck is a default and resulting economic meltdown, the second-worst is a deal - Obama's long-sought "grand bargain" - that avoids default but requires cuts in Social Security.

Kathleen Geier at Political Animal:

Today’s New York Times features an important, and frightening, editorial about the alarming growth in extreme poverty among the elderly. According to the Times:

In analyzing the recent Census Bureau report on poverty, researchers at the National Women’s Law Center found that from 2011 to 2012, the rate of extreme poverty rose by a statistically significant amount among those 65 and older, meaning that a growing number of them were living at or below 50 percent of the poverty line. In 2012, this was $11,011 a year for an older person living alone.

$11,011 a year is “extreme,” all right — how can a person survive on such a miserably low income? Women, as usual, are disproportionately represented among the extremely poor in this age group. The Times also mentions that another report, The Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, shows an increase among the elderly poor as well, “from 9.0 percent in 2010 to 9.3 percent in 2011 and 9.5 percent in 2012.”

This is a horrifying trend. It’s clear that our retirement system is a mess. The 401(k), which a lot of people never even had access to in the first place, was an experiment that has utterly failed us. Social Security has long been a bulwark against poverty among the elderly, but clearly it’s not enough, and it needs to be increased — dramatically. So that’s exactly what the Times is going to tell us, right?

Except — no. Here’s what they say the richest country in the history of the world should do in response to this impending cat food dystopia: nothing. No, really. This is what the editorial says, in its entirety, about how we as a society should react to the specter of growing numbers of old people eating out garbage cans:

For now, the best policy response is to do no harm. For example, budget proposals to cut Social Security’s cost-of-living benefit, ill advised in any case, would be especially unwise and untimely.

I’m happy that the Times covered this issue, at least — it’s an important one, and I’m afraid it will not be going away. But “do no harm” hardly cuts it as an effective response to this problem, policy-wise, politically, rhetorically, or morally.

The problem is simple: the Social Security is too damned low. Progressives must keep hammering this message ad infinitum. If we do, maybe even out-of-touch elites like the New York Times will get it. If we don’t, we can almost certainly look forward to a whole lot of Meow Mix in our not-so-golden years.

Or more simply:

As for Medicare, here's Alan Grayson:

Of course you can make changes [that are not benefit cuts] to the program, and then make the program better. I'd like to see Medicare cover eyewear. I'd like to see it cover hearing aids. I'd like to see it cover dental work. As far as I know, most seniors have eyes, ears and teeth. [Laughs.] I think these things should be covered. I'd like to move in that direction. That would improve these programs. But in terms of cutting benefits, no - that's not fair.

QOTD

Via Crooks and Liars:

Taxes are not theft. They're a cover charge that gets you entry into a functioning society.

Thank You, Greg Collett, For Being the Perfect Example

Of the the un-self-aware, clueless selfishness of the quintessential teabagger.

Juanita Jean:

Wait. Wait. Wait a damn minute. Is there something crazy about that? His 10 kids are covered by Medicaid but he doesn’t think government should be involved in health care?

SNIP

Collett says that he’ll pay the $95 fine for not getting Obamacare until it increases so much that “it makes economic sense” for him to go ahead and get it. Oh yeah, economic sense. This guy is just full of economic sense. Has the Nobel Prize for economics been handed out yet because this guy could be a contender.

I think we’ve found that “low information voter” I keep hearing about.

His 10 kids are covered under Medicaid so screw everyone else’s kids who might make enough not to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to afford health insurance.

Greg thinks everybody else should be forced to live by his philosophy to make up for the fact that he doesn’t. There ya go — the typical tea partier.

Austerity Killed This 12-Year-Old

But Pennsylvania's obscenely rich saved entire dimes in taxes, and it was just a blah, and one without a penis - no big loss.

From Wonkette:

Before you read this story, you may want to make sure you secure any heavy objects nearby, so that you won’t hurl them through your computer monitor. From the Philadelphia City Paper, just one more example of what happens when you make government small enough to drown in a bathtub: Children will die.

Sixth-grader Laporshia Massey died from asthma complications, according to her father, who says he rushed her to the emergency room soon after she got home from school on the afternoon of Sept. 25. He says Laporshia had begun to feel ill earlier that day at Bryant Elementary School, where a nurse is on staff only two days a week. This day was not one of those days.

SNIP

On the positive side, Pennsylvania taxpayers don’t have to carry the burden of paying for a nurse to be at each school all day, so it probably all evens out. There are probably other jokes to be made about this, but right now we are a bit busy being glad we don’t yet live in the You’re On Your Own wonderland of Liberty that so many teabaggers want us to live in, where if your kid gets sick, it’s your own lookout.

Why Does Congress Suck So Bad? Because Repugs Slashed the Staff Budget

Until the Gingrich takeover in 1995, staff kept Congress honest.  The Office of Technology Assessment issued a constant stream of fact-stuffed but clear and concise reports on every issue to come before Congress, preventing members from spouting gravity-denying lies in front of TV cameras.

Veteran staffers with prosecutorial experience handled the questioning of witnesses, keeping hearings on track and avoiding wasting time with pointless grandstanding by members.

But Newtie closed the OTA and members preferred to make speeches in place of questioning and here we are.

Naked Capitalism:

Another big change took place when the Republicans took control of the House in 2010. They put through significant cuts to the budgets of individual members. The result was big reductions in the pay to Congressional staffers and the evisceration of other budget items. For instance, staffers no longer have funds to buy trade journals or travel to conferences to obtain information and develop contacts outside the Beltway reality-distortion machinery. The result is that it is becoming more difficult for staffers to get information outside the predigested, persuasively-packaged positions served up by lobbyists. And even worse, the pay levels make it well-nigh impossible to hire anyone who might be inclined to do so. As one staffer remarked, “Only the children of rich parents or people who plan to become lobbyists can afford to take this job.” And needless to say, most children of rich parents aren’t predisposed to challenge the current order of caviar for the elites, crumbs for everyone else.

And on top of that, the pay levels also assure that the staffers are overmatched by lobbyists who have top-dollar law firms providing language to be inserted in pending legislation. The average pay for new graduates of top law schools is the in the $130,000 to $167,000 range. By contrast, junior Congressional staffers make just above $20,000, mid range staffers (those with X to Y years of experience) get salaries of $30,000 to $50,000, and senior staffers (X to Y experience) receive in the $70,000s. A few very seasoned staffers might just breach the $100,000 mark. And remember, House ethics rules make it effectively prohibit to earn additional income through writing or speaking. The problem of low pay relative to job responsibilities is made worse by the fact that Washington, DC is a high-cost city by virtue of the impact of a tsunami of lobbying dollars on living costs. At the Atlantic Economy conference in March of this year, Paul Volcker voiced disapproval of the way-too-obvious sheen of prosperity in the capital. The AACRA cost index of American cities put Washington DC as number 8 of 307 urban areas, with costs 145% of this national average.

Once upon a time, it was possible to have Congress produce well-crafted, terse, durable legislation. Former member of the Australian Treasury John Hempton has called the Securities Act of 1934 the single best piece of legislation ever written. By contrast, there was a good reason Dodd Frank was a sprawling bill that left numerous issues open by punting on major questions by kicking them over to further studies or rulemaking (which was recognized to give the banking industry lobbyists a second go at watering the rules down).

The health care matter may seem a minor issue, but it’s not. When you have staffers that are already significantly undercompensated and then make it worse by inflicting another de facto pay cut on them, you just assure further bribery. It’s no different that underpaying cops leads to more abuses, like only a fraction of the cash seized in drug and numbers rackets bust being turned in (a former DA in Brigdeport, CT, a famously rough city, told em the skimming in his day was about 20%. His guess is that it is now closer to 80%).

Sadly, some corruption in government may be inevitable, but there’s a huge difference between a system which has some petty pilfering around the margin and one that is being redesigned to stymie anything other than influence-peddaling. And we can already see that the best government money can buy is a crappy product. But the people who’ve succeeded in making Congressional staffers even more susceptible to lobbying have done a masterful job of diverting attention from the real game by playing on class and economic resentment. Nothing like getting the peasants fighting among themselves to keep the nobles safe.

If citizens want a public sector that can govern, they are going to have to pay for it by either taxing the rich or raising the compensation of public servants, or probably, both. There’s no free lunch. Talented and effective people are going to go where they are rewarded, and they are going to work for those who pay them. That means an army of incompetents in Congress, or worse, an army of talented people in Congress who work for the private interests that actually pay their salaries.

Another Step Closer to the You'e-On-Your-Own Thunderdome Future the Repugs Want

The knee-jerk reaction to stories like this is to say "Don't call the police when you're in trouble. Get your own arsenal, shoot anybody who looks at you cross-eyed and claim stand-your-ground."

But of course that's what they want: a non-society, non-community of non-citizens all at each other's throats all the time. That's the real Galtian paradise for the one percent.

Aviva Shen at The Nation:

A 911 call for medical assistance ended in the fatal shooting of Georgia resident Jack Lamar Roberson Friday. Roberson was acting erratically after possibly overdosing on his diabetes medication, leading his fiancé to call for paramedics and an ambulance. Instead, Roberson’s family charges that police showed up and killed the 43-year-old in front of his mother, fiancé, and 8-year-old daughter.

Waycross Police said they were responding to reports of a man trying to commit suicide and that he had become combative. Police Chief Tony Tanner said Roberson lunged at officers with weapons and refused to drop them. Roberson’s fiancé, Alcia Herron, disputes the police story, comparing the scene to a “silent movie.”

“He didn’t have nothing in his hands at any time or period at all before they came, any time while they were here, anything. They just came in and shot him,” Herron told First Coast News. “He didn’t say nothing, the police didn’t say nothing, anything, it was like a silent movie. You couldn’t hear anything, all you could hear were the gun shots go off and I seen them going into his body and he just fell down.”

Roberson’s mother, Diane, lamented, “I saw my son go down with his hands up in the air, Lord Jesus, he had nothing in his in hands, we don’t even own a decent kitchen knife and they shot my baby down.”

An autopsy was performed Monday, but results have not yet been released. If Roberson did indeed overdose on his diabetes medication, he may well have been experiencing the tell-tale symptoms of intense anxiety and a general sense of confusion.

The two officers involved have been placed on administrative leave.

As in similar cases of unjustified tasing, the solution is not abandoning community law enforcement but rather improving it with large infusions of taxpayer cash for raising salaries that attract more stable candidates, massive training in non-violent response and a return to community policing that encourages communication rather than confrontation.

Civilization costs money. Either you're willing to pay for it or you're not.

Repugs who tell you we don't need government, or that government doesn't need money - lots of money - are barbarians.

Disability Insurance's Real Fraud is How Stingy It Is

I am personally acquainted with people who fraudulently applied for disability insurance they didn't qualify for, and were justifiably denied.

I am personally acquainted with people who correctly applied for disabiity insurance they did qualify for, but were unjustifiably denied, and ended up penniless, homeless and hopeless.

I am personally acquainted with people who were unjustifiably denied but who persisted in appealing that denial and eventually got the disability insurance to which they, as disabled members of the community, were entitled.

But I have never yet met or seen good evidence of that mythical creature, the person who fraudulently applied for disability insurance they didn't quality for, but received anyway.

George Zornick at The Nation:

It certainly gave a frightening impression. But viewers got little valuable information about the actual fraud rates for SSDI. Kroft didn’t interview any policy experts, nor any spokespeople for the program nor anyone who actually receives benefits.

Had he done so, viewers might have learned the following:

- According to the OECD, the United States has among the most restrictive and least generous disability benefit systems in the developed world—behind only South Korea.

- Two-thirds of SSDI applicants are denied on the first application. More than 60 percent are denied even after all appeals are complete.

- SSDI is funded through payroll tax contributions, and is provided to workers who have contributed enough through payroll taxes to be insured.

- There is an answer to Coburn’s question of “where did all these disabled people come from?” Demographics explain nearly all of it, and this rise in SSDI applicants was predicted as far back as 1994. Growth in the US population, the baby-boom generation entering its high-disability years and the surge of women who entered the workplace in the 1970s and 1980s and became insured under SSDI all contributed to the natural rise in beneficiaries.

- As baby boomers reach the retirement age, the SSDI growth has already begun to level off and will decline in coming years.

- There will be a shortfall in SSDI benefits beginning in 2016, but the program can pay 79 to 80 percent of benefits through 2086.

- To reach solvency, Congress would simply have to enact a modest reallocation of payroll taxes from the retirement side of Social Security to the disability side, as it has done eleven times in the past to respond to demographic changes. In other words, SSDI is a very strict program that denies far more people than it accepts, and needs a modest congressional fix to stay at full solvency. An interesting issue, for certain—but nothing like the benefit-sucking dystopia portrayed by 60 Minutes.

SNIP

Advocates like Vallas are naturally frustrated. “These media reports do a tremendous disservice to viewers as well as to people with disabilities,” she told The Nation. “Any misuse of these vital programs is unacceptable; however, it is unfortunate and disappointing when media reports mislead their viewers by painting entire programs with the brush of one or a few bad apples, without putting them in the context of the millions of individuals who receive benefits appropriately, and for whom they are a vital lifeline.”

Hold Thomas Massie Acountable for These Deaths

Andy Barr, Hal Rogers, Brett Guthrie and Ed Whifield, too - they are all refusing to pass a continuing resolution to re-open the federal government.

And now there's blood on their hands.

Coal miners are dying on the job at an alarming pace while politicians are squabbling and the government remains partially closed, the United Mine Workers of America said Tuesday.Last week was the first time since 2002 the industry had three deaths in three days — one each in West Virginia, Illinois and Wyoming. 

The union called on workers to "watch each other's back" and take extra precautions working around machinery while regular safety inspections by the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration are on hold.

Also, don't eat any chicken or anything from a kitchen where chicken has been cooked: there's a salmonella outbreak and nobody to figure out where it came from or how to stop it.

The Nobel Peace Prize Has Always Been Political

But until recently, it was political in the service of peace. Now it's political in the service of Wall Street, global elites and the Permanent War.

Norman Solomon at Firedoglake:

The announcement of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner, set for October 11, is sure to make big news. The prize remains the most prestigious in the world. But the award has fallen into an evasive pattern, ignoring the USA’s continuous “war on terror” and even giving it tacit support.

In his 1895 will, the dynamite inventor and ammunition magnate Alfred Nobel specified that Norway’s parliament should elect a five-member committee for awarding the prize to “champions of peace.” Yet the list of recent Nobel peace laureates is notably short on such champions. Instead, the erstwhile politicians on the Norwegian Nobel Committee have largely bypassed the original purpose of the prize.

SNIP

Since 2001, the Nobel Peace Prize has been on a prolonged detour around the U.S. government’s far-flung warfare, declining to honor anyone who had challenged any of it anywhere in the world. But the Nobel Committee has done more than just ignore peace activism seeking to stop U.S.-led war efforts. By giving the Peace Prize to Obama and the E.U., the committee has implicitly endorsed those military efforts as part of a rhetorical process that conflates war-making with peace-making. Orwell’s 1984 specter of “War Is Peace” looms uncomfortably large.

At times, the Peace Prize has earned goodwill in NGO circles by honoring humanitarian work that is laudable but not directly related to peace. And so far in this century, when the Nobel Committee has focused the prize on human rights, it has danced around Uncle Sam’s global shadow. The Peace Prize has gone only to dissidents in countries where governments are in conflict with Washington — such as Shirin Ebadi of Iran in 2003 and Liu Xiaobo of China in 2010 — while failing to honor any of the profuse activism against severe abuses by U.S.-backed governments.

It was not always this way. During previous decades, the annual announcement of the Nobel Peace Prize might alternately please or enrage the top leaders in the capital of a world power. In 1983, the awarding of the prize to Poland’s Solidarity leader Lech Walesa infuriated the Kremlin. When the 1992 prize went to Rigoberta Menchu, an indigenous foe of U.S.-supported tyrants killing Guatemalan civilians in large numbers, it was a much-needed rebuke to Washington.

SNIP

But in the “war on terror” world of this century, the Nobel Committee — far from an independent, evenhanded course — has steered the Peace Prize away from terrain where the U.S. government and its allies might appear to be anything other than noble peace-seekers. Relying on such a broken moral compass, the mission to assist “champions of peace” with the Nobel Peace Prize has lost its way.

Teabagger to Rational Translation

David Atkins at Hullabaloo cites an apparently nonsensical quote from Georgia Rep. Paul Broun::

“America is going to be destroyed by Obamacare, so whatever deal is put together must at least reschedule the implementation of Obamacare,” he says. “This law is going to destroy America and everything in America, and we need to stop it.”

Allow me to translate: "If the signature achievement of that Ni**er in the White House succeeds, that means the death of White Supremacy in America."

First off, I would love it if someone in the press would identify a federally elected Democrat who said anything remotely similar even about such far reaching laws as the Patriot Act or the Iraq War, much less anodyne efforts to expand the reach of private sector health insurance. There's no "both sides do it" equivalent for this.

2) What do you suppose the consequences to be of this sort of rhetoric? What if you were the sort of person who actually believed that your elected representative was telling you the truth? If a President your pastor suggested might be the Anti-Christ bringing on the end of days refused to budge on killing a law your Congressman said would literally "destroy America and everything in America," what sort of action would you be forced to take? And what if the sort of people who generally elected such politicians were armed to the teeth?

The Tea Partiers in Congress aren't just playing with political fire. They're playing with civil war. Just as the big money Chamber of Commerce boys let loose a Tea Party dragon they've already lost control of, so too may these Pied Piper Tea Party boys lose control of the people who follow them.

It won't get that ugly just yet. But wait until their demographic winter becomes fully apparent and all three branches of government revert to Democratic control. Do you suppose all these people will just lie down quietly and accept the dictates of democracy?

Obama Doesn't Need Congress to Fix Income Inequality Now

President Obama could raise wages for hundreds of thousands of workers, cap salaries for hundreds of corporate CEOs and give a permanent boost to the economy in a moment with just his signature.

Kathleen Geier at Political Animal:

Over at In These Times, Michelle Chen reports about an engine of economic inequality you may not have considered before: taxpayer-funded government contracts. She writes:

The progressive think tank Demos calculates in a new research report that private contractors have funneled up to $24 billion in federal funds into executive salaries. Yet, according to the analysis, the same system of contracted firms—from defense manufacturers to concession stands at national tourist sites—also employs hundreds of thousands of poverty-wage workers at the bottom.

There’s been talk about capping CEO pay, and earlier this year President Obama announced he supported limiting the CEO pay of defense contractors to $400,000. So far, such efforts have gotten nowhere. But reining in executive excess is important, in part because it complements ongoing campaigns to raise the pay of low-wage federal contract workers.

President Obama doesn’t even need Congress to do something about unequal pay in federal contracts. Activists are calling on him to sign executive orders that would both put a cap on executive pay for contracted firms, and create a living wage for low-wage contact employees.
They advocate other reforms to the federal contracting system as well:

DEMOS and other reform advocates recommend that contracting in general should be minimized “when work can be done more efficiently and effectively by government employees than private companies.” In addition, the group calls on the White House to enact reforms to avoid “contracts with companies that regularly violate wage and hour laws, workplace health and safety regulations, or other employment protections.”

Given the Republican-controlled Congress, President Obama has little power to proactively enact a legislative agenda. And with each passing month, he drifts closer to lame duck status. Actions to increase the wages of low-paid federal employees, or cap the executive pay of excessively compensated ones, would likely be widely popular. And as Chen argues, “taxpayer-funded federal contracts should reflect the values of a democratic social contract.” I hope the President acts soon. But given the administration’s reluctance to act on behalf of labor in previous disputes, I’m not holding my breath.

To Every KY Landowner Thinking About Taking Pipeline Money: They Will Kill You Anyway

This rancher signed an easement on his farm with Laurel Mountain Midstream, LLC, a subsidiary of Williams Co, which is trying to grab Kentucky Bluegrass land to build a pipeline to carry toxic waste products from fracking in Pennsylvania south to the Gulf to be sold overseas.

Watch his story of what happened after he signed.

Lazy Stupid Bureaucrats Ripping Off the Taxpayers

The circumstances may be unusual but the dedication is not. I'm not sure you can explain to people who have never worked in public service what it means to know that however lowly your job, you are a public servant and that doing your job is important to the smooth running of the nation.

From Salon:

Neither wind nor snow nor government shutdown could keep Rapid City, S.D.’s National Weather Service (NWS) meteorologists from showing up at the office during the unseasonably early blizzard that hit the region with record-setting snowfall this weekend. Climate Central got its hand on a memo sent from Rapid City’s NWS forecast office to Central Region Headquarters Sunday morning (they also decoded some of the abbreviated language for us):

Access to the office is still blocked. Two employees were able to hike in around some obstructions, but it is not possible to drive out of the parking lot due to snow drifts and downed trees in the neighborhood. The SOO (one who hiked in) is attempting to take two stranded employees home this morning. One forecaster hiked in for his mid shift last night, and I sent him home so he can come back tonight. Of the three who are on duty at this time, two have been here since 7 a.m. Friday, and I have been here since 3 p.m. Friday. We have two NWR (NOAA Weather Radio) transmitters down: Terry Peak and Rapid City. We have three ASOSs (Automated Surface Observing Stations) down: IEN (Pine Ridge, S.D.), RAP (Rapid City, S.D.), and PHP (Philip, S.D.).

We are on commercial power which has been stable since yesterday evening. Rapid City is pretty much paralyzed, and recovery and repair operations are in full swing. We have heard that the governor called in the national guard. Conference call briefing expected to take place later this morning. There is some concern about the potential for flooding with temperatures warming up quickly tomorrow and melting off the large snowpack. we have 1 to 4 inches of liquid equivalent on the ground and a big rain storm in the models for Friday. 8:09 a.m. MDT

In case you missed it:  because of the repug temper tantrum, those people hiking through monster snowpiles in order to make sure that Rapid City residents get timely, accurate weather reports during a weather crisis are not getting paid.

Debt Ceiling Hostage-Taking Facts

No, it is not remotely like your family budget; no, it's not a fake crisis drummed up by President Obama - fake crises is what repugs do - and no, it's not anything Democratic members of Congress have done, ever. Not once.

Steve Benen at Maddowblog:

First, a little common sense is in order. The right would have us believe that debt-ceiling increases and debt-reduction agreements simply go together -- they're the chocolate and peanut butter of U.S. fiscal policy. But even casual observers might notice an obvious flaw: the debt ceiling has been raised about 90 times over eight decades, and there haven't been 90 debt-reduction agreements over that period. So just on a surface level, we know there's a serious flaw in the argument.

Second, and more important, are the details Republicans choose to overlook. For example, since President Reagan, Congress has approved 45 debt-ceiling increases. How many of them were tied to budget deals? Seven. In other words, over the last several decades, 38 out of 45 debt-ceiling increases were not part of debt-reduction agreements (or any other policymaking measures).

Indeed, we should highlight an inconvenient detail: many leading Republican members of Congress, including a cast of characters that includes John Boehner, Eric Cantor, and Mitch McConnell, have each voted for clean debt-ceiling increases unrelated to budget deals.

And third, while Boehner desperately hopes you have a short memory, his references to the 1980s and 1990s overlooks the fact that neither party ever held the debt-ceiling hostage before. Before 2011, the notion of American policymakers threatening to crash the economy on purpose unless their demands were met was considered so hopelessly insane that neither party dared go that far.

Boehner wants to talk about the Reagan, Bush, and Clinton eras? That's a great idea -- let's talk about the fact that Republicans of these eras were open to concessions as part of budget compromises, and never once said they were prepared to trash the full faith and credit of the United States on purpose unless they got their way.

What Boehner wants to present as routine is, as a matter of reality, wholly outside the traditions of the American experiment. He's the first Speaker to ever make this threat, so he should hardly be surprised when President Obama balks at paying a ransom to encourage lawmakers to do what they have to do anyway.

As Jon Chait recently explained, "Part of the confusion is that the debt ceiling used to be an opportunity for the opposing party to denounce the fiscal irresponsibility of the president. On occasion, but not usually, debt-ceiling hikes have been appended onto budget agreements that were negotiated on their own terms. 

What's completely novel is Congress using the threat of a debt default to force the president to make unilateral policy concessions. The conventions of he-said, she-said journalism have allowed this radical development to insinuate itself into the routine backdrop of partisan squabbling."

The Republicans' favorite argument is garbage. Whether they're aware of this or not is unclear, but either way, it's not to be taken seriously.

The Pipeline and the Paradigm: Thursday Night in E-town

Too Misogynist Even for Eastern Kentucky

No, that headline is too mild.  This motherfucker went out of his way - multiple times - to say nearly outright that 13-year-old girls deserved to be sexually abused by an adult.

He's protecting child rapists so enthusiastically you'd think he was a catlick bishop.

He should be thrown off the bench and stripped of his law license.

Valerie Honeycutt-Spears at the Herald:

The Kentucky Judicial Conduct Commission on Monday publicAly reprimanded an Eastern Kentucky judge for comments he made about juvenile girls during the sentencing of an male teacher convicted of sexually abusing the students.

Frank Fletcher, chief circuit judge for the 39th judicial circuit of Breathitt, Powell and Wolfe counties, commented that the defendant "was not blind and only human" and that some of the victims did not look their age, an order said. The victims were five 13- and 14-year-old girls who were the defendant's students, the order said.

Fletcher was presiding over a sentencing hearing for a defendant who was not named in the order and had pleaded guilty to 14 counts of sexual offenses.

During that hearing, Fletcher also discussed the lack of enforcement of the school dress code and said he didn't think students should come to school wearing low-cut blouses and short skirts, the order said.

"During the hearing, Judge Fletcher made comments which could be viewed as sympathetic to the defendant," the order said.
 
According to the order, Fletcher said, when responding to a statement by the defendant's attorney, "This is a statutory offense, but is it your understanding that all of the acts that occurred were consensual?"

Just throw him in prison. They're big on consent to sexual acts in prison.

Two Things You Can Do to Protect Kentucky From the Bluegrass Pipeline

From the activists determined "to protect Kentuckians' land rights, water sources and environment from the Bluegrass Pipeline" come two simple but important actions anyone can take.

First, we want the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a comprehensive environmental impact study and needs assessment, and to deny the company permission to continue with routing and easment acquisition until the impact study and needs assessment are complete. Second, we are working diligently with state representatives to limit condemnation authority to pubic utilities. To accomplish this task, we need your help. There are two important ways you can assist:

1. Write a letter to the Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Comission at:

James Townsend
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Regulatory Branch, P.O. Box 59
Louisville, KY 40201

Ms. Kimberly Bose, Secretary
Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
888 First Street NE, Room 1A
Washington, D.C. 20426

What to Include in the Letter:

· Require a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement on new and repurposed portions of the Bluegrass NGL Pipeline Project.”

· Collaborate to conduct a full environmental analysis of the need, alternative routes and alternatives to the pipeline, and the social, environmental, and economic impacts of the project

· Advise the project proponents that no actions that would commit resources to a particular project route, including easement acquisition, so be allowed pending the completion of a comprehensive Environmental Impact Statement.

Include personal details of how the Bluegrass Pipeline could affect your land and your quality of life.

2. Call or write to your State Senator and Representative and ask them to Co-Sponsor BR 129 and BR 198:

Contact your state Senator and Representative, and ask them to “co-sponsor BR 129 (in the Senate) and BR 198 (in the House) to limit condemnation powers for oil and gas pipelines to utilities regulated by the Kentucky Public Service Commission.” Senator Higdon and Representative Floyd are the lead sponsors. You can contact your state Senator and Representative by linking to www.lrc.ky.gov/Legislators.htm or by calling them at 502-564-8100 (this is not a toll-free call).

Learn more here.

It's Our Goverrnment That Makes America Exceptional

C_R_eature at Wonkette, on how the government shutdown is destroying science:

Do you know something that makes this country exceptional? It’s not Exxon, oil companies are transnational. It’s not Goldman-Sachs, because there’s shady folks pushing piles of other people’s money around in every nation. It certainly isn’t trust fund fascists, since oligarchs are everywhere too. It’s our government’s agencies and the people who choose to work at them that’s exceptional.

Over the years this country has existed, we have painstakingly assembled a network of excellent institutions that has ensured our success. Our federal laboratories and institutional research partners are the envy of the world. This is our birthright and our true national treasure. Federal Agencies, and the federal employees who work at them, manage our resources, look after our health, see that our food is safe, maintain our security and keep our rivers from exploding into flame. They’re the folks that rush in with supplies and money when they’re hit by disasters. They watch out for storms, volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis. They scan the skies for asteroids that could wipe out our civilization. They’re the real Atlases that hold our society up and they take a torrent of abuse from misguided, ungrateful people who don’t think the jobs they do should exist at all.

It isn’t a popular viewpoint these days, but I think that it’s patriotic to be proud of our institutions and grateful of the work our Federal employees do. It should be patriotic to let them do their jobs. It should be patriotic to value their work, not to invent conspiracies to discredit it. It should be patriotic to pay them, at the very least.

It should be patriotic to want our government to work, not work to make our government fail.

Louisville Radio Host Flunks Hate Speech Test

Yes, tolerating someone else's hate speech makes you a racist, too.

Joseph Gerth at the Courier:

And so it was, just over six minutes into the show when Conway put Gary on the air.

“Hey, Gary, you’re on 84 WHAS. What’s going on, Gary?” Conway said.

“Hey, my wife had a suggestion about the ‘Panda Cam,’ ” Gary replied.

“Yeah, hold on a second, hold on a second,” Conway stopped him. “Is she OK? Is your wife OK with the ‘Panda Cam’ shutdown?”

“She’s alright with that, but, you know, she’s got a suggestion for the ‘Panda Cam,’ those who are really troubled about it, they can always just watch the ape that’s in the White House, so, an interesting suggestion,” Gary said.

“Thanks for your call. I appreciate it, I appreciate it,” said Conway, who seemed to rush Gary off the air. “Thanks for your call.”

Conway took another caller, and then, returned to talk about Gary’s call and to school him on a minor political point, but not for calling the president an ape.

Conway had a series of lame excuses each of which made him sound more racist than the last, and apparently still doesnt' get it.

But Raoul Cunningham, president of the Louisville branch of the NAACP, said use of the word “ape” in describing Obama — the nation’s first black president — was more than disrespectful. It was racist.

Likening blacks to apes and gorillas has long been a method that racists “have used to portray African Americans as subhuman,” said Cunningham, who added that using such words is hurtful and wrong.

What kind of fucking moron doesn't understand that? Oh yeah: the racist kind.

And John Johnson, executive director of the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights, said it was Conway’s duty to “say something that would prick this individual’s conscience.”“... It was disrespectful of not only the office of the president, but it implies the worst in people. It is racist,” he said.

The Public Pension "Crisis" Is Just the Latest Unprosecuted Wall Street Crime

There is no repository of public funds that the banksters have not looted with impunity so that taxpayers have to not only suffer the loss of their money, but pay double to replace what Wall Street stole.

In Kentucky, nonprofit agencies lured into the state pension system are filing suit to get out before they lose every last penny.

Mike Wynn at the Courier:

Two more quasi-governmental agencies have filed suit to pull out of the state’s troubled retirement system, arguing that they should have never been allowed to join the pension plan more than a decade ago.

Frontier Housing in Morehead and Housing Oriented Ministries Established for Service in Whitesburg filed the joint complaint in Franklin Circuit Court last week.

They are asking a judge to declare them ineligible to participate in the County Employees Retirement System, which faces more than $6.2 billion in unfunded liabilities.

SNIP

CERS is the largest of several pension plans at Kentucky Retirement Systems — the pension program for state and local workers that has $17 billion in unfunded liabilities and administers one of the worst-funded plans in the nation.

In Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi explains how Wall Street is stealing funds for public pensions.

Or watch the video as Matt Taibbi joins Amy Goodman, and Juan Gonzalez of Democracy Now! to discuss his new article.

Matt Taibbi: "The primary focus of my piece, there were a couple of things. Number one, how did these funds come to be broke the first place? I think everyone realizes that states are in fiscal crises or having trouble paying out their obligations to workers. One of the reasons is that at least 14 states have not been making their annual required contributions to the pension fund for years and years and years. So essentially, they have been illegally borrowing from these pension funds, sometimes going back decades. Another focus of the piece was the solution that a lot of sort of Wall Street funded think tanks are coming up with now is to get higher returns by putting these funds into alternative investments like hedge funds. In a lot of cases what I’m finding is that the fees that states are paying for these new hedge funds and these new types of alternatives investments are actually roughly equal to the cuts that they are taking from workers. Like in the state of Rhode Island, for instance, they have frozen the cost of living adjustment and the frozen cola roughly equals the fees that they’re paying to hedge funds in that state. So essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops, and firemen to billionaire hedge-funders."

 Time to face facts: Wall Street is no longer an asset to the U.S. or world economy, if it ever was.  It is now a monster liability that we can no longer afford.

Imprison everybody involved in financial speculation, confiscate all their assets, burn Wall Street to the ground and salt the earth so nothing rises there again.

“People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.”

If you've never been fortunate enough to hear Wendell Berry - Kentucky's Conscience - speak, here is your chance.

From PBS:

This week on Moyers & Company in a rare television interview, Bill talks to visionary, author and farmer Wendell Berry to discuss a sensible, but no-compromise plan to save the Earth.   

SNIP

Wendell Berry, one of America’s most influential writers who has written more than 40 novels, books of poetry, short stories and essays, has become an outspoken advocate for revolution. He’s calling for immediate action to end industrial farming and return to the sustainable farming methods of years past. In his interview with Bill, Berry says: “People who own the world outright for profit will have to be stopped; by influence, by power, by us.”

Watch the video here.

How the Talibangelical Republic of Kentucky Assaults Women

Yes: Any restriction - any restriction - on abortion is an assault on women. Period. Anyone who would deny those rights in any way other than speaking or writing in the most low-key, polite fashion should be in prison.

Joe Sonka at Leo Weekly:

The physical and verbal intimidation outside the clinic is far from the only obstacle women in Kentucky face when attempting to access a medical procedure that has been legal for 40 years.

Throughout the past several years, many states around the country where the Republican Party has gained power have passed new laws severely restricting abortion access. Such legislation has closed more than 50 clinics over the past three years, with 10 closing this summer in Texas and North Carolina.

Though Kentucky is the only Southern state to (narrowly) avoid passing such laws targeting abortion in recent years, the state already ranks among the most restrictive in the country regarding access to abortion, as women face legal, financial, geographical and informational barriers to reproductive health care, particularly low-income and rural women.

As poor as such access is in Kentucky, it could soon become much worse. The Democratic majority in the state House has barely held off further restrictions in recent years, but anti-abortion activists are optimistic that Republicans have a good chance of taking back the majority in the 2014 election and pushing through their legislative wish list.

Read the whole thing.

How much worse can it get?  Plenty.  Kevin Drum at Mother Jones:

Most of you probably know this already, but it's worth a reminder. All those red states that are passing anti-abortion laws usually emphasize the provision that bans abortions after 20 weeks. That tends to poll pretty well. But it's mostly a charade:

While all the attention is going to the 20-week bans, they're not the point, not by a long shot....The 20-week bans are just the most high-profile component of larger pieces of legislation whose goal is to make it impossible for women to get abortions at all, no matter what the stage of their pregnancies. The bills are inevitably crafted with provisions that will shut down as many abortion clinics as possible. Abortion clinics often require doctors from out of state to travel to the clinic, because of the harassment, threats, and even assassinations that local doctors have been subject to? Then we'll require that every doctor have admitting privileges at a hospital within a certain number of miles, which out-of-state doctors won't have. And we'll throw in some rules on how wide your hallways need to be (not kidding), meaning in order to stay open you'd have to do hundreds of thousands of dollars of remodeling. Failing that, we'll make sure that women who need abortions will have to suffer as much inconvenience, expense, and humiliation as possible.

It's these provisions, much more than the 20-week bans, that will make the largest difference for women in these states. Depending on what state they're in, they'll have to travel far—in some cases hundreds of miles—pay for hotels because of waiting periods, get lectures from doctors required to lie to their patients about things like a fictional link between abortion and breast cancer, and submit to forced and medically unnecessary procedures. These kinds of provisions aren't new, but this latest wave is occurring under the rubric of 20-week bans that are much more likely to be met with public approval, or at least the indifference most state legislation receives. Opponents of abortion rights are hoping they can get a case to the Supreme Court that will result in Roe v. Wade being overturned, but even if that doesn't happen, they can still succeed in making abortion virtually illegal in states where they have control. And they've made lots of progress already.

Like I said, you probably already knew this. But it can't hurt to hear it again. More here.

Meanwhile, civilization and human rights prevail in California, where the legislature and governor have expanded abortion rights. And nationally pro-abortion activists are going back on offense by demanding public funding for abortions.

Abortion On Demand. No restrictions. No questions asked. No waiting. No charge. Immediately available everywhere. Abortion On Demand. Anything less is a violation of human rights.

If the Shutdown Shoe Were On the Democratic Foot

Of course, throughout the Smirky/Darth Interregnum, it was the Democrats who had the power to hold the debt ceiling hostage and demand the repugs oh, say, withdraw from Iraq, cancel the Bush tax cuts and eliminate subsidies to Big Oil.  But they never did.

Next time, they'll know better.

New York Crank at No More Mister Niceblog:

But if the Republicans by some freak accident ever simultaneously control the House, the Senate and the Presidency again in the next half century, here’s what the Democrats ought to do.

First things first: stand up in the Senate and read “The Cat In The Hat,” a Dr. Seuss poem about how “somebody else” wrecks everything, and then talk nonobjectively about nonobjective art and the price of pewter in Pittsburgh, meanwhile letting preferential subsidies run out for major government contractors abnd rich land owners and industrialists.

Second, demand a 99 percent marginal tax bracket for anyone earning over $10,000,000 a year.

Third, stand up in Congress and read “The Sneetches,” a Dr. Seuss poem about a group of critters who have stars on their yellow bellies and therefore think they’re entitled to stuff nobody else has.

Fourth, demand that anyone who has ever registered Republican be forced to surrender his or her firearm, on the grounds that being Republican is a prima facie indicator of insanity.

Fifth, stand up in Congress and read the Dr. Seuss poem about the north going Zax and the south going Zax, who meet  on the Prairie of Prax “nose to nose, face to face,” and refuse to budge for each other.

Sixth, demand that Ted Cruz, John Boehner, Eric Cantor…well the list goes on, but it includes every Tea Party Republican and current corrupt shill for collapsing the government and the economy, John Boehner included. Demand all Tea Party-ites turn themselves into the FBI as the Al Qeada agents they most probably are, and confess to conspiring to destroy the United States for ideological reasons.

Seventh, stand up in Congress and read the Dr. Seuss poem about the “pair of pale green pants with nobody inside them,” another perfect metaphor for John Boehner and other “heads” of the Banana Republicans.

Eighth, institute an excess wealth tax on individuals with assets over $20,000,000. If you have $19,999,999, that’s enough to live very, very comfortably. You don’t need another dollar. Add to that an inheritance tax of 100 percent on all estates larger than $10,000,000.

When the Banana Republicans begin to scream and bleat, declare that you’re willing to negotiate nearly all these issues if they simply give you the Excess Wealth Tax, but that they refuse.

In the end, nothing tastes as bitter as your own medicine.

What Unions Are For

Will we re-discover just how essential unions are to capitalism just at the point that capitalism itself collapses?

Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

Great job by IBEW Local 520 in Austin to execute its own undercover investigation of independent contractor fraud among the city’s construction industry. Basically, employers are listing workers as independent contractors to avoid labor law. They then place these workers in dangerous situations, take advantage of the limited to nonexistent English language skills, and steal their rightful wages (not to mention taxes that should go to the state).

In case anyone ever asks what unions are good for, point them right straight to IBEW Local 520. Unions aren’t just about money. They are about dignity, safety at the workplace, labor law, and ensuring a better life for all Americans. Given how much even one local in a lightly unionized state uncovered, how much more fraud and abuse is out there? 

David Atkins has the flip side:

I'm beating a dead horse here, but it has to be said again: old answers won't work to solve new problems. Capitalism as we understand it today worked fairly well with physical products and smaller economies of scale. Everything worth buying needed lots of people to produce it, and those people needed to paid well enough to buy other things. Non-material goods were at a minimum, and mass producing items in one part of the world to be sold in another was limited to mostly to trade goods like tea that could not be supplied at home.

So long as the worst inequalities could be tempered with social safety nets, the most basic universal services provided or subsidized by government, and wages buoyed by labor organizing, the system worked as well as any economic system run by human beings could be expected.

But few people are asking themselves what becomes of human economic organization when the world's most profitable companies sell intellectual rather than physical property, and employ only a small number of people? What happens when the companies that do sell physical goods automate most of their processes? What happens when the few previously skilled jobs humans can still do become low-skill routine, when booksellers become Amazon warehouse stockers and cab drivers cease to exist entirely in a world of self-driving cars? What happens when local labor unions are helpless to organize against employers because almost any product can be produced almost anywhere in the world in a globally integrated economy?

You get rampant inequality. Countries run by right-wing politicians suffer increasing barriers to entry between classes, social instability and horrific gaps in wealth, while more left-leaning countries protect their middle classes and safety nets at the expense of high cost of living, graying demographics, choking deficits and skyrocketing unemployment.

The symptoms of a global disease are everywhere, and the old cures won't work anymore. There simply isn't enough honest work that needs doing at decent wages--perhaps at all, and certainly not within the control of any one nation-state. Technology has allowed capital to become disconnected enough from labor that the foundation of our economic systems needs serious re-examination.

Here's the Deal

Divine Irony:

The Shutdown in Ten Facts

Kevin Drum boils it down:

1. Democrats have already agreed to fund the government at Republican levels.
2. Despite what you might have heard, there have only been two serious government shutdowns in recent history, and both were the result of Republican ultimatums.
3. Democrats in the Senate have been begging the House to negotiate over the budget for the past six months, but Republicans have refused.
4. That's because Republicans wanted to wait until they had either a government shutdown or a debt ceiling breach as leverage, something they've been very clear about all along.
5. Republicans keep talking about compromise, but they've offered nothing in return for agreeing to their demands—except to keep the government intact if they get their way.

Get the rest - plus a chart! - here.

How Red States Are Fucking Over the Poor on Obamacare, Or 320,000 Kentuckians Newly Eligible for Medicaid Are the Luckiest in the World

640,000 Kentuckians are uninsured.  Or were, before Tuesday. Of those, 320,000 are working poor people making too much money for regular Medicaid, but able to get Medicaid under the new Obamacare rules.

Because unlike almost every other red state in the nation, Kentucky's governor saw clearly through the repug bullshit just what Medicaid expansion would mean to Kentucky, and told his conservatard legislators, advisors and voters to fuck off and die because he was insuring every Kentuckian no matter whose idea it was.

Shame, shame, SHAME on the repug governors denying lifesaving and poverty-killing health insurance to their working poor.

Digby:

He may not have been able to completely block the plan but they made sure the people they like to call "welfare queens" (aka parasites) got theirs. And that's what's most important:

A sweeping national effort to extend health coverage to millions of Americans will leave out two-thirds of the poor blacks and single mothers and more than half of the low-wage workers who do not have insurance, the very kinds of people that the program was intended to help, according to an analysis of census data by The New York Times.

Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured and ineligible for help. The federal government will pay for the expansion through 2016 and no less than 90 percent of costs in later years.

Those excluded will be stranded without insurance, stuck between people with slightly higher incomes who will qualify for federal subsidies on the new health exchanges that went live this week, and those who are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid in its current form, which has income ceilings as low as $11 a day in some states.

People shopping for insurance on the health exchanges are already discovering this bitter twist.

“How can somebody in poverty not be eligible for subsidies?” an unemployed health care worker in Virginia asked through tears. The woman, who identified herself only as Robin L. because she does not want potential employers to know she is down on her luck, thought she had run into a computer problem when she went online Tuesday and learned she would not qualify.

Feature, not bug.

I'm going to guess that the Republicans may think this is a good way to drive a wedge between the Democrats and this loyal voting bloc of poor people. But I doubt it will work unless they literally die. Which may actually be the plan. They love human sacrifice.

Like cutting food stamps and eliminating Headstart and defunding Meals on Wheels, denying affordable health insurance to the working poor should be a crime. A felony with a mandatory minimum of life without parole in solitary confinement.

Motherfuckers.

Joe Biden is a Class Act

Old Handsome Joe 2016.

TPM:

Vice President Joe Biden reached out to the park ranger who was chewed out by a Republican congressman on Wednesday at the World War II memorial in Washington.

"I'm proud of you," Biden told the ranger over the phone. The call was announced on the vice president's official Twitter feed.

If you've ever worked for a living, if you've ever had to tolerate an asshole publicly humiliating you for doing your job, if you've ever had a boss who genuinely appreciated your work, you don't need to know anything else about the difference between Democrats and republicans.