Pretty Something, But Not Great

There are a 2:38 video (below) and a :31 second television commercial (further below) for the Honda Civic, called "Today is Pretty Great."  David Atkins of Hullabaloo and the Ventura County (CA) Democratic Committee comments

Let's be clear: this is a perfect distillation of the message that corporate executives and the politicians who feed out of their hands are peddling to Millennials everywhere. And it's bullshit.

No. Today is not great. Today is terrible. All the petty personal freedoms to dress up funny, grow funny facial hair, watch funny videos online and do silly things doesn't make up for the fact that jobs are less available than ever, wealth is more concentrated than ever in fewer hands than ever, wages are lower than ever, and the climate is spinning out of control.

Let's be clear: this is a perfect distillation of the message that corporate executives and the politicians who feed out of their hands are peddling to Millennials everywhere. And it's bullshit.

No. Today is not great. Today is terrible. All the petty personal freedoms to dress up funny, grow funny facial hair, watch funny videos online and do silly things doesn't make up for the fact that jobs are less available than ever, wealth is more concentrated than ever in fewer hands than ever, wages are lower than ever, and the climate is spinning out of control.










In the article (summarized here in The New York Times) he wrote for the Journal of Economic Perspectives, Miles Corak graphically displays The Great Gatsby curve (below), in which "countries with greater inequality of incomes also tend to be countries in which a greater fraction of economic advantage and disadvantage is passed on between parents and their children."    He found more income inequality in the USA than in the UK, Italy, Australia,France, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Germany, Norway,Denmark, Finalnd, or Sweden.  And not coincidentally, there is less mobility across the generations n the USA than in each of these countries except the UK and Italy.

Jaime Dimon, however, is doing just fine. The San Francisco Chronicle reports the board of directors of JP Morgan Chase

gave the bank’s chairman and CEO a 74% raise. Compensation for 2013: $20 million. Now true, that’s a mere fraction of the $23 billion in fines the bank incurred in the same year for a variety of criminal and civil offenses. The cost of doing business one supposes.

And as far as his board of directors are concerned, Dimon, has been conducting business just fine. Didn’t he play the leading role in negotiating the settlements? Without his sure hand and charismatic personality, the fines could have been even bigger. He actually saved the company money, not to mention presiding over another boffo year of profits. And he only gets half of the $49.9 million he got in 2007 –  just prior to the entire financial system going down the tubes.

Forgotten, it seems, is the list of JP Morgan’s crimes and misdemeanors on Dimon’s watch — mortgage fraud, insurance fraud, illegal billing, kickbacks, manipulating California’s energy market, rigging the Libor benchmark interest rate, turning a blind eye to Bernie Madoff’s ponzi scheme; and who could forget the London Whale? Shouldn’t there be another price to pay?

So for some, today is "pretty great" as long as, Atkins points out, "you can take selfies, watch Nyan cat, grow out a beard, dress up like a comic book character, maybe get fifteen minutes of fame on Youtube, put on a virtual reality mask and volunteer for causes."





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Same Old, Same Old

A few weeks ago Jonathan Easleyy of The Hill reported

First lady Michelle Obama on Wednesday said New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) suffers from adulthood obesity and is an example of why her "Let’s Move" campaign is such an important initiative.

Speaking Wednesday on the "Today" show, the first lady was asked to comment on reports that Christie secretly underwent a medical operation in February to help him lose weight.

“The one thing I will say is that there are millions of people like the governor who struggle with adulthood obesity, and that’s one of the reasons why 'Let’s Move' is so important,” she said. “Because we want to start working with kids when they’re young so that they don’t have these challenges when they get older.”

The first lady initially tempered her comments by calling it a private family decision.


Of course she did- because, as Easley added, "The New Jersey governor is one of the most popular political figures in the country, and many consider him to be in the top-tier of potential 2016 Republican presidential candidates."   And no one may criticize Chris Christie.

Especially, it would seem, in front of his BFF, Barack Obama.   In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, in late October the President toured Atlantic City, N.J. with Christie and appeared at a press conference in a photo-op valuable to both men.  Atlantic City mayor Lorenzo Langford, who has feuded with the NJ Governor was notably absent, presumably because he might have imperiled the comity between the two Republicans- uh, er, the Republican and the Democrat.

Several conservative opinon-makers were Incensed that one of the party's governors would be campaigning with the Democratic president a few days before a close election.  Predictably, MSNBC bloggers were contemptuous of the right, one praising Christie for allegedly "abandoning partisanship in favor of responding to a natural disaster-induced crisis," another slamming "the right-wing's growing rapid hatred of bipartisanship."

But Christie's favor to the President has been returned.   As Matt Katz (unofficial stenographer to the Governor) effused Tuesday

The boys of October are back, just in time for summer.

"Jersey, you still got a lot of road ahead, but when you look out on this beach here, it looks good!" President Obama told the Jersey Shore this afternoon.

Invoking the phrase officials have adopted as part of the Jersey Shore tourism campaign, Obama said: "You are stronger than the storm."

"After all you've dealt with and after all you've been through, the Jersey Shore is back and it's open for business."

Obama and Gov. Christie, the bipartisan duo that worked closely in the aftermath of Sandy -- and in the process triggered controversy of seismic levels in the lead-up to Election Day -- are hanging out today on the Jersey Shore. Beyond the political implications, the event is intended to let America know that the state's main tourist destination is largely up and running, ready to welcome tourists.

Ah, yes," just in time for the summer", two guys from the neighborhood just "hanging out," knocking back a couple.   In his next, the fifth, paragraph, Katz got around to telling us where on the "Jersey" ("New Jersey" is just, oh, so formal) shore the two buds were.

The President's support for Christie, campaigning for re-election to the Statehouse, is apiece with one of the President's most curious habits.    Republican SenatorLincoln Chafee, who became an Independent and was elected Governor of New Hampshire, has now switched his party identication to Democrat in his bid to be re-elected.   Chairperson Peter Shumlin of the Democratic Governor's Association says the organization will support "whomever emerges as the Democratic nominee."  Nonetheless

In an encouraging sign for Chafee, the White House publicly embraced him as a soon-to-be-minted Democrat on Wednesday, issuing a statement from Obama praising Chafee as “an independent thinker and leader” who hasn’t been constrained by party labels

.

“I enjoyed working with Linc when he was a Republican in the United States Senate, and I look forward to continuing that collaboration on the issues that matter not just to the Democratic Party, but to every American,” Obama said. “I’m thrilled to welcome Linc to the party of Jefferson and Jackson, Roosevelt and Kennedy – and I look forward to working with him in the years ahead.”

It’s no surprise that Chafee would win a warm reception from Obama: The ex-Republican campaigned for the president in 2008 and 2012 and spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte last summer.

Obama has returned the favor: he declined to endorse a Democrat for governor in 2010, when Chafee was running as an independent in a three-way race. And when Chafee ran TV ads featuring archival footage of the president praising him, Obama and his aides did not object.

In fact, despite being officially neutral in 2010, Obama was perceived as so Chafee-friendly that the Democratic nominee that year, Frank Caprio, told Rhode Island radio station WPRO that the president could “take his endorsement and really shove it.”

Chafee ultimately won with 36 percent of the vote, while Caprio fell into third place.

Blogging at Hullabaloo, David Atkins notes that the state Democratic establishment is displeased that what he accurately dubs "the Neoliberal-in-Chief" has endorsed Chafee.  The Governor's whose switch of party is particularly opportunistic, his only chance to avoid what otherwise would be near-certain defeat for the unpopular governor in this reliably Democratic State.  Atkins explains

Lincoln Chafee has finally decided to switch parties and become a Democrat. The short and simple analysis is that Chafee faced an uncomfortable three-way battle in which many Democrats declined to endorse their own fellow Democrat Frank Caprio in order to assure that a Republican didn't sneak into the Rhode Island governorship. Chafee's switch to the Democratic Party means that he can potentially avoid that situation if he runs for re-election.

A lazy progressive take on Chafee's switch is that Republicans have become so extreme that they've driven the likes of Chafee out of their party, that more sensible Republicans should switch away also, that the GOP is facing death throes as the Bachmanns are laughed out of Congress while the Chafees become Democrats. Yada yada. But I'm not going to do that, because it would be whistling past the graveyard.

The reality is that while Chafee is reliably liberal on social issues, he largely remains an economic conservative. That makes him wholly inadequate as a Democrat.

Now, if Rhode Island were a tough red state in which Chafee was a reliable winner against a bevy of hyperconservatives, that would be different. Ben Nelson, for instance, will always get a pass in Nebraska because there aren't good alternatives. But Rhode Island is not that. Good progressive Democrats with real progressive economic values can and should win in Rhode Island. Lincoln Chafee is not the best of a bad bargain. He's the worst of a good bargain.

Chairperson of the Ventura County (CA.) Democratic Central Committe, Atkins concludes

As Democrats, we can do better than Lincoln Chafee in Rhode Island, particularly now that he's saddled with bad approval ratings. We must do better.

And it must be the state party leadership in Rhode Island that stands up to the President and makes it clear that they expect and demand a real Democrat run for and win the governorship of the Ocean State.

Congressional Democrats, liberal pundits, and others must support the President as he is saddled with the largely trumped-up Benghazi and IRS scandals. (The AP/Justice Department scrum is a different matter.)  But if (though unlikely) Obama's troubles grow and the possiblity of  impeachment looms, House Democrats might remember that a defining characteristic of Barack Obama's political career has been that, when faced with competing interests of party and self, he never has wavered.

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Only Benign Sounding



David Atkins labels Ted Nugent "a buffoon" and "to a certain degree" Representative Steve Stockman, the Texas Republican who invited the pro-gun, anti-Obama, one-hit wonder of long ago to tonight's State of the Union address.

Not so, Atkins argues, are Alan Simpson, Erskine Bowles, John Boehner, and President Obama, who are desperate to cut Medicare Social Security, Medicaid and the WIC program, and who ignore climate change and promote militarization of our police force.

Dictionary.com defines "buffoon" as "a clown; a jester" as well as "a person given to clowing and joking" and "a ludicrous or bumbling person; a fool."   So, yes, Nugent and possibly Stockman fit the bill while, as Atkins notes, "The Washington Consensus types love to clutch their pearls over the Sarah Palins, Ted Nugents, and Todd Akins" while lauding far more dangerous individuals such as the aforementioned SimpsonBowlesBoehnerObama.

Fittingly, two-and-a-half hours earlier Atkins had written about another "Serious Person" enjoying a honeymoon with the Washington Consensus folks, for he is no fool, no bumbler, or jokester, but a leading candidate for his party's presidential nomination.  He also sounds reasonable and is Hispanic, for which he gets extra points from a media which is exorcised about the anti-science, anti-middle class, anti-gun safety party because it doesn't like ethnic minorities.

He is Marco Rubio, who will be delivering the official official (the other, by Rand Paul) Repub response to the State of the Union message.  Atkins slams Rubio's remarks, as projected in the preview by the Weekly Standard's Chris Hayes, who comments in his love letter

Rubio also wants to take arguments about debt from the theoretical and the long-term to the immediate and the short-term. “I think we have to link the debt to their lives. People understand that we have this debt and that their kids are going to get saddled with this in the future. And I think that’s a compelling argument. But I think an even more compelling argument, in conjunction with that one, is to explain to people how the debt is hurting them right now.”

“The debt has a direct impact on unemployment. Ever dollar that is being lent to the government is a dollar that is not being invested in our economy,” he says. “The immediate danger of the debt, and the one that speaks to people in the real world, is the fact that the debt is contributing to the fact that they don’t have a good job.”

As George W. Bush ran up the deficit and the debt with two wars not paid for, a prescription drug benefit cherished by the pharmaceutical industry but not paid for, and cuts in the income tax rate, Rubio said... nothing.  Now, as Jeff Graham of Investor's Business Daily puts it, "Here's a pretty important fact that virtually everyone in Washington seems oblivious to: The federal deficit has never fallen as fast as it's falling now without a coincident recession" (chart, from Ezra Klein from CBO and OMB figures, immediately below).

Now the fact-starved Rubio is concerned about the deficit; now, he wants to cut spending, even though, as the graph (from the St. Louis Fed via Krugman's blog) below indicates, government spending has risen at a far lower rate in the Obama Administration than it did in the Bush 43 Administration.

Slashing spending won't bring the nation out of its economic slump.  Rubio claims "every dollar that is being lent to the government is a dollar that is not being invested in our economy." But heads of corporations are practically going on strike, hoarding $1.9 trillion rather than investing them in the U.S.A. because they hope Congress allows them to repatriate profits without paying taxes.  Paul Krugman explains

Which means that we're awash in excess savings. And if you decide to save more, it's not actually going to help society. I mean, things add up. If there's a crucial, one crucial thing to understand about all this it is that the global economy, money moves around in a circle. And my spending is your income, and your spending is my income. And if all of us try to spend less because we want to save more, we don't succeed. All we end up doing is creating a global depression...

There are some other things you can do. Debt relief, where you can do it, will help because it will make people able to spend more. There're some things that the, maybe the Federal Reserve can do, even though interest rates are zero. But the core thing, the thing that we know works, the thing that all the evidence of history says works in a situation like this is the private sector won't spend, government can step in and provide the spending that we need in order to keep this economy afloat.

Rubio apparently will demonstrate impressive economic ignorance and equally impressive sleight-of-hand.   The dollars lent to the government are those not invested in our economy, maintains the Florida Senator, suggesting that these are revenues from the American people.  But tax revenue is not returned to taxpayers on a dollar-for-dollar basis and are not meant to be, but instead are spent on defense, Medicare, etc.  Rather, those "lent" to the Federal government come from foreign banks and governments and therefore are not dollars "not being invested in our economy."  They are, in fact, dollars which are being invested in our economy.  Pretty slick, Senator.

Ultimately, however, facts matter little to Marco Rubio and only slightly more to the likes of Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, included among those about whom Krugman observes:

The deficit scolds dominating policy debate will, of course, fiercely resist any attempt to downgrade their favorite issue. They love living in an atmosphere of fiscal crisis: It lets them stroke their chins and sound serious, and it also provides an excuse for slashing social programs, which often seems to be their real objective.

But neither the current deficit nor projected future spending deserve to be anywhere near the top of our political agenda. It’s time to focus on other stuff — like the still-depressed state of the economy and the still-terrible problem of long-term unemployment.





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Only A Matter Of Time


On November 26, Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky) told GOP TV's Greta Van Susteren "I made a pledge to the people of Kentucky that I'm not raising taxes. I took a pledge. I signed a statement, an oath that I wouldn't raise taxes, and I'm going to adhere to it."

In a spurt of wishful thinking, David Atkins commented

One mark of a moron is not to know a good deal when they see one. So thank goodness for morons like Rand Paul, the kind of people who still think tax cuts for the rich pay for themselves and don't realize that this is their one big chance to cut Medicaid and Medicare in exchange for easily replaceable tip money for the rich, and blame it on the Democrats to boot.

The Grand Bargain would be much more likely without such useful idiots, and that would be awful. So bravo to you, Rand Paul. Keep that venal stupidity coming all the way through the end of the lame duck session, and best of luck with the 2016 GOP nomination.

In all likelihood, Atkins realized that was merely wishful thinking.   Today, The Washington Post's Lori Montgomery and Rosalie Helderman report

A growing chorus of Republicans is urging House leaders to abandon their staunch opposition to higher tax rates for the wealthy with the aim of clearing the way for a broad deal that would also rein in the cost of federal health and retirement programs.

With less than a month before the “fiscal cliff” deadline, President Obama remains adamant about allowing tax rates to rise for the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. Without such a deal, he is “absolutely” ready to go over the cliff, Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner said Wednesday on CNBC.

Many GOP centrists and some conservatives are calling on House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) to concede on rates now, while he still has some leverage to demand something in return. Republicans are eager to win changes to fast-growing safety-net programs, such as raising the eligibility age for Medicare and applying a less-generous measure of inflation to Social Security benefits.

A few days ago, ABC's Jonathan Karl found

Republicans are seriously considering a Doomsday Plan if fiscal cliff talks collapse entirely. It’s quite simple: House Republicans would allow a vote on extending the Bush middle class tax cuts (the bill passed in August by the Senate) and offer the President nothing more: no extension of the debt ceiling, nothing on unemployment, nothing on closing loopholes. Congress would recess for the holidays and the president would face a big battle early in the year over the debt ceiling.

Two senior Republican elected officials tell me this doomsday plan is becoming the most likely scenario. A top GOP House leadership aide confirms the plan is under consideration, but says Speaker Boehner has made no decision on whether to pursue it.

Under one variation of this Doomsday Plan, House Republicans would allow a vote on extending only the middle class tax cuts and Republicans, to express disapproval at the failure to extend all tax cuts, would vote “present” on the bill, allowing it to pass entirely on Democratic votes.

Of course, there is ample reason for the GOP to fold on the Democrats' bid to return tax rates on upper incomes to the 39.6% the wealthy had to endure (sarcasm alert) during the financially strapped Clinton years.  As Alex Seitz-Wald notes, the President is getting a much better reception from the public on his handling of the negotiations than are congressional Republicans; most Americans would rather the politicians compromise rather than "stick to their principles;" most individuals believe Congress, rather than the President, would be blamed if the country went over the cliff/slope; and most people support raising taxes on individuals earning over $200.000.

So the GOP eventually will capitulate on tax rates, but demand much in return.  Yesterday, the Post's Montgomery and Helderman wrote

“I and some others are advocating giving the president what he wants,” said Rep. Steven C. LaTourette (R-Ohio). But he stressed that this must be part of a package that slows federal borrowing and reduces the debt by $4 trillion to $5 trillion.

“Quite frankly, some people in this 2 percent who call me, they’re more worried about the fiscal cliff than about the rates going up a couple points. That has bigger risk for them,” said LaTourette, a close Boehner ally who is retiring in January.

Rep. Thomas J. Rooney (R-Fla.) added: “If there are truly real entitlement reforms that are going to preserve Social Security and Medicare for generations to come, it’s going to be very difficult for me to oppose” higher rates for the rich.

It's clear, therefore, what Republicans are after- and it's not reducing the deficit.  Many of them, having applauded budget-busting deficits engineered by Presidents Reagan and Bush 43, now target not only Medicare and Medicaid, but, like Representative Rooney, refer to Social Security or "entitlements" generally.

These conservatives could not be unaware that  the most popular leg- Social Security- of the entitlement trio contributes not a whit to budget deficits, the debt, or any imaginary "cliff."     On Sunday's Meet The Press, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) first took a swipe at Medicare, stating "Look, I laid out in great detail very painful cuts to Medicare. I just did it in a 242 page bill that I’ve shared with the White House [...] "    A moment late, he would casually shift his concern to the more inclusive "entitlements," arguing "We really have to look at much deeper reforms to the entitlements… I think the Speaker is frustrated right now because as you’ve mentioned, the White House keeps spiking the ball on tax increases for the wealthy. But has not yet been forthcoming on real entitlement reform."  Corker's Fiscal Reform Act of 2012 includes, CBS News reports, "reforms to entitlement programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security."

For now, the GOP, with Democratic acquiescence, is coming after health care for the poor and the elderly by taking aim at Medicaid and Medicare.   Social Security, however, also is on the chopping block, though apparently not yet.

At a press conference last week, Senate Majority Leader Reid remarked "Social Security is not part of the problem. That's one of the myths the Republicans have tried to create.  Social Security is sound for the next many years. But we want to make sure that in the outer years, people are protected also. But it's not going to be part of the budget talks as far as I'm concerned."  He added that the President had told the Cliff negotiators recently "Social Security is not part of this."

Not yet, it's not.   It's "not going to be part of the budget talks" and "is not part of this."  But Republicans have set their sights on Social Security, as well as Medicare and Medicaid.   (After all, many of the recipients are among their despised 47%.)   And the President is anxious to get "the fiscal cliff" behind him so that he can continue to work on the slippery slope of undermining social insurance.

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No Trip To Charlotte



Senator Joe Lieberman hasn't been invited to the Democratic (or Republican) National Convention this year and a few people are offended.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports

Some Democrats think keeping Lieberman away is a mistake. After all, he served as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, becoming the first Jewish American to run atop a major party’s ticket.He also presided for several years as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped transform the ideology of the Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.

“Even though he’s no longer a member of the Democratic Party, he caucuses with the Senate Democrats and provides a vote for their majority. It would be a good thing to invite him,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who served as a senior adviser to Gore’s campaign. “He doesn’t have to be invited to give a speech. He doesn’t have to have Clinton’s time slot."...

“Joe Lieberman is a victim of polarization. He’s another person cast aside by people who aren’t interested in centrist views,” said Professor Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, who has worked as a scholar in residence in the Senate.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said Lieberman’s approach is out of step with the times.

“Given how polarized the political process has become, my guess is that Joe Lieberman is taking this, appropriately, as a tremendous compliment,” said Schnur. “If there were a convention being held in the days between Tampa and Charlotte that was devoted to bridging partisan gaps and moving forward on the country’s challenges, Joe Lieberman would probably be the keynote speaker.”

In response, Hullabaloo's David Atkins (with a deserved swipe at Bill Clinton) explains

Holding contradictory partisan views doesn't make one a "centrist." Supporting lower taxes on the wealthy while supporting action on climate change isn't "centrist." A hypothetical candidate who wanted to ban abortion entirely while supporting single-payer healthcare wouldn't be a "centrist," either. A centrist is someone who supports milquetoast, inoffensive positions on a variety of issues: say, simplifying the the tax code while raising taxes slightly on just the richest incomes. Or advocating toothless carbon exchanges as a "solution" to climate change. Or decrying abortion but wanting to make it "safe, legal and rare." Or converting welfare programs into work programs.

You know, the mainstream positions of the modern Democratic Party. That's centrism. It's not the voters' fault if centrism has been wholly adopted by one political party while the other sits squarely in crazyville. That's just the breaks.

Like Baker and Schnur, Bolton is perturbed that such a deserving, open-minded guy like the Democratic-turned-Independent senator from Connecticut is being being denied what he appears to believe is a constitutional right of being invited to a party convention.   He writes

Lieberman made a memorable attempt to bridge party divides in 2008 when he endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a move that infuriated many Democrats and nearly cost him a top committee slot.

“I am here tonight because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth: Being a Democrat or Republican is important, but it is nowhere near as important as being an American,” he said in the 2008 speech.

He went on to praise McCain for taking on “corrupt Republican lobbyists” to reform campaign finance law and for trying to reform the nation’s immigration laws and “actually do something about global warming.”

In 2000, Joe Lieberman pulled the rug out from under Al Gore and did his part to make George W. Bush president.    Not content with helping one Republican enter the Oval Office, in 2008 he didn't merely endorse the G.O.P. candidate for president.  He spoke at the party's convention, slamming both the Democratic nominee for allegedly being unwilling "to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party" and by implication, those very "interest groups." That would be those selfish minorities, women, public employees, members of unions.

Lieberman didn't only endorse the GOP presidential nominee, he campaigned for him.   And in so doing, he implied the Democratic nominee was unfaithful to American soldiers, accusing him of "voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground."   Not a mention from the paragon of bipartisanship and independence, however, that, as Media Matters noted in 2008, John McCain "voted against legislation to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or that Obama has voted in the past to provide funds for troops stationed there."

Joe Lieberman is entitled to support actively anyone he wants for any office and to advocate for what he believes in.  But when those views are antithetical to the causes central to the Democratic Party and he works strenuously to defeat a Democratic nominee for president, it would be political malpractice to invite him to the gathering which will renominate that individual he found so repugnant in 2008.




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Food Politics



Sean Hannity went on a compassionate conservative tear recently.      On April 23 he maintained

I never went to bed hungry in my life.... Most Americans haven't ... I have friends of mine that eat rice and beans all the time.   Beans-protein-rice.   Inexpensive.  You can make a big pot of this for a week for relatively negligible amounts of money for your whole family and feed your family.

Look, you should have vegetables and fruit in there as well but, you know, if you need to survive, you can survive off it.   It's not ideal- you know,you can get some cheap meat and throw inthere as well for protein.   There are ways to live really, really cheaply.

On April 25, Hannity urged poor people to "quit drinking soda and drink water" and reportedly suggested they eat eggs.

Good advice, actually, for most people- not only the indigent- to opt for water and eggs rather than soda.   Patronizing for a guy making $10 million a year, and quite simplistic, but sound.

Perhaps this Sean Hannity, fan of fresh vegetables and fruit, can stage a debate with the other Sean Hannity.    A year and a half ago, Hannity joined other right-wing talk show hosts in condemning First Lady Michelle Obama's emphasis on eating fresh, locally, and raw.        According to Media Matters, he had claimed "that Michelle Obama was 'taking the nanny state to a new level' by 'tell[ing] us what to eat' and claimed that we will soon have the government 'fining us if we use salt.'"

But it's not only Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, John Stossel, Fox News, and self-described "Ameica's Anchorman," Rush Limbaugh.    In July, 2011 a Heritage Foundation report included  

The actual living conditions of America’s poor are far different from these images. In 2005, the typical household defined as poor by the government had a car and air conditioning.

David Atkins called out the conservative think tank for targeting Americans they portray as

spoiled whiners because they can afford a microwave, three square meals a day and a used car while the poor in Brazil have none of those, is a particularly insidious and revolting bit of sophistry.

There are three key reasons that the lack of significant increase in middle-class wages vis-a-vis productivity and inflation since the 1970s has not led to the sort of riots and revolution we are seeing in the Middle East. The first is massive subsidies of agribusiness and processed foods in the U.S., which keep prices for unhealthy foods low, leading to America's poor rarely experiencing starvation, but often experiencing massive diet-related health problems. The second is cheap prices due to globalization and lack of tariffs: even as jobs manufacturing microwave ovens in America have disappeared, leading to lower wages and higher unemployment, the price of a Chinese-manufactured microwave oven has become more affordable. Wage deflation due to labor arbitrage has also led to price deflation--particularly in the prices of the sorts of electronic goods like refrigerators and video game consoles on which the Heritage Foundation places such a keen focus. The third reason is the widespread availability of credit, which has served to mask the inability of middle-class and poorer American households to balance incomes and expenses. Shred the credit cards of every single American, and you would have riots the very next day. And in fact, that very explosion of credit in the United States that both keeps the pitchforks away from investment bankers' mansions in the Hamptons and makes those mansions possible, is part of what has driven the world economy into recession. 

It's a nifty trick Heritage has pulled: promote agribusiness subsidy, free trade and credit expansion policies that kill domestic jobs while putting households in debt, but make DVD players and cheeseburgers cheap to obtain. Then criticize America's poor for being overweight, in debt, and owning a DVD player, in order to con the beleaguered American middle class into cutting taxes on billionaires.

Though Atkins' worthy target is the Heritage Foundation, his criticism applies, to a varying degree, to most of the right-wing talkies and intelligentsia.      And if any Democratic politician- or spouse of same- dares even to imply criticism of agribusiness, the corporate shills in the Republican punditocracy will have none of it.



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Complacency Unwarranted

You can't get much more articulate and perceptive (evidence, here) than David Atkins, regular contributor to Digby's Hullabaloo. But he is wrong about the likelihood of an enthusiastic GOP base in the 2012 presidential election.

Atkins links to a New York Times article in which Alison Kopinski writes (types)

With the nation’s first nominating contests just two months away, a large majority of Republican primary voters have yet to make up their minds about the candidate they would like to see as their party’s nominee for president in 2012.

About eight in 10 Republican primary voters say it is still too early to tell whom they will support, and just four in 10 say they have been paying a lot of attention to the 2012 presidential campaign, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

Herman Cain, the former restaurant executive, is riding a wave of support among Republican primary voters that has placed him in a statistical dead heat with rival Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, in a race that has been characterized by momentum swings among the candidates.

The poll found Mr. Cain with the highest level of support, with 25 percent of Republican primary voters, and Mr. Romney with 21 percent. This difference is within the poll’s margin of sampling error.

Adding to the fluidity of the contest, about one in 10 Republican primary voters say they would like to see someone else nominated.

Atkins thus observes

What most Democrats are looking for is basic competence and an eye for the common good. We are willing to mostly overlook race, gender, personal foibles and even difficult votes made in the past, because we understand that people are people, both life and governance are hard, and no one is perfect. We have an easier time of this.

So far, so good. But then he goes off track, concluding

The GOP purity train is such that they're not going to be happy with anybody they pick. And that, at least, is a silver lining to their increasingly radical cloud.

Significantly, when Herman Cain, whom polls now indicate is the favorite of the greatest number of registered voters of the pro-life party, appeared on Piers Morgan Tonight, he repeated faithfully the primary pro-choice talking point:

Not me as president, not some politician, not a bureaucrat. It gets down to that family. And whatever they decide, they decide. I shouldn't have to tell them what decision to make for such a sensitive issue.

And for those who believe Cain was talking only about abortion in the case of rape or incest, a moment later, asked by Morgan about "these things"(i.e., abortion generally) the candidate maintained

The government shouldn't be trying to tell people everything to do, especially when it comes to social decisions that they need to make.

All across the country GOP legislators and chief executives move aggressively to curtail abortion rights or the opportunity of a woman to choose abortion and GOP politicians proudly claim to belong to the "pro-life party." Herman Cain goes on national television and gives the pro-choice argument. And those Republican politicians, the GOP popular base, and the pro-life interest groups which have strengthened the party for decades rise as one to say: nothing.

Maybe they, especially the rank-and-file voter, weren't aware of Cain's remarks. Or perhaps a substantial portion of Republicans favor abortion rights or are relatively indifferent to the issue, characteristic of the corporate base of the party.

Or maybe it's something else. Perhaps his demeanor- direct and dominating, nothing vague- or his statements. On Meet The Press, Cain had stated "The objective of the liberals is to destroy this country."

Nothing as a prelude, no explanation necessary: "the objective of the liberals is to destroy this country." When Morgan sought elaboration, Cain asserted he meant "economically" and, a moment later, contended "It is their mission. Because they do not believe in a stronger America, in my opinion. Yes." A straight-talker. Uninformed and prone to contradict himself, but conservative and unrepentant, a man who has accused President Obama of being a liar with an economic approach that is "bulls_ _ _."

Most Repub voters, apparently, like and even respect that sort of thing. And it's not an electorate that's "not going to be happy with anyone they pick." Once the candidate, even if the relatively reasonable Romney is selected (as is likely), GOP voters will be happy, even enthusiastic. They really, really dislike Barack Obama- the policies and the man. Revving up the base will not be a problem, with or without a rebel yell.

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