Fight the Lies on Solyndra, the Stimulus and Repug Hysteria

Seriously, people: everything repugs say is the polar opposite of the facts, reality and truth. You don't even have to do any research.

But you do have to fight back. Repugs have the megaphone and the Villagers are whipped. It's up to us to start forcing some facts down people's throats.

Kevin Drum:

You've probably heard of Solyndra by now, right? It's the solar power company that got $500 million in Recovery Act loans from the Department of Energy and then went belly up a couple of weeks ago.

Conservatives have been trying to paint this as a big scandal of some kind, despite the fact that: the company had plenty of private investors too; it's the only DOE loan that has failed so far; and there's no real evidence that anyone in the White House did anything worse than push OMB to speed up their decision-making process a bit in 2009. Stephen Lacey has the full timeline here.

But I think Dave Roberts probably has the bigger picture right:

Watching this unfold over the last week, I keep thinking back to "Climategate." When it first broke back in late 2009, lefties and bloggers and Dem lawmakers just ignored it, because it was obviously dumb. This left the field entirely open to a massive attack from the right, coordinated among ideological media, staffers, lobbyists, and pols. When the left finally stirred itself to action, all that emerged were a bunch of long, boring investigations into the details and good-faith efforts to be fair about how both sides a point. By the time five separate investigations had cleared the scientists of all wrongdoing, the damage was done. Now we're seeing the same script play out again.

…The right is going after this whole hog, trying to make the name synonymous with clean energy boondoggle. And the left is flailing around, throwing out this fact and

Unfortunately, I think that a bit of flailing was inevitable. Conservatives had a clear attack line: anything and everything that makes Solyndra look bad. They didn't care what. Liberals didn't have the same luxury. At the time this story broke, none of us knew enough about Solyndra to really have any idea if the company itself was defensible, so a bit of hesitancy was inevitable. But Dave is right: At this point we do know enough, and there's really no reason to hesitate any longer. Basically, Solyndra was working on a solar technology that promised to be cheaper than silicon, and at the time of the loan it looked really promising both to DOE and to private investors. But then the market turned: Silicon prices dropped, and China started producing super low-cost silicon PV. That spelled doom for Solyndra. They had a good idea, but it didn't work out.

In any case, Solyndra is a tiny fraction of DOE's green-energy loan program, and Solyndra's loan guarantees are dwarfed by those of both fossil fuel and nuclear companies, which range into the multiple billions. There was no scandal in the loan process, and there's nothing unusual about having a certain fraction of speculative programs like this fail. It's all part of the way the free market works.

Want to learn more? Read the timeline here, and then listen to Rep. Ed Markey at Wednesday's hearing. You'll learn the facts from one, and how to talk about Solyndra from the other. No more flailing, okay?

Kevin has more on the stimulus here:

Repug hysteria over Solyndra is particularly hypocritical compared to the scandal of Halliburton. David Atkins thereisnospoon at Hullabaloo:

You can't talk about the Solyndra story while ignoring the epic scale of the Halliburton story that dwarfs it both financially and especially morally. You can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking why the government is forced to invest in risky private companies to do the jobs that need doing in the first place. And you can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking how and in what ways it fundamentally differs from government investments in risky industries that conservatives do support.

And even if Solyndra were a con game, that says nothing about the solar power industry or the rest of the renewable energy industry.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

This stupid Solyndra circus is starting to remind me of the late 1990s, when any whiff of scandal was like catnip to the media. This is 1/80th of the total price of loans made from the Energy Department’s program, none of the other companies involved have failed, and yet this is supposed to be an object lesson in how green jobs cannot compete. Never mind the $40 billion in subsidies given to oil and gas companies or the hundreds of millions in loan guarantees propping up the nuclear industry. This notion of a free market in energy is ridiculous.

In point of fact, the domestic solar industry, a net exporter last year, happens to be booming.

Finally, Digby paints the big picture:

This problem was obvious when the stimulus was being proposed. The administration was desperate not to have any of the money go to projects that didn't pan out because this kind of hissy fit would be the obvious result. (Remember all the shrieking that some of the money was going to public health programs and fixing the grass on the Washington Mall?) They weren't wrong to be worried and it's actually surprised me that something like the Solyndra failure hasn't come to light earlier. Of course some of the money was going to go to failed projects, particularly when the free market fetishists insist that they go to private enterprise, the very definition of "risky." Nobody bats a thousand and the fact is that the "success" of the program isn't the most important thing about economic stimulus in any case. Getting the money into the economy is.

So this goes, once again, to the problem of right wing tropes being the default standard because liberalism is the ideology that dare not speak its name. If people understood the role of government in economic crises as being something other than "please save us by cutting spending" this would not be the problem that it is. Unfortunately, the entire population has been indoctrinated into this concept (which I recognize is easy to do) and so they are extremely skeptical of something like stimulus to begin with --- and are quite ready to believe that the whole thing is a crooked game.

What makes it most delicious for the Republicans is their ability to manipulate the press into focusing on alleged Democratic corruption (not that it doesn't ever exist, mind you) while successfully obscuring and stonewalling the very serious, high dollar corruption of the GOP. It all works together like a well oiled machine to paralyze liberal action. And the centrists, like vultures, are there waiting to leap on whatever opening either side gives them to portray themselves as the "pragmatic" "moderate" "common sense" alternative, which somehow always seems to end up being that which benefits the wealthy status quo.

Every time a repug lie goes unchallenged, liberalism dies a little. Don't let it happen.

How Climate Deniers Are Like Tobacco Liars

Click here for the video.

Via Steve Benen.

New Rule: Anyone Demanding Drug Tests Has To Take One

Everyone occasionally suggests something that later events reveal to be ill-advised, if not mind-numbingly stupid. Most of us respond with "oops, my bad, never mind."

But it takes a special combination of idiocy, hypocrisy and anti-poor-people hatred to demand a policy after it has been proven a dead-wrong failure.

Kentucky Representative Lonnie Napier, come on down!

Floyd County Times:

A piece of legislation, which, if passed, would require drug testing for welfare recipients, was filed this week in Frankfort.

According to the Kentucky Legislative Research Commission, Rep. Lonnie Napier, R-Lancaster (36th District) re-filed a bill that would require drug and substance-abuse screening for any adults in Kentucky receiving public assistance.

BR63, prefiled for the 2012 Regular Session, would set up a random testing drug program for any adult suspected of using drugs who receives public assistance, food stamps or state medical assistance.

"I've received calls from across the U.S. from individuals, legislators and the media expressing support for this bill," said Rep. Napier. "Many Americans understand that we need to balance the needs of helping those who legitimately use public assistance to support their families with eliminating the fraud of individuals who sell their food stamps and use their welfare checks to feed a drug habit."

This is the second consecutive session that Napier has filed such a bill. In the 2011 session House Bill 208, which had more than 50 cosponsors, including House Speaker Greg Stumbo and House Republican Floor Leader Jeff Hoover, received a hearing in the House Health and Welfare Committee but never came up for a vote.

BR63 would allow the Cabinet for Health and Family Services to set up a random drug testing program for individuals suspected of using drugs while receiving public assistance.

According to the Kentucky LRC, the legislation states that substance abuse testing would only occur "when a caseworker suspects substance abuse at the initial interview or at any other occasion when the caseworker comes to suspect that the recipient is abusing controlled substances."

The bill also makes the following requirements:

• Applicants would pay for their screenings and be reimbursed if they pass.

• Both parents in two-parent families would be required to comply with screening requirements

• Those failing a drug screen would be given a 60-day grace period to enter a treatment program.

BR63 also allows any children of a parent or guardian who test positive to continue receiving public assistance, and would also allow individuals who later test negative to be eligible for receiving public assistance again.

Rep. Napier believes that his re-filed bill will once again gain bipartisan support.

"Protecting the children of our Commonwealth is not a Democrat, Republican or independent issue, but one that concerns all of Kentucky," Rep. Napier said. "Other states are passing legislation requiring drug testing for those on public assistance, and Kentucky needs to follow suit."

Everybody who thinks pre-PATRIOT-Act rules on probable cause would be honored in this program, stand on your head.

This is poor-bashing, plain and simple.

Tell ya what, Lonnie: I'll bet $100 that if you drug-tested every repug member of the Kentucky General Assembly, the percentage of positive piss tests would be higher than that of the same number of Kentucky welfare recipients.

Six Big Lies on the Economy Debunked

By UpTakeVideo.



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Economy-Killers Admit: Austerity Kills

When even the international agency infamous for destroying third-world economies with arrogant demands for suicidal austerity - the agency that forced onto Europe the austerity that is destroying Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Italy - comes right out and admits that austerity destroys jobs, you know it's true.

John Amato at Crooks and Liars:

Here's another reason why President Obama needs to stop paying homage to the deficit hawks and confidence fairies.

These past few years, the Republican line on job creation has been simple: Cut government spending, tame the deficit, and unemployment will fall. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not the day after, but soon. “To put it simply,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R- Va.) said last spring, “less government spending means more private-sector jobs.” But that’s not exactly a rigorous study. So here’s a rigorous study.

In a new paper for the International Monetary Fund, Laurence Ball, Daniel Leigh and Prakash Loungani look at 173 episodes of fiscal austerity over the past 30 years—with the average deficit cut amounting to 1 percent of GDP. Their verdict? Austerity “lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more of a hit than others; it also raises unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment.”

More specifically, an austerity program that curbs the deficit by 1 percent of GDP reduces real incomes by about 0.6 percent and raises unemployment by almost 0.5 percentage points. What’s more, the IMF notes, the losses are twice as big when the central bank can’t cut rates (a good description of the present.) Typically, income and employment don’t fully recover even five years after the austerity program is put in place.

There’s also a class dimension here: A deficit cut of that size tends to cause real wage income, where lower-income folks get their money, to shrink by 0.9 percent, whereas rents and profits, which higher-income folks depend on, decline by just 0.3 percent. And, as the chart on the right shows, profits tend to bounce back faster than wages.

Kevin Drum remarks:

So what happens if we tighten our belts and cut back on spending, as Republicans unanimously want us to do? A new IMF study estimates the effect of a cutback equal to 1% of GDP, which amounts to about $150 billion in the U.S. According to both the GOP leadership and its crew of presidential candidates, this would be peanuts, a mere down payment on serious budget cutting.

And maybe so. Unfortunately, as the chart below shows, a cutback of that size would lead to lower incomes and dramatically higher unemployment. But wait! There's more! The IMF study says the effect is twice as big as the one in Chart 2 when central banks can't cut interest rates. And guess what? The Fed already has interest rates at zero. They can't cut them any further.

In other words, the GOP's version of belt-tightening would probably jack up unemployment rates by nearly a full point. Welcome to Rick Perry's America. (Via Brad Plumer.)

President Obama's American Jobs Bill falls far short of the massive, direct stimulus the economy needs, but it is a step forward on the only path out of the Great Recession and back to prosperity.

HA! Poll Results

The way repugs lie about "what Americans want," it's a wonder their tongues don't just snap right off their rollers.

Digby on Wednesday:

Per Bloomberg's poll this morning:

I am going to mention some changes that could be made to decrease the deficit. For each, please tell me if you favor or oppose the change.

Reduce Social Security benefits for high-income earners --- Favor:64%

Repeal the tax cuts for households earning more than $250,000 a year --- Favor: 54%

Raise the amount of salary subject to Social Security tax beyond the current limit of about $107,000 --- Favor: 52%

Gradually increase the Social Security retirement age to 69 --- Favor: 49%

Eliminate all tax deductions, including the home mortgage deduction, in return for lower tax rates for every tax bracket --- Favor: 48%

Let tax cuts for all taxpayers expire as scheduled and return rates to previous levels --- Favor: 48%

Cut defense weapons systems and reduce the number of armed forces personnel --- Favor: 41%

Replace Medicare with a system in which government vouchers would help participants pay for their own health insurance --- Favor: 37%

Increase co-pays for Medicare recipients --- Favor: 33%

Decrease the amount paid to hospitals and doctors who provide Medicare services --- Favor: 30%

Cut benefits by slowing the rate of automatic cost-of-living increases for Social Security payments --- Favor: 29%

Cut Medicaid, which is government help for medical care for low income people --- Favor: 21%

Just saying.

Liberals know that liberal ideas for fixing the economy and restoring the nation are the ideas the vast majority of Americans agree with and want. The key is transforming that agreement and desire into liberal political action.

Repugs Are Eating Our Lunch - Get Off the Couch and Organize

During the Reagan years, a friend used to infuriate me by saying "Americans get the government they deserve." I yelled back "I do NOT deserve THIS!"

During the Bush Interregnum, I said "NO ONE deserves this."

Now I know it's not a question of what we deserve; it's a question of what we've earned.

Steven Benen:

Matt Yglesias received a terrific email from a “well-educated, politically literate, 30-something person with a job and a kid,” who spends about 45 minutes a day thinking about politics. About 40 of those 45 minutes are spent reading Matt, me, and Ezra, and another five are spent talking to her husband, who’s been reading Kevin and Jon Chait.

She’s apparently feeling a little discouraged, though, because, as this reader put it, she didn’t “actually DO anything.”

She turned to Matt looking for suggestions. I found his response compelling.

If you’re a progressive and you feel that the political system isn’t doing what you want, it’s misguided to look at this as a personal failure of elected officials. It’s, if anything, a personal failure of you and people like you. Justice and equality doesn’t just happen because it’s nice, people need to make it happen. If it’s not happening, then its advocates are failing. And I do think there’s a lot of wisdom to the old Le Tigre song “Get Off The Internet.”

Reading and talking to like-minded people about how powerful people are failing can seem like action, but it really isn’t.

I agree with nearly all of this, though I’d probably take an ever-so-slightly different approach. Getting informed and engaging in political discourse is, to my mind, a form of action — action that the vast majority of Americans never bother to take. Investing the time and energy in reading worthwhile blogs and/or watching programs like “The Rachel Maddow Show” or “Countdown,” hopefully, on good days, gives news consumers a base of information they can use. It’s a foundation. It’s a prerequisite. It’s an important first step.

But it’s not the last step. I don’t want folks to get off the Internet and/or turn off their televisions — at least not at first — but I certainly wouldn’t mind if folks got informed and then get off the Internet and turn off their televisions.

And then what? Matt points to several worthwhile endeavors that engaged citizens can choose to pursue: volunteering for a campaign, contacting members of Congress, engaging those close to you in political conversations, etc. I don’t care if it sounds corny; efforts like these really matters. Those tired cliches about politics not being a spectator sport? They happen to be true. Ask staffers on Capitol Hill and they’ll tell you the truth — if the office is inundated with calls and letters, the member takes note.

Matt didn’t mention one of the big ones — actually showing up to vote — but that’s probably because it’s obvious, even if most Americans don’t feel compelled to do it.
He concluded, “Conservatives write and call Congress at a much higher rate than progressives, and more-or-less ordinary people hear conservative political messages from preachers and business executives all the time.”

Right, and that should, in theory, light a fire under the butts of those on the left. Tea Partiers didn’t have the foggiest idea what they were talking about — they still don’t — but they got off the couch, got engaged, and had a major impact. Conservatives don’t have to be connected to reality to do what’s necessary to help shape the larger political landscape.

And if they have the field to themselves, they’ll keep winning.

Liberals don't sit around waiting for Big Daddy to fix it. Liberals get out there and make it happen.

State-Stealing for Election Fraud

Not content with mere election-stealing, repugs are now stealing entire states.

Kevin Drum:

Policy fights are one thing, but Republican strategists have long understood that there's a deeper level to politics, one where the goal isn't merely to fight the opposition's agenda but to actively subvert the infrastructure and funding that allow the opposing party to exist at all. There are several ways Republicans do this. They try to defund the Democratic Party by undermining the interest groups that support it — for example, by passing anti-labor laws that weaken unions or tort reform laws that cripple defense lawyers. They work to change the rules to deprive Democrats of votes — for example, via voter ID laws or crack-and-pack redistricting schemes. And they ferret out political norms that everyone has always followed and then break them to their advantage — for example, with mid-decade redistricting or by institutionalizing the filibuster.

It's all pretty ruthless. So what's next? Well, most states allocate electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis. Barack Obama won Pennsylvania in 2008, and that victory gave him 21 electoral votes. The odds are good he can do it again in 2012. So the GOP's latest masterstroke is to do away with winner-take-all in the Keystone State. Nick Baumann explains:

Under the Republican plan—which has been endorsed by top Republicans in both houses of the state's legislature, as well as the governor, Tom Corbett—Pennsylvania would change from this system to one where each congressional district gets its own electoral vote....Under the Republican plan, if the GOP presidential nominee carries the GOP-leaning districts but Obama carries the state, the GOP nominee would get 12 electoral votes out of Pennsylvania, but Obama would only get eight—six for winning the blue districts, and two (representing the state's two senators) for carrying the state. This would have an effect equivalent to flipping a small winner-take-all state—say, Nevada, which has six electoral votes—from blue to red. And Republicans wouldn't even have to do any extra campaigning or spend any extra advertising dollars to do it.

And it's not just Pennsylvania:

It doesn't necessarily end there. After their epic sweep of state legislative and gubernatorial races in 2010, Republicans also have total political control of Michigan, Ohio, and Wisconsin, three other big states that traditionally go Democratic and went for Obama in 2012. Implementing a Pennsylvania-style system in those three places—in Ohio, for example, Democrats anticipate controlling just 4 or 5 of the state's 16 congressional districts—could offset Obama wins in states where he has expanded the electoral map, like Virginia, North Carolina, Colorado, or New Mexico. "If all these rust belt folks get together and make this happen that could be really dramatic," says Carolyn Fiddler, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which coordinates state political races for the Dems.

Needless to say, there's no legitimate reason for this. "Pennsylvania Ponders Bold Democrat-Screwing Electoral Plan," reads Dave Weigel's Onion-esque headline, and that about sums it up. It's just a cynical ploy to change the electoral map to arbitrarily favor the Republican Party. If Pennsylvania looked likely to swing Republican, they'd change the rule back without blinking.

But here's what really so disheartening about the whole thing. As recently as a couple of decades ago this would have been a bridge too far for most of the party's mandarins: conservative pundits and senior GOP officials would have sounded off against it because it was just too raw a deal even for flinty political pros. But now we live in the era of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove and Tom DeLay and Fox News. There's really no one left who might object to this merely out of a decent respect for institutional integrity and fairmindedness.

Steve Benen:

In a close national race, an obnoxious scheme like this can alter the entire presidential election, all because Republicans are afraid to fight on a level playing field. The appropriate response from the GOP should be to nominate a strong candidate and present a worthwhile agenda, not to shamelessly rig an election.

As Republicans have become increasingly radicalized, the “war on voting” has become far more intense. We see this in the voter-ID laws and restrictions on voter-registration drives, not to mention GOP efforts to undermine labor unions. But divvying up “blue” states’ electoral votes, while leaving “red” states as winner-take-all, is fundamentally offensive to how our democracy is supposed to operate.

SNIP

Republicans are simply out of control. They know no limits; they have no shame.

David Atkins at Hullabaloo:

The article is actually incorrect on one point: there is a way for cooler heads to fight back from a legal perspective, and that way is to push for the National Popular Vote act to be ratified in states totaling at least 271 electoral votes.

But beyond that, the Republicans know their goose is cooked long-term, from a demographic perspective. Most of the tea party and Fox News base will be gone or senile within a generation. With Latino population growth and unabated GOP racism, Texas will be a blue state within 10-15 years or even sooner. That by itself spells doom for the Republicans at the Presidential level as they are currently constituted. Congress won't be quite as problematic for them and yes, it's true as I have argued before that that doesn't mean permanent majorities for Democrats in a binary system. But the basic demographics do make the road that much tougher for Republicans to take the White House now and on into the future.

Increasingly, the GOP is going to need to turn to blatantly dishonest gimmicks like this to remain viable at a presidential level. But there's a big problem.

If the GOP-controlled "blue states" do this, and if President Obama wins the popular vote by a few million votes and would have won the election under the current rules but "loses" to Rick Perry under the GOP rules, I can practically guarantee mass civil disobedience. It would ignite hot flashes in what is already a cold civil war. In 2000 Democrats took the theft of the election lying down, mostly because the 1990s had been a fairly comical time politically speaking, political tensions except among the activist classes didn't run nearly as high as they do today, and even most Democrats figured that Bush wouldn't be so bad. The sort of acquiescence we saw in 2000 won't happen again. It would be the beginning of the end of the current system.

Unfortunately, the only thing scarier than contemplating riots and a potential 2nd civil war, is what the reaction of a President Rick Perry would be to such a scenario. You don't exactly have to guess.

Benen often tosses a sarcastaic thanks a lot to the 2010 voters who gave us this mess. But the real architects of this latest crisis are the Democratic voters who sat at home in November, out of either despair or petty vengeance on a Democratic Party that revealed itself to be almost as corporate-owned as the repugs, if not quite as venal.

Next year, Disappointed Democrats, we liberals who held our noses and voted for the not-repugs would appreciate if you would think about something other than your tiny, fragile ego, like your fellow Americans who do not deserve the serfs-and-lords tyranny Rick Perry will force down our throats.

So get the fuck off your ass and vote.

Tax These Fuckers

The freakazoids have been getting an unjustified free ride for far too long. Tax exemption for god-botherers is stupid, unfair and in the reality-based world a direct violation of the Establishment Clause - even when they kept their traps shut about politics.

But when they blatantly violate even the weak, pathetic IRS rules on political involvement - then they are begging for the ax.

Steve Benen:

First up from the God Machine this week is a look at formerly apolitical preachers who are, at levels unseen in a long while, mobilizing their congregations for the 2012 election cycle.

[Iowa pastor Mike Demastus] is part of a growing movement of evangelical pastors who are jumping into the electoral fray as never before, preaching political engagement from the pulpit as they mobilize for the 2012 election.

This new activism has substantial muscle behind it: a cadre of experienced Christian organizers and some of the conservative movement’s most generous donors, who are setting up technologically sophisticated operations to reach pastors and their congregations in battleground states.

The passion for politics stems from a collision of historic forces, including heightened local organizing around the issues of abortion and gay marriage and a view of the country’s debt as a moral crisis that violates biblical instruction. Another major factor: Both Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Bachmann, contenders for the GOP nomination, are openly appealing to evangelical Christian voters as they blast President Obama’s leadership.

Both Republican and Democratic strategists say that pastors have already helped unleash an army of voters to shape the GOP primary contests in Iowa and South Carolina, two states with large numbers of conservative Christians. They are making plans to do the same in states that are even more important to next year’s general election. Those include Ohio, Florida, Iowa, Virginia and Colorado, where evangelical voters make up about a quarter of the electorate and their participation could greatly aid Republicans.

Richard Land, president of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, called it the “congregational version of the ‘tea party.’”

The religious right, as a political movement, has clearly fallen on hard times as powerhouse groups and leaders, prominent in the ’80s and ’90s, have faded from public view. But the concept of organizing churches into a political machine hasn’t gone away at all, and with technological advances and a reinvigorated right-wing base gearing up for 2012, this is an initiative that can make a difference, both in Republican nominating contests and the general election.

The one thing to keep an eye on, though, is federal tax law — tax-exempt institutions, including churches, are legally prohibited from intervening in political campaigns, either in support of or opposition to candidates and parties. If pastors are organizing voter-registration drives, they’re well within the law. If they’re organizing “Rick Perry for President” efforts, the IRS may be stopping by for a visit.

Anybody who pays attention knows that the freakazoid motherfuckers have been violating IRS rules on political involvement for decades; hell, here in Kentucky they call out Democratic candidates by name from the pulpit week after week, saying flat out that voting Democratic is the direct path to hell. Worse than abortion. Worse than being gay. Worse than enjoying sex.

Best and fastest way to stop them is to yank their tax exemption and take their money. All of it.

Parliament Is Not Amused

The British know from terrorism. They've been fighting it at home for going on a century now.

I'm part Irish and have a soft spot in my heart for the Irish Republican Army, vicious terrorists though I know them to be. But I've never given them money, never promoted their cause, even in private, much less with the full-throated public support Rep. Peter King has given them for decades.

King is free to do that here, in the U.S. Our government long resisted the entreaties of the British to name the IRA a terrorist group and treat their supporters accordingly. King was safe from British ire, as long as he stayed on this side of the pond.

But in addition to being a hypocritical bigot, King is a moron. He accepted an invitation to testify - on terrorism! - before the British Parliament, the first member of Congress to do so.

It didn't go well.

“Representative Peter T. King testified about terrorism on Tuesday before a legislative committee, but the committee was in London, not Washington, and the New York Republican found himself the uncomfortable object of tough questioning. In a hearing on ‘Roots of Violent Radicalization,’ Mr. King was asked about his own past support for the Irish Republican Army.”

Too bad they didn't arrest the fucker. A few years in the Tower staring down at the chopping block would do him a world of good.

American Jobs Act in Kentucky

What specifically will the American Jobs Act accomplish in your state? The answer is here.

In Kentucky, this is what we'll get:

1. Tax Cuts to Help America’s Small Businesses Hire and Grow

The President’s plan will cut the payroll tax in half to 3.1% for employers on the first $5 million in wages, providing broad tax relief to all businesses but targeting it to the 98 percent of firms with wages below this level. In Kentucky, 70,000 firms will receive a payroll tax cut under the American Jobs Act.

2. Putting Workers Back on the Job While Rebuilding and Modernizing America

The President’s plan includes $50 billion in immediate investments for highways, transit, rail and aviation, helping to modernize an infrastructure that now receives a grade of “D” from the American Society of Civil Engineers and putting hundreds of thousands of construction workers back on the job. Of the investments for highway and transit modernization projects, the President’s plan will make immediate investments of at least $455,500,000 in Kentucky that could support a minimum of
approximately 5,900 local jobs.

The President is proposing to invest $35 billion to prevent layoffs of up to 280,000 teachers, while supporting the hiring of tens of thousands more and keeping cops and firefighters on the job. These funds would help states and localities avoid and reverse layoffs now, and will provide $406,500,000 in funds to Kentucky to support up to 6,100 educator and first responder jobs.

The President is proposing a $25 billion investment in school infrastructure that will modernize at least 35,000 public schools – investments that will create jobs, while improving classrooms and upgrading our schools to meet 21st century needs. Kentucky will receive $390,900,000 in funding to support as many as 5,100 jobs.

The President is proposing to invest $15 billion in a national effort to put construction workers on the job rehabilitating and refurbishing hundreds of thousands of vacant and foreclosed homes and businesses. Kentucky could receive about $20,000,000 to revitalize and refurbish local communities, in addition to funds that would be available through a competitive application.

The President’s plan proposes $5 billion of investments for facilities modernization needs at community colleges. Investment in modernizing community colleges fills a key resource gap, and ensures these local, bedrock education institutions have the facilities and equipment to address current workforce demands in today’s highly technical and growing fields. Kentucky could receive $54,700,000 in funding in the next fiscal year for its community colleges.

3. Pathways Back to Work for Americans Looking for Jobs.

Drawing on the best ideas of both parties and the most innovative states, the President is proposing the most sweeping reforms to the unemployment insurance (UI) system in 40 years help those without jobs transition to the workplace. This could help put the 79,000 long-term unemployed workers in Kentucky back to work.

Alongside these reforms, the President is reiterating his call to extend unemployment insurance, preventing 30,900 people looking for work in Kentucky from losing their benefits in just the first 6 weeks. And, across the country, the number saved from losing benefits would triple by the end of the year.

The President is proposing a new Pathways Back to Work Fund to provide hundreds of thousands of low-income youth and adults with opportunities to work and to achieve needed training in growth industries. Pathways Back to Work could place 2,200 adults and 8,700 youths in jobs in Kentucky.

4. Tax Relief for Every American Worker and Family

The President’s plan will expand the payroll tax cut passed last December by cutting workers payroll taxes in half next year. A typical household in Kentucky, with a median income of around $43,000, will receive a tax cut of around $1,330.

5. Fully Paid for as Part of the President’s Long-Term Deficit Reduction Plan.

To ensure that the American Jobs Act is fully paid for, the President will call on the Joint Committee to come up with additional deficit reduction necessary to pay for the Act and still meet its deficit target. The President will, in the coming days, release a detailed plan that will show how we can do that while achieving the additional deficit reduction necessary to meet the President’s broader goal of stabilizing our debt as a share of the economy.

Beat that, Mitch, you insult to sad turtles everywhere.

Theft by Private Contractor

No, this isn't about specific incidences of overcharging. The most efficient public contract is still far more expensive than paying public employees. Even unionized ones.

Kevin Drum:

So how about those overpaid government workers? We should probably just can the whole unionized lot of them and contract out their jobs to the lean-n-mean private sector. That'd save the taxpayers some serious dough, wouldn't it?

Maybe not. There's a reason that private contractors are called Beltway Bandits, after all. The Project on Government Oversight took a look at how much private contracting really costs once you look at actual billing rates, and the private sector didn't come out looking too good:

The result of POGO’s analysis was shocking. In 94 percent (33 of the 35) of the occupational series POGO analyzed, the average annual contractor billing rate was much more than the average annual full compensation for federal employees: on average, contractors may be billing the government approximately 1.83 times what the government pays federal employees to perform similar work. When the average annual contractor billing rates were compared with the average annual full compensation paid to private sector employees in the open market, POGO found that in all occupational classifications studied, the contractor billing rates were, on average, more than twice the costs incurred by private sector employers for the same services.

The most egregious example of an outsourced occupational classification that resulted in excessive costs rather than cost savings is claims assistance and examining—administrative support positions that involve examining, reviewing, developing, adjusting, reconsidering, or recommending authorization of claims by or against the federal government. To provide these services, on average, federal employees are fully compensated at $57,292 per year, private sector employees are fully compensated at $75,637 per year, and the average annual contractor billing rate is $276,598 per year.

$276,000 per year! Nice work if you can get it. Federal labor unions might be tough bargainers, but they're pikers compared to the suits on mahogany row. Those are the guys who really know how to work the system. If you're on the lookout for overpaid chair warmers with cushy jobs, that's your first stop.

Liberals have known this all along. This isn't even the first time a credible study has turned up the facts to prove it. Maybe this time people will listen.

Ten Years Stupider, Ten Years Closer to a Police State

Every single one of us is just one unlucky seat assignment and a bunch of panicked idiots away from this. Or worse.

From the Atlantic:

And here is a further AP report, with the headline "No charges against 3 detained at Detroit airport."

Now, read this account from one of those three who escaped with the apparent good fortune of not being charged. Her name is Shoshana Hebshi, and she is an American citizen with a Saudi father and a Jewish mother. She is married and is herself a mother, and she lives in the Midwest. That's her picture, at right, from a column she did about her love of bicycles, two years ago while a graduate student in journalism at Iowa State.

To skip ahead to the punch line, on this flight she was sitting by chance in a row with two Indian-looking passengers, neither of whom knew the other or knew her. But collectively they aroused the suspicion of other passengers or crew, and when the plane landed, heavily armed troops stormed aboard, handcuffed the three of them, and took them off for extensive questioning. After which they were eventually released with "no charges filed." Which is fair enough, considering that like everyone else on the plane they were simply trying to travel from Denver to Detroit and had done absolutely nothing wrong except to have "suspicious" looks.

A sample of her account of what happened after the plane landed and was directed away from the normal gate area:

Then what looked like the bomb squad pulled up. Two police vans and a police communication center bus parked off the road. I started to get nervous and rethink my decision to fly on 9/11.
[A Tweet she sent out: Cops in uniform and plainclothes in a huddle in rear of plane.]

We had been waiting on the plane for a half hour. I had to pee. I wanted to get home and see my family. And I wanted someone to tell us what was going on. In the distance, a van with stairs came closer. I sighed with relief, thinking we were going to get off the plane and get shuttled back to the terminal. I would still be able to make it home for dinner. Others on the plane also seemed happy to see those stairs coming our way.

[Another Tweet: I see stairs coming our way...yay!]
Before I knew it, about 10 cops, some in what looked like military fatigues, were running toward the plane carrying the biggest machine guns I have ever seen-bigger than what the guards carry at French train stations.
[My last tweet:
Majorly armed cops coming aboard]

Someone shouted for us to place our hands on the seats in front of us, heads down. The cops ran down the aisle, stopped at my row and yelled at the three of us to get up. "Can I bring my phone?" I asked, of course. What a cliffhanger for my Twitter followers! No, one of the cops said, grabbing my arm a little harder than I would have liked. He slapped metal cuffs on my wrists and pushed me off the plane. The three of us, two Indian men living in the Detroit metro area, and me, a half-Arab, half-Jewish housewife living in suburban Ohio, were being detained.

The cops brought us to a parked squad car next to the plane, had us spread our legs and arms. Mine asked me if I was wearing any explosives. "No," I said, holding my tongue to not let out a snarky response. I wasn't sure what I could and could not say, and all that came out was "What's going on?"...

And, much later, after the authorities begin to establish that she is not a threat:

Again, I asked what was going on, and the [policeman] said judging from their line of questioning that I could probably guess, but that someone on the plane had reported that the three of us in row 12 were conducting suspicious activity. What is the likelihood that two Indian men who didn't know each other and a dark-skinned woman of Arab/Jewish heritage would be on the same flight from Denver to Detroit? Was that suspicion enough? Even considering that we didn't say a word to each other until it became clear there were cops following our plane? Perhaps it was two Indian man going to the bathroom in succession?

Her account goes on, at quite some length. I think if you start reading you will continue. I should say that I cannot independently vouch for her version of events -- and it is so specific and detailed that I'm sure it will be challenged by the airline or police if it's inaccurate. But the worst thing about it is that it is so easy to believe. Compared with this, the Vance Gilbert "flying while black" case is nothing.

The AP story quotes the official response thus:

FBI Detroit spokeswoman Sandra Berchtold said ultimately authorities determined there was no real threat.

"Due to the anniversary of Sept. 11, all precautions were taken, and any slight inconsistency was taken seriously," Berchtold said. "The public would rather us err on the side of caution than not."

"Caution," yes. But read this story and see if "caution" or "restraint" is the term that comes to your mind.

In a free and diverse society "the public would rather" that officials recognize the balance and tradeoff between "complete" security, on the one hand, and on the other the liberties and privacies that distinguish open societies from police states. In the Gilbert case, you can argue that once the authorities were called in, they kept their cool and reached a sensible "let's calm things down" decision. That is not how this latest case looks to me.

Assuming that Ms. Hebshi's account is correct, this is an important instance for recognizing what security-state, permanent-fear thinking has done to us. Which is a necessary part of the tenth-anniversary reflections.

Knowing this kind of thing is the logical consequence of fear-mongering over "security" is just one of the many reasons liberals fiercely opposed the disgustingly-named USA PATRIOT Act. It's still here, it's still worse than you imagine, and it still needs a stake driven through its heart and the corpse burned to ash and buried in lime.

"It's time to get to work" - Pass This Jobs Bill

I'm getting fully behind this one, because I think it may just be the first genuine no-lose proposition for the Democratic Party in this administration.

Obama has pounded it hard, every day, for a week now, and shows no sign of letting up. Yes, of course the repugs are going to kill it. But the bigger the push, the more people harass their congress critters over it, the more publicity it gets, and the bigger the price repugs will pay for killing it.



Full transcript here.

Bipartisanship is for Suckers

Or, "Aren't dems tired of always being the bottom with never a reach-around?"

Digby:

Michael Tomasky does an interesting analysis of the congressional support for Bush vs Obama. He discusses a number of high profile votes and crunches the numbers, coming up with this:

Here’s how it all adds up:

Average Democratic Senate support for Bush: 45.5 percent.
Average Democratic House support for Bush: 36.8 percent.
Average combined Democratic support for Bush: 41.1 percent.
Average Republican Senate support for Obama: 8.8 percent.
Average Republican House support for Obama: 2.7 percent.
Average combined Republican support for Obama: 5.75 percent.

It's fairly clear that the "both sides do it" trope is nonsense. And to my eyes, knowing the kind of centrist and right wing policies the president has proposed, it shows just how radical the Republicans have become.

However, judging from how the Villagers have interpreted this sort of result in the past rather than it being proof that the Republicans are mindlessly obstructionist, it proves that the country is "center-right." The point isn't that Republicans refuse to vote for a "liberal" president's proposals, it's that all those Democrats voted with President Bush. That's how you "get things done in Washington."

And they're not entirely wrong, unfortunately. The fact is that in Washington the only things that are even contemplated in the first place are center-right or right wing policies and the only way to "get them done" is to let Republicans do them with Democratic help. Anything else is considered out of the mainstream, regardless of the substance.

Still, it's good to see the numbers laid out so starkly. There can be no doubt of the imbalance. The only question is what it means.

Liberals are good-hearted souls who are easy to take advantage of - once. The next time, we fight back.

Quote of the Day

The Rude Pundit:

Simply put, there's a fuck of a lot more poor people in this country than rich ones. And they get to vote, too, despite the best efforts of Republicans, and they get the same number of votes per person as the wealthy. The Rude Pundit's said it before and will say it again: If the Democrats wanted to shake up the electoral landscape, they'd throw trucks of money at a movement to get the poor to the voting booths. They'd create jobs programs and housing programs and more real and actual liberal stuff, and when someone brought up tax breaks, they'd have a press conference from a shack in FuckYerCousin, Tennessee, to ask why.

If, you know, Democrats still gave a damn about the poor.

Celebrate Constitution Day

September 17 is Constitution Day.

Constitution Day commemorates the formation and signing of the U.S. Constitution by thirty-nine brave men on September 17, 1787, recognizing all who, born in the U.S. or by naturalization, have become citizens.

On September 17, 1787, the delegates to the Constitutional Convention met for the last time to sign the document they had created. We encourage all Americans to observe this important day in our nation's history by attending local events in your area.

Celebrate Constitution Day through activities, learning, parades and demonstrations of our Love for the United State of America and the Blessings of Freedom Our Founding Fathers secured for us.

You might want to concentrate on the First, Fourth, Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.

Kentucky's Finest

By @KYYellowDog

"In Sergeant Dakota Meyer, we see the best of a generation that has served with distinction through a decade of war.

Let me tell the story. I want you to imagine it’s September 8, 2009, just before dawn. A patrol of Afghan forces and their American trainers is on foot, making their way up a narrow valley, heading into a village to meet with elders. And suddenly, all over the village, the lights go out. And that’s when it happens. About a mile away, Dakota, who was then a corporal, and Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez-Chavez, could hear the ambush over the radio. It was as if the whole valley was exploding. Taliban fighters were unleashing a firestorm from the hills, from the stone houses, even from the local school.

And soon, the patrol was pinned down, taking ferocious fire from three sides. Men were being wounded and killed, and four Americans -- Dakota’s friends -- were surrounded. Four times, Dakota and Juan asked permission to go in; four times they were denied. It was, they were told, too dangerous. But one of the teachers in his high school once said, “When you tell Dakota he can’t do something, he’s is going to do it.” (Laughter.) And as Dakota said of his trapped teammates, “Those were my brothers, and I couldn’t just sit back and watch.”

The story of what Dakota did next will be told for generations. He told Juan they were going in. Juan jumped into a Humvee and took the wheel; Dakota climbed into the turret and manned the gun. They were defying orders, but they were doing what they thought was right. So they drove straight into a killing zone, Dakota’s upper body and head exposed to a blizzard of fire from AK-47s and machine guns, from mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

Coming upon wounded Afghan soldiers, Dakota jumped out and loaded each of the wounded into the Humvee, each time exposing himself to all that enemy fire. They turned around and drove those wounded back to safety. Those who were there called it the most intense combat they’d ever seen. Dakota and Juan would have been forgiven for not going back in. But as Dakota says, you don’t leave anyone behind.

For a second time, they went back -- back into the inferno; Juan at the wheel, swerving to avoid the explosions all around them; Dakota up in the turret -- when one gun jammed, grabbing another, going through gun after gun. Again they came across wounded Afghans. Again Dakota jumped out, loaded them up and brought them back to safety.

For a third time, they went back -- insurgents running right up to the Humvee, Dakota fighting them off. Up ahead, a group of Americans, some wounded, were desperately trying to escape the bullets raining down. Juan wedged the Humvee right into the line of fire, using the vehicle as a shield. With Dakota on the guns, they helped those Americans back to safety as well.

For a fourth time, they went back. Dakota was now wounded in the arm. Their vehicle was riddled with bullets and shrapnel. Dakota later confessed, “I didn’t think I was going to die. I knew I was.” But still they pushed on, finding the wounded, delivering them to safety.

And then, for a fifth time, they went back -- into the fury of that village, under fire that seemed to come from every window, every doorway, every alley. And when they finally got to those trapped Americans, Dakota jumped out. And he ran toward them. Drawing all those enemy guns on himself. Bullets kicking up the dirt all around him. He kept going until he came upon those four Americans, laying where they fell, together as one team.

Dakota and the others who had joined him knelt down, picked up their comrades and -- through all those bullets, all the smoke, all the chaos -- carried them out, one by one. Because, as Dakota says, “That’s what you do for a brother.” "

Full transcript here.

Dakota Meyer was 21 years old when he earned the Medal of Honor. His hometown in Adair County nestles in the foothills of south-central Kentucky, a long drive from the metropolises of Louisville, Lexington or even Bowling Green. He's back home now, working construction. Because that's what Kentucky heroes do.

If the Rich Aren't Paying 90 Percent, They're Not Sharing the Sacrifice

Via Down with Tyranny.

Brett Guthrie is a Lying Moron, Part 2

Yep, he's done it again. Sent out a "constituent email" chock-full of lies, stupidity and insanity.

"Get Our Economy Moving Again" reads:

Unfortunately, I am concerned that the president’s proposals follow the previous pattern of borrowing and spending.

The only thing wrong with President Obama's American Jobs Act is that it's about one-tenth the size it needs to be.

We have learned we cannot create a growing economy by spending more money in Washington and creating uncertainty for job creators.

Lies and stupidity. The evidence of the last 78 years is that the only thing that creates a growing economy is government spending.

Assuming that Kentucky's Second District's Only Congress Critter mendaciously means "corporate fat cats" when he says "job creators," it was just a month ago that Wall Street sent a clear message to congressional repugs: stop fucking around and start hiring people.

Our jobs agenda must be centered on supporting our nation’s small businesses and removing the burdensome regulations coming out of Washington that are impeding growth, employment and prosperity.

More lies and stupidity. Actual small business owners overwhelmingly say government regulations are neither burdensome nor an obstacle to hiring. The biggest obstacle to hiring is that their customers have no money to spend. Because they have no jobs. Because governments are laying people off rather than hiring them.

Over the recent August district work period I heard the same sentiment from small business owners, manufacturers and farmers across Kentucky.

Lying coward. Guthrie did not hold one single public meeting with his constituents this summer. That's because he knows the Second District's "small business owners, manufacturers and farmers" want taxes raised on rich people and corporations to pay for massive infrastructure projects that put millions of Americans back to work.

I support a plan to get our economy moving again. The proposal, put forward by House Republicans, addresses a number of regulatory burdens that have stifled job growth. We must get the government out of the way of job creation by reigning in the overeager regulations coming out of the EPA, the Obama health care law and Dodd-Frank financial reform that have our economy hanging in uncertainty.

Motherfucking lies. The "plan" Guthrie supports will kill any chance of economic recovery. Again, regulations are not preventing a single job. Government does not "get in the way of job creation;" government creates jobs through deficit spending. It has done so successfully for 73 years. Until Guthrie and his fellow assholes started obstructing everything President Obama does.

The Affordable Care Act is, in fact, already saving lives and lowering health care costs. The Dodd-Frank financial reform falls far short of what is needed to fix what's wrong with Wall Street and the banks, but because it doesn't regulate them enough.

By flipping off the switch on the federal regulatory factory we can restore certainty to our economy and foster the climate of prosperity that employers need to hire and grow their businesses.

Crazier than a shithouse rat. It was severe lack of financial industry regulations (repealing Glass-Steagall) that led directly to the 2008 economic disaster, and only President Obama's February 2009 stimulus kept the recession from becoming a full-blown Depression.

Here are fact-based charts to prove it.

During his speech, the president said any ideas should be put forward. I have voted in favor of dozens pro-growth measures designed to create jobs.

Guthrie has voted for dozens of bug-fuck insane repug plans to eliminate the middle class and turn America into a lords-and-serfs economy.

I hope we can work to find common ground to restore America’s competitive edge.

Unless you are voting in favor of President Obama's American Jobs Act, you motherfucking liar, that is the worst lie of all.

As always, please contact me with any questions or your thoughts on how we can create jobs and get our economy back on track.

And there's a poll!

What do you think is the most important priority to spur economic growth?

Stop overreaching federal regulations

Reduce the tax burden on small businesses

Achieve energy independence

Cut federal spending and reduce the federal debt

Unsure

The only thing on that list that would actually "spur economic growth" is "achieve energy independence." But of course Guthrie doesn't mean curing our addition to fossil fuels, which is the only path to true "energy independence." No, he means leveling every last mountain in Kentucky for planet-killing coal.

But we won't live to see civilization drowned and burnt, because Guthrie's plan to "cut federal spending and reduce the federal debt" will ensure we all die of the poverty first.