TWiA explores the intersection of policy and politics, and most importantly, how that intersection affects real people. It's dedicated to the proposition that good government is possible, it matters, and taxpayers deserve nothing less. Its starting point is that facts are facts, science is real, data are real, and we can and must learn from history. Below you'll find facts and opinions that derive from fact, informed by a close and careful study of these issues that began in 1968 and has never stopped. Note, when we discuss generic "Democrats" and "Republicans" or "conservatives" and "liberals," etc., we're generally talking about elected officials, unless otherwise noted. Also, bonus bear news and other awesomeness. We appreciate comments and arguments, so please chime in, and if you like it, spread the word.
This Week in the Debt Ceiling
March 15 was the day the country hit its debt ceiling, so as of March 16 we were past it. As we've discussed before, raising the debt ceiling doesn't mean that Congress will spend more taxpayer dollars--it means Congress can pay bills it's already run up. Raising it has only rarely been considered a big deal, and that was typically only because some Republican Congress tried to make it one. It shouldn't be a point of negotiation, it should just be a procedural matter that Congress handles as a matter of dealing with the business of running the country.
Unfortunately, that's no longer the case, it seems. Phillip A. Wallach, writing for the Brookings Institution, describes it this way:
"To understand the basic fruitlessness of making the debt ceiling the centerpiece of any fiscal negotiations, our political memories need to extend back farther than 2011. In that year, Republicans dug in their heels and won what they considered to be an important partial victory under the shadow of a debt ceiling-driven default. But that isn’t our only data point. Arguably, it was mixing the debt ceiling into the negotiations around the government shutdown in October 2013 that forced the Republicans to accept ignominious total defeat then. The same can be said about the previous instance in which the debt ceiling played a prominent role in a fiscal fight, in 1995-96. In that episode, Republicans thought they could force President Clinton to accede to their demands by attaching them to a debt ceiling increase, but Clinton had the fortitude to veto these and stare them down. His Treasury Secretary, Robert Rubin, devised a series of extraordinary measures, including messing around with the funding of the Social Security Trust fund (since explicitly banned by statute), and earned some furious impeachment threats in the process, but ultimately meant that the executive branch could outmaneuver and outlast the legislature in those negotiations. The lesson learned by Speaker Newt Gingrich was an extremely clear one: that the debt ceiling is a “dead loser” for Congress. Go farther back and you find more fruitless disruptions, if usually lower profile.
"This shouldn’t come as a surprise. As I have previously argued, the debt ceiling acts like a roach motel for fiscal conservatives: they can come in to make big speeches, but they cannot leave until they have capitulated to as clean a raise as the President decides to demand."
He adds, "Other than an extremely cheap rhetorical advantage, it’s hard to imagine what anyone hopes that arguing about the debt ceiling can reasonably be expected to yield."
But now we've passed the point where it should have been raised without incident. As we reported last week, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell still hadn't decided quite what he wanted to hold it hostage for, but he meant to come up with some kind of ransom demand.
This is not, need we say, responsible governing. Manufacturing crisis after crisis in order to try to push through a conservative agenda is pointlessly destructive. Republicans in Congress decided at the beginning of the Obama administration that they would obstruct for political gain, rather than make any attempt to work with Democrats or the president. Sadly, their scheme worked--they achieved the political gains they wanted. Having done so, they find themselves unable or unwilling to abandon the strategy, so now crisis manufacture, in service of pointless ends, is the only tool they know.
More below the fold, including budget blues, staggering reversals, religion and the rich, rank cowardice, insane Arizona, and bears.
This Week in Budgets
It's budget time, and since Republicans control both houses of Congress now, the presumption is that they'll be able to pass a budget (as opposed to the last four years, when they blocked any attempt to do so, then cried about the fact that the Democrats hadn't passed a budget).
Lo and behold, some in both the House and the Senate have actually presented some numbers on paper. Unfortunately, when you look at what the numbers actually indicate, you discover that those House members are no more serious than they ever are. In the Washington Post, Dana Milbank writes that "the [House] budget does not rely on gimmicks. The budget is a gimmick." He goes on to discuss multiple ways in which the budget is misleading or downright fraudulent (e.g., "It proposes to repeal Obamacare but then counts revenues and savings from Obamacare as if the law remained in effect.").
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman says, "The modern G.O.P.’s raw fiscal dishonesty is something new in American politics. And that’s telling us something important about what has happened to half of our political spectrum," calls their budgets "an enormous, destructive con job," and reaches the same conclusion we've recently reached, much to our own dismay. "But I’m partial to a more cynical explanation. Think about what these budgets would do if you ignore the mysterious trillions in unspecified spending cuts and revenue enhancements. What you’re left with is huge transfers of income from the poor and the working class, who would see severe benefit cuts, to the rich, who would see big tax cuts. And the simplest way to understand these budgets is surely to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer."
We admit, we've long thought conservatives were simply misguided. Now we think they've known all along what their policies would do to America, and they're correct--that is, in fact, their goal.
Even conservative economist James Pethokoukis calls the budget disappointingly "unserious."
One of the budgets' high points (for conservatives) are their attacks on the social safety net. That safety net has lifted millions out of poverty, allowed our elders to age with dignity, helped Americans get by despite disabilities that prevent them from being fully employed, and fed countless hungry children. Among developed nations, our safety net is one of the weakest*. Slashing it more seems like a bad idea.
Climate change is arguably the biggest national security challenge we'll face in the 21st century. The Department of Defense and the CIA take it seriously and are working to find ways to address it. The House budget wants them to stop. The New Republic reports, "The GOP proposes 'eliminating waste' in federal spending by cutting funds to clean energy programs and climate change research. It slashes all federal spending on clean energy development beyond allocating some funds for research, while leaving subsidies for fossil fuels in place. And it calls for the Department of Defense and the Central Intelligence Agency to stop studying climate change. According to House Republicans, study of the climate's impact on national security fits under 'examples of areas where there should be room to cut waste, eliminate redundancies, and end the abuse or misuse of taxpayer dollars.'"
Climate change is a nonpartisan threat. Congressional Republicans might not like to admit that it's real. But it's no longer something that can be "believed in" or not; it's as certain as gravity or sunlight or spiders. It exists; it's not a theory or a belief system. People can deny facts, but that just means they're wrong, not that there's a difference of opinion. The only argument now should be over what to do about it. The Republican approach appears to be "nothing." Don't study it, don't talk about it. If we pretend it's not there, maybe it'll go away.
It won't. And if we continue to rely on fossil fuels but block funding for clean energy, we'll make it worse, faster. In that sense, this budget doesn't simply ignore climate change, it actively advocates in favor of more severe and destructive climate change.
Ideology doesn't trump math or science, but these budgets pretend that it does both. If we only wish hard enough, all these things might come true. That's not only not a real governing philosophy, it's the opposite--a philosophy that replaces governing with magical thinking. This budget embraces conservative economic theories that have long proved unworkable and worse, throws most Americans under the bus (how does shielding offshore corporate profits from American taxation benefit Americans, exactly?), and cements for all time two classes of Americans, the very rich (and therefore exceptional human beings worthy of all manner of privilege) and everybody else. Ayn Rand is dancing in her grave, and Rep. Paul Ryan is doing cartwheels because, although Ryan did not write these budgets, they perfectly reproduce the morally bankrupt ideas he and Rand are famous for.
"Republican" and "reprehensible" start with the same three letters. More and more, we're beginning to think they're synonymous.
Side Note*: One point the above-linked article makes is that social programs are most effective and most popular when they're universal. If everyone pays in and everyone gets something out of it, a program enjoys healthy support and provides the greatest overall economic benefit, both to individuals and to society as a whole. That's why conservatives who don't like these programs are always trying to undo their universality, by allowing people to opt out or by privatizing them. When people think programs are just for the poor, or just for the "other guy," whoever that other might be, they withhold their support and endanger the entire structure.
A new study finds that the people whose support for redistributive social programs (which, unlike most of our current economic policies, redistribute toward the least well off, not away from them) is decreasing fastest are the elderly and African-Americans. These two groups are among those most likely to be hurt by cuts to social programs--the elderly because they can't work and rely on Social Security and Medicare for a lot of their needs, and blacks because the structural and systemic effect of slavery, segregation, and long-term racism still inordinately impacts their earnings potential. But their support for such programs has diminished over time, more than any other groups'. In the elderly, it seems to be a fear that spending on other social programs will mean their Medicare benefits will be reduced. Blacks are more likely to support redistributive social programs than whites, but their support is eroding faster, in part because of negative perceptions of "race-based" government aid.
This Week in Stunning Reversals
Newly minted, and newly famous, Sen. Tom Cotton (R/AR) gave his first floor speech in the Senate this week, and followed it up a couple of days later with further remarks. Those remarks were either jaw-droppingly lacking in self-awareness, or hilariously ironic. We aren't sure if Cotton is a dunce or a brilliant comic in the vein of Andy Kaufman.
As most people know, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu won his reelection bid, in large part by appealing to the worst instincts of Israeli ultranationalists with frankly racist appeals, and by verbally overturning the long-standing US (and formerly Israeli) goal of a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict. After the election, Bib backtracked on that, saying he didn't really mean it. He was lying before the election or he's lying now; either way, it's impossible now to take him at his word. Justifiably, American officials have to take a second look at him and at US-Israel relations going forward.
That simple fact seemed to incense Cotton, who said this on Thursday:
"While Prime Minister Netanyahu won a decisive victory, he still has just started assembling a governing majority coalition. These kinds of quotes from Israel's most important ally could very well startle some of the smaller parties and their leaders with whom Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently in negotiations."This raises the question, of course, if the administration intends to undermine Prime Minister Netanyahu's efforts to assemble a coalition by suggesting a change to our longstanding policy of supporting Israel's position with the United Nations."
Cotton, of course, is the man who just last week led 46 other Republican Senators in sending an open letter to the leadership of Iran, warning them not to trust the President of the United States. His stated purpose for that letter was to interfere with ongoing negotiations between the US, Iran, and other countries. Now he's upset about US officials interfering with current Israeli negotiations?
Sometimes the only fitting response is WTF?.
Does Cotton get his paychecks from Washington or from Jerusalem? Does he think his constituents live in Little Rock or the West Bank? Or is he just hankering for a war someplace? Cotton--to his credit--served in Iraq and survived. Now it looks as though he's forgotten about all those who didn't survive, and all who came back terribly broken.
Netanyahu is no friend to the United States. He wants our military might at his back, but if he shares any American values at all, they're the worst kind--hatred and racism and a hunger for bloodshed. The US-Israel relationship stands despite Bibi, not because of him--it stands because of shared history and the knowledge that Bibi can't hold power forever. For Cotton to turn against his own president and the interests of his country but to support the war-mongering prime minister is staggeringly unpatriotic.
* * *
On Tuesday, Cotton might have set a Senate record when he invoked Hitler (as conservatives love to do) within the first minute of his first speech. Huffington Post reports:
"'The world is growing ever more dangerous, and our defense spending is wholly inadequate to confront the danger,' Cotton said. 'To be exact, during the last four or five years, the world has grown gravely darker. We have steadily disarmed, partly with a sincere desire to give a lead to other countries and partly due to the severe financial pressure of the time. But a change must now be made. We must not continue longer on a course in which we alone are growing weaker while every other nation is growing stronger.'
He continued: 'I wish I could take credit for those eloquent but ominous words, but I cannot. Winston Churchill sounded that warning in 1933 as Adolf Hitler had taken power in Germany. Tragically, Great Britain and the West didn't heed this warning, when they might have strangled that monster in his crib. Rather they let the locust continue to eat away at the common defense.'
"Cotton lamented that President Barack Obama was apologizing for America's actions, and accused the administration of being 'harsh and unyielding to our friends' and 'soothing and suffocating to our enemies.'"
When people bring up Hitler and Neville Chamberlain in that way, when they talk about "appeasement" and compare it to this nation's foreign policy, they prove only two things: 1) they have no understanding of history; and 2) they have no understanding of today.
The "Obama apologizes" trope is common among today's conservatives, and the only accurate way to describe it is the crude, but utterly appropriate "bullshit." They love to say it, but they can't come up with a single example of him apologizing for the US, because he hasn't done it. He has reached out to a world community alienated by his predecessor's foreign policy disaster and obvious disinterest in the wider world, and he has made America safer and more prosperous by doing so.
We'd like to know what "friends" Cotton thinks we've been "harsh and unyielding toward"--and if he's including Netanyahu among those "friends," he is clearly confused; and what enemies we've been "soothing and suffocating" to. For that matter, we'd like to know what he means by that--suffocating someone is a violent act, and far from soothing. One supposes we were suffocating toward Osama bin Laden and Muammar Gaddafi, in the sense that they're no longer breathing. Is that a bad thing, Sen. Cotton?
If Sen. Cotton loves Israel more than he does America, he's welcome to emigrate. If he's just looking for a war, he's welcome to resign from the Senate and go find one to play in. Arkansas voters did the country no favor when they elected such a foolish and despicable man to the United States Senate, and we can only hope his political career is short, and the damage he threatens to do is contained.
This Week in Health Care
Back in 1989, the right-wing think tank The Heritage Foundation came up with a model health care plan that would, they claimed, insure all Americans by establishing an individual mandate requiring families to buy health insurance. In 2006, to great praise from Heritage, Governor Mitt Romney (R/MA) signed a version of that plan into a law that became known as Romneycare.
In 2015, we've learned that the US uninsured rate is down by 35% since the inception of the federal version of the plan--the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare--which has now insured 16.4 million Americans. So Heritage must be delighted, right?
Not so much. "Edmund Haislmaier, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative research group, said the report also doesn’t include essential information on how many people who signed up on exchanges were previously uninsured. 'It’s premature to say it’s ACA related,' Mr. Haislmaier said."
Yeah, it's just a weird coincidence that the ACA has been enrolling Americans by the millions for two years, and that has resulted in millions of Americans being enrolled. Heritage used to be a think tank, but these days it's a "think" tank, where real thought is shoved aside because it might get in the way of thinking about new ways to propagandize for Heritage's singular goal--helping the rich get richer. If someone at Heritage today proposed a plan like the one of 1989, they'd be laughed out of the organization. We were never fans of Heritage to begin with, but it's still sad to see how pathetic a shell of its former self it has become.
This Week in Religious History
America is "one nation under God," right? "In God we trust." 57% of Republicans want to declare the US a "Christian nation," apparently forgetting the opening phrase of the Bill of Rights. Way back when, in 2007, historian Kevin M. Cruse reminds us in the New York Times, 55% of Americans thought it already was one.
But the Founding Fathers had other ideas. The Pilgrims came here looking for religious freedom. Our forebears wanted their new nation to welcome those of all faiths. They didn't want Congress to be able to one day declare that only one religion counted and the rest were all second-rate.
So where did the widespread confusion about Christianity's predominance come from? The fascinating NYT piece linked above explains: it was a deliberate program of persuasion, organized by corporate chieftains in much the same way as their campaigns to sell certain brands of automobiles, dish soap, toothpaste and televisions. It started when those wealthy tycoons saw the steps President Franklin D. Roosevelt took to end the Great Depression--necessary steps, as it turned out--as "creeping socialism." (We should keep in mind that a major cause of that Depression was the vast chasm between rich and poor--a Gilded Age in which the wealthy controlled almost all the nation's resources, and there was hardly a middle class to speak of. So the aforementioned tycoons were upset about "assaults" on their wealth, when those concentrations of wealth were a big part of why the Depression occurred in the first place. But they were less concerned about rescuing the economy than about keeping what they had. Sound familiar?)
Kruse, author of a new book called One Nation Under God: How Corporate America Invented Christian America, reports, "To regain the upper hand, corporate leaders fought back on all fronts. They waged a figurative war in statehouses and, occasionally, a literal one in the streets; their campaigns extended from courts of law to the court of public opinion. But nothing worked particularly well until they began an inspired public relations offensive that cast capitalism as the handmaiden of Christianity."
The report continues:
"Accordingly, throughout the 1930s and ’40s, corporate leaders marketed a new ideology that combined elements of Christianity with an anti-federal libertarianism. Powerful business lobbies like the United States Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers led the way, promoting this ideology’s appeal in conferences and P.R. campaigns. Generous funding came from prominent businessmen, from household names like Harvey Firestone, Conrad Hilton, E. F. Hutton, Fred Maytag and Henry R. Luce to lesser-known leaders at U.S. Steel, General Motors and DuPont.
"In a shrewd decision, these executives made clergymen their spokesmen. As Sun Oil’s J. Howard Pew noted, polls proved that ministers could mold public opinion more than any other profession. And so these businessmen worked to recruit clergy through private meetings and public appeals.
"The Rev. James W. Fifield — known as 'the 13th Apostle of Big Business' and 'Saint Paul of the Prosperous' — emerged as an early evangelist for the cause. Preaching to pews of millionaires at the elite First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, Mr. Fifield said reading the Bible was 'like eating fish — we take the bones out to enjoy the meat. All parts are not of equal value.' He dismissed New Testament warnings about the corrupting nature of wealth. Instead, he paired Christianity and capitalism against the New Deal’s 'pagan statism.'
Fifield went so far, the Times says, as to offer cash prizes for clergymen who preached the virtues of capitalism. Seems apropos, somehow.
The piece describes the big kahuna in this propaganda effort, a name still familiar today: "The most important clergyman for Christian libertarianism, though, was the Rev. Billy Graham. In his initial ministry, in the early 1950s, Mr. Graham supported corporate interests so zealously that a London paper called him 'the Big Business evangelist.' The Garden of Eden, he informed revival attendees, was a paradise with 'no union dues, no labor leaders, no snakes, no disease.' In the same spirit, he denounced all 'government restrictions' in economic affairs, which he invariably attacked as 'socialism.'
We're sure Graham was partly right. There were no union dues or labor leaders in the Garden of Eden. There were also no bosses, no child labor, no sweatshops or firetrap factories. Adam and Eve didn't need eight-hour workdays or vacation time or parental leave or a living wage. (For that matter, slavery was a capitalist system--capitalism holds no special claim to godliness, despite Graham's preaching.)
The result of all those efforts? "In 1954, Congress added 'under God' to the previously secular Pledge of Allegiance. It placed a similar slogan, 'In God We Trust,' on postage that year and voted the following year to add it to paper money; in 1956, it became the nation’s official motto."
We have occasionally discussed in this space the history of American libertarianism, which was no haphazard affair growing naturally from the general public, but one consciously promoted by corporate interests to protect private wealth from...well, from the theoretically rapacious hands of we the people, the American public who, the Constitution tells us, our great system of self-government was meant to serve. Christianity, the NYT observes, worked hand-in-hand with that libertarian propaganda effort, the two of them perverting both biblical teachings (as we understand it, Jesus was no fan of the big banks, such as they existed in his time, and he had more interest in the welfare of those who have little than those who, by virtue of having much, keep it from the hands of the poor) and the actual intent of the Founding Fathers in a double-barreled attempt to serve the whims of the rich by keeping the poor in their place.
Make no mistake--we here at TWiA have nothing against people who succeed and make plenty of money and live comfortably. We respect their accomplishments. But we think they should remember the nature of the system that allowed them to succeed, and the contributions made by those without vast wealth that allowed those few to attain it. Feeding the public hogwash about a malicious federal government out to curtail their liberties--or twisting an ancient religious narrative to serve the ends of the rich, even when it means making the lives of everyone else that much harder--should be beneath the dignity of those whose accomplishments have already catapulted them into the economic stratosphere. With great power, Spider-Man told us, comes great responsibility. Great wealth proffers great power, and those with plenty should work to help those without, not seek to once again create an unbridgeable gulf between the rich and the not-rich.
In recent years, the tea party has largely served the same purpose those bought-and-paid-for "religious" crusaders and libertarians did a few decades ago. Under the guise of advocating for "liberty" (which many tea party types believed, and still believe, falsely, was their true cause), groups funded by millionaires and billionaires were able to build a new groundswell that pushed much of the national conversation, and almost the whole of the Republican Party, to once again carry water for those who have much but want to give little. In doing so, they inadvertently act against their own financial self-interest, and against the interests of an economically, environmentally, and socially healthy America.
Any American who believes that he or she is less free in the 21st century than Americans were in the 18th, 19th, or 20th is an American who doesn't know history. Public schools, gun-free libraries, and an internet protected from corporate control are not attacks on anybody's rights; they're part of a society that Americans of every faith, every creed, every race, and every social stratus have fought and died for. Anyone who thinks our freedom is more limited now than it was at any time in the nation's past needs to take a look at who is financially invested in making them believe that. The only partial exception to that is the vast number of incarcerated Americans, who are demonstrably less free--but as often as not, their incarceration also serves the goals of the wealthiest among us.
Instead of weeping about the imaginary disappearance of freedom, we should embrace the incredibly, almost globally unique freedom that Americans do have, including the freedom to worship in the Christian faith or any other, or none at all, and the freedom to come up with a million-dollar idea and make it happen. And we should resist the false notions that nobody is free unless the wealthy have unlimited power and resources, or that the purpose of religion is to protect those resources. Those ideas didn't come from the Founders or from the faithful--they were cooked up by greedy people afraid of sharing in the economic suffering their greed helped bring about. Nobody likes to be played. But some of the wealthiest among us have figured out how to play just enough Americans to ensure they can continue to concentrate the nation's treasure into the fewest possible hands, and they don't care what ideas they have to twist around to do so, or how much that concentration of wealth hurts everybody else. We have a feeling Jesus would be righteously pissed.
Side Note: Among conservatives, the mantra of "cut taxes, spending, and regulation" has almost become a religion. It's a prescription history proves doesn't work for anyone but the rich, but if that's all one is concerned about, then it's perfectly reasonable.
The rest of us, though, would like to see inequality narrowed and wages for regular Americans increased. The Economic Policy Institute has just released a paper documenting an argument we've made around here for years, and laying out concrete proposals that would accomplish those goals. According to the Washington Post:
"Binding all the recommendations, economically and ideologically, is EPI’s long-standing argument that inequality and wage stagnation do not result from workers lacking the right skills to succeed in today’s economy, or from taxes being too high and government too large, but from an economic theft of sorts – the richest and most powerful Americans diverting the gains of economic growth from average workers to themselves.
"As Mishel and Eisenbrey write, 'stagnation is not inevitable. It is the direct result of public policy choices on behalf of those with the most power and wealth that have suppressed wage growth for the vast majority in recent decades.'”
This Week in Rank Cowardice
During the 2008 presidential campaign, a woman at an event for Sen. John McCain (R/AZ) said, "I can't trust Obama. I've read about him and he's not, he's not, uh, he's an Arab. He's not--"
Sen. McCain cut her off. "No ma'am. No ma'am. He's a decent family man...citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues."
This week, we learned about an event that occurred on March 14 at a conservative gathering in South Carolina. While former senator and seemingly perpetual presidential candidate Rick Santorum stood at the microphone, a woman (presumably not the same woman) said this (the video is here, and it's astonishing and infuriating):
"Why is the Congress rolling over and letting this communist dictator destroy my country? Y'all know what he is, and I know what he is. I want him out of the White House. He's not a citizen. He could have been removed a long time ago. Larry Klayman's got the judge to say that the executive amnesty is illegal. Everything he does is illegal. He's trying to destroy the United States. The Congress knows this. What kind of games is the Congress of the United States playing with the citizens of the United States? Y'all need to work for us, not the lobbyists that pay your salaries. Get on board, let's stop all of this, let's save America. What's going to stop -- Senator Santorum, where do we go from here? Ted told me I've got to wait until the next election. I don't the country will be around for the next election. Obama tried to blow up a nuke in Charleston a few months ago, and the three admirals and generals -- he's totally destroyed our military, he's fired all the generals and all the admirals who said they wouldn't fire on the American people."
Santorum, of course, emulated McCain's basic decency and political courage, and set the woman straight, and--no, wait, that's not even remotely what happened. In the real world, Santorum stood there and let her spout more than two minutes of the most insane conspiracy theories, then--instead of pointing out that Obama did none of those things and is not a communist dictator, told her that he was offended that she would hold him responsible for any of those things, because he hasn't been in Congress for years. He added that the president "has done a lot of dangerous things," and said "the word 'tyrant'" comes to mind and that the Constitution is "unraveling."
Rick "Man on dog" Santorum should have been considered disqualified from elected office years ago for some of the disgusting things he's said out loud. Instead, he ran a close second to Mitt Romney in the 2012 Republican primaries. Now he's not only said disgusting things, but he's demonstrated the basest kind of cowardice. Tell us again why anyone should listen to another word he says, ever? As the saying goes these days, "If he can't stand up to a crazed Infowars junkie, how can he stand up to ISIS?"
Santorum should go home, close the door, and never come out again. He's not fit for decent human companionship.
This Week in Snake Oil
Most Republican pitch-men wait until after they retire from politics to start selling products. Not Mike Hucksterbee--err, Hucklechuck...or, whatever. Sayeth the New York Times:
"In his diabetes video, Mr. Huckabee promotes the 'Diabetes Solution Kit,' a $19.95 booklet with advice on eating, exercise and dietary supplements. 'Just sit tight,' he says in the two-minute, 40-second pitch, 'because in a moment, a free presentation is coming up.' He promises it will reveal 'all the natural secrets that are backed by real science that really work.'
"But rather than science, the second, lengthier video peddles a diabetes 'cure' consisting of cinnamon and chromium picolinate. Both the American Diabetes Association and the Canadian Diabetes Association warn that dietary and herbal supplements are ineffective for treating diabetes, which is an epidemic in the United States and is tied to obesity."
So Mike Honkybat is selling a diabetes "cure" that not only doesn't cure diabetes, but might just make people sicker, since in fact there is no "real science" backing it, and no controls over what precisely is in it, or in what increments. And he admits that--despite his inferences in the video--this "cure" isn't how he brought his own weight and his diabetes under control. It's almost as if he knows it's a scam, and doesn't care. No, scratch the "almost."
How certain are we that it's a scam? Pretty darn certain.
"A number of customers of Barton Publishing have complained online about exorbitant and unauthorized charges to credit and debit cards. This reporter ordered the 95-page booklet promoted by Mr. Huckabee, for an advertised $19.97 for a downloadable copy and $19.95, plus shipping, for a printed copy, and found a $120.08 charge to his Visa card, which included a $67 coaching video that was not ordered. Mr. Barton said fewer than 1 percent of customers complained about overcharges, which he said were the result of user error.
"Mr. Huckabee, who earlier this year released a book, 'God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,' celebrates the populist culture and values in the 'flyover' states, the political identity he is preparing to run on. His manifesto appeared before he endorsed the diabetes cure, which includes numerous foods to cut from one’s diet. One of those on the list: grits."
Are all Republican presidential candidates moral cowards and grifters? Or just the ones claiming to be most religiously devout, like Rick Santorum and Mike Hookahbong? We really want to know.
This Week in Scare Tactics
Sen. Tailgunner Ted Cruz (R/TX) made a campaign swing to New Hampshire to speak to a crowd of people, many of whom were from Massachusetts and can't vote in New Hampshire anyway. While there, he managed to terrify a small child, who is probably still quivering with fright at what that strange, horrible man told her.
"At one point, Cruz spoke about the 'Obama-Clinton foreign policy of leading from behind,' and said the world is on fire. A young girl in the crowd immediately said aloud, 'The world is on fire?' Cruz looked at the girl, Julie Trant, 3, who was sitting with her mother, Michelle. 'Yes, the world is on fire,' Cruz said. 'Your world is on fire.'"
This Week in Arizona
America's Most Corrupt SheriffTM admits what everybody already knew--he violated court orders because he just can't bring himself to stop administering his brand of "justice" on a race-by-race basis. White folks, AMCSTM feels, are okay. Hispanics are automatically suspect.
While we applaud his admission of guilt--a breath of fresh air, after all his criminal behavior through the years that he hasn't admitted to--we understand that he's just trying to avoid a trial and a much more public scouring of his activities.
As is typical of this seething bag of corruption, his attorneys suggested possible consequences for his action, which include him "admitting violations of the court's orders in a 'public forum' and a request for a compensation fund footed by Maricopa County taxpayers."
In other words, he wants his punishment to be speaking in front of cameras, which is his favorite thing in the world. Failing that, he wants Maricopa County taxpayers to pony up yet more of their tax dollars to make amends for his behavior. We don't see anything in the statement about him finally changing his behavior, or paying any fines or victim compensation out of his own well-lined pockets, although he did propose that he and some well-heeled friends (meaning mostly those friends) could make a donation to some unnamed "Hispanic group."
The funniest line in this story? "Arpaio's attorneys say the hearings next month would unnecessarily waste hundreds of thousands of dollars of county taxpayer money."
Wasting taxpayer money has been a consistent hallmark throughout his career. He's never had a problem with it before, and he clearly doesn't now. What he wants is to avoid going before a judge who's still considering criminal proceedings against him.
Why Maricopa County voters keep electing this dirtbag is a question that can probably never be answered satisfactorily. His corruption and bigotry have been widely known for years and years. We can only assume that bigotry runs thick through the county, and enough people there figure it's just fine to treat Hispanics as subhuman, including refusing to investigate sex crimes perpetrated against Hispanics (well documented before his last electoral victory) that they don't mind casting their ballots for him. One has to hope they'll throw him out of office at the next election, if not earlier, before he repurposes more millions of their dollars to pay for more of his crimes. For our part, we'd like to see him do about twenty years in his own Tent City. That would be light punishment for a criminal who hides behind a badge.
* * *
As of January 2016, Americans will need a new kind of ID (or a passport) to get on airplanes (a recommendation of the 9/11 Commission to help keep terrorists off airplanes). Reasonably enough, a legislator in Arizona wrote a bill that would allow the state to start issuing compliant driver's licenses. The bill passed through the Senate. Unreasonably, said bill is stuck in the House, because House members don't like "being told by Washington what to do."
Do Arizona legislators need a remind that Arizona is not a country unto itself, but one of the states in the United States? Federal law applies in Arizona, just as it does in every other state. The legislature may balk, but the Constitution's Supremacy Clause means the result will be court battles that the state will lose but will cost the taxpayers millions.
Maybe it's time Arizonans started thinking before they vote.
(Thanks to TWiA special MVD correspondent Marcy Rockwell for the tip.)
Side Note: Speaking of sex crimes, the rape kit backlog (about 400,000 untested kits around the country) is a national disgrace. Law enforcement agencies are perpetually underfunded, and testing rape kits costs money. The US Department of Justice is stepping up to do something about it, with a $41 million program specifically set up to fund that vital testing. We hope Arizona doesn't turn the money down because it comes from Washington.
This Week in Bears
Arizona's Bearizona has three new black bear cubs, and they're all kinds of cute.
Here's a bear and a wolf having lunch together.
"We can only assume that bigotry runs thick through the county, and enough people there figure it's just fine to treat Hispanics as subhuman, including refusing to investigate sex crimes perpetrated against Hispanics (well documented before his last electoral victory) that they don't mind casting their ballots for him."
As a resident of Maricopa County, I find that a little unfair. Most people pay no attention whatsoever to the election of a new sheriff, and Arpaio has name recognition. If you're there to vote on something else and haven't researched the candidates for sheriff's office, then 9 times out of 10, you're going to pick the name you recognize.
It's not bigotry, it's apathy. Which may be worse, but, still.
Posted by: Marsheila (Marcy) Rockwell | 03/21/2015 at 09:39 AM