Reverse Inequality is the Only Solution

We have been moving toward a lords-and-serfs economy for so long, and the right-wing noise machine has drilled acceptance of inequality into the national consciousness so deeply that we are no longer able to recognize, much less address, the real cause of our current crisis.

Robert Reich at Nation of Change:

The econ­omy won’t re­ally bounce back until Amer­ica’s surge to­ward in­equal­ity is re­versed. Even if by some mir­a­cle Pres­i­dent Obama gets sup­port for a sec­ond big stim­u­lus while Ben S. Bernanke’s Fed keeps in­ter­est rates near zero, nei­ther will do the trick with­out a mid­dle class ca­pa­ble of spend­ing. Pump-prim­ing works only when a well con­tains enough water.

Look back over the last hun­dred years and you’ll see the pat­tern. Dur­ing pe­ri­ods when the very rich took home a much smaller pro­por­tion of total in­come — as in the Great Pros­per­ity be­tween 1947 and 1977 — the na­tion as a whole grew faster and me­dian wages surged. We cre­ated a vir­tu­ous cycle in which an ever grow­ing mid­dle class had the abil­ity to con­sume more goods and ser­vices, which cre­ated more and bet­ter jobs, thereby stok­ing de­mand. The ris­ing tide did in fact lift all boats.

Dur­ing pe­ri­ods when the very rich took home a larger pro­por­tion — as be­tween 1918 and 1933, and in the Great Re­gres­sion from 1981 to the pre­sent day — growth slowed, me­dian wages stag­nated and we suf­fered giant down­turns. It’s no mere co­in­ci­dence that over the last cen­tury the top earn­ers’ share of the na­tion’s total in­come peaked in 1928 and 2007 — the two years just pre­ced­ing the biggest down­turns.

SNIP

Even­tu­ally, of course, the bub­ble burst. That ended the mid­dle class’s re­mark­able abil­ity to keep spend­ing in the face of near stag­nant wages. The puz­zle is why so lit­tle has been done in the last 40 years to help deal with the sub­ver­sion of the eco­nomic power of the mid­dle class. With the con­tin­ued gains from eco­nomic growth, the na­tion could have en­abled more peo­ple to be­come prob­lem solvers and in­no­va­tors — through early child­hood ed­u­ca­tion, bet­ter pub­lic schools, ex­panded ac­cess to higher ed­u­ca­tion and more ef­fi­cient pub­lic trans­porta­tion.

We might have en­larged safety nets — by hav­ing un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance cover part-time work, by giv­ing tran­si­tion as­sis­tance to move to new jobs in new lo­ca­tions, by cre­at­ing in­sur­ance for com­mu­ni­ties that lost a major em­ployer. And we could have made Medicare avail­able to any­one.

Big com­pa­nies could have been re­quired to pay sev­er­ance to Amer­i­can work­ers they let go and train them for new jobs. The min­i­mum wage could have been pegged at half the me­dian wage, and we could have in­sisted that the for­eign na­tions we trade with do the same, so that all cit­i­zens could share in gains from trade.

We could have raised taxes on the rich and cut them for poorer Amer­i­cans.

But start­ing in the late 1970s, and with in­creas­ing fer­vor over the next three decades, gov­ern­ment did just the op­po­site. It dereg­u­lated and pri­va­tized. It cut spend­ing on in­fra­struc­ture as a per­cent­age of the na­tional econ­omy and shifted more of the costs of pub­lic higher ed­u­ca­tion to fam­i­lies. It shred­ded safety nets. (Only 27 per­cent of the un­em­ployed are cov­ered by un­em­ploy­ment in­sur­ance.) And it al­lowed com­pa­nies to bust unions and threaten em­ploy­ees who tried to or­ga­nize. Fewer than 8 per­cent of pri­vate-sec­tor work­ers are union­ized.

More gen­er­ally, it stood by as big Amer­i­can com­pa­nies be­came global com­pa­nies with no more loy­alty to the United States than a GPS satel­lite. Mean­while, the top in­come tax rate was halved to 35 per­cent and many of the na­tion’s rich­est were al­lowed to treat their in­come as cap­i­tal gains sub­ject to no more than 15 per­cent tax. In­her­i­tance taxes that af­fected only the top­most 1.5 per­cent of earn­ers were sliced. Yet at the same time sales and pay­roll taxes — both tak­ing a big­ger chunk out of mod­est pay­checks — were in­creased.

Most telling of all, Wash­ing­ton dereg­u­lated Wall Street while in­sur­ing it against major losses. In so doing, it al­lowed fi­nance — which until then had been the ser­vant of Amer­i­can in­dus­try — to be­come its mas­ter, de­mand­ing short-term prof­its over long-term growth and rak­ing in an ever larger por­tion of the na­tion’s prof­its. By 2007, fi­nan­cial com­pa­nies ac­counted for over 40 per­cent of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate prof­its and al­most as great a per­cent­age of pay, up from 10 per­cent dur­ing the Great Pros­per­ity.

SNIP

The real rea­son for Amer­ica’s Great Re­gres­sion was po­lit­i­cal. As in­come and wealth be­came more con­cen­trated in fewer hands, Amer­i­can pol­i­tics re­verted to what Mar­riner S. Ec­cles, a for­mer chair­man of the Fed­eral Re­serve, de­scribed in the 1920s, when peo­ple “with great eco­nomic power had an undue in­flu­ence in mak­ing the rules of the eco­nomic game.” With hefty cam­paign con­tri­bu­tions and pla­toons of lob­by­ists and pub­lic re­la­tions spin­ners, Amer­ica’s ex­ec­u­tive class has gained lower tax rates while re­sist­ing re­forms that would spread the gains from growth.

Yet the rich are now being bit­ten by their own suc­cess. Those at the top would be bet­ter off with a smaller share of a rapidly grow­ing econ­omy than a large share of one that’s al­most dead in the water.

SNIP

Re­viv­ing the mid­dle class re­quires that we re­verse the na­tion’s decades-long trend to­ward widen­ing in­equal­ity. This is pos­si­ble notwith­stand­ing the po­lit­i­cal power of the ex­ec­u­tive class. So many peo­ple are now being hit by job losses, sag­ging in­comes and de­clin­ing home val­ues that Amer­i­cans could be mo­bi­lized.

SNIP

As the his­to­rian James Truslow Adams de­fined the Amer­i­can Dream when he coined the term at the depths of the Great De­pres­sion, what we seek is “a land in which life should be bet­ter and richer and fuller for every­one.”

That dream is still within our grasp.

Read the whole thing.

If you are old enough to remember the Liberal Prosperity of 1940 to 1980, tell the story to everyone you meet. If you are not old enough to remember it, ask to hear the story from everyone old enough to tell it.

Liberals know we all do better when we all do better.

Think Your Right to Vote is Secure? Think Again

We've known since at least November 2000 that repugs are all about stopping Democratic voters from voting. They've always pretended they're fighting "voter fraud," which doesn't exist but which gives them a nice cover for actual election fraud.

Now they've dropped the pretense.

From TPM Muckraker:

Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers."

Most conservative criticism of voter registration drives aimed at poor and minority communities has been under the guise of worries about voter fraud. Vadum's column is notable because he isn't just pretending to be worried about the nearly non-existent threat of in-person voter fraud -- he just doesn't think poor people should be voting.

Late Update: Responding to what he says are misrepresentations of his view, Vadum writes that of course he thinks poor people have the right to vote, he just doesn't want anybody to help them since their votes "could lead to the destruction of the republic."

Vadum clarifies that it is "destructive to register welfare recipients to vote so that they can vote themselves more government benefits. It is even worse that our tax dollars are used to register welfare recipients at welfare offices. It is a policy that would cause the Founding Fathers to roll over in their graves."
But, he adds: "Of course those who are legally qualified to vote should be allowed to vote but our tax dollars shouldn't be used to underwrite the destruction of the republic."

"Poor people" is just repug-speak for people who vote Democratic: minorities, students and other young people, the disabled, elderly and disadvantaged. And the stop-Democratic-voters program is much, much bigger than you think.

Kevin Drum:

I almost forgot about this, but Ari Berman has a terrific piece in Rolling Stone this week about one of my pet topics: the relentless Republican drive to pass laws designed to reduce voting rates among traditional Democratic constituencies:

All told, a dozen states have approved new obstacles to voting. Kansas and Alabama now require would-be voters to provide proof of citizenship before registering. Florida and Texas made it harder for groups like the League of Women Voters to register new voters. Maine repealed Election Day voter registration, which had been on the books since 1973. Five states — Florida, Georgia, Ohio, Tennessee and West Virginia — cut short their early voting periods.

Florida and Iowa barred all ex-felons from the polls, disenfranchising thousands of previously eligible voters. And six states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures — Alabama, Kansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — will require voters to produce a government-issued ID before casting ballots. More than 10 percent of U.S. citizens lack such identification, and the numbers are even higher among constituencies that traditionally lean Democratic — including 18 percent of young voters and 25 percent of African-Americans.

Here's my favorite passage:

After the recount debacle in Florida in 2000, allowing voters to cast their ballots early emerged as a popular bipartisan reform. Early voting not only meant shorter lines on Election Day, it has helped boost turnout in a number of states — the true measure of a successful democracy. "I think it's great," Jeb Bush said in 2004....But Republican support for early voting vanished after Obama utilized it as a key part of his strategy in 2008.

....That may explain why both Florida and Ohio — which now have conservative Republican governors — have dramatically curtailed early voting for 2012. Next year, early voting will be cut from 14 to eight days in Florida and from 35 to 11 days in Ohio, with limited hours on weekends. In addition, both states banned voting on the Sunday before the election — a day when black churches historically mobilize their constituents.

If this weren't so loathsome, you'd almost have to admire it. I mean, would it ever even occur to you to specifically ban voting on the Sunday before election? It wouldn't to me. But that's because I don't have quite the reptilian mind it takes to figure out that this might affect black churches disproportionately compared to white churches, and therefore provide a small advantage for Republicans.

But Republican strategy gurus have exactly that kind of mind. Thus we get laws like this one, plus many, many more designed for exactly the same purpose. Berman runs them all down for you, so read his whole piece. This is revolting far beyond anything we should accept as normal politics, and it's a disgrace that the Supreme Court allows it to continue.

But it isn't happening at the federal level: it's happening in your back yard. Do you know who your Secretary of State is? Is your SoS Democratic or Republican? What kind of voting laws are your state legislators passing right now?

Digby:

There are a lot of scary things going on in our political and economic culture right now. The growing police state, the dysfunctional governing structures, the economic failure and corruption. But this one goes right to the heart of our democracy and attacks it head on.

The movement has been leading up to it for decades, but it's picked up speed in the last 12 years. They impeached a Democratic president and stole an election in a two year time span. They fired US Attorneys for failing to rig elections and dismantled the voting rights section of the DOJ. They've packed the courts with anti-democratic judges and filed cases before them to create a sense of systematic voter fraud that doesn't actually exist. And last November they made their move into state houses all over the country and wasted no time in creating laws to disenfranchise as many liberal voters as possible.

Democrats had better hope that the coming elections aren't close. If they are, there's just no way they can win with these laws that are coming on line. And that's the plan.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) will hold hearings (this) week on state-level voter suppression efforts, i.e., voter ID laws, tighter voting registration requirements, and other "ACORN-inspired" GOP efforts.

Watch those carefully, and take notes. You'll need then for the next time the repugs in your state try to restrict voting to white male property owners.

Lack of Regulation is What Kills

Let's end Labor Day with a reminder that strong labor, a strong middle class and a strong economy depend on strong regulations strongly enforced.

The first government regulations, from more than a century ago, were put in place to save lives. Adulterated food and patent medicines were literally killing people by the thousands every year.

Even if such regulations did "strangle business" according to the repug lie, the regulations would still be necessary and cost-effective - because they save lives.

karoli at Crooks and Liars reminds us what happens when regulations are absent or unenforced.

Nearly a year ago to the day, San Bruno spontaneously combusted. As attractive as it may be to blame Satan, the report issued by federal investigators places responsibility firmly on the shoulders of just about everyone at PG&E, past and present.

Via LA Times:

The National Transportation Safety Board also said PG&E exploited the lack of monitoring by regulators, who mistakenly placed "blind trust" in the utility.
The report Tuesday concluded that poor pipeline welds went undetected because of a lack of inspections by the company and inadequate monitoring by state and federal regulators. The utility also lacked a workable emergency response plan that board members said could have helped to prevent the devastation in the city of San Bruno.

"This represents a failure of the entire system — a system of checks and balances that should have prevented this disaster," said Robert L. Sumwalt, an NTSB board member. "The seam weld may have been the technical reason, but this was an organizational accident."

What's shocking, though, is how far back the failures go. In the report, the NTSB pinpoints faulty welds as far back as 1956. And of course, PG&E burned $46 million in the 2010 election to try and take over utilities maintained by municipalities, so they could make lots of money and not keep their pipelines maintained. Fortunately, they failed in that attempt.

The depth and breadth of the errors enumerated in this report reminds me of Rick Perry's ridiculous call for President Obama to place a moratorium on all regulations, if elected. Sure, that's what we need.

Perry said:

We’re calling today on the president of the United States to put a moratorium on regulations across this country, because his regulations, his EPA regulations are killing jobs all across America.

Actually, no. Lack of enforcement is killing people all across America, and if Rick Perry had his way, that would be just fine. That many fewer people to govern, I suppose.

Liberals know that government regulation not only saves lives, it protects business from unfair competition and from itself.

The repug prescription would, as usual, harm the very constituency repugs claim to protect.

Un-Privatize Public Service and Save Millions

It's been decades since the corporatizing repugs started the privatization craze, and the evidence is in: all the results show overwhelmingly that handing public service over to private corporations ruins the service and wastes millions of dollars.

Fittingly considering that prisons were the first to be privatized, local law enforcement and corrections officials are now leading the charge to return services to public hands.

From the Courier:

Members of the Kentucky Jailers Association are pushing the state to cancel contracts with a pair of private prisons next summer and transfer some of the inmates to county jails, a move that would also redirect millions of state dollars to the jails.

The jailers say that because the state Department of Corrections pays local jails to house state inmates, the move could help jails across Kentucky reduce budget deficits.

Department of Corrections spokesman Todd Henson said making such a move wouldn’t go smoothly because of the laws governing which inmates may be housed at jails and which must remain in prisons, according to The Kentucky New Era. Not all the inmates at the private prisons are eligible for transfers to county jails, Henson said.

Kentucky’s contracts with Nashville, Tenn.-based CAA for two private prisons expire on June 30. CCA operates the Marion Adjustment Center in Marion County and Otter Creek Correctional Center in Floyd County.

Kentucky pays for Marion Adjustment Center to house at least 794 inmates. It pays $37.99 per day for minimum-security inmates and $47.98 for medium-security inmates.
The state pays for Otter Creek to house at least 600 inmates, at a rate of $44.26 each per day.

That totals roughly $21.6 million each year, at minimum.

Even in that cesspool of corporate destruction, Florida.

WhyIHateCCA at Firedoglake:

Sheriff Michael Page of Hernando County, Florida, is the latest in a line of Sheriffs to inherit the headache that is the county jail. After being operated by CCA for 22 years, the facility had fallen into exceptional disrepair, after CCA had neglected to perform millions of dollars worth of required maintenance. The county took over the facility a little more than a year ago and started the long process of upgrading the security, staff, and conditions of the jail.

Initial projections by then-Sheriff Richard Nugent hypothesized that the county could save up to $200,000 compared to what CCA would have charged. It turns out that de-privatizing the jail has actually saved Hernando County taxpayers more than $1,000,000 this year. Maybe Ric Scott and JD Alexander ought to reconsider their bullheaded push to privatize half the state’s prison system.

Liberals know that public employees always do the job better and for less than corporations with contracts.

Tax Incentives Cause Layoffs

Just as much as they "create jobs." Which is not at all. But can it really be a coincidence that this same scenario plays out over and over again in state after state?

From the Herald:

In May, after the world learned that U.S. military Special Forces had found and killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan, workers at Bluegrass Station in Lexington celebrated.

"Many folks contributed to the success of this strategic mission in addition to those who carried it out," Howard Yellen, a Lockheed Martin vice president, wrote in a monthly newsletter. "Some included our colleagues in SOF CLSS!"

Yellen would know: His job since October has been to head SOF CLSS, or Special Operations Forces Contractor Logistics Support Services, at the Lexington facility, where Lockheed is doing work that is part of a 10-year, $5 billion contract awarded last year to modify a variety of equipment for Special Forces.

The contract, along with Lockheed's promise to invest $26 million in Bluegrass Station, convinced Kentucky economic development officials to approve $15 million in potential tax credits and $415,000 in other incentives on the promise of 224 more jobs at the facility.

But now, three months later, hundreds of workers at Bluegrass Station have learned they might be let go at the end of September.

Lockheed Martin says it has decided to in-source work that was being done by DS2, a subcontractor that it co-owned but now has divested itself of, according to Lockheed spokesman Ken Ross. Bringing the jobs in-house will save money for Lockheed customers, the company says.

As of Monday, Lockheed Martin said 499 workers have been affected by the change but as many as 422 might be hired back. At least 77 will be laid off, but that number could rise because workers will be competing against outsiders for the jobs.

Liberals know that tax incentives for businesses are a suckers's game. Businesses open, relocate, add jobs, layoff employees and close for practical economic reasons - customer base, stable/educated workforce and strong infrastructure - that have nothing to do with tax incentives. If a state is stupid enough to hand tax incentives to a company the company is smart enough to take them, but don't think such incentives influence any company decisions.

Don't Be Fooled By "Americans Elect"

I understand your frustration: Obama is a huge disappointment, the Democrats are corporate shills with no backbone, and the republicans are just crazed monkeys flinging shit.

Surely there's an alternative, right?

Maybe, but "Americans Elect" ain't it.

karoli at Crooks and Liars:

Never let it be said that Republicans make politics easy or understandable, despite their Frank Luntz talking points, and the mysterious Americans Elect group is a terrific example of how they muddy up elections, messages, and confuse voters.

Let's start with what David Atkins wrote last week over at Digby's place:

The GOP has figured out that it is much more intelligent in American politics to consolidate an unassailable ideological voter and donor base, win what elections they can essentially by default, and push the Overton Window as far as humanly possible toward conservatism while in office. And when Democrats hold office, as they inevitably will? Then prevent them from governing as Democrats:

At our 25th college reunion in 2003, Grover Norquist — the brain and able spokesman for the radical right — and I, along with other classmates who had been in public or political life, participated in a lively panel discussion about politics. During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.

One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”

Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

Far from being insane, this approach is actually eminently rational. The GOP needn't hold the presidency every cycle. All they need to do is prevent a Democratic President from accomplishing much of anything progressive while forcing him or her to clean up Republican messes. Then when they inevitably get back in office, they can continue to ratchet public policy as far to the right as possible until they inevitably lose again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Aligning with this strategy, they pull their most insane ideologues out of the mothballs to take a run at the presidential nomination, engaging their wingnut base and getting voters mobilized for the general election where a centrist will be nominated (Bush, McCain, Dole, and so on) and the rest will jockey for the VP slot.

This is how Republicans do it, and with a complicit media, they get away with it. The constant false equivalence, the appeal to the mysterious "independent" voter in the news, the polls that report how disgusted everyone is with partisan politics. All of it, points directly back to the core strategy of never allowing a Democrat to govern as a Democrat.

Enter "Americans Elect," the "populist internet" alternative to the two party system. Here's what AE's creators know: By being vague and inviting "clicktocracy" they can fool the ones who aren't already fiercely partisan, that "center of the spectrum" group that blows with the wind. And boy, have they fooled some people.
Who is Americans Elect?"

According to their pretty website, it's just voters like you and me who are tired of the party machines and want to use this fabulously democratic Internet thing to nominate a candidate for President.

What they really want to do is use hedge fund money, Republican shills, and a touchy-feely sort-of-social website to run a third party candidate. Think about this: So far, it's got moderate Republicans and pissed-off lefties on it. You think they'll make a willing coalition?

The only real solution to all three problems: Obama's penchant for surrender, DINOs and shit-flinging repugs is to make more liberals. One at a time. From the ground up. For decades.

It's how the repugs destroyed Liberal Prosperity, and it's the only way we'll get it back.

By Crushing Labor, Capitalism Destroys Itself

Because all wealth comes from labor

Capitalism's fundamental error is rejecting this fact: without labor, there is no capital.

The only time capitalism has truly thrived n this country is when working people earned good pay with good benefits: the four decades between World War II and the Reagan Regression.

As soon as Big Money decided they could do better by crushing workers - and persuaded politicians of both parties to help them do it - the Great Liberal Prosperity began to decline.

But plutocrats toasting the imminent death of unions and the rise of a lords-and-serfs economy are celebrating their own demise.

Shamus Cooke at Truthout:

"Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy itself," said Mr. Roubini, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. "We thought markets worked. They're not working."

The world economy is in shambles and about to get worse, according to even mainstream economists. How bad is anybody's guess. Some things, however, are certain: the recovery that politicians have been promising for years existed only in their heads. The reality of the situation is now apparent to millions of people across the globe, who, before, clung to the empty promises of economic recovery. This newfound consciousness will inevitably find expression in the political realm and, more importantly, the streets.

A key aspect of this sudden mass awareness is in response to high unemployment and the deeply unpopular measures that politicians are forcing upon working people, both byproducts of the Great Recession. Politicians are blaming "the markets" for demanding austerity measures, but "markets" are simply places where wealthy people invest their money. To guarantee a profitable return on their money these investors demand that labor laws be squashed and social programs be eliminated, all over the world.

Spain, for example, is one of many countries having austerity measures forced down their throats. Reuters reports:

"Analysts see the shaking up of the country's inflexible labor laws [laws that protect workers] and the easing of hiring and firing [so older, activist, or slower workers can be fired] as vital to restoring the country's competitiveness. The labor reforms are crucial. They will help to restore growth [profits] in the long term. Growth is the only way out of these adverse fiscal trends,' said Luigi Speranza, analyst at BNP Paribas." [May 27, 2010]

To summarize, creating new laws that enable Spanish corporations to work their workers harder will be better for profits.

Greece faces a similar austerity plan, according to The Guardian UK:

"Tax increases, spending cuts and wage reductions and a sweeping privatisation programme have led to violent protests in Greece, with many arguing that the International Monetary Fund and European Union have demanded too high a price for their financial support." [August 2, 2011]

In the United States, these policies find expression in the attack against public-sector unions and the targeting of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid for cuts, while mass unemployment is allowed to act as a very efficient way to lower wages for all workers.

Politicians have made it clear that economic growth, especially corporate profits, will increase in response to these anti-worker policies. They are only partially right. Corporate profits in fact have been on the rise, but the austerity measures have been responsible for the depressed economies throughout Europe and the US. When workers' wages are lowered and social programs are decimated, working people and the poor are left with little money for any purchases other than the bare necessities. Without consumer demand for their products, corporations curtail operations even more. This global dynamic has been decades in the making, with the recession having finally forced the issue into the forefront.

SNIP

Since illusions of an economic recovery have now been shattered, it's up to working people to demand that their labor unions and community groups unite to tax the rich and corporations in order to finance a massive jobs program. Fortunately, the AFL-CIO is organizing actions for the first week of October to demand jobs and oppose cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Many within the labor movement are calling for massive demonstrations across the country for October 1. It will take these types of actions to unite working people to fight for a positive solution to the economic crisis.

Read the whole thing.

Then find your local Labor Day parade and get out there and march for workers, for capitalism, for America.

There is No Such Thing as Domestic Oil

So anybody and everybody who talks about lowering gas prices or improving security or increasing energy independence by drilling for more oil is a motherfucking liar.

Digby:

Some man on TV keeps telling me that building the tar sands pipeline will create cheap energy for Americans and make us energy independent. Guess what?

In pushing for the Obama Administration’s approval of TransCanada’s proposed Keystone XL tar sands pipeline, the North American oil industry and its political patrons argue that the pipeline is necessary for American energy security and its construction will help wean America of dependence on Mideast oil. But a closer look at the new realities of the global oil market and at the companies who will profit from the pipeline reveals a completely different story: Keystone XL will not lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil, but rather transport Canadian oil to American refineries for export to overseas markets.

Well hell. Whodda thunk it?

If anyone wants to know how this works, they need to get on the cluephone to Alaska:

JUNEAU - Today, Alaska Representatives Pete Petersen and Chris Tuck (both D-Anchorage), and Representative Scott Kawasaki (D-Fairbanks) sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder asking that he investigate Alaskan fuel prices as part of his investigation of nationwide gasoline prices.

“Alaska produces more oil than most countries, but Alaskans still pay more at the pump than anyone else in the U.S. Something’s not right,” said Rep. Petersen. “Any investigation into high fuel prices should certainly include a hard look at the situation in Alaska.”

Last week, Holder announced that he will conduct an investigation of gasoline prices in the United States. Since 2008, Alaska has consistently had the highest gasoline prices in the nation. According to a May 26 report from AAA, the average price for a gallon of gasoline in Alaska is $4.10, excluding state taxes. The next highest state is Hawaii at $4.08, which has no oil production.

“In Fairbanks, the high cost of heating fuel is crippling,” said Rep. Kawasaki. “We need to get to the bottom of this before Fairbanks families have to face another winter wondering if they’ll be able to afford to heat their homes.”

I have friends who are leaving the state because the cost of heating oil was more than their mortgage last year. "Energy independence" for Alaska hasn't meant low prices. Their oil is shipped to the West Coast and overseas and their gas and heating oil prices are higher than everywhere else in the US. That whole rationale is a crock.

Any way you look at oil - wasted tax dollars, high expense, climate change, spill pollution, energy weakness, etc. - it's just suicidally stupid to waste another minute or taxpayer dime on that shit.

Liberals know the sooner we start a crash Manhattan Project for renewable energy, the sooner we'll be able to consign oil to the Stupid Mistakes We Shouldn't Have Made and Paid Far Too Much For bin.

Callous Arrogance of Bushies Still Takes Your Breath Away

One day soon, we're all going to look real stupid trying to explain to our grandchildren why we didn't execute fuckers like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Dubya for war crimes.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

This is the widow of the Army Ranger I wrote about recently. I'm glad that she got the all-too-rare opportunity to tell one of these callous warmongers to his face what she thinks of him and his enablers:

Two people were removed from Friday’s Donald Rumsfeld book signing at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, including the Yelm widow of an Army Ranger who blames the military for her husband’s suicide.

Security officers for the former secretary of defense escorted Ashley Joppa-Hagemann out by the arm, she said this evening. She and Jorge Gonzalez, the executive director of Coffee Strong, a Lakewood-based anti-war group that links soldiers with benefits and counseling, confronted Rumsfeld as he promoted his memoir, “Known and Unknown.”

According to an account posted today on Coffee Strong’s web site:

Mrs. Joppa-Hagemann introduced herself by handing a copy of her husband’s funeral program to Rumsfeld, and telling him that her husband had joined the military because he believed the lies told by Rumsfeld during his tenure with the Bush Administration.

Joppa-Hagemann complained about Rumsfeld’s response to her account of Staff Sgt. Jared Hagemann’s multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and his death at age 25. He belonged to the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment.The web site said Rumsfeld's

only response was to callously quip, ‘Oh yeah, I heard about that.’ Despite the reply, Mrs. Joppa-Hagemann continued to lay the blame directly at the feet of Rumsfeld and the military for not providing enough care for soldiers and veterans returning from deployments in combat zones. However, within moments Ashley and Jorge were dragged from the Post Exchange by a group of 5-6 security agents and military police officers, and told not to return.

A base spokesman said the pair were causing a minor disturbance. “Two people were quietly and peacefully escorted out of the PX after they caused a disturbance at the book signing,” public affairs officer Bud McKay said.

Joppa-Hagemann said the pair spoke calmly and weren’t trying to make a scene. She should have been allowed to finish talking to Rumsfeld, she said.The pair did take a picture with Rumsfeld, after Gonzalez unbuttoned his shirt to reveal an “Iraq veterans against the war” T-shirt.

Another Unforced Error

Guess this news came too late to give President Obama a winning argument against the repugs:

Zandar:

We keep hearing from Republicans that "Obama regulations and high taxes are destroying America's small businesses and jobs!" and repeat it as a mantra, which largely goes unchallenged by the "liberal" media. When asked for proof, Republicans usually just go SHUT UP CUT TAXES NOW and cover their ears. McClatchy finally got around to asking small business owners if regulations and taxes were putting them out of business.

They said "no."

McClatchy reached out to owners of small businesses, many of them mom-and-pop operations, to find out whether they indeed were being choked by regulation, whether uncertainty over taxes affected their hiring plans and whether the health care overhaul was helping or hurting their business.

Their response was surprising.

None of the business owners complained about regulation in their particular industries, and most seemed to welcome it. Some pointed to the lack of regulation in mortgage lending as a principal cause of the financial crisis that brought about the Great Recession of 2007-09 and its grim aftermath.

Fantastic news! That'll put an cork in the nonstop repug bitching about "burdesome regulations." Wait'll Obama starts bashing them with this ... um. Sigh.

Erik Loomis at Lawyers Guns and Money:

Obama’s decision to not implement stricter clean air standards might be the final blow to anyone who had hopes for him as an environmental president. While he campaigned on promoting clean energy and fighting climate change, he’s had to scale much of that back in the face of congressional opposition and Republican extremism.

This I can understand on some level–if you can’t get the votes, you can’t get the votes.

But the president’s greatest power on environmental issues is through the executive branch and working with regulatory agencies. We saw George W. Bush do this very effectively–he wanted to eviscerate environmental regulations and he did. But Obama has generally refused to go down this road. While I think most of us were encourage by the appointment of Stephen Chu as Secretary of Energy, his appointment of Ken Salazar as opposed to someone like Raul Grijalva as Secretary of the Interior was very disappointing. Salazar has always been friendly to the energy industry and we’ve seen his Department of the Interior follow that path. Obama has not been strong on rallying for the National Park Service (which provides jobs, good environmental management considering the number of visitors and a big place in Americans’ hearts). He hasn’t pushed much for wilderness or new protections for federal lands. He signed the wilderness bill in 2009, but that was drafted before he took office.

Like most other issues, Obama caved on clean energy pretty fast, opening up drilling off the Atlantic Coast, apparently thinking this would get petroleum companies behind his energy policy, which showed his typical naivete when it comes to how Washington works. He stopped deepwater drilling after last year’s oil spill but that’s on its way back to pre-spill heights with no real additional regulations to prevent future problems.

And now we see Obama opposing the rules on clean air developed by his own EPA, apparently because he buys into the idea that environmental regulations hurt the economy and cause unemployment, an assertion commonly repeated but without empirical evidence.

It’s all extremely discouraging. I mean, I’ll vote for the guy, but that’s about it. The alternative will be atrocious on environmental issues, but it’d be nice to see Obama flex some presidential muscle and put through behind the scenes what he can’t get done through Congress. Alas, no.

But it's even worse than that, as Steve Benen explains:

President Obama is going to deliver a big speech on the economy on Thursday, and in the weeks that follow, there will presumably be at least some talks between Democrats and Republicans about job-creating ideas. Democratic leaders, in both the White House and Congress, will be pushing for things like infrastructure investments, and Republicans will be pushing for measures like weakening/eliminating environmental regulations.

With this in mind, even if West Wing officials sincerely believed these ozone standards would be bad the job market, why not keep this realization close to their chest, and then trade it to Republicans in exchange for something else? Why not use the rules as a bargaining chip?

Because Barack Obama treats valuable bargaining chips as if they were covered with the Ebola virus: he throws them away as fast as he can.

Liberals use every tool in the toolbox, and when those don't work, liberals invent and build new tools. Whatever it takes, and whatever works. That's what built the Liberal Prosperity.

What Are You Doing Tomorrow to Support Labor?

Kenneth Quinnell at Crooks and Liars:

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is very active in advance of the Labor Day holiday. In addition to releasing the video above (and another video, see below), the organization released it's "America Wants To Work Action Plan." The plan (which can be read in detail here) includes six planks:

1. Rebuild America’s schools and transportation and energy systems: The plan argues that reinvesting in this critical, but crumbling, infrastructure will create millions of new jobs.

2. Revive U.S. manufacturing and stop exporting good jobs overseas: A number of policy proposals are included in this section, including strong opposition to free trade deals.

3. Put people to work doing work that needs to be done: This one is largely a repeat of No. 1 above, but also includes other policy options proposed by progressive members of Congress.

4. Help federal, state, and local governments avoid more layoffs and cutbacks of public services: This is an important focus -- the bipartisan assault on government workers at all levels is a big problem with the current failure in boosting the job market.

5. Help fill the massive shortfall of consumer demand by extending unemployment benefits and keeping homeowners in their homes: These moves are so obvious, it's a crime that they haven't been done yet.

6. Reform Wall Street so that it helps Main Street create jobs: Wall Street used to help Main Street, but they've moved away from that. Maybe we should do something about that.

The organization also launched a "Who Do You Heart" campaign for Twitter and Facebook, asking everyone to let everyone know what group(s) of workers they are thankful for this Labor Day. Anyone can post to Facebook or Twitter via a web interface for the campaign.

Gordon Skene has a historical reminder:

In 1941 it was only a matter of time before the U.S. would be engaged in a shooting war. On that Labor Day it was about building up military strength for what was going to be a very long haul and the Labor Movement was crucial to what would become a Herculean War Effort.

In this Labor Day Address (which fell on September 1st), President Roosevelt called on the American people to put aside fundamental differences and focus on what needed to be done.

Pres. Roosevelt: “On this day, this American holiday, we are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women. The preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them, but to the whole future of Christian civilization.”

In 1941 Labor was regarded an an integral part of American society.

Today, it's all different.

Hear the speech here.

And get the latest labor news roundup here.

Look at What Those Horrible Unionized Public School Teachers Have Done

They've done what everybody said they never could: raise reading and math scores for ALL eighth-graders for 20 years.

Kevin Drum:

The charts below are taken directly from the most recent NAEP report card, generally viewed as the "gold standard" among measures of student achievement. Here are the results among eighth-graders over the past 20 years in reading:

Overall scores are up.
White scores are up.
Black scores are up.
Hispanic scores are up.

And for math:

Overall scores are way up.
White scores are way up.
Black scores are way up.
Hispanic scores are way up.

Obviously it would be nice to be doing even better. It would be nice if black and Hispanic scores were catching up faster. We still have plenty of lousy schools that we should be working hard to improve. And achievement results among twelfth-graders are more ambiguous. School reform is an important topic and worth spending a lot of time on.

Still, keep these basic results in the back of your minds. Contrary to widespread opinion, our children are doing better today than they were 20 years ago. We're making progress, not falling ever further behind.

Click here to see the charts.

Time after time after time, when public employees - with their unions and their health insurance and their paid sick time and their defined-benefit pensions - go up in direct comparison to privatized, corporate employees - with their minimum wage and no benefits and massive profits for owners - public employees turn out to be not just less expensive, but far more efficient and effective than their modern serf competition.

Liberals created the civil service system of professional public employees more than a century ago. We were right about it then, and we're still right about it now.

Trying to Help the Poor is Now a Crime

But what if the person trying to help the poor is a rich, white, straight, male republican? Surely that person ... wait. Never mind.

Digby:

And with all the talk about how charities and volunteers will naturally take up the slack at the local level, it doesn't actually work out that way. And it isn't just Republicans turning a cold shoulder:

The Orange County Democratic Executive Committee wants the region’s top Democrat to stop arresting anti-poverty activists who feed the homeless.

The Orange County party’s officers passed a resolution Monday night calling on Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer to stop enforcing a controversial ordinance that’s led to the arrest of nearly 30 people who handed out food to the homeless at Lake Eola Park.

The resolution asks the same of the six members of the Orlando City Council — Phil Diamond, Sam Ings, Daisy Lynum, Tony Ortiz, Patty Sheehan and Robert Stuart — all but one of whom (Ortiz) are Democrats.

“Whereas, the passage of this ordinance and its enforcement involving arrests may reflect badly on Orlando, internationally. Moreover, adverse publicity about these arrests may significantly hurt the economy and reputation of the City Beautiful,” the resolution reads, in part. “Whereas, as Democrats, we stand firm in our belief in anti-poverty policies and expect our elected officials to do the same.”

The city ordinance requires a permit to feed large groups in downtown parks, and groups are limited to two permits per year, per park. Orlando Food Not Bombs members were arrested after defying the ordinance and sharing food at Lake Eola Park. The first few of those arrested face fines and/or 60 days in jail when they go on trial next week.

If you're lucky enough to own a car, or preferably an RV, you could just move on down the road and join the legions of "Workampers" (aka, itinerant workers):

After communicating with Suzann for more than six months and observing the Ellingsworth’s ups and frequent downs, it’s obvious that workamping is not all fun and games, at least for those who hit the road in need of a job to survive.

Most workamper jobs are of the minimum-wage variety. Workampers generally don’t receive unemployment insurance benefits, severance pay or any warning that a job is about to end. Workampers face many of the same job insecurity issues as the millions of Americans who have been downsized due to job outsourcing, financial mismanagement and slow consumer demand for products and services, except workampers are purposely more nimble and have been conditioned to pack up and move to where the jobs are. “We have to be mobile to land a job,” said Suzann. Those who become jobless and live in traditional stationary homes aren’t usually able to move to another city on a moment’s notice.

That's just good old American entrepreneurship and pluck. Kind of like the Grapes of Wrath with carpeting. (I'll bet some of them have cell phones too, the lucky duckies.)In fact, if we can get the whole middle class to sign on to this we could beat the global competition all to hell. And it solves the housing crisis!

This isn't getting better. We are going on for years now in an epic slump, with no end in sight. People are still losing their homes and their futures in this thing. And instead of dealing with it seriously, we've got Democrats in Orlando throwing volunteers in jail for giving food to people forced to live on the street and Republicans presidential candidates telling everyone that Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional Ponzi Schemes and cutting help for homeless veterans.

Oy vey.

Here's a little much needed Elizabeth Warren, on the middle class:

The crime - the inhumanity - is stopping people from helping poor people. That's where we are today. That's what happens when we let the repugs demonize and marginalize the liberals. The liberals who created a half-century of prosperity supported by a strong safety net along with constantly expanding civil and human rights.

You want the Liberal Prosperity and American Humanity back? Get out there and make more liberals.

Kentucky's Healthier Highways First in the Nation

For all the stupid, useless and/or destructive crap the Beshear administration wastes time, money and effort hyping to the public in hopes of cadging another vote or two, every once in a while they get one right. This is one.

Kentucky is first in the nation to promote healthier options at state-operated vending sites. Travelers on Kentucky’s highways will now be reminded of healthy snack choices they can make at the state’s rest areas and welcome centers. The Kentucky Education and Workforce Development Cabinet today announced the “Kentucky Healthier Highways Partnership.”

The initiative is a collaborative effort of the Office for the Blind (OFB), the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Transportation Cabinet, the Kentucky Alliance of YMCA’s and the Humana Foundation aiming to improve the food choices of those traveling on Kentucky’s roads.

“Kentucky is the first state in the nation to promote healthier options at state-operated vending sites,” said Education and Workforce Development Cabinet Secretary Joseph U. Meyer. “We hope to serve as a model to the rest of the country.”

As its first effort, Healthier Highways is placing the YMCA’s “Food Fight” posters in every vending site at 23 rest areas and welcome centers across the Commonwealth. These posters highlight healthy food choices at the moment when people are about to make a purchase decision. The messaging on the posters will change seasonally.

Research has shown that these reminders are the best way to help people make decisions that support a healthy lifestyle without restricting their options. Healthier choice snacks currently make up 25 percent of the offerings in vending machines operated by the OFB’s Blind Vendors Program.

The Blind Vendors program, operated through OFB’s Kentucky Business Enterprises, is one of the leading vending and food service programs in the United States operated by people who are blind. The program trains and certifies individuals as self-employed operators of snack bars, cafeterias and automated vending machines in public and private facilities across Kentucky. The program currently serves 54 vendors.

Kentucky’s rest areas and welcome centers are operated through a state agency partnership among the Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, the Transportation Cabinet and the Blind Vendors program.

This group was approached by the Kentucky Alliance of YMCA’s to seek out innovative ways to work together to fight the epidemic of obesity, particularly childhood obesity, in Kentucky.

Kentucky has the seventh highest rate of obesity in the country and the fourth highest rate of childhood obesity. According to the Kentucky Alliance of YMCAs, this costs Kentucky more than a billion dollars in health care expenditures each year, which does not count lost productivity or personal costs to those affected by diabetes, heart problems or high blood pressure.

“Reversing this trend is going to require changes to the environment to facilitate healthier living,” said Ben Reno-Weber, executive director of the Kentucky YMCA Youth Association. “It is going to require new ways of thinking about how people make health choices. And it is going to require changes in people's attitudes about food and exercise.”

Based on traffic count, the Transportation Cabinet estimates that there are approximately 30 million travelers annually that enter the rest areas and welcome centers.

“This initiative provides a great opportunity to get a positive message out to literally millions of people about the benefits of making healthy choices,” said Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet Secretary Marcheta Sparrow.

This is the first step of the Healthier Highways campaign, underwritten by the Humana Foundation. As the partnership awaits new guidance from the Food and Drug Administration, it looks to take further steps to promote healthy living across the state. More information on healthy food choices is available at yfoodfight.com.

Don't be fooled by that "underwritten by the Humana Foundation." Humana Inc. has its corporate headquarters in Louisville in part because it also has the sole-source contract for health insurance for the state's 35,000 employees plus thousands more local government employees. The corporation will receive much more in reduced costs and increased contracts than the foundation spends on this initiative.

Nevertheless, this is a large step forward for Kentucky, so kudos to the Beshear administration.

Your move, Missouri.

Go Big AND Small, Mr. President

Zandar has good advice for President Obama.

There are two schools of thought on what President Obama should do for his jobs program announcement next month: One, that he should announce a major new jobs initiative to help the millions of long-term unemployed and dare the GOP to block it (and they will and nobody will receive any help at all), or two, that he should announce a smaller program though the aegis of the executive branch. The GOP will attack the President anyway and call the measure a failure, but some people will get some help.

SNIP

But couldn't the President do both, then? Immediately enact executive branch measures through the departments of Labor and Commerce to help the country and push for a new PWA? That I think would be much more effective in the short and long term. A combination of both approaches is what is needed, because if there's anything Robinson and I agree on, it's that any jobs proposal taken before Congress will be blocked by the Republicans, period, end of line.

In that respect, anything that President Obama does propose to put forth in front of Capitol Hill must be a doozy, Robinson is right on that.

Liberals remember 1935, when repugs were attacking FDR on his multiple and varying attacks on 25 percent unemployment, even though most of those programs had started to work. Liberals remember that FDR's mantra was "try something. If it doesn't work, trying something else. But above all, try something."

And the next year he was re-elected in a historic landslide.

The Bloated Bureaucracy Begging for Budget Cuts

Oooh, looky here: a bloated gubmit bureaucracy wasting billions of taxpayer dollars and violating American citizens' freedom and liberty by creating a fascist security state.

Repugs must be all over this one for massive, agency-killing budget cuts, right?

Right?

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Police and military types have an overwhelming lust for the latest, greatest and most expensive technology -- and a talent for rationalizing the budget expenditures. Since 9/11, it's been one long Christmas list of weapons of war and anti-terror, and Santa Congress denies very little. In the meantime, anything that directly benefits We The People gets slashed. It's time, as this LA Times article suggests, that we take a much closer look at what we get for all that money. I'd also like to suggest a name change - "Homeland Security" reminds me very much of Nazis:

A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bomb-proof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

But how effective has that 10-year spending spree been?

"The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism.

"So if your chance of being killed by a terrorist in the United States is 1 in 3.5 million, the question is, how much do you want to spend to get that down to 1 in 4.5 million?" he said.

Sure, it's saved and created millions of emergency-response jobs across the country, but those are despicable, unionized public employees; fire them quick, before they hurt the feelings of private industry.

Digby:

If you build it, they will use it.

I guess you can call it government stimulus. And improving emergency response is one positive result, for sure. Still, I don't about you but I'd much rather that most of this money be spent fixing our crumbling infrastructure and teaching our young than creating a massive security state.

I've been worried about this since they first named this monstrous new police bureaucracy "Homeland Security." Nothing good could possible come from that.

SNIP

The LA Times piece is worth reading as it puts into perspective the real risks out there in comparison to cost. It's substantial and it should be part of any discussions we have going forward about budgets. (Not that we will --- anything in a uniform is sacrosanct in our free society nowadays.) But for me, the primary concern is that the US had built a monolithic federal, state and local police apparatus that must constantly seek to justify its existence. And I think we know where that sort of thing ends up don't we?

Liberals know that balancing individual freedom and rights with law enforcement and security is a never-ending battle requiring constant attention and fine-tuning. Repugs just throw billions of tax dollars at it, and damn the Fourth Amendment.

Quote of the Day

By Digby:

They are so emboldened at this point that they are one step away from mooning the President during his speech.

Welcome to Kentucky's Newest Citizen

I wrote about this three years ago when the Transy protest started. I am surprised and pleased that it has turned out well. Protest does work - especially when you put the pressure on your congress critters.

From the Courier:

Lino Nakwa was a hardworking immigrant who after eight years in a refugee camp came to America, where he raised his four brothers and sisters in Louisville and sent them off to college.

He himself graduated with honors from Transylvania University, where he was beloved by students and faculty.

But in 2008, the Department of Homeland Security’s Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services denied him residency — opening him to being deported — because a terrorist group that abducted him when he was 12 years old and held him captive for a month also gave him military training.

After an outcry from fellow Transy students — and the intervention of Kentucky’s congressional delegation — the government reopened Nakwa’s case, and this May he was granted his green card.

Friday, he (was) sworn in as a citizen of the United States.

Nakwa, 32, will take the oath from U.S. District Judge John G. Heyburn II along with 276 other immigrants from 66 countries in a naturalization ceremony at the Gall House that is part of Louisville’s three-day WorldFest 2011.

After spending most of his life as a refugee, Nawka said he will finally feel like he belongs somewhere.

“I am overwhelmed by joy,” he said in an interview this week.

Those who fought for his right to remain in his adopted country are celebrating with him.

“He is a model citizen-to-be who has cared for his family and gone through untold horrors and overcame them and made a new life for himself,” Rep. John Yarmuth, D-3rd District, said in an interview.

U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell said in a statement that “I join the many people across the commonwealth who were touched by the story of Mr. Lino Nakwa in congratulating him on becoming a United States citizen.”

Neil Barry, a Transylvania graduate, led the grassroots campaign for Nawka because he said “he was my friend, and I felt an injustice had been done to him.”

“There is no doubt he deserves to be in the U.S. and will make it a better place,” Barry said.

Teresa Wagner, Nakwa’s lawyer at Kentucky Refugee Ministries, said Nakwa is one of about 10 of the agency’s clients who were denied residency status because they received military training by an terrorist group.

This is immigration, people. This is illegal immigration. These are the people who built this country - your ancestors and mine, unless you are a full-blooded Native American Indian.

Somebody get Lino Nakwa a driver's license and registered to vote ASAP. I want to see pictures of him at his polling place come November 8.

"A disaster for our infrastructure and our economy"

But of course "a disaster for our infrastructure and our economy" is exactly what congressional repugs want, and exactly what they will do everything in their power to create.



Full transcript here.

Some Charts For the Factually-Challenged

This is all old news, well-known and obvious to us denizens of the reality-based world, but there's nothing like a simple, colorful graph for the anti-literate.

Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future:

Problem: Your right-wing brother-in-law is plugged into the FOX-Limbaugh lie machine, and keeps sending you emails about "Obama spending" and "Obama deficits" and how the "Stimulus" just made things worse.

Solution: Here are three "reality-based" charts to send to him. These charts show what actually happened.

Spending



Government spending increased dramatically under Bush. It has not increased much under Obama. Note that this chart does not reflect any spending cuts resulting from deficit-cutting deals.

Deficits



Notes, this chart includes Clinton's last budget year for comparison.

The numbers in these two charts come from Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables Fiscal Year 2012. They are just the amounts that the government spent and borrowed, period, Anyone can go look then up. People who claim that Obama "tripled the deficit" are either misled or are trying to mislead.

The Stimulus and Jobs



In this chart, the RED lines on the left side -- the ones that keep going DOWN -- show what happened to jobs under the policies of Bush and the Republicans. We were losing lots and lots of jobs every month, and it was getting worse and worse. The BLUE lines -- the ones that just go UP -- show what happened to jobs when the stimulus was in effect. We stopped losing jobs and started gaining jobs, and it was getting better and better. The leveling off on the right side of the chart shows what happened as the stimulus started to wind down: job creation leveled off at too low a level.

It looks a lot like the stimulus reversed what was going on before the stimulus.

Conclusion: THE STIMULUS WORKED BUT WAS NOT ENOUGH!

More False Things

These are just three of the false things that everyone "knows." Some others are (click through): Obama bailed out the banks, businesses will hire if they get tax cuts, health care reform cost $1 trillion, Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme or is "going broke", government spending "takes money out of the economy."

Why This Matters

These things really matter. We all want to fix the terrible problems the country has. But it is so important to know just what the problems are before you decide how to fix them. Otherwise the things you do to try to solve those problems might just make them worse. If you get tricked into thinking that Obama has made things worse and that we should go back to what we were doing before Obama -- tax cuts for the rich, giving giant corporations and Wall Street everything they want -- when those are the things that caused the problems in the first place, then we will be in real trouble.

Liberals know you can't solve a problem unless you understand and acknowledge what caused it.

"I've never seen anything like this ever"

Explain to me again how "job creators" like BP create jobs by poisoning an entire ocean watershed that used to sustain tens of millions of people?

Lots of health care jobs, I guess - but aren't those terrible unionized public employees who are killing the economy? Funeral home jobs, then - those are private sector.

Digby:

And look what's happening in the gulf today:

The fear is palpable on the docks from Galveston to Panama City. Commercial fishermen working the waters hardest hit by the BP oil spill are worried sick about their future. It keeps them up at night. Many are convinced the 200 million gallons of crude that spewed into the Gulf last year have done irreparable damage to the fragile fisheries that provide their livelihood. According to a new CBS News segment, Gulf fishermen “have started catching fish with sores, fin rot, and infections at a greater frequency than ever before.”

It would seem BP’s oil is coming home to roost in an epidemic of sick fish and devastated lives. An Aug. 15 CBS News video – that’s going viral as we speak – captures the uncertainty of tens of thousands of commercial Gulf fishermen: “I don’t think we’ll be fishing in five years,” says Lucky Russell. “My opinion. …Everybody is worried.”

Everybody includes LSU oceanography Professor Jim Cowan, who has been studying the Gulf ecosystem for years:

“When one of these things comes on deck, it’s sort of horrifying,” Cowan said. “I mean, there these large dark lesions and eroded fins and areas on the body where scales have been removed. I’d imagine I’ve seen 30 or 40,000 red snapper in my career, and I’ve never seen anything like this. At all. Ever.”

I'm sure that the new GOP "conservation" department, along with the EPAs in 50 states will ensure that doesn't happen again, right?

But then maybe it doesn't really matter who's in charge:

The State Department gave a crucial green light on Friday to a proposed 1,711-mile pipeline that would carry heavy oil from oil sands in Canada across the Great Plains to terminals in Oklahoma and the Gulf Coast.

The project, which would be the longest oil pipeline outside of Russia and China, has become a potent symbol in a growing fight that pits energy security against environmental risk, a struggle highlighted by last year’s oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

By concluding that the $7 billion Keystone XL pipeline would have minimal effect on the environment, President Obama would risk alienating environmental activists, who gave him important support in the 2008 election and were already upset by his recent decisions to expand domestic oil drilling and delay clean air rules. Pipeline opponents have protested in front of the White House for a week, resulting in nearly 400 arrests.

At the same time, rising concerns about the weak economy and high gas prices have made it difficult for the administration to oppose a project that would greatly expand the nation’s access to oil from a friendly neighbor and create tens of thousands of jobs.

If I were a cynic, I'd be inclined to think that certain interests were happy to keep unemployment high so as to ensure that this sort of reckless project passes muster.

But, hey, nothing to worry about. We'll have a new and improved GOP "conservation" department that will factor in the fact that 10 years after the big oil pipeline is built, many of the same people will be called back to work to clean up whatever horrific environmental disaster happens as a result. That's how it worked in Alaska, anyway. It's win-win.
If I live to be 300, I will never understand why liberals' concern for people's lives and health endangered by pollution is considered such a crime.

Energy Cabinet's Secret Decisions Exposed in Court

State environmental officials letting coal companies off the hook for breaking the law is the inevitable consequence of Governor Steve Beshear turning the former Natural Resources and Environmental Protection Cabinet into the Energy and Environment Cabinet.

That's like creating the Drug Enforcement Agency for Legalizing Cocaine. Or the Immigration, Customs Enforcement and Coyote Services Agency.

Big Coal has been terrorizing Kentucky's environmental protection staff for decades, but they never had an official presence in the agency itself until a "Democratic" governor gave it to them.

Most recently, they've used their new power to get water pollution fines reduced by more than 99.9 percent - from a recommended $720 million to $660,000.

But this time, the environmental groups who discovered the violations - who did the work the environmental protection staff was not doing - demanded their day in court.

From the Courier:

Kentucky environmental regulators on Wednesday were forced to explain in Franklin Circuit Court how they came up with fines of $670,000 for two coal companies instead of $720 million as calculated by environmental groups.

The Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet had originally sought a combined $1.25 million, but agreed to lower that after negotiations with the companies, Jeff Cummins, who oversees enforcement for the cabinet, said in his testimony.

SNIP

A coalition of environmentalists who first brought the alleged violations to the attention of the state have insisted that state regulators were soft on the companies, and Wednesday they got their day in court.

After bringing thousands of alleged water pollution violations by the companies to the attention of the energy cabinet last year, they have been allowed to participate in the court case originally brought by the state as an enforcement action. The trial, which may wrap up on Thursday, pits groups such as Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth and Waterkeeper Alliance against the energy cabinet and the two coal companies.

SNIP

In her opening statement, the environmental groups’ attorney, Mary Comer, said the agreement was not fair, reasonable or in the public interest. The groups have argued the penalties were too lenient for what they had found, including the companies repeatedly copying and pasting the same water quality discharge data at coal mines in 2009 and 2010.

The case lifted some of the veils that typically surround legal action against violators of laws like the Clean Water Act, despite objections by the energy cabinet that the environmental groups’ court involvement would set a precedent that would lead to “chaos” in the court system.

Information about how the state determines environmental penalties “will be used by defendants (against the state) in every court proceeding from here to doomsday,” said Mary Stephens, an energy cabinet attorney.

Damn fucking straight and about fucking time. Thirty years ago, Big Coal was bribing the John Y. Brown Jr. administration to release performance bonds on strip mines that had not been reclaimed as the law required. But no one knew about it - except for the underpaid, overworked reclamation inspectors who hauled to Frankfort reams of documentation and photographs of "moonscape mining": bare hillsides stripped down to bedrock, leaching acid into freshwater streams and cascading boulders down to crush homes in the holler.

Big Coal has been getting away with murder in the coalfields for more than a century, in part because the government agency taxpayers entrusted to regulate Big Coal kept its decision-making secret from the public.

No more, thanks to Appalachian Voices, Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, the Waterkeeper Alliance and Judge Phillip Shephard, who used to run the environmental cabinet and knows what he's dealing with.

Liberals know that corporate criminals pay million-dollar fines out of petty cash, and only monster fines that make stockholders sit up and take notice have any effect whatsoever.

When Repug Fantasies Face Reality World

Here's the problem with telling so many lies about poor people that you start to believe them: when you get elected and start making policies based on those lies, they blow up in your face.

Wonkette:

Those crazy Florida welfare princes! Always lining up for their fat government checks with dirty syringes dangling from their shriveled purple arms, right? Haha, wrong! Florida governor Rick Scott’s incompetent proposal to save state money by requiring welfare recipients to pass a drug test has turned up a rousing 2% positive result among those tested, which is 6.7% lower than the overall drug use rate in Florida. B-b-but poor people love drugs! No, Rick, fancy bankers love drugs, especially the expensive ones. Haven’t you ever seen Wall Street? The average $134 welfare check from the state of Florida isn’t even enough to maintain a glue-sniffing habit. So let’s see, how much has this little experiment in stereotyping saved the state?

By the way: Florida, we are impressed! We would probably be snarfing hard drugs through our eyeballs faster than Michele Bachmann if we lived among the endless gray nebulae of crumbling strip malls, foreclosed homes and hardcore unemployment statistics strewn across large swaths of the state.

From Tampa Bay Online:

So far, they say, about 2 percent of applicants are failing the test; another 2 percent are not completing the application process, for reasons unspecified.

Cost of the tests averages about $30. Assuming that 1,000 to 1,500 applicants take the test every month, the state will owe about $28,800-$43,200 monthly in reimbursements to those who test drug-free.

That compares with roughly $32,200-$48,200 the state may save on one month’s worth of rejected applicants.

The savings assume that 20 to 30 people — 2 percent of 1,000 to 1,500 tested — fail the drug test every month. On average, a welfare recipient costs the state $134 in monthly benefits, which the rejected applicants won’t get, saving the state $2,680-$3,350 per month.

But since one failed test disqualifies an applicant for a full year’s worth of benefits, the state could save $32,200-$48,200 annually on the applicants rejected in a single month.

Net savings to the state — $3,400 to $8,200 annually on one month’s worth of rejected applicants. Over 12 months, the money saved on all rejected applicants would add up to $40,800-$98,400 for the cash assistance program that state analysts have predicted will cost $178 million this fiscal year.

And even those useless savings — $98,400 out of $178 million — will be meaningless if and when the ACLU decides to sue the state. Hooray!

But Ruck Scott's massive failure and record-breaking humiliation isn't deterring his fellow fanasists in Ohio:

Down with Tyranny:

Friday evening, when everyone was freaking out about Irene, Chris Hayes was freaking out about something more directly man-made, the Ohio Republican Party's latest plan to kick the unemployed while they're down. A video of the segment is embedded above. "The legislation," opined the always astute Hayes, "is being driven by the apparently unkillable prejudice that the poor are shiftless, drug-addled lay-abouts scheming to get their hands on your precious, precious, gooey tax dollars."

Buoyed by what an embarrassing failure Rick Scott's drug testing bill has been in Florida-- all it proved is that poor people use far less drugs than the average American, probably because they can't afford them-- Ohio Republicans see it as another battle in their vicious class war against the poor. They're coming up with their own bill-- one that is much worse than Rick Scott's! Perhaps next Ohio Republicans will follow Rick Scott and Florida Republicans down the political sewer of cutting back on the health clinics that serve... who else?... poor people. So many ways out there for well-financed right-wingers to attack poor people.

Repeat after me: Rich people are the problem. The problem is rich people. Tax the everlasting fuck out of rich people. That's the solution.

Idiot Texas Judge Outlaws Daycare and Babysitters

This is the kind of suicidal backfire you get when you make legal and public policy decisions based on Bronze-age fables and craven bigotry instead of facts.

Hunger Tallest Palin at Rumproast:

If I haven’t mentioned it before, I’ll say it now, bigots are fucking morons. Exhibit #9826(W) comes to us by way of (surprise) Texas (via TWO):

In a case causing rising controversy in the US, a judge has told a Texan man he cannot leave his children in the care of the man he married.

Inter-state tension continues as the marriage between William Flowers and Jim Evans fails to be properly recognised in the second-largest US state.

Flowers had been married to a woman previously and fathered three children with her before they divorced in 2004. At the time, it was agreed she would keep custody of the children.

Over six years on, in early 2011, Flowers married Jim Evans in Connecticut, and began proceedings to claim custody.

Evans didn’t get custody, but that’s not the problem [I disagree, but no matter. - ed]. The judge in the case has ruled that Evans can’t leave the children with anyone “not related by blood or adoption,” which specifically excludes his husband.

TPM provides more details:

Judge Charley E. Prine, Jr. “issued a ruling which included an injunction applicable only to William. It prohibits him from leaving his children alone with any male to whom the kids are not related by ‘blood* or adoption,’”

But because bigots are fucking idiots, Prine forgot he was also creating a little thing called precedent. At a minimum it creates an opportunity to make divorce and custody proceedings 100% uglier. A former husband can argue that based on this ruling, mom can’t leave the children alone with a new boyfriend. Ditto a new husband until he formally adopts the kids. A former wife can argue that it is discrimination to only apply the ruling to men, and by the way, tell my ex-husband he can’t leave my kids alone with his girlfriend.

And why stop there? Once you argue that children shouldn’t be left alone with non-relatives it’s just a short step to arguing the kids should only be alone with relatives. My advice to parents in Texas: Hire a reputable genealogist and hope like hell you’re at least the 10th cousin twice removed of your babysitter, day care provider, kid’s teachers, football coaches ...

Or you could move to a state where fuckheads don’t run the show.

*Wouldn’t it be hilarious if it turned out Flowers and Evans were distant relatives?

Seriously, the kind of over-the-top stupidity that is now constant in states like Texas and Oklahoma and Kansas is what we used to laugh at in backwards countries like Guatemala and South Africa and India. Countries that are now ahead of the U.S. in measures like student achievement, public health and economic equality.

Lousville Hospital Deal Still Fucks Over Women

No, forcing women to go through two separate surgeries on two separate dates in two separate locations with two separate copays and deductables does not solve the problem.

From the Courier:

Baptist Hospital East will provide a site for University of Louisville doctors to perform tubal ligations that would no longer be permitted at University Hospital and Jewish Hospital if a pending merger takes place and puts the hospitals under control of Catholic Health Initiatives.

“This will ensure our ability to provide reproductive services for our patients after the merger occurs,” Dr. David Dunn, U of L executive vice president for health affairs, said at a news conference Wednesday.

University Hospital and Jewish Hospital will no longer offer sterilizations and other procedures prohibited by Catholic health-care directives after they become part of a new statewide health-care system, which will also include Lexington-based St. Joseph Health System. The system will be controlled by CHI, which is St. Joseph’s parent.

The merger requires approval by Gov. Steve Beshear and the Catholic Church before it can take effect, and public officials in Frankfort and Louisville are studying its possible effect on consumers and taxpayers.

State officials said there are still other concerns, including end-of-life care, that need to be addressed before the merger is completed.

But the arrangement with Baptist would resolve one of the trickiest aspects of maintaining current levels of reproductive care under the merger: how uninsured women who normally rely on University can have their tubes tied in the same surgery as a C-section delivery.
Not only is the Baptist deal a huge burden on women who should be able to get tubal ligations at the same time as their C-sections, but it fails to resolve the broader issues:

• turning taxpayer-supported, public hospital assets and access over to a private, for-profit corporation.
• forcing public hospital patients to suffer the bizarre, unscientific, anti-Hippocratic-Oath rules of Catholic freakazoids.
• allowing the acolytes of a Bronze Age fable to make health care decisions at the biggest public hospital in Kentucky's largest city.

This merger, like privatizing Medicare or Social Security, is so obviously a galactically bad idea that I expect Governor Steve Beshear and Attorney General Jack Conway to announce their approval before the day is out.

Peak Oil Meets Climate Change In Obama's Front Yard

More than 500 people, including actor Darryl Hannah, have been arrested for protesting at the White House against the proposed tar sands oil pipeline from western Canada to Texas.

At the same time, peak oil studies reveal that spikes in oil prices are going to keep getting worse for the foreseeable future.

But exploiting tar sands is not only not the solution, it's going to make everything worse.

Brian Beutler at TPM:

What the heck is this all about?

At issue isn't just NIMBYism or standard concerns about oil spills, but the question of whether the United States should accelerate an extraction process that some environmental experts say will lose the fight against global warming forever.

The oil in question comes from the Canadian oil sands -- or tar sands, as opponents refer to it. It's not just regular oil, but highly corrosive and particularly carbon intensive. The process of extracting the oil from the sands is more energy intensive than drilling for crude. It entails destruction of Canada's Boreal forest, which serves as a carbon sink, making this particular resource extraction a global warming double whammy.

But maybe you think global climate change is a myth and high gas prices are Obama's fault. Or maybe you're old enough to not give a shit about climate change and rich enough to afford gas at any price.

Do you care about something that is causing permanent economic contraction?

Yep, our dependency on oil is strangling the economy, prolonging the recession and preventing growth.

Kevin Drum:

I've talked a few times about the possibility that world growth is now constrained by oil production. The basic story is simple: As long as there's spare oil-production capacity, increasing demand caused by economic growth produces only a steady, manageable increase in oil prices. But oil production is now close to its maximum and can't be easily or quickly expanded. When the global economy grows enough that demand starts to bump up against this ceiling, oil prices don't rise slowly and steadily; rather, they spike suddenly, causing a recession, which in turn reduces oil demand and drives down prices. When the economy recovers, the cycle starts all over. Because of this dynamic, the production ceiling for oil produces a corresponding ceiling for world economic growth.

SNIP

If this model is accurate—and if the ceiling on global oil production really is around 90 mbd and can be expanded only slowly—it means that every time the global economy starts to reach even moderate growth rates, demand for oil will quickly bump up against supply constraints, prices will spike, and we'll be thrown back into recession. Rinse and repeat.

If you don't believe in global warming, that's one thing. But the evidence that the world is starting to reach growth constraints based on oil production is, if not a slam dunk case, still pretty compelling. So even if, as Rick Perry says, the world's climate scientists are just inventing global warming as a devious scheme to increase their funding, we still ought to be going balls to the wall to expand existing forms of alternative energy and fund research into new ones. Unless, of course, you really like the prospect of a future full of relentless and painful oil-induced recessions. It doesn't seem very agreeable to me.

So drill, baby, drill, right? That certainly seems to be the Obama administration's non-answer, with the State Department's ludicrous determination that the tar sands piepline will have "negligible" environmental impact.

Oil is no longer a luxury we can't afford. Oil is now an explicit drain on the economy. Oil eliminates jobs. Oil adds to the deficit. Oil makes us poorer, sicker and weaker.

The real, obvious and liberal solution is a massive renewable energy Manhattan Project to wrench the country away from disappearing, economy-strangling oil and onto job-creating, economy-growing, stable renewable energy.